When I was between the ages of 12 and 14 or maybe 15 … right before I started working, I was on the “golf team” at school. We would get to leave school early, and drive out to the local Golf Club and play for free.

Then, various parents would pick us up and take us home afterwards.

Boys being boys, and kids being kids, had “clicks” and groups of friends. And when we would “tee off” one group would play after the other, and the groups were four kids.

But we had nine kids in the club.

What the coach should have done was…

3 + 3 + 3

3 groups. Everyone played in a group.

But No. The “coach” left us alone and went to the clubhouse to grab a beer and play some poker with “his” friends.

So we self organized.

Yeah. And you can guess what happened.

Two “clicks” of friends. One outsider.

3 groups.

4 + 4 + 1

Dumb fuck golf coach.

…

Guess who usually had to play alone?

Yup. I was the last kid, and I was the one playing alone.

I trailed behind the two other groups. Alone. Waiting until they finished playing before I could tee off. Which was something like ten to fifteen minutes.

Nine holes.

Nine times.

And often, I would finish the last round and walk to the parking lot to find my dad waiting for me with a car-load of the other kids waiting for me. Yupur. They were all in the car.

And all he could say was… “What took YOU so long?”

Which, of course, the other kids asked as well.

“Yeah, XXXXX, what too YOU so long?” And they would giggle.

I never said anything.

…

Dumb fuck. The other two groups played before me. I had to wait until they were all done before I could tee off.

The first group would be in the car, then the second group would pile in.

Meanwhile, I’m the last guy out, getting ready to tee off.

Fucking shits.

…

Fuck the “golf coach”.

Fuck my classmates.

Fuck my dad.

And FUCK ME for taking it. 14 years old. I should have known better.

…

So this is how I spent my entire time on the Golf Team. Mostly, but not always, playing alone.

Sometimes, I would get to play with one or two boys.

But mostly, I trailed behind. Spending the afternoon playing ALONE.

…

My stupid-as-a-rock father didn’t notice that I spent the afternoon shunned, and playing alone.

And, don’t you know it, he was giving the kids a ride and allowing them to make fun of me. A double whammy insult.

…

So one day, I was feeling bad. I was lonely. And I was again the last guy. Playing alone.

And the entire time I just fumed about the entire piss-poor situation.

I fumed, and fumed and fumed.

And, somewhere around the sixth hole, I said “fuck this!”.

…

So that day, I skipped the eighth and ninth holes, cut through the wood line, and went directly to the parking lot. My dad was there as always.

He looked up and said” Wow, you are early today.”.

I didn’t say anything.

I just threw my clubs in the car, and told my father to go. To leave. To just get going. He’s looking at me like..

Then he asked…”what about the other kids”.

I yelled; “Drive! Go! Go! Go! Don’t get those kids. Leave now!”

He looked at me like the dumb-fuck he was. The face of incomprehension.

And then he fired up the car.

And I was surprised that he actually drove off.

We left the gravel parking lot, in a wide turn.

The first group of kids were just then reaching the parking lot.

He did it slowly, looking at me; fully expecting me to ask him to stop. But I must have had a real pissed off expression on my face. So he kept on driving.

And these other kids were looking at us, like “why are you leaving without us.?”

…

So he, of course, asked.

“What is going on?”

…

On the way home I told him why.

The kids never played with me.

I always played alone.

…

They were using me to get a ride, and that was all.

That they did not like me, and I was sick and tired of being shunned. If they didn’t want to play golf with me, then they won’t get a ride with me either.

…

Dad had nothing to say.

So we drove in silence.

He then, after about ten minutes of silence, asked me sheepishly if I still wanted to be “on the team”, and I said “no”.

…

Fuck them all. And that is my story for today.

Sometimes we HAVE to tell the rest of the world to FUCK OFF.

Shortly after that, I quit the team, and started to work in the coal mines.

And that was another adventure. Today…

Have you ever seen someone park in a handicap spot who wasn’t disabled and get ticketed by the cops?

I was the cop. I was an officer at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I kept seeing a young lady parking a car in a handicapped spot and scurrying inside before I could reach her. I ran the plate and found the vehicle was registered to her father. I ran the placard hanging on the rearview mirror. It was also registered to him as well. NC law states the placard is registered to an individual, not the car, and only the registered user can use it when in the vehicle. One day, I finally caught her getting out of the car. I stopped her and explained she would have to move the vehicle, and of course, I got the usual, “Do you know who owns the car?” I responded and told her what the citation would say word for word. She still refused to move the vehicle. I requested her driver’s license and registration. When she refused, I put her in cuffs and placed her in the back of my car. I told her she would be charged with resisting, obstructing, and delaying an officer and the parking violation, and I was towing her car. It finally hit her: I was a police officer and didn’t care who her father was. She immediately agreed to move the vehicle and surrender the placard. I wanted this from the get-go, so I seized the placard and cited her for the parking violation.

I had a sinking feeling this wouldn’t be the end, so I wrote a report and placed the placard into evidence. I sent a copy of the report to the NCDMV in Fayetteville, NC, then called the inspector there and told him he may or may not hear about this later. Not thirty minutes after hanging up with the DMV inspector, I got a call from communications to return to the station. I walk in, and who do I see but my Asst. Chief and the young lady. She has this grin and wears it up to the assistant—Chief’s office. The Chief went through the everyday complaint speech, and I elected to have the young lady tell her story first. She attempted to say I was disrespectful, yelled and threatened her, and stole property belonging to the state. After all her whining and moaning, I walked over to the Asst. Chief’s computer pulled up the report and the video attachment of the traffic stop (I always recorded my stops even before it was mandatory). I said nothing but let the report and video tell the story. She left near tears, swearing, “We” hadn’t heard the last of this. I remember turning to the Asst. Chief and saying something like, “I don’t doubt it.”

The next day, a young lady in a wheelchair entered the lobby and requested to speak to the Chief. The Chief was busy, so my Asst. Chief took the visit. The young lady wanted to thank the officer who made a non-handicapped girl move from the handicapped parking spot to her dorm.

I did hear from the father a couple of days later. He called from the Fayetteville DMV office, stating he was filing a report for a stolen handicapped placard. The inspector got the case and connected him with me. I explained the situation and what happened. I offered to send him a copy of the report and the traffic stop video. After all was said and done, he decided he didn’t want to file a report with DMV and ended up apologizing for his daughter’s behavior. I explained he wasn’t responsible for his daughter’s poor decisions, and hopefully, she learned a lesson.

What is the funniest joke you’ve been told that you still think about to this day?

So, this completely drunk guy walks into a bar, sits down at the end and orders a beer. He’s obnoxious but not bad enough to get booted out. After a while he notices a dart board at the other end of the bar and asks the bartender “hey, barkeep what will you give me if I can hit a bullseye with one dart from over here? “

“You can’t.”

“Ya, but what if I do?”

“Don’t worry, I have a special prize.”

And the drunk grabs a dart, chucks it in the general direction of the dart board and to everyone’s amazement nails a bullseye.

“Well, what’s my prize?” the guy asks.

Well, the bartender has nothing and is calmly scrambling around, trying to think of something to give the guy, when he remembers a turtle he’s got in a brown bag that he was going to give to his nephew for his birthday after work.

So, he grabs the bag and plops it down in front of the drunk…who doesn’t even look in it. He just picks it up, says “Hey, thanks Boss” and walks out.

A couple weeks later, the drunk shows up again, sits on the same barstool and chats people up while putting down a couple more beers. After a while he once again asks “Hey, bartender… what’ll you give me if I throw a bullseye with one dart on that board over there?”

Knowing there’s no way in hell the drunk is going to repeat his last lucky shot the bartender says, ” I gotcha covered”

The drunk picks up a dart and once again with reckless abandon throws it in the general direction the dart board. And nails another bullseye.

Before the bartender can say anything the drunk guy says “And no food this time. That burger you gave me last time was the worst I’ve ever had.”

Proof of Reincarnation

What did the teacher in your high school get fired for?

This occurred in Mississauga, just outside of Toronto. Didn’t get fired, but worse! My high school science teacher was an okay guy, everyone liked him and he did some interesting things in his classroom.

One time he performed open heart surgery on a live chicken to demonstrate biology. The chicken died from the ether.

I graduated from high school and about two years later I see my science teacher on the front page of the Toronto Sun. This guy was a total fraud! He was arrested for impersonating a doctor and was operating his own medical clinic in Brampton based on fraudulent documents. Even his teaching degree was a fake – he wasn’t even a licensed teacher.

And the most impressive con? He was also impersonating a golf pro! He was a good golfer and he used to show us pictures of him with pro golfers like Jack Nicholas (this was late 70’s). He was found guilty, did some time, and was deported back to the US.

My theory is that he was a failed medical student but great forger and knew enough to fake his way as a biology teacher and doctor. Same for the golf, pretty good, but not quite good enough!

Us Literally Freaking Out As Brics Takes A Huge Step To Dethrone The Dollar.

This is probably the best, most brutal, most honest rant on Japan by Japanese that I heard for a while.

[Japan in 2024]

Japan in 2024 has lost the ability to even buy orange juice and has started making "orange-mandarin mixed juice" with tears in its eyes.

Women have gone abroad to prostitute themselves so much that they have been refused entry into the United States, and even started going to South Korea, which was much poorer not so long ago, to work as prostitutes.

The former trading and exporting powerhouse has been sitting cross-legged for a long time now, with a trade deficit of trillions of yen and nothing to export, and in the tourism industry it is desperately bowing down not only to Westerners but also to people in Southeast Asia, India, and even countries whose names we do not know. Earn foreign currency.

Even though Japan is a country with extremely low wages, we subsidize hundreds of billions of yen to foreign companies to build factories in the country, yet young people still go abroad to work.

The top ranks of universities have all been uprooted by foreign capital, and graduates from prestigious schools such as Tokyo University, Kyoto University, and former Imperial Waseda University are pursuing empty careers in consulting rather than manufacturing, with no hope of earning foreign currency.

The top ranks of society are fleeing to the United States one after another, and those who escape never return.

In urban areas, Japanese people pay monthly rent for apartments to Chinese owners, and while Japanese people complain that they can't buy real estate because it's too expensive, Chinese people buy apartments with cash because they're cheap.

The prices of imported building materials have skyrocketed, making it difficult to even buy a house, but it's okay! The president's house is grateful for its good cost performance, and the company's profits are at an all-time high.The sales of a small-scale real estate agency that has been selling on the street in front of the station, appealing to people in their early 30s, and raising the slogan, ``Let's go, 1 trillion,'' has finally increased. Over 1 trillion.

Even though the US dollar price of the iPhone has not increased, there is a lot of fuss in Japan saying, ``It's gotten more expensive again!'' Foreign companies are in control of almost all mobile communication methods, including smartphones and LINE.

IOWN is amazing because they are desperately trying to hide the fact that they have not achieved Industry 4.0 or even the third industrial revolution by chanting a fluffy and mysterious fantasy and delusion called Society 5.0, and neither the government nor the private sector has any IT technology to sell anymore. They are desperately trying to promote something that they don't really understand and are trying to show off that they are doing a good job.

In the past, the country used to have empty discussions such as, ``If we don't have enough labor, we should bring in immigrants,'' or ``It's better not to bring in immigrants.'' The wages are higher in the department,'' so they have no choice but to deceive the Vietnamese and create a system of slavery to secure labor.

The medical infrastructure that was said to be one of the best in the world has been eaten up by the elderly, and as a result of exploiting the working generation and finally reaching the limit of what they can pay, Japan has forced its drug prices down, and now Japan is saying, ``I won't sell it to Japan at such a low price.'' There are countless drugs made overseas that cannot be used.

Young people who could be saved by a new drug cannot be helped, and even today, old people happily gather at the hospital to receive compresses, administer drugs that delay dementia by 20-30% at a cost of 3 million yen per person, and patients in their 80s are in bed. There is an old man in his 90s who is bedridden and trying to prolong his life, and his single son in his 60s who is earning his pension sometimes comes to visit him.

All of this is borne by the young working generation, who have no money and the marriage rate has hit a record low, while at the same time the number of births has hit a postwar low.

The currency that people around the world once coveted, the yen, is no longer known as the "emergency yen" and is being sold off on a daily basis.

Now, as one of the currencies of emerging countries in the Far East, it is experiencing wild price fluctuations, and although it has managed to hold on by selling off foreign currency hoarded during its past glory days, it is unclear how long it will last.

The country and its people have postponed structural reforms, neglected technological development, and simply postponed everything, mistakenly believing that monetary and fiscal policies would somehow solve the problem.

Forgetting the bloody efforts of the wise men of the past and the history of drastic changes caused by civilization and enlightenment, the old men of companies and organizations that were only steeped in old interests, which flourished in the Showa era, are wielding power and introducing new technologies and ways of thinking. Even if they were crushed, the people in question would be dead by then and have escaped.

The young people who were forced to carry a time bomb in the bellies of boiled frogs realized that one day, when foreign currency runs out, they will not be able to buy everything, including beef, flour, soybeans, oil, gas, and uranium, resulting in a devastated society. Even though I'm vaguely anticipating the future, I just turn my eyes away from the reality and drink tangerine juice today while the daddy girl is being asked about the color of her pants by an uncle.

US approach to decouple from China is backfiring

On May 3, the US Treasury announced relaxed conditions for tax incentives when consumers purchase electric vehicles (EVs). Previously, EVs using Chinese-produced minerals were set to lose tax incentives starting in 2025. The new adjustment extends this deadline to 2027 for certain minerals like graphite.

According to an analysis by Nikkei News, the US government’s decision to relax these conditions stems from the difficulty of producing EV batteries without using Chinese-produced graphite. Graphite is a core material in lithium battery anodes, and currently China accounts for 70 percent of its supply worldwide, with a high dependency on Chinese processing and refining capabilities.

As the US grapples with the complexities of its containment and decoupling from Chinese manufacturing, it’s increasingly feeling the “pain.” Over the past three years, the US government has implemented strict export controls to weaken China’s high-tech capability.

However, this approach has started negatively impacting the US itself, creating a complex double-edged effect.

A report released last month by the New York Federal Reserve Bank (Geopolitical Risk and Decoupling: Evidence from US Export Controls) analyzed this issue. According to the research by Matteo Crosignani and others, US export controls led to widespread decoupling between American suppliers and Chinese companies. Affected American suppliers are more likely to terminate existing relationships with Chinese clients and less likely to form new ones.

With the decoupling, numerous American suppliers impacted are unable to form new supply chain connections with clients in the US or allied nations within three years of the export controls being enforced.

The imposition of export controls has resulted in substantial losses for affected American suppliers, leading to heightened negative loan default risks, with an average market value decline of $857 million per impacted supplier, summing up to $130 billion collectively across all suppliers.

These suppliers are also encountering reductions in revenue, profitability and workforce. Bank loans to these suppliers have notably dwindled, signaling wider financial limitations.

From the perspective of Chinese companies, the report reveals their resilience. Targeted Chinese enterprises have increased their reliance on domestic and non-US suppliers to cope with US export controls. They have established new relationships with alternative suppliers within China and strengthened cooperation with existing non-US suppliers to mitigate the impact of the controls. Moreover, US export controls may unintentionally promote domestic innovation in China as businesses are forced to reduce their dependence on American technology.

Washington has implemented decoupling strategies with China, not without anticipating losses on the American side. The approach involves sacrificing short-term economic interests to prompt supply chain shifts and hinder China’s rapid advancement in vital high-tech areas, thereby maintaining America’s continuous advantage in global technology competition. However, the trouble now is that decoupling not only causes more losses for the US but also rebuilding supply chains is not an easy task, and some may be impossible.

This is because Chinese manufacturing has achieved large-scale, diversified and multi-tiered system development, with many sectors being irreplaceable, and the aggressive expansion of Chinese manufacturing in the global market is unstoppable, especially in sectors like EVs, renewable energy, shipbuilding, high-speed rail and steel, where it already has the upper hand.

As Chinese enterprises gradually reduce their dependence on American technology and enhance their own innovation capabilities, the influence of US enterprises in the global market may further weaken. The position of Chinese manufacturing in the global supply chain is becoming more solid. Extensive decoupling of US businesses from China could potentially cause irreversible damage to the global industry and supply chains, as well as their own. Washington has already had to start assessing the consequences brought about by this.

Chinese enterprises are also seeking breakthroughs by establishing new supply chains and innovation paths. The friction and conflict between US and Chinese manufacturing will unfold on a broader scale.

The US will not change its policy of containing China in the short term. It will continue to expand the scope of its controls and sanctions, while coordinating with other third parties to curb Chinese enterprises’ access to international markets and find new ways of international cooperation.

This strategic game will have complex impacts on the economies of both sides, including adjustments to their own economic structures and profound effects on global political, economic and security fields. Change has already begun.

“America Is Getting WIPED OUT” — This Is What’s Coming… | Robert Kiyosaki 2024

Biden’s Foreign Policy Has the US in Deep Trouble

There are two problems in the United States these days and they are closely related.

The first problem is that the Biden Administration is in deep trouble on the foreign policy front and the trouble is almost certainly going to get worse. The Ukraine war is going badly for both Ukraine and the West, but U.S. leaders show no signs of wanting to negotiate a settlement and, instead, seem committed to making this a forever conflict. Gaza is another horror show. It simply has no solution since Israel has no intention of allowing the Palestinians to have a sovereign state of their own. To make matters worse, the United States is complicit in Israel’s murderous policies in Gaza. This conflict is now causing huge trouble on campuses around the country, which is making America’s poisonous politics even worse. Moreover, there are real dangers in East Asia, where there is an ever-present possibility that China and the United States could get into a shooting match. And there are further armed conflicts taking place in Africa and other regions of the world. Something is badly wrong with U.S. foreign policy.

The second problem is that there is significant agreement inside the American foreign policy establishment on most foreign policy issues, and those consensus views are reflected in the discourse in the mainstream media. It is very difficult for the many individuals who challenge the establishment’s prevailing wisdoms to make their case in elite media outlets. This disturbing situation explains in good part why America’s political leaders will not change course and adopt smarter policies.

What we need in the United States is an open discourse about the ongoing wars as well as potential wars. Why? Because unfettered debate maximizes the chance of coming up with smart strategies for either ending wars or preventing them. The key to success in this regard is to have well-informed individuals with different perspectives engaging with each other in the marketplace of ideas. We need free-wheeling debates that include unpopular views.

Sadly, there is little chance of reforming the mainstream media anytime soon. But thankfully, alternative media outlets have proliferated in recent years, making it possible for critics of U.S. foreign policy to make their voices heard.

Antiwar.com is one of our most important alternative platforms on the planet. It is an ideal place to find first-rate analysis that challenges today’s foreign policy orthodoxies. I visit Antiwar.com every day and am invariably rewarded for doing so. Surely, many of you who are reading this appeal also benefit in all sorts of ways from reading pieces published on this vital platform.

All this means that we readers have a responsibility to help maintain a flourishing Antiwar.com. In that spirit, I urge you to join me in making a generous contribution so that we can collectively increase the chances that the United States will begin acting in much smarter ways on the world stage.

John Mearsheimer is the Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and one of the leading foreign policy scholars in America.

What did someone do or say at the bank that made you say, “You gotta be kidding me!”?

We sold our house and we had to fill out paperwork saying how we wanted the money paid out across the loans we had with that bank.

We stated
home loan in full.
credit card to be paid out.
whatever money left over paid towards personal loan

What the bank chose to do
home loan in full
personal loan paid out I rang and asked what was going on as that’s not what we asked to happen. I was told ‘we assumed you filled the forms out incorrectly and that you would prefer the loans to be paid out’.

Told them no I wanted the home loan gone and then the credit card as it had the higher interest to which they responded with ‘oh well we’re sorry but it’s to late now as personal loans won’t do anything about it’.
The lady was very surprised when I didn’t take that as a final decision and told them exactly what I thought of their ‘we assumed’.
The only reason the bank decided that was what was happening is because the credit card had a higher rate of interest with no free interest period and if they didn’t pay it off we would of course keep using it and that would benefit them more.

The banks decision when I wouldn’t back down
my credit card was to be charged at the personal loan rate for the next 6 months(time left on personal loan). This rate was of course only for the amount that should have been paid out. Anything purchased after that on it would be at full rates.

our decision we took the interest rate cut told them that would be fine and then destroyed both credit cards so they couldn’t be used at all. In the end we cut expenses as much as possible and paid it off in 4 months.
As I told them ‘What’s the point of having people fill out paperwork if you’re not gonna pay attention to it’.

The final result was that when we built our new home we checked out loan deals at lots of banks but never even enquired with our original bank they had stuffed us around on a number of other occasions and we had had enough but that’s another story.

HOLLYWOOD is DEAD and GOLLUM MOVIE PROVES IT

Bacon-Wrapped Turkey with Chipotle and Orange

Want to knock their socks off? Make this bacon-wrapped turkey with a zesty chipotle-orange rub.

Prep: 30 min | Total: 4 hr 30 min | Yield: 24 servings

Ingredients

1/2 cup Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup Kraft Original Barbecue Sauce
4 canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
1 (13 pound) fresh or thawed frozen turkey
1 orange, cut into wedges
5 bay leaves
1 (16 ounce) package Oscar Mayer Bacon
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon water

Instructions

Heat oven to 325 degrees F.
Blend first 4 ingredients in blender until smooth.
Remove and discard neck and giblets from turkey cavities. Free legs from tucked position. (Do not cut band of skin.) Place oranges and bay leaves in chest cavity. Use rubber spatula or your fingers to loosen skin over breast, starting at body cavity opening by legs. Rub half the chipotle mixture onto meat under skin on breast, legs and thighs. If necessary, use wooden toothpicks to secure skin at opening. Return legs to tucked position and tie securely with string; turn wings back to hold neck skin in place. Rub remaining chipotle mixture evenly onto turkey skin.
Place turkey, breast side up, on flat rack in roasting pan. Top with bacon*. Tent turkey with foil.
Bake for 4 hours or until turkey is done (165 degrees F), uncovering after 3 hours. Remove turkey from pan; tent with foil. Let stand 15 minutes before carving. Meanwhile, pour pan drippings into medium saucepan. Discard excess fat. Mix cornstarch and water until blended; gradually stir into drippings. Bring to boil, stirring constantly.
Carve turkey. Serve with gravy.

Notes

How to make a lattice design (weave bacon): Place 5 bacon slices in single layer on sheet of parchment or waxed paper. Weave 5 of the remaining bacon slices through bacon slices on parchment to resemble lattice pattern. Hold 2 opposite corners of parchment, then quickly invert parchment onto turkey; remove parchment. Arrange remaining bacon slices over turkey’s legs, thighs and wings.

Food Facts: A 12 to 14 pound frozen turkey needs 3 to 3 1/2 days of thawing time in the refrigerator. The cooking time will range between 3 to 3 3/4 hours until the turkey is done (165 degrees F).

Nutrition

Per serving: Calories 270 Total fat 12g Saturated fat 3.5g Cholesterol 135mg Sodium 450mg Carbohydrate 3g Dietary fiber 0g Sugars 2g Protein 35g

Vitamin A 2% DV Vitamin C 0% DV Calcium 0% DV Iron 8% DV

Interesting

What are some examples of assassination attempts gone wrong?

İlkay Sivaslı was a 41 years old teacher who had been feeling suicidal after breaking up with her married lover.

main qimg b5eb5c2aaa5265ff4e6de0d615d3bdb4 lq

She hired a hitman, Tanju Doğan, to kill her because she can’t bring herself to commit suicide. Things took an interesting turn when the hitman fell in love with her instead.

So for a month, she had to pursue him to finish off what he’s paid to do while he took his time to talk her out of it. One time he tried to strangle her but couldn’t do it when she started turning red.

But she texted him the next day asking him to come over as she had purchased a gun for him to kill her. He tried one last time for her to change her mind but eventually did it by putting a pillow over her face and pulling the trigger twice.

Miraculously she didn’t die immediately so Tanju called the emergency line for her and fled her house. Initially, police thought it was a murder case until they obtained the record for their texts and realised that the teacher had paid him to assist in her killing.

Welp, that’s the story of a woman who pays someone a lot of money to be killed but ended up being persuaded not to instead by the hitman himself. Unfortunately, she died while paramedics were trying to save her when they got to her house.

This is in China. First day at school.

What is the most disrespectful thing someone has done while you were shopping?

It was Black Friday at about six in the morning.

In the aisle was a display for two sets of toys. One was a Noah’s Ark with all the animals and Noah and his family. The other was Old MacDonald’s Farm.

My son had the Old MacDonald one. He’d gotten it a couple months earlier for his birthday. He wanted the Noah one. The display only had a couple of Noahs, but plenty of Old MacDonalds.

I was standing right by a Noah and waiting for the store employee to cut the banding. Once he did, it was game on.

I grabbed the Noah one. A woman lunged OVER THE TOP of the display and grabbed the same one I did, yelling, “I need this! You can have one of the MacDonald ones!”

She refused to let go. So I did the only thing I could do…I planted my feet and yanked her across. She had no choice, let go or take a faceplant into the floor. She was pissed.

She followed me around cussing me out. I ignored her. But when I went to get a game off the shelf, she lunged at my cart to grab the Noah toy. I slammed my hand down on hers as she grabbed my cart. This got her pinched fingers.

I cut across a line of people waiting to get DVD players to get to the other side. People parted to let me through. When she followed behind me I yelled and pointed to her, “Hey, she’s trying to cut in line!”

They converged on her like lions on a gazelle.

Her screams were most satisfying.

Whenever I’m in a bad mood, I remember that day, and those screams.

Suddenly I’m not in a bad mood anymore.

Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar writes about the major takeaways of his recent tour to Brazil.

I have just been immersed in an extraordinary experience: a mini-tour of conferences in Brazil encompassing four key cities – Sao Paulo, Rio, Salvador, Belo Horizonte. Full houses, sharp questions, fabulously warm people, divine gastronomy – a deep dive into the 8^th largest economy in the world and major BRICS+ node.

As much as I was trying to impress the finer points of the long and winding road to multipolarity and the multiple instances of frontal clash between NATOstan and the Global Majority, I was learning non-stop from an array of generous Brazilians about the current inner contradictions of a society of astonishing complexity.

It’s as if I was immersed in a psychedelic journey conducted by Os Mutantes, the iconic trio of the late 1960s Tropicalia movement: from the business front in Sao Paulo – with its world-class restaurants and frantic deal-making – to the blinding beauty of Rio; from Salvador – the capital of Brazilian Africa – to Belo Horizonte, the capital of the third-wealthiest state in the Federation, Minas Gerais, a powerhouse of iron ore, uranium and niobium exports.

Chancay-Shanghai

I learned about how China chose the state of Bahia as arguably its key node in Brazil, where Chinese investment is everywhere – even if Brazil is not yet a formal member of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

In Rio, I was presented with an astonishing work on Stoics Zeno and Cleanthes by essayist Ciro Moroni – delving among other issues into the equivalences between Stoic theogony/theology and the Hindu Vedanta – the tradition of culture, religion and sacred rituals in India up to the Buddha era.

And in a sort of psychedelic synchronicity, I felt like Zeno in the Agora as we debated the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine at a lovely round pavillion – a mini-Agora – in fabled Liberty Square in Belo Horizonte, across the street from a fabulous exhibition of Treasures of Peruvian Art.

Much to my astonishment, a Peruvian, Carlos Ledesma, flew in from Lima especially for my conference and the exhibition; and then he told me about the Chancay port being built south of Lima, owned 70% by COSCO and the rest by private Peruvian capital; that will be a sister port of Shanghai.

Chancay-Shanghai: APEC in action across the Pacific. Next November, there will be three nearly simultaneous key events in South America: the G20 in Rio, the APEC summit in Lima, and the inauguration of Chancay.

Chancay will be boosted by no less than five rail corridors that may eventually be built – certainly with Chinese investment – from the agribusiness Valhalla in the Brazilian Center-West all the way to Peru.

Yes, China is all over the place in its largest trade partner in Latin America – much to the despair of a Hegemon sending lowly functionary Little Blinken to Beijing to hear the letter of the new law by Xi Jinping himself: it’s cooperation or confrontation, a “downward spiral”. Your downward spiral.

A river from Tibet to Xinjiang

At the Belo Horizonte conference, I shared the stage with remarkable Sebastien Kiwonghi Bizaru from Congo, who supervises PhD programs at the Candido Mendes University as well as being a Professor of International Law, after an extraordinary academic journey.

He is also the author of a ground-breaking book examining the highly debatable role of the UNSC in the conflicts of the Great Lakes – focusing on Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

With top researcher Natacha Rena, we pored over a map of China retracing her travels east to west last year all the way to the Xinjiang border – as she filled me in on the astonishing Honggqi River – or Red Flag River – Project, first proposed in 2017: no less than an attempt to divert water from Tibet to the dry lands and deserts of Xinjiang by building an enormous, over 6,000 km-long artificial river, including the branch canals.

The projected river will be slightly less longer than the Yangtze, diverting 60 billion cubic meters of water a year, more than the annual flow of the Yellow River. Predictably, ecologists in China are attacking the project, which may have already had an official go-ahead and is proceeding discreetly.

And then, as I was on the road between Rio and Minas Gerais, the BRICS 10 Ministers of Economy and heads of Central Banks met in Sao Paulo: and all of them hailed the drive towards “independent” payment settlement mechanisms. Russia is the 2024 president of this crucial group.

Russian Vice-Minister of Finance, Ivan Chebeskov, went straight to the point: “Most countries agree that payment in national currencies is what the BRICS need.” The Russian Ministry of Finance privileges the creation of a common digital platform congregating the BRICS Central Banks’ digital currencies and their national systems of transmitting financial messages.

Crucially, at this BRICS 10 meeting, most members stressed they are in favor of totally bypassing the U.S. dollar for trading.

Russian Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov was even bolder: he said that Russia is proposing to BRICS the creation of an independent and “de-politicized” global system of payments.

Siluanov hinted that the system may be based on blockchain – considering its low cost and minimal control exercised by the Hegemon.

BRICS map the new world in Sao Paulo

A day before the meeting in Sao Paulo, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow supported the development of these BRICS strategies, noting that “if we manage to develop independent financial mechanisms, that will seriously question the globalization mechanism currently led by the West.”

As over 100 nations are currently researching or embryonically implementing a digital currency in their Central Banks, a big breakthrough is imminent in Russia – a process I have been following in detail since last year.

In the end, it’s all about Sovereignty. That was the crux of the most serious debates I had this past week in Brazil, with academic players and on several podcasts related to the conferences. It’s the overarching theme hanging over the Lula government, as the President seems to cast the figure of a lonely fighter cornered by a vicious circle of 5^th columnists and comprador elites.

In Belo Horizonte I was presented with yet another astonishing book by a former, brilliant government official, the late Celso Brant. After a sharp analysis of the modern history of Brazil and its interactions with imperialism, he reminds the reader of what stellar Mexican writer and poet Octavio Paz said in the 1980s about Brazil and China: “These will be the two great protagonists of the 21th century.”

When Paz rendered his verdict, every indicator favored Brazil, which since 1870 held the largest GDP growth in the world. Brazil exported more than China, and from 1952 to 1987 was growing at annual rate of 7.4%. Continuing the trend, Brazil would be the 4^th largest economy in the world by now (it’s between 8^th and 9^th, side by side with Italy, and could be the 5^th, were not for direct destabilization by the Empire starting in the 2010s, culminating with the Car Wash operation).

That’s exactly what Brant shows: how the Hegemon intervened to crash Brazilian development – and that started way before Car Wash. Kissinger was already saying in the 1970s that “the United States will not allow the birth of a new Japan under the Equator line.”

Hardcore neoliberalism was the privileged tool. While China under Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping and then Jiang Zemin went Full Sovereign, Brazil was mired in neocolonial dependency. Lula tried – and is now trying it again, against all odds and surrounded on all sides, with Brazil branded as a “swing state” by U.S. Think Tankland and potential victim of new rounds of imperial Hybrid War.

Lula – and some solid academic elites away from power – know full well that as a neo-colony, Brazil will never fulfill its potential of being, side by side with China, as prophesized by Paz, the great protagonist of the 21^st century.

That was the major takeaway of my psychedelic tour of Tropicalia: Sovereignty. Viktor Orban – accused by simpletons of being a member of a fuzz “Neofascist International” – nailed it with a simole formulation: “The inglorious period of Western civilization will be brought to an end this year, by replacing the world built on progressive-liberal hegemony with a Sovereigntist one.”

BIDEN TARIFF AGAINST CHINA EV’s and GREEN ENERGY – us auto companies can’t compete…

Daily Comics

Ukrainian Losses And The Role An Austrian Archduke Has Had In Them

A recent piece in the New York Times connects us to a name which played a serious role in the last century of Ukrainian ‘nationalism’.

The history of the western Ukrainian region is, like in some other European areas, a quite convoluted drama that still plays out today.

The first reports of war fatigue in the ‘nationalist’ western Ukraine are coming in. Natalia Yermak, a Ukrainian cartoon producer turned New York Times journalist, reports from the Galician area near Lviv:

In Western Ukraine, a Community Wrestles With Patriotism or Survival (archived) – New York Times
As the war drags on, communities that were steadfast in their commitment to the war effort have been shaken by the unending violence on the front line.

It was sunset when Maj. Kyrylo Vyshyvany of the Ukrainian army stepped into the yard of his childhood home in Duliby, a village in western Ukraine, just after his younger brother, also a soldier, had been buried. Their mother was still crying in the living room.“I can already see that she’ll be coming to visit him every day,” he said that day. He was right, but he would not be by her side. A few days after the funeral, in March 2022, he was killed in a Russian missile strike on a Ukrainian military base and buried next to his brother, Vasyl.

The Vyshyvany brothers were the first deaths from Duliby and the surrounding community after Russia began its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. Since then, 44 more Ukrainian soldiers from the area have been killed — more than four times the local death toll from the previous eight years of fighting Russian-backed separatists in the east.

For Duliby and its surrounding enclave of Khodoriv — total population around 24,000 people — waiting for the next solemn death notification and the funeral that follows has become a bitter routine. But even as the town meets and buries the fallen with modest ceremony, some neighbors are quietly weighing the price they are willing to pay for a war with no end in sight.

Divisions have started to form between residents agnostic about the war — often those whose family members have dodged the draft or fled the country — and those who have loved ones on the front line or who fully support the war effort.

The name Vyshyvany looked quite familiar to me. I’ll come back to it.

The reporter depicts Galicia, the hotbed of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) fascists, as ‘nationalist’:

In the earliest days of the war, before the news of the first combat deaths arrived, people in communities across Ukraine flocked to draft offices. Among them was Khodoriv, whose families have a long history of fighting for Ukraine’s independence and being executed or sent into exile during violent Soviet repressions of its nationalist movement in the last century.

Even in the region with deeply seated Ukrainian nationalism lots of people have skipped the draft by paying bribes or other means:

Petro Panat, the leader of the territorial defense unit, an ad hoc military unit formed in the early days of the war to protect local communities, said 10 out of 30 men from the unit had since obtained documents to legally exempt them from fighting. The exemptions are granted for reasons like health problems or relatives in need of care.
…
In the Khodoriv area, relatives of soldiers who are fighting or who have died at the front said that in the last two years they have begun to resent men in the community who are said to have bought their way out of service while their own sons and fathers are fighting — a feeling that may be shared by many across the country as the Ukrainian government wrestles with how to mobilize up to 500,000 more troops.

After the war is lost, with whatever other outcome, there will be a deep acrimony between families who’s members have fought and died in it and those families who had the means and foresight to bail their members out:

There is no legal way to pay for an exemption from military service in Ukraine, but there have been widespread reports of corruption in draft offices, with bribes ranging from $1,000 early in the war — “a buyout from death” — to as much as the $10,000 per head price that was revealed in a Kyiv draft center.

In future the distance between the ‘nationalists’ and pragmatist draft dodgers will get even bigger than it has been before the war. I wonder how much that could contribute to further internal strife or even a civil war in western Ukraine.

Now back to the Vyshyvany family name which was the first mentioned in the above piece. I had stumbled over it a while ago.

If one searches for that name it brings up the Wikipedia page of the Archduke Wilhelm Franz of Austria who was born in 1895. Wilhelm’s rather complicate history and Ukrainian fascist-‘nationalism’ are deeply interwoven:

Archduke Wilhelm Franz of Austria, later Wilhelm Franz von Habsburg-Lothringen (10 February 1895–18 August 1948), also known as Vasyl Vyshyvanyi (Ukrainian: Василь Вишиваний), was an Austrian archduke, a colonel of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, a poet, and a member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine.
…
Wilhelm was raised in his parental estate located in the Austrian city of Saybusch, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. His father was a patriot of Poland [..]. Accommodating the 19th-century rise of nationalism, he decided that his branch of the Habsburg family would adopt a Polish identity and would combine a loyalty to their Habsburg family with a loyalty to Poland. Accordingly, he had his children learn Polish from an early age and tried to instill in them a sense of Polish patriotism.
…
Wilhelm, the youngest child, rebelled, and came to identify with the Poles’ rivals, the Ukrainians. … [H]e developed a fascination with Ukrainian culture that he kept for the rest of his life.

The family eventual accepted his Ukrainian tendencies and groomed Wilhelm to become a ruler of Galicia, then part of Austria-Hungary and today of western Ukraine.

During the first world war Wilhelm became a Ukrainian ‘nationalist’:

The most acceptable course to solve the “Ukrainian issue”, for Wilhelm, was the creation of an autonomous Grand Duchy of Ukraine with federalist principles, within the Habsburg monarchy. That duchy, beside the Eastern Galicia and Bukovina provinces, could include as well Ukrainian lands that at that time belonged to the Russian Empire and which had to be reconquered.

Supported by the German-Empire and Austria-Hungary William fought as commander of Ukrainian draftees against the Bolsheviks.

When the world war ended William was hospitalized. Ukraine, the name translates to ‘border land’, again experienced the fate that comes with such an estate:

As he lay in the hospital, World War I ended, Austria-Hungary fell apart, and the Habsburgs lost their throne. In Eastern Galicia the West Ukrainian National Republic was proclaimed, while the Ukrainians of Bukovina tried, unsuccessfully, to unite their land with the new Ukrainian republic. The Bukovina was occupied by hostile Romanian forces, causing Wilhelm to flee to Lviv to avoid arrest. As Lviv was occupied now by Polish forces, Wilhelm again was forced to leave, moving to the Carpathian region where he was hiding in local monasteries for almost half a year. Meanwhile, while Germany was withdrawing its troops from Ukraine, the regime of Skoropadskyi in Ukraine was overthrown by republican forces of “Directorate”, led by Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Symon Petliura, and interest in seeing Wilhelm as sovereign of Ukraine faded.

During that era other nation’s rivalries affected the region – as they had done before for many centuries and as they still do today.

Between the world wars Wilhelm was mostly in Vienna but continued his Ukrainian ‘nationalist’ activities:

In circles of Ukrainian political emigrants, a hope was burning that the loss was not yet final and the Soviet regime could still be overthrown. In Vienna, Wilhelm became involved with pro Ukrainian monarchists who saw in him an opportunity, but nothing came out of it.
…
In Paris Vyshavanyi renewed his communications with Ukrainians when members of the newly formed Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) found him. He twice met with head of OUN Yevhen Konovalets. Through Wilhelm, nationalists tried to find new sources of financing.

Wilhelm supported the German Nazis who, with the avid support of the Ukrainian OUN militia, killed many Poles and Jews after invading the Soviet Ukraine. When the Nazis turned against the OUN Wilhelm stayed with the Ukrainian ‘nationalists’:

Soon however, Wilhelm realized that the Hitlerites would not allow for creation of independent Ukraine even as a puppet state similar to Slovakia. After he and his brother Karl Albrecht were arrested and interrogated by Gestapo, Wilhelm changed his political views and soon joined the local anti-Nazi resistance in Vienna.

When the second world war came to an end Wilhelm was engaged by the British(?) and French secret services to instigate a Ukrainian nationalist terror campaign against the Soviet forces in Ukraine:

At some point Maas introduced Wilhelm to his colleague Jack Brier who in his turn in 1946 introduced Wilhelm to French military officer Jean Pélissier. The latter had been tasked by the French authorities to revive contacts with Ukrainian nationalists who continued to fight the Soviet regime. Confrontation between yesterday’s allies, the collective West and the Soviet Union, was becoming more obvious and eventually had grown into what now is known as the Cold War. The French representatives promised help with delivering by planes political agitation on the Soviet territory as well as Ukrainian militants who would join the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). At first the French representatives requested to meet personally with Stepan Bandera, but since it was too complicated, agreed to meet someone from his closer associates.

The ‘western’ allies, especially the U.S. between 1948 and 1952, spent a lot of effort and money to instigate an insurgency in Galicia against the Soviet forces.

Wilhelm was eventually caught by the Soviets. In 1948 he died in of tuberculosis a prison hospital

One wonders what else but the name connects the Vyshyvany family in the recent NYT piece with the Austrian aristocrat turned Ukrainian ‘nationalist’.

In the early 1950s, after the Soviets had launched a serious counter insurgency campaign, the post WWII fascist OUN insurgency in Ukraine eventually petered out.

In 2014 the U.S. revived it.

Posted by b on May 9, 2024 at 15:00 UTC | Permalink

Why has everyone in the United Kingdom turned against Meghan Markle despite initially liking her?

We like to give folk a fair chance to settle in. We also root for the underdog. It’s a British thing.

The second of Diana’s sons is a bit of a wild card, but that’s okay. Will is in 1st place and he’s the sensible one so it’s not a big issue if H wants to be a bit of a jack-the-lad. It might even be expected from the spare to the heir.

Anyway, he got together with Meghan and a lot of us thought ‘okay, a bit of diversity. Probably about time. American too. That didn’t work out so well for Edward with Wallis Simpson, but that was all a long time ago. Besides, H isn’t king, so we’re not likely to have a constitutional crisis. Let’s give the girl a chance’.

Fitting in to any new family has its challenges, but a Royal family, that’s going to be extra tough with all the press scrutiny. We wished her well.

Then the seams started to come apart. It was obvious that Meghan had certain ideas about what it meant to be in a Royal family, and when things didn’t quite go the way she expected she threw her Teddy bear out of the cot.

We can forgive a lot in the UK, but stabbing the Firm in the back is a no-no. Airing the dirty laundry through the press is very bad form.

Meghan took a great opportunity and squandered it rather than taking her time to adapt. She made her own bed.

What are some deep things 80 year old man told before his death?

Don’t celebrate too soon, wait until it’s a sure thing.
Don’t give things to people who won’t value them.
Starting is simple, but keeping going is tough.
Showing off starts when being smart ends.
Even someone foolish can have a talent.
Even when time feels never-ending, life is still short.
Everyone likes different things. Let’s respect each other’s preferences.
Fear is only as strong as we let it be in our minds.

Is this the end of the United States as a global superpower?

SUMMARY: US lost dominance nearly decade ago on all fronts, now, its prepping a world war against China to regain it before the gap gets wider

Dominance? This was over 7 years ago.

Dominance? America lost the first spot to China on all fronts.

ECONOMIC: China is the world No. 1 Economy for 5 years and over 10 years if you add the black economy.

POLITICAL: U.S policy was based on creating Win-lose, China’ relies on Win-Win.

Invasions and destruction VS. Investments and development.

All U.S close allies rushed to China to build partnerships, after realizing that the US can’t be trusted for a blink.

These partnerships are China’s Political leverage in the future. A way smarter approach than bullying and intimidation.

China is respected, the US is (was tb precise) feared.

The atrocities and impunity of the several consecutive US administrations made the US hated but feared worldwide, which made China loved and respected when it emerged.

China is a 70 century old wise grandad compared to the US,a bustard 4 centuries baby with a diaper, wisdom and experience is a key on the policies front.

(Note: bustard is not an insult here,but a description of a nation born on a raped land from another, and that explains alot, since It was born with brute force and relied on it to present)

TECHNOLOGY: One of the Chinese giants, HUAWEI is times bigger than the entire of Silicon Valley companies. Search Huawei city and see the wonders. HUAWEI is the world’s no 1 mobile phones manufacturer, the forbidden APPLE is the 3rd next to Samsung. But that’s just the tip.

HUAWEI is the world’s leading telecom company, owns the 5G with over 1000+ patents and now the 6G.

The panic of NSA and the 5 eyes( US,CA, UK,AU,NZ) over the 5G says it all. The FIORC or the 5 eyes WERE tapping and controlling all Internet and telecommunications until the 5G. Now, HUAWEI or China runs the show.

But the desperation of US was really interesting, starting with an idiotic campaigns on the hazards of the 5G, as if the 4G was the last safe thing and supposedly we shouldn’t advance anymore?

That was followed by an even more idiotic move from NSA, which announced they will start their own 5G, they will reinvent the wheel, so by the time, they are ready, there will be 6 or even 7G.Ofc the intention was a message of the US capabilities to the world, which was perceived as a silly joke.

Now, the entire West is paying loyalties on the 5G patents to HUAWEI.

Tables are turned, yesterday’s payee is today’s payer. More importantly, intelligence is in the Chinese hands

And another desperate but seriously idiotic move was by Trump, by calling Tredau of Canada, to arrest HUAWEI daughter( also HUAWEI CFO) from Canada to the USA in an attempt to blackmail HUAWEI on the 5G. Obviously blackmailing was Trump’s Art of the deal.

These desperate moves signals the panic of the US and its typical way of thinking. Just American muscles no brains.

Since Technology and communication is a key and crucial factor in today’s smart weapons, it adds leverage to the military front.

MILITARY This is tricky, because practically wars aren’t 1vs 1, but alliance vs alliance.

1 vs 1, China has an equivalent of each US weapon,but China has weapons, the US never saw before on the military parade of the Chinese party 70 year anniversary. Its available on CCTV UT channel.

The US realises that the gap with China is growing wider every day. So, its Now or Never.

Knowing that China and Russia have joint defense agreement, then they will face both together.

The US used Ukraine to provoke Russia and Taiwan to provoke China. These pawns are presented to the public under the pretenses of democracy and free world, as always. Its not Ukraine vs Russia, its the US and the Nato against Russia and China for now.

Inflation rises in the countries of conflict, pretty normal, but in the present quarter, it’s the entire world.

This is not a regional conflict, its a global one, its a brink of a world war.

The US weapon stockpiles have been depleted to critical levels, making the US incapable of self defense with its current levels. Manufacturing backlogs are full. The US won’t risk that unless its at war, not for any of the pawns. These stockpiles are enough to go against the entire world.

It’s pretty clear that the 4 centuries diapered baby, is a cry baby, and can’t learn or accept the fact, that life and existence is a cycle, everything is a cycle.

Europe had its 2 centuries of dominance, then the US had its 2, now its China, its Asia time.

The West had 4 centuries collectively, now its the East time

So, the US crybaby isn’t mature enough to grasp that concept, and seek a confrontation while at parity, hoping to stay dominant.

Nothing strange, Muscles no brains is the American way of thinking.

The brat doesn’t realise its not a confrontation vs Russia and China, its against a cycle, its against nature

Man has never won against nature

So again, DOMINANCE was 10 years ago, and heading to DOOM, unless one of those immigrants isn’t thinking the American way.

God saves us all from the immigrants way of thinking

Which countries have the most brutal and horrific history?

This answer isn’t really about saying what one single country has done the worst, but I do want to share below on the cruelty of humankind that many people don’t know about.

Graphic content below but I want to make this known because so many people around the world have heard of Hitler, Nazis, concentration camps but they have not heard of the Asian holocaust that took place around the same period. In western schools, history classes do not teach people about this part of the world.

This is regarding what the Japanese did during their occupation of Korea and the war crimes they committed to the surrounding Asian countries, including some Pacific Islands they invaded: Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar, East Timor, New Guinea, Indonesia, Guam, Nauru, Wake Island, Attu and Kiska Islands, and Kiribati.

They even had some prisoners of war from the west such as America, any forces against them at the time etc.

Hundreds of thousands of women from my country in Korea were forcefully abducted (called comfort women) during the Japanese occupation in WWII. They endured torture beyond imagination if they did not sexually submit to these vile men and were forced to have sex with 60–100 men every single day. Their innards rotted because of the STD’s and they were destroyed, unable to have children even after they were rescued. They have still not been compensated for the war crimes that they endured and majority have died.

Pregnant mothers were cut open and rape victims were sodomized with bamboo sticks and bayonets until they died in agony.

On top of this they literally tore the unborn from women’s wombs and speared them alive with bayonets in front of them. They’d crush the infant’s skull against concrete floors. They would actually do this for fun.

They tied sons and daughters up and tore them apart, spearing them and forced their own parents to watch.

They raped and pillaged women of all ages, even toddlers to old women in the most vile, disgusting way imaginable. They would often disembowel them while in the process, leaving them to die in agony.

They conducted unspeakable evil torture and experiments on LIVE prisoners from these countries even children and infants in UNIT 731. Torture methods such as vivisecting pregnant women without any anesthesia, centrifuging and killing people in pressurized chambers, and slowly burning and freezing people alive. They artificially created what is similar to the ‘bubonic plague’ to see the effects on the prisoners. They were forced into X-rays until they perished and hung people by their thumbs or tongues etc. These torture tactics were deliberately planned to see death happen SLOWLY, not fast as the scientists wanted to observe the resilience of the human body.

Unbelievably Inhumane Japanese Torture Methods Used During World War II

@main qimg 30af759ac02bf12299e3638e3d9082d3 lq

Bodies of slayed, raped, mutilated women in China.

@main qimg 5265b29cc2832a97f3ac4f46bc541daf lq

Carcasses of babies and children piled up

Despite this, Japan still presently denies what has happened and even believes that it is a rumour. The young people as shown in this video are absolutely clueless on the whole tragedy, or are so far removed in cognitive dissonance and lack of care it is astounding. There is even a middle aged woman in the video who even says “Well I’m not sure if it’s a rumour or not…” which is an absolute lunacy and an embarrassment of the failure of the country in not properly educating their citizens of what truly happened. One young girl even says “Well, I wonder when they will ever get over it…” How are people supposed to get over it when there are still thousands of victims still alive who didn’t receive any form of compensation for what they have been through??!

Their government still warps their history books and deliberately tries to hide the evidence of what truly happened. There are active groups within Japan who refuse to accept what happened and truly believe that it is just a ‘rumour’ to make Japan look bad.

Below is a real life account by a South Korean comfort woman on the horrors she went through. It is heartbreaking to watch but quite educational. She sadly passed away early January of this year, fighting until her last breath but still never receiving any compensation or apology from the Japanese. They don’t even recognize that she went through this or who she is.

What Japan did wasn’t just an invasion or occupation, it was a literal carnage, hell on earth genocide. They didn’t have to go this far as majority of the Koreans and the people they invaded were helpless farmers, uneducated servants, and innocent people who were not trained in war at all. They did this because they did not see these people as human, and their goal wasn’t simply to occupy, but to desecrate the spirit from within. They knew when you destroy someone’s spirit from inside out, the enemy will bend the knee and yield to the point where they do not have the soul to fight back. On top of this, it was just pure, raw sadistic savagery because all of these helpless people surrendered and begged for mercy yet they were still tortured for absolutely no reason.

Presently Japan is one of the most wealthiest and prosperous Asian countries in the world yet they cannot even fully take responsibility for their own committed atrocities. It shows the savage barbarism that still resides in some of these people and makes one question just how this is even acceptable. Instead they choose to warp their own history books, flat out deny it existed and have refused to offer sincere, acceptable compensation/apology for the people who are still alive. They are waiting until every last victim is dead so they no longer have to worry about it. They are not truly ashamed of this past, they just see it as an eyesore they want to bury. Keep in mind Japan has very strong political parties that strives to ensure this shameful past does not reach the masses to retain their false honour. Still to this day, they praise their war criminals in shrines.

From the invasion of China in 1937 to the end of World War II, the Japanese military regime murdered near 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most probably almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. This is more than the estimated Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe controversially claimed that “there was no evidence to prove

” that the women had been coerced into sex.

“The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is engaged in an all-out effort to portray the historical record as a tissue of lies

designed to discredit the nation,” wrote Mindy Kotler, director of Asia Policy Point, in 2014.

“Mr. Abe’s administration DENIES that imperial Japan ran a system of human trafficking and coerced prostitution, implying that comfort women were simply camp-following prostitutes,” Kotler continued. “The official narrative in Japan is fast becoming detached from reality, as it seeks to cast the Japanese people — rather than the comfort women of the Asia-Pacific theater — as the victims of this story.”

Japan’s Textbooks Reflect Revised History

Japanese Broadcast Official: We Didn’t Commit War Crimes, the U.S. Just Made That Up

Why is it so hard for Japan to say sorry?

China criticises Japan after Shinzo Abe honours war criminals as martyrs

Letter threatening to hunt Koreans sent to South Korean embassy in Japan: media

The Harrowing Story Of Filipina Women Enslaved In Japan’s Wartime Rape Camps

Edit: Since I’m getting quite a lot of people who clearly don’t seem to understand and may not have read or researched in depth in this matter. They are saying that ‘Japan does not need to offer apology or compensation for what people of their past did etc’

It’s more complicated than that. Please read the links again. Even if they can’t take full responsibility for their past, they SHOULD take responsibility for the future by not warping textbooks and giving power to political parties who enforces the dangerous fallacy of denying any of this ever happened or triviliazing everything that has happened. They should make sure to teach the correct history not just for educational purposes but to ensure their citizens fully know and accept their own history and in hopes that it never happens again. This is also to help not silence the voices of the people who did suffer in the past and to not spit into their graves and ruin their legacy by spreading false lies.

Also the comfort women and people who were forcefully taken into labour camps as prisoners, many are still alive who didn’t actually get any compensation or even sheer RECOGNITION. They suffered their entire lives without anyone hearing what they have to say with nothing from Japan. This isn’t just about wanting Japan to go up to a stadium and saying ‘I am sorry’ and stepping down. Words are meaningless and worthless when not backed up by actions.

They are hypocrites by warping textbooks and also praising their own war criminals. Imagine what the world would say if Germany praises Nazis and gave strong political power that has the power to make Germans never even hearing of the Nazis or even contemplate if it was just a rumour or not. Think about how insane that would be.

So why do they need to apologise? Because unlike Germany what they are doing is absolutely deplorable and morally bankrupt by continuing to CONTRIBUTE to the legacy of the abomination Japan was in the past. You don’t see Germany do the same about the Nazis and for good reason. It means Japan hasn’t learned and is not truly remorseful. By Japan I am talking of the FACES of Japan which are the politicians who represent that country. The rest of the Japanese experience their trickle down effect so while it’s not saying it’s their fault, they end up indirectly contributing to supporting these vile politicians. So yes the people who represent JAPAN who hold the power of influence does need to sincerely apologise and stop contributing to what they are presently doing.

As I am getting tired of having to repeat the same information again and again, any comments that say things along the lines of ‘Japan does not need to apologise’ or those questioning or defending the existence of any of these crimes, their war criminals will be either ignored, deleted or blocked. It is extremely disrespectful to the victims and deplorable. The links are already here clear as day for reading and one can also do the research themselves. Also for anyone who brings up another atrocity and pitting them against each other, STOP. This post isn’t about pitting one atrocity against another, it is disgusting to even keep doing that and seriously lacks any insight into the original point of my post.

Otherwise thank you for reading and have a nice day.

TLDR: Japan did some truly horrific shit that many people including the present day Japanese citizens are unaware of. What they did is abysmal carnage from the Antichrist itself.

Also, piece of shit apologies that require uttering words and throwing money at victims isn’t a true apology when they are still in 2019 warping textbooks and none of their youths know anything about their crimes.

Why do you think Germany forces every citizen to learn about their nazi history and Japan doesn’t ? It is to deliberately ignore and not acknowledge their past due to their pride and selfishness. I’d equate this to even pathological narcissism and psychopathy due to how far they have gone in managing stomping this knowledge out of their own present day citizens.

Edit 2: As I am still getting very disrespectful, deranged comments on here pitting atrocities against each other, saying that I am spreading lies and others spewing ignorant hatred against Koreans, here’s my final message.

Instead of blaming others, look at what Japanese Nationals do. Stop diverting the attention away by blaming the mistakes of other countries yet not acknowledging the corruption of the Japanese government

Japan’s leaders are still stubbornly refusing to admit their war crimes

What Japanese history lessons leave out

Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia

The Germans in contrast have personally done everything possible to make people aware of their Nazi past. Japan doesn’t scratch the surface of what it means to have true honour while Germans go to great lengths to do humanitarian work and to allow their citizens to understand the FULL facts. This is what true compensation and remorse actually is, not the dogshit excuse of what Japan does by also denying people, correct history. End of.

We must remember Nazi crimes, says Merkel

Jim Rickards Shared Some Horrible News

What is something you heard your child say or saw them do that made you think “Yep, that’s my kid.”?

Daughter was 4, old enough to be dropped at a birthday party for sometime without husband or I to be with her.

At this one party, I dropped her and told her I would be back in an hour and that if she wants to come home, she just needs to tell the birthday boy’s mother to call me.

She assured me she was okay and headed off inside.

I was skeptical as this was the first time but she appeared okay to me.

I went back after an hour and a half to see the main door was open. I took out my slippers and peeked in. A bunch of kids were fighting and screaming. A few girls were crying put loud for their mother terrified with scene going on in front of them.

I looked around for my daughter and didn’t see her.

I panicked.

The host was in the middle of the whole drama trying to call a truce but in vain. Two mothers joined me just then and took control over the situation.

I looked around for my daughter and still couldn’t find her. I went over to the host lady and asked her about it.

She laughed and pointed at a teeny tiny corner of the dining table.

Perched up on the chair sat my daughter with a plate in her hand, munching away the food. Oblivious to the surrounding.

The whole area looked like a war zone. ‘Hurt’ people were complaining to their mother. The birthday boy was crying because his party was spoiled plus someone broke his favourite toy. Some girls were crying because they were afraid and wanted to their parents to take them away.

And here was my daughter not caring a damn to the drama that unfolded around her.

“Hey!” I said as I walked up to her.

“Mumma, the fried rice is really good and also these cheese balls. You want?” She said beaming.

“There was a fight here. You know what happened?”

“No. I am eating.” She said as she dug into her cheese ball with a fork.

When it comes to food she doesn’t care even if the world is ending.

Yep, that’s my kid.

Women has it so easy…

During a light-hearted exchange, a man guessed this 39-year-old woman’s age to be 43, which apparently pissed her off. She followed him to the bathroom and glassed him in the face, twice.

He received a 10cm cut that narrowly missed his eye, as well as an injury to his thumb while he was trying to shield his face. He needed stitches for his injuries.

Judge Elizabeth Nicholls spared her prison. The judge said that she could see this woman was a ‘hard working woman’, ‘loving mother’ and ‘no risk to the public’. Yeah right.

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In September 9 last year Joanne Dodd was out with her sister at a Manchester pub. In a banter with a guy he was asked to guess their age, at which he guessed Joanne to be four years older than she was. This made her fly into a rage and threaten to hurt him. He excused himself to go to the bathroom and away from the hostile situation, but she followed him and attacked him with her glass.

In court her lawyer said she was drunk. Said she was suffering from low self-esteem. Yeah aren’t we all. We just don’t cut up people’s faces when we’re drunk.

Joanne pleaded guilty to inflicting grievous bodily harm. She was facing up to three years in jail under the sentencing guidelines.

But she was spared jail. The judge said, “one person’s banter may be insulting to others, but that did not justify what you then went on to do.” Fair enough, but come on.

She almost rendered someone blind over a joke, gave them multiple lacerations in the face that needed stitches.

Joanne was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for 12 months and was ordered to complete 180 hours of unpaid work. Plus also ordered to pay £800 in compensation to her victim.

Proof of Reincarnation

Have you ever called in sick but you were convinced or threatened by your superiors to come to work? Did it end well for you?

When I worked for the legal department of the Department of Children and Families, about year three or so I begin to experience profound depression, bad enough that I needed to seek medical assistance. I felt pretty miserable that my life had deteriorated to a point where I would need psychotropic medication just to function, but the doctors assured me that it was a very good thing that I was seeking help from them instead of trying to self medicate and we tried to work on a plan. The problem was, I hadn’t taken any psychotropic meds for years at that point, and I wasn’t sure what would be effective. At this point, there are so many medications on the market that sometimes it’s literally a game of “well, let’s try this and see how it goes.”

The first medication I took, Prozac, made me paranoid, even at half-dose, and gave me full-blown panic attacks. I called the doctors’ office to explain my symptoms, and they continued to tweak, but suggested that I give the meds a chance to work. The meds ended up knocking me out constantly. I literally would not have been safe to drive a car, let alone work with legal files.

The managing attorney of the office threatened my employment when I came back to work, stating that me being out of work for five days put too much stress on everyone else in the office for coverage. Mind you, this is the same person who would make small talk with me about when I was going on vacation and asked me why I hadn’t dropped everything to go across the country with my husband on one of his spur-of-the-minute trips California or Italy or something. So it’s totally cool if I ask for time off to go on a drinking trip, but actually trying to manage my mental health so that I can continue to do the job of a junior attorney for a receptionist pay is borderline terminable?

This is the same supervisor who took nine months off for her own maternity leave, but was demanding that an underling come back to work four weeks after giving birth because “the office needed her.” Completely unempathetic human being. Before she became the managing attorney, the turnover in the office was practically zero; afterwards, it stood close to 90% every two years.

Law enforcement, when did you get an unbelievable tip that was actually real?

I was working the front desk at the police station when a woman came in and said she had some information. She told me her boyfriend (I had the impression he was or was about to be an ex-boyfriend) had two sticks of dynamite hidden under her house. She wasn’t sure why he had this. I recorded her information, thanked her, and sent her on her way.

The usual procedure would have been to notify our bomb squad. My department participated in a regional EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) team that was staffed by representatives of the local police, sheriff, and fire departments. Our PD’s representative was an academy classmate. He was (and is) also an asshole. I avoided talking to him for any reason. One of my close friends, however, was the EOD tech for the fire department. I called him at home and passed along the information.

About six hours later, my friend came in to the PD to update me. He had gone to the address in question for recon, found a suspicious package under the house (maybe some search and seizure issues here, but Not My Problem), and called the rest of the team. They recovered the two sticks of crystallized (read: highly unstable) explosive, which they placed into a bomb-proof cask to transport to a remote location to be “rendered safe” (read: blown up). He thanked me for a most productive day.

What is the stupidest crime you have ever seen anybody charged with?

I was in court over a ticket, it was dismissed so I’m not a lawbreaker.

Anyway, this little old lady was called up. She’d been given a ticket for speeding in an area at the end of my street, a busy business highway street that goes through the main part of a town.

The lady told the judge she wasn’t speeding, she was actually going under the speed limit. The judge called the officer up, he said he clocked her going 44 in a 40. The officer said I clocked her in front of… some local business, XXXX, and she was doing 44mph. I drive that area every day, multiple times. The speed limit there is 45. She really wasn’t speeding. The judge started to chew the lady out, stating she was getting too old to drive and needed to surrender her license and sell her car.

I muttered something to the effect that she hadn’t done anything wrong and was driving fine, and the judge heard me. I was thinking “oh crap! now he’s not going to listen to me when it’s my turn!!” but I said I live on SSSS street and drive the road in question, every day. The speed limit in front of XXXX business is 45, the speed limit if 40 up the YYYY business and the 45 mph speed limit sign in on the easement in front of their business. The speed limit where he’s talking about is 45mph.

The judge had to get another officer on the phone to go and check where the speed limit changed. The lady went to sit down and wait. I was nearly last so when they got the call back he dismissed her ticket. I bet the officer got in trouble for giving false tickets.

Girls as illustrated in the 1960s

When and where did your parents die? What do you remember about it?

Dad was supposed to be on Hospice but they didn’t start it because someone was on vacation. He was home swearing he wouldn’t ever go to the hospital. Mom was trying to take care of him but he fell off the couch twice one day and sat on his oxygen tube. She called 911 to pick him up once then the neighbors the next time. Saturday I was with her all day to help with him. Sunday morning he asked if I was coming so she had him call me. Then he asked if my brother was coming and she offered to call him but he said he would know he wanted him. She called him anyhow. So my brother, SIL and I were visiting when dad announced he was ready to go to the hospital. The doctor said he couldn’t because they couldn’t help him. Mom was crying, she couldn’t lift him and thought if it got to be too much she could have him go to the hospital. The doctor came to the house and said he had total system shutdown and his kidneys had stopped working. She said he could go to the hospital to get morphine but if he did, he couldn’t come home again, he would go to the nursing home if he didn’t die first. On Tuesday he went to the nursing home, an hour or so later mom was home taking a nap when they called and said to come back. He had died already.

Mom ended up living with my brother and went to the hospital for pain. They claimed she had pancreatic cancer but wouldn’t treat it unless she got a biopsy. She said she didn’t want a biopsy and would rather have hospice, so they sent her home. Everyone came to visit her dozens of grand and great grandkids, she had a great time visiting everyone like a big party. One day she said this was the first time she thought about dying. She only lived 20 days and died peacefully at home.

Is the problem with US diplomacy with China that it goes against Chinese values?

Not to be rude, but I burst out laughing reading this question in the notification.

The Chinese do not conduct diplomacy on grounds of values.

As in we’re attacking/punishing/threatening/sanctioning you for not being Chinese enough.

Only the West, and primarily the United States does that. Western NGOs are an economy unto themselves.

Israel does it to its own citizens/residents, because their quarrel with the Palestinians boils down to a disagreement over whose God is in charge.

China doesn’t print “In God We Trust” on the Renminbi.

In fact, China as a state does not identify with any religion, unlike modern India, and most of the West. All monarchies that remain today identify with a religion, and that includes Japan.

Evangelism has never been a part of Chinese culture, which doesn’t travel well, unless there is critical mass.

China’s diplomatic principle is simple. Recognize One China and respect Chinese sovereignty, and China is your friend.

America’s problem with China is singular—it wants to remain top dog, at all cost.

I say good luck.

中国人不吃这套

Pepe Escobar

May 8, 2024

The NATOstan lackeys will remain dazed and confused. So what; lackeys lack strategic depth, they just wallow in the shallow waters of irrelevancy.

Startling mirror images swirl around two major developments this week directly inbuilt in the Grand Narrative that shapes my latest book, Eurasia v. NATOstan, recently published in the U.S.: Xi Jinping’s visit to Paris and the inauguration of Vladimir Putin’s new term in Moscow.

Inevitably, this is a contrasting tale of Sovereigns – the comprehensive Russia-China strategic partnership – and lackeys: the NATOstan/EU vassals.

Xi, the quintessential hermetic guest, is quite sharp at reading a table – and we’re not talking about Gallic gastronomic finesse. The minute he sat at the Paris table he got the Big Picture. This was not a tete-a-tete with Le Petit Roi, Emmanuel Macron. This was a threesome because Toxic Medusa Ursula von der Leyen, more appropriately defined as Pustula von der Lugen, had inserted herself in the plot.

Nothing was lost in translation for Xi: this was graphic illustration that Le Petit Roi, the leader of a third-rate former Western colonial power, enjoys zero “strategic autonomy”. The decisions that matter come from the Kafkaesque Eurocracy of the European Commission (EC), led by his Nanny, the Medusa, and directly relayed by the Hegemon.

Le Petit Roi spent the whole of Xi’s Gallic time babbling like an infant on Putin’s “destabilizations” and trying to “engage China, which objectively enjoys sufficient levers to change Moscow’s calculus in its war in Ukraine”.

Obviously no pubescent adviser at the Elysee Palace – and there’s quite a crowd – dared to break the news to Le Petit Roi about the strength, depth and reach of the Russia-China strategic partnership.

So it was up to his Nanny to volunteer out loud the fine print on the “Monsieur Xi comes to France” adventure.

Faithfully parroting Treasure Secretary Janet Yellen in her recent, disastrous Beijing incursion, the Nanny directly threatened the superpowered hermetic guest: you are exceeding in “over-capacity”, you are over-producing; and if you don’t stop it, we will sanction you to death.

So much for European “strategic autonomy”. Moreover, it’s idle to dwell on what can only be described as suicidal stupidity.

Steadfastly defending a debacle

Now let’s switch to what really matters: the chain of events leading to Putin’s lavish fifth inauguration at the Kremlin.

We start with the chief of GRU (main intelligence department) of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Admiral Igor Kostyukov.

Kostyukov, on the record, actually re-confirmed that right on the eve of the Special Military Operation (SMO), in February 2022, the West was ready to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia in Donbass, just as before the Great Patriotic War (Victory Day, incidentally, is celebrated this Thursday not only in Russia but also across the post-Soviet space).

Then the ambassadors of Britain and France were called at the Russian Foreign Ministry. They spent roughly half an hour each, separately, and left without addressing the media. There were no leaks about the reasons for both visits.

Yet that was more than obvious. The Foreign Ministry handed the Brits a serious note in response to David “of Arabia” Cameron’s babbling about using British long-range missiles to attack the territory of the Russian Federation. And to the French, another serious note on Le Petit Roi’s babbling about sending French troops to Ukraine.

Immediately after this compounded NATO babbling, the Russian Federation started drills on the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

So what started as a NATO verbal escalation was counterpunched not only with stern messages but also an extra, clear, stern warning: Moscow will regard any F-16 entering Ukraine as a potential carrier of nuclear weapons – regardless of its specific design. F-16s in Ukraine will be treated as a clear and present danger.

And there’s more: Moscow will respond with symmetric measures if Washington deploys any ground-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles (INF) in Ukraine – or elsewhere. There will be a counterpunch.

All that happened within the framework of astonishing Ukrainian losses in the battlefield over the past two months or so. The only parallels are with the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and the first Gulf War. Kiev, between dead, wounded and missing, may be losing as many as 10,000 soldiers a week: the equivalent of three divisions, 9 brigades or 30 battalions.

No compulsory mobilization, whatever its reach, can counter such debacle. And the much-advertised Russian offensive has not even started yet.

There’s no way the current U.S. administration led by a cadaver in the White House, in an electoral year, is going to send troops to a war that from the beginning was scripted to be fought to the last Ukrainian. And there’s no way NATO will officially send troops to this proxy war, because they will be minced into steak tartare in a matter of hours.

Any serious military analyst knows NATO has less than zero capability to transfer significant forces and assets to Ukraine – no matter the current, grandiloquent Steadfast Defender “exercises” coupled with Macron’s mini-Napoleon rhetoric.

So it’s Ouroboros all over again, the snake biting its own sorry tail: there was never a Plan B to the proxy war. And at the current configuration in the battlefield, plus possible outcomes, we’re back to what everyone from Putin to Nebenzya at the UN have been saying: it’s over only when we say it’s over. The only thing to negotiate is the modality of surrendering.

And of course there will be no sniffin’ sweaty sweatshirt cabal in place in Kiev: Zelensky is already a “Wanted” entity in Russia, and in a few days, from a legal standpoint, his government will be totally illegitimate.

Russia aligns with the world majority

Moscow has to be fully aware that serious threats remain: what NATOstan wants is to test the strategic capability of hitting Russian military, manufacturing or energy installations deep within the Russian Federation. This could be easily interpreted as a last shot of bourbon at the counter before the 404 saloon goes down in flames.

After all, Moscow’s response will have to be devastating, as already communicated by Medvedev Unplugged: “None of them will be able to hide either on Capitol Hill, or in the Elysee Palace, or on Downing Street 10. A world catastrophe will happen.”

Putin, at the inauguration, was cool, calm and collected, unfazed by all the hysterical incandescence across the NATOstan sphere.

These are his main takeaways:

Russia and only Russia will determine its own fate.

Russia will pass through this difficult, milestone period with dignity and become even stronger, it must be self-sufficient and competitive.

The key priority for Russia is safeguarding the people, preserving its age-old values and traditions.

Russia is ready to strengthen good relations with all countries, and with the world majority.

Russia will continue to work with its partners on the formation of a multipolar world order.

Russia does not reject dialog with the West, it is ready for dialog on security and strategic stability, but only on an equal footing.

All that is supremely rational. The problem is the other side is supremely irrational.

Still, a new Russian government will be in place in a matter of days. The new Prime Minister will be appointed by the President after the Duma approves the candidacy.

The new head of the Cabinet must propose to the President and the Duma candidates for deputy prime ministers and ministers – except for the heads of the security bloc and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The heads of the Ministry of Defense, FSB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Emergency Situations and Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be appointed by the President after consultations with the Federation Council.

All ministerial candidacies will be submitted and considered before May 15.

And all that will happen before the key meeting: Putin and Xi face to face in Beijing on May 17. Everything will be in play – and on the table. Then a new era starts – outlining the path towards the BRICS+ summit next October in Kazan, and the subsequent multipolar moves.

The NATOstan lackeys will remain dazed, confused – and hysterical. So what; lackeys lack strategic depth, they just wallow in the shallow waters of irrelevancy.

Amazing Tour Inside a Chinese Attack Submarine

Is this the end of the United States as a global superpower?

All empires fall. It’s an historical fact.

The American Empire is falling. The US Dollar is America’s main pillar of power and the world is massively de-dollarizing.

Within the next 20 years, the US Dollar will no longer be the world’s primary reserve currency. It will be replaced by something else.

When that happens, the Empire will collapse. It will no longer be able to afford its military.

America is also rotting from within. It is plagued by domestic problems such as homelessness, gun violence, poor health care, poor education, crumbling infrastructure, opioid addiction, systemic racism (“I can’t breathe”), mass incarceration, growing poverty, etc.

The US political system is in turmoil. Deep political division. Deep corruption by the corporate capitalist elite. January 6, 2021 is just the beginning.

As we report, the disintegration of the old order is visible everywhere. Sanctions are used four times as much as they were during the 1990s; America has recently imposed “secondary” penalties on entities that support Russia’s armies. A subsidy war is under way, as countries seek to copy China’s and America’s vast state backing for green manufacturing. Although the dollar remains dominant and emerging economies are more resilient, global capital flows are starting to fragment, as our special report explains.The institutions that safeguarded the old system are either already defunct or fast losing credibility. The World Trade Organisation turns 30 next year, but will have spent more than five years in stasis, owing to American neglect. The IMF is gripped by an identity crisis, caught between a green agenda and ensuring financial stability. The un security council is paralysed. And, as we report, supranational courts like the International Court of Justice are increasingly weaponised by warring parties. Last month American politicians including Mitch McConnell, the leader of Republicans in the Senate, threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions if it issues arrest warrants for the leaders of Israel, which also stands accused of genocide by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.

It is the U.S., the country which arguably benefited the most from the liberal international order, which is actively destroying it.

Others, if they did not attract random U.S. rage and war against them, also saw some benefits from it. Those small to medium countries will most likely lose out should the current regime collapse.

That would not be unprecedented:

Unfortunately, history shows that deeper, more chaotic collapses are possible—and can strike suddenly once the decline sets in. The first world war killed off a golden age of globalisation that many at the time assumed would last for ever. In the early 1930s, following the onset of the Depression and the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, America’s imports collapsed by 40% in just two years. In August 1971 Richard Nixon unexpectedly suspended the convertibility of dollars into gold; only 19 months later, the Bretton Woods system of fixed-exchange rates fell apart.

Similar ruptures, like the examples above again caused by the U.S., may happen soon.

Interestingly the Economist does not name a solution or way to avoid it. It sees a collapse coming, blames -more or less- the U.S. for causing it, but does not point to way out of it.

That is an uncharacteristically pessimistic view for writers who otherwise like to paint a positive picture for those with big money.

Posted by b on May 10, 2024 at 14:04 UTC | Permalink

Shopping in Stores in 1971: Retro Video of the Early 70s in America

Picadillo-Stuffed Turkey with
Orange-Tamarind Sauce

Add Latin flavor to your holiday turkey with the addition of picadillo ingredients to the Stove Top Stuffing.

Prep: 30 min | Total: 4 hr 45 min | Yield: 24 servings

Ingredients

1 tablespoon oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 pounds ground pork
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 (6 ounce) package Stove Top Stuffing Mix for Chicken
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup Planters Slivered Almonds, toasted
5 large navel oranges, divided
1 (15 pound) frozen turkey, thawed
1 (14 ounce) package frozen tamarind pulp, thawed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
4 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon butter

Instructions

Heat oven to 325 degrees F.
Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat.
Add onions and garlic; cook and stir for 3 minutes.
Add pork; cook 5 minutes or until no longer pink, stirring occasionally.
Stir in tomato sauce; cook 2 minutes.
Add stuffing mix, raisins, nuts and the juice of 2 oranges (about 1/2 cup); mix well. Cook for 5 minutes or until heated through, stirring frequently.
Remove from heat. Cool for 15 minutes before stuffing the turkey.
Remove and discard neck and giblets from turkey cavities. Rinse turkey; drain well. Free legs from tucked position, but do not cut band of skin. Place turkey, breast-side up, in roasting pan.
Spoon stuffing into neck and body cavities, being careful to not pack stuffing into turkey too tightly. Return legs to tucked position; turn wings back to hold neck skin in place.
Cut 1 orange into 8 slices; arrange over turkey. Cover breast loosely with foil to prevent over-browning.
Bake for 3 hours, basting occasionally with pan juices.
Meanwhile, combine tamarind pulp, sugar and juice from remaining 2 oranges in saucepan.
Remove foil; bake turkey 45 minutes to 1 hour or until done (165 degrees F), brushing with 1/4 cup of the tamarind mixture for the last 15 minutes.
Remove turkey from oven; let stand 15 minutes before carving.
Meanwhile, stir cornstarch into remaining tamarind mixture until completely dissolved. Bring to boil; cook and stir 1 minute or until thickened.
Remove from heat; stir in butter. Serve warm with turkey.

Notes

Serve with smart sides, such as a crisp mixed green salad and your favorite hot steamed vegetable.

A 12 to 14 pound frozen turkey needs 3 to 3 1/2 days of thawing time in the refrigerator. The cooking time will range between 3 to 3 3/4 hours until the turkey is done (165 degrees F).

Do not stuff turkey until ready to roast.

Nutrition

Per serving: Calories 460

Total fat 20g Saturated fat 6g Cholesterol 130mg Sodium 260mg Carbohydrate 26g Dietary fiber 2g Sugars 17g Protein 45g

% Daily Value: Vitamin A 2 % DV Vitamin C 0% DV Calcium 6% DV Iron 20% DV

* Nutrition information is estimated based on the ingredients and cooking instructions as described in each recipe and is intended to be used for informational purposes only. Please note that nutrition details may vary based on methods of preparation, origin and freshness of ingredients used.

What did your boss say to you during a meeting that resulted in you immediately resigning?

“You never deserved any of the promotions I gave you.”

I started working for a small non-profit when it was only 3 other employees and myself. I was able to take over a lot of jobs that they were outsourcing and saved the foundation over $15,000 a year in contract labor within 6 months of being hired. Within 2 years, the organization grew to over 15 full time employees and I was promoted from Office Admin to Office Manager to Finance Director/Travel Logistics Manager. I was on call every day and often sacrificed family stuff to make sure the participants in programming were taken care of.

After 2 years, I took a 9 day vacation with my family to Disney. I made sure that everything was taken care of before I left and had made arrangements with co-workers to be able handle anything that came up. I left contacts for myself, and my husband should there be an emergency. On the plane to FL, I lost my phone. When we arrived at the hotel, I immediately emailed from my personal email to let my co-workers and boss know what had happened and how I was handling it.

When we returned, my boss pulled me into her office and berated me for not taking my work laptop on my family vacation and said that losing my phone (not a company phone) was extremely “unprofessional” and that I didn’t deserve anything I had earned in my tenure there. She claimed that she had only advanced me because she was being nice and yelled at me so loudly that the entire office heard. I told her that was pretty poor leadership and gave my 2 weeks notice to the founder and explained the situation. Unfortunately, he felt we were “just being catty” and refused to do anything about it.

I visited my village in CHINA for the first time in 10 years MY LIFE CHANGED

What is your most horrifying supernatural experience? (A real life incident)

You may not believe this, but…

Los Angeles. 1980, at a stoplight. three lanes. Truck in furthest left lane, A friend was next to me in middle lane, I was in the inside lane. My friend and I were revving our motors like we were going to drag race as soon as the light turned green.

Rev..rev, looking at the light. Waiting. Yellow comes on in other direction, I was ready to go when….. this old man crosses in front of us, slowly. He looks like he’s 100 years old and so slight you can barely see him.

The light turns green but we can’t go because of the guy. All of a sudden, from my left, a truck comes barreling through his red light, crossing directly in front of us. If it wasn’t for the old guy walking across our paths, we probably would have been dead. Except……later at the coffee shop, we were talking about what a close call that was, and that but for the old guy crossing we would have been toast.

My friend asked: “what old guy?” I said the old guy crossing the street in front of us, isn’t that why you didn’t take off? No, he said, I just don’t race at stoplights. I thought we were playing.” My friend was killed, a long time ago by an old driver racing through a red light and striking his car, killing him. Me: “So you didn’t see the old guy.” He laughed thinking I was making it up.

My life was saved by a ghost.

What is the rudest thing that a new neighbor has done to you immediately after you had moved in?

It was immediately after he moved in.

We had a house for 10 years. Beautiful natural yard with several 200+ year old oak trees. Mr. New Jersey moves in behind us and immediately starts pestering my wife about getting those trees cut down because, “if they fell over they could land on his house and take out the power so they needed to be removed immediately.” Wife demanded I not talk to him about it as she didnt want me to anger new neighbor.

She put up with it for a year. I was really sick of hearing her complain about it. So I started doing yard work where he could see me. He came over and started his rant. I politely told him noody was cutting down my wifes healthy oak trees and the subject was closed. I then pointed out his pretty shrub was growing into the powerline and needed to be trimmed or we would all have a power outage.

A few weeks later the power company came out for a service call(3 days with no power for the neighbor hood). His shrub had taken out the power.

We all now get along great.

When the 65 foot Hackberry tree died, I rented a 45 foot boomlift. He let me park it in his backyard while I cut that thing into 2 foot pieces and lowered it to the ground. It was leaning over the powerline. The power company wouldnt cut it down and I had to take it down in pieces so it didnt knock out the power to the neighborhood.

He asked me why I was doing the work instead of hiring a tree service. I explained its easy work and I find it fun and relaxing.

I get to drive a 45 foot boom lift and play with a new chainsaw. Its guy heaven.

He had thought he could bully a woman into cutting down her trees. As I had not gotten involved in the fracus for a year he maybe figured I was intimidated by him for some reason. Then he realized I wasnt intimidated and just supported my wifes opinions.

What do women have that men want from us besides our holes?

I was a stripper for about ten years, so I’ve talked to far more men than the average female. The one thing most married men talked about missing from their marriage/relationship was acknowledgement, particularly for their feelings, and also their contribution. Men would routinely tell me that their wife behaved as if she was owed a better husband than he was to her; she deserved a man who made more money, but she also deserved a man who spent more time at home. And very often, a man would go to great length and trouble to do something special for a woman he cared about, and very often, she would mention the parts he fell short in that endeavor. Women have encouragement and acceptance and affection and appreciation, and when a man gets all that from a woman, her holes are hardly the thing he wants most from her. In fact, if any woman has nothing to offer, but her holes, she will find herself very unwanted, even if she has really good holes.

Aliens & Espionage: Crop Circles and the CIA Coverup | They Don’t Want You to Know

This is great fun. Learn something.

(Visited 163 times, 1 visits today)

My publisher went out of business. So I need to set it up using other means. -MM

I want to buy one of your books but it is out of stock on Amazon. Is there a way…

Thanks for that. *sigh* Life can be so interesting sometimes. -MM

Sometimes the words in the 'narrative' need to be precise, at least in terms of 'calendar time'., or else confusion…

" Thanks for the Russian missile movement update via ol’ Panicky-Hal, Metallicman. What would life be like without him!? Meanwhile…

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