Cycles that repeat, neocon freakouts, USA dependency on China, inflation and food shortages, and delicious food

There’s a giant steam-roller of change moving forward, and a combination of bubbles, and systems are starting to explode, pop, collapse, and shake. Many things are “up in the air”, the the historical paths are clear, and the elements are plain to see. Mainsteam American and British narratives openly argue that this is a global recession the world is moving towards, but that is not true. It is the collapse of the West. And if you live in the West you are witnessing this collapse. If, however, you live in the East (Russia, India, Iran, China, Africa, and South America) you are experiencing something else (if anything). Here, we review what is going on as a snapshot of this true unique period of time.

Have some fun and browse around.

Alice Cooper – “Big Apple Dreaming”

A classic for all of us small town America, high schoolers in the early 1970s.

Forgotten Architectural Beauty

Inside an abandoned and decaying ruin.

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Pizza Hut is dying inside the United States

But thriving inside of China.

Pizza Hut went “woke” inside the USA, and alienated it’s customer base. Meanwhile, in China, it’s against the law to be “woke” as that goes against the fundamentals of traditional Chineses culture. No one in America would dare vocalize it, but China is doing things right. From HERE.

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2022 05 10 19 25
Pepe Escobar
April 29, 2022
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The only antidote to propaganda dementia is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed.

Especially since the onset of GWOT (Global War on Terror) at the start of the millennium, no one ever lost money betting against the toxic combo of hubris, arrogance and ignorance serially deployed by the Empire of Chaos and Lies.

What passes for “analysis” in the vast intellectual no-fly zone known as U.S. Think Tankland includes wishful thinking babble such as Beijing “believing” that Moscow would play a supporting role in the Chinese century just to see Russia, now, in the geopolitical driver’s seat.

This is a fitting example not only of outright Russophobic/Sinophobic paranoia about the emergence of peer competitors in Eurasia – the primeval Anglo-American nightmare – but also crass ignorance about the finer points of the complex Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership.

As Operation Z methodically hits Phase 2, the Americans – with a vengeance – have also embarked on their symmetrical Phase 2, which de facto translates as an outright escalation towards Totalen Krieg, from shades of hybrid to incandescent, everything of course by proxy. Notorious Raytheon weapons peddler reconverted into Pentagon head, Lloyd Austin, gave away the game in Kiev:

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

So this is it: the Empire wants to annihilate Russia. Cue to War Inc.’s frenzy of limitless weapon cargos descending on Ukraine, the overwhelming majority on the road to be duly eviscerated by Russian precision strikes. The Americans are sharing intel 24/7 with Kiev not only on Donbass and Crimea but also Russian territory. Totalen Krieg proceeds in parallel to the engineered controlled demolition of the EU’s economy, with the European Commission merrily acting as a sort of P.R. arm of NATO.

Amidst the propaganda dementia cum acute cognitive dissonance overdrive across the whole NATOstan sphere, the only antidote is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed. The West ignores them at their own collective peril.

Patrushev goes Triple-X unplugged

Let’s start with President Putin’s speech to the Council of Legislators in St. Petersburg celebrating the Day of Russian Parliamentarism.

Putin demonstrated how a hardly new “geopolitical weapon” relying on “Russophobia and neo-Nazis”, coupled with efforts of “economic strangulation”, not only failed to smother Russia, but impregnated in the collective unconscious the feeling this an existential conflict: a “Second Great Patriotic War”.

With off the charts hysteria across the spectrum, a message for an Empire that still refuses to listen, and doesn’t even understand the meaning of “indivisibility of security”, had to be inevitable:

“I would like to emphasize once again that if someone intends to interfere in the events taking place from the outside and creates threats of a strategic nature unacceptable to Russia, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning fast. We have all the tools for this. Such as no one can boast of now. And we won’t brag. We will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know about it – we have made all the decisions on this matter.”

Translation: non-stop provocations may lead Mr. Kinzhal, Mr. Zircon and Mr. Sarmat to be forced to present their business cards in select Western latitudes, even without an official invitation.

Arguably for the first time since the start of Operation Z, Putin made a distinction between military operations in Donbass and the rest of Ukraine. This directly relates to the integration in progress of Kherson, Zaporozhye and Kharkov, and implies the Russian Armed Forces will keep going and going, establishing sovereignty not only in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics but also over Kherson, Zaporozhye, and further on down the road from the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea, all the way to establishing full control of Nikolaev and Odessa.

The formula is crystal clear: “Russia cannot allow the creation of anti-Russian territories around the country.”

Now let’s move to an extremely detailed interview by Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, where Patrushev sort of went triple-X unplugged.

The key take away may be here: “The collapse of the American-centric world is a reality in which one must live and build an optimal line of behavior.” Russia’s “optimal line of behavior” – much to the wrath of the universalist and unilateralist hegemon – features “sovereignty, cultural and spiritual identity and historical memory.”

Patrushev shows how “tragic scenarios of world crises, both in past years and today, are imposed by Washington in its desire to consolidate its hegemony, resisting the collapse of the unipolar world.” The U.S. goes no holds barred “to ensure that other centers of the multipolar world do not even dare to raise their heads, and our country not only dared, but publicly declared that it would not play by the imposed rules.”

Patrushev could not but stress how War Inc. is literally making a killing in Ukraine: “The American and European military-industrial complex is jubilant, because thanks to the crisis in Ukraine, it has no respite from order. It is not surprising that, unlike Russia, which is interested in the speedy completion of a special military operation and minimizing losses on all sides, the West is determined to delay it at least to the last Ukrainian.”

And that mirrors the psyche of American elites: “You are talking about a country whose elite is not able to appreciate other people’s lives. Americans are used to walking on scorched earth. Since World War II, entire cities have been razed to the ground by bombing, including nuclear bombing. They flooded the Vietnamese jungle with poison, bombed the Serbs with radioactive munitions, burned Iraqis alive with white phosphorus, helped terrorists poison Syrians with chlorine (…) As history shows, NATO has also never been a defensive alliance, only an offensive one.”

Previously, in an interview with the delightfully named The Great Game show on Russian TV, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had once again detailed how the Americans “no longer insist on the implementation of international law, but on respect for the ‘rules-based world order’. These ‘rules’ are not deciphered in any way. They say that now there are few rules. For us, they don’t exist at all. There is international law. We respect it, as does the UN Charter. The key provision, the main principle is the sovereign equality of states. The U.S. flagrantly violates its obligations under the UN Charter when it promotes its ‘rules’”.

Lavrov had to stress, once again, that the current incandescent situation may be compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis: “In those years, there was a channel of communication that both leaders trusted. Now there is no such channel. No one is trying to create it.”

The Empire of Lies, in its current state, does not do diplomacy.

The pace of the game in the new chessboard

In a subtle reference to the work of Sergei Glazyev, as the Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union explained in our recent interview, Patrushev hit the heart of the current geoeconomic game, with Russia now actively moving towards a gold standard: “Experts are working on a project proposed by the scientific community to create a two-circuit monetary and financial system. In particular, it is proposed to determine the value of the ruble, which should be secured by both gold and a group of goods that are currency values, to put the ruble exchange rate in line with real purchasing power parity.”

That was inevitable after the outright theft of over $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves. It may have taken a few days for Moscow to be fully certified it was facing Totalen Krieg. The corollary is that the collective West has lost any power to influence Russian decisions. The pace of the game in the new chessboard is being set by Russia.

Earlier in the week, in his meeting with the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, Putin went as far as stating that he’d be more than willing to negotiate – with only a few conditions: Ukrainian neutrality and autonomy status for Donbass. Yet now everyone knows it’s too late. For a Washington in Totalen Krieg mode negotiation is anathema – and that has been the case since the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine meeting in Istanbul in late March.

So far, on Operation Z, the Russian Armed forces have used only 12% of its soldiers,10% of its fighter jets, 7% of its tanks, 5% of its missiles, and 4% of its artillery. The pain dial is set to go substantially up – and with the total liberation of Mariupol and the resolution one way or another of the Donbass cauldron there is nothing the hysteria/propaganda/weaponizing combo deployed by the collective West can do to alter facts on the ground.

That includes desperate gambits such as the one uncovered by SVR – Russian foreign intel, which very rarely makes mistakes. SVR found out that the Empire of Lies/War Inc. axis is pushing not only for a de facto Polish invasion to annex Western Ukraine, under the banner of “historical reunification”, but also for a joint Romanian/Ukrainian invasion of Moldova/Transnistria, with Romanian “peacekeepers” already piling up near the Moldova border.

Washington, as the SVR maintains, has been plotting the Polish gambit for over a month now. It would “lead from behind” (remember Libya?), “encouraging” a “group of countries” to occupy Western Ukraine. So partition is already on the cards. Were that ever to materialize, it will be fascinating to bet on which locations Mr. Sarmat would be inclined to distribute his business card.

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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Will You Starve to Death This Year?

Maybe. Maybe not. It’s all up to you.

A video with a flood of charts and data. It’s not for everyone. But if you love that kind of stuff, this video helps explain why there is a “perfect storm” approaching. Yikes!

A perfect storm for famine…

Yes. In the United States.

You see, John Boltona nd Donald Trump tried to create famine inside of China from 2017 through 2019. It failed, but the Chinese documented a carpet-bombing of livestock, and all kinds of genetically-modified insects that started to decimate Chinese crops.

But, you know, China survived, but did not forget.

And China does “tit for tat”.

My personal email is being flooded with all sorts of reports on fires hitting food warehouses, viruses attackign livestock, and all kinds of insects attacking crops and trees. All you need to do is be aware…

A coincidence, or something else?

Forgotten Architectural Beauty

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Stone Temple Pilots – Plush (Unplugged)

I had just moved from Kentucky to Mississippi, and we were living in Pervis and commuting to my job in Hattiesburg. This was the music of that time. It was fried catfish, boudin, hush puppies, and heavy scented pine trees going on forever…

Forgotten Architectural Beauty

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10 2rrr9

A True Angel Indeed

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good best bosses 121 626108e3c21ef 700

What did a big Wall Street banker say to Alan that spooked him and should spook every RV owner.

An insight into domestic America.

Transforming Subway Passengers Into Renaissance Paintings

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Other Countries Warning STOCK UP NOW | Buy Food NOW | Prepping SHTF

He’s right. I can tell you that the Chinese government has told all of us to stock up on food. He’s also saying that the United States isn’t doing this. Why?

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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‘Is someone out there using Orwell’s work as an owner’s manual?’ says Neil Oliver

A decent discussion. Check it out.

The destruction of a second Russian ship was a lie

What a surprise! (Not!)

2022 05 10 19 32
2022 05 10 19 32
H.I. Sutton, an independent journalist focusing on naval warfare, has spotted more than a dozen of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s remaining warships, intact and underway.

They include Admiral Makarov, one of the fleet’s three frigates and arguably the top target for Ukraine’s drones and anti-ship missile batteries.

Sutton’s analysis of new commercial satellite imagery seems to confirm that last week’s rumors about a successful Ukrainian attack on Admiral Makarov were just that—rumors. The frigate survives.

But it’s worth noting where Sutton found Admiral Makarov on or before Monday: sailing near Sevastopol in the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. In other words, close to home.

Indeed, Sutton narrowed the locations of most of the underway Black Sea Fleet to a narrow swathe of ocean off the west coast of Crimea. Just two ships—a landing craft and one unidentified vessel—were near Snake Island, the current locus of naval combat between Ukraine and Russia.

Near to Crimea, Russian ships enjoy the protection of shore-based S-400 surface-to-air missile batteries and the Russian navy’s Su-30 fighter jets. Closer to Snake Island—which sits astride the main shipping route to Ukraine’s strategic port Odesa, 80 miles to the north—ships are at greater risk of coming under attack from Ukrainian TB-2 armed drones and whatever Neptune anti-ship missiles Ukraine has left.

From HERE.

Forgotten Architectural Beauty

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15 Survival Foods Every Prepper Should Stockpile before they Run Out – Food Shortage Preps

I do not want MM to become a “prepper blog”, but everyone SHOULD have a supply of these 15 items in storage.  It’s a good video.

Roasted Greek Chicken Drumsticks

Roasted Greek Chicken Drumsticks are delicious, tender, and full of flavor right out of the oven. 
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Roasted Greek Chicken Drumsticks5 1200×1800 1

Greek chicken is by far one of my favorite things to eat.

The combination of oregano, lemon, olive oil, and tons of garlic – it just goes so well with delicious, crunchy chicken.

We’ve been eating a lot of chicken thighs and drumsticks lately (they are so economical and easy!), and I wanted to make a good riff off a Whole Roasted Grecian Chicken  – but with drumsticks!

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Roasted Greek Chicken Drumsticks0 683×1024 1

These drumsticks are incredibly delicious, super easy, and a great dinner party meal since they aren’t fussy and are inexpensive for a group!

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Roasted Greek Chicken Drumsticks3 2 683×1024 1

Ingredients

  • 4 lb chicken , drumsticks
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 2 tbsp greek oregano
  • 1 tbsp sage
  • 1 tbsp basil
  • 2 tbsp garlic powder
  • 2 tbsp onion powder

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
  2. Thoroughly pat chicken dry with a paper towel.
  3. In a small bowl, mix together spices and chicken.
  4. Coat chicken in oil and spice mix, let sit 30 minutes to overnight.
  5. Add chicken to oven on a cooling rack sitting atop a baking sheet.
  6. Cook chicken for ½ hour, then flip. After an hour, turn the heat up to 400 degrees.
  7. Flip chicken drumsticks every 10 minutes to ensure it crisps evenly on all sides.
  8. When chicken is ready, fat will be rendered and skin will be crispy. If it needs a bit more crunch, turn on broiler and broil for two minutes on each side to give a little extra crunch to chicken skin.
  9. Serve immediately.

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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Finian Cunningham
April 9, 2022
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The West has sown the wind in sanctioning Russia; Russia will not reap the whirlwind, says Scott Ritter in an interview with the Strategic Culture Foundation.

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who has gained international respect for his independence and integrity as a commentator on conflicts and foreign relations. This week, he was banned on the Twitter social media platform for challenging Western claims of a massacre in Bucha, Ukraine, allegedly carried out by Russian troops. Moscow denies the claims, as have other independent analysts who point to evidence that the incident was a false-flag provocation perpetrated by NATO-backed Ukrainian Nazi regiments to undermine Russia internationally and bolster Western objectives. It is a foreboding sign of the times that Ritter should be banned for daring to question dubious narratives. (He was later reinstated following a public outcry against censorship.)

In the following interview for Strategic Culture Foundation, he makes the crucial point that Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is exposing the involvement of the U.S. and NATO in the training and weaponizing of that country’s dominant Nazi regiments. That is why Western media have been so vehement in trying to distort the conflict and blame Russia. The truth about Western dirty involvement in Ukraine would be too much to bear for the Western public.

When Ritter served as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s he later challenged Western media and government claims that Iraq was harboring WMDs. Those claims were used as a pretext for the U.S.-British war on Iraq launched in 1993 that cost over one million lives, destroyed a nation, created millions of displaced and millions of casualties, as well as spawned international terrorism. It later turned out that the WMD claims were based on deliberate lies for which no Western leader has been held accountable. Scott Ritter was vindicated in his warnings against that war and it is one reason why he is widely respected among international public opinion.

Ritter is a critical commentator on U.S. conflicts and foreign relations. He is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the Soviet Union implementing nuclear arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and as a UN inspector in Iraq (1991-98) overseeing the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. He is the author of Scorpion King: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump (Clarity Press, 2020).

Interview

Question: Do you think that Russia has a just cause in launching its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24?

Scott Ritter: I believe Russia has articulated a cognizable claim of preemptive collective self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The threat posed by NATO expansion, and Ukraine’s eight-year bombardment of the civilians of the Donbass fall under this umbrella.

Question: Do you think Russia has legitimate concerns about the Pentagon sponsoring biological weapons programs in laboratories in Ukraine?

Scott Ritter: The Pentagon denies any biological weapons program, but admits biological research programs on Ukrainian soil. Documents captured by Russia have allegedly uncovered the existence of programs the components of which could be construed as having offensive biological warfare applications. The U.S. should be required to explain the purpose of these programs.

Question: What do you make of allegations in Western media that Russian troops committed war crimes in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities? It is claimed that Russian forces summarily executed civilians.

Scott Ritter: All claims of war crimes must be thoroughly investigated, including Ukrainian allegations that Russia killed Ukrainian civilians in Bucha. However, the data available about the Bucha incident does not sustain the Ukrainian claims, and as such, the media should refrain from echoing these claims as fact until a proper investigation of the evidence is conducted, either by the media, or unbiased authorities.

Question: Do you think the alleged Russian bombing of a hospital and an art theater in Mariupol were false-flag provocations?

Scott Ritter: Both locations are available for detailed forensic examination that would either confirm or refute Ukrainian allegations that these locations were struck by Russian aerial bombs. Other data, such as the existence of any NATO radar data that would put Russian aircraft over these two locations at the time of the alleged attack, should be collected. A detailed forensic examination of each site would go a long way in proving or disproving the Ukrainian claims through the collection of weapons fragments and the evaluation of environmental samples which would show the chemical composition of any explosive used, thereby allowing a better idea of what weapon or explosive was used to destroy the sites.

Question: Western governments and mainstream media have denigrated Russian objectives to “demilitarize and deNazify” Ukraine. The West says Russia has invented or grossly exaggerated these problems as a pretext for invasion. Do you think this Western denialism is because it doesn’t want to acknowledge that Russia may indeed have legitimate concerns, and secondly that to acknowledge would mean admitting that the West is part of the problem in the current war?

Scott Ritter: The irony is that the West had thoroughly documented the extent of the Nazi ideology in Ukraine’s civil, political, and military structures during and after the 2014 Maidan coup. This documented reality was deliberately obscured by the same sources that had previously documented its existence once the Russian invasion occurred. To acknowledge the existence of this odious ideology by NATO would require NATO to acknowledge the role it played in training and equipping Azov regiment personnel since 2015. The Russian documentation of its ongoing de-Nazification effort in Ukraine is a source of continual embarrassment to NATO, as it exposes the scope and scale of NATO’s role in empowering the militarization of Nazi ideology in Ukraine.

Question: For about four months before the Russian intervention in Ukraine, the Biden administration was asserting non-stop that Moscow was planning an invasion. Do you think this is a case of great intelligence on the part of Washington or the culmination of provocation by Washington resulting in Russian military action in Ukraine?

Scott Ritter: We now know that the U.S. intelligence community under the Biden administration is committed to a policy of haphazardly “declassifying” intelligence for the purpose of shaping public opinion (so-called “getting ahead of the story”). There is no evidence that the intelligence regarding potential Russian military action was based upon anything other than politicized speculation derived from a crude analysis of Russian military dispositions void of any context. Any genuine intelligence assessment regarding the timing of any Russian military action would have incorporated the domestic political imperative of getting Duma [Russian parliamentary] approval for the deployment of Russian forces outside the borders of Russia, which carries with it the requirement of a cognizable justification for this military action under the UN Charter. This required political steps such as Donetsk and Lugansk declaring independence, and then petitioning the Russian parliament to recognize this independence, so that Russia could legitimately invoke Article 51. None of these factors was knowable when the Biden administration was issuing its warnings of imminent attack, thereby certifying the “intelligence” as being derived from fact-free speculation, and not intelligence at all.

Question: The Western media are reporting that the Russian military operation in Ukraine is floundering because it has not over-run Ukraine entirely. As a military expert, how do you see the Russian operation proceeding?

Scott Ritter: Russia is fighting a very difficult campaign hampered by its own constraint designed to limit civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure and the fact that Ukraine possesses a very well-trained military that is well led and equipped. Russia deployed some 200,000 troops in support of this operation. They are facing some 600,000 Ukrainian forces. The first phase of the Russian operation was designed to shape the battlefield to Russia’s advantage while diminishing the size and capacity of the Ukrainian ability to wage large-scale conflict. The second phase is focused on destroying the main Ukrainian force concentration in eastern Ukraine. Russia is well on its way to accomplishing this task.

Question: Do you see danger from Ukraine being turned into a proxy war by the United States and NATO partners against Russia in a way that attempts to repeat the West’s covert war in Syria or the Afghanistan war (1979-89) with the Soviet Union? There are reports of foreign legions being sent to Ukraine via NATO countries. Do you think there is a Western plan to embroil Russia in a proxy war that is aimed at sapping Russia politically, economically, and militarily?

Scott Ritter: The Ukrainian conflict is a proxy war, but one which Russia is poised to win decisively. While there appears to be a NATO/western plan to embroil Russia in a “new Afghanistan”, I don’t see any risk of this conflict dragging on for more than a few more weeks at the most before Russia accomplishes a strategic victory over Ukraine.

Question: There is an arrogant assumption among Western governments that they can impose crippling economic sanctions on Russia in a similar way to what they did on Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea among others. But would you agree that if Russia begins to impose its own counter-sanctions by restricting oil and gas exports then the Western states may end up reaping a whirlwind that is devastating to their societies?

Scott Ritter: Russia was warned well in advance about the scope and scale of U.S.-led sanctions that would be imposed if Russia were to invade Ukraine. Russia has prepared its own counter-sanction strategy which will not only defeat the Western sanctions but further strengthen Russia’s economy by decoupling it from the West and Western control/influence. We see evidence of the effectiveness of this counter-campaign as the Russian ruble is strengthened, the Russian stock market enjoys positive traction, and Europe and the U.S. flounder economically. The West has sown the wind in sanctioning Russia; Russia will not reap the whirlwind.

The Restaurant I Work For Is Closing Until Further Notice. My Manager Gave Me A Gift

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good best bosses 208 62503109b6f2a 700

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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Oasis – Live Forever (Official HD Remastered Video)

OMG! My all-time favorite song to sing at the KTV. Of course the rent-a-chicks don’t understand what I’m singing about, but they clap enthusiastically, and I usually get some great nuggies later on.

I Work Construction In The Midwest And My Boss Just Delivered All Of These Food Goodies To Our Home In Time For The Holiday

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624ab843eaada jr1jr1xhil681 700

U.S. Hospitals RUNNING OUT of CT-Scan Contrast Dye

A reader provided the following email he received from his hospital, concerning them running-out of Contrast Dye used for medical CT Scans.  This shortage of Dye is now global in scope due to the COVID lockdown of Shanghai, China.

Here is the e-mail:

Many people rely on Cat scans. Guess what? The US President and these fricking liberal politicians are letting us die on the vine. Need proof you say? Trinity here you go- real doom for a change

I just received this by email below from my doctors. Fricken Biden better do something or many of our family members and us could die. The contrast media is used in every part of the body- from the brain and heart to the feet. Its time to stop these asshole politicians from talking about social fricking issues and concentrating on keeping our families alive.

Dear Patient,
Due to unprecedented COVID-related supply chain disruptions in
China, all hospitals in the United States are experiencing a shortage of contrast media (sometimes referred to as X-ray dye) used to perform CAT or CT scans. This may affect ERCP procedures as well. As at all U.S. hospitals, LVHN and other imaging providers’ ability to perform these scans in all but the most critical cases will be limited until these supply chain issues are corrected. This shortage has been caused by the Chinese government’s COVID lockdown of Shanghai, where most of the world’s supply of contrast media is manufactured and then subsequently distributed by GE Healthcare and Bracco. This disruption is expected to last until at least the end of June.

LVHN is exploring various strategies to conserve contrast media, including using other imaging technologies and materials and postponing non-emergency scans. As always, we are 100% committed to providing the best possible care to our patients. If you have any questions or concerns about a scheduled test at LVHN, please contact the scheduling department at LVHN at 610-402-8378.

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1501 N Cedar Crest Blvd
Allentown, PA 18104-2309

Stanford Scientists Reverse Engineer Moderna Vaccine, Post Code on Github

Stanford scientists saved drops of the COVID-19 vaccine destined for the garbage can, reverse engineered them, and have posted the mRNA sequence that powers the vaccine on GitHub for all to see.

The GitHub post is four pages long. The first two are an explanation by the team of scientists about the work, the second two pages are the entire mRNA sequence for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. “RNA vaccines have become a key tool in moving forward through the challenges raised both in the current pandemic and in numerous other public health and medical challenges,” the scientists said on GitHub. “Despite their ubiquity, sequences are not always available for such RNA. Standard methods facilitate such sequencing.”  The GitHub posting is HERE  (We have a download of the posting in case GitHub deletes it.)

According to Stanford scientists Andrew Fire and Massa Shoura, this isn’t technically “reverse-engineering” a vaccine. “We didn’t reverse engineer the vaccine. We posted the putative sequence of two synthetic RNA molecules that have become sufficiently prevalent in the general environment of medicine and human biology in 2021,” they told Motherboard in an email. “As the vaccine has been rolling out, these sequences have begun to show up in many different investigational and diagnostic studies. Knowing these sequences and having the ability to differentiate them from other RNAs in analyzing future biomedical data sets is of great utility.”

The scientists were light on details about how they acquired the Moderna sample. “For this work, RNAs were obtained as discards from the small portions of vaccine doses that remained in vials after immunization; such portions would have been required to be otherwise discarded and were analyzed under FDA authorization for research use,” they said.

Fire and Shoura explained that none of what they studied came from usable vaccines. “This project did not waste vaccine material or reduce in any way the number of vaccine doses available to the public,” they told Motherboard. “None of the residual ‘dregs’ that we used for this work came from vaccines that could have been otherwise administered. Think of the thin layer of milk coating a carton that had been fully used and emptied yesterday and sitting on the kitchen counter—if we sequenced that, we’d get a full picture of the cow genome even though the small quantity of milk would be of no use.”

The scientists requested permission from the FDA to keep emptied vials that were going to be discarded at Stanford and Veteran’s Affairs vaccination sites. “Given  the ability of Next Generation Sequencing technology to detect even minuscule amounts of RNA, this was more than sufficient to assemble a coding region for the two vaccine RNAs,” they said.

The scientists told Motherboard they felt that their peers working at Moderna/NIH and BioNTech/Pfizer had done the world a great service and that releasing the RNA sequences will help continue to benefit humanity. “While anyone interested could data-mine and filter these sequences out later, there is a substantial economy of scale and educational value in having the sequences available ASAP and in not having to guess where they have come from,” they said.

This isn’t the first time a COVID-19 vaccine has been reverse-engineered and shared online. On December 25, 2020, PowerDNS founder Bert Hubert used publicly available information about the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine to figure out its mRNA sequence.

According to Shoura and Fire, the FDA cleared the Stanford project’s decision to share the sequence with the community. “We did contact Moderna a couple of weeks ago to indicate that we were hoping to include the sequence in a publication and asking if there was anything that we should reference with respect to this… no response or objection from them, so we assume that everyone is busy doing important work.”

This is all exciting, and it’s great for the public to have access to the mRNA code that’s part of a vaccine many of us are injecting into our bodies. It also probably won’t make more people get the vaccine. The supply chain behind this kind of medicine is complicated and isn’t easily DIYed. It’s worth noting, however, that this sort of research makes information about the vaccine more accessible to everyone, which is a big deal considering the patents that big pharma has on many of the vaccines, and the fact that the world has a massive task ahead of it in trying to distribute the vaccine to billions of people around the world.

“Nobody will be making an mRNA vaccine in their garage any time soon,” engineer Jason Neubert said in a blog post about the reverse-engineered Pifzer vaccine.

COVERT INTEL – France Has Sudden (and Dramatic) Change of tune . . .

World Hal Turner

French President Emmanuel Macron made a startling series of statements today, and my former colleagues in the Intelligence Community conveyed to me exactly why.  It TERRIFIED Macron!

Welcome To The Greatest Energy Crisis In History – Things Will Only Get Much More Painful From Here

by Michael

Just as the western world was accelerating the transition away from traditional forms of energy, the COVID pandemic caused the most epic supply chain crisis in history, and now the largest land war in Europe since World War II has thrown global energy markets into a state of complete and utter chaos.  And if you think that things are bad now, just wait until a huge war erupts in the Middle East.  Energy prices are ridiculously high now, but they will eventually go much higher than this.  Needless to say, skyrocketing energy prices will have a catastrophic impact on worldwide economic conditions during the troubled months and years ahead of us.

Do you remember when Joe Biden promised that he would do all that he possibly could to drive down the price of gasoline?

Yeah, that isn’t exactly working out too well

Retail gasoline prices in the United States rose on Tuesday and hit another all-time record, surpassing one set in March, as global refineries grappled with a bottleneck that has sent prices soaring ahead of driving season.The average cost of a retail gallon of gasoline hit $4.374 early Tuesday, according to the American Automobile Association, surpassing the former record of $4.331.

 

Ultimately, it really is a matter of supply and demand.

We need more drilling, we need more refineries, and we need less regulation on traditional forms of energy all over the western world.

But with the leaders that are currently in place, you shouldn’t expect any significant changes any time soon.

So the price of gasoline will continue to rise.

And actually the price of diesel has been going up even faster

Tom Kloza, head of global energy research at OPIS, said that in years past a barrel of diesel typically sold for $10 above the price of crude oil. Today, that differential – known as the crack spread – has surged to a record high above $70.“It’s become untethered, unmoored, a little bit unhinged. These are prices we’re not used to seeing,” he said, adding that there are large price differences across the U.S.That is really bad news, because our economy runs on diesel fuel.

As I pointed out yesterday, our trains and our trucks are powered by diesel, and so rapidly rising diesel prices are going to have a huge economic impact.

In addition, most farm equipment uses diesel as well, and this is yet another factor that is putting an enormous amount of financial stress on America’s farmers.

One farmer that was asked about this admitted that he is “really concerned how bad it can get this next year”

“My family is preparing now and stocking up our freezers and pantry because we are really concerned how bad it can get this next year.”He estimates that fertilizer prices near him have increased 200 or even 300 percent, “dependent on what program you are running.”The rise in diesel prices has hurt him the most. “Farm equipment runs on diesel,” he pointed out.According to AAA’s gas price website, diesel in Texas is running at an average of $5.231, up from $2.820 a year ago.

 

Needless to say, you should be stock up too, because things are going to look completely different a year from now than they do today.

Of course things are already getting quite crazy.  Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal warned that widespread electricity shortages in the U.S. could be coming as early as this summer

From California to Texas to Indiana, electric-grid operators are warning that power-generating capacity is struggling to keep up with demand, a gap that could lead to rolling blackouts during heat waves or other peak periods as soon as this year.California’s grid operator said Friday that it anticipates a shortfall in supplies this summer, especially if extreme heat, wildfires or delays in bringing new power sources online exacerbate the constraints.

 

I am stunned that things have gotten this bad already.

And the Ukrainians have decided to make things even worse for the western world by cutting off a key source of Russian natural gas that Europe depends upon

Ukraine’s state-owned gas grid operator GTSOU said May 10 it had declared force majeure on the transit of Russian gas entering the Ukrainian system at Sokhranivka and would not accept gas at the entry point from May 11.The force majeure declaration, the first of its kind since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, sent European gas prices sharply higher.

As energy prices rise, so will prices for everything else.

Because it takes energy to produce and transport virtually everything that we buy and sell.

So the inflation spiral that we are currently enjoying is likely to intensify even more in the months ahead.

At this point, economic conditions are already shifting so rapidly that some restaurants have decided to put stickers on their menus so that they can be easily changed

It’s not the prices on the menu so much that’ll shock you. They’re actually still very cheap (and the tacos really good). It’s the fact that the prices were scrawled in pen on stickers slapped on the menu. Those stickers are a tell-tale sign that prices are going up at such a rapid-fire clip that the staff is struggling to print new menus fast enough. Rewriting prices on old menus is easier and cheaper, too.A quick scan of the restaurant’s Facebook posts lays out the increases. The special, offered every Wednesday and Friday, had been $1 per taco for years. That changed in February of last year, when it was raised to $1.25. A month later, it went to $1.50. This January, it shot up to $1.75. And now it’s $2.00.

 

This is the sort of thing that happens in Venezuela.

And now it is happening in the United States of America.

When I bring up the years 1929 and 2008, what do you immediately think about?

The answer to that question is obvious.

Now we stand on the precipice of another major financial disaster, but this time around there will not be a “return to normal”.

The entire western world has been on a suicidal path for decades, and now a day of reckoning has finally arrived.

And since the U.S. and Europe are the two core pillars of the global economy, the whole world will feel the pain of the coming collapse.

So I would encourage you to buckle your seatbelts, because the road ahead is going to be exceedingly bumpy.

Tears For Fears – Head Over Heels (Official Music Video)

It’s the 1980s, and I am working as a short order cook in San Louis Obispo waiting, waiting, waiting for a call-up to get my MAJestic training. This song is playing everywhere, all the time.

Matthew Ehret
April 27, 2022
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Time is ticking away, and the doors to a bright future of cooperation close faster with every passing minute.

Every day, the American and European public is subjected to a barrage of information telling them what they should think about the events in Ukraine now moving into the 3rd month of conflict since Putin launched his military intervention on February 24th.

From CNN, BBC, Fox News and everything in between, streams of talking heads perform spin while pictures of gruesome horror are flashed in front of our eyes. Narrative framing ensures that watchers of mainstream media are kept in a constant state of fear, hysteria and repulsion over Russia’s supposed crimes against humanity. Where evidence was once a precondition for judgement, under the careful management of Five Eyes ‘perception managers’, mere accusation and repetition are sufficient. Viewers doubting the trustworthiness of those same media sources that lied about weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons by Assad or Russia gate crockery, have increasingly found themselves cheerleading the very empire which many a liberal had protested and despised for years.

Despite the tendency to doubt the credibility of CIA-infested media outlets, recent Pew Surveys published on April 6 tell us not only that “seven-in-ten Americans now see Russia as an enemy” but also that “NATO is seen in an increasingly favorable light” by the majority of Americans. It is rare in this day in age to find agreement from both sides of the political aisle on anything, but on the issue of Russia being America’s enemy, an exception has been found with 72% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans falling into lockstep. Such numbers were not even approximated during the days of America’s illegal assault on Iraq or Libya which saw nearly a million deaths and great cultures driven back into the stone age by U.S.-tax payer money.

And so we find ourselves careening ever more quickly towards an abyss, as members of the UK special forces have officially entered Kiev with “boots on the ground” on April 15 in order to provide training to Ukrainian forces. This obviously increases the risk of military exchanges with Russian forces (and thus activating NATO’s Article 5 collective suicide pact).

As a “good ally to the UK”, the USA is feeling much pressure to follow suite.

The British journalist Michael Tracey recently noted that “Chris Coons, the Democratic Senator from Delaware who occupies Joe Biden’s old seat, and basically serves as a personal emissary to the Administration, started making the rounds to float the next phase of U.S. intervention. Again: Coons isn’t just some Senator, he’s the Senator who basically operates as a conduit directly to Biden. And so for Coons to all the sudden start going around declaring that it’s high time Congress and Biden figure out when they’ll be willing to send “not just arms but troops to the aid in defense of Ukraine” — that’s very telling. “Putin will only stop when we stop him,” warned Coons on TV this past Sunday.”

Some assert that this is no big deal since the western alliance has already been supplying lethal weapons and training for years to prepare Ukrainian cannon fodder for their inevitable war with Russia, so what difference does it make if NATO-affiliated troops enter the fray now while a hot war is in play? Russia is, after all, the modern Hitler and poor Zelensky is the greatest human being since Martin Luther King Jr so it seems like we are morally obliged to do everything we can right?

Moreover, other nations like Finland and Sweden are now making their intention to be absorbed into NATO known and why shouldn’t they? Russia did intervene militarily into Ukraine over the danger that the Kiev would join NATO, so it stands to reason that the best protection for other countries sharing borders with Russia should be to… join NATO?

Despite the fact that ISIS-affiliated groups from Syria have been deployed into Ukraine to continue their jihad against Russia, and despite the fact that even mainstream press agencies have had to begrudgingly admit the presence of neo Nazi groups in Ukraine, westerners barely blink an eye brushing off such uncomfortable facts with the statement “there will always be some bad apples”.

Sanctions continue to drive new fissures between east west relations and breakdowns of the already fragile supply chains which require vast inputs of Russian oil, coal and natural gas, not to mention minerals, wheat, and fertilizers to keep from collapsing. Millions of Europeans and Americans are already suffering after 2+ years of lockdowns with the danger of new “health crises” looming on the horizon. Job insecurity, inflation, and exploding gas prices are what most Americans and Europeans truly care about, but online survey systems like Pew are always ready with new statistics to help people re-calibrate their wrong thinking according to more “acceptable values”.

We are assured by these same media spin doctors that there was never a solution to this crisis beyond a military confrontation with Russian villains in some abstract fight to the death over liberty and democracy. We are constantly told that the blame of the terrible events of the past two months of war falls squarely on the shoulders of Putin who, we are assured by streams of experts, truly desires to overturn the western order, undermine democracy and restore a neo-Soviet authoritarian empire upon the world.

These claims are of course bunk. The fact is that Putin had done everything imaginable to avoid the military escalation now underway starting from his 2008 Munich Security speech calling out the designs for military containment of his nation and demanding the west respect Russia’s existential security concerns.

From the moment that Victoria Nuland installed a puppet regime in 2014, the predominant ethnic Russian populations of east Donbass watched their fellow citizens in Odessa burn alive by hoards of Nazis and wasted no time to vote for their secession from Kiev in the form of two breakaway republics.

Putin could have quickly recognized these newly aspiring states in 2014 but chose to go the way of Minsk II instead, doing everything possible to keep the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples’ Republics integral members of an undivided Ukraine. For eight years we saw Russian diplomats try everything imaginable to keep Minsk II alive and for eight years we saw only the abrogation of this peace process and over 14,000 lives of eastern Ukrainians lost in turn.

By December 2021, the fact of a planned military intervention into in the East Donbass and Crimea was impossible to ignore, and Putin made it clear that all conflict could easily be avoided by simply obeying the Minsk II treaty while signing binding agreements to keep Ukraine a neutral territory outside of any anti-Russian military bloc. Simple.

The benefits to such an elegant solution are infinitely more favorable than the accelerated breakdown of supply chains, food production, energy supplies which will hurt Europeans, Americans and most importantly Ukrainians even more than they will hurt Russians who are finding new markets hungry for their bountiful resources in Asia. The obvious avoidance of thermonuclear war is also no small win for those who chose to think with clear heads during this time of existential crisis.

But time is ticking away, and the doors to a bright future of cooperation close faster with every passing minute. It is thus important to take the opportunity of the anniversary of Elbe Day (April 25) to recall and revive the spirit of U.S.-Russian brotherhood that jointly put down the Nazi machine in WWII and whose joint sacrifices created the possibility for an age of cooperation and brotherhood that even at this late stage may possibly be revived.

Boss Being An Absolute Bro Over A Mistake

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My Boss Asked Me If I Play Games And Gave Me This

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Forgotten Architectural Beauty

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Pork Schnitzel

Here's a tender, juicy pork schnitzel recipe of thin, breaded pork cutlets that are sautéed and served with a creamy dill sauce. Ideal for a quick dinner, it's ready in just 30 minutes!
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“The first time I traveled to the land of my Austrian ancestors I was taken to a restaurant where I saw “schnitzel” on the menu.

Of course, I ordered it, thinking I could use a good German sausage in a bun. (You have my permission to pound your head on the wall now.)

I mean, who in America didn’t grow up with those fast food joints with the giant hot dogs on the top of them? That was schnitzel, right?

When the order came, I was stunned by how far off it was from what I was expecting; even my gracious hosts had a hard time believing me when I told them that in America, a wiener schnitzel was a hot dog (at least where I was from in suburban California).”

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How To Make Schnitzel That Shines

To ensure your schnitzel turns out well, follow these tips.

  • For less pounding, start out with thin cutlets, no more than 1/2 inch thick.
  • Pat the cutlets dry with a paper towel. The flour will stick to dry cutlets better.
  • If you’re concerned about the breading staying on the cutlets, bread them an hour before cooking. Put them in a single layer, uncovered, on a tray in the refrigerator; the breading will adhere better. The cooking time may increase a minute or two for cutlets straight out of the refrigerator.
  • If you’re cooking the cutlets in batches, place a metal rack on a baking sheet, and keep the cooked cutlets in a preheated 180°F oven on the rack. Placing the cutlets directly on the baking sheet may result soggy breading.

 

The Best Cuts of Meat for This Schnitzel Recipe

While this recipe calls for pork chops, you can substitute other meats.

  • Veal cutlets
  • Chicken cutlets
  • Turkey cutlets
  • Round steak

Pork Schnitzel or “Cutlet”

Curses! Yes, we tend to distort some traditional dishes here in America, but this one? We weren't even close.

"Schnitzel", for the uninitiated, is German for "cutlet" which is usually made with veal and thinly pounded, breaded and fried.

As for this schnitzel recipe, it is made with thinly pounded pork cutlets. Those of you looking for a quick, mid-week dinner may be happy with this one. I love it.

The sauce alone is worth making this pork schnitzel for, and could easily be used on chicken, for turkey meatballs, or over fish.

Craig Morgan – That’s What I Love About Sunday – Nashville Connection Heroes Salute

One of my all-time favorite Country songs. I am my fellow inmates sang this together while doing time.

How to Make Homemade Cream of Chicken Soup

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Cream Cheese Chicken Soup exps14118 CW143433C03 21 2b RMS

You may never buy cream of chicken soup at the grocery store again!

I love nothing more than a comforting soup, especially when snow is falling outside. I’m also all about cooking with simplicity. As a busy mother of two—and with one on the way—I need quick, easy recipes that are also delicious. Of all the different types of soup, cream of chicken ticks off the all the boxes.

Now, what comes to mind when you think of cream of chicken soup? Is it a can of glop? What if I told you that this substitute for canned cream of chicken soup will change your life? You can whip it up in 30 minutes, including prep. It’s true!

How to Make Homemade Cream of Chicken Soup

Kathleen Rappleye, from Mesa, Arizona likes to serve this soothing cream cheese chicken soup on a chilly winter night with a crusty French bread.

Ingredients

  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon butter or margarine
  • 3 cups chicken broth
  • 3 medium carrots, cut into 1/4-inch slices
  • 2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
  • 2 cups cubed cooked chicken (Use rotisserie chicken!)
  • 2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 package (8 oz.) cream cheese (This is the trick!)

Directions

Step 1: Saute

Get out your favorite large saucepan and heat the butter on medium heat, then toss in the onion and saute. Now add your broth, carrots and potatoes. Hike up the heat and bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat; cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, until veggies are tender. The beauty of this stage is that you can leave it to simmer while you go break up the fight over Legos in the next room!

Step 2: Add the chicken

Now you’re going to add the chicken, parsley, salt and pepper until heated through.

Step 3: Cream cheese it

OK, here’s where the real magic happens. In a bowl, whisk the flour and milk until smooth, then stir it into your pan of vegetables. Bring the mixture to a boil, cook and stir for about 2 minutes (until soup has thickened). Reduce the heat to a simmer and add the entire block of cream cheese (psst…here’s more ways to use cream cheese in recipes). Stir until melted and heated through. Ladle into eight of your favorite soup bowls—or save some for later—and sprinkle on any fresh herbs you like.

Let’s Eat!

You can pair this substitute for canned cream of chicken soup with a loaf of crusty French bread. This recipe is truly love at first spoonful (even for the pickiest of eaters) and will be your homemade go-to.

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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Dark Shadows – Alice Cooper

A funny scene from the Johnny Depp movie “Dark Shadows” where Alice Cooper sings at the mansion.

Transforming Subway Passengers Into Renaissance Paintings

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Filter – Hey Man, Nice Shot (Official Music Video)

Based off of a true story about an American councilman who killed himself in front of his staff.

Transforming Subway Passengers Into Renaissance Paintings

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China Accelerates Nuclear Buildup, Military Modernization; Biden Speeding US To Defeat

Wednesday, May 11, 2022 – 11:25 AM

By Judith Bergman of The Gatestone Institute

Neocons are FREAKING OUT over China. Check out this article. -MM
  • “The PRC likely intends to have at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, exceeding the pace and size the DoD projected in 2020.” — Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2021, US Dept. of Defense.
  • “In space, China is putting up satellites at twice the rate of the United States and “fielding operational systems at an incredible rate.” — General David Thompson, the Space Force’s first vice chief of space operations, quoted in The Washington Post, November 30, 2021.
  • “Look at what they [CCP) have today…. We’re witnessing one of the largest shifts in global geostrategic power that the world has witnessed.” — General Mark Milley, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, breakingdefense.com, November 4, 2021.
  • “[T]he Chinese are building up their military capabilities in space, cyberspace, and in the conventional force. It’s all happening at the same time.” — Timothy Heath, senior international and defense researcher at Rand Corporation, Business Insider, January 4, 2022.
  • “To fully assess the China threat, it is also necessary to consider the capability of the associated delivery system, command and control, readiness, posture, doctrine and training. By these measures, China is already capable of executing any plausible nuclear employment strategy within their region and will soon be able to do so at intercontinental ranges as well.” ­­ — Admiral Charles Richard, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Senate Committee on Armed Services, April 20, 2021.
  • There is now as well the added probability of China and Russia engaging in military coordination…. a strategic partnership of “no limits” and with “no forbidden areas” in an agreement that they said was aimed at countering the influence of the United States.
  • This cooperation has already seen China undermining Western sanctions on Russia and supplying Russian President Vladimir Putin with the lifeline he needs to continue his war in Ukraine.
  • “The friendship between the two peoples is iron clad.” — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Associated Press, March 7, 2022.
  • “For the first time in our history, the nation is on a trajectory to face two nuclear-capable, strategic peer adversaries at the same time, who must be deterred differently.” ­­ — Admiral Charles Richard, Senate Committee on Armed Services, April 20, 2021.
  • [T]his is NOT the time for the US to cancel the sea-launched nuclear cruise missile (SLCM-N), as President Joe Biden plans to do.
  • Meanwhile, Biden’s proposed defense budget risks speeding the US to defeat by insufficiently taking into account the current skyrocketing inflation, as acknowledged in early April by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Pentagon comptroller Mike McCord. “This budget assumes an inflation rate of 2.2%, which is obviously incorrect because it’s almost 8%,” said Milley. “Because the budget was produced quite a while ago, those calculations were made prior to the current inflation rate.”
  • “Nearly every dollar of increase in this budget will be eaten by inflation. Very little, if anything, will be left over to modernize and grow capability.” — Representative Mike Rogers, (R-Ala.) House Armed Services Committee, Defense News, April 5, 2022.

When the Pentagon assessed China’s nuclear arsenal in its annual report to Congress on China’s military power in November 2020, it projected that China’s nuclear warhead stockpile, which the Pentagon then estimated to be in the low 200s, would “at least double in size” over the next decade. The Pentagon also estimated that China was “pursuing” a “nuclear triad”, meaning a combination of land-, sea- and air-based nuclear capabilities.

Just one year later, in November 2021, the Pentagon found itself acknowledging that China’s nuclear buildup was taking place at an astonishing speed, with the nuclear warhead stockpile now possibly quadrupling from the estimated low 200s in 2020 over the next decade:

"The accelerating pace of the PRC's nuclear expansion may enable the PRC to have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027. The PRC likely intends to have at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, exceeding the pace and size the DoD projected in 2020."

In addition, China is no longer merely “pursuing” a nuclear triad but appears to have already achieved the basics of it:

"The PRC has possibly already established a nascent 'nuclear triad' with the development of a nuclear-capable air-launched ballistic missile (ALBM) and improvement of its ground and sea-based nuclear capabilities."

China, according to the report, is also “constructing the infrastructure necessary to support this force expansion, including increasing its capacity to produce and separate plutonium by constructing fast breeder reactors and reprocessing facilities,” while “building hundreds of new ICBM silos, and is on the cusp of a large silo-based ICBM force expansion comparable to those undertaken by other major powers.”

The accelerating pace of China’s nuclear buildup is concerning in itself, but even more so given that the military buildup constitutes just one, but significant, part of China’s general military buildup and modernization. Last summer, for instance, China tested its first hypersonic weapon. In space, China is putting up satellites at twice the rate of the United States and “fielding operational systems at an incredible rate,” according to General David Thompson, the Space Force’s first vice chief of space operations. China and Russia’s combined in-orbit space assets grew approximately 70% in just two years, following a more than 200% increase between 2015 and 2018 according to Kevin Ryder, Defense Intelligence Agency senior analyst for space and counterspace in the U.S.

According to General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff:

"If you look at, again, 40 years ago, they had zero satellites...They had no ICBMs...They had no nuclear weapons... They had no fourth or fifth-generation fighters or even more advanced fighters, back then... They had no navy...They had no sub-force. Look at what they have today... So if you look at the totality, this test [of a hypersonic weapon] that occurred a couple weeks ago, is only one of a much, much broader picture of a military capability with respect to the Chinese. That is very, very significant. We're witnessing one of the largest shifts in global geostrategic power that the world has witnessed."

According to Timothy Heath, a senior international and defense researcher at the Rand Corporation think tank:

"It's important to see the modernizing nuclear arsenal as part of the bigger picture, in which the Chinese are building up their military capabilities in space, cyberspace, and in the conventional force. It's all happening at the same time."

On April 20, 2021, U.S. Strategic Command’s chief Admiral Charles Richard made it clear in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee that China is no longer a lesser nuclear threat than Russia:

"While China's nuclear stockpile is currently smaller (but undergoing an unprecedented expansion) than those fielded by Russia and the United States, the size of a nation's weapons stockpile is a crude measure of its overall strategic capability. To fully assess the China threat, it is also necessary to consider the capability of the associated delivery system, command and control, readiness, posture, doctrine and training. By these measures, China is already capable of executing any plausible nuclear employment strategy within their region and will soon be able to do so at intercontinental ranges as well. They are no longer a 'lesser included case of the pacing nuclear threat, Russia." (Emphasis in original).

China’s nuclear acceleration is not all, however. There is now as well the added probability of China and Russia engaging in military coordination: In February, the two powers declared that they were entering into a strategic partnership of “no limits” and with “no forbidden areas” in an agreement that they said was aimed at countering the influence of the United States.

This cooperation has already seen China undermining Western sanctions on Russia and supplying Russian President Vladimir Putin with the lifeline he needs to continue his war in Ukraine. China has not only supplied material support through a variety of deals with Russia, it has also refrained from condemning Russia’s invasion and has criticized the sanctions.

In March, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Russia the “most important strategic partner” for China.

"No matter how perilous the international landscape, we will maintain our strategic focus and promote the development of a comprehensive China-Russia partnership in the new era... The friendship between the two peoples is iron clad."

On April 19, China reassured Russia that it will continue to increase “strategic coordination.”

China-Russia cooperation is going to affect US strategic deterrence. Admiral Richard told the Senate Armed Services Committee in early March that the US needs to have plans for scenarios in which the two powers cooperate militarily, adding:

"I'm very concerned about what opportunistic aggression looks like. I'm worried about what cooperative aggression looks like... We do not know the endpoints of where either of those other two are going either in capability or capacity. We're just now starting to work out what three-party stability looks like, what three-party deterrence dynamic works out."

In his April 20, 2021 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Richard said:

"For the first time in our history, the nation is on a trajectory to face two nuclear-capable, strategic peer adversaries at the same time, who must be deterred differently. We can no longer assume the risk of strategic deterrence failure in conflict will always remain low."

In the light of China’s accelerating nuclear buildup — and the nuclear threat that Russia poses with its thousands of tactical nuclear weapons — this is NOT the time for the US to cancel the sea-launched nuclear cruise missile (SLCM-N), as President Joe Biden plans to do.

The missile, according to the Wall Street Journal, “is considered a ‘tactical’ nuclear weapon that has a lower yield than ‘strategic’ options and might be used on battlefield targets. The missile could be launched from submarines or destroyers” and “is needed to deter Russia and others” and, according to the article, would also be useful “in dissuading China from using a nuke on Taiwan, without the longer and fraught debate of, say, putting American nuclear weapons on Japanese soil… [and] reduce proliferation at a volatile moment.”

The acceleration of China’s nuclear and military modernization, and the new situation of tri-polar deterrence that the U.S. finds itself in for the first time, necessitate increases in US military research and development, acquisition and procurement. Meanwhile, Biden’s proposed defense budget risks speeding the US to defeat by insufficiently taking into account the current skyrocketing inflation, as acknowledged in early April by Gen. Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Pentagon comptroller Mike McCord. “This budget assumes an inflation rate of 2.2%, which is obviously incorrect because it’s almost 8%,” Milley noted. “Because the budget was produced quite a while ago, those calculations were made prior to the current inflation rate.”

“Nearly every dollar of increase in this budget will be eaten by inflation,” Representative Mike Rogers (R-Ala), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said. “Very little, if anything, will be left over to modernize and grow capability.”

Transforming Subway Passengers Into Renaissance Paintings

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“People DON’T KNOW What’s Coming!” Prepare For The CHANGING WORLD ORDER | Ray Dalio

Things are going on. Pay attention.

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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Planting POTATOES In FREE Containers SIMPLE and EASY

Really easy to do, and fun. Grep prep skill.

I Started A New Job A Few Months Ago And I Have Never Felt More Appreciated And Valued. Here Is A Christmas Card From My Boss

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NEW CRISIS That Will Affect EVERYONE In 1 to 2 WEEKS

Pay attention! By early June 2022 the USA is going to experience some serious issues.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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The death of the Ukraine, and the cheer-leading of the lemmings on their march of death

Scott Ritter is on fire. You have to watch the video here and he tears into Finland and Sweden. Yeah. They want to join the death march of the lemmings following the Nazi’s and cheer led by the American neocons drinking their Carmel coffee latte’s in Starbucks. LOL. It’s over, folks.

Let’s continue on the “news” during this period of insanity.

The Anti-China fear-mongering has begun

All from the front page of Zero Hedge this morning (11May22) …

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Transforming Subway Passengers Into Renaissance Paintings

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This week’s “must-read”…

B names Return of the King by Wolfgang Streek as this week’s must-read. I agree: the article is very good on the Ukraine’s recent past, its present predicament, and its likely future.

One sentence really caught my eye:

Rumours have it that the numerous wargames commissioned in recent years from military thinktanks by the American government involving Ukraine, NATO and Russia have one way or other all ended in nuclear Armageddon, at least in Europe.

It’s a rumor but a very plausible one. Nuclear armaggedon, at least in Europe, seems likely if the neocons in Washington keep doubling down, as is their wont. This leads to another thought: the US knows that Europe will probably be destroyed, yet it continues to stoke the conflict. Therefore, the death of a large economic competitor, namely Europe, is what the US — or a least a faction of the US — wants!

To Europeans: is Europe’s death what YOU want? Not importing energy from Russia will destroy your economy, but you won’t need an economy if you are dead.

To the nutcases in Washington DC: How would a dead Europe help you in the fight against China?

I do agree it is worth reading, so would encourage others.

I have a ‘however’ however — would like very much those who would agree with the essay to give me some proof of the veracity of the following statement near the end of the piece:

“…Very likely, what Europe can deliver to the United States would exceed what Russia can deliver to China, so that a loss of Russia to China would be more than compensated by the gains from a tightening of American hegemony over Western Europe…”

 

I’m not seeing that as ‘very likely’ at this point; but who am I to know?

Forgotten Architectural Beauty

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Greece formally rejects US proposal to supply Ukraine with additional Russian-made weapon systems

The USA wants every nation to throw away their weapons to Ukraine, and then buy fresh new, expensive ones from the United States.

Article HERE

Sheet Pan Greek Chicken

This Sheet Pan Greek Chicken recipe has been one of the most popular recipes on this site for over 3 years, and with good reason! It really couldn’t be any easier to make with less than 10 minutes of hands on prep. It’s a great all in one meal and is loaded with roasted peppers, tomatoes, artichokes and olives, all tossed in a yummy sauce and cooked with pieces of chicken. Whether you are doing a Whole30, Paleo, Gluten Free or just love food, this Greek Chicken Traybake is a great crowd pleasing meal. 

-Everylastbite

Sheet pan recipes have become the star of my weeknight dinners. I am all about the low maintenance midweek meals that can be prepared with the absolute minimum amount of effort, taste good, and ideally be eaten as leftovers over the following days. This Sheet Pan Greek Chicken ticks all those boxes and more. It’s packed with beautiful healthy ingredients including red and yellow peppers, cherry tomatoes, red onions, wedges of lemon and loads of garlic and basil.

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2022 05 10 21 10

WHY YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE THIS SHEET PAN GREEK CHICKEN

  1. It requires just 10 minutes of hands on prep! After that place the tray in the oven and sit back and relax. It really couldn’t be any more low maintenance to make! This is the perfect recipe to try if you are new to cooking, it’s basically impossible to mess up!
  2. I have received so many comments from people who love making this dish for guests, it can all be prepared in advance and guests are always wow’d by how pretty it looks
  3. It’s naturally Gluten Free, Grain Free and Specific Carbohydrate Diet Legal, and with a few modifications you can make it comply with many other diets too (see details below)!
  4. There is so much flavour! The mix of herbs, garlic and oil seems simple but really gives the veggies and chicken a wonderful Greek flavour.
  5. Minimal dishes to wash, need I say more!
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2022 05 10 21 12

CAN I USE A DIFFERENT CUT OF CHICKEN?

Absolutely! While I prefer using boneless skinless chicken breasts or thighs, bone in also works well. If using bone in cuts of chicken remember to increase the cook time by 15 minutes

I DON’T EAT CHICKEN, ANYTHING ELSE I CAN USE?

Swap the chicken for salmon or a white fish such as cod or halibut. Bake the veggies in the oven for 15 minutes before adding the fish on top and then baking for another 15 minutes until cooked through.

HOW TO MAKE IT DAIRY FREE? 

If you are on a dairy free diet such as Paleo or Whole30, skip the feta and add in small slices of potato

CAN I ADD OTHER VEGETABLES? 

Definitely! Other vegetables that would be a great addition to this recipe include asparagus, wedges of zucchini, cubed eggplant or baby potatoes.

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2022 05 10 21 13

WHAT SHOULD I SERVE WITH THIS SHEET PAN GREEK CHICKEN?

I love serving this sheet pan meal with tzatziki, it really ups this meal to the next level. You can use store bought tzatziki, or if you are looking for a dairy free tzatziki, try making this absolutely delicious one which you can quickly whip up with the sheet pan is cooking, and its vegan, whole30 and paleo too!

You can keep things simple and serve this sheet pan meal with a salad for a light meal. Alternatively you can serve it with roast potatoes or rice (or cauliflower rice). The chicken and veggies have so much flavour you can keep everything else simple.

CAN I PREP THIS SHEET PAN GREEK CHICKEN IN ADVANCE?

This Sheet Pan Greek Chicken is a great make ahead dish. You can chop all of the veggies and put them on the tray with the chicken up to a day in advance. 30 minutes before serving simply pour the sauce overtop and bake in the oven, it doesn’t get much easier than that.

WHAT TO DO WITH LEFTOVERS

Leftovers will last for up to 4 days in the fridge. I like to cut up the leftover vegetables and add them into a salad along with the chicken. You can even use any excess sauce from the bottom of the tray as dressing.

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2022 05 10 21 14

Equipment

  • 1 21x15inch Sheet Pan or Baking Dish

Ingredients

  • 1 red pepper cut into 2 inch pieces
  • 1 yellow pepper cut into 2 inch pieces
  • 1 red onion cut into eighths
  • 2 cups cherry tomatoes
  • 1/2 cup artichoke hearts
  • 1 lemon
  • 2 large chicken breasts, cut in half or 4 chicken thighs
  • 2 cloves garlic crushed
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 1/2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
  • 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 tsp dried oregano
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • 2 tbsp chopped fresh basil
  • 2/3 cup kalamata olives
  • 1/4 cup chopped feta (omit for Paleo/Whole30)

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius)
  • In a large baking sheet or roasting tray, add the chopped peppers, red onion slices, artichoke hearts, lemon wedges and tomatoes.
  • In a bowl whisk together the garlic, olive oil, vinegar, paprika and oregano. Pour 1/3 of the sauce over the veggies, sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss until well coated. Place the chicken pieces on top of the veggies and brush sauce. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes.
  • After 25 minutes, add in the feta, chopped basil and olives. Pour the remaining sauce over the tray and return to the oven to bake for another 5-10 minutes. Check the chicken to ensure its no longer pink. Sprinkle with basil and serve.

Whoa!

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2022 05 11 11 17

BioLabs

Matthew Ehret on bio labs on rumble.

This week, I was invited to speak on the Mel K Show in order to shed some light on the strategic roots of the Pentagon's global bioweapons complex running 320+ biolabs across the world.

How did this opaque and dangerous network grow out of the 2001 Anthrax attacks which began on Sept. 18, 2001 and the earlier Dark Winter exercises? 

How is this connected to the absorption of General Hiro Ishii's Unit 731 bio terror network into Fort Detrick after WWII? How were plans for a post-war age of win-win cooperation sabotaged by the same machine that funded and directed the rise of fascism both prior to and even during WWII?

During the interview, a sober assessment of the growth of the US full spectrum “containment” policy encircling both Russia and China, and the various US military satraps of the Pacific whose sovereignty is in name only. Among those military colonies, we discuss South Korean, Japan, Taiwan, Guam and even increasingly the Philippines.

REPORTS: U.S. Admiral Surrenders to Russia in Mariupol, Ukraine

World Hal Turner

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2022 05 16 13 41

Numerous reports have been circulating much of today (Sunday, May 15, 2022) claiming that a U.S. Military Commander surrendered to Russian forces from the Azovstal Steel Mill in Mariupol, Ukraine.   As of 6:17 PM EDT, a photo purported to be U.S. Navy Admiral Eric Olson, has been released allegedly showing the Admiral under arrest by Russian troops.

The photo, featured above, is claimed to be Admiral Eric T. Olsen.

From Wikipedia:

Eric Thor Olson (born January 24, 1952) is a retired United States Navy admiral who last served as the eighth Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) from July 2, 2007 to August 8, 2011.
His official US Military photo (Years old) appears on Wikipedia as shown below:

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2022 05 16 13 43

He previously served as Deputy Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command from 2003 to July 2007. Olson was the first Navy SEAL ever to be appointed to three-star and four-star flag rank, as well as the first naval officer to be USSOCOM’s combatant commander.

He took command from Army General Bryan D. Brown in 2007.[1] Brown and Olson had served together at the SOCOM headquarters in Tampa for four years.
He retired from active duty on August 22, 2011 after over 38 years of service. He relinquished command of SOCOM to Admiral William H. McRaven the same day.
Below is a more recent photo of Admiral Olson, taken in March, 2020:

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2022 05 16 13 44

Along with U.S. Admiral Olson (Ret’d), British Lieutenant Colonel John Bailey and 4 NATO military instructors also allegedly surrendered to Russia.

There is also news of Canadian, French, and Turkish military officers still hiding inside tunnels beneath the Azovstal Steel Mill in Mariupol.

What these men were allegedly doing there and who sent them there, is not yet known.

If confirmed by the Pentagon, the massive question this raises is why are U.S. military officers, and the military officers from other NATO countries, inside Ukraine at all, and who authorized them to participate in waging undeclared war upon Russia?

UPDATE 7:02 PM EDT —

There is a dispute as to WHERE this photo was taken.   There is a claim it was taken in Luhansk, and not in Mariupol.  There is also a dispute as to WHEN the photo was taken, with claims that it was taken on April 14.

The “where” and “when” arguments do not take issue with WHO is allegedly shown in the photo.

RELATED: Reports Seven (7) Other Americans KILLED in Ukraine

Seven (7) Americans were killed in Rubizhnoye, who participated in the battles on the side of Kyiv, according to Alaudinov, an assistant to the head of Chechnya,.

He showed a document of one of them with the name Joseph Ward Clark from Washington state.

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2022 05 16 13 46

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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24 5

Warning to the people of Finland

Scott Ritter has a stark warning for Finland: Join NATO and you will get nuked!

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Brett Eldredge – Raymond (Official Music Video)

A long time favorite.

US State Department site deletes ‘Taiwan is part of China’ | Taiwan News

Playing with fire.

Article HERE.

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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23 6

Saudi Aramco Has Cut Prices From Record Highs for Asia

When the world no longer afraid of the United States, the revenge has begun…

The only difference is that , unlike the West, habitually killing and looting the world at will, the world will simply not going to give the West special prices anymore .

That is enough to keep the Western economies uncompetitive compared to the rest of the world.

Article HERE.

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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22 7

Huawei smartphone production capacity has been restored

No surprises here.

ARTICLE.

Forgotten Architectural Beauty

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12e 25

Manager Helps His Employee Get A Raise

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good best bosses 203 625029a356d5f 700

The last billboard in Poland has been torn down

The proliferation of advertising in public spaces has long been a controversial issue around Poland, with many referring to it as “reklamoza” (“advertosis”), likening it to a disease eroding the fabric of Polish cities.

Advertising is not free speech; obscenity is not free speech. Being able to express any viewpoint in the correct form in a correct venue is free speech, especially anti-egalitarian ideas because they are always unpopular, and while our society has encouraged a proliferation of advertising and obscenity, it has crushed actual free speech. Democracy has not only failed, but reversed itself.

From HERE.

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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21 8

Forgotten Architectural Beauty

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3 40

China orders government, state firms to replace all foreign computers

China has ordered central government agencies and state-backed corporations to replace foreign-branded personal computers with domestic alternatives within two years, marking one of Beijing’s most aggressive efforts so far to eradicate key overseas technology from within its most sensitive organs.

The West will (eventually) do the same, once domestic manufacture of computers returns. However, the difficulties are many. Not just the lack of manufacturing, but unions, selfish and parasitic organizations are fundamental elements that need to be corrected before a change in policy can be implemented. It is, after all, that situation that drove all of Western manufacturing to China in the first place.

From HERE.

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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20 8

The End of Socialized Insurance in the West

Last year, program trustees projected that, beginning in 2033, Social Security’s trust fund will be depleted and insufficient to pay retirement benefits. Medicare faces an even more immediate crisis, with its trust fund projected to run out in 2026.

Neither the US nor Europe can afford these social benefits programs while funding an enormous military. Something must change. What will change is unknown, but it will be a grand “arm wrestle” between the lobby of retired people, against the military-industrial lobby. The outcome will be nasty, and contentious.

Forgotten Architectural Beauty

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STP – Acoustic – Interstate Love Song

Declan Hayes
May 7, 2022
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Russia should ignore Zelensky and the Finnish biker and let the EU know what its choices are.

Although Satan 11, Russia’s latest super‐heavy RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), packs a lethal punch, it is not of itself a game changer. Because leopards don’t change their spots, NATO won’t stop its war mongering until it is defanged, disarmed and demobbed. Though Satan 11 is necessary to deter NATO’s aggression, it is not nearly sufficient to alter the NATO jingoistic mind set that now has middle aged Swedish and Finnish women clambering to kick start Armageddon.

If these Swedish and Finnish mamasans want Santa’s Lapland to be nuked, fair enough. On the positive side, pre-emptive nuclear strikes would end Sweden’s rampant urban terrorism and enable future entrepreneurs to build back better after Assa Abloy, Electrolux, Ericcson, Essity, H&M, Ikea, Skanska, Spotify, Vattenfall, Volvo, Abba and Greta Thunberg dissolve in palls of nuclear smoke, with Finnish firms Nordia, Nokia, Neste and UPM tagging along for the one-way ride.

Though all sane Swedes and Finns, like all sane Norwegians and Danes, don’t want to be NATO’s sacrificial lambs, they don’t have a vote in this. Scandinavia is not Switzerland. And they are certainly not democracies which are dependent upon large and well-informed electorates which would quickly discern that Sweden’s pretty Prime Minister and Finland’s prettier Prime Minister are just tools of Empire, lipstick on the war pig that is NATO.

NATO membership would mean for Finland and Sweden, as it means for Norway and Denmark, that its more pliable generals would get cushy numbers pushing pens in Brussels and its prettier politicians would get their five minutes of fame talking tough on the international stage against NATO’s latest baddie. But for the ordinary Swedes and Finns, just like for the ordinary Greeks, it would mean huge military expenditures, with nothing but increased American arms’ profits and more Greek-like poverty to show for it. If Finland and Sweden join NATO, then they should pay the penalties worldwide, just as little Lithuania is currently being taught some basic manners by China.

On the subject of manners, it wasn’t very nice of Sweden to pretend to broker peace between Iran and Iraq, even as they sold arms to both sides. Though one can understand Sweden’s need to mob up with NATO to retain its toxic arms exports, Sweden should not be all that surprised if Satan 11 or some gentler messenger of death calls it to account for its duplicity; President Putin keeps saying as much about Sweden and Perfidious Albion.

When one deals with the NATO devil, one needs a very long spoon as global blowback is a given. H&M has already suffered much well earned blowback in China and Bangladesh promises much more of that until Sweden backs off or Satan 11 ends Malmö’s mayhem.

Though Einstein famously quipped that World War 4 would be fought with sticks and stones, that would be fine with NATO’s Nordic pimps if there was money to be made by cudgelling Armageddon’s survivors to death; after all, that is how their ISIS proxies dispatched their victims.

The United States and its British bulldog, the two leeches at the heart of NATO, are its financial command, control and co-ordination centers, far more concerned with profiteering from global supply lines’ disruption than with making their own countries, or any others, at peace with themselves and with others.

England, once the world’s work horse is, beyond its semi-autonomous City of London, a social and economic waste land, whose citizens pay fortunes to watch foreigners kick balls in its foreign-owned football clubs. Its foreign owned media relay those matches to its masses in between informing them how the Queen and the vast cast of her Royal Family, even down to the Queen’s youngest great grand children, are faring and what they are wearing. Kate Middleton, the Queen’s grand daughter in law, is a media staple, Britain’s bonniest Barbie doll if you will. When she is not holding a tennis racket, swinging a cricket bat or throwing a rugby ball, she eyes up squaddies, ogles at natives, smiles at toddlers, and far out-shines Meghan Markle, the Royals’ Chief Witch-in-Exile. In between the endless column inches devoured by these D-Listers, the media, which scoff at North Korea’s leader for doing similar photo shoots, shriek that “Putin must be stopped” before his armies invade England’s drug infested council estates where even England’s own police forces fear to tread. If you want to have a rational argument with those coke heads, Deus vult.

America, meanwhile, is the reborn Roman Empire of bread and circuses, the supposedly eternal empire, where over 50% of Rome’s citizens subsisted well below the bread (and circuses) line and where, much like America today, conscripts had to serve 25 years in their legions so they could boast Civis Romanus Sum, Ich Bin Ein Römer.

America has its Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trials and its Silicone Valley porno industry, which turns more coin than all of America’s sports’ industries combined. Silicon Valley‘s power brokers, meanwhile, are at the core of America’s, and thus NATO’s, perpetual wars whereas, just an hour’s drive away, homelessness is rife. America, the land of the free, is a land of coke and Botox, celebrity tittle tattle, poverty and endless foreign wars to externalise their own internal contradictions. Europe would be infinitely better off without them both.

Although dropping Satan 11 nuclear calling cards on London, Helsinki and Washington would dampen NATO’s war enthusiasm, it would not extinguish it. That is because both London and Washington are primed for plunder and not for peaceful co-existence. The bankers, industrialists and oligarchs, who are at the heart of those hubs, know no other way.

As their legions ransack Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, their media must forever divert their Barbie doll-buying, sport, Botox and porno fixated citizens to look over there at what Putin, Asma Assad, Xi and the Pakistanis, Venezuelans, Indians and Solomon Islanders are doing to subvert the American way of suppressing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Germany is no better. Though Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schoenbach‘s warning Germany against another Stalingrad by the Dnieper would be heeded in a sane world, to career minded German generals with an eye on future consultancies, it was not what they wanted to hear and so Schoenbach had to fall on his ceremonial sword.

Germany can choose Hitler’s way or Bismarck’s way. They can either choose diplomacy or once again see the world, via Satan 11, thunder down around them. They cannot have both. Bismarck’s way would have been to continue importing Russian oil and exporting German goods that are dependent upon adding German craftsmanship to Russian raw materials. Germany is again opting for Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, the Ragnarök’s Twilight of the Gods, where Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, Loki and billions of us lesser mortals perish.

Russia’s President Putin and Foreign Affairs Minister Lavrov, no trivial men, have repeatedly made it clear that this is where NATO’s rock scissors paper game ends, perhaps even before this year’s mid-term elections where Irish Joe Biden’s war party stands to get a pasting. If Germany and Denmark cannot see that they deserve massive retaliatory blowback for continuing to pour weapons of mass destruction into Ukraine, then their collective mental functions have gone the same way as Biden’s, who cannot even control his bowel movements in front of the Pope.

The end choice is clear. The first is Satan 11, a nuclear High Noon and all that entails for the City of London, Brussels, Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid, the New York and Chicago stock markets, Disneyland and California’s Silicon and Silicone Valleys. The second is for negotiations between Russia, on the one hand and any sane Westerners on the other. As that rules out the Americans, the first priority would be to agree that the seven or so peace treaties that ended World War One and the very many others which followed over the following 100 years have left many territorial related issues unresolved and, even leaving the Second World War’s carnage to one side, that far too many tens of thousands have needlessly died as a result of Europe’s disputes, which must, under option 2, be resolved this side of Armageddon.

Regarding the Ukrainian issue at hand, Russia’s President and Foreign Minister should negotiate with people of equivalent stature on the other side and, as they say, seal a deal. But there is no one of equivalent stature on the other side. Although Ukraine’s President is history’s richest comedian, his propensity to “perform” stark naked, his plagiarized speeches to European Parliaments and his off-shore bank accounts all show he is not his own man. For Finland’s Prime Minister to think dressing up as a biker absolves her from embroiling Finland in nuclear war shows she too has nothing this side of a lunatic asylum to offer.

Once we remove the Ukrainian and Finnish onion layers, we just get more of the same, the same bland politicians serving the EU’s unelected power brokers, who are bumbling us into Armageddon, just as Austro Hungary’s leaders bombardment of Belgrade bumbled us into The Great War, that war to end all wars.

Instead of nth dimensional chess, it is time to get back to basics with simpler strategies. Russia should ignore Zelensky and the Finnish biker and let the EU know what its choices are. In Satan 11, it has a big nuclear stick and in Lavrov, it has the greatest diplomatic voice of our age. If the Belgian, British, Danish, Dutch, Spanish and Swedish Royal Families, the Vatican, the incontinent clowns in the White House and their enforcers at the heart of NATO’s machinations wish to continue in their wanton ways, they should choose one or the other, left hand or right hand, thermo nuclear war or peace with justice, reparations, respect and co-operation. It is time to call time on NATO’s 73 years of thugocracy. Let Germany, which reneged on the Nordstream2 Oil deal and which is always at Russia’s throat or Albion’s feet, choose. Left hand or right hand, Satan 11 or Oktoberfest?

Forgotten Architectural Beauty

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From the Streek article:

"Ukrainian politics apart, an American proxy war for Ukraine may force Russia into a close relationship of dependence on Beijing, securing China a captive Eurasian ally and giving it assured access to Russian resources, at bargain prices as the West would no longer compete for them. Russia, in turn, could benefit from Chinese technology, to the extent that it would be made available."

Is it just me or does this statement sound naive as to the already publicly stated cooperation and special status between China and Russia?

The USA already and long since had anything, zero, zippo to say or do relative to cooperation between China and Russia. All this talk of driving Russia into China’s arms is just more out of touch American exceptionalism, it seems to me.

The author’s conclusions may be right about the EU and USA but I do not think this is a time in history to be banking on the empire’s success anywhere in the world for much longer.

Steak Gaucho-Style with Argentinian Chimichurri Sauce

This recipe is also excellent for grilled fish and chicken.
2022 05 10 21 23
2022 05 10 21 23

Ingredients

  1. Argentinian Chimichurri sauce
  2. 1 cup Lightly packed chopped parsley (ideally, flat leaf “Italian” parsley)
  3. 3 clove To 5 cloves of garlic, minced
  4. 1 tsp salt
  5. 1/2 tsp Fresh ground pepper
  6. 1/2 tsp Chili pepper flakes
  7. 2 tbsp Fresh oregano leaves (optional)
  8. 2 tsp Shallot or onion, minced
  9. 3/4 cup Vegetable or olive oil (I prefer the latter)
  10. 3 tbsp Sherry wine vinegar, or red wine vinegar (I prefer the sherry)
  11. 3 tbsp Lemon juice
  12. steak
  13. 1 tbsp Cayenne pepper
  14. 3 tbsp salt
  15. 2 1/2 lb Any grillable Steak. New York Strip, skirt steak, London Broil, etc
  16. 1 cup hot water

Directions

  1. Preheat a grill.
  2. Place all chimichurri sauce ingredients in a blender or food processor and pulse until well chopped, but not pureed. Reserve.
  3. Dissolve cayenne pepper and salt in 1 cup hot water. Transfer to a squeeze container.
  4. Place the steak directly over a hot grill, baste with the chimichurri grilling sauce, and grill until the outer portion of the meat reaches the desired degree of doneness. Remove the steak from the grill and slice long strips from the outer edges of the steak. Instruct guests to pick up a steak slice from the cutting board with their fingers, place it on a slice of baguette, and enjoy. Return the remaining steak to the grill, baste, and grill until more of the steak is cooked. Remove and repeat the slicing and serving procedure until steak is consumed. For extra spicy steak, baste 2 or 3 additional times with the cayenne pepper mixture during grilling process. Spoon chimichurri sauce over steak. (Also brilliant on any grilled fish or chicken)
  5. Recommended beverage: Argentinian Malbec (red)

When You Had A Bad Day And Your Boss’s Boss Leaves This On Your Desk

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624eaee4c92b4 uvys17ja6wx71 700

Sanity Check

"A dead Europe would help the US by] not being part of the Chinese BRI. In effect a dead Europe would not be part of an integrated Eurasia."

A dead Europe would hurt the US far more than China.

At the moment, the US and EU have roughly the same GDP. Let G be that amount. Assume China’s economy grows to 2G, double the size of the US’s present GDP (the Middle Kingdom has already zoomed past G in PPP terms). In the same timeframe, assume the US and EU both grow to 1.2G.

  • A dead Europe would cost a US+EU alliance 1.2G / (1.2G + 1.2G) = 50% of its potential GDP.
  • A dead Europe would cost a China+EU alliance 1.2G / (2G + 1.2G) = 37.5% of its potential GDP.

So if Europe died in a nuclear armageddon, the US would be at a greater disadvantage relative to China than if Europe thrived.

Of course, I’m assuming that China’s growth stopped at twice the US’s current GDP. There’s no reason for the Middle Kingdom to stop there. If China’s GDP grew to 3G, the loss of Europe would cost the China+EU alliance only 1.2G / (3G + 1.2G) = 28.6% of its potential GDP.

The US would be even more crippled in comparison.

What I Would Do To Have A Boss Like This

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1248717238636408832 png 700

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1/10) Movie CLIP – Pee-wee’s Breakfast (1985) HD

Back to my training days at China Lake NWC. LOL.

The Psychology of Manipulation: 6 Lessons from the Master of Propaganda

From HERE

1. If you manipulate the leader of a group, the people will follow
2. Words are powerful: the key to influencing a group is the clever use of language
3. Any medium of communication is also a medium for propaganda
4. Reiterating the same idea over and over creates habits and convictions
5. Things are not desired for their intrinsic worth, but rather for the symbols that they represent
6. One can manipulate individual actions by creating circumstances that modify group customs

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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Maps of Destruction

I am also a native of Washington State (Seattle), but I live in Philadelphia.

I remember well a map of Washington we studied in 9th-grade science during the Cuban missile crisis which showed all the projected targets in Washington in a nuclear war; even Aberdeen and Hoquiam (small cities) were targeted, and it looked like most of the population would be killed by blast damage.

The remark I made about Kalaloch was kind of a joke, because, as my father said at the time in declining to build an underground shelter, “Who would want to survive a nuclear war?.”

Still, only the ocean front would not be immediately affected by blast or fallout.

I know that Bangor would be the first target in the state, but the blast would likely be blocked by the Olympic Mountains on the west, and the fallout would also be blown east. That it, assuming that no stray missiles fell west of the Olympics.

I don’t believe longterm survival in any of those places would be easy, and life would become immediately unpleasant and desperate, so that dying earlier of blast or radiation might be preferable.

As production would cease, people surviving underground in shelters or in areas not damaged directly would face starvation when their food ran out.

This would be a main problem.

Growing one’s own food after not knowing how to do it would be hard.

As for radiation, some longterm radiation would spread over the world, but, as it became reduced through radioactive decay, it would not be enough to kill people directly by acute radiation disease in places not irradiated early.

However, longlasting isotopes would probably cause a lot of later cancer, and there would be no medical treatment available.

There is a set of maps showing targets in the US at Modern Survival Blog/ ; if anything, these maps are too conservative in their picture of destruction.

A comment also at that site that I would endorse, after my editing of it, states:

“All 12000 missiles would be launched, many to Europe and other strategic places. Military and possible sources of retaliation would not get one or two but twenty missiles to ensure complete destruction and if at all possible preventing counter launch. Then, the cities, airports and what not are all secondary. The attack…would read like this:…0300 AM while most are asleep and military has less brass awake, cyber attack nationwide. 0301 missiles launch in massive salvo. 0302 massive EMP from orbit. [In US,] nuclear sites pounded with two dozen missiles each, some shot down, some burnt in atmosphere, some just didn’t work, most intended targets annihilated. Minor targets…civilian airports, small to medium cities may escape damage from the random missiles interception. Power out, welcome to primitive living. 200 million dead. 100 million burnt and dying. 20 million lucky sheltered, bunkered, mostly West Texas [except what about El Paso?], Oregon [meaning part of Oregon, mainly ocean front], and a few scattered small towns.

“Meanwhile, in the rest of the world… either by man, or by computer-operation, spoil sport begins. Everything from Germany to Moscow is leveled, burnt, and massive fires consume all to bedrock… China no longer exists either except the high mountains.

So then, as fallout encompasses the globe, the global population falls to a few million in a week, a million in three weeks, and perhaps 100,00 globally in a year. Nuclear winter is very exaggerated, but it does exist. The biggest problem is long lasting strontium [90] or whatever is sprayed about. Thirty to one hundred years later, a few tribes living like American Indians from remote and untouched parts of the globe walk a new world and only the stories of the old world remain.”

The only caveat is that possibly some Southern Hemisphere places might fare better, but they would hurt too and also suffer mass death from starvation.

-Cabe

How Many Nuclear Weapons In The World

The approximate official world score…

12,000 (Russia)
9,400 (USA)
300 (France)
240 to 1000+ (China)
225 (UK)
90 (Pakistan)
80 (India)
80 (Israel)
10 (N. Korea) (More? recent reports say 60)
? (Iran?)

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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18 8

30 Ways To Cut Your Monthly Expenses

From HERE.

A while ago, for one month, myself and a then work colleague lived money-free—I cut expenses by 100%, pretty much! The job I was in at the time paid for my accommodation and transport, so all I had to worry about was food. On the second day of the experiment, however, we met a ‘freegan’ who regularly collected food thrown out by all the supermarkets in town. So, following her lead, we went along, filled up her truck with perfectly packaged food, including toothpaste and other essentials, and lived money-free for the month.

Now, I’m not suggesting you go and rummage around in supermarket bins for a month to cut expenses, because, for one, I think it’s illegal in many parts of the world! Still, there are many other ways you can cut your expenses and have lots of your monthly income left to spend, save and enjoy.

1. Write down all of your expenses

How many times do you hand over $1 or £1 for something and think, “Oh, it’s only a dollar,” and then repeat the same process every day for a month? Be mindful of where you’re spending your pennies and write down everything you spend for a month—you can then see where to cut costs in the future. Trust me, this one really does work.

2. Cut out the takeaway coffees

Get yourself a nice flask and make your own coffee. If you’re serious about cutting your expenses and you still buy a takeaway coffee every morning, buying a flask will save you at least $80 a month.

3. Cycle or walk to work

I know many of you probably have long train or car commutes, but 10km is still do-able on a bike, right? And if you’re a little on the lazy side, invest in an electric bike to help you up those hills in the morning. Ditching the train or car for a bike is a serious money saver; plus, you’re getting fitter at the same time!

4. Shop in thrift stores (at least some of the time)

You can get designer items for pennies; you can find cheap tat and upcycle it for next to nothing, and find one-off clothes you’d never find on the high street. So, if you’re looking to update your wardrobe or buy new stuff for your home, check out the cheaper alternatives first.

5. Buy the unbranded products in the supermarket

You may only be saving pennies per item, but there really isn’t much difference in the taste—do not be seduced by pretty branding! The only difference, for example with unbranded tinned tomatoes and branded ones, is the lack of salt and sugar and you can add that yourself. Why pay loads extra for it?

6. Take your own lunch to work

Yes, it’ll take up a few extra minutes of your evening, but wouldn’t you prefer to have an extra $100 at the end of each month instead? Over the course of a year, that’s a saving of over $1,000.

7. Bulk cook your meals

Set aside a few hours on Sunday and make a load of different dishes to prepare you for the whole week. Pop them in the freezer and you won’t be tempted with takeaways or packaged meals midweek.

8. Compare gas and electricity prices

Are you really getting the best deal with your gas and electricity? It only takes a few minutes to compare deals on an online comparison site.

9. Cut out the pricey drinks

Perhaps you don’t drink much, but for a lot of people, spending a good proportion of their monthly salary on expensive boozy nights out is part of their monthly regime. If this rings true, try cutting back or going alcohol-free for a month to see how much you save.

10. Keep a penny/cent collection

Throw your loose change into a jar, then count it up at the end of each month and see how much you’ve saved—over time, you’ll be surprised by how much money you’ll make.

11. Use Freecycle

In the UK there’s a scheme called Freecycle, where you can give away your unwanted furniture, or anything else you no longer need, for free. Obviously, in return, if you need any household essentials—kitchen table, bicycle, bookshelf … you can just log on to the site and see what’s available.

12. Ditch the large overdrafts

If you’ve got an overdraft of $1,000, chances are you’ll spend it each month if you’re not careful with your money. If you’re scared to lose the overdraft completely, halve it and see if it makes you any more cautious with your money.

13. Clear out your unwanted stuff

Have a car boot sale, sell your unwanted things on eBay … if you’ve been living in the same house for over a year, chances are that unless you’re super-organized, you’ll have at least a few things that are worth selling to make some extra money.

14. Share car journeys

If you drive to work alone every day, see if there are any other people who live near you so you can share journeys and cut your costs on petrol. It’ll pay off in the long run.

15. Re-evaluate your insurance

Whether it’s life, health, or travel insurance, shop around, compare prices and make sure you’re getting the best deal for the least amount of money. Remember though, that cheapest does not always equal the best.

16. Change your phone deal

Do you really need all those minutes and extras? Is there a cheaper phone deal that will save you money in the long run? Shop around and see what other phone deals are out there.

17. Do not take out any pay day loans

The adverts may be appealing, but the interest rates on pay day loans make these companies no better than con artists!

18. Dry clean at home

If you’re a regular at your dry cleaners, cut costs by buying a home dry cleaning kit and a spot remover pen.

19. Take another look at your internet bills

Can you get a better deal elsewhere? Do you live in an apartment block? If so, perhaps you can share an internet connection with those around you—providing you trust them.

20. Make more gifts for people

Now that we’re coming up to the festive season, rather than splashing out on expensive gifts for people, cut expenses and make your own cards and presents—at least for some people. The gesture won’t be forgotten. Plus, everyone knows the gift of time far outweighs the gift of money.

21. Cut back on expensive cleaning products

There are loads of ways you can make your own cleaning products; for example, vinegar and baking soda work wonders for cleaning your drains; spray lemon juice on surfaces to get rid of stains and streaky grease marks; and use vinegar to scrub up wooden flooring.

22. Simplify your beauty regime

We can all be seduced by fancy creams claiming to minimize pores, get rid of wrinkles and leave our skin looking healthy and plump; but, in reality, all your skin needs is a good diet, plenty of water and hydration. Try ditching expensive creams for almond or coconut oil. It’s really cheap and will leave your skin looking incredible.

23. Cancel your gym membership

Get on your bike, jog round the park, and lift weights at home. You could even organize regular work out sessions for free with others who want to ditch the gym. You don’t need to pay to be fit!

24. Turn your lights off

When you leave a room, flick the switch and cut expenses on your electricity bills. If you live with forgetful people, place little stickers by the switch to give people helpful reminders.

25. Replace bulbs with energy saving ones

Cut expenses and save the environment at the same time. It’s a no-brainer!

26. Pay for things with cash only

Allow yourself a certain amount of money each week and spend only that amount. Unless you’re constantly checking your finances, there’s no way you can keep up-to-date with what you’ve really spent if you keep paying for things with your credit or debit cards.

27. Tell your friends and family that you want to cut expenses

If you’re ever tempted to spend more than you intended, tell everyone you spend time with what you’re doing. Or even better, arrange for a group of you to all cut expenses at the same time.

28. Get savvy with deals

Sign up to Groupon, or get Amazon deals sent straight to your inbox, and save heaps of money on theater tickets, holidays, restaurant meals, and much more.

29. Take care of your teeth

Brush your teeth twice a day and don’t forget to floss. If you don’t take care of your teeth now, you’ll pay the price in expensive dental bills years down the line.

30. Be grateful for the money you have

Change your attitude towards money and be grateful for what you have rather than complaining about not earning enough or having enough of it. You’ll be surprised by how much a simple change of attitude can help you to manifest more money and help you cut expenses.

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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17 9

Isaac Hayes performs “Shaft” at the 2002 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

Great performance. I love it.

Store Manager Being A Bro

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good best bosses 201 6250187672af3 700

Mazzy Star – Fade Into You – 10/2/1994 – Shoreline Amphitheatre

Classic. She’s unique and very special.

Creamy Broccoli Cheddar Soup

This hearty broccoli cheddar soup is loaded with mouthwatering flavors, yet uses everyday ingredients, and is ready in about 30 minutes!


No need to go out to a well known bread company, this copycat broccoli cheddar soup is incredibly smooth, rich, and full of great broccoli cheese flavors!  The best part, is that it’s made in just 30 minutes on your stovetop!

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2022 05 10 21 43

I’ve been tweaking this recipe for years you guys. So. Many. Bowls. Of. Soup! Some form of this recipe has been on the blog since 2014, and this version takes the cake! Deliciously creamy, thick and rich, with the perfect mixture of smoothness and texture and loaded with broccoli cheddar flavors. You simply can’t go wrong!

This broccoli cheddar soup is sort of a copycat recipe from Panera Bread, but I honestly haven’t had that soup from there in years, so I can’t say for absolute certain if the flavors are spot on or not.

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2022 05 10 21 45

HOW CAN YOU MAKE BROCCOLI CHEDDAR SOUP THICKER?

I’ve found this soup thickens up very well with the roux created by the butter and flour, but if you’re wanting to thicken it up even more, you have a few options.

  1. You can mix equal parts butter and flour to form a thick paste, then stir that into the soup.
  2. You can whisk some cornstarch into cold water or broth until the cornstarch is dissolved, and stir that into the soup.
  3. You can add a bit more cheese.

HOW LONG DOES BROCCOLI CHEDDAR SOUP LAST IN THE REFRIGERATOR?

If you have any leftovers, which doesn’t happen to us very often, they’ll keep in the refrigerator about 3 days.

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2022 05 10 21 46

CAN BROCCOLI CHEESE SOUP BE MADE IN THE SLOW COOKER?

Sure can!  You’ll want to wait to add the dairy until the end, to prevent any curdling though.  I’ll have the directions below the recipe below.  The Instant Pot directions will be there as well.

CAN BROCCOLI CHEDDAR SOUP BE FROZEN?

Yes, but just like with the slow cooker, you’ll want to make this soup without adding the dairy, since dairy doesn’t generally freeze well.  Just wait and add the dairy when you’re reheating the soup.

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2022 05 10 21 47

HOW DO YOU PUREE BROCCOLI CHEESE SOUP?

Honestly you don’t even have to puree the soup if you like it chunkier, but if you like it smoother, again, you have a few options.  My personal favorite method is to use an immersion blender, which you can use right in the pot!  Or you can transfer some of the soup to a traditional blender, just be careful, since the soup is hot.

PRO TIPS FOR MAKING BROCCOLI CHEDDAR SOUP:

  1. Make sure to chop the broccoli into small florets, otherwise they won’t be tender in time.  
  2. Alternatively, you can par-cook the broccoli (and the carrots) in the microwave for a few minutes, which will help them soften in less time in the soup.
  3. To prevent a grainy soup, add the cheese one handful at a time, mixing well between handfuls, and have the heat turned off when you’re adding the cheese.
  4. For best results, shred your own cheese.  Not only is it cheaper, it melts SO much better than the pre-shredded kind.
  5. Serve this broccoli cheese soup with some crusty bread, caesar salad, or some ham and cheese sliders!
  6. I like to garnish this soup with a sprinkle of black pepper, some extra cheddar cheese and sometimes some crunchy croutons.  Sounds weird, but croutons in soup are amazing!
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2022 05 10 21 48
his hearty broccoli cheddar soup is loaded with mouthwatering flavors, yet uses everyday ingredients and is ready in just 30 minutes!

Ingredients

  • 1 Tbsp butter
  • 1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
  • 1/4 cup salted butter
  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups chicken broth
  • 2 cups half and half
  • 12 oz fresh broccoli (I use a 12 oz bag of florets) , roughly chopped
  • 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
  • 1/2 tsp kosher salt
  • 1/4 tsp paprika
  • 1/4 tsp garlic powder
  • 1/4 tsp dry mustard (can substitute with about 1/2 tsp regular mustard)
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper
  • 2 cups cheddar cheese

Instructions

  • Add 1 Tbsp butter to dutch oven and heat over MED heat.  Add chopped onion and saute until onions are soft and translucent, about 2-3 minutes.  Add 1/4 cup butter to dutch oven, still over MED heat. When melted, add flour and whisk together. Cook mixture about 1 minute, whisking often.
  • Slowly pour in about a cup of chicken broth, whisking as you pour.  Continue with remaining chicken broth and half and half, pouring slowly and whisking as your pour.
  • Let broth/half and half mixture cook for a minute or two, whisking often, making sure no flour lumps remain.
  • Add broccoli and carrots and stir to combine.  Add paprika, garlic powder, dry mustard, salt and pepper, stir.  Reduce heat to LOW/MED LOW and simmer about 10-15 minutes or until thickened and broccoli/carrots are fork tender.  If soup gets too thick for your liking, add a splash of chicken broth or half and half to loosen it up.
  • Blend soup until desired texture is reached, using either immersion blender or by transferring soup to traditional blender.
  • Add grated cheddar cheese a handful at a time, stirring to melt the cheese into the soup after each handful.  Taste soup and season with additional salt and pepper if needed.
  • Serve hot with additional black pepper and shredded cheese on top if desired.

Chef Tips

SLOW COOKER INSTRUCTIONS:

  1. Omit butter from the recipe, add onions, broccoli, carrots, salt, paprika, garlic powder, mustard powder, and black pepper to the slow cooker.
  2. Whisk flour and chicken broth together until no lumps remain, then add to slow cooker and stir to combine all ingredients.
  3. Cover and cook on LOW for 6-8 hours, or HIGH for 3-4 hours.
  4. About 30 minutes before serving, add half and half and cheese, stirring well.
  5. Cover and continue cooking until cheese is melted.
  6. Blend to desired texture and serve.

 INSTANT POT INSTRUCTIONS:

  1. Press Saute and cook butter and onion until onions are soft.
  2. Add additional butter and flour, then whisk.  Cook about 1 minute.
  3. Add broccoli, carrots, salt, paprika, garlic powder, mustard powder, and black pepper to pot.  Pour in chicken broth.
  4. Secure lid and move valve to the sealing position.  Set on Manual/Pressure cook on high for 8 minutes.
  5. Let the pressure release naturally, then stir in half and half and cheese until cheese is melted.
  6. Blend to desired texture and serve.

Earth, Wind & Fire (9/16) – Thats the way of the world

One of my faves from my university days. Still love it. The song is so rich, and has so many deep levels of melody. Ugh! I just love it.

I’m A Programmer, And My Boss Handed Me This Piece Of Paper On My First Day At Work

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624aea2e4fbae 700

10 energy-saving life hacks: How to save on electricity bills & more

Boss Bought Burgers To Celebrate Portugal Win Last Week

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62597f61d6ed2 m49aG4K 700

Forgotten & Abandoned Architectural Beauty

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6 34

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
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The nightmare of Ukraine gas supply, visions of 1950, delicious food, the beauty of ruins, and American insanity.

On May 11, 2022, the government of Ukraine stopped all gas supplies to Europe through the Sohranivka station. This station is located in the Luhansk region. (The GTS Operator of Ukraine did not offer additional transit capacity for April through the gas distribution stations Sudzha and Sokhranivka, that action was cancelled.) Thus, in the move, Ukraine declared that Europe needs to seriously think about where it will get gas during the current condition where Nord  Stream-2 is blocked for Europe until 2028. Keep in mind that the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline does not pump gas to Germany through Poland, and Ukraine has now begin to blackmail Europe by cutting off gas supplies through its pipelines.
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The problem is not that unexpected, it was strange that Ukraine did not immediately take up this, in the conditions of military operations, continuing to ensure the pumping of gas to Europe.
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They could have raised the question long ago – if you won’t help us, you’ll lose your gas. Force majeure, gentlemen, we have a war, we cannot help you live in warmth and prosperity. War is war for everyone, Ukraine is Europe! Therefore, let’s share not only goodies, but also it’s problems.
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Not reported in the “West”. Very interesting.

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Transforming Subway Passengers Into Renaissance Paintings

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2 89

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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1 19

How to Reduce Food Costs and Save Money

If you’re an avid cook or baker, you’ve probably noticed how much scrap and waste you produce when crafting your next dinner masterpiece.

The average American family throws away $1,600 worth of produce each year, leaving a large area for improvement. Not only is there a financial impact of this extreme wastefulness, but an environmental impact as well.

Plan, Plan, Plan

The best way to reduce food costs and save money is by planning. By creating a plan for every meal for the week, you’ll know exactly what and how much of each ingredient you need.

The best way to plan your meals is by [1] using a calendar for the week mapping out your meals each day. If there are certain nights you plan to eat out at a restaurant, you can opt to remove these days from your meal plan strategy.

Once you’ve planned your meals, you’ll want to create a grocery list detailing every ingredient needed. To maximize your trip to the grocery, try to find meals that utilize some of the same ingredients.

Create a Shopping List – And Stick to It!

Whenever you visit the grocery store, you are subliminally bombarded with marketing messages encouraging you to spend more money and make unnecessary purchases.

Have you ever noticed that many “essential” items like milk and butter are placed towards the rear of the store? This encourages you to walk through the store, increasing the chances of you grabbing other items like chips, fruit snacks, etc.

By [2] creating a shopping list and only purchasing foods you need, you can cut food waste and save money.

Keep it Simple

Some dishes will require many more ingredients than others. Aim to [3] find meals that are easy to cook and use just a few common ingredients to save money.

For example, a pasta dish that contains chicken and some form of pasta will only require a few ingredients. However, a dish that uses a rare type of produce and seasonings will often lead to more waste.

There is a common misconception that meals requiring fewer ingredients have less flavor than their complex counterparts. This is not always the case. Simple meals can have great flavor and nutrition when prepared the right way.  For example, using a smoker griller combo can help you to save space and money!

Buy and Cook in Bulk

[5] Buying ingredients in bulk can help you to save an additional 15% to 20% on your food costs. But you’ll want to consider the ingredients before buying.

Perishable items should be avoided when purchasing in bulk as many times they will spoil before use. Some perishable items can be frozen to extend their life.

Some common ingredients and foods that you’ll want to consider purchasing in bulk include:

      • Rice
      • Beans
      • Canned goods
      • Oats
      • Pasta
      • Some Oils
      • Frozen fruits or vegetables

When cooking in bulk, it will also help to reduce the costs to run your appliances. For example, you can reduce the costs to run an air fryer by filling it up instead of using it for just one item.

Make Frequent Trips to the Grocery

Provided that it is nearby and within walking distance.

When buying fresh produce or meats, making frequent trips to the grocery or butcher is an easy way to save money by avoiding throwing away spoiled foods.

Plan to go to the grocery a couple of times per week to purchase fresh produce and meats. You’ll want to plan your cooking around your trips to the grocery so you can cook with the freshest ingredients.

It’s common to visit the grocery once on the weekends and once mid week.

Find Other Ways to Use Scraps

If you have leftover scraps when cooking, see if there are other ways you can use them other than throwing them in the trash.

This might mean using them as food for your pets, other dishes, or a variety of other ways.

If you don’t have any other use for your waste, consider starting a compost pile to reduce the environmental impacts of food waste.

Grind Your Own Meats

[6] Grinding your own meat not only can save you money but it also provides superior taste over meat ground days ago. You’ll need to have a meat grinder to get started, but these can be purchased for less than $100.

Use the Freezer

[7] Freezing leftovers and bulk ingredients is an excellent way to save money when cooking and reducing food waste.

Most foods can be frozen to preserve their life. Meats, vegetables, and fruits are the most common foods that get frozen, but there are other options including bread, bananas, tomato paste, and even coconut milk that freeze well. Check out these other uncommon foods that freeze well.

[8] By purchasing a vacuum sealer, you can extend the life of your frozen goods even longer while simultaneously preserving its flavor. You can find a vacuum sealer for less than $50.

There are many cheap foods that you can store in the freezer to last.

Start a Garden for Fresh and Cheap Vegetables

If you live in an area with a moderate climate, [9] starting a vegetable garden can be a fun idea to grow your own ingredients. Not only will this help to lower your food costs, but it has a positive environmental impact and it allows you to cook with the freshest ingredients.

You’ll need to consider the types of vegetables you plan to grow when determining the size of your garden.

To get started, you’ll need to have soil that works for your plants. Depending on where you live, you might consider getting your soil tested to ensure it will allow your plants to grow properly.

Next, you’ll need to decide which plants to grow. For moderate climates, here are some ideas on vegetables, fruits, and spices you might consider growing:

      • Tomatoes
      • Strawberries
      • Peppers
      • Cumin
      • Mint
      • Dill
      • Arugula
      • Sage
      • Cucumbers
      • Onions or garlic

Don’t want to start your own garden at home? Consider using a local community garden. These gardens are shared by several members and give you many of the same benefits.

Utilize Local Farmers Markets

If you want to reduce food costs, [10] finding a local farmers market can be a fun way to do so.

You’ll have your chance to purchase local eggs, honey, and other common ingredients from local farmers at a discount.

This has many benefits other than saving you money! You’ll also reduce the negative environmental impacts of shopping at a nation grocery chain as well as helping boost your local economy.

Store Foods Appropriately

[11] Knowing how to store foods the right way is critical to reducing food waste and saving money.

Some foods might require airtight storage containers, while others might be capable of being left out in the open air. Research how to store your foods to extend their life and save you money.

Final Thoughts on Reducing Food Waste at Home

There’s a good chance you end up throwing away a nice portion of leftover ingredients when cooking.

By utilizing some of the tips above, you’re sure to reduce your food waste and start saving money in no time.

Between cooking in bulk, visiting the grocery more frequently, planning meals ahead of time, and storing foods the right way, you can easily cut your food waste, save money, and do good for the environment.

Now it’s your turn. Starting avoiding food waste and saving money today!

Forgotten Architectural Beauty

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Star Trek seems to believe that World War III started with Trump

From HERE.

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2022 05 10 19 29

Greek Classic Moussaka

Moussaka has so many delicious layers of flavor in one dish that you’ll want to make an extra for the freezer!
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WEB Close Side plate 1024×683 1

Moussaka is classic Greek comfort food. It’s one of the most popular dishes in Greece and one of my all-time favorites. You can make it ahead for easy serving at a dinner party or to be frozen for a delicious meal any day you choose.

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WEB Pan 1 1 1024×683 1

The eggplant

Japanese eggplant is perfect for this dish because of its size and shape, but regular eggplant is traditional and the one I can find most often. Make sure the eggplant is soft, not squishy, and the skin is shiny.

Cut into ½ inch thick round slices and layer in a colander. As you layer, generously salt each layer to help draw out the bitter water that’s inside the eggplant. Set aside for 20-30 mintues.

The Potatoes

Traditionally, the potatoes in Greek moussaka are deep-fried, but I like the taste of oven-roasted potatoes much better. Plus, while they’re roasting, I can make the meat sauce. So, cut the potatoes into ¼ – ½ inch thick round slices. Place them all on a baking tray and drizzle with olive oil. Season on both sides with salt, pepper, and oregano, then bake for 20-25 minutes or until fork-tender.

The Meat Sauce

  • Finely chopped onions
  • Grated garlic cloves
  • Olive oil
  • Lean ground beef –lean ground meat works best, and you can sub any ground meat
  • Salt
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • Crushed tomatoes
  • Water
  • Dried crushed oregano

I make this meat sauce at least once a week, and I usually have a batch or two in the freezer. It freezes for months and can be used in a lot of the dishes on my site.

Traditionally, the meat mixture in Greek moussaka has cinnamon, nutmeg, and sometimes even allspice. I don’t add these to my moussaka because my kids won’t eat it that way. If you’d like to try the traditional meat sauce, add ¼ teaspoon cinnamon and ¼ teaspoon nutmeg when you add salt and pepper.

Use a big enough pot to hold all of the meat and onions. Place the onion in a large skillet with olive oil and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Cook the onions over medium heat for 10 minutes or until soft and golden. Add the garlic and warm through for a few seconds, then add the ground beef, salt, pepper, and crushed tomatoes. Rinse the can with a cup of water and add it to the skillet. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes or until the sauce is very thick. When it looks ready, taste and adjust the seasoning if needed. Add the oregano and set it aside.

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WEB Top Table 3 683×1024 1

Why will this become a favorite in your house?

  • Melt in your mouth eggplant
  • Hearty Meat sauce
  • Creamy Cheese sauce
  • It can be made ahead for easy entertaining!

Back to the Eggplant

While the meat sauce is simmering, it’s time to pan-fry the eggplant. The eggplant should have released the bitter water, so pat the slices with a paper towel to dry them as much as possible. I prefer the pan fry method over roasted eggplant because there are a few issues with the roasted method.

First, it may be a little healthier, but you will have to use so many trays that there’s a lot of clean up. Secondly, the eggplant never gets as soft ad tender as it does when you fry. So make an effort to pan-fry your eggplant.

Make sure your oil is nice and hot so your eggplant doesn’t absorb too much. Cook the eggplant rounds until golden brown on both sides and soft in the center. Then, place them on a paper towel to absorb any excess oil.

The Béchamel sauce:

  • Whole milk –whole milk works best, but you can use what you have on hand
  • Olive oil –you can also use the exact same amount of butter
  • All-purpose flour
  • Salt and pepper
  • Nutmeg
  • Grated parmesan cheese
  • Whole eggs
  • Egg yolks

Bechamel sauce is basically a creamy custard, also known as a white cheese sauce that’s so delicious.

Make the béchamel sauce by combining the flour and oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk well while cooking a few minutes until the flour smells toasted. Try not to add the milk all at once because doing so will create lumps. Instead, slowly add the milk in a few batches, whisking to incorporate so that the mixture is smooth and creamy. Cook until it comes to a boil and thickens, then season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Remove from heat.

Whisk the eggs together in a bowl, then add a small amount of the hot cream sauce into the eggs while whisking to temper them. Tempering will prevent the eggs from scrambling when added to the cream sauce.

After the eggs have tempered, add them to the cream sauce and whisk well. Then, add the parmesan cheese and stir to combine.

What is Greek moussaka?

Moussaka is a layered Greek casserole-style dish made with layers of vegetables and meat. There are variations of this classic, but my version of moussaka is made with delicious layers of potato, eggplant, cheese, hearty meat sauce, and creamy béchamel sauce.

Moussaka takes a little more work but is absolutely worth every minute. And since it freezes well, you can make two at a time… one to eat and one to freeze.

There are several steps, so let’s break it all down into simple steps for a delicious Moussaka!

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Web Wide table 1 1024×683 1

Pulling your Greek moussaka together

Using a 9×13 casserole dish, I like to start by adding a thin layer of unseasoned bread crumbs. It’s a trick I learned to soak up any extra moisture that may make your moussaka watery. Here’s how to layer the dish:

  1. Bread crumbs
  2. Roasted potato slices
  3. Grated cheese
  4. Roasted eggplant slices
  5. Grated cheese
  6. Meat sauce spread evenly
  7. Roasted eggplant slices
  8. Top with béchamel sauce

Sprinkle any remaining cheese over the béchamel sauce if you’d like. ​Adjust the oven temperature to 400 °F, 200 °C, and bake for 45 minutes – 1 hour. The bechamel sauce will be golden brown on top.

You can let the moussaka cool a bit and scoop it out, but it’s messy. So, allow it to rest for about 45 minutes before slicing. It will be hard to wait, but you’ll be able to cut pieces, and they’ll hold their shape.

Freezing your Greek moussaka

If you’ve made a double batch or want to freeze the one you made for later, the best way is to freeze it before you bake it. It will freeze for up to two months, and you can thaw it the night before you want to serve it. Then bake as usual.

I’m not a fan of freezing the béchamel sauce, so I freeze my moussaka without béchamel. I make a fresh béchamel the day I bake it, and I think it’s the best way to serve it. However, my aunt in Greece freezes the whole thing, so it works! Let me know what you like best.

Serving

Since Greek moussaka can be made ahead, it’s perfect for dinner parties. You can make it earlier in the day, then pre-slice it for the party. It will stay warm for a couple of hours, so you can enjoy your guests as they arrive. Serve it with a nice side salad that you’ve also made ahead, and you’ll have a delicious meal ready whenever your guests are.

Ingredients

  • ​3 eggplants, cut into 1/2 inch slices
  • 3 potatoes, peeled and sliced
  • 2 cups parmesan cheese or kefalotiri
  • olive oil, for brushing on vegetables
  • salt and black pepper to taste
  • ​dried oregano

For the Béchamel sauce:

  • 5 cups whole milk
  • 3/4 cup olive oil
  • 3/4 cup all purpose flour
  • salt and pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 cup grated parmesan cheese
  • 2 whole eggs
  • 2 egg yolks

For the Meat Sauce:

  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 5-6 garlic cloves, grated
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 2 pounds lean ground beef
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • Freshly ground black pepper to taste
  • 1 (15-ounces) can crushed tomatoes
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 teaspoon dried crushed oregano

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 425°F, 220 °C.
  2. Place the potato slices on a baking tray. Drizzle 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil over them and season both sides with salt, pepper, and oregano.
  3. ​Bake 20-25 minutes or until fork-tender and golden.
  4. Slice the eggplants and layer them in a colander or on a tray. Sprinkle salt on top of each of the layers of eggplant and set aside for 20-30 minutes.
  5. Prepare the meat sauce: Place the onion in a large skillet along with the olive oil and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes or until soft and golden. Add the garlic and warm through for a few seconds. Add the ground beef, salt, pepper, and crushed tomatoes. Rinse the can with a cup of water and add it to the skillet. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes or until the sauce is very thick. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Add the oregano and set aside.
  6. Cook the eggplant: Pat the eggplant dry with. a paper towel. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and add a layer of olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Pan-fry the eggplant slices until soft and golden on all sides. Drain them on a tray that has been lined with paper towels.
  7. Make the béchamel sauce by combining the flour and oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk well while cooking a few minutes until toasted.
  8. ​Slowly add the milk in a few batches, whisking to incorporate so that it is smooth and creamy. Adding the milk all at once will create lumps.
  9. ​Cook until it comes to a boil and thickens. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Remove from heat.
  10. ​Whisk the eggs together in a bowl. Add some of the hot milk mixture into the eggs and whisk to temper them so that they don’t scramble when added to the cream sauce.
  11. ​Add the eggs to the sauce and whisk well.
  12. Add the parmesan cheese and mix to combine.
  13. ​Place the roasted potato slices on the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch baking pan. Use a deep pan. Sprinkle grated cheese over the potatoes.
  14. Top with a layer of roasted eggplant slices and sprinkle grated cheese over them.
  15. ​Top with the meat sauce and spread.
  16. ​Make a final layer of roasted eggplant over the meat sauce and top with the béchamel sauce.
  17. Sprinkle any remaining cheese over the sauce if desired.
  18. ​Adjust oven temperature to 400 °F, 200 °C.
  19. ​Bake 45 minutes – 1 hour until the cream is golden brown on top.
  20. ​Allow to rest for about 45 minutes before slicing so that the pieces hold their shape.
  21. Serve with a nice salad and enjoy!

Forgotten Architectural Beauty

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POPA CHUBBY – “LITTLE WING”

I love his rendition of the Jimi Hendrix song. One of the best blues guitarists alive.

April 29, 2022
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Our enemy is the Western system of U.S.-led imperialism, its capitalist elite, and their political flunkies like Joe Biden and Ursula von der Leyen. 

The United States and its NATO and European Union allies have imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia that amount to economic warfare. This warfare has been going on, discernibly, since the CIA-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014 on the back of allegations of Russian wrongdoing, for example, the alleged annexation of Crimea. It’s the logic of a poacher posing as the gamekeeper.

For eight years, the U.S.-led economic war against Russia has been pursued without relent. The self-professed “exceptional nation” presumes the privileged, exclusive use of economic terrorism against others who do not bend the knee. In hock to its Washington master, the European Union has imposed round after round of restrictions on trade with Russia in full compliance with American orders. The European compliance to self-inflict damage is astounding especially given that the U.S. economy is not as reliant on Russia as the EU’s and therefore has not been impacted as badly, at least not directly. But the presumed American “free lunch” is beginning to change, as our columnist Declan Hayes cogently surveyed this week.

Now that the proxy war against Russia has escalated into “Total War” – the historically sinister phrase used by France’s economy minister Bruno Le Maire – the full nefarious scope of the Western objective has become even more explicit. The U.S. and its NATO partners want to achieve the complete collapse of the Russian economy leading to regime change in Moscow. The eruption of violence in Ukraine following Russia’s military intervention on February 24 is but the opportunity to ramp up the U.S.-led war campaign against Russia.

The explicitly stated objective of cutting off Russia’s vital energy trade and the theft of the country’s foreign monetary reserves can only be interpreted as part of a wider imperial plan to crush the Russian nation, subjugate it and conquer its vast natural wealth.

Eight years of NATO-backed military aggression by the Neo-fascist Kiev regime against Russian-speaking populations has gone hand-in-hand with the installation of U.S. strategic weapons across Europe, including Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles in Germany and biological weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine. The military threat to Russia has been in tandem with the relentless economic warfare from sanctions. In addition, there is the intransigence by the U.S. and its NATO partners to engage with Moscow in resolving security concerns through diplomacy. All of this culminated in the present war in Ukraine. The concerted and rapid imposition of further draconian sanctions on the Russian economy from the blockade on virtually its entire banking system as well as the extreme censorship of Russian international media – all of that indicates that the U.S. and its partners were already on a war footing and ready to escalate hostilities.

In this context, ominously, Ukraine is resembling Bosnia-Herzegovina and the pre-World War One assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as a fatal flashpoint.

The reckless flooding of weapons into Ukraine over recent weeks by the United States, NATO, and the European Union is also proof of a premeditated pent-up war agenda. This week, U.S. President Joe Biden is calling for his Congress to release $33 billion in “emergency aid” for Ukraine to “defend against Russian aggression”. This represents a tenfold increase in the record military support that the Biden administration has already plowed into the Kiev regime. This is tantamount to stoking a powder-keg.

The ludicrous, bitter laugh about this is that when Russia seeks to defend itself and Russian-speaking people, then Moscow is accused of “aggression”.

The latest twist in this Western duplicity and rank hypocrisy comes with the accusations that Russia is using “blackmail” by warning it will cut off its prodigious gas supplies to Europe. Moscow has simply and reasonably demanded that all European importers must henceforth pay for their gas supplies in the Russian currency, the ruble, as opposed to dollars or euros. The move was prompted in part because the Western countries had seized Russia’s foreign reserves and have banned most Russian banks from the international payment system. In other words, it is they who have politicized their currencies as weapons. So what is Russia supposed to do? Give away its vast natural gas wealth for free? To countries that are waging an economic war and increasingly a military proxy war against it?

This week, Russia’s state-owned energy industry Gazprom announced it was suspending the supply of gas to Poland and Bulgaria. The two EU and NATO member states had bluntly refused to pay for their vital energy needs in Russian currency. In that case, Russia has the right to withhold the selling of its commodity.

The move to mandate payment for gas in ruble was an essential counter-measure that has succeeded in defending the Russian currency and economy from collapse. That collapse was being deliberately orchestrated by Western sanctions aimed at strangling Russia. And yet when Russia acts to defend its vital existential interests it is accused of using “blackmail”. One of the shrill voices was that of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The former German defense minister is a rabid Russophobe. Her logic of accusing Russia of wrongdoing is like a Third Reich minister lambasting the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as an insolent insurrection.

Von der Leyen and her elite, unelected Brussels bureaucracy are calling for all EU members to refuse payments to Russia. They are effectively endorsing the theft of Russia’s wealth. Their arrogance is not surprising. But that arrogance is leading to rebellion across Europe from the economic damage and unbearable cost-of-living crisis hitting the majority of the EU’s 500 million population. Bulgarian and Polish workers are demanding their governments resume trade with Russia to prevent a crash to their livelihoods.

A further mockery in this absurd scenario is that anti-Russia hawks in the United States and Europe have been vociferously jeering for all energy and other trade with Russia to be cancelled. Of course, this mania is all about propping up U.S. capitalism, hegemony over Europe, the weapons industry, and the transatlantic feeding trough for effete European lackeys.

Then, when Russia cuts off the energy supplies because of non-payment, there is an uproar about Moscow “weaponizing trade”.

The Western accusations of economic blackmail are analogous to perverse claims of military blackmail. The criminally reckless aggression that the United States and its NATO partners have pursued against Russia has escalated into war in Ukraine. As a British government minister demonstrated this week, the NATO powers are now directing their proxy Kiev regime to launch attacks on Russian territory. Yet when Russia warns of the dangerous risks of world war veering into a nuclear conflagration, the Western powers and their dutiful media turn around and accuse Russia of using “nuclear blackmail”.

America and Europe’s dubious political “leadership” is exposing itself as delusional, duplicitous, and criminally insane. They are insanely willing to push the world into a catastrophic war. And when Russia stands up to their madness, it is accused of being a reprobate.

In a funny sort of way, such farcical Western leadership is good. For it only further exposes how utterly unhinged and corrupt the Western elite rulers are in the eyes of their increasingly restive, angry populations.

It is Western callous, sociopathic leaders who are the ones blackmailing their own citizens and indeed the rest of the world. Their ultimatum is: destroy Russia or we will destroy everything. This is the mindset of totalitarianism.

The Western public’s enemy is not Russia, and it’s not China nor Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, or some other designated foreign foe. All our enemy is the Western system of U.S.-led imperialism, its capitalist elite, and their political flunkies like Joe Biden and Ursula von der Leyen.

Jacksonville Mother: I “Cannot Feed My Son” Due To Baby Formula Shortages

Food shortages are starting. Here is baby formula. It’s a breakdown in supply line management, and engineered shortages. here in China, there are no shortages.

Meanwhile in Russia

"Real men and women here teaching kids about pride in country, nothing wrong with that, at least they are not grooming the kids in mental illness to believe they are what they are not or have drag queen clowns bouncing kids on their boners, or teaching the boys to think they have a period or to get B-hole pap-smears."
2022 05 10 19 56
2022 05 10 19 56

Transforming Subway Passengers Into Renaissance Paintings

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4 84 1

Rory Gallagher – Tattoo’d Lady (Live At Montreux)

This has to be one of the best “jams” between a lead guitarist and a fella on keyboard that I have ever seen. Outstanding.

Wholesome

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Spinach & Feta Stuffed Chicken Breast

This dish tastes like juicy chicken stuffed with spanakopita (Greek spinach pie) and is ready in under an hour. I love recipes like this one that are quick and easy, can be made ahead, and are good for a busy weeknight yet, elegant enough for a dinner party. What could be better?

This recipe is a great one for your Thanksgiving table. Maybe for a dinner for 2 or if you’re just not a fan of turkey. When I was recipe testing, I couldn’t decide between the tomato sauce or the lemon caper sauce so, I made both. They were both flavorful yet different. The tomato sauce added a hint of sweetness and the lemon caper sauce brightened everything up and added another layer of flavor. Both of the sauces are listed. Enjoy!

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2022 05 10 21 18

Ingredients

  • 5 chicken breasts, boneless skinless
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Cumin
  • Dried oregano

For the filling:

  • 1-pound baby spinach leaves, roughly chopped
  • ¼ cup olive oil
  • 4-5 scallions, finely chopped
  • 2-3 garlic cloves, grated
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • 6 ounces feta cheese
  • 4 ounces ricotta cheese
  • 2 tablespoons finely chopped mint

For the tomato sauce:

  • 1 jar of your favorite marinara sauce

For Homemade Marinara Sauce:

  • 1 small onion
  • 2 garlic cloves, grated
  • 28 ounces canned tomatoes, pureed
  • ½ teaspoon sugar or honey
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

For the Lemon-Caper Sauce:

  • Pan drippings
  • 2 tablespoons of butter
  • 2 garlic cloves, grated
  • 2-4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
  • 2-3 cups chicken broth
  • 2 tablespoons capers, or less

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 475 °F, 250 °C.
  2. Cut a pocket into each chicken breast. Season the chicken all around and inside the pocket with salt, pepper, a dusting of cumin, and oregano. Set aside in a baking tray.
  3. Place the scallions with the olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat and cook until they soften. About 3 minutes.
  4. Add the garlic and warm through about 30 seconds.
  5. Add the spinach and cook until wilted and the liquid is mostly evaporated. About 8 minutes.
  6. Place the feta in a large mixing bowl and mash it with a fork. Add the ricotta cheese and mix together. Season with some black pepper and add the mint along with the spinach mixture and mix well. Taste and adjust seasoning, if needed.
  7. Stuff each breast with about a half cup of the filling.
  8. To make your own homemade marinara sauce heat the olive oil with the onions over medium heat and cook until soft and golden. Add the garlic and warm through. Add all of the remaining ingredients and simmer for 10 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed.
  9. Place the chicken in an ovenproof pan such as a cast-iron skillet and cook over medium-high heat for 5 minutes. Flip the chicken over and remove from the heat.
  10. If you are making this dish with the tomato sauce, pour as much of the marinara sauce as desired into the pan. It should cover the chicken 1/3-1/2 of the way up from the bottom of the pan.
  11. Bake in the preheated oven until the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 165 °F. Time depends on the thickness of the chicken cutlets. Thicker chicken takes about 18 minutes to bake.
  12. Remove from the oven and allow to rest 5 minutes before serving.
  13. If you are serving these with the lemon-caper sauce, just bake them in the oven without any sauce and as soon as they are ready, take them out of the oven, transfer the chicken to a plate and cover with foil.
  14. Make the lemon caper sauce: Place the skillet that the chicken baked in over medium heat and add the butter. Once it melts add the garlic and immediately add the lemon juice. Pour the chicken broth into the skillet and bring to a boil. Add the capers and simmer for 3-5 minutes until the sauce reduces a bit. Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve.
  15. To make this ahead:
  16. Assemble and fill the chicken and place the tray in the refrigerator covered in plastic wrap. This can be done a day ahead.
  17. Allow the chicken to come to room temperature before cooking. About 1-2 hours.
  18. If you’re making a big batch (8-12, or more) you may skip the step of pan-frying one side of the chicken and just bake it in a large pan (or 2) until the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 165 °F.
  19. Serve this with some toasted bread, pasta, or roasted vegetables. Enjoy!
2022 05 10 21 1d8
2022 05 10 21 1d8

Luigi, The Boss Of Bosses

good best bosses 09 626668fe408a9 700
good best bosses 09 626668fe408a9 700

Squeeze * Last Time Forever

Takes me back to the 1980s. I had this album. I love the transitions and that jazzy keyboard work is just precious. This is a real treat. I am so very glad that I rediscovered this tune…

I Didnt Have Thanksgiving With My Family This Year So My Boss Made Me A Plate And Said That I’m Part Of Her Family

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good best bosses 08 6266675baa942 700

VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA: Premier Dan Andrews is passing a bill that prohibits people from growing their own food.

From HERE

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2022 05 11 14 31
Unbelievable. But Australia seems to be the cutting edge of the totalitarian thrust threatening to engulf us all. This thrust is the big story right now, far bigger than what's happening in Ukraine. I still can't shake off the suspicion that Russia and China are on board with this thrust somehow. Or maybe the rest of the multipolar world will be relatively free and open but the wicked West will be a gulag archipelago for a while until we've learned our collective lesson?

-Scorpion
Transforming Subway Passengers Into Renaissance Paintings
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Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s
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Finian Cunningham
April 14, 2022
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The corporate-dominated media (that lied us into the 2003 “shock and awe” attack on Iraq over non-existent WMD) is trotting out the same strategy again to sell war and deceive the public

American peace activist, documentary filmmaker and author Bruce Gagnon analyses the current war in Ukraine with a critical bigger picture of political and strategic context that is so woefully – and deliberately – missing in Western media.

In the following interview, Gagnon points out that the Russian military intervention in Ukraine that began on February 24 can only be properly understood by viewing it as a response to eight years of relentless military assault by the NATO-backed Kiev regime against the ethnic Russian population of the Donbass region. Nearly 14,000 people were killed by the NATO-backed Kiev regime and its Russian-hating Nazi regiments. Where were Western government and media condemnations?

The current expansion of the war, he contends, is really just the front line in a bigger war that the United States and its NATO-European allies are waging against Russia. The ultimate objective is regime change in Moscow. This objective is to satisfy Western corporate interests and includes the eventual targeting of China. In this way, the U.S. and its imperialist allies are trying to thwart the emergence of a multipolar world and to offset the historic decline of Western corporate power. As he says: “China is also on the regime-change list of the West, and due to the new economic and military pact between Russia and China, it becomes essential to take out Russia first before going after China. The United States is currently using Taiwan in a similar way to how it has used Ukraine as a tool of destabilization.”

Therefore, the stakes are profoundly vested in the outcome of the war in Ukraine. The U.S. and NATO want this war to continue in order to sap, destroy and subjugate Russia. Hence the reckless, criminal flow of weaponry from the NATO bloc into Ukraine to derail any political settlement. Gagnon also points out that the U.S.-NATO-Kiev axis is likely to resort to more false-flag atrocities in order to win the information war against Russia – a war that the Western so-called news media are openly waging under the conceited and deceptive guise of “journalism”.

Bruce Gagnon is based in Maine, United States of America. He is founder and coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He also publishes incisive commentaries on international developments in his Organizing Notes blog. Gagnon is a Vietnam War-era veteran, has worked as a labor rights activist, and has traveled to dozens of countries to give public speeches and seminars to peace, anti-war, and justice organizations.

 

Interview

Question: The U.S. Congress is set to pass a Lend-Lease Act that will greatly increase the supply of weapons to Ukraine purportedly to help defend that country from “Russian aggression”. This is while negotiations are underway between Ukraine and Russia to find a peace settlement to the conflict. Is Washington trying to strengthen Kiev’s negotiating hand or is the United States aiming to prolong the war?

Bruce Gagnon: Using the 2019 Rand Corp study called ‘Overextending and Unbalancing Russia’ as a guide, the U.S.-NATO obviously do not want negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to flourish. Their interest is in creating a festering sore along Russia’s border forcing Moscow to spend more of its national treasury on the military and on rebuilding the massively destroyed Russian-ethnic Donbass region in eastern Ukraine. The Donbass destruction was largely due to Ukrainian army shelling for over eight years since the U.S.-orchestrated coup in Kiev in 2014.

Question: In passing the Lend-Lease Act, the U.S. Senate cited allegations of genocide and the massacre of civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha by Russian troops as justification for the legislative go-ahead for more American weapons to Ukraine. Russia categorically denies the allegations while several independent analysts have pointed to evidence that the gruesome killings were a false-flag provocation carried out by Ukrainian forces in order to incriminate Russia. What is your view of the Western media reports on the Bucha massacre?

Bruce Gagnon: I have studied the Bucha story quite closely and it is more than obvious that this was one more false flag by the U.S.-NATO-Ukrainian axis. The timelines point to this being such. Russian troops left Bucha on March 30. On March 31, the mayor of Bucha put out a video where he excitedly and proudly proclaimed that Russian troops had left. On April 1, a woman who serves as a Bucha City Council Deputy made a similar video proclaiming victory over the Russians. Neither of those two city leaders made any reference to a massacre or bodies in the streets which would have been more than obvious at that point. On April 2, Ukrainian forces retook control of Bucha. On April 3, Western media began reporting on the alleged massacre.

There have been repeated attempts by the U.S.-NATO-Ukrainian side to claim that Russia was killing civilians but each story has turned out to be lacking a factual basis. The latest attempt was the Ukrainian army shelling Kramatorsk using a Tochka-U missile on April 8. Dozens of civilians were killed and up to 100 wounded. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was quick to blame Russia although the Tochka-U missile is an outdated technology that is no longer used by Russia and ample evidence shows that it has been a favorite weapon used by the Nazi-led Kiev regime’s army to repeatedly shell the Donbass region.

Additionally, Kramatorsk is in the Russian-ethnic region of eastern Ukraine that Russia is trying to liberate from the Nazi-led army of Kiev. It makes no sense that Russia would kill their own people.

It is said that every criminal has a Modus Operandi (MO) – a way of repeating their bad behavior. I think it is safe to say that Ukraine is losing this war and has resorted to an MO to create false flags in order to turn public opinion against Russia with hopes that U.S.-NATO will then fully enter the war on the Kiev regime’s side. So Ukraine has replaced actual offensive military operations (which they are no longer really capable of) with false-flag events as their primary strategy to vilify and defeat Russia.

Question: You have said that the war in Ukraine is not merely about Ukraine and Russia in isolation, but rather represents a front line in a bigger confrontation between the U.S.-led NATO bloc on one hand and Russia and China on the other. Are you saying this is a proxy war?

Bruce Gagnon: There can be no doubt that this war is being waged on behalf of a larger mission – regime change in Russia that the West hopes would allow for the breaking up of Russia into smaller nations similar to what U.S.-NATO did to Yugoslavia following the 1999 American-led attack on Belgrade. The goal is for Western resource extraction corporations to take control of Russia’s vast landmass and most importantly its huge resource base that includes natural gas, oil, timber, agricultural lands and vital mineral deposits. With the melting of the Arctic ice, it will increasingly become possible to “drill-baby-drill” for offshore resources under the sea that has long been covered in thick layers of ice. It’s no coincidence that at the same time this war started, the U.S.-NATO began holding a war game called ‘Cold Response’ in the north of Norway which borders Russia’s Arctic region.

U.S. President Joe Biden, in one of his confused moments, blurted out in a recent speech in Warsaw that “Putin had to go”. I am more than certain that during many of the National Security Council meetings in Washington this has long been a key agenda item.

In the past 500 years, Russia has been invaded several times from the West. The Poles came across the European Plain in 1605, followed by the Swedes under Charles XII in 1707, the French under Napoleon in 1812, and the Germans twice, in both world wars, in 1914 and 1941. Every 100 years, the West makes its move and fails.

China is also on the regime-change list of the West, and due to the new economic and military pact between Russia and China, it becomes essential to take out Russia first before going after China. The United States is currently using Taiwan in a similar way to how it has used Ukraine as a tool of destabilization.

Question: Russia has said it hopes that the war in Ukraine will be finished soon. But from what you are saying, there is a real danger that the conflict could be spun out for much longer due to U.S., British and NATO arms being supplied to Ukraine. Is this prolongation of the war what galvanizes Washington and London’s calculus and policies?

Bruce Gagnon: The vested interests inside the U.S.-EU military-industrial complex stand to make massive profits if this war can be extended for months, or even years. I believe that this is the intent of Washington-Brussels. By getting NATO members to ship outdated military hardware to Ukraine, the Western military manufacturers are salivating as they imagine replacing those stocks of weapons with the latest technologies that must be “interoperable” with Pentagon space-directed war-fighting capabilities. What this translates to over time is a vast high-tech global war machine. Don’t forget that NATO is also going international as they sign up “partners” in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan and others in the Asia-Pacific. In this “mission vision”, the U.S. would be in charge of the “tip of the spear” and will have had NATO members and partners help pay for it all. NATO’s job is to ultimately force submission to Western corporate demands. They declare they are a “peace alliance” yet their history is nothing but endless war.

Question: Do you think there is an even bigger picture to the U.S.-led NATO confrontation with Russia? That is, the bigger battle is to stave off the historic decline in the American-dominated Western economic system? Russia and China have consistently hailed the advent of a multipolar world based on cooperation and partnership. The United States seems deeply opposed to this vision, claiming that Moscow and Beijing undermine a so-called “rules-based global order”. Why does Washington object to a multipolar vision? What is it about American power that demands unipolar dominance, fealty, or war?

Bruce Gagnon: The U.S. and NATO are an insecure and desperate military war machine. They are the muscle for the Western-run corporate globalization syndicate. They know their days are numbered as the dominant Western imperial powers that have ruled most of the world for hundreds of years.

It reminds me of a drunken riverboat gambler rolling the dice – knowing that he has lost everything but still going for broke one last time. Washington and the EU clearly understand that the rising multipolar world is unstoppable – when you add up the population numbers this rising tide is the vast majority of the world’s population. So the U.S.-NATO know this is their last-ditch chance to try to remain in control of the planet. Washington-London-Paris-Berlin-Brussels want total power and control and are willing to burn any nations to the ground that stand in their way.

Obviously, China, Russia, Iran, India, and others across the global South understand all of this. They have suffered at the hands of the U.S.-Europe long enough. They are moving to help create this multipolar world – what one Russian leader recently called a “Fair World Order” not run by Wall Street, the Bank of England, the IMF and World Bank. The question for all of us is: will the U.S.-NATO be willing to take this drive to remain in control to World World III that could then quite possibly turn nuclear? Those so-called “peaceniks” out in the streets waving Ukrainian flags ought to ask themselves if they are in fact inadvertently helping to push things in that horrific direction.

Question: In the reporting on the Ukraine war and the prelude to it, would you agree that Western news media seem to have more openly embraced the function of a propaganda system, peddling intelligence disinformation to distort the nature of the conflict with Russia?

Bruce Gagnon: The Western media is all in when it comes to demonizing Russia and helping to escalate this war. Just days ago while driving, I turned on NPR (National Public Radio) and heard one “correspondent” claim that Russian troops had raped young girls in Bucha.

Have we forgotten the groundbreaking U.S. Senate committee hearings in 1975 on the CIA’s control of the media? Those hearings were led by Senator Frank Church (D-ID). At the time, it was disclosed that 400 journalists worldwide were submitting news stories on behalf of the CIA. Operation Mockingbird it was called. Look it up on the internet. I don’t think the videos from those congressional hearings have been removed yet on YouTube. I’d bet my life that the so-called “Bucha rape story” was produced by the agency.

Just last week we learned from an NBC-TV report that U.S. intelligence agencies were putting out false stories about Russia in order to “preempt” Moscow “from doing something bad”. The corporate-dominated media (that lied us into the 2003 “shock and awe” attack on Iraq over non-existent WMD) is trotting out the same strategy again to sell war and deceive the public. And when you factor in all the efforts of corporate-owned social media outlets to take down alternative views on the Ukraine war it becomes clear that the Number One goal is the brainwashing of the public. Modus Operandi – every criminal syndicate has one.

My Old Boss Has Been 3D-Printing Reusable Masks And Delivering Them To Medical Facilities Amidst A Shortage
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Forgotten Architectural Beauty

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UKRAINE SHUTS-OFF 1/3rd of **ALL* EUROPEAN NATURAL GAS

UKRAINE IS SHUTTING OFF THE FLOW OF ALL NATURAL GAS TO EUROPE, claiming a “force majeure” due to the presence of “Russian Occupiers.”

Russian gas conglomerate Gazprom has received no confirmation of force majeure or any obstacles to continued transit of gas through a junction in Lugansk Region, the company said on Tuesday, after Ukraine’s operator OGTSU announced it would halt further deliveries starting May 11, due to the presence of “Russian occupiers.”

Gas Transit Services of Ukraine (OGTSU) declared force majeure on Tuesday, saying that it was impossible to continue the transit of gas through a connection point and compressor station located in the Lugansk area. As OGTSU personnel “cannot carry out operational and technological control” over the Sokhranovka connector point and Novopskov compressor station, the company cannot continue to fulfill its contract obligations, it said.

Gas from this connection will not be accepted into the transit system of Ukraine starting at 7 am on Wednesday, OGTSU said. Sokhrankovka accounts for almost a third of the Russian gas that transits through Ukraine to Europe – up to 32.6 million cubic meters per day – according to the operators.

Gazprom has received no confirmation of force majeure or disruption of operations at Sokhranovka or Novopskov, company spokesman Sergey Kupriyanov said on Tuesday. He added that Ukrainian specialists have had full access to both facilities all along, and there had been no complaints about it previously.

Kupriyanov also said that Gazprom has been notified by Ukraine’s gas company Naftogaz that if Russia continues to supply gas through Sokhranovka, Kiev will reduce the volume at the point of exit by the same amount, effectively confiscating the gas.

While OGTSU has proposed to reroute the gas to Sudzha, a connector located in the Sumy region and controlled by the Ukrainian government, Kupriyanov said this was “technologically impossible.” 

“The distribution of volumes is clearly spelled out in the cooperation agreement dated December 30, 2019, and the Ukrainian side is well aware of this,” he said.

Gazprom is fulfilling all of its obligations to its European customers, with all the transit services in accordance with the terms of the contract and paid in full, Kupriyanov pointed out. Moscow has continued gas deliveries to Europe, including transit through Ukraine, regardless of the ongoing military operation and the embargoes against Russia imposed by the US and its allies in the EU.

HAL TURNER COMMENTARY

Why Ukraine is doing this is beyond my understanding. On its face, it doesn’t seem to make any sense at all.  In fact, it’s literally ABSURD! You can’t even make up shit like this!

The Ukrainians are cutting their own throats; shutting off gas to the very countries keeping them afloat.

But one thing appears instantly clear: Any support Ukraine has from Europe, will likely dry-up as fast as the gas flow.

Europe will collapse economically without Russian gas, and the fact that Ukraine is the reason the gas flow is being halted will not be well received by its European “partners.”

If Europe is smart, they will tell Ukraine, no more weapons, no more money, no more military intel.  Europe and the USA should then tell Russia “We’re very sorry that this whole thing happened, we had no idea Ukrainians were so crazy.   We’re ending all sanctions immediately, returning all seized funds and property, turning back on your access to SWIFT.  As for Ukraine, go ahead and have-at them,  it’s not our concern anymore.   Oh, and by the way, can you start turning on the Nordstream 2 pipeline, we need to get that up and running as fast a s possible.”

Russia will grind the Ukraine into dust within days.

The Ukrainian government won’t exist anymore.

This whole debacle will be over and the grown-ups in the room can start to rebuild relations that have been so soured over this thing.

This is a gigantic development for Europe, and very bad, too.

Could Ukraine being twisting European arms for more money and more weapons?   Could Ukraine actually be blackmailing Europe, maybe withholding gas flows until Ukraine gets the money and weapons they want?  Only time will tell.

Strange Happenings in North Korea – Immediate National Lockdown!

Something is going on in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Multiple sources are reporting that people have been ordered indoors IMMEDIATELY due to a “national problem.”

Large lines of people seen suddenly rushing home at around 2pm local time this afternoon.

It is not yet known what this “national problem” might be which would require the whole country to go home and remain inside.

Nonprofit Watchdog Uncovers $350 Million In Secret Payments To Fauci, Collins, Others At NIH

An estimated $350 million in undisclosed royalties were paid to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and hundreds of its scientists, including the agency’s recently departed director, Dr. Francis Collins, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to a nonprofit government watchdog.

“We estimate that up to $350 million in royalties from third parties were paid to NIH scientists during the fiscal years between 2010 and 2020,” Open the Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski told reporters in a telephone news conference on May 9.

“We draw that conclusion because, in the first five years, there has been $134 million that we have been able to quantify of top-line numbers that flowed from third-party payers, meaning pharmaceutical companies or other payers, to NIH scientists.”

The first five years, from 2010 to 2014, constitute 40 percent of the total, he said.

“We now know that there are 1,675 scientists that received payments during that period, at least one payment. In fiscal year 2014, for instance, $36 million was paid out and that is on average $21,100 per scientist,” Andrzejewski said.

“We also find that during this period, leadership at NIH was involved in receiving third-party payments. For instance, Francis Collins, the immediate past director of NIH, received 14 payments. Dr. Anthony Fauci received 23 payments and his deputy, Clifford Lane, received eight payments.”

Collins resigned as NIH director in December 2021 after 12 years of leading the world’s largest public health agency. Fauci is the longtime head of NIH’s National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as well as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. Lane is the deputy director of NIAID, under Fauci.

(HT Remark:  So Fauci and company PUSHING the "COVID vaccines" now seems to have a very real profit motive for Fauci personally!  Isn't THAT interesting?)

GATES: “Low Fatality Rate”

On May 5, no less than Bill Gates, was interviewed about COVID Vaccines and made this utterly shocking admission: “We didn’t understand that it’s a fairly low fatality rate & that it’s a disease mainly in the elderly, kind of like flu is, although a bit different than that.”

WHOA!   “Low fatality rate?”   Wasn’t it people like Bill Gates telling the whole world they HAD to get the COVID Vax or they would get sick and die?   Wasn’t the world repeatedly told this was like the 1918 Spanish FLu Pandemic and that “Millions will die” unless they vaccinated everyone?

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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Transforming Subway Passengers Into Renaissance Paintings

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My Boss Is Unreal. He Knows I’ve Been Trying To Get A 3080 And We’ve Had Them In Stocks For Systems We Build

Today he walked up to me and said, “it’s yours, Merry Christmas”.

good best bosses 207 62502fdd78108 700
good best bosses 207 62502fdd78108 700

The Letterheads on Lemonman -“It’s a Shame About Ray”

A classic. This WAS the 1990s. Ah, it takes me back.

Beautiful Life Of Florida In The 1950s

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Buchanan: Is Ukraine’s War Now America’s War?

Wednesday, May 11, 2022 – 04:25 AM

Authored by Pat Buchanan,

Last week, sources leaked to The New York Times that, in Ukraine’s targeting and killing of Russian generals and the sinking of Russia’s Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, U.S. intelligence played an indispensable role.

Apparently, our intel people identified and located for the Ukrainian forces what became the targets of their deadly attacks.

Why U.S. intelligence would do this seems inexplicable.

By claiming credit for Ukraine’s most visible military successes, we diminish the achievements of that country’s own forces.

By bragging publicly that we helped engineer the killing of Russian generals and the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, we taunt Russian President Vladimir Putin. We provoke him into retaliating in kind against us, thereby raising the possibility of a wider U.S.-Russia war that could escalate into World War III.

Moreover, U.S. boasting like this plays right into Putin’s narrative that Russia is facing and fighting in Ukraine a U.S.-led alliance that is out to crush Russia.

Indeed, why are we going beyond assistance to the Ukrainians in defending themselves, into making this American’s war?

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Poland following her visit to Kyiv, she virtually embraced the idea of the Ukraine-Russia war as now being America’s war, declaring, “America stands with Ukraine. We stand with Ukraine until victory is won.”

Accompanying Pelosi to Kyiv was a delegation of House Democrats, one of whom, Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, echoed Pelosi in Poland:

“The United States of America is in this to win.”

Their visit followed that of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who came out of Kyiv and declared the U.S. strategic goals in Ukraine’s war:

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kind of things it has done in invading Ukraine.”

These statements by U.S. leaders reinforce Putin’s line that Russia is besieged by a U.S.-led Western alliance that fears and detests Mother Russia and wishes to see her defeated and diminished.

Our enemies in the West who seek to destroy Russia are like those we fought in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, Putin now claims. And intervention in Ukraine was necessary to prevent today’s neo-Nazis from dragging Ukraine into their larger conspiracy to destroy Russia.

Consider Putin’s words of a week ago:

“The forces that have always pursued a policy of containing Russia … do not want such a huge and independent country that is too big for their ideas … They believe it endangers them simply by the fact of its existence, although this is far from reality. It is they who endanger the world.”

We are hated for who and what we are, says Putin. And our military operation is an act of legitimate self-defense against the same kind of “Nazi filth” we fought in the Great Patriotic War.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov describes the recent surge in heavy Western weapons shipments to Ukraine as “NATO … going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy.”

By cutting Republicans out of her delegation to Kyiv, Pelosi appears to want to make the war not only America’s war, but her party’s cause.

That seems to be a motive as well behind Biden’s consciously exceeding any Western leader in the language he uses on Putin, calling him a “killer,” a “murderous dictator,” a “pure thug,” a “butcher,” a “war criminal,” guilty of “genocide,” who “for God’s sake … cannot remain in power.”

Such language is designed to showcase Biden as the world’s leading anti-Putinist and the most morally outraged of all the world’s leaders at what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

But, again, like the public boasting of U.S. intel agents over our role in the sinking of the Moskva and killing of the Russian generals, the effect is to disqualify the U.S. president from any role in negotiating a truce or an end to this war.

How do we benefit from having no leader-to-leader communication with the Kremlin, which President John F. Kennedy retained in the Cuban missile crisis to end it?

NATO Europe, which is supporting the Ukrainian resistance, is not on board with the U.S. plans to cripple Russia permanently.

America needs to recognize that our objectives in this war are not the same as Ukraine’s.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would like to have the U.S. plunge in and fight alongside Kyiv, devastate and defeat the Russian army, and expel Russia not only from the regions invaded this year but also from Crimea, which Putin annexed in 2014 .

America’s vital interests in this war, however, are to prevent it from becoming a U.S.-Russia war or a third world war or a nuclear war.

The U.S. goal of imposing a crushing defeat of Russian aggression is secondary to our far more vital interest in avoiding a U.S.-Russia war.

America’s interests are best served by an early and negotiated peace. Such a goal rules out imposing humiliating terms on Russia, which cause Moscow and Putin to escalate militarily — to survive politically.

But that is not going to happen. – MM

Transforming Subway Passengers Into Renaissance Paintings
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Taco Bell Goes Woke: Launches ‘Drag Brunch’ Events At US Locations

Wednesday, May 11, 2022 – 07:05 AM

Taco Bell is the latest company to embrace woke activism by rolling out “Taco Bell Drag Brunch” at select Taco Bell Cantinas across the US.

"Each show will be hosted by the fabulous drag performer and taco extraordinaire, Kay Sedia, and feature performances from local queens and kings that will transform any morning from Mild to Fire!" according to a recent press release from the largest fast-food Tex-Mex restaurant chain. 

"As a brand that brings people together, the Taco Bell Drag Brunch experience is rooted in celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community and creating safe and welcoming spaces for all," the press release continued. 
2022 05 11 14 10
2022 05 11 14 10

The first drag event was held at a Taco Bell Cantinas in Las Vegas on May 1. Here are the upcoming events:

  • Chicago, Wrigleyville Cantina: Sunday, May 22
  • Nashville Cantina: Sunday, May 29
  • New York, Times Square Cantina: Sunday, June 12
  • Fort Lauderdale Cantina: Sunday, June 26

“We understand the importance of creating safe spaces for the LGBTQIA+ community and are thrilled to provide a unique experience that spotlights and celebrates the wonderful artform of drag and its influence in culture with their chosen families,” Taco Bell global chief brand officer Sean Tresvant said in a statement.

"Taco Bell Drag Brunch was concepted by Live Más Pride, Taco Bell's LGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group, which has played a major role in driving awareness of and meaningfully supporting LGBTQIA+ communities both within Taco Bell and the communities we serve and operate in," Tresvant added. 

Taco Bell’s drive to create “spaces for the LGBTQIA+ community” is another example of woke corporations meddling in divisive political issues and risk sparking a backlash.

If CEOs learned anything so far in 2022, it’s that woke corporate America is  getting push-back for the promotion of this narrative. The latest example was Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) signed a bill that strips Disney of its special tax status in Florida after defaming the governor’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Corporations diving into woke activism can result in severe consequences — if that’s losing special tax status or even a customer base.

Some Taco Bell customers lost their appetite over the announcement of taco drag brunches.

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Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

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Deep, dark and misty English forests, 1960s New York City, delicious food, and Ukraine war with Russia

I watched a recent video by Gonzalo Lira today, and of course, I completely agree with it. You can watch this video here…

Now, that you have watched this, my statement is what I have always said, but there is a a REAL urgency right now.

Transportation

You need to provide ways to cut your dependence on expensive means of transportation, realizing that walking is often impractical.
  • Get a bicycle. Walking sucks. Bicycle isn’t so bad. Don’t be so damn dependent on gas vehicles for transportation. Make sure the bike has a basket, and a lock. Use it to cut your gasoline expense. It will work! A used bike is fine. You can get them really cheap. Don’t wait. do it NOW.
  • Electric Charging. If you have an electric vehicle, expect charging rates to increase. Figure on setting up your own charging station. Solar panels will take a long time, but it’s free. Using a gas generator uses gas, but it will work to charge up your car. There’s wind and hydro methods as well. You want to find ways to cut dependency on public utilities.
  • Conversion kits. You can add a small electric motor or gas motor to your bicycle that will enable you to travel huge distances for pennies. Consider having a handiman install one of these on your bicycle. Go HERE.

Heating

Sure Summer is coming. Now is the time to prepare for Winter. Do not hesitate. To to antique stores and all the rest and find old wood or coal stoves. make sure you have one and install it. Go "old school".
  • Get a wood burning stove. They can be small. Used ones are cheap. You can heat up your house for pennies using it. Place it in the room that is central to your home. With it, you need two (2x) “cords” or wood. One cord of wood is one pickup truck full of cut up wood.  It will last all winter, and will cost from $50 to $150. Imagine only paying $50 for heat all Winter, eh? Don’t wait. Do it NOW.
  • Get some coal. If you live in a coal-bearing region, get some coal. Just find the old local mines, and drive your car over, and pick up some chunks. They are everywhere alongside the road, and in open coal licks. Coal lasts much longer than wood, and burns much hotter. Use it to suppliment your wood burning stove. Do it NOW, if you live in a coal-bearning area.

Food

Just some basic notes. It doesn't hurt to have extra.
  • Bags of rice. Lasts near forever. Is cheap (right now). Stock up with a minimum of five bags. You all don’t want to have to carry them over 30 Km in your arms from the store to the house. Do it NOW.
  • Bags of flour. Same thing. You’ll need to strain out the mill worms, but make sure that you have a couple of boxes of yeast to go along with it. without yeast, you’ll be stuck with flat breads. You need yeast. You cannot have too much flour. Just make sure that you store it properly. Do it NOW.
  • Potatoes. Bags of potates can last up to 9 months. What you cannot eat, you can plant. they are healthy, full of starch and minerals.
  • Canned Tuna. Cases. Get as many cases as you can. Get other canned vegitables as well. But having tuna, or other canned meats will be important.
  • Cooking oil. Get a lot. It’s a heavy buttle to carry, and much comes from Ukraine.

Garden

  • You need to start a garden. Tomatoes, lettice, onions, cucumbers, zuccini, carrots, potatoes. It can be small, a mini-tomato bush with keep you well supplied with daily tomatoes.
  • Beware of night raids. Those that are unprepaired can raid your garden. If you cannot put up a fence, or keep it hidden, take steps to make it secure. Nothing is worse than spending the time and effort to make a garden, only to have some lazy people steal everything.
  • Potatoes. This is a basic and simple plant that is easy to grow, lies hidden from view, and full of easy nutrition. Plant potatoes away from the main garden, and remember, most people don’t know what potato plants look like.

Chickens

  • Get some chickens. Three chickens will keep a family of four well fed daily. Select egg layers. Not decorative, or meat hens.
  • Build a chicken coop. Have a handiman do it if you cannot, or buy one. They are not expensive. Small ones are the size of a dog house.
  • Get some chicken food. Don’t rely on rice to feed chickens. You need special seed or bird seed.

Fishing

  • Learn to fish. Yes, you can get a pole and try to fish. I advise geting a fish trap and let the fish enter the trap and then take them home. It’s easier, less work and you get more fish that way.
  • Shellfish. If you live near an ocean, learn how to harvest shellfish. It’s not hard, you just need a small hammer, and a pick.

Guard Dogs and Cats

  • Guard Dogs. They scare bandits, theves, and criminals away. They are worth their weight in gold.
  • Cats. They get rid of mice, rodents and cockroaches that feed on your stored dry goods. They are a great investment.

Cost Cutting Measures

  • Clothes Line. Use of a clothes dryer in your home is a major contributor to your energy expenses. Start using a clothes line instead. Start with it to suppliment your load requirements, and then eventually use it entirely. Especially in the Summer.
  • Expenses. I do not advocate that you completely change your lifestyle. I only suggest that you cut back. Instead of three starbucks coffee a week, reduce it to once a week.  Just start to be moderate in your actions, and mindful of your expenses.

Let’s continue on geopolitics…

Australia to threaten China with the United States

Australia will work with its allies to ensure China does not set up a military base in the Solomon Islands, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has pledged during a heated pre-election debate.

From HERE

Scott Morrison has responded to a leaked draft MoU between China and the Solomon Islands outlining how they will further deepen ties including cooperation on building wharves and ship yards.
Those investments are set to include “port wharves, submarine optimal cable construction, shipbuilding and ship repair and ocean transportation”, as well as “exploration and development of offshore oil, gas and mineral resources”.

The RESPONSE article here

Demon Comic

Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39df9adeb 626a3d8ab6367 880
Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39df9adeb 626a3d8ab6367 880

In Chicago

Chicago still has a few wooden water mains. Worse than that, they are busy terminating for cause all the old guys who know how to work on those mains, or slightly newer and important mains, because the old guys have pensions coming that can’t be paid. As it becomes plain to everyone it is a fools errand to work for Chicago Water more than a few years there is not much hope for keeping that infrastructure alive. And no way to pay for full replacement. Feels to many of us the plan is to flush the whole city. Even ten years ago I was in the civic frame of mind that thought this was the worlds greatest city. No one is planning for this place to be here another ten years.

- Oldhippie

A Chart Illustrating Gerrymandering In Its Most Basic Form

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BkddKFQBUnK png 700

Nausea Rules


The way financial markets puked this week, they must have started reading the news. Let’s face it, the headlines are a little short of reassuring. The $6.49 price on a gallon of diesel is enough alone to tell you that the nation can’t do business the way it’s set up to do, and there isn’t a new model for running things ready to launch — not even Klaus Schwab’s utopia of robots and eunuchs.

What’s out there, rather, is a model of breakdown and collapse which the Woked-up, globalist neo-Jacobins are doing everything possible to hasten. US-inspired sanctions on Russia have quickly blown-up in America’s face. How’s that ban on Russian oil working?

Do you understand that US shale oil — the bulk of our production — is exceptionally light in composition, meaning it contains not much of the heavier distillates like diesel and aviation fuel?  ‘Tis so, alas. Truckers just won’t truck at $6.49-a-gallon, and before long they’ll be out of business altogether, especially the independents who have whopping mortgages on their rigs that won’t be paid. The equation is tearfully simple: no trucks = no US economy.

Europe, the old original homeland of Western Civ, isn’t just losing face, it’s blowing its head clean off going along with “Joe Biden’s” economic war. Are Germany, France, and the rest of that bunch really so dead-set on jamming Ukraine into NATO that they’re willing to go full medieval for it? By which I mean sitting in the cold and dark with empty plates. That’s a hard way to go just to prove somebody else’s point.

The war in Ukraine itself was apparently losing its sex appeal for the click-hungry news media. No matter which way The New York Times and friends tried to spin it, they failed to grok both Russia’s determination to neutralize Ukraine and its ability to get the job done, even if it takes a longer-than-expected grind to finish.

That’s how important it was to Russia that Ukraine not become a forward missile base and bio-weapons lab for its adversaries.

When that operation concludes, the West will be left economically crippled and humiliated — which are conditions that historically portend regime change. Will America cough up “Joe Biden” like a hairball to get those trucks running again? Might the Dems themselves resort to releasing the kraken known as Hunter’s laptop just to send the old grifter packing?

In the meantime, the leaked Roe v Wade cancellation ruling shoved the Ukraine fiasco offstage so as to provoke more useful histrionics for the dreaded midterm elections upcoming. The poorly-understood truth is that said ruling will only send the abortion question back to the individual states.

But let’s get real: places like New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, and California are not going to enact any new anti-abortion laws, and that’s where most of the people having hebephrenic breakdowns over the issue live. Which is to say there’s little danger that the shrieking denizens of these Blue states will lack abortions. So, how much has the party only been pretending that Roe v Wade is its primal touchstone?

The strange parallel question has been raised: might laissez-fair abortion be a cover for the evident new problem that Covid-19 vaccines have made a shocking number of birthing people incapable of reproducing?

There’s a buzz about it, anyway.

It’s a fact that Pfizer excluded pregnant and breastfeeding women from all phases of its mRNA trials. Among the various harms now ascribed to the mRNA shots are infertility, miscarriage, and newborn abnormalities. But, of course, that sort of rumor — here coming from cases among vaccinated military personnel and not so easily hushed up — is just what the many lurking censors want to slap down in any forum where ideas could be exchanged. It’s misinformation!

And so, the derangement volume knob over Twitter changing ownership stays up at eleven. Imagine what will happen if the supposedly 70-odd percent of Americans who got vaxxed learn in a re-liberated Twitter Zone that the Covid-19 vaccines are not “safe and effective.”

According to Zero Hedge, twenty-six globalist NGOs with ties to George Soros signed a letter saying,

“Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety, especially among those already most vulnerable and marginalized.”

They are, as usual, projecting — since what is a greater threat to public safety than inducing tens of millions of frightened citizens to accept multiple shots of a poorly-tested pharmaceutical cocktail that can kill you six ways to Sunday? The folks in-charge (and others who would like to be the boss-of-you) don’t want you to know any of this. The pharma companies, the doctors, the hospital administrators, and the politicians must be frantic with terror of being found out.

Altogether, the scene looks like a multi-dimensional nightmare. Broken economy… sinking Western Civ… police state tyranny… vaccine death and injury… starvation…. So, there it is. Oh, look, those markets… they’re puking again!

The Many Flags Inside Norway’s Flag

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BeVMo7iFoiI png 700

True story

Has actually happened.

Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39e711ab1 880
Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39e711ab1 880

Chinese Orbital Power Station

China aims to build an orbital solar collection/transmission station. This is a recent article about the project in Chinese and more can be found.

Worsening . . .

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Russia just announced it is withdrawing its ambassador from Poland and is EXPELLING the Polish ambassador.

Details if they become available . . . 

Girl taking a nap on a bench in the 1960s

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new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 02

Canadian fighting in Ukraine describes the ‘hell’ he witnessed

18 Signs That Food Shortages Will Get A Lot Worse As We Head Into The Second Half Of 2022

If you think that things are bad now, just wait until we get into the second half of this year.  Global food supplies have already gotten very tight, but it is the food that won’t be produced during this current growing season in the northern hemisphere that will be the real problem.  Worldwide fertilizer prices have doubled or tripled, the war in Ukraine has greatly reduced exports from one of the key breadbaskets of the world, a nightmarish bird flu pandemic is wiping out millions of chickens and turkeys, and bizarre weather patterns are absolutely hammering agricultural production all over the planet.  I have often used the phrase “a perfect storm” to describe what we are facing, but even that phrase really doesn’t seem to do justice to the crisis that we will be dealing with in the months ahead.  The following are 18 signs that food shortages will get a lot worse as we head into the second half of 2022…

#1 The largest fertilizer company on the entire planet is publicly warning that severe supply disruptions “could last well beyond 2022”

The world’s largest fertilizer company warned supply disruptions could extend into 2023. A bulk of the world’s supply has been taken offline due to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This has sparked soaring prices and shortages of crop nutrients in top growing areas worldwide; an early indication of a global food crisis could be in the beginning innings.

Bloomberg reports Canada-based Nutrien Ltd.’s CEO Ken Seitz told investors on Tuesday during a conference call that he expects to increase potash production following supply disruptions in Russia and Ukraine (both major fertilizer suppliers). Seitz expects disruptions “could last well beyond 2022.”

#2 The world fertilizer price index has skyrocketed to absurd heights that have never been seen before.

#3 It is being reported that global grain reserves have dropped to  “extremely low” levels…

“Global grains stocks remain extremely low, an issue that has become amplified because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

“We think it will take at least 2-3 years to replenish global grains stocks,” Illinois-based CF Industries Holdings Inc.’s president and chief executive officer Tony Will said in a statement in Wednesday’s earnings report.

#4 Due to the war, agricultural exports from Ukraine have been completely paralyzed

Nearly 25 million tonnes of grains are stuck in Ukraine and unable to leave the country due to infrastructure challenges and blocked Black Sea ports including Mariupol, a U.N. food agency official said on Friday.

The blockages are seen as a factor behind high food prices which hit a record high in March in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, before easing slightly in April, the FAO said on Friday.

#5 The out-of-stock rate for baby formula in the United States has now reached 40 percent

The out-of-stock rate for baby formula hovered between 2% and 8% in the first half of 2021, but began rising sharply last July. Between November 2021 and early April 2022, the out-of-stock rate jumped to 31%, data from Datasembly showed.

That rate increased another 9 percentage points in just three weeks in April, and now stands at 40%, the statistics show. In six states — Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Texas and Tennessee — more than half of baby formula was completely sold out during the week starting April 24, Datasembly said.

#6 In six U.S. states, the out-of-stock rate for baby formula has actually risen to 50 percent or greater.

#7 Searches for the phrase “how to make homemade formula for babies” on Google have spiked 120 percent.

#8 We are being told that this is a “perfect storm” as shelves become increasingly bare at food banks all around the nation.

#9 In Canada, more than 1.7 million chickens and turkeys have already been lost in recent months due to the global bird flu pandemic.

#10 In the United States, more than 37 million chickens and turkeys have already been wiped out due to the global bird flu pandemic.

#11 The two largest reservoirs in California, Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville, have both fallen to “critically low levels”.

#12 Some communities in southern California won’t be able to make it through the coming summer months without “significantly cutting back” on their water usage.

#13 Many of the largest lakes around the world are currently in the process of disappearing because they are rapidly drying up.

#14 Wildfires continue to absolutely devastate agricultural land all across the western half of the United States.  This weekend, it was New Mexico’s turn to be hit the hardest

After a few days of calm that allowed some families who had fled wildfires raging in northeast New Mexico to return to their homes, dangerous winds picked up again Sunday, threatening to spread spot fires and complicate work for firefighters.

More than 1,500 firefighters were on the fire lines at the biggest blaze east and northeast of Santa Fe, which grew another 8 square miles (20 square kilometers) overnight to an area more than twice as large as the city of Philadelphia.

#15 We are being told that steak prices in the United States will “keep rising” in the days ahead.

#16 Due to hail and frost, the Spanish apricot crop is going to be way below expectations

In Spain, the latest forecasts suggest production will not reach 60,000 tonnes, compared with 110,000 tonnes in 2019 and 100,000 tonnes in 2020 and 90,000 tonnes in 2021.

In Murcia, where around two-thirds of Spain’s apricot production is located, farmers in the Mula River and northwest regions have been forced to write off the entire season following a severe hailstorm on Monday which not only resulted in the loss of the fruit, but also caused widespread damage to trees.

#17 Overall, Spanish fruit production is expected to drop to the lowest level in 40 years.

#18 Kansas Senator Roger Marshall is openly warning that a horrifying worldwide famine is coming

The war in Ukraine will lead to a worldwide famine in the next two years, warned Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Ky.), who serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee, warned on Tuesday.

“You know I’m a big agriculture guy. Twelve, 15 percent of the agriculture products – corn and wheat, sunflower oil – come through that Black Sea, so— and fertilizers come from that area as well, so there actually is going to be a famine one to two years from now. I think two years from now will be even worse,” he told Fox Business’s “Mornings with Maria Bartiromo” on Tuesday.

The alarm bells are ringing.

Are you listening?

In all of the years that I have been writing, I have never seen anything even close to this, and this crisis is only going to intensify as the months roll along.

MM Comments

As I have often said, and I will repeat, Americans and those in the West seem to think that if inflation, shortages, or tax increases happen inside America that they will ALSO happen globally. That is not true.

Keep that in mind.

Teenagers in the 1960s

new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 04
new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 04

PLAY THE FORBIDDEN NOTE!

Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39c2a9c2b 880
Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39c2a9c2b 880

Supply Chains

Fragile supply chains are facing a new headwind amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a new COVID-19 lockdown in one of China’s manufacturing hubs.

Shipping giants including Switzerland-based MSC, Denmark’s Maersk, and France’s CMA CGM announced this month that they would halt cargo bookings to and from Russia until further notice, joining the growing list of companies to shun Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

And on Tuesday, after Russia signed a law enabling domestic airlines to keep planes leased from foreign companies, Maersk announced that it’s trying to retrieve tens of thousands of shipping containers from the country.

We have about 50,000 of our containers in Russia today,” Maersk Chief Executive Soren Skou said. “Most of them are empty, they are our property. We need them, and we are very reluctant to leave them in Russia. For this reason, we still have some port calls in Russia.”

Article HERE

Real Polish Meat Pierogi – Recipe Video by Polish Your Kitchen

Car trouble in New York

new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 05
new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 05

Tod…Nooooo!

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Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a399524077 626a4311abe5e 880

A selection of links

DOCUMENTARIES

“Ukraine on fire” An Oliver Stone documentary
LINK

Link Vimeo
LINK

“Donbass I’m Alive!” – 50 min
LINK

MILITARY VIEWPOINTS

Former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter:

2022-04-28 – How to End the War Now – UN Chief Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter – 2 MINUTES LINK

2022-04-11 – Scott Ritter and the Battle of the Donbas (with Gonzolo Lira) – 1hr 17min
LINK

2022-04-08 – SCOTT RITTER with Gerald Celente – Ukraine War Could Have Been Avoided but Here’s Why Putin Will Achieve His Goals – 54 min
LINK

Col. Douglas Macgregor on Tucker Carlson – The American Military is in Trouble: MacGregor – 4 min
LINK

Col. Richard Black – After serving 31 years in the Marines and in the Army, Black then served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1998 to 2006, and in the Virginia Senate from 2012 to 2020. U.S. Leading World to Nuclear War – 1hr 10 min
LINK

LIVE COVERAGE FROM UKRAINE

Gonzalo Lira – A Chilean citizen married to a Ukrainian who’s been reporting live from Kyiv and Karkhiv since the beginning of the war.

Gonzalo started live reporting from his hotel in Kiev at the beginning of the invasion. He relocated to Kharkiv after the first week. This is his original channel, with videos from March 3 to April 12 (his videos from Feb 26 to March 1 have been deleted).
LINK

Gonzolo Lira II – After being detained by Ukrainian secret police, he lost access to his original channel. He’s now posting short daily updates here:
LINK

INDEPENDENT JOURNALISTS

Alex Christoforou – Daily updates and news commentary from Athens, Greece
LINK

The Duran – Panel discussions of current events with Alexander Mercouris, Alex Christoforou, and Gonzolo Lira, plus guests like Scott Ritter:
LINK

Redacted with Natali and Clayton Morris
LINK

The Dive with Jackson Hinkle
LINK

The Jimmy Dore Show
LINK

The New Atlas – Former marine Brian Berletic (aka Tony Cartalucci) reports on Eurasian geopolitics from Bangkok, Thailand.
LINNK

LIVE WARZONE COVERAGE

Patrick Lancaster – LIVE IN UKRAINE
LINK

John Mark Dougan – LIVE IN Ukraine.
LINK
LINK

Graham Phillips – LIVE IN Ukraine
E-MAIL
LINK

iEarlGrey – LIVE IN Saint Petersburg, Russia. News from the ‘other side’ from an English ExPat.
LINK

Diner in New York in 1960s

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new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 09

Update those damned spam filters (pun intended)

Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39d80cf1a 626a3e0482bb7 880
Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39d80cf1a 626a3e0482bb7 880

China ‘Deeply Alarmed’ By SpaceX’s Starlink Capabilities That Is Helping US Military Achieve Total Space Dominance

China doesn’t simple hold it’s collective dick in it’s hands. China takes action. I am sure that things are in process.

A recent commentary in the official newspaper of the Chinese armed forces suggested that the international community should be on high alert for the risks associated with the Starlink satellite internet system, as the US military could potentially use it for dominating outer space.

The commentary came one day ahead of SpaceX’s launch of the Falcon 9 rocket that took off on May 6 from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, carrying 53 Starlink internet satellites to the low-earth orbit (LEO).

“SpaceX has decided to increase the number of Starlink satellites from 12,000 to 42,000 – the program’s unchecked expansion and the company’s ambition to use it for military purposes should put the international community on high alert,” said the article on China Military Online, the official news website affiliated with the Central Military Commission (CMC), China’s highest national defense organization headed by President Xi Jinping himself.

Article HERE

Aussie Meat Pie Recipe – Authentic Recipe | Aussie Pie’s

This simple food dish revolutionized my ideas of what food is. Here’s how to make it.

Girls of 1960s NYC

new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 13
new york 1966 1967 kodachrome 13

Must be a german shepard

Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39d67de01 880
Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39d67de01 880

Speech by the President of Russia at the military parade

From HERE. Not reported in Western media…

Speech by the President of Russia at the military parade

Vladimir Putin: Dear citizens of Russia!

Dear veterans!

Comrade soldiers and sailors, sergeants and foremen, midshipmen and ensigns!

Comrade officers, generals and admirals!

I congratulate you on the Great Victory Day!

The defense of the Motherland, when its fate was being decided, has always been sacred. With such feelings of genuine patriotism, the militia of Minin and Pozharsky rose for the Fatherland, went on the attack on the Borodino field, fought the enemy near Moscow and Leningrad, Kyiv and Minsk, Stalingrad and Kursk, Sevastopol and Kharkov.

So now, these days you are fighting for our people in the Donbass. For the security of our Motherland - Russia.

May 9, 1945 is forever inscribed in world history as a triumph of our united Soviet people, their unity and spiritual power, an unparalleled feat at the front and in the rear.

Victory Day is near and dear to each of us. There is no family in Russia that was not scorched by the Great Patriotic War. Her memory never fades. On this day, in the endless stream of the "Immortal Regiment" - children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War. They carry photographs of their relatives, fallen soldiers who have remained forever young, and veterans who have already left us.

We are proud of the unconquered, valiant generation of victors, that we are their heirs, and it is our duty to keep the memory of those who crushed Nazism, who bequeathed us to be vigilant and do everything so that the horror of a global war does not happen again.

And therefore, despite all the disagreements in international relations, Russia has always advocated the creation of a system of equal and indivisible security, a system that is vital for the entire world community.

In December last year, we proposed to conclude an agreement on security guarantees. Russia called on the West to an honest dialogue, to search for reasonable, compromise solutions, to take into account each other's interests. All in vain. The NATO countries did not want to hear us, which means that in fact they had completely different plans. And we saw it.

Openly, preparations were underway for another punitive operation in the Donbass, for an invasion of our historical lands, including Crimea. In Kyiv, they announced the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons. The NATO bloc has begun active military development of the territories adjacent to us.

Thus, a threat that is absolutely unacceptable to us was systematically created, moreover, directly at our borders. Everything indicated that a clash with neo-Nazis, Bandera, on whom the United States and their younger partners staked, would be inevitable.

I repeat, we have seen how the military infrastructure is unfolding, how hundreds of foreign advisers began to work, there were regular deliveries of the most modern weapons from NATO countries. The danger grew every day.

Russia gave a preemptive rebuff to aggression. It was a forced, timely and only right decision. The decision of a sovereign, strong, independent country.

The United States of America, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, started talking about its exclusivity, thereby humiliating not only the whole world, but also its satellites, who have to pretend that they do not notice anything and meekly swallow it all.

But we are a different country. Russia has a different character. We will never give up love for the Motherland, faith and traditional values, the customs of our ancestors, respect for all peoples and cultures.

And in the West, these thousand-year-old values, apparently, have decided to cancel. Such moral degradation became the basis for cynical falsifications of the history of the Second World War, inciting Russophobia, praising traitors, mocking the memory of their victims, erasing the courage of those who won and suffered the Victory.

We know that American veterans who wanted to come to the parade in Moscow were effectively banned from doing so. But I want them to know that we are proud of your exploits, your contribution to the common Victory.

We honor all the soldiers of the allied armies - Americans, British, French - participants in the Resistance, brave soldiers and partisans of China - all who defeated Nazism and militarism.

Dear comrades!

Today, the militiamen of Donbass, together with the fighters of the Russian Army, are fighting on their own land, where the combatants of Svyatoslav and Vladimir Monomakh, the soldiers of Rumyantsev and Potemkin, Suvorov and Brusilov, fought the enemy, where the heroes of the Great Patriotic War - Nikolai Vatutin, Sidor Kovpak, Lyudmila Pavlichenko fought to the death.

I am now addressing our Armed Forces and the Donbass militia. You are fighting for the Motherland, for its future, so that no one forgets the lessons of the Second World War. So that there is no place in the world for executioners, punishers and Nazis.

Today we bow our heads before the blessed memory of all whose lives were taken by the Great Patriotic War, before the memory of sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, relatives, friends.

We bow our heads before the memory of the martyrs of Odessa, who were burned alive in the House of Trade Unions in May 2014. Before the memory of the elderly, women and children of Donbass, civilians who died from ruthless shelling, barbaric strikes of neo-Nazis. We bow our heads before our comrades-in-arms, who died the death of the brave in a righteous battle - for Russia.

A moment of silence is announced.

(Moment of silence.)




The death of each of our soldiers and officers is a grief for all of us and an irreparable loss for relatives and friends. The state, regions, enterprises, public organizations will do everything to provide such families with care and help them. We will give special support to the children of the dead and wounded comrades. The Presidential Decree on this was signed today.

I wish the wounded soldiers and officers a speedy recovery. And I thank the doctors, paramedics, nurses, medical staff of military hospitals for their selfless work. A low bow to you for fighting for every life - often under fire, on the front line, not sparing yourself.

Dear comrades!

Now here, on Red Square, soldiers and officers from many regions of our vast Motherland stand shoulder to shoulder, including those who arrived directly from the Donbass, directly from the combat zone.

We remember how Russia's enemies tried to use bands of international terrorists against us, tried to sow national and religious enmity in order to weaken and split us from within. Nothing succeeded.

Today, our fighters of different nationalities are together in battle, covering each other from bullets and shrapnel like brothers.

And this is the strength of Russia, the great, indestructible strength of our united multinational people.

Today you are defending what your fathers and grandfathers, great-grandfathers fought for. For them, the highest meaning of life has always been the well-being and security of the Motherland. And for us, their heirs, devotion to the Fatherland is the main value, a reliable support for the independence of Russia.

Those who crushed Nazism during the Great Patriotic War showed us an example of heroism for all time. This generation of winners, and we will always look up to them.

Glory to our valiant Armed Forces!

For Russia! For victory!

Hooray!

A victim of the telephone

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A Misty English Wood

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Beef Pasties (Esfiha fechada)

This is the Brazilian version of “meat pies”. OMG! Unique taste. Nice size. Yum! This recipe doesn’t seem to be anything more than a basic meat pie… plain. You can consider this to be the basics for future meat pie exploations. And this version is very compatable with Western diets; read “American tastes”.

Anyone doing this in 2015…

Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39ba8e81b 880
Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39ba8e81b 880

“US watched its colonies slipping away.”

The US gains nothing from holding Europe captive but loses EVERYTHING from losing Europe. Largest EU trading partner is China. Trains run from Shanghai and Wuhan into Germany every week carrying laptops and other goods across Russia. It is far faster than by ship.

That is now halted.

That is the whole purpose of the Ukraine War. Now China intends to use Mariupol as a port at the end of the train line and avoid Malucca Straits and Suez Canal.

Merkel signed an Investment Treaty with China during German presidency of European Council and US was incandescent under Trump. Conte as PM in Italy signed wide-ranging treaties with China including Yellow Brick Road Treaty -

US watched its colonies slipping away.

-Paul Greenwood

Rome right after world war II

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The atmosphere and photographic challenge of the English forest…

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Brazilian Pastel – Easy Meat Pie Recipe

But, yeah. This is even BETTER! Note the VERY UNIQUE ingredients that really KICK the flavors and uniqueness! I especially love the green olives and hard boiled eggs mixed with the ground hamburger.

The Devil made Him do it!

Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39d360d2d 880
Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39d360d2d 880

Beautiful forest

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Rome after world war II

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Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter has penned An open letter to the American people, as Russia celebrates its WW2 victory over the Nazis that’s part autobiographical and thus informs us of his behavior. He concludes with words that are hard for people to swallow but must be soberly faced:

"Unlike the Germans, the Russian people don’t forget.

"Sadly, I cannot say the same thing about the American people. There will be no Victory in Europe celebration in the United States this year, just as there hasn’t been for years past. We have forgotten our “Greatest Generation” and the sacrifices they made for our future. There is no American “Immortal Regiment” of family members marching proudly down the main streets of US towns and cities honoring the cause for which these young men and women served.

"We have forgotten what they even fought for....

"Instead, the United States is providing succor to the present-day adherents of Bandera, and by extension, Hitler; their hateful ideology disguised as Ukrainian nationalism. American military personnel, whose traditions are born from the heroic sacrifices made by hundreds of thousands of their fellow soldiers, sailors, and airmen who gave their lives to defeat Nazi Germany, are today providing weapons and training to Ukrainians whose bodies and banners bear the markings of Hitler’s Third Reich.

"On May 9, Russia will celebrate Victory Day, marking the 77th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, the struggle against Nazi ideology continues to this day and, sadly, the United States finds itself on the wrong side of history, supporting those whom we once were sworn to defeat, while fighting against those whom we once called allies."

The Deep, Dark history documenting decades of such “succor” Ritter omits although he knows it, but I don’t condemn him for the omission as very few of those his letter addresses will be provided an opportunity to read it since Free Speech and Press are cancelled. Perhaps barflies might share his letter with those still able to appreciate its contents since standing up for your country–in my case the USA–means being very much opposed to those aiding Fascists & Nazis while destroying their own people and lying about it all every step of the way.

It’s not just Russia. It’s China as well.

They HAVEN’T forgotten.

So very stunning!

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3 1 2

How to Make Beef Shawarma at Home

A Middle Eastern classic street food, shawarma can be made with beef, chicken, lamb or a combination, but it is all about the spice mix to give the authentic flavor.

MurderBOT

Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39cc120b6 880
Artist Makes His Characters Have Unexpected Twists And It Works Very Well 626a39cc120b6 880

The deep, dark and moist misty forest

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The Stock Market Carnage That You Have Been Waiting For Is Here

A lot of people out there have been waiting for this stock market bubble to implode for a really long time.  Well, the wait is now over.  Stock prices have been falling for months, but what we have witnessed within the past couple of weeks has been absolutely breathtaking.  Trillions upon trillions of dollars worth of paper wealth has been suddenly wiped out, and many investors are panic selling in a desperate attempt to lock in profits before the market completely collapses.

On Monday, the Dow lost another 600 points, but the really big news continues to be the staggering declines for both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 653.67 points to 32,245.70, or 1.99%. The S&P 500 fell 3.2% to settle at 3,991.24, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 4.29% to 11,623.25.

It has been stunning to see these sorts of numbers day after day.

One long-time market veteran actually used the word “violent” to describe what we have been witnessing…

“I’ve been in the markets for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and chief strategist for Quill Intelligence, a Wall Street and Federal Reserve research firm. “It’s violent not just volatile.”

Sadly, she is right on target.  Things have already gotten really crazy, but many believe that the most chaotic chapters of this market implosion are still ahead of us.

The S&P 500 just dropped below 4,000 for the first time in more than a year, and I am already seeing people talk about what will happen when it falls to 3,000.

As for the Nasdaq, it has already plummeted 27 percent from the all-time record high.

Needless to say, that puts the Nasdaq well into bear market territory.

Tech stocks were crushed once again to begin the week, with some of the biggest names leading the way

Rising rates continued to crush technology names such as Meta Platforms and Alphabet, which lost 3.7% and 2.8%, respectively. Amazon, Apple and Netflix all fell more than 5%, 3% and 4%, respectively, while Tesla and Nvidia plunged more than 9% each.

Ouch!

And check out these numbers for all of 2022 so far…

Tesla: down 25 percent

Disney: down 30 percent

Amazon: down 34 percent

Facebook: down 41 percent

Uber: down 45 percent

Snap: down 50 percent

Netflix: down 71 percent

Of course Palantir has them all beat

Palantir Technologies, which went public in September 2020 via a direct listing amid enormous hype and hoopla, has now earned a much coveted spot in my Imploded Stocks column.

Today, Palantir reported another huge loss, this time $101 million, on $446 million in revenues, bringing its total loss over the past four years, to $2.86 billion. Its revenue outlook for Q2 was below what Wall Street expected. Shares [PLTR] kathoomphed 22% so far today, and 84% from the peak in January 2021, to $7.40 a new all-time low.

Investors are starting to figure out that trendy “tech companies” that regularly lose hundreds of millions of dollars are not actually good investments.

Cryptocurrencies have been falling dramatically as well.

Bitcoin and other cryptos were hammered really hard once again on Monday, and at this point Bitcoin is down almost 55 percent from the all-time high…

Bitcoin is off nearly 55% from its November peak, and 40% of holders are now underwater on their investments, according to new data from Glassnode.

That percentage is even higher when you isolate for the short-term holders who got skin in the game in the last six months when the price of bitcoin peaked at around $69,000.

Those that bought Bitcoin low and got out in time ended up making a killing.

But those that got in at or near the top of the market and just kept holding on are going to get absolutely eviscerated.

Of course that is how the market works.  You either eat or you get eaten.

As for what is ahead, many of the experts are fearing the worst.  Here is just one example

“We expect markets to remain volatile, with risks skewed to the downside as stagflation risks continue to increase,” wrote Barclays’ Maneesh Deshpande. “While we cannot discount sharp bear market rallies, we think upside is limited.”

In the short-term, you would think that things should stabilize at some point.

The fact that the Fed recklessly raised interest rates last week really shook a lot of people up, but that wave of panic should soon subside.

The much bigger issue is the outlook for the U.S. economy moving forward.  Interestingly, even corporate media outlets are now adopting a very negative tone about what is coming…

Inflation is at a 40-year high. Stock prices are sinking. The Federal Reserve is making borrowing much costlier. And the economy actually shrank in the first three months of this year.

Is the United States at risk of enduring another recession, just two years after emerging from the last one?

Even without another unexpected “trigger event”, the U.S. economy should get progressively worse throughout the remainder of 2022.

But as I have detailed in my last couple of books, I believe that we have entered a time in history when unexpected “trigger events” will come fast and furious.

Keep a close eye on the Middle East for the rest of this year, and we will all want to carefully watch how the global food crisis develops.

When people don’t have enough food, violence tends to erupt.  We saw this during the Arab Spring of 2011, and we will undoubtedly see similar eruptions in the months ahead.

Only this time around, the food shortages that we are facing threaten to develop into a long-term phenomenon.

In all my years of writing, I have never been more concerned about what is in front of us.

We have already been hit by crisis after crisis so far in 2022, but it looks like the second half of this year is going to be even crazier than the first half.

Deep, dark and lovely

Glorious

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Is Ukraine’s War Now America’s War?

.

Last week, sources leaked to The New York Times that, in Ukraine’s targeting and killing of Russian generals and the sinking of Russia’s Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, U.S. intelligence played an indispensable role.

Apparently, our intel people identified and located for the Ukrainian forces what became the targets of their deadly attacks.

Why U.S. intelligence would do this seems inexplicable.

By claiming credit for Ukraine’s most visible military successes, we diminish the achievements of that country’s own forces.

By bragging publicly that we helped engineer the killing of Russian generals and the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, we taunt Russian President Vladimir Putin. We provoke him into retaliating in kind against us, thereby raising the possibility of a wider U.S.-Russia war that could escalate into World War III.

Moreover, U.S. boasting like this plays right into Putin’s narrative that Russia is facing and fighting in Ukraine a U.S.-led alliance that is out to crush Russia.

Indeed, why are we going beyond assistance to the Ukrainians in defending themselves, into making this American’s war?

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Poland following her visit to Kyiv, she virtually embraced the idea of the Ukraine-Russia war as now being America’s war, declaring, “America stands with Ukraine. We stand with Ukraine until victory is won.”

Accompanying Pelosi to Kyiv was a delegation of House Democrats, one of whom, Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, echoed Pelosi in Poland:

“The United States of America is in this to win.”

Their visit followed that of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who came out of Kyiv and declared the U.S. strategic goals in Ukraine’s war:

“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kind of things it has done in invading Ukraine.”

These statements by U.S. leaders reinforce Putin’s line that Russia is besieged by a U.S.-led Western alliance that fears and detests Mother Russia and wishes to see her defeated and diminished.

Our enemies in the West who seek to destroy Russia are like those we fought in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, Putin now claims. And intervention in Ukraine was necessary to prevent today’s neo-Nazis from dragging Ukraine into their larger conspiracy to destroy Russia.

Consider Putin’s words of a week ago:

“The forces that have always pursued a policy of containing Russia … do not want such a huge and independent country that is too big for their ideas … They believe it endangers them simply by the fact of its existence, although this is far from reality. It is they who endanger the world.”

We are hated for who and what we are, says Putin. And our military operation is an act of legitimate self-defense against the same kind of “Nazi filth” we fought in the Great Patriotic War.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov describes the recent surge in heavy Western weapons shipments to Ukraine as “NATO … going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy.”

By cutting Republicans out of her delegation to Kyiv, Pelosi appears to want to make the war not only America’s war, but her party’s cause.

That seems to be a motive as well behind Biden’s consciously exceeding any Western leader in the language he uses on Putin, calling him a “killer,” a “murderous dictator,” a “pure thug,” a “butcher,” a “war criminal,” guilty of “genocide,” who “for God’s sake … cannot remain in power.”

Such language is designed to showcase Biden as the world’s leading anti-Putinist and the most morally outraged of all the world’s leaders at what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

But, again, like the public boasting of U.S. intel agents over our role in the sinking of the Moskva and killing of the Russian generals, the effect is to disqualify the U.S. president from any role in negotiating a truce or an end to this war.

How do we benefit from having no leader-to-leader communication with the Kremlin, which President John F. Kennedy retained in the Cuban missile crisis to end it?

NATO Europe, which is supporting the Ukrainian resistance, is not on board with the U.S. plans to cripple Russia permanently.

America needs to recognize that our objectives in this war are not the same as Ukraine’s.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would like to have the U.S. plunge in and fight alongside Kyiv, devastate and defeat the Russian army, and expel Russia not only from the regions invaded this year but also from Crimea, which Putin annexed in 2014 .

America’s vital interests in this war, however, are to prevent it from becoming a U.S.-Russia war or a third world war or a nuclear war.

The U.S. goal of imposing a crushing defeat of Russian aggression is secondary to our far more vital interest in avoiding a U.S.-Russia war.

America’s interests are best served by an early and negotiated peace. Such a goal rules out imposing humiliating terms on Russia, which cause Moscow and Putin to escalate militarily — to survive politically.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”

Sergey Glazyev: For those who still don’t understand

Source:  HERE

Machine Translation and then checked and finessed by the Saker Blog Translators

I will try to briefly explain and justify the necessary measures to achieve Victory

A special military operation (SVO) revealed a plan prepared in advance by the US power and financial elite to seize power in Russia. It includes the following components and stages.

1. Wear out the Russian armed forces in a war with well-trained and directly controlled by the Pentagon fighters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, “stitched” by the Nazis with a vertical of officers appointed by the US and British special services. Turn the population of Ukraine into zombies infected with Russophobia. At the same time, incite the international community against Russia, making accusations of war crimes and genocide against its leadership. On this basis, confiscate Russia’s foreign currency assets and impose total sanctions against it, causing the maximum possible damage. This stage is actually completed.

2. Terrorize the Russian population with shelling of border settlements and military infrastructure, sabotage of transport, and hacker attacks. Hit the public consciousness with a flood of negative fake news and anti-government propaganda through social networks. To impose, through their agents of influence in the financial and economic authorities, an economic policy that blocks the mobilization of resources, including: inflating interest rates, continuing the export of capital, encouraging currency and financial speculation, manipulating the ruble exchange rate, and inflating prices. Thus, the sanctions can be repeatedly aggravated and provoke a collapse in production and a decline in living standards. This stage is in full swing.

3. Provoking protest moods and destructive socio-political actions aimed at overthrowing the legitimate authorities against the background of falling living standards and losses in the course of their activities. The use of the entire arsenal of methods for organizing “color revolutions” financed by the Comprador oligarchy under the promise of unfreezing assets seized in the US-European jurisdiction. At the same time, we are preparing the organizational and ideological foundations for separatist actions in the regions. This stage is under active development.

This plan also provides for the following tasks::

  • consolidation of US control over the European Union and NATO countries;
  • use of the armed forces of Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, as well as mercenaries from the West, the Middle East and the Middle East in combat operations against Russia;
  • the destruction of the male population and the actual enslavement of women and children of Ukraine for the subsequent development of this territory in the interests of the power and financial elite of the United States, Britain and Israel.

The implementation of this plan, in fact, is aimed at destroying the Russian world, followed by the American “deep state” plans to destroy Iran and block China.

Due to the objective laws of global economic development, this plan is doomed to failure. The United States will not be able to win the global hybrid war it has unleashed to maintain its global hegemony. They are irrevocably losing it to China, which is rapidly strengthening as a result of anti-Russian sanctions.

Washington, London, and Brussels played their main trump cards in an effort to inflict maximum possible damage on Russia: a monopoly on the issue of world currencies, an image of an exemplary legal democratic state, and a belief in the “sacred” right of private property. Thus, they have put all independent countries in front of the need to find new global currency instruments, risk insurance mechanisms, restore the norms of international law and create their own economic security systems.

Anti-Russian sanctions did not strengthen, but, on the contrary, undermined the global dominance of the United States and the EU, which the rest of the world began to treat with distrust and apprehension. They dramatically accelerated the transition to a new world economic order and the shift of the center of the world economy to Southeast Asia. Russia needs to stand up to the United States and NATO in its confrontation, bringing IT to its logical conclusion, so as not to be torn between them and China, which is irrevocably becoming the leader of the world economy.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.

New Beginnings 4

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
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Master List of Heirloom Tomatoes

Here’s a “master list” of heirloom tomatoes that I have collected off the internet. I have extracted the data from heavy advertisement saturated websites, and other pay-wall blocked for-profit venues. Whether or not you enjoy heirloom tomatoes, I hope that this list will be beneficial to you.

What is a Heirloom Tomato…

An heirloom tomato (also called heritage tomato in the UK) is an open-pollinated, non-hybrid heirloom cultivar of tomato. They are classified as: family heirlooms, commercial heirlooms, mystery heirlooms, or created heirlooms. They usually have a shorter shelf life and are less disease resistant than hybrids. They are grown for a variety of reasons: for food, historical interest, access to wider varieties, and by people who wish to save seeds from year to year, as well as for their taste.

Wikipedia

But first…

I wish that I was as talented as some of the women that I know. They have a real understanding, or a “feel” on how food comes together and mates with other foods. And they have this kind of innate ability that I seem so very clumsy with. And they seem to know which is the right tomato for the right application.

Never the less, I do know that I like to eat. I know that when I go to a store, I like to smell the produce, and if I am growing things, I am always smelling the tomatoes on the vine. There’s a real connection between scent and taste. Seriously.

Here’s some pictures to illustrate what you can do with heirloom tomatoes…

The best thing about heirloom tomatoes is the taste.

I strongly argue that the best thing to do with heirloom tomatoes is to eat them. After all, they are so very delicious.

Tomatoes are meant to be eaten.

Not a full sandwich, but tasty never the less…

Good eating.

A recipe

Here’s a great heirloom tomato sandwich recipe. Yum!

A very delicious heirloom tomato sandwich.

And the details…

A story…

When I was around 12 years old, I was given free reign in the family garden, and there, every day I would how the ground, pull the weeds, water the plants and so forth. I developed a real love for the plants. With tomatoes, and zucchini being my favorites. Peppers and cucumbers grew too slowly for my tastes, while onions and carrots remained hidden under the ground.

There, every day during the middle to late summer I would pick my tomatoes and was amazed at the enormous big bounty and delicious flavor that they provided.

I remember my mother coming in to the kitchen one day and asking what “the heck” I was doing. Why, I had made a thick, fresh, tomato sandwich with mayonnaise, salt and pepper on plain white (store bought) bread. And I was busily smunching down on it over the sink, with the tomato drippings falling into the sink. I guess she must have thought me to be so silly.

But it was glorious.

And I still remember that day. I still remember how great it tasted. I still remember how wonderful it was.

In China…

Chinese stir fry tomatoes and eggs 番茄炒蛋.

One of the top favorite foods is this dish called eggs and tomatoes. It’s not prepared American style, where you simply scramble the tomatoes in with the eggs. No NO. Instead, there is a certain procedure and the results are glorious.

Here’s what the dish looks like…

Chinese stir fried tomatoes with eggs.

Here’s a video of how it is done…

…So sexy! So delicious! So wonderful!

Here’s a recipe…

Ingredients

  • 3 eggs
  • 2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 tablespoons ketchup optional
  • 4 medium/large tomatoes
  • Steamed rice for serving
  • 1 teaspoon corn starch mix in 2 teaspoon water, optional

Instructions

  • In a bowl, beat the eggs with 1 teaspoon of salt.
  • At the bottom of each tomato, use a knife to cut the skin to make a cross opening.
  • In a large pot, add 1 cup of water and bring it to a boil over high heat. Add the tomatoes with the bottom side down into the hot water.
  • Cut them into 1/2-inch wide wedges. Make sure to reserve the core as much as possible for the sauce later.
  • Heat a wok/pan over high heat with 2 tablespoons of oil. Add the eggs, stir well with a spatula, about 30 seconds. Use the spatula to cut up the curds for stir fry. Transfer the eggs to a plate.
  • Heat the wok over high heat with 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the tomatoes and salt to taste; give it a stir and cover with a lid for 2 minutes. Cook until the flesh is softened. Use a the spatula to break up the big tomato pieces so that the flesh would quickly form a sauce.
  • Add salt, sugar and ketchup (optional) and mix well. Return the eggs to the wok. Stir until it’s well incorporated.
  • Optional: If the sauce is too watery, you can mix the cornstarch and 2 teaspoons water in a small bowl until well combined. Add the cornstarch slurry to the wok and cook for a few more seconds and transfer to a plate.
  • Serve with rice.

Some comments

From HERE.

Because of the many different regions in China, defining a Chinese national dish is nearly impossible. But if you ask Chinese people their favorite childhood dish, stir fried tomatoes and eggs is THE ONE that everyone will agree on!

There’re a few variations of this dish. I sometimes stir fry the tomatoes with tofu or beef.

You won’t find this dish in American-Chinese restaurants often, but it’s definitely a staple dish served with rice at home.

Hint: In China, just about every restaurant will serve this dish on the menu.

If you are just starting to learn how to cook in a wok, this is a great recipe for a beginner.

Back in Guangzhou, China, there’re fresh fruits and vegetables all year long and tomatoes are in season most of the time. My mom usually doesn’t add ketchup to this dish, but I do that when tomatoes are out of season in Cleveland. This helps enrich the flavor of the tomato sauce and enhance the color of the dish.

Here’re a few things to know when cooking this dish:

    • Tomatoes must be fresh, ripe and soft. Ripe tomatoes make the sauce flavorful and juicy.
    • Pealing off the tomato skin will help soften the flesh and make them melt in your mouth.
    • Serving the dish with rice is a must.

The Heirloom Tomato list…

Ace 55

These determinate tomatoes grow in abundant crops. They come with low acidity.

Alaska

The semi-determinate tomatoes are characterized by bushy plants. Originating in Russia, they are suited to colder environments.

Alaskan Fancy

These are the earliest semi-determinate plum-shaped tomatoes. They are suitable for colder weather.

Allerbest

The indeterminate tomatoes come from Germany. They are characterized by fruits with few seeds.

Alicante

The tomatoes are indeterminate. They take up to 70 days to mature and at the moment, they are popular across the UK.

Amber Colored

With Ukrainian roots, the semi-determinate tomatoes are characterized by a sweet flavor.

Amish Paste

The indeterminate heirloom tomatoes are known for their juicy flesh. They are used for sauces and fresh eating.

Anahu

These determinate tomatoes were bred by De. Jim Gilbert of Hawaii. They have a deep red color and they are known for their sweet flavor.

Andes

With French origins, the semi-determinate tomatoes are recognizable with their long pointed shape. They are suitable for sauces.

Ananas Noire

These bi-color tomatoes have an indeterminate profile. The yellow-red tomatoes come with fruit sizes of 16oz.

Aunt Ginny

With rich pink color, the indeterminate tomatoes are suitable for sandwiches and salads. They resist cracking.

Aunt Ruby

With a distinct green look, the indeterminate tomatoes take at least 80 days to mature. They were first introduced in 1993 in Wisconsin.

Aussie

With a rich flavor, the indeterminate tomatoes are meaty. They are suited to warmer climates.

Anna Russian

The indeterminate tomatoes have a sweet taste. Their fruits can grow up to 1 pound.

Arkansas Traveler

The indeterminate tomatoes are made for hot and humid climates. The tomatoes have disease resistance.

Aunt Ruby

The green indeterminate tomatoes are sweet. The beefsteaks also have a yellow tint.

Aurora

Named after the Aurora Borealis, these Russian determinate tomatoes produce heavy crops. They are suitable for colder environments.

Austin Red Pear

As their name suggests, the indeterminate tomatoes come are shaped like pears.  They are known to be very productive.

Azoychka

The indeterminate tomatoes come from Russia. When they are ripe, they have a pale orange color.

B

Backa

These determinate tomatoes come from Yugoslavia. They are used in sauces, sandwiches or canning.

Banana Legs

These determinate tomatoes come in 4-inch fruits. Their name comes from their light banana color.

Basket Vee

The red determinate tomatoes have a size of 9in for the fruit and 4feet for the plant. They are resistant to Verticillium.

Beaverlodge Slicer

The determinate tomatoes come from the Beaverlodge Research Center in Canada. With only 54 days to reach maturity, the tomatoes are suitable for colder environments.

Besser

Dating back hundreds of years, the indeterminate cherry tomatoes have a sweet taste. The tomatoes originate in Germany.

Big Brandy

The indeterminate tomatoes have a pink color. They have a tangy flavor.

Big Rainbow

The yellow and red indeterminate tomatoes have low acidity. They are shaded by large leaves.

Big Red

The indeterminate vines are suitable for sandwich tomatoes. The fruits have a deep red color.

Big Zac

The meaty indeterminate tomatoes are rich in taste. The fruits are large and suitable for slicing.

Big Zebra

The indeterminate beefsteak tomatoes have a mildly sweet flavor. They have a distinct red-green color.

Bison

Developed by North Dakota University, the determinate tomatoes produce dwarf compact plants. They are suited to damp cold weather.

Black From Tula

The indeterminate tomatoes grow up to 14 ounces. They were exported from Ukraine by Marina Danilenko.

Black Cherry

The indeterminate tomatoes ripen through the season. They can take up to 75 days to reach maturity.

Black Krim

Bearing the name of the Crimean Peninsula, the indeterminate tomatoes reach maturity within 80 days.

Black Plum

Black Plum indeterminate tomatoes come from Russia’s Marina Danilenko. They can be used for a rich pasta sauce.

Black Prince

The indeterminate tomatoes have a red-black color. They are known for their juicy profile.

Black Sea Man

With attractive marble flesh, the tomatoes come from seed woman Marina Danilenko. The determinate tomatoes are medium in size.

Black Trifele

Known as Japanese or Russian Black Trifele, the indeterminate tomatoes take between 70 and 80 days to mature.

Blondkopfchen

The 1-in yellow indeterminate tomatoes have a sweet flavor. They come from Germany.

Bloody Butcher

The indeterminate tomatoes are known for their rich crops. The fruits have a rich flavor.

Beam’s Yellow Pear

The indeterminate tomatoes were first introduced in 1983 in Indiana. They are known for their bright yellow color.

Beefsteak

These tomatoes are known for the size. They can reach a weight of up to 4lbs. The indeterminate tomatoes are common in the US.

Boondocks

With a beefsteak profile, the indeterminate tomatoes have a deep pink-red color. The fruit size can reach 16oz.

Big Rainbow

The indeterminate tomatoes take up to 85 days to mature. They have a distinct yellow look with red swirls.

Bonny Best

The indeterminate Bonny Best produces fruits of up to 8 ounces. The fruits are suitable for all purposes.

Box Car

The red indeterminate tomatoes come in weights of up to 16 ounces. The color of the fruits is red with dark undertones.

Brandywine

The indeterminate tomatoes were first introduced in 1889. They were offered to Johnson and Stokes by a customer in Ohio.

Brandywine Pink

With a pink color, the indeterminate tomatoes are rich in flavor. They are not heavy producers.

Brandywine Yellow

The indeterminate tomatoes come with a distinct yellow color. The fruits weight from 12 ounces to 2 pounds.

Brandywine Sudduth’s Strain

Popularly called Pink Brandywine, the tomatoes are rich in flavor. Their indeterminate fruits ripen through the season.

Burbank Slicing

The determinate tomatoes were introduced by Luther Burbank. They are high in amino acids.

Burgess Stuffing

The indeterminate tomatoes are small at 4 inches. The hollow interior makes them look similar to peppers.

Bush Beefsteak

These determinate red tomatoes are already popular for shorter growing regions. The plant grows up to 3 feet.

C

Campbell 33

The determinate tomatoes are suitable for salads and sandwiches. They have a deep red color.

Chef’s Choice Orange

The indeterminate tomatoes come with a distinct bright orange color. They are used in soups and sauces.

Cherokee Chocolate

With red-black color, the indeterminate tomatoes are ripe late in the season. They are suitable for slicing.

Cherokee Green

With a distinct green color, the juicy indeterminate tomatoes are best served fresh.

Cherokee Purple

The indeterminate tomatoes come with a brownish red color. The tomatoes have regular leaves.

Cherry Brandywine

With a dark red color, the indeterminate tomatoes grow in clusters. The plant height reaches 6 feet.

Cherry Roma

The indeterminate tomatoes are great fresh or dried. They are considered very productive.

Chianti Rose

The beefsteak indeterminate tomatoes have a deep pink color. The fruit size varies between 1 and 2 lbs.

Copia

With an orange color with red stripes, the indeterminate tomatoes have a distinct look. They originate in the US.

Cosmonaut Volkov

The determinate tomatoes have a rich flavor. They are suitable for areas with a short growing period.

Costoluto Genovese

Originating in Italy, the indeterminate tomatoes have a slight tart flavor. Their color is bright red.

Cream Sausage

The determinate tomatoes are very productive. They were introduced by Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in 2004.

Crimson Cushion

The indeterminate Crimson Cushion takes 95 days to mature. The fruits can reach up to 2 pounds in weight.

Crnkovic Yugoslavian

The indeterminate tomatoes have a delicious flavor. They were introduced to the US by Yasha Crnkovic.

Cuostralee

Rich in production, the indeterminate tomatoes can measure up to 4 inches.

Czech’s Bush

The red indeterminate tomatoes have a juicy profile. The tomatoes can be traced back to Czechoslovakia.

D

David Davidson

The tomatoes fruits come in variable shapes. The indeterminate tomatoes grow in clusters of 7 fruits.

Dester

The tomatoes are believed to come from Germany. The indeterminate tomatoes grow pink fruits of up to 1lbs.

Dixie Golden

Going back to the 1930s, the indeterminate yellow tomatoes have a mild taste. They are suitable for slicing.

Djena Lee

With a yellow-orange color, the indeterminate tomatoes can be traced back to 1929.

Druzba

Originating in Bulgaria, the indeterminate tomatoes have a bright red color. They have a robust tomato flavor.

Dr. Wyche

With a distinct golden color, the indeterminate tomatoes have a meaty flesh.

Dutchman

Growing up to 3 pounds, the indeterminate tomatoes have a mild flavor. They can be traced back to 1920.

Dwarf Pink Passion

As a result of the Dwarf Tomato Project, the determinate tomatoes have a hybrid profile. They are a cross between Roza Vetrov and Anna Banana Russian. The tomatoes have a balanced sweet flavor.

Dwarf Purple Heart

Developed by the Dwarf Tomato Project, the determinate tomatoes are a cross between Dwarf Wild Fred and Brad’s Black Heart. They have a purple-black color.

E

Earliana

Introduced in New Jersey in 1900, the indeterminate tomatoes grow come in clusters of 4-5 ounce fruits.

Early Annie

With few seeds, the determinate tomatoes are suitable for canning. They take 60 days to mature.

Early Wonder

These determinate tomatoes were first introduced in 1950. They are suitable for container-based growing.

Elbe

The indeterminate tomatoes originate in the Elbe River’s area in Germany. They come with a sweet and tart flavor.

Ethiopia Roi Humbert

The red determinate tomatoes are suitable for canning or snacking. They can grow up to 2”.

Eva Purple Ball

Believed to come from Germany, these indeterminate tomatoes are recommended for humid areas. They have a distinct vivid red color.

F

Fargo

The semi-determinate tomatoes come in a pear shape form with a yellow-orange color. They are suitable for specialty salads.

Federle

With fruits of up to 7 inches, the indeterminate tomatoes can easily be processed. They can be the base for salsa sauces.

Ferris Wheel

Up to 90 days is needed for the tomatoes to reach maturity. The indeterminate tomatoes have been developed in 1894.

First Pick

Traced back to France, the indeterminate tomatoes can be grown in colder climates. The fruits have a deep red color.

Fireworks

The pointed tomatoes are available early in the season. The indeterminate tomatoes grow up to 6oz.

Fox Cherry

The indeterminate tomatoes come with fruit sizes of up to 1oz. They are suitable for salads.

G

Garden Peach

The tomatoes come in a yellow color. They are indeterminate and distinctly fuzzy, as their name suggests.

Gardener’s Delight

The indeterminate tomatoes take up to 65 days to mature.

German Pink

The meaty fruits of the tomato can grow up to 2 pounds. The indeterminate tomatoes take up to 85 days to mature.

German Johnson

The indeterminate tomatoes come with low acidity. The fruits have a pink color.

German Red

The indeterminate German heirloom has a strawberry color. They come with a rich flavor.

Glacier

The semi-determinate tomatoes are suitable for early season harvest. They are consumed fresh.

Glamour

With a slightly flattened shape, the tomatoes grow up to 10oz. The indeterminate tomatoes grow up to 4 feet.

Gold Medal

With larger orange-yellow fruits, the indeterminate tomatoes are known for their large size and good flavor.

Giant Beefsteak

The indeterminate tomatoes have a meaty profile. The fruits can reach up to 2 pounds in weight.

Giant Belgium

With a sweet taste, the tomatoes have a deep pink color. The tomatoes can vary from 1 to 3 pounds.

Giant Syrian

The meaty tomatoes are flavorful. The indeterminate tomatoes are suitable for salads and sandwiches.

Gill’s All Purpose

Suitable for canning, juicing or slicing, the semi-determinate tomatoes are a cross between Wasatch Beauty and Pepper tomatoes.

Gold Medal

The yellow-red tomatoes have a rich flavor. Their juicy profile recommends them for fresh eating.

Gold Nugget Cherry

The determinate cherries have a yellow to orange color. They are suitable for snacking.

Gold Rush Currant

With up to 80 days needed to reach maturity, the indeterminate tomatoes offer hundreds of fruits per plant.

Grandma Freida’s

The indeterminate ribbed tomatoes come in sizes from 8 to 16 ounces. They have an old-fashioned taste.

Great White

The average flavor tomatoes are indeterminate. They are average in flavor intensity.

Green Grape

The determinate tomatoes have a distinct olive yellow color. The fruit ripens within 2 weeks.

Green Sausage

With a distinct look, the determinate tomatoes have a green color with yellow stripes. They have a long pointed shape.

Green Thumb

The determinate yellow-orange tomatoes ripen slowly. They are suitable for high altitudes.

Green Zebra

The indeterminate tomatoes are known to be very productive. They were first bred in 1983 by Thomas Wagner.

Grushova

These determinate heirloom tomatoes come from Siberia. They produce 2-3 inch fruits.

H

Hartman’s Yellow Gooseberry

With a mildly sweet profile, the indeterminate tomatoes come from a seed company in Indianapolis. They are used in salads.

Hawaiian Pineapple

The beefsteak indeterminate tomatoes are known for their pineapple resemblance. The tomatoes are mildly sweet.

Healani

The determinate tomatoes are bred to resist hot water. They are tolerant of the tobacco mosaic virus.

Heinz

The determinate red tomatoes are suitable for canning. They take 76 days to mature.

Heinz 1350

The mid-season determinate tomatoes are used for sauced and canning. They were developed for Eastern Canada and Northeast U.S.

Heinz 9129

The determinate heirloom tomatoes are used for canning and sauces. They are slightly larger than other Heinz varieties.

Hillbilly

The large beefsteak indeterminate tomatoes can reach weights of up to 2 pounds. They have a yellow-orange color.

Homestead 24

The determinate tomatoes are thriving in hot and humid areas. They are resistant to cracking.

Hillbilly Potato Leaf

With yellow and red, the tomatoes look distinctly juicy. The tomatoes are indeterminate, originating from Ohio.

Hungarian Heart

The indeterminate tomatoes resist cracking. They originate from a village near Budapest.

I

Ildi

Growing in clusters, the indeterminate tomatoes reach fruit sizes of 0.5oz. They are suitable for salads and decoration.

Igleheart Yellow Cherry

The yellow indeterminate tomatoes ripen through the season. They are rich in flavor with moderate acidity.

Isis Candy Cherry

The red tomatoes come with a sweet flavor. These indeterminate tomatoes take between 70 to 80 days to ripe.

Italian Heirloom

The indeterminate tomatoes grow up to 1lbs. They are suitable for slicing and sandwiches.

Italian Beefsteak

The Italian indeterminate heirlooms have a meaty flesh. They are suitable for sandwiches or served fresh.

Italian Roma

The determinate vines bear elongated fruits. They are larger than Roma tomatoes. The tomatoes are also higher in sugar.

J

Japanese Black

Shaped as pears, the tomatoes have a red-black color. They are resistant to cracking.

Japanese Trifele

With distinct potato leaves, the indeterminate tomatoes are rich in flavor. They are often canned.

Jaune Flamme

Great for drying or roasting, the indeterminate tomatoes are known for their deep orange color. They come from France.

John Baer

Rich in flavor, the indeterminate tomatoes are eaten fresh. The tomatoes were introduced in 1914.

Jubilee

The indeterminate heirloom tomatoes were released in 1943 by the Burpee Seed Company.

K

Kewalo

The determinate tomatoes are a bred of the University of Hawaii. With a sweet flavor, the tomatoes were bred to resist bacteria and viruses.

Kanner Hoell

Probably originating from Germany, the indeterminate tomatoes have red beefsteak fruits which can grow up to 1.5 pounds. Double fruit is common with the low acidity tomatoes.

Kellog’s Breakfast

The indeterminate tomatoes have a distinct orange glowing color. They can take up to 90 days to mature.

Kentucky Beefsteak

With an oval shape, the indeterminate tomatoes have a meaty flesh. They are recognized due to their distinct orange color.

Kolb

Originating in the Kolb Greenhouse of Storm Lake, the indeterminate tomatoes have a pink color. They are rich in flavor.

L

Large Red Cherry

These tomatoes are very productive. With fruits between 1 and 2 inches, the indeterminate tomatoes are used in salads or eaten fresh.

Lemon Drop

With a transparent yellow-green color, the tomatoes are indeterminate. They are known for their resilience in cold and wet weather.

Lillian’s Yellow

These potato leaf indeterminate tomatoes were first collected by Lillian Bruce in Tennessee.

Lime Green Salad

The determinate tomatoes stay small. As a result, they can be grown in containers.

Livingston Paragon

These red tomatoes have an indeterminate growth habit. They are named after Alexander Livingston’s seed trade.

Long Keeper

These semi-determinate tomatoes were introduced in 1979. They are suitable for winter storage.

M

Mamie Brown

These pink tomatoes are indeterminate. They are sweet in flavor.

Mama Leone

With meaty fruits, the indeterminate tomatoes are plum-shaped. The tomatoes reach up to 6 feet in height.

Manitoba

With a red color, the determinate tomatoes are suitable for small gardens in cooler climates.

Marglobe

The juicy indeterminate tomatoes come with an orange-red skin. They are suitable for canning.

Marion

The indeterminate tomatoes are resistant to disease. They come in a dark red color.

Martino’s Roma

With a distinct Italian profile, the determinate tomatoes are known to fall off when fully ripe.

Marizol Magic

Similar to beefsteaks but smaller in size, the indeterminate tomatoes can grow up to 2oz.

Matt’s Wild Cherry      

Smaller than regular indeterminate cherry tomatoes, Matt’s Wild Cherry come from Mexico’s wild tomatoes.

Marvel Stripe

These indeterminate orange tomatoes also feature distinct orange stripes. They have juicy flesh.

Milano Plum

The determinate tomatoes have a sweet flavor. They are suitable for sauces.

Mexico Midget

Bering very productive, the indeterminate tomatoes are rich in flavor. Their size varies between ½-¾ inches.

Mini Orange

The indeterminate smooth tomatoes grow in clusters of 4 to 6. The tomatoes have a rich flavor.

Missouri Pink Love

As their name suggests, the tomatoes come in a pink color. The indeterminate tomatoes have a juicy profile.

Moneymaker

With inexpensive seeds, the indeterminate tomatoes take 80 days to mature.

Moonglow

With a bright orange color, the indeterminate tomatoes ripen through the season. They have a distinctly-solid flesh.

Mortgage Lifter

These beefsteak indeterminate tomatoes used to pay off a mortgage.

Moskovich

These indeterminate tomatoes have a rich taste and slightly flattened shape. They are suitable for cold climates.

Mr. Stripey

The indeterminate tomatoes grow up to 1lbs. They come with high sugar content and with a yellow color with red stripes.

Mule Team

The red indeterminate tomatoes resist drought. They are also disease-resistant.

N

Napoli

The determinate tomatoes are suitable for sauces and soups. They have a tangy flavor.

Nebraska Wedding

These determinate tomatoes ripen over a two-week period. They can be traced back to 1983.

Neves Azorean Red

The beefsteak indeterminate tomatoes are rich in flavor. Their fruits grow large, up to 16oz per piece.

New Big Dwarf

The determinate tomatoes were introduced in 1919. They are a cross between Ponderosa and Dwarf Champion.

New Hampshire Red Pickling

The determinate tomatoes are small but pear-shaped. Their fruits grow up to 0.7oz.

New Yorker

The determinate tomatoes are suitable for cooler climates. They mature in 63 days.

Northern Delight

With a determinate profile, the tomatoes are sweet and suitable for early crops for cooler seasons.

Nyagous

Free from blemishes, the indeterminate tomatoes have a brown-red color. They are very productive.

O

Old German

The indeterminate red and yellow tomatoes come with few seeds. The color of the skin is also visible in the flesh of the tomatoes.

Old Virginia

The indeterminate tomatoes are suitable for hot climates. They come with thick skin which resists cracking.

Omar Lebanese

The indeterminate beefsteaks have a rich sweet flavor. The fruits reach up to 2 pounds.

Opalka

Growing between 3 and 6 inches, the fruits of the tomatoes have few seeds. The indeterminate tomatoes hold well on the vine.

Orange Banana

With a distinct orange color, the indeterminate tomatoes have fruits of up to 6oz. They are plum-shaped.

Orange Minsk

The beefsteak indeterminate tomatoes have a dark orange color. They grow up to 12 oz per fruit.

Oregon Spring

The determinate vines are recommended for early growth. The fruits come with a low number of seeds.

P

Pantano Romanesco

With a rich flavor, the indeterminate tomatoes take 80 days to mature.

Paul Robeson  

With a dark red to black color, the indeterminate tomatoes mature in 90 days. They come from Russia.

Peach Jaune

With a pink look and a fuzzy skin, the indeterminate tomatoes have a refreshingly sweet flavor.

Pearson Improved

The determinate wines can be grown in dry regions. The tomatoes are juicy and used for canning.

Persimmon

Originating in Russia, the orange tomatoes can reach 1lbs in weight. The indeterminate tomatoes are blemish-free.

Picardy

Traced back to the 1890’s France, the indeterminate vines produce until frost. They have a meaty texture.

Pineapple

The yellow skin with red streaks is what inspired the names of these indeterminate tomatoes. They come in large sizes.

Pink Accordian

These distinct indeterminate tomatoes are suitable for slicing. They come in a light pink color.

Pink Oxheart

The indeterminate vines are known for their 1-2 pound size. They come with a firm texture.

Pink Ping Pong

At 3oz, the indeterminate tomatoes have the size of a ping pong ball. The tomatoes are suitable for salads.

Plum Lemon

The indeterminate tomatoes look similarly to lemons. Their taste is mild-citrusy.

Polish Pastel

The ribbed indeterminate tomatoes come with a 1-pound weight. The tomatoes have a rich flavor.

Ponderosa

The indeterminate tomatoes can be traced to 1891. They usually come in sizes between 1 and 2 pounds.

Porter

With rich red color, the indeterminate tomatoes are crack-resistant. They are suitable for canning.

Principe Borghese

The plum-shaped indeterminate tomatoes have a rich taste. They are suitable for drying.

Prudens Purple

With a dark pink-purple color, the indeterminate tomatoes are rich in taste. They have firm flesh.

Purple Calabash

With a dark marooned color, the indeterminate tomatoes have a complex flavor. They grow in crops of 3-inch tomatoes.

Purple Russian

The red indeterminate tomatoes have a sweet flavor. They are distinctly pear-shaped.

Powers

Probably originating in Mexico, the indeterminate tomatoes come with a translucent yellow color. They are very productive.

Prescott

These determinate heirloom tomatoes are suitable for higher altitudes and colder climates. They are used for canning and salads.

Pride of Flanders

These black determinate tomatoes were developed by Tom Wagner. The cherry tomatoes still have a novelty profile as they were introduced around 2.000.

Principe Borghese

The Italian tomatoes are suitable for drying. They are determinate and they produce plum-shaped fruits.

R

RAF

The semi-determinate round tomatoes have a red color. They mature in 75 days.

Red Currant

The miniature tomatoes take at least 65 days to mature. Their indeterminate profile also comes with regular leaves.

Redfield Beauty

The indeterminate tomatoes originate in Florida. They are characterized by productive plants.

Red Fig

With pear-shaped fruits, the indeterminate tomatoes originate in Philadelphia. They are suitable for drying.

Red Oxheart

The heart-shaped indeterminate tomatoes are recommended for slicing. They have a rich fruity taste.

Red Pear

Dating back to the 1700s, the indeterminate tomatoes can deal with early blight. Their fruits are distinctly blemish-free.

Red Robin

With 54 days needed to reach maturity, the determinate tomatoes have a sweet flavor. They are consumed fresh.

Red Rose

The indeterminate beefsteak tomatoes can be consumed fresh. They reach 10oz per fruit.

Red Sweet Pea Currant

The small ¼in indeterminate tomatoes come with a rich taste. They are consumed fresh.

Red Zebra

Discovered on the fields of California, the indeterminate tomatoes come with a distinct red look with orange stripes.

Redfield Beauty

Selected from Livingston’s Beauty, the indeterminate tomatoes have a pink color. The plant reaches 6 feet.

Riesentraube

Originating in Germany, the indeterminate tomatoes can bear fruits of up to 1in.

Rowdy Red

Suitable for hot climates, the indeterminate tomatoes have a red color. They make fruits of up to 8oz.

Roma

The indeterminate tomatoes are known for making good sauces. Their fruits weigh between 2 and 3 ounces.

Rose

The indeterminate tomatoes have an Amish origin. They are rich in flavor.

Rosella Crimson

These pink determinate tomatoes have a balanced flavor. They are a cross between Budai Torpe and Stump and one of the results of the Dwarf Tomato Project.

Rosso Sicilian

These bright red tomatoes can grow up to 6 ounces. The indeterminate fruits are used for sauces.

Rounghwood Golden Plum

The semi-determinate yellow-orange tomatoes were developed by William Woys Wearer. They are suitable for salads.

Rutgers

The indeterminate heirloom tomatoes are a cross. They come from Marglobe and J.T.D.

S

Salvaterra Select

With a sweet flavor, the indeterminate tomatoes are used for sauces. They have average productivity.

San Marzano

The indeterminate tomatoes take 85 days to mature. Their seeds are available for purchase.

Santorini

Originating from Greece’s Santorini, the indeterminate tomatoes are small by nature.

Sasha Altai

The indeterminate tomatoes were gifted in 1989’s Siberia by a man called Sasha. They have been seen as one of the best early producing tomatoes in the world.

Sausage

The indeterminate vines are very productive. They are known for heavy crops and banana-like shape.

Sheboygan

With a pink color, the plum-shaped indeterminate tomatoes are used in pasta. Their fruits vary between 4 and 6 inches.

Scarlet Beefsteak

With a meaty texture, the indeterminate tomatoes come with weights of up to 1 pound. They can be grown in small gardens.

Schellenberg Favorite

The oval red-orange indeterminate tomatoes come from Germany’s Manheim family. The tomatoes resist cracking.

Sean’s Yellow Dwarf

The yellow-orange determinate tomatoes are medium-sized. They mature in 80 days.

Sheboygan

Growing up to 6 ounces, the indeterminate tomatoes originate in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.  They are very productive.

Siberian

These determinate tomatoes have fruits of up to 3 inches. They are not to be confused with Siberia tomatoes.

Siletz

The determinate red tomatoes are acclimatized to cooler climates. They are used as slicing tomatoes.

Silvery Fir

These determinate tomatoes grow on 24” plants. They have Russian roots.

Soldacki

The indeterminate tomatoes are believed to originate in Poland. They have thin skin susceptible to cracking.

Sophie’s Choice

The determinate tomatoes were introduced in Edmonton, Canada. They are suitable for cooler areas.

Southern Night

With a rich tomato flavor, the indeterminate plant grows to 4 feet producing 10oz fruits.

Speckled Roman

The indeterminate tomatoes are red with orange stripes. The tomatoes are a cross between Antique Roman and Banana Legs.

Speckled Siberian

The determinate red tomatoes produce 2-inch fruits. They are suitable for salads.

Slava

Producing well in Northern climates, the indeterminate tomatoes are believed to originate from former Czechoslovakia.

Sprite

Made for salads or eating fresh, the determinate tomatoes produce until frost. They have thin skins.

Stripped German

The distinct red-yellow indeterminate tomatoes are made for slicing. They have a tart flavor.

Stupice

With 62 days needed to reach maturity, the indeterminate tomatoes have distinct potato-type leaves.

Sub-Arctic Plenty

With upright stems, the determinate vines are made for colder environments. They are recommended for early harvests.

Sugar Lump

Growing in clusters of 12 fruits, the indeterminate German tomatoes have a sweet taste. They are characterized by vivid red color.

Super Italian

The elongated Italian indeterminate tomatoes are used for sauces and canning. The fruits can reach weights of 10 ounces.

Super Sioux

The globe-shaped indeterminate tomatoes are suitable for hot weather. They are used for canning or consumed fresh.

Sweetie

With high sugar content, the indeterminate tomatoes are sweet. The sweet tomatoes grow in clusters of up to 20.

Swiss Alpine

The small 5-ounce tomatoes originate in Switzerland. They are suitable for cold weather.

Surrender’s Indian Curry

The red determinate tomatoes have regular leaves. They come from Indian gardener Surender Katta.

Sweet Israeli

The determinate red tomatoes have bushy, regular leaves. They come from Israel.

Sweet Pea Currant

With an indeterminate profile, they are used as a garnish. They are considered one of the best red currant tomatoes.

T

Tangerine

With a distinct tangerine shape, the indeterminate tomatoes have a tart-citrus flavor. The fruits grow up to 7 ounces.

Tasty Evergreen

The tomatoes have a green color. The indeterminate tomatoes are very sweet.

Taxi

The determinate yellow-orange tomatoes are suitable for hot and humid regions. They are good for slicing and sandwiches.

Thessaloniki

The Greek indeterminate tomatoes have medium acidity. They resist cracking and high temperatures.

Tigerella

With a distinct look with yellow stripes, the tomatoes measure up to 2 inches. They have a tangy-tart taste.

Ten Fingers of Naples

The red determinate tomatoes have an Italian elongated shape. They have a rich flavor and they can be used for canning.

Tiny Tim

With only 45 days needed to reach maturity, the determinate tomatoes were developed by the University of New Hampshire.

Tondino di Manduria

The semi-determinate tomatoes originate from Southern Italy. They are suitable for dryer regions.

Tommy Toe

Being indeterminate, the cherry tomatoes are considered to be very productive. The plants are very vigorous.

Trophy

These round tomatoes can grow up to 7 ounces. The indeterminate tomatoes are used for slicing as a result.

Traveler

Originating from Arkansas, the indeterminate tomatoes come with regular leaves.

Trip-L-Crop

The meaty indeterminate vines grow up to 25 feet. The fruits are used for slicing and canning.

Tomaccio

The round indeterminate tomatoes come with a distinct red color. They were developed in Israel.

Trucker’s Favorite Pink

The 3” pink tomatoes are known for their strong flavor. The indeterminate tomatoes have good blight resistance.

U

Ukrainian Purple

The indeterminate tomatoes are resistant to cracking. They might also be available under the name of Purple Russian.

V

Variegated

With fruits growing all season, the indeterminate tomatoes have variegated coloration. The tomato fruits can reach a size of 2 inches in diameter.

Velvet Red

These tomatoes are easy to recognize with due to the silvery-grey foliage. The indeterminate tomatoes can grow up to an inch.

Viktorina

The determinate tomatoes have a pink color. They take 68 days to mature.

Vintage Vine

With a pale-pink color, the indeterminate tomatoes have a sweet taste. They can be served fresh.

W

Watermelon Beefsteak

The indeterminate vines grow in heavy crops. The meat of the fruit is purple-red, similar to the flesh of a watermelon.

Wapsipinicon Peach

As most Peach tomatoes, Wapsipinicons have a fuzzy skin texture. These indeterminate tomatoes can be recognized due to their distinct yellow color.

White Cherry

These indeterminate tomatoes mature early. Their color is pale yellow to ivory.

White Tomesol

With a distinct color combination of pale yellow and pink, the indeterminate tomatoes have a sweet flavor.

White Wonder

With high sugar content, the indeterminate vines are white when fully ripe. Fruits weigh up to 4 ounces each.

Window Box

The oval 3-ounce red fruits are planted in the fall. The determinate vines grow oval tomatoes.

Whittemore

With deep ribbings, these indeterminate tomatoes grow fruits of up to 2 pounds.

Wisconsin 55

With a distinct bright red color, the indeterminate tomatoes are seen on rich soils. They are used for canning.

Wisconsin Chief

Developed by the University of Wisconsin, the semi-determinate tomatoes are good for all purposes. They are not as red as Wisconsin 55.

Y

Yellow Pear

The indeterminate tomatoes come with a lemony-yellow color. With smaller seed cavities and lower acidity, they are used in salads and sandwiches.

42 Days

The openly-pollinated determinate tomatoes come with a plant size of up to 2 feet. The fruits have very few seeds.

Want to learn more about heirloom tomatoes?

See these helpful resources:

Heirloom Tomato & Goat Cheese Napoleon

Serves 6

Ingredients
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
4 ounces soft, fresh goat cheese
2 tablespoons cream (or half and half)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon leaves
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil leaves
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons tomato jam (or apricot or other light colored jam)
1-1/2 pounds heirloom or vine-ripened tomatoes, cored and sliced 1/3-inch thick

Method
1. Heat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with a Silpat or parchment paper.

2. Unfold puff pastry on a lightly floured surface. Cut along the fold lines into three strips. Place on baking sheet and bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool slightly. Cut in half with a serrated knife, creating a top and bottom.

3. Stir the cream, herbs and pepper into the goat cheese.

4. Spread the goat cheese on the top and bottom of two of the puff pastries. (The third top and bottom will become the middle layer of the other two.)

5. Spread the middle layer with the jam (just 1 side of each, it doesn’t matter if you do the inside or the outside.)

6. Layer 1/4 of the sliced tomatoes on each of the two bottom halves with the goat cheese. Top each with the jam smeared layer. Layer with the remaining tomatoes and place the tops on. Cut into thirds, crosswise, to create six pieces and serve.

What it is like to live in a truly free society. No it’s not the USA, and no it’s not China either.

It’s actually Albania.

Life is better in a third world “shit hole” than in the fabled land of the free and home of the brave… 

-stevennonemaker88

I argue that America has become a totalitarian, oligarchy-run, military empire, that pretends to be a “democracy”.

Meanwhile, China has become a traditionalist, merit-driven, single-party, socialist republic.

Both nations have their benefits and liabilities. But the bottom line is always a simple one. How “free” do the people feel who live inside these nations?

Let’s look at the often overlooked nation of Albania, and see what kinds of “freedoms” that they enjoy.

Where it is located…

What it’s geography is like…

Physical map of Albania, shaded relief outside.
Here's a reprint of an article from UNZ, it's titled "The Freest and Most Open Country". It's written by  • April 28, 2021. All credit to the author, and please note that it was formatted to fit this venue.

The Freest and Most Open Country

People don’t have to pay extortionate taxes, or interest rates, to cater for their basic needs such as housing, farmland ownership, education or health. People earn little, but their relative purchasing power is higher and their lives certainly more secure and pleasant than ours in the West. 

-Iris
Girl walking past a billboard in Albania.

Is Albania, believe it or not, for here, you can walk around, sit inside cafes, bars or restaurants, worship at a packed church or mosque, and travel by crowded buses between cities, etc.

Though you’re supposed to wear a mask in public, most folks do so with their nose sticking out, because it’s hard to breathe otherwise, and unhealthy, too. That’s good enough for the easy-going cops.

All these people can enter Albania without a visa, vaccine passport or even a negative Covid test, and stay up to a year: European Union citizens, North Americans, most South and Central Americans, Turks, Kuwaitis, Israelis, Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, South Koreans, Malaysians, Singaporeans, Australians and New Zealanders, plus a few more.

After decades of Communist isolation, Albanians are happy to reclaim their Western heritage. A bookcase is painted on a downtown high-rise. Among the authors featured are Homer, Aeschylus, Cervantes, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekov, Twains, Dickens, Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert, Kafka and the Brothers Grim. Albanian giants such as Kadare, Agolli, Fishta, Arapi and Poradeci are also honored. Unlike elsewhere, the Western canon is not assailed or canceled, but upheld and extolled.

Sidewalk book vendors are common, so Albanians are obviously reading, and not just junk either. I’ve seen volumes by Camus, Dostoevsky, Orwell and Hitler, etc. Albanian minds can still stay open.

Old man’s bar in Albania.

In an old man’s bar with plenty of character, there are five wine bottles with labels showing a portrait of Mussolini, JFK, Lenin, Hitler or Stalin. Sharing the same shelf are skull and penis shaped liquor containers, and a laughing buddha.

In a more Jew-screwed nation, this goofy display would undoubtedly trigger complaints, protests and maybe even a riot that burns up half the street, if not much of downtown. Luckily, I’m in Albania.

There’s a Frederic Chopin monument here. Born in Poland, Chopin spent nearly all of his adulthood in France, and had nothing to do with Albania. As an important cultural figure, however, and not just in the West, but globally, why shouldn’t Chopin be celebrated in Tirana?

Those who reject even the best of their heritage are lobotomizing themselves. Go for it!

In my building, I’m friendly with a man roughly my age. Introducing himself, he said, “Just remember me as the guy with the hat,” and sure enough, he always wears the same baseball cap.

Like many Albanians, he has emigrated, but returned after only a few years in Greece. Vaguely dreaming of America, he entered the immigration lottery, and actually won, but by then, he has changed his mind.

“I have a cousin in Illinois,” he said. “He told me Albania is better.”

“I agree,” I laughed.

“Really? I should tell people you said that.”

“In every American city, there are homeless people all over. If you go to San Francisco, for example, you’ll see homeless people all around City Hall, right in the center! Many of them have gone crazy. Many are on drugs. They shit in the streets!”

“Hmmm.”

“There are almost no homeless in Tirana.”

“We have family. We take care of each other.”

“There are beggars here, but not too many.”

“Most of them are Gypsies.”

“Is your cousin in Chicago?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe just Illinois. Every year, he comes to Albania and stays for six months. He wants to retire here.”

“Does he have children?”

“Three. Two boys, one girl. They are big.”

“Have they been back here?”

“No, they work, all the time. They have good jobs, but they can’t get married,” he chuckled.

Near us, there were half a dozen boys playing. Hearing English, they decided to join in, but their vocabulary was limited to just “hello!” and “hi!”

Walking down a side street, I heard “hello” repeatedly, but there was no one in front or behind me. Perplexed, I finally looked up to see two small boys inside a sixth-floor window. “Hello! Hello!” I returned their greetings, waves and smiles.

My North Macedonian friend, Alex, has a peculiar habit. As we wandered through the back streets of rarely visited towns like Veles and Shtip, little kids would sometimes get very excited to see me, so Alex had to answer their questions. When they asked Alex where he was from, however, he’d also say, “Америка!”

“Why did you say that?” I asked.

“It’s more exciting for them! If I told them I was North Macedonian, they’d think, Who cares? Now, they can go home and brag about seeing two Americans today!”

Inside a Chinese restaurant in Albania.

Though Albania is wide open, there are very few tourists here. In 2 ½ months, I’ve only seen eight Orientals on the streets, plus two Chinese cooks inside restaurants. I’ve chanced upon American English maybe ten times, but Italian just twice. Once, I ran into a group of Turks. I’ve never gone this long without seeing a single black.

It has been raining too much, but with more reliable sunshine, visitors will come. Ali, a taxi driver, certainly hopes so.

Impulsively one morning, I paid Ali $24 to take me to Durres, 24 miles away. It’s a pretty good deal, and Ali could surely use my business. Too often, I see him just standing around near the Swiss Embassy, his usual spot. This also gave us a chance to chatter.

Like the man with the hat, Ali has also gone abroad. He spent six years in Australia.

“Wow! How did you get a visa for that?”

“I paid,” meaning to the right people.

After sweating his ass off at various menial jobs, and saving almost nothing, Ali returned to Tirana, his hometown.

Here, Ali got a job driving trucks, then buses, before becoming a cabbie 15 years ago. Until the Covid mess, everything was going fine.

Ali also got married then, so his son is almost 14, and his daughter, 10. He showed me their photos.

“Nice kids! Are they good students?”

“No,” Ali laughed.

As his name indicates, Ali is Muslim, but only nominally.

“It’s Ramadan,” I noted, “but all the restaurants are busy. Nobody is fasting!”

“Some people are. My kids are fasting. I’m not.”

“They’re better Muslims than you are!”

Ali just shrugged.

After the collapse of Communism in 1991, thousands of Albanian boat people fled to Italy from Durres. This ugly, chaotic exodus lasted until the end of that decade.

Now, Durres is a very pleasant city with an elegant seaside promenade. Before Covid, ferries departed often for Bari, Ancona and even Trieste (where James Joyce spent nearly a decade). Soon, buses will resume their daily routes to Athens.

Normal family life in Albania with children on swing-sets, and normal shops in the background.

Basking in sea breeze-tempered sunshine, I watched parents pushing strollers, a stern boy bouncing a ball and three tots on swings. Busking, a beer bellied, middle-aged man tooted his clarinet. A stand briskly sold “Petulla te Gjyshi” [“Grandpa’s Fried Dough”].

As you’re tucked into your novel nightmare, Albanians have quite impressively exited theirs. How bad was it?

An escapee risked being shot or jailed for years, and if he manages to get out, a family member would be arrested instead. For trying to flee, poet Uran Kostreci was locked up for two decades.

Just getting into Albania was very difficult. Defining the border as “a checkpoint against foreign ideology,” Enver Hoxha declared that “The People’s Republic of Albania is closed to enemies, spies, hippie tourists and other vagabonds.”

First of, Albania was not a republic, much less a “people’s republic,” and there’s no ideology more foreign to Albania than Jewish Marxism, in any permutation. A fanatical us-against-them mindset is the Jewish core. A dictator, Hoxha ruled Albania for 40 years, until his death.

Of the hundreds of Hoxha statues that once dotted this poor land, only one remains that’s not damaged. A ten-foot bronze, it lies in the basement of the former museum in Labinot, a Communist stronghold.

In 1975, the Albanian government posted this guideline:

  1. The border authorities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs do not allow the entrance into the People’s Republic of Albania of all those foreigners who, with their appearance go against the norms of the socialist aesthetics, such as men with long hair like women, with exaggerated sideburns, with irregular beards and with inappropriate clothing, and women with mini and maxi skirts.
  2. Persons with extravagant clothing and irregular appearance […] may enter into the People’s Republic of Albania only if they choose to be adjusted (to cut their hair, to dress normally) […]

To facilitate such adjustments, a barbershop and a store with socialist-approved clothing were available at Albanian borders.

Even eight years ago, Albania was still a wreck, apparently, at least according to an unsolicited account I just received.

Reading about me being sick in Tirana, a reader emailed to say that he had come here in 2013, to be somewhere “as ugly as [he] felt”!

An American living in France, he had spent a year in “herpes hell,” which he had gotten from “an attractive empty vessel who worked in the Paris fashion scene.”

Bald, loveless, with “a ruined penis” and nearly broke, he thought about killing himself, then “had a better idea”:

I would identify the most miserable country on Earth and I would go there. Anything but suicide. I wanted to be somewhere as ugly as I felt. I wanted to see bleak, closed, hard faces. I wanted to see mute wifebeaters and battered women caked in whore makeup. So I went to Albania. I wandered around Tirana with sores on my dick for a few days, considering suicide. One day I found this weird field next to the train station, just a big garbage-strewn negative space at the heart of the city. There were fetid ponds, plastic bags everywhere, and little paths through the half-dead grass. An old Balkan crone squatted next to one of the paths with a few carrots and onions spread out on a scarf in front of her. Men in tracksuits with brutal pimp faces came and went. I went to the center of the field, squatted down, and dug through the trash a little. I found a broken teacup, an old domino, and a playing card. It was Christmas Day. I felt like I was at the negative center of the universe. Here I was, at ground zero of our ruined Jew world with pus coming out of sores on my dick surrounded by the most ugly and corrupted goyim on Earth, the despised and despicable Albanian race. 

That’s some beautiful writing about an ugly situation. Today’s Tirana, though, is nothing like that.

Albanian kiosk.

Though many of the buildings are drab, each Tirana street is lively with cafes, bars, restaurants and shops, and the people are very pleasant, mellow and lovely.

Most are slim and not misshapen. Children are well behaved and not agitated. Young men don’t sneer or bluster. Many women are confidently beautiful. The old are dignified.

Though Albania is one of Europe’s poorest countries, with an extremely high emigration rate, its social fabric is more intact than in more advanced nations. Its great men are justly revered. It’s also freer and more open, and as safe as any, with no mugging or riot around any corner.

Unlike in Philadelphia, I don’t wake up each morning to news of another murder or two. There were 499 in the City of Brotherly Love in 2020!

The United States will never catch up to Albania.

This is most interesting. Albania always seemed like a pit of drabness, repression, and despair during the Cold War. Not that I actually read anything about it, of course. Now here it is quite relaxed about life while the US slips ever deeper into unreason, minority hatred of whites, wars that are beyond stupid, open borders, multicultural delusion, corrupt courts, a lunatic legislature, contemptible corporate whores, a rotten FBI, a worthless press, malevolent central bank, Jewish control, feminist malevolence, and leftist thuggery. Did I leave anything out? 

-Ace

Conclusion

It is difficult for Americans to understand, and grasp this fact, but most of the world outside the United States is MUCH freer.

This is a fair and philosophical point, which contains a much large-ranging truth:

– Traditional societies favour the collective and protect the weakest among them but at the expense of some of the individuals’ freedoms. This is why there are less junkies and homeless in the streets of poorer countries, as they remain within the family fold, but individuals sometimes feel suffocated by social pressure.

– Modern Western societies, especially with the ascent of Anglo-Saxon “liberal” values, purport to favour the individual and individual freedoms. This should normally give great opportunities to the brightest and smartest to achieve and accomplish their professional and economic potential, at the expense of the less gifted who are let down. This is how it was supposed to work anyway, and maybe it did work like that up to the 80’s or 90’s.

But since globalisation took off, the individualist dream hyped in the West has remained just a dream. No matter how hard one works, it is obvious that the middle classes are disappearing to the benefit of an ever-more powerful plutocracy.

So Western working people are actually only getting the anxiety and precarity, without the economic security, the worst of two worlds. I can very well understand why the Albanians described by Mr Dinh have returned to Albania after initially emigrating to the West.

-Iris

Americans have 24-7 narratives about “American Exceptionalism” rammed into their mushy brains for decades. So much so that they believe it. And then, coupled with the non-stop fear-mongering about the rest of the world being a very dark and gloomy place, it’s  no wonder that Americans hide inside their homes and huddle in front of the flickering blue monitors for their entertainment.

Freedom is not a nice road, a fancy mall, a impressive government building, or being able to own guns. It’s nothing of the sort.

A large proportion of Americans today, think freedom is the right shop at Walmart, eat at Burger King and to get a quick Covid shot. How things have changed 

-Joe Paluka

Freedom is the ability to live your life, as you see fit, without interference by anyone for any reason.

Freedom

  • Never having to report any income, or financial information to the government.
  • Never having to ask your government for permission to do something.
  • Being allowed to eat, smoke, ingest anything your want to your own body.
  • Never worrying about the police.
  • Being able to redress your grievances with the government locally and get results in a timely manner.

Not Freedom

  • Asking permission to buy bullets, and then once granted, having to pay taxes on them, and enter onto a watch list.
  • Being forced to buy something simply because you are a citizen.
  • Having your ability to leave the nation prevented and subject to a tax audit.
  • Your taxes are used for other things that do not directly impact your quality of life.

When I say that my life in China is far freer than what it was in the United States, it’s not hyperbole. It’s truth. It’s on a very personal, and direct, visceral level.

And I have experiences that back this up. So it’s non-debatable.

People, if you are miserable with your life…

…instead of blaming yourselves, maybe you need to start looking at where you are living and what you put up with. Most Americans will discover an exceptional amount of personal freedom the moment they step outside the monstrous United States Military Empire.

And that’s a fact Jack.

The best case in point would be in New York City. 

Take the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy, for instance. Aside from the fact that the policy has proven to be vehemently racist, what kind of free society allows their police officers to search people without just cause?

Imagine casually walking home from work only to have a police officer stop you, ask for ID, question you and frisk you. All you’re guilty of is walking home. How is this any different than the Gestapo asking you to see your papers?

-The rise of the American Police State

You all won’t see that anywhere else in the world.

Only in America.

America is more and more like a contagious disease. It would be fine if the US contained their toxic culture and influence to their own border and left the rest of the world alone. But no… They want to make the whole world like them. Enough. 

-Dumbo

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my Escape! Index here…

Escape!

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How a Chinese Business KTV Works – The Dinner

This is a very detailed discussion on how a Business KTV works in China. This is a pretty large multi-part post. It was originally posted HERE, but it soon became problematic as the videos would not load and the SEO flags weren’t being picked up by the search engines. So I broke it down into smaller bite-sized posts. It’s faster to load, easier to read, and you can see all the videos without problem. Enjoy.

This is part 3 of 17.

Please kindly note that this post has multiple embedded videos. It is important to view them. If they fail to load, all you need to do is to reload your browser.

Dinner

Let’s talk about the Chinese business dinner.

You will most likely NOT eat Western food. If they offer it to you, decline. You are in China. You want to make their face as big as possible. Suggest their local delicacy, or a restaurant that cooks the same kind of meals that their home town makes. Let the factory boss select the restaurant.

Keep in mind that Chinese food is really different. Far different from any kind of “Chinese food” that you might find in the United States, for instance.

Most Chinese people don’t even know what chop suey actually is. There is nothing even remotely resembling it in China.

Since Chinese food first began being served in the USA in the 19th century, it has had generations to evolve and suit US tastes, so much so that it’s completely disconnected to traditional dishes served in China, both now and then. What Americans eat in the USA, the stuff we call “Chinese food” is wildly different from anything that you can obtain in China.

You know, most Chinese people wouldn’t recognize a plate of sticky orange chicken if it was splattered in their face. Not only the dishes, but how they are prepared, and the dish and plate sizes are all very, very different from what you would find in the States. Not to mention the “fortune cookies”.

Now, typically, the driver will either take you back to the factory where you will meet the others for the dinner, or you will drive directly to the restaurant.

In almost all cases, there will be a private room reserved in the restaurant. This is a private dining room. It will typically have a nice bathroom, a set of sofa’s and comfortable chairs, a television, and a huge circular table.

Chinese private room
Most private rooms in China look a little something like this. They consist of a large central table and comfortable furnishings.

You, as the boss will be led to the room, and offered the “boss seat”. This is a chair that faces the door. You sit down, and everyone else arranges themselves around the table. The seating arrangement is hierarchical, with the various ranks of the individuals placed strategically around the table. The driver of the car(s) will also attend the meal, though they will typically be silent and not participate into any of the discussions.

You will be offered some cigarettes, just like at the factory. As the boss it is your responsibly to accept the cigarettes, or else you will lose face. Oh, yeah, it’s not healthy and all that second-hand smoke nonsense. Well, if you are doing business in China, you will need to adopt local customs. You do not want to lose face.  You accept the cigarette. You take a drag. You hold it in. Tilt you head back, and stare up at the ceiling and then exhale the smoke slowly.

via GIPHY

You need to adapt to Chinese culture. Do not lose the face of the boss. Else they might serve you dog’s head or something equally disgusting as a way to just see how low you can go.

Don’t test them.

Out of politeness, you will be offered a menu and you can select what to eat. As I typically live in the Guangzhou region, I will choose Guangzhou style food. This is easy to do, as the menu consists of full-color glossy photos of delicious food. Guangzhou food is typically steamed lightly. It is very fresh and very tasty. Now, if you were in Hunan or Sichuan, the food would be very spicy and delicious. That’s a good thing too.

Anyways, as a general rule, you order two dishes more than the number of people at the table. So, if there were six people around the table, including yourself, you would order eight dishes. (Oh, yes, everyone shares the dishes. This is quite different from the West where everyone gets their own meal.)

Being in Guangzhou, you order one thing that walks (pig, beef, mutton), one thing that flies (chicken, duck, goose), and one thing that swims (fish or seafood like shrimp). If there is a near certainty that you will go to a business KTV and you might have an all-night companion, you should make sure to order a nice large plate of oysters. Just make sure that they are fresh. Otherwise, watch out!

In general, once the three main dishes are ordered, I usually like to order vegetables, tofu, and assorted other dishes such as braised pig fat, flat bread, and maybe jellyfish. Let the other (hosting) people make suggestions and nod your head in violent agreement with their selections.

The waitress, or room manager will ask what you want and take your order. You, with your aide, will select the pictures and work out the details. While the picture might say a thousand words, there is typically a discussion of lively banter on what kind of fish, how to cook it, what spices to use, etc. Let them work out the issues.

Then, some condiments will be placed on the table. These might include peanuts infused in vinegar and spices (a personal favorite), some long white bars, that are actually pickled carrots (I love the things.), and some chicken feet. Try them all. It’s all good.

The Food

I have another post that covers the many different types of food that is available in China. For China is THE place to eat, and eat well. Of course, the ill-informed, and the media-manipulated sheeple will retort that Chinese food is terrible that they “milk rats” and eat dogs and cats. But this is just simply manipulative propaganda to keep Americans living in ignorance and fear. They take something truly rare and unique and blow it all out of proportion.

Don’t be like the ill-informed ignorant masses. There’s no need to be. If Chinese food is so bad, then why do Chinese men live an average of 15 years longer than American men? Think people, think.

Eat, for goodness sakes! Enjoy the food. Savor it. And thank the host for their very fine taste in delicious wonderful food.

Spicy Food

Oh, and one more thing, “spicy” in Chinese is “Ma” and “La”. There are, in other words, two families of spicy dishes. Both of which are way… way… out of the league of Americans. Trust me, if you think that you can handle Chinese spicy food, then ask for “zhong la” (medium spicy). What ever you do, don’t ask for “da ma la”, else your ass will be burning for a week.

There are two regional culinary areas of spicy food. They are Hunan, and Sichuan. Hunan food is cooked with a ton of hot chili peppers. It is very delicious and super flavorful, but yao oh yao! Sichuan is also tasty. They use both the Ma pepper corn seeds and the chili peppers. So delicious, and so you need to be careful in how you eat and how much you eat.

Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.

The Table

Of course, as mentioned previously, you will have your own private eating room. It will have a television, some sofas, and a large (well adorned) central table. It will probably be covered in a fresh white table cloth. In the central will be a large glass circular rotating table (a lazy Susan) where the dishes will be placed. As customary in China, you might have a box of disposable tissues or a full-on linen napkin.

You, as the guest, would sit at the head of the table. You [1] would face the door with the table between you and the door. The host would be to your right [2]. Your aides would be to your left [3]. It would sort of look a little like this…

Chinese seating arrangement.
Typical formal seating arrangment for a circular table where the host would entertain a business client. The client [1] would sit with his aides [3], in such as way that the boss [2] can easily communicate with all of them.

There will be some differences in the way the food is eaten. It goes far beyond using “chopsticks” (quaizi) instead of a knife, fork and spoon. For starters, the meals are communal. They are shared meals. This differs from the West where every gets their own individual plate. Here are some of the major differences…

  • Chinese usually eat communally and share their dishes with others. Westerners usually enjoy individual servings.
  • Chinese cooks chop everything into bite size pieces, thus people don’t need knives to cut it, and just pick up their food with chopsticks. Westerners cook food in big pieces and serve it with knives and forks for cutting it up.
  • Chinese usually don’t remove bones, and just cut them and the meat into pieces. They cook fish whole. Westerners usually eat filleted fish, and meat with whole bones, or no bones. This took me a long time to get used to. Be careful when eating, and if you eat fish, try to eat fish out of the ocean. The bones are larger and easier to remove. River and pond fish have billions of tiny, tiny bones. My wife chews it all up and spits the bones out like a sub-machine gun. Me, I have a real difficult time.
  • Chinese always cook vegetables — frying, stewing, boiling, and steaming — sometimes with soy sauce, ginger, and garlic. Western salads, or just boiling vegetables in water, are virtually unknown in China. Even at home, when the wife makes me a salad, she cooks the lettuce for thirty seconds or so.
  • Ingredients: Chinese cuisine uses many ingredients rarely seen in Western cuisine, like winter melons and yams, tree fungi and lotus pods, frogs and dogs, feet, tongues, ears, and all manner of internal organs, etc.
  • Using spices: Chinese cooks like to add fresh/dried spices when cooking, like ginger, spring onion, mint, pepper, garlic, chilies, etc. Western cooks usually use processed spices like pepper powder, ketchup, etc.
  • Seasoning bottles: You usually won’t find any salt, pepper, tomato sauce, or mustard on the table in a Chinese restaurant. But if you have breakfast at a dumpling and steamed bun shop, you can enhance the flavor with soy sauce or vinegar from a bottle poured into a dipping dish.
  • Desserts: Sweet desserts are served after Western dinners, while Chinese have fresh fruit or tea for dessert. The most common is watermelon. I always love the end of the dinner watermelon. It’s almost always cut up in little pie-slice shapes.
  • Round tables vs. square tables: Chinese traditionally eat at round tables, particularly family meals, as it’s convenient to share dishes with others, especially with a lazy Suzy. Roundness symbolizes unity in China. Westerners eat at square tables, which is more convenient for individual meals, with long tables for bigger groups.
  • Cooking methods: Where Westerners limit themselves to boiling, frying, roasting, and baking usually, Chinese use more methods of cooking, like steaming, stewing, sautéing, braising, and quick-frying with a wok. Chinese usually use animal/peanut oil to fry food; Westerners use more butter, sunflower oil, and olive oil.

Some things I am so used to that I don’t even think about it. But the reader should note. Rice is served separately. Every person will get a bowl of rice. You eat your food over the rice and consume the rice with your bite-sized nuggets.

It is just fine and dandy to spit out bones, grizzle and other things you don’t like. You can use the plate (provided) or on the tablecloth next to the plate.

Oh Yes, before I forget… Smoking

It is very common to smoke all over China. It is rare to visit an establishment with a non-smoking sign. Usually, they will be Western restaurants such as Starbucks, McDonalds and KFC. It is VERY RUDE to tell anyone not to smoke. If you do so, you will be looked up with extreme disfavor.

If you don’t like how other people live their lives, then stay in your home nation. What ever you do, don’t be the “ugly American” and try to force your norms of behavior on others.

"Ugly American" is a pejorative term used to refer to perceptions of loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, and ethnocentric behavior of American citizens mainly abroad, but also at home. Although the term is usually associated with or applied to travelers and tourists, it also applies to U.S. corporate businesses in the international arena.

If you are dining as part of a business trip, and you are offered a cigarette or cigar, how to accept will establish the pace at which you may or may not be accepted. To decline would be a terrible move. Oh, yeah. They will take your money for sure.

Just watch what happens when things don’t go well.

Tips

No one tips in China. You are not expected to. In fact, as the guest of honor, you will be treated with extra special care. Anything you need would be provided for you. All you need to do is ask.

Toothpicks

The Chinese use toothpicks just like they used to be in the United States (before the Bill Clinton Presidency). You will find either a toothpick container on the table or some individually wrapped toothpicks for your use. Go ahead and use them. When using them you cover your mouth with one hand while you pick at your teeth. That is the Asian technique that is common throughout Asia.

Drinking

As mentioned previously, you would be drinking hard alcohol during dinner. This would typically be “white wine”, “red wine” or Whiskey. If you drink Whiskey, XO, or VSOP it will (typically) be mixed with green tea with ice. Green tea is actually unsweetened green tea that is mass produced and dispensed in bottle much like soda is in the States.

By the time dinner is over, all of the hard booze will be gone. Thus, when you go to the KTV you will start a while new round of drinking. Often, this is simply beer or, maybe some more VSOP. You need to be able to control and monitor your drinking. Remember…

This is work. While that are pleasurable aspects to these fun games, it is serious business and you do need to have your wits about you.

Sometimes…

Sometimes you might have the dinner in the same building as the business KTV. This will be a one-place-does-it-all environment. You would be welcomed on the first floor and maybe go to the third floor for dinner. Then to the KTV on the 6th floor and then to the hotel rooms on the 11 or 12th floors.

In this case, there might be groups of gals led into your dining room. Then they might wear their costumes and share a bottle of wine or two with you and your associates. This is a nice light time and lets you get into the spirit of the night. It would be along the lines of this…

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