The slow slide to destiny

International relations can be likened to a game of 3D chess. 

In this great game Putin, in the finest Russian tradition, or like Mr. Spock in Star Trek, is a grand master. 

I don’t believe the chess players in the U.S. State Department, such as Victoria Nuland (wife of the Robert Kagan mentioned above) and the other neocons who are at the helm, are quite at Putin’s level, but they had the great advantage of being able to make a series of aggressive moves (e.g., the series of NATO expansions and the 2014 Ukraine coup) before Putin was able (i.e., was strong enough) to make a counterplay in response. 

By comparison, the general run of media journalists, commentators and even supposed analysts are tiddlywinks players. 

-UNZ "Russia is back"

Ok, the peak of the event sequences for this phase of “bumpiness” has passed. We are an a momentary adjustment period. See? It wasn’t all that bad. just your fears screeching towards you, eh? Well, you will be fine. Just stay calm.

Let’s go this array of odds and ends at this particular point in time.

Spaceballs – They’ve gone into plaid

We start with a funny clip of a parody of Star Wars known as “Spaceballs”. It’s a Mel Brooks classic. I hope to remind everyone not to get too serious. It’s really cramping our happiness, don’t you know.

Cool find

2022 04 13 19 46
2022 04 13 19 46

US aircraft carrier & strike group to enter East Sea as ‘show of force’

North Korean news agency Yonhap quoted on Monday sources as saying that US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln will access the international waters of the East Sea this week as a "show of force" movement to fend off any possible North Korean provocations. 

 The aircraft carrier along with a strike group will stay in the sea for about 5 days, Yonhap reported, adding that it will be the first incident of its kind since November 2017.  

The news agency quoted the spokesman for US Forces Korea, Lee Peters, as saying that "as a matter of operational security," he refuses to comment on the matter.
2022 04 12 21 24
2022 04 12 21 24
Article

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A strange find

1644842972 e46hz4jday
1644842972 e46hz4jday

Now for something funny…

Father of 5-year-old pterodactyl: It’s not easy to get species-affirming care in America

Don't be too serious, folks -MM

Local man and father of a 5-year-old trans pterodactyl Bradley Mingastank is struggling to find the medical care his young dinosaur son needs, as it is very difficult to find species-affirming care in the United States.

2022 04 12 21 35
2022 04 12 21 35

“Seriously, it’s 2022, and we still haven’t figured out how to provide adequate medical care to children who think they’re extinct flying lizards,” said Mingastank. “I do my best to raise my son Madison as a pterodactyl per his wishes, which is important for his self-esteem. I only communicate to him in ear-piercing dinosaur screeches, I feed him small rodents and fish, and every once in a while I push him off the roof of the garage so he can try flying. But no other doctors seem to be willing to help him get the ultraviolet heat lamps and lizard medicine his pterodactyl body desperately needs.”

According to sources within the family, Madison first discovered his true pterodactyl identity when he put on a Halloween costume and then refused to take it off. It was then his parents knew he was a dinosaur trapped in a human child’s body.

“According to science, If someone thinks they are something, then they are automatically that thing, and the whole world must pretend they are that thing or they’ll die. That’s just proven science,” said Mingastank as he called a veterinarian to set up an appointment for his son.

UPDATE: Madison has changed his mind and has decided he is now a sea lion. His parents are currently looking for a giant aquarium to keep him in.

Dracula meets Lucy Westenra – “Dracula: Dead and Loving It”

One of my favorite scenes. Funny but sensual. I really like those old 1960s style vampires and their attractive female companions.

How To Make 1950’s good wife’s guide

I found this. It's really very dated. I found it interesting, but I do not recommend that anyone follow the guidelines. Never the less, I do think that this is good advice for either mean or women in regards to talking to strangers, friends, or family.

Don't shoot the messenger. -MM
  • Food – Dinner

    Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have be thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they get home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.
  • Prep

    Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you'll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.
  • Be interesting and happy

    Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.
  • No clutter

    Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. Run a dustcloth over the tables.
  • Fire

    During the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering to his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.
  • Peace and quiet

    Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Encourage the children to be quiet.
  • Welcoming

    Be happy to see him.
  • Smile

    Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.
  • Listen

    Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first - remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.
  • Be positive

    Don't greet him with complaints and problems.
  • No complaining

    Don't complain if he's late for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through at work.
  • Comfort

    Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or lie him down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.
  • Shoes and pillow

    Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.
  • No questions

    Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.
    Yes, it’s dated advice.
    .
    But if you look at it closely, just about all of the advice pertains to cats and their “owners”.
    .
    And you know, both of my grandparents were happy folk and had functioning families. Perhaps they knew something that we have forgotten over the years.

A very strange find

1644842968 77wxuhdy3j
1644842968 77wxuhdy3j

Reports: Chemical Weapons Dropped in Mariupol (False Flag???)

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Numerous reports are coming in claiming an unmanned aerial vehicle dropped some type of chemical or nerve agent against a target in Mariupol, Ukraine, killing several and injuring 100’s.

We have no OFFICIAL confirmation, but the reports are flooding-in anyway.

This could be the exact, precise, FALSE FLAG that the USA and NATO have been “warning” the Russians “might use” which could spark a formal NATO military response into Ukraine.

It was back on March 24 that NATO publicly stated a Chemical attack would prompt their intervention (Story HERE)

The headline to that story looked like this:

2022 04 12 21 54
2022 04 12 21 54

More info as it becomes available.   Check back.

UPDATE 4:59 PM EDT —

One (a single, isolated report) claims the following:

"Russian forces used a poisonous substance of unknown origin against Ukrainian military & civilians in the city of Mariupol, which was dropped from an UAV. The victims have respiratory failure and vestibulo-atactic syndrome."

Now, there are real problems with this report.

1) It does not say WHERE in Mariupol the attack allegedly took place.

The _only_ major fight zone where any type of chemical weapon would prove useful, is at Asovstal Steel Mill, where thousands of AZOV nazis are scattered through vast catacombs beneath the sprawling plant.  It is in these catacombs, where a reported Biolab exists, consisting of allegedly 8 full floors deep, all beneath the plant, and initial rumors (not confirmed) claim this lab was working on genetic-specific bioweapons in violation of treaties.

2) The decision to FLOOD those underground catacombs by using fire trucks to pump water into the air shafts, to force out the Nazis, was already publicly reported (Story HERE)

Thus, it makes no sense at all to turn around and use a chemical weapon or nerve agent against the very target they intend to flood-out.

3) NATO has been itching for an excuse to enter the war inside Ukraine, and has, on more than one occasion, said the use of chemical weapons would meet that excuse.

Interesting timing now that a Biolab has been proved to be under that steel mill, and if Russia successfully takes over that Biolab, they will find PROOF that the US and others were working on Biological weapons in violation of Treaties.  Or, worse, that they were working on race-specific bioweapons, designed to wipe out . . .  only . . . . Russians.

4) The report cites “vestibulo-atactic syndrome”

Pathogenesis

In the practice of a neuropathologist, the vestibulo-atactic syndrome is most often observed in patients with cerebral ischemia, when the brain receives insufficient oxygen because of a violation of blood flow.

The pathogenesis of this pathology includes the lack of blood flow in the vertebro-basilar system, which unites the vertebral and central (base) arteries of the brain, the violation of blood circulation in the brain stem structures, as a result of which their energy supply and connections with other parts of the central nervous system (CNS) are disrupted.

Stem brain formations are sensitive to hypoxia (oxygen starvation of systems and organs), which causes a large prevalence of vestibular-ataxic syndrome and also the variety of forms and manifestations of this pathology in cerebral ischemia.

The clinical picture can vary depending on the cause of the disease, age and condition of the patient. For example, in elderly patients, the disruption of the central part of the vestibular analyzer is often combined with the lesion of its peripheral part, which forms a peculiar picture of the pathological disorder.

This pathology – a combination of motor and vestibular disorders due to violations of the general and cerebral circulation. It is quite common, many of its symptoms have been noticed in itself, without giving them much importance. If, when walking, a person begins to feel dizzy, he throws from side to side, coordination of movements is disturbed – this is an occasion to immediately consult a doctor.

What constitutes a vestibulo-atactic syndrome and what are its causes we have figured out. What are the signs and complaints of patients that enable the neurologist to diagnose ataxia?

Ischemic disorders in the work of the brain are dangerous because in the early stages they can simply not be noticed, since the first symptoms that appear can correspond to various disorders of the patient’s health and condition. A person can simply not pay attention to individual cases of malaise. This makes it difficult to timely diagnose and treat diseases that are the companions of the vestibulo-atactic syndrome.

The first signs of the initial stage of the disease are:

  • Frequent dizziness, especially when walking.
  • Flicker and “flies” before the eyes.
  • Nausea and vomiting.
  • Headache.

In later stages, motor disorders appear:

  • Loss of balance.
  • Throwing from side to side.
  • Falls.
  • Involuntary twitching of the eyelid

Hal Turner Analysis / Take-away: 

If NATO officially asserts that chemical weapons WERE used (and that’s a big “if”) and that NATO is entering the war, Russia has already said publicly it will use its nuclear missiles.

UPDATE 5:28 PM EDT —

Kira Rudik, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, confirms recent reports about Mariupol attack: “The unknown substance was sprayed by Russians in Mariupol.  People are suffocating.”

UPDATE 5:42 PM EDT —

The mass-media is starting to “run” with the story of a “Chemical attack” in Mariupol.   They would only be running with it if their government masters told them to.  And Government would only tell them to, if the plan is for NATO to announce they are intervening.   Here, from the London “Mirror” newspaper (Link)

This is getting worse by the hour.

UH OH . . . 5:46 PM EDT — Now NEWSWEEK in the USA is carrying the story . . . . (Link)

5:49 PM EDT — Microsoft Network (MSN) now carrying the story too . . . (Link)

Whatever and whomever is in that lab is worth potentially destroying the world to them.

UPDATE 6:08 PM EDT —

UK'S FOREIGN MINISTER TRUSS TWEETS: REPORTS THAT RUSSIAN FORCES MAY HAVE USED CHEMICAL AGENTS IN AN ATTACK ON THE PEOPLE OF MARIUPOL. ANY USE OF SUCH WEAPONS WOULD BE A CALLOUS ESCALATION IN THIS CONFLICT AND WE WILL HOLD PUTIN AND HIS REGIME TO ACCOUNT.

6:52 PM EDT –

All the latest info TONIGHT at 9:00 PM Eastern (8:00 Central, 7:00 Mountain, 6:00 Pacific, 5:00 Alaska, 4:00 Hawaii) on the Hal Turner Radio Show.  Set a REMINDER in your cell phone!

You can tune-in FREE as follows:

WBCQ Shortwave on Frequencies 7.490 and 6.160 AM

WRMI Shortwave on Frequency 5.950 AM

KYAH – 540 AM, Utah’s Talk Authority

or here on the Internet at this link:  http://stream.halturnerradioshow.com:8000/ (Click LISTEN)

NOTE: This link does not go active until about one hour BEFORE showtime.  During that hour, it streams commercial-free music until the show begins.

FINAL UPDATE —

It turns out that the “reports” of this “Chemical attack” originated from . . . . wait for it . . . . the Azov Battalion which is stuck in the Asovstal Steel Mill, and under siege from Russian forces.   It appears to have been a blatantly fraudulent claim, designed to instigate the entry of NATO into the Ukraine situation.

The claim was repeated and re-circulated by the press and PR machine backing Ukraine.  That’s why reports “flooded-in.”

Here’s the “rub.”   If NATO, which appears to be run by sociopaths and psychotics, CHOOSES to treat this report as legitimate and CHOOSES to enter Ukraine, then it’s war with Russia and the nuclear missile will fly.

None of us knows right now if NATO sociopaths and psychotics will try to put lipstick on this pig of a report, and treat it as legitimate.  Until we know, there is very real danger that this will be the match that ignites world war.

Isn’t the Iraq/Saddam trick with the “chemical weapons” a little out of date?

Or they are hoping that we don’t remember how the fake war started over there?

Well, some of us remember.

A decent thrift store find

thrift shops 19
A thrift shop find.

INTEL: U.S. Delta Forces and U.K. “SAS” Fighting inside Ukraine since February!

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A source in the French intelligence community reportedly informed a Le Figaro reporter last week that elite special forces from the UK and the US have been deployed in Ukraine since the start of hostilities with Russia in late February.

The claim was made public by the newspaper’s senior international journalist Georges Malbrunot on Saturday, the same day that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson paid an unexpected visit to Kiev. Although this information has not been officially confirmed, the British leader was reportedly accompanied by special SAS guards.

SAS units “have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, as did [sic] the American Deltas,” Malbrunot tweeted, citing a French intelligence source. He went on to say that Russia was well aware of the “secret war” waged against its troops by foreign commandos, according to the source. His information was mentioned in Le Figaro’s Ukraine updates.

The French journalist who returned from Ukraine after arriving with volunteer fighters told broadcaster CNews that “Americans are directly “in charge” of the war on the ground.”

The United Kingdom and the United States have been among Kiev’s most ardent military supports. Johnson is said to have personally urged his Ukrainian colleague, Volodymyr Zelensky, to continue fighting Russia until better terms are presented.

It seems that the United States and Europe lost their bet on Ukraine and Zelensky. They will not receive anything for the supplied weapons

Something tells me, dear readers, that, in the end, the Anglo-Saxons will get nothing from Ukraine but losses.

These losses will become the operating costs of the West.

There are several reasons for Western operating losses:

- the current power of the Nazis is illegitimate, even if the state of Ukraine will exist due to the succession of the DPR and LPR;

- it is not a fact that the state of Ukraine will exist after the completion of the special military operation of the Russian Armed Forces;

- to save the Nazi regime in Ukraine, Russia must suffer a military defeat and disappear as a state. This is the "wet" dream of the West, which is not destined to come true. From the word "never".

With a probability of up to 97%, in my opinion, instead of the state of Ukraine, the Southwestern Federal District of Russia may appear on the map.

Variants of names - Little Russia, Malorossia

After the victorious completion, of course, of the special military operation of the Russian Armed Forces on the territory of Ukraine.

All the enslaving "rights" of the West, to the best of my understanding, exist exactly until the moment when, instead of today's illegitimate government, legitimate successors come to govern Ukraine - the DPR and LPR.

That's when the United States and the rest of the West will get a "donut hole", nothing more.

All their costs will become their sunk costs.

Similar to the Nazis, who armed the collaborators, during the war with the USSR.

I don’t remember that in the history of the wars of the West against Russia, the Republic of Ingushetia, the USSR, such issues were resolved somehow differently.

And this will happen after the cleansing of the current Nazi regime in Ukraine.

With a high degree of probability, even shameful for the part of the Russian people living there, the name "Ukraine", invented by the Poles, will cease to exist.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, "soon the fairy tale is told, but the deed is not done soon."

Social processes, in comparison with the life expectancy of people, are slow.

For them, 100-300 years is not a period.

But, to the best of my understanding, this time. all the main events that cleanse the part of the Russian people living there from Nazism (constituting, somewhere, at least 80% of the total population), will occur much faster.

It will work out the social law of three generations, at least there are signs of this.

In addition, dear readers, as far as I know, Ukraine did not find time to register the 1991 treaty borders with the UN.

It directly follows from this that the entire territory of Ukraine was and is, from the point of view of the UN and international law, under the administrative control of Russia, as the legal successor of the USSR.

(The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, inhabited mainly by Russians, having not agreed to become part of Romania, has a similar legal status, similar to that of the DPR and LPR.)

This explains why Russia, in this case, legally, is not at war with another state.

This fact legally confirms that civilians who are not at war with the Russian Armed Forces are OWN for Russia.

Which he confirmed with his order of the Supreme Command of Russia.

Russia, in its own right, conducts a special military operation on the territory that is legally one of the administrative units of Russia.

Yes, a few specific units, but nothing more.

It should also be borne in mind that there can be no war, other than a civil one, between territories under common administrative control.

As well as no annexations, etc., etc.

But, administrative reforms on the territory of Ukraine, in my understanding, can and, perhaps, should be in the future.

Moreover, Russia has the right to carry out administrative and other reforms at its own discretion, and, of course, in its own interest.

On the above basis, there is the only internationally recognized state western border of the USSR with the countries of Eastern Europe.

The rights of Russia, as the successor of the USSR, are registered with the UN.

So, Russia paid the debts of the USSR for all the republics, including for Ukraine, in accordance with international law.

Thus, from the point of view of international law, no one has any grounds for a dispute with Russia about the territorial affiliation of Ukraine.

Author – Gennady Tsybanev

Cool thrift shop find…

thrift shops 34
thrift shops 34

Dr Lexus!

One of the best Scenes. Dr. Lexus! Idiocracy 2006 comedy film, directed by Mike Judge. Starring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph.

British Mercenary “CossackGundi” Surrenders To Russian Forces in Mariupol Ukraine

CossackGundi Merc SurrendersToRussia large
Cossack Gundi Merc SurrendersTo Russia

We have received reports that British “volunteer” Aiden Aslin, better known as “CossackGundi”, and other international “volunteers” in the Ukrainian Marines, have chosen to lay down their arms to Russian forces around Mariupol, Ukraine, after running out of food and ammunition.

A source close to Aiden, who previously served with him in the YPG (Syria) spoke with him by phone and told us “I just spoke with Aiden. His unit is out of food and ammo. They have no other option but to surrender. He said he loves you all.”

He is surrendering to Russians which is only slightly better than surrendering to Chechyns.

He’s upset.  Likely he knows he’s going to spend the rest of his life in some Russian prison.   Worse, for him, is that once Russia tells the world they have him, the country of Syria is likely to issue an arrest warrant for the mercenary role he played in THAT country.   This likely translates to life in prison not only in Russia, but in Syria as well.

Hal Turner Analysis

THIS is what happens to British forces who actually believe the mentally retarded British government.  The people inserted into government positions are such incredible fools, and such blatant liars, they will fabricate just about __any__ story to get people to go do things for them.   And when those things go bad . . . . the government fools who caused it all, are nowhere to be found.

British officials like Liz Truss are unimaginable liars; they deliberately falsify information to the public – and likely in private as well – to cause people to do things that are not in the interests of others.   Those others fight back and whoever volunteers to help the British, gets the consequences.  Just like CossackGundi is getting right now.

Same thing with the Americans.  Look at what they did to Afghans.  Pulled out of Kabul, and simply LEFT all the Afghans who helped them.  Those Afghans – what few were allowed to live — were dealt with by the Taliban.

DO NOT FIGHT FOR THE UK OR FOR THE USA.   If you choose to believe the lies of those government nitwits, liars, and sociopaths, you will likely get what CossackGundi is getting right now.

For what its worth, Ukraine is losing this conflict and is going to lose. Period. Full stop.

Ukraine never had a chance against Russia.  Only an idiot would think otherwise.

Ukraine lost when they decided to accept western money to overthrow the Democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovich, in 2014.

They lost again when they elected a west-financed puppet government in Kiev.

They lost again when the people of Crimea voted in a referendum, to leave Ukraine and return to Russia.

They lost again when the people of Luhansk and DOnetsk decided they, too, were leaving Ukraine for Russia – but Ukraine said “no” and sent the Ukraine Army to bomb them.

Ukraine lost again when their army in Luhansk and Donetsk was confronted by “Little Green men” sent in by Russia to protect the civilians in Luhansk and Donetsk.

Ukraine lost again when they signed the Minsk Agreements, then did absolutely NOTHING to implement them for five years, and instead continued to bomb civilians in Luhansk and Donetsk.

Ukraine lost again when they openly incorporated actual NAZIS into their government, police, and military.

Ukraine lost again when Luhansk and Donetsk declared Independence and invited Russia in to protect them.

Ukraine lost again when the Kremlin called on February 23, and gave Ukraine five hours to accept the terms of the Minsk Agreement, accept that Crimea was now Russian territory, and allow Luhansk and Donetsk to be free, then IGNORED the Kremlin ultimatum at the behest of the British and Americans.   Once that five hour window expired, the Russian Army entered Ukraine.

Ukraine’s public relations machine would have people think that Ukraine is the victim; they are not.  They are the perpetrators . . .  they brought all this upon themselves and they are losing.

Discovery 1

2022 04 13 19 37
2022 04 13 19 37

The United States Begs China to help them deal with the American economic crisis

Translated from Chinese. This is from an article out of Hong Kong. I don’t know how accurate it is. While my factories and logistics carriers are seriously nervious about shipping to the USA, none of them has actually refused making products for Americans. -MM

2022-04-12 18:23 HKT
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The trade war between China and the United States has been fought for several years, but judging from the current overall situation, it is clear that the outcome has been divided. The United States has fallen into a serious economic crisis, while China will enter a new round of golden age of economic development. Even when the United States has been forced to do nothing, it has repeatedly released goodwill hopes to China to soften China and get China's help to get out of the crisis.

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According to a New York Times report, in mid-May, the U.S. Trade Representative made two requests for dialogue with senior leaders of the Chinese commerce sector, but both were rejected by China.

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The current US economic crisis is indeed very serious.

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 In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has brought a huge blow to the US economic order, because the US government at that time did not consider to achieve effective control of the coronavirus, and in response to the 2020 election. .

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The Trump administration's policy of only focusing on economic data has directly led to the loss of control and raging of the domestic epidemic in the United States, which also caused headaches for the Biden administration, which had just taken office only a few months ago.

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Although the Biden administration has adopted a relatively clear epidemic prevention and control policy after taking office, it has also vaccinated the people on a large scale, hoping to achieve herd immunity. 

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However, the epidemic in the United States cannot be completely controlled in just a few months. Under the influence of the epidemic, the unemployment rate in the United States has reached about 10%, and it is difficult for many Americans to maintain their basic survival. 

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Moreover, the coronavirus pandemic is after all spreading throughout the world, which has also had a huge impact on the overall world trade. It is already difficult for the United States to export its goods to all parts of the world without hindrance as before, and the world It is still unknown when the economy can be fully restarted.

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What's more terrible is that in order to restore the instability of the economic order, the Biden administration unilaterally began to seek economic recovery after taking office. The Biden administration proposed a trillion-dollar infrastructure construction plan, but the current U.S. finances clearly cannot support it. According to data released by the U.S. Department of Finance, the U.S. government debt ratio reached 137% in fiscal year 2020, which is a historic high.

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If the US government wants to pay back the money, it will take at least 20 years, so the Biden administration can also be said to have completely abandoned its control of the inflation rate. The Biden administration implemented monetary easing and fiscal stimulus plans, requiring the Fed to step up printing trillions of dollars into the market to revitalize the US economy. From the perspective of existing economic indicators, this is indeed useful.

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The U.S. government has given the people a lot of money for consumption, thereby promoting the stability of the U.S. economic order. Therefore, in the first few months of this year, U.S. economic growth has at least returned to a normal track, but what this has brought is The domestic inflation rate in the United States has increased as never before. (note : when the world stop buying US treasury debt and begin to sales those in hand, US lost its power of printing money without domestic inflation) 

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In May of this year, the U.S. consumer price index rose to 5%, and the inflation rate was as high as 53%. This will bring more serious obstacles to the future economic development of the United States, and even now the United States is overdrafting its global economic hegemony. And the US dollar hegemony to temporarily stabilize the economic order.

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The high inflation rate means that the domestic price level in the United States is rising rapidly, but the average salary of American residents has not followed up, and even has declined to a certain extent. After all, the coronavirus pandemic still exists, and various American companies want to guarantee themselves. The business interests of the United States have carried out large-scale layoffs and reduced employee salaries. Therefore, the economic harm caused by inflation to the United States has actually been hit on ordinary Americans, while the rich in the United States have entered the rotation of leeks. Carnival.

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Because these wealthy people can also receive government financial subsidies, they have invested all the financial subsidies they received in the stock market to plunder the wealth of the American middle class. Therefore, we can clearly see that in the last half of the year, the top 10 wealthy individuals in the United States have completed their own rapid accumulation of capital, and their average asset ratio has increased by nearly 40%. Therefore, under the influence of the coronavirus pandemic, the inflation rate in the United States is rising rapidly, and the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is becoming wider and wider.

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The U.S. government must be responsible for all this. After the end of World War II, the U.S., as a capitalist country, has encountered economic crises more than once, but because of the existence of the Bretton Woods system and subsequent U.S. dollar hegemony and economic hegemony, the U.S. When suffering from an economic crisis, it is possible to transfer the crisis to the entire international community by investing a large amount of US dollars in the market. The facts have proved that such measures are indeed effective. The US economy protected by the international economic order has guaranteed its long-term prosperity, but now the US dollar hegemony has been challenged unprecedentedly.

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The first point is that the global de-dollarization process is constantly being promoted. According to the data released by the IMF, the proportion of the US dollar in the world trade orientation system has dropped from 85% at its peak to 57%. Although it still has an advantage, But the advantage is far from what it used to be.

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Moreover, in 2020, the entire world will be severely affected by the epidemic. .

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The United States can indeed ensure its own economic order by transferring the economic crisis, but this has a premise that the world trade market must be stable, and all countries must buy American products. Products, or export products to the United States, but now obviously there is no such condition.

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Because most countries are unable to maintain their trade stability under the influence of the epidemic. Vietnam, India and other well-known markets in the international community have begun to reduce their product imports. 

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It is no longer possible for them to import products from the United States on a large scale. As the world's largest and most dynamic market, China is of course also It is impossible to allow American products to enter the Chinese market on a large scale. After all, the Sino-US trade war has not completely ended until now.

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But for the current U.S. government, there is not much that can be found. The U.S. needs China. As we have mentioned above, the inflation rate in the United States is very huge, which has even reached a historic high. The domestic price level in the United States has risen by 31% in just three months

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(note : apparently, China stop export subsidies and imposed export tariff on certain strategic products such as steel help to keep the domestic prices stable, while making US cost rise to counter US irresponsible money printing.)

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In order to quell domestic prices in the United States, they must obtain goods from China, because China's industrial output is huge, and because we have the advantage of the entire industrial chain, Chinese goods are characterized by good quality and low prices. 

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Once Chinese goods are acquired, the domestic price level in the United States will inevitably fall. Therefore, many American companies have begun to place orders with Chinese factories, but most Chinese factories have rejected orders from the United States. There are two main reasons for China's rejection of orders.

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The first point is because of the coronavirus pandemic. Although the overall domestic epidemic in China has been brought under control, China's economic recovery level and factory resumption rate rank first in the world. However, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on us still exists. Unhindered large-scale industrial production as before is obviously unrealistic, which is not conducive to our overall epidemic prevention and control.

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Therefore, the main purpose of China's industrial operation is to ensure its own market demand, not to save the United States. It is obvious that the rejection of US orders by Chinese companies is understandable. After all, the catastrophe is imminent. 

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Even if China is a responsible country, the first consideration is its own national interests and market needs. (note: still remember last winter, in the name of energy shortage and prices, China deliberately cut certain factory output? I believe it is deliberately cutting those output so that they can reject US order to avoid the dollar they received become useless in a foreseeable future. )

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The second is that Sino-US relations have not yet returned to normal.

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Before, the United States initiated a full-scale trade war against China, but now the United States has taken the initiative to show its favor to China, hoping that Chinese goods will enter the United States and quell American inflation. .

How can this be possible? 

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The initiative in the relationship between China and the United States is in China's hands. It is impossible for us to maintain the economic order of the United States by harming our own commercial and corporate interests.

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And if Chinese factories do not accept US orders, US inflation may fall into an endless loop, because the US's own industrial manufacturing obviously cannot meet the needs of the market. 

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The U.S. has a population of hundreds of millions, and the U.S. economy is also the world's No. 1, but we can see that in the total U.S. economy, manufacturing accounts for only 10% of the total, while U.S. manufacturing and industry are only about 27% of China's. , It is simply impossible to meet the domestic market demand in the United States.

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Not to mention that most of the US manufacturing and industry are concentrated in military weapons and high-end information industry. 

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These industrial categories and product categories can bring huge commercial benefits to the United States in peacetime, but they are severely affected in global trade. Under the circumstances, this does not have any positive effect on the United States' current idea of ​​consolidating economic order. After all, Americans can't eat bullets. It's not realistic to let them eat mobile phones.

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Although the Biden administration has put forward a large-scale infrastructure construction plan and a US secondary industry plan since it came to power, it takes time and money. So now the US needs China to help. If there is no China, the US inflation rate will only be Progress expands.

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And the economic crisis in the United States really tells us that the economy of this country is mainly based on manufacturing and industry. About 80% of the total US economy comes from the tertiary industry, and about 7% of the total US economy is created by the lawyer industry. 

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That is to say, the total output value of the US manufacturing and industry is only more than that of the lawyer industry. The created GDP is 3% higher, and the US economy can be said to be built on castles in the air

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In the past, the US economy was able to stabilize because the US possessed global hegemony and dollar hegemony. However, when US hegemony was challenged, their economic order did not have a solid foundation. China can certainly help the United States, but the premise is that the United States must respect our national sovereignty and give up unrealistic suppression and blockade of China. China is no longer an object that the United States can suppress at will.

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Another cool thrift shop discovery

thrift shops 42
A must have!

China Firms Pulling-Out of USA, BRITAIN, CANADA

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China’s top offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC Ltd. is preparing to exit its operations in Britain, Canada, and the United States, because of concerns in Beijing the assets could become subject to Western sanctions, industry sources said.

All in a Day’s Work

From <redacted> a fine MM follower…

Back when we were supposed to be locked down for some unknown period of weeks or months, Wifey and I stocked up on some barterable and essential slop that we both could tolerate in an emergency.

Booze, beans and bullets.

Yesterday I came in for lunch from my yardwork tasks in the swampy bitch that is our backyard; muddy, but wet enough that the soles of my boots were pretty clean. Wifey was rotating out some of the A-Bomb supplies and a large can (12oz) of tuna + greenery was my awaiting meal. The can said that it had expired
over a year ago like I give a shit what those lying planned-obsolescence assholes say. I pound down that mound of an enhanced salad in about fifteen minutes. I suited back up and headed to the quagmire to distribute Wifey’s latest “all natural” cure upon our weed farm that the neighbors love so. About fifteen
minutes into the task, I felt something gurgling down deep in my processing plant.

Fuck!

Read the rest HERE in glorious PDF.

Discovery 2

2022 04 13 19 38
2022 04 13 19 38

South Korea is on China’s “Hit List”

Article 9 of the South Korea-US Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) stipulates that a custom’s examination “shall not be made” in case of “military cargo consigned to the US armed forces,” according to a document posted by the South Korean Foreign Ministry.
“According to the SOFA, the US military cargo is exempt from customs inspection, allowing (the USFK) to bring in whatever it wants … (South) Korea is a very friendly country for the United States to import germs and conduct tests,” Lee Jang-hie, emeritus professor at law school of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, told Xinhua.
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Russians aren’t that different from Americans

wtf russia 11
Russian fishing.

1950″s Brownie Recipe

This is the recipe we used in Home Economics in the l950’s.  It’s very moist and chewy, a super rich brownie. It goes great with pudding, ice cream, or fudge toppings.

And a fine brandy or hot coffee.

2022 04 12 21 50
So yummy!

Here’s the recipe:

1 cup softened butter
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 ounces semi-sweet bar
1 1/4 cups of sifted all-purpose flour
(measure flour after sifting)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Optional: add 1 cup of chopped pecans or walnuts.
dark can be used

Preheat oven 350 degrees
Use 13″ x 9″ pan, greased and floured
Bake 40-45 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
Allow cool in pan before slicing.
These brownies freeze very well, they will keep months.

So Pun-ny

fails on snapchat 21
Booby trap.

Poland “attacks” Belarus border post

A few days ago—and I’m not sure it was the first time—Polish uniformed personnel “attacked” a Belarus border post.

In the short video clip below, one Polish serviceman shoots a slingshot (see around 0:27) and another one shines a stroboscopic lamp, towards the Belarussian position.

 

You might think this is not serious.

It is serious.  This is an international border.  Unless you think the Polish border guard (or army, or whoever this is) is a hooligan rabble, they would not be doing this without orders.

Imagine if Mexico’s army did this to the U.S. Border Guard, how would Americans feel?  (We know the cartels do much worse, but they’re not the government, so Mexico gets a pass.)

Next, the Poles may deploy a watermelon catapult, or sound warfare, or tear gas, or whatever, and someone on the Belarussian side will get hurt, or worse.

Poland will say, “It’s just a catapult!”, but if it breaks someone’s neck, Belarus would have to respond…..

…..And then it’s “NATO Article 5”, and the 10,000-plus U.S. military personnel in Poland, most located within 30 miles of the Ukrainian or Belarussian borders (for just such an eventuality), get drawn into it.  Not to mention, just now I got video of this U.S. or German (these are not in the Polish arsenal) howitzer train—at least two batteries’ worth—moving into Poland.

 

In short, the border actions are a provocation.

This is one step in a campaign of escalation.

Poland has been trying to pull off a regime change in Belarus since 2020.

Claims that Uncle Sam is directly behind the regime change efforts are mostly false.  It’s Poland, with Lithuania and Germany in second place.

In response, Belarus had been facilitating a wave of chaotic illegal migration of Iraqis and others into Poland, however, that more or less stopped, many months ago.

Recently, a team of railway saboteurs was arrested in Belarus; one of the three resisted and was shot (not killed.)  They were found to have a pistol and some professional radio gear.  I have videos of their apprehension and the damage they caused, but it’s not that interesting.

It’s likely they were operating under pay and orders from Polish intelligence.  The railway is a target because it moves Russian army gear.

Poland’s intelligence service has set up a virtual “front group” called BYPOL, allegedly consisting of Belarussian security personnel who want to see a democratic Belarus blah blah.

BYPOL might have some uniformed collaborators in its employ.  (We don’t know, because no one is identified—it’s made out like it’s an undercover network inside Belarus, probably imaginary.)

Even if it’s not 100-percent fake, it’s a front.  You know who is writing the checks and pulling the strings.

BYPOL “exists” so that any sabotage inside Belarus can be “plausibly denied” by Poland. “It wasn’t us, it was BYPOL.”

BYPOL’s English-language website is here.  It’s ridiculously slick, probably made in the USA, or with the help of an American PR firm.

Poland has been looking to expand its influence over its neighbors.

Much of Belarus and the Ukraine were controlled by Poland from the 1400s to the early 1700s, and then western Belarus and northwest Ukraine were occupied by Poland again from 1919 to 1939.

Now, Poland wants it back. 

Don’t just take my word for it.  Polish-American tweeter Jack Posobiec—1.7 million followers, and a regular on Steve Bannon’s show—has been calling for a renewed Polish empire for over a year.

A retired commander of Polish ground forces recently told Poland’s leading tabloid that Russia’s Kaliningrad province (taken from Germany in 1945) is rightfully Polish and must be conquered.

That’s the sort of crap that is going around in their media space.  Their public is being primed for intervention and expansion.

In recent weeks, Poland has mobilized an entire infantry division (with the help of U.S. trainers) to move into northwest Ukraine, to “protect” the Ukrainians, even though the Ukraine-Russia fighting is hundreds of miles away.

A few military targets in this part of the Ukraine have been bombed, but no one seriously thinks Russia wants—or would be able to—move its ground forces into the area anytime soon.  If the war comes here, unlikely as that is, it is still months away.

So far, the European Union and NATO Command have told Poland, “No!”

That may change if something heats up on the Poland-Belarus border.

If Poland and Belarus start fighting, that would be bad enough, it would involve NATO and possibly nuclear weapons.  But (if we’re still here), Poland would also have some pretext and political cover to move into northwest Ukraine and establish a long-term protectorate there.

(This “expeditionary force” would be supported by NATO Patriot missile batteries now deployed in Slovakia.)

That’s their goal.  That’s what this Belarus border drama is about.

Everyone must understand now, if the Russia-Ukraine war gets “out of control”, and turns into a broader Russia-NATO war, or a nuclear war, it won’t be thanks to Brandon.

It would be thanks to Poland.

It’s a common enough problem.

2022 04 13 20 25
2022 04 13 20 25

FLASH TRAFFIC: RUSSIA TO CONSIDER US/NATO VEHICLES BRINGING WEAPONS TO UKRAINE AS LEGITIMATE MILITARY TARGETS

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Russia will consider US and NATO vehicles that transport weapons to Ukraine as legitimate military targets, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov said.

He did not elaborate on WHERE such vehicles would be treated as legitimate military targets.  While it may be normal to treat them as such INSIDE Ukraine, the statement seems deliberately ambiguous on that point.

In other news, however, there was no ambiguity:

The Russian Ministry of Defense today publicly warned Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenski that if Ukraine continues to attack targets inside Russia, then Russia will commence targeting the “centers of decision making” in Ukraine.   Read that to mean, government buildings in the national capital, Kiev.

Earlier, the governor of the Kursk region in Russia reported several attacks at border crossings perpetrated on the Ukrainian side of the crossing. The attacks with mortars and small firearms have not yet caused any casualties, the governor said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has warned that Russian armed forces will launch strikes on Ukrainian “decision-making centers”, including Kiev, if Ukraine doesn’t stop trying to hit objects on Russian territory. The ministry added that, so far, Moscow had avoided hitting these centers, but this policy might change.

Russia announced its decision drastically to scale down its military activities near Kiev after making such progress in the last in-person bilateral talks with Ukraine, which took place in Istanbul on 29 March. Moscow explained that key decision-makers, who can make the final call in peace talks, live in Kiev and hence the city should be spared any hostilities in the near future.

The defense ministry’s announcement comes in the wake of several incidents, in which the Ukrainian Armed Forces carried out attacks on Russian territory. Governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoit reported that a border crossing was shelled from the Ukraine side on 9 April and that the mortar position was suppressed when the Russian side returned fire. Starovoit also said that a group of Russian border guards came under small arms fire from the Ukrainian side on 13 April. There were no casualties among Russians in both incidents.

Discovery 3

2022 04 13 19 40
2022 04 13 19 40

4 Checkmate – Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner

This show should be watched in its entirity. This is a classic 1960s show about the retirement of “secret agents”. This is a really nice segment, and you really should watch the ENTIRE clip. It’s just… precious.

I hope you enjoy it. It seems very bizzare, but as you watch it you can see the beauty in the entire production.

Sweden Expects to Join NATO in June of this year

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The Social Democrat party leadership in Sweden has allegedly decided on the NATO issue. Party Leader Magdalena Andersson‘s goal is for Sweden to join NATO in June this year, say sources in the party.

OIP C.eOONJwi3vNvHft1Bxr9yagHaE9
Magdalena Andersson

The application is planned to be submitted at the NATO meeting in Madrid on June 29-30.

The official neutrality of both Sweden and nearby Finland, has kept the peace with Russia for decades.

It is not yet known what Russia’s reaction might be to such a decision by Sweden, but the reaction by Russia over Finland joining is not in question: Russia has publicly stated that the only thing Finland would achieve by joining NATO would be the destruction of their country.

The America Competes Act of 2022

The America Competes Act of 2022 contains a proposal for a new outbound review process that would screen investments in offshore supply chains, notably in China
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Though there is bipartisan political support for the investment regime, it is not yet clear what shape it will take or how it will impact US firms in China, say experts
.

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Discovery 4

So you lift up this crappy old rug, and you find a crappy owld wooden floor. On closer inspection,  you see that it is real hardwood, and so you fix the holes and sand and clean it up then a fine layer of acrylic. Look at the transformation!

2022 04 13 19 41
2022 04 13 19 41

Russia’s role in space program is irreplaceable, Roscosmos boss says as EU suspends cooperation on Mars mission

Western countries are heavily sanctioning Russia’s space program. The European Union has decided to suspend cooperation with Russia on exploring Mars. But the head of Russia’s space program, known as “Roscosmos” told CGTN that Moscow’s role in space exploration is indispensable.

LI JIANHUA CGTN Reporter “Mr. Rogozin, thank you for accepting our interview. The EU has halted cooperation with Russia on ExoMars. How has this affected the Russian Space Agency and what is the impact on manned space exploration?”

DMITRY ROGOZIN Director General, Roscosmos “It’s a cooperative mission. If Russia doesn’t join, Europe won’t go ahead with the mission, because Russia’s contribution to the mission is huge. It is not only about the heavy rockets that send these instruments into orbit and to Mars. It’s also about the landing vehicles. These vehicles must help achieve a soft landing on Mars or the research rovers. The module itself is a research station. We have been waiting so long to realize this mission. If it is delayed, it will never happen. They may change Russia’s landing module, but that decision could take a lot of time and money.”

LI JIANHUA CGTN Reporter “Without international cooperation, will Russia be able to conduct the expedition research on its own?”

DMITRY ROGOZIN Director General, Roscosmos “The problem is when someone does it on their own, it costs a lot of money. It will be a huge burden on the budget. In the construction of ExoMars, the main element is the landing module. The Mars research rover is not the essential element. I think we can make this mission happen with another partner like China or someone else.”

LI JIANHUA CGTN Reporter “How about the International Space Station? NASA has said the Russia-US cooperation on the ISS will not be affected by the new sanctions. What’s your take on that?”

DMITRY ROGOZIN Director General, Roscosmos “The sanctions have been imposed on Russia to make our economy and high-tech companies suffer, to make our people’s lives more difficult, and to bring Russia to its knees. Clearly, it’s not possible because of the strength and will of our people and country.”

LI JIANHUA CGTN “So let’s say there are more sanctions on Russia and Russia decides to withdraw from the ISS programme. You previously warned that the ISS could collapse as a result of the sanctions. I’m quoting you as saying ‘if you stop cooperation with us, who will save the 500-ton ISS from going out of control, derailing and falling on Earth.’ What’s your take on that?”

DMITRY ROGOZIN Director General, Roscosmos “Russia’s role is vital. Only Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft can transport American, European, Canadian, Japanese astronauts and their guests. Soyuz is irreplaceable, because America doesn’t have any spacecraft. Russia helps the international space station avoid space rubbish and maintain orbital correction. The ISS is in a low earth orbit. It helps deliver fuels to the station. These are the main contributions from Russia and Roscomos in particular. So working without Russia is impossible, just like working without America. If they pull us out of this, the ISS wouldn’t exist anymore.”

LI JIANHUA CGTN Reporter “China’s Shenzhou-13 crew are set to come back to Earth in mid-April. What’s your comment on their mission? What do you think of China’s promise of international cooperation in the future?”

DMITRY ROGOZIN Director General, Roscosmos “We work well with our Chinese friends. We have Glonass, and China’s Beidou system was built in orbit not long ago. They are compatible, very compatible. The second project is interesting, which is the International Lunar Research Station. We have signed all the necessary documents with our Chinese friends. Regarding China’s space station, we can talk about creating new modules. To be friends in space, we must be friends on Earth. Russia and China are friends on Earth. I think China and Russia can work together in manned cosmonautics.”

Article

Discovery 5

You remove some drywall, and you discover windows that were covered up. Why?

2022 04 13 19 43
2022 04 13 19 43

Discovery 6

There’s all sorts of things lying around that are interesting.

2022 04 13 19 g43
2022 04 13 19 g43

The Inflation Crisis Of 2022 Is Now Worse Than Anything That We Experienced During The 1970s

America is going to be in for some trying times. -MM
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Most Americans don’t realize this, but we truly have entered historic territory.  As you will see below, the inflation crisis of 2022 has now escalated to a level that is beyond anything that we experienced during the horrible Jimmy Carter era of the 1970s.  If you are old enough to have been alive back then, you probably remember the constant headlines about inflation.  And you also probably remember that it seemed like the impotent administration in power in Washington was powerless to do anything about it.  In other words, it was a lot like what we are going through today.  Unfortunately for us, this new economic crisis is still only in the very early chapters.

Of course the mainstream media would like us to believe that what we are experiencing today is not even close to what Americans went through in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  According to CNN, the U.S. inflation rate hit a peak of 14.6 percent in the first half of 1980…

The inflation rate hit a record high of 14.6% in March and April of 1980. It helped to lead to Carter’s defeat in that fall’s election. It also led to some significant changes in the US economy.

Compared to that, the numbers we have been given in early 2022 seem rather tame.  On Tuesday, we learned that the official rate of inflation in the U.S. hit 8.5 percent in the month of March…

Prices that consumers pay for everyday items surged in March to their highest levels since the early days of the Reagan administration, according to Labor Department data released Tuesday.

The consumer price index, which measures a wide-ranging basket of goods and services, jumped 8.5% from a year ago on an unadjusted basis, above even the already elevated Dow Jones estimate for 8.4%.

8.5 percent is much lower than 14.6 percent, and so to most people it would seem logical to conclude that we are still a long way from the kind of nightmarish crisis that our nation endured during the waning days of the Carter administration.

But is that the truth?

In reality, we can’t make a straight comparison between the official rate of inflation in 2022 and the official rate of inflation in 1980.  The way that the inflation rate is calculated has been changed more than 20 times since 1980, and every time it was changed the goal was to make the official rate of inflation appear to be lower.

What we really need is an apples to apples comparison, and fortunately John Williams over at shadowstats.com has done the math for us.

According to Williams, if the inflation rate was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the official rate of inflation would be somewhere around 17 percent right now.

17 percent!

That means that the inflation that we are seeing now is even worse than anything that Americans went through during the Jimmy Carter era.

And government figures for individual categories seem to confirm that inflation is now wildly out of control.  For example, the price of gasoline has risen by 48 percent over the past year…

The price of gasoline rose by 48.0 percent from March 2021 to March 2022, according to numbers released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In just one month—from February to March—the seasonally adjusted price of gasoline went up 18.3 percent.

Vehicle prices have escalated to absurd levels as well.  If you can believe it, the average retail selling price of a used vehicle at CarMax has risen by 39.7 percent in just 12 months…

CarMax experienced a slowdown in fourth-quarter used car sales volume as its average retail selling price jumped 39.7% year-over-year to $29,312, an increase of approximately $8,300 per unit.

And I discussed yesterday, home prices in the United States have jumped 32.6 percent over the past two years.

We have entered a full-blown inflationary nightmare, and the Biden administration is trying to blame Vladimir Putin for it.

Needless to say, that is extremely disingenuous of Biden, because prices were already skyrocketing even before the war in Ukraine started.

But it is true that the war is making economic problems even worse all over the globe, and that isn’t going to end any time soon.

A couple of weeks ago there was a bit of optimism that some sort of a ceasefire agreement could be reached, but now there appears to be no hope that there will be one any time soon.

On Tuesday, Putin told the press that peace talks have reached “a dead end”

Talks with Ukraine have reached “a dead end,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in fresh Tuesday remarks. “We will not stop military operations in Ukraine until they succeed.” He explained that Ukraine has “deviated” from agreements and any possible prior progress reached during the Istanbul meetings, according to state-run RIA.

The strong remarks aimed at both Kiev and the West were given during a joint presser with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko. He further hailed that the military operations is still going “according to plan,” Bloomberg reports, however while admitting to the domestic population that “Russian logistics and payment systems remain a weakness and the long-term impact of western measures could be more painful.” But he also said the county has withstood the economic “blitzkrieg” from the West.

And Volodymyr Zelensky is now saying that the return of Crimea is a “red line” for him

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky named recognition of the annexation of the Crimea region as one of his red lines for Moscow in any potential peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end war between the two countries.

Russia annexed the southern region of Crimea in 2014. Russian-backed separatists and forces, as well Ukrainian soldiers, have since been fighting in the eastern region of Ukraine.

Russia will never, ever willingly give Crimea back to Ukraine.

Anyone that thinks otherwise is simply being delusional.

So unless someone changes their tune, this war between Russia and Ukraine is going to keep going until someone achieves total victory.

And that could take a really long time.

Meanwhile, global food supplies will get tighter and tighter, and global economic conditions will continue to rapidly deteriorate.

In other words, the kind of nightmare scenario that I have been warning about for years is now upon us.

And so what happens if another “black swan event” or two hits us later in 2022?

We are so vulnerable right now, and it wouldn’t take much at all to push us over the edge and into an unprecedented worldwide crisis of epic proportions.

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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 3

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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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What I love about China

This video was posted on you-tube on Wednesday 13th April 2022. I later found out that a number of nations banned viewing of this video. I guess the content is too dangerous for you all to view.

That’s really strange, as the following videos about China were allowed…

Strange.

Never, the less, this article is a workaround to the video that was selectively blocked in certain nations.

The Original video on You-Tube

We start off with the video. See if you can access it. Here is the direct link to the You-Tube video.

For those who are denied the You-Tube video…

But for those of you who are denied watching this video, do not worry. I have the video here in three parts. Please download the parts and watch it in the privacy of your own home.

Do you want more?

You can find more articles related to this in my “Broken Dreams Index”.

Broken Dreams

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Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • 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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Tipping and turning points as the United States dies

Above Photo: Digging youselves out from under all the lies and bullshit.

Are you getting tired of this geo-political stuff? I sure am.

Sorry to keep bringing it up, but these are historical times that we are living in. It’s exciting, dangerous, fearful and exciting. It’s new, novel and strange. And also everything in between. So please forgive me this latest article.

Ok already!

The United States is a shambles and it’s falling apart. Just die off, and leave me alone.

Will you? Please?

"...Making thing worst, western fake democracy produce low quality, corrupt, and know no consequences politicians who care for no one except their own personal wellbeing."

This article continues with a selction of snapshots of the world relate to the United States. We discuss the rise of Asia, of course. We discuss the fall of the United States. And we also discuss the strange, strange behaviors that it seems to be taking on.

We do this instead of talking about things that matter. Like cats, cheese, wine, and cars. Sheech!

We start with this article.

Where the author is stunned that the American “leadership” and their minions / toadies believe that wars can and will be fought on the same basis as was done one hundred years ago. Let me tell youse guys something, the world is a far different place today.

Yesterday, the press secretary of the Foreign Ministry, Mariya Zakharova, made such a post on FB. 

"A request to the US and British disinformation media Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Sun, etc. - announce the schedule of our "invasions" for the coming year. I would like to plan a vacation."

Here, in the flood of “any day now”, “any hour now” is this churning out nonsesne about Russia invading the Ukraine. Not one is discussing the “why, in the Hell woud they want to do such an idiotic thing?”

And you know, you DO know, that the Internet is an erasible whiteboard. Things come and then in a few years they are gone. Poof! Well, here’s what I am talking about for all youse guys who are reading this in 2030.

Two months of “any day now”. From December 2021 to February 2022. Just about every major headline was about “The Ukraine”. For me, it was a welcome respite from the “any day now China will invade Taiwan” nonsense.

But still, it is tiring…

Um. Sure.

What ever you say Jake.

Here’s another. Thousands of these bullshit articles. All clogging up my media feeds.

Invasion 1 am on Monday.

There are literally thousands of these kinds of articles and they are flooding my feed just like the Anti-China narrative doused me back last year.

All lies.

All distortions.

All fearmongering. All bullshit.

Here’s on at 3am on Wednesday.

The days come and go. The times come and go.

The lies just plow forward.

It’s all been bullshit.

It’s all shrilling nonsense.

Who are these editors? Jane LGBQ diversity-hire; spending time at a nail salon, or a perpetual evil sociopath without a brain, just doing what they are told by some kind of Reptilian evil overlord?

Which pretty much makes people scratch their heads and wonder. Like this article points out…

Next part.

I’m scratching my noggin, don’t you know.

Here’s a bunch of articles that pretty round out the massive and timultious changes that the world is going through right now. If you live inside of the United States, you will probably be only aware of eight out of the ten articles. And you know why, right?

So. Yeah. That being said…

I need a drink.

Some delicious VSOP.

We begin here…

Article 1

Finian Cunningham

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February 12, 2022
© Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis

The infernal danger is that Washington and London are pushing Europe and the world towards the abyss of a nuclear with Russia.

The Anglo-Americans are running a modern-day reworking of Operation Overlord, the June 1944 military invasion plan billed to liberate Western Europe from Nazi Germany.

This time around, the billed objective is to “liberate” the European Union from its “tyrannical” dependency on Russian natural gas.

In reality, the unspoken objective is to maintain U.S. tyrannical control over Europe.

That control is essential for upholding American hegemony and global power.

The ultimate price is economic devastation and even war for Europe which the “noble” American hegemon is all too willing for its peons to pay.

This week, U.S. President Joe Biden showed off his overlord status when he arrogantly spoke for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a White House press conference.

Biden was asked about the fate of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany in the hypothetical event of an invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Biden didn’t skip a beat to consult with the German leader. He peremptorily asserted the gas project would be terminated.

“There will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” said Biden without hesitation. “We will bring an end to it.”

The American president was asked how this could be done given that the functioning of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is nominally under the control of Germany, not the United States.

“We will — I promise you, we’ll be able to do it,” asserted Biden without so much as a hint of seeking any kind of agreement from the German chancellor.

The assuredness of Washington’s presumed ability to over-ride European sovereignty was a revealing and disturbing display of American imperial arrogance.

It was also an excruciating display of American contempt for supposed European “allies”. Scholz, Germany, Europe, was made to look like a nonentity by Biden.

Later press reports indicated that too.

Washington and London have led the ramping up of geopolitical tensions with relentless accusations that Russia is about to invade Ukraine and jeopardize European security.

From the way the Anglo-American propaganda has contrived it, one would think that the scenario is a re-run of Nazi aggression threatening Europe for which they alone are the noble defenders.

Putin is Hitler, the Kremlin is the Third Reich, and diplomacy is appeasement, so the preposterous propaganda goes.

Moscow has repeatedly said it has no intention to invade Ukraine and that in fact it is Russia that is being threatened by the U.S.-led NATO military alliance after year-on-year expansion of the bloc all the way to Russia’s borders.

Ratcheting up the tensions further, Washington and London are demanding that Europe must adopt draconian sanctions against Moscow including the commitment to abandon the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.

That pipeline took five years and a €10-billion investment to complete despite constant American objections.

The crisis over Ukraine contrived by Washington and its British flunkey have ensured that the gas supply has been suspended for the past six months despite an energy crunch in Europe.

What the Anglo-American overlords want to see finally is the entire gas project being scrapped. That’s the end-game even if it means European households freezing from un-payable gas bills.

The American overlords don’t care.

That’s why the Americans and the Brits are doing their best to scupper any diplomatic effort to calm the inordinate crisis with Russia over Ukraine.

Hence, Washington and London are funneling weapons to Ukraine and deploying paratroopers to Eastern Europe in a reckless bid to escalate the confrontation.

While visiting the White House this week, Chancellor Scholz was peppered with petulant demands to explicitly state that the Nord Stream 2 project would be axed “if Russia invaded Ukraine”.

Scholz refused to state that, although in an apparent attempt to offer a sop he claimed that Germany and the United States were united in their resolve.

There is a palpable peeved sense among the Americans and British that Berlin is not being sufficiently hostile towards Russia.

Likewise, when French President Emmanuel Macron went to Moscow this week for diplomatic talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin there was also an unmistakable sense of rancor from Washington and London that their militaristic “unanimity” was being undermined.

There’s little doubt that Berlin and Paris know that the Anglo-American bravado is a cynical provocation that is “nobly” signing a suicide note on behalf of Europe in the event of a war with Russia.

Macron’s bitter experience of France being shafted last year by the U.S., Britain and Australia over the €50 billion AUKUS submarine contract has probably helped engender a bit of healthy skepticism too. He’s also got an eye on French presidential elections in April.

The bottomline is that Washington wants to sabotage the strategic partnership between Europe and Russia for energy trade and the general normalization of relations. The objectives are maintaining U.S. hegemony, selling its own more expensive gas to Europe and of course endless sales of weapons for NATO members in a perennially agitated state of insecurity. The Brits as ever are in it for ingratiating with Uncle Sam and serving their usual function of being the geopolitical butler to U.S. imperial power.

Energy analysts know that Germany and Europe cannot survive economically without Russia gas, which accounts for at least 40 percent of the continent’s consumption. Even Biden at the White House press conference could not pretend that the U.S. was able replace Russia’s supply. If Russia’s gas trade to Europe was to be disrupted by conflict or deeper sanctions the repercussions for the European Union’s economies would be devastating. There is no way that Germany, France and the EU could survive without Russian oil and gas. For the U.S. and Britain to demand that Berlin make definitive statements about cancelling Nord Stream 2 is a form of coercion and blackmail. Operation Overlord II.

But the infernal danger is that Washington and London are pushing Europe and the world towards the abyss of a nuclear with Russia. That’s how demonic the failing Anglo-American imperium is.

So, we start off realizing that the entire “song and dance” about the “War in the Ukraine” is to scare Europe into compliance wiht the United States, and stop Germany from trading with Russia (and China).

It’s not successful.

So why is the United States doing this?

Well. It needs a war. It REALLY needs a war.

Every single state, all 50 of them, have enormous military-industrial factories cherning out bombs, guns, and battle gear. They employ millions of people, and without a war, there will be layoffs. And layoff right now, in this economic condition would be devistating.

What economic condition you might ask?

Article 2

The USA is a real fiasco. Sorry to say.

Make sure that your larder is well stocked and that you are part of your community. And when you have a change, just go to the local diner and eat a nice fine pie. Not that it’s the end of the world or anything like that, but rather to enjoy the little things in life.

Delicious cherry pie. Oh, and don’t forget a nice HOT cup of fresh brewed coffee to go with it.

5 New Numbers That Prove That America’s Horrifying Inflation Crisis Is Getting Even Worse

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If you are less than 40 years old, you have never seen inflation like this in the United States.  Despite all the warnings, our politicians in Washington just kept borrowing and spending trillions upon trillions of dollars that we did not have.  And despite all the warnings, the Federal Reserve just kept pumping trillions of fresh dollars into the financial system.  Now we have a giant mess on our hands, and anyone that believes that this is going to be easily fixed is simply being delusional.

Of course most Americans weren’t going to start paying attention to all of this until it started to affect them personally.

Now it is affecting all of us personally, and there are millions of people out there that are becoming increasingly frustrated about the current state of affairs.

Unfortunately, this crisis appears to be just in the early stages.  The following are 5 numbers that indicate that the inflation crisis in the United States continues to get even worse…

#1 The producer price index has risen at a rate of 9.7 percent over the previous 12 months.  According to CNBC, that is close to a brand new record…

The producer price index, which measures final demand goods and services, increased 1% for the month, against the Dow Jones estimate for 0.5%. Over the past 12 months the gauge rose an unadjusted 9.7%, close to a record in data going back to 2010.

Last week we learned that the consumer price index has risen by 7.5 percent over the previous 12 months.  Of course if the consumer price index was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the real number would actually be more than double the official number that we were just given.

#2 Truck trailer prices in January 2022 were 29.6 percent higher than they were in January 2021…

A shortage of parts and labor has sent the prices of truck trailers through the roof.

Truck trailer prices jumped 3.1 percent in January, data from the Department of Labor showed Tuesday. That followed a 3.8 percent increase in December. Compared with 12-months ago, trailer prices are up 29.6 percent, by far the biggest one-year jump in records going back to 1980.

#3 The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is telling us that the price of used vehicles rose by an astounding 40.5 percent from January 2021 to January 2022

According to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday, the consumer price index for used cars and trucks jumped up by 40.5% from January 2021 to January 2022. That means within a year, the average price of used cars and trucks for urban consumers has gone up by 40.5%.

#4 You may have noticed that you are paying a lot more at the pump these days.  If you can believe it, the price of gasoline has actually shot up 40.8 percent since Joe Biden first entered the White House…

Between January 2021 and January 2022–President Joe Biden’s first year in office–the price of unleaded gasoline increased 40.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

#5 The price of lumber has really been surging once again.  According to the National Association of Home Builders, this most recent surge has “added more than $18,600 to the price of a newly built home”

That is adding to the cost of both building a new home and remodeling an older one. The National Association of Home Builders estimated the recent price jump added more than $18,600 to the price of a newly built home. It also added nearly $7,300 to the cost of the average new multifamily home, which translates into households paying $67 a month more to rent a new apartment.

Ouch.

I sure wouldn’t want to be trying to build a new home in this environment.

Pressure has been building on the Federal Reserve to take action, and it is being anticipated that the “geniuses” at the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates by 50 basis points next month…

The hot inflation readings led financial markets to price in a better-than-even chance of a 50 basis points interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve next month.

Inflation is running well above the U.S. central bank’s 2 percent target. Economists are expecting as many as seven rate hikes this year.

Just recently, a reader sent me an email which pointed out that we shouldn’t have a system where an unelected group of bureaucrats gets together and determines what our interest rates are going to be.

And he is exactly right.

In a free market system, interest rates would be determined by the free market.

But we don’t have a free market system anymore.

In fact, we haven’t had one for a long time.

Of course when it comes to the economy, the guy in the White House is going to get more of the credit or more of the blame for what is going on than anyone else.

And a brand new poll that was just released has Joe Biden’s approval rating sitting at just 34 percent

The president’s approval rating nationally sits around 40 percent, according to several tracking averages, but a new CIVIQS poll showed it sitting at 34 percent from the 165,786 respondents surveyed.

That is a shockingly bad number, and what should alarm Democrats even more is how bad Biden’s numbers are in the most important swing states

Swing states of Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin all voted narrowly blue in the 2020 election, but the new poll shows their approval of Biden sits in the low 30 percentages.

Arizona has the biggest split with 32 percent approval to 61 percent disapproval. Georgia sits in second with 31 percent approval to 59 percent disapproval; Pennsylvania’s split is 36 percent to 57 percent; Michigan is 33 percent to 59 percent; and Wisconsin has 36 percent approval and 56 percent disapproval of Biden.

Unfortunately, Biden isn’t going to resign no matter how low his numbers go.

That means that we are going to have at least three more years of either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris running the country.

So we shouldn’t expect any dramatic policy shifts from Washington.

And the “geniuses” at the Fed are undoubtedly going to find even more ways to really mess things up.  They are the ones that are more responsible than anyone else for getting us into this mess, and now many Americans are desperately hoping that they can get us out of it.

If you are waiting for them to fix the economy, you are going to be waiting a really, really long time.

I have been warning for years that the decisions that were being made would have severe consequences, and now those consequences have started to arrive.

We are on a road to national ruin, and those that are running things are even more blind than those that they are supposed to be leading.

Ok so the United States has high inflation. So what?

It’s more than just the price of food and a decrease in the standard of living. It’s  a total collapse of everything and a President that is a bumbling puppet. The Americans are distraught, frustrated, and are waking up that they do not like the govnerment that they have right now, and thus a war of distraction is really needed…

For those of you who are unawares, the United States has been pushing and pushing for a war in the Ukraine, and Russia and the Ukraine said No.

They continued. And still nothing happened.

Now today, President Biden is declaring a “victory” by “forcing” Russia to back down and not invade the Ukraine. Silly. Can’t they see that the United States is now the laughingstock for the entire world?

Article 3

Yes, the United States is acting like a colleciton of ignoarant, mentally deranged jackasses, and has lost all global respect, but you are not part of the USA leadership. So don’t fret. No one, and I do mean NO ONE, is blaming the American people for the faults of the USA federal government. Instead they blame the fact the United States is trapped in an obsolete model of governance that has been taken over by evil and corrput wealthy individuals.

Yeah. It sucks.

But what can you do?

I recommend, a pizza.

A fine, MM approved, pizza.

If I did not know this is for real…

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… I would think that this is some anti-US spoof, based on listening to the most discredited cliches about the USA and the kind of people who run it.  It had everything, frantic flagwaving, hilarious hyperbole, Biden trying to look like Dubya who, himself, was always squinting  his yes à la John Wayne hoping to look like some Sheriff at OK Corral.  It also had all the mantric repetition of mind-numbing concepts like “democracy” and “freedom”, etc.

The best part was when Biden raised his voice and sternly looked at the screen.

I am sure that Putin hid under his bed, to hug a pillow and sob in abject terror before The Great American Sheriff!

Here is the deal.  It’s not just Biden who is brain dead.  Its also the collective “Biden”: all the do is “traffic in hot air” as Lavrov aptly mentioned it today.  What we heard tonight is not just the rambling of a senile, delusional, narcissist.  What we heard was the voice of the US deep state: that is what they “think” and this is how they “think”.

It does not really matter anymore how/why such individuals as Clinton, Dubya, Obama, Trump or Biden came to power or what they promised.  What matters is that these are the type of folks who run the USA (well, not them personally, of course, but the interests they represent).  The same kind of non-entities run the UK, by the way, just in a even more pompous and ridiculous way.

The clueless fellow below, ladies and gentlemen, is the current Commander in Chief of the most powerful military in history, this is the Leader of the Free World and his so-called “values” are shared by millions worldwide.  Or so he thinks (maybe).

Here is a scary thought: there is a good chance that the next clown in the White House might even be worse!  There is zero chance that anybody who could fix this awful mess will be “elected”.  If the past is the best indicator for the future, then we must realize that there is only one way this will ever end: in ridicule, violence and infamy.

That also fully applies to Ze and his “European Banderastan”.

Does anybody still doubt the outcome of this abject slo-mo train wreck?

Yes?

What’s next?

Once this fiasco dies down, the focus with be a war in Taiwan “any day now”. It’s all so silly and so very predictable. I just don’t know when. A few days or a few months, but as sure as the sun rises, a “war” in Taiwan will be next on the United States agenda.

It’s all so very predictable.

It makes me yearn to chill out with a cat, drink a fine relaxing drink and eat something delicious. You know, like this…

Needs a little salt me thinks.

It makes me yearn for a simpler time, and a simpler lifestyle.

It makes me yearn for a time when a man would work, then go home, eat a great home cooked meal of pot roast and mashed potatoes, and drink his cocktail.

A delicious pot roast.

Good times. Times of substance.

City tour bus, San Francisco, California, 1956

Times when a cup of coffee costs ten cents, and was about double the cost of a five cent newspaper. Good times.

Times when there were real, goodness to gracious, families.

Times when the “news” actually reported events, and not based their operations off of payments from the government.

But that’s all changed.

And it changed into something much worse. But do not fear, it’s still changing and still evolving. There are still “adults in the room”, and many of them live in Asia. And they have a plan…

Article 3

Observations on the Russia China Statement

“Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on International Relations Entering a New Era and lobal Sustainable Development” 4 February 2022. (English) (Russian).

This document is the grand strategic manifesto of a new world order and there is much more to be said about it than what follows. I believe that 4 February 2022 will be remembered as the proclamation of a new disposition of world power and relationships.

It is a truly new order of things, not the old “new world order” which was based on US supremacy. And it is most certainly not the so-called Rules-Based International Order in which one side makes up the rules, breaks them when it wants to and orders everyone else to obey. (A perfect example of the mutability of the “rules” is that gay rights are very important in Russia but not at all in Washington’s new “major ally” of Qatar.)

The old “new world order” was always about making them conform to us: “The foremost goal of US strategy should be to cause China’s ruling elites to conclude that it is in China’s best interests to continue operating within the US-led liberal international order…”

The Russian-Chinese document speaks much of “democracy” but it’s a different vision than the one common in the West. The West today is focussed on the process of democracy – was the voting up to acceptable standards?

Did the opposition have a fair chance? were there enough candidates? was the advertising even-handed? were “administrative resources” used to shift the vote? and like questions.

Never mind that the West is often hypocritical in its discussion – microscopes analyse the treatment of dissidents in Russia and but the house arrest and treason charges against opposition figures in Ukraine are ignored – these are the metrics used in the West’s assessment of whether a country is “democratic” or not.

Now it may well be that fifty or sixty years ago concentrating on the process of democracy was appropriate but it is very questionable whether it is today. This one graph, showing the relationship between productivity and wages and compensation shows that all is not well. Up until the late 1970s, the two curves kept step with each other – the “rising tide” was indeed lifting all boats. Afterwards, however, they diverge until today there is a considerable gap between the two “Productivity has grown 3.5x as much as pay”.

The rising tide is floating only a few super yachts.

The richest one percent owned six times as much as the bottom fifty percent in 1989, now it’s 15 times as much. A Princeton University study in 2014 concluded “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose“. These findings suggest that, however good the process may be, the δεμος does not have much κρατος.

The Russian-Chinese document speaks of the results of democracy.

The sides believe that democracy is a means of citizens’ participation in the government of their country with the view to improving the well-being of population and implementing the principle of popular government. 

Note the purpose: “improving the well-being of population”. Whatever one may say about the process of the governance of China or Russia, no one can doubt that the well-being of the population has mightily improved in both countries.

We shall see for the future how this holds up but the document describes a different approach to democracy: don’t concentrate on the process and assume the results will follow – which they are not doing in the USA in particular and the West in general – but instead never mind the process, ask whether the are results desirable? Throughout the document – fifty times – we see the word “development” (“развитие” in the Russian version).

The sides believe that peace, development and cooperation lie at the core of the modern international system. 

A world in which everyone has a chance to get rich. And who can doubt that the government in Beijing knows how to do that? We will see, in the coming world competition of ideas, which approach is more attractive and successful.

A second theme, repeated throughout the document is that all countries are equal and they have their own ways of doing things, it is their right to do this, no one may preach to them and no one may interfere with them.

The sides call for the establishment of a new kind of relationship between world powers on the basis of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial cooperation. 

This is what might be called a descriptive take on the world rather than the prescriptive take more common in the West. To explain what I mean, let us consider Soviet-Polish relations.

Although it’s very unfashionable to admit it today, Warsaw, as the first country to form a non-aggression pact with Hitler’s Germany and by its refusal to allow Soviet troops into its territory to fight Germany, played a consequential role in the outbreak of the war.

Poland suffered terribly, losing 20-25% of its population and was liberated by the Soviet Army after immense destruction. Stalin then designed a Poland which, for the first time in its long history, included all of the historical Polish lands and no irredentist minorities.

Then imposed the blessing – or so Moscow saw it – of socialism and transformed Poland into a loyal ally of the USSR. Except that, the moment it became clear that the tanks weren’t coming, Poland quit the alliance, threw off socialism and turned to NATO and the EU.

All the “fraternal, socialist, ally” rhetoric turned out to be empty declarations of people compelled to say them.

In other words, the lesson is that you can’t change a country except temporarily by force or very slowly over a very long time. Moscow has learned this lesson.

Hence my use of the world “descriptive” – countries, quite simply, are what they are and outsiders can’t change them; therefore outsiders have to live with them.

It’s that simple: the prescriptive notion – we have the truth and you should follow it (we must make Beijing follow the “US-led liberal international order”) simply can’t be done.

Therefore, the emphasis throughout the document that countries are as they are and are to be treated as equals is firmly based on reality. You can’t make a particular country go along with your notions of propriety but you still have to deal with it: treat it as it is.

The West has long lost sight of this despite its numerous failures of prescription: even if the Western ideas actually were “better”, you can’t bomb Afghans into accepting them.

Therefore, this position in the document is quite simply realistic and practical.

I have said before that Russia, in the communist days, was an “exceptionalist state” and so was China under Mao.

They then regarded themselves as a pattern for others to follow – a pattern that others should follow – and the USSR imposed that pattern on many of its neighbours.

Both Beijing and Moscow have learned that exceptionalism is a route to failure. Therefore, what I am calling a “descriptive” approach to world variety is the result of the failure of trying a prescriptive approach.

This is not, therefore, a point of view adopted to gull people into acquiescence, it is one that is based on cold, bitter experience. It is a lesson that Washington has not yet learned: exceptionalism is a road to a blind alley, as Putin put it a quarter century ago.

It is, in fact, something the West should remember: “Westphalianism” is the principle of cuius regio, eius religio adopted after Europeans had torn themselves apart trying to impose religion on each other.

Not uniformity, but variety. The China-Russia manifesto is rooted on a truth that not only they, but Europe as a whole, have learned the hard way.

The Chinese-Russia relationship is described as follows:

They reaffirm that the new inter-State relations between Russia and China are superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era. Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ”forbidden“ areas of cooperation, strengthening of bilateral strategic cooperation is neither aimed against third countries nor affected by the changing international environment and circumstantial changes in third countries. 

Time will show just what is meant by this but it is clear that it is a relationship both deep and wide.

A complete commonality of interest which is not uniformity of interest. (It will be amusing to watch Western “experts” fail to get that distinction.) And not one to be easily split apart as some naïve people in Washington think. They trust each other and neither trusts Washington.

Finally, the new world order that they are calling for is described as:

The sides reiterate the need for consolidation, not division of the international community, the need for cooperation, not confrontation. The sides oppose the return of international relations to the state of confrontation between major powers, when the weak fall prey to the strong. The sides intend to resist attempts to substitute universally recognized formats and mechanisms that are consistent with international law for rules elaborated in private by certain nations or blocs of nations… 

A new world order for all, not just those who accept “the better way”.

I would expect, as details are filled in at the “strategic” and “operational” level, that this “grand strategic vision” will prove to be widely attractive across the globe. Washington and its allies will, no doubt, concentrate on the many criticisms of its behaviour, but the manifesto is positive in tone.

People are attracted to success and the West doesn’t project that any more.

Republished from Russia Observer

Remember who you are and whence you came from. It’s important. We all have to keep grounded as the world changes around us.

Don’t get caught up in all the bullshit.

Never forget who you are.

Firefighters in Princeton, New Jersey, 1956

Never forget who you are and where you came from.

We are all unique and we are all special. We really are. We all have stories to tell. Some are fun, some are cute. Some are romantic, and some are terribly embarrassing. But, you know, that’s life.

Don’t worry, though.

There’s always wine, and cheese.

Article 4

Here we take a look at what the Chinese government is economically. In this next article, they call it “Red Capitalism” as there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. As such it deserves a study, as it is truly very efficient, and a light-year improvement over the best of the West.

Red Capitalism

by Observer R for the Saker Blog

INTRODUCTION

This paper is mainly about the Chinese economy, but includes discussion of the Russian and United States (US) economies in order to provide a clearer explanation.

Comparisons

The Chinese economy is the largest in the world according to the latest CIA Fact Book, based on the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) method.

The CIA claims that the PPP is a better method to use than the nominal method (GDP) based on conversion to US dollars.

Many analysts and politicians still use the nominal method, however, which shows the US in first place and China second. (As it is their preference. They msut keep America lookign great and perfect; the “shining house on the hill”.)

China has been continually careful to claim only second place, presumably as part of its long-term strategic decision to keep its head down and not make unnecessary waves.

Second place also fits better with the significantly lower per-capita income in China and the Chinese aim to keep the status of a “developing country” for purposes of climate change response and funding.

Economic Systems

There are many labels used to describe the various economic systems around the world, most ending in “ism.”

Different authors use the same label to describe different systems, making it hard to understand what they are really referring to in real life.

In reality, most economies appear to be a mixture of various systems, as these are defined in the dictionary.

The Chinese economy is no exception.

So for the purpose of this article, it is simply called “Red Capitalism” for want of a better term.

Red Capitalism is an amalgam of many different systems combined with the so-called “Chinese characteristics.”

The first section of this article provides background information about how the various economic systems are defined by Webster’s. These definitions can be kept in mind while reading the rest of the article.

The second section describes the rivalry between two different methods of explaining and managing a national economy, using either engineering or economics, and how this rivalry plays out in practice. The discussion also touches upon issues with computer models and simulations.

The third section deals with booms and busts. These economic and financial events are a notorious problem that seems to defy a long-term solution. Even the cause(s) of economic and financial instability are lacking any agreement. Some suggested readings are provided for those who wish to delve further into the topic.

The fourth section mentions some aspects of national security which are important for analysis, such as culture and economics. The importance of these two factors in the demise of the USSR is touched upon, and whether China can avoid a similar fate.

The fifth section covers competition and monopoly in China and the US, and how the two countries have tried to deal with these issues. It incorporates many of the topics addressed in the preceding sections and applies them to the evolving situation.

Finally, a sixth concluding section points out some of the difficulties in describing a national economy using the common “isms.” National economies contain elements of various systems, as well as varieties within systems. China is no exception.

I. ECONOMIC “ISMS”

A great deal of discussion in various media concerns differing economic structures, including capitalism and socialism.

The problem with these discussions is that these terms are not defined and other types of economic organization, such as mercantilism and imperialism, are overlooked. For example, there are state capitalism, finance capitalism, crony capitalism, and numerous others.

To assure that both readers and authors were clear about what structure was being addressed, for example, the first page of such articles or books could provide a detailed definition of which capitalism is being discussed.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that capitalism is composed of private ownership and private investment decisions, and that prices, production, and distribution are determined by the market.

But there need to be much more detailed descriptions in view of the many different varieties of capitalism.

As for socialism, there is a similar problem of variety.

The dictionary states that socialism is the government ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. That is a start, but what if it is control, but not ownership? Or vice versa?

What about market socialism as promoted by the Swedes versus command socialism theoretically practiced in the USSR?

We could even invent a few new terms: Bankers’ capitalism and bankers’ socialism for a start.

After all, China claims to be socialist but has a central bank and numerous other banks, as do most other countries, including the US. China appears to be following the same economic advice as the US, leading to the same asset bubbles and too-big-to-fail enterprises.

As another example, the dictionary defines mercantilism as the attempt to increase the power and monetary wealth of a nation by government regulation of the economy, usually trying to accumulate gold and promoting a favorable balance of trade.

Mercantilism also supports manufacturing and agricultural development, as well as foreign trading monopolies. The campaign for “Made in China 2025” may be partly viewed in this light.

It is a national strategic plan along the lines of industrial policy to promote manufacturing.

According to some reports, China is the number one gold-producing nation in the world and all the gold produced is purchased by the Chinese government. Imperialism is defined as extending the dominion of a nation by territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other territory.

Imperialism and mercantilism support each other, especially in terms of foreign trade, protecting domestic manufacturing and collecting gold and other rare commodities.

Communism is defined in one version as “a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed.” This definition requires considerable finesse when talking about the Chinese Communist Party.

II. ENGINEERING VS ECONOMICS

Chairman Mao eventually found that he had a problem in keeping control of Chinese politics due to the development of wealthier businessmen and the growing size of the market economy.

His solution was an attempt to return to some of the features of the wartime economy.

These included a semi-drafting of civilians into the army, where they were housed in barracks, clothed in uniform outfits, put on work details in the countryside, fed in the mess hall, and moved about on public transportation.

This was in line with Mao’s experience as a general commanding the Red Army for many years during the civil war in China. This is wartime mobilization, where the generals decide on the final outputs of the economy and the engineers work out the methods to achieve such results.

During war, the civilians are put on rationing and the central plan determines which and what civilian goods will be produced and distributed.

Sort of like Henry Ford’s old adage concerning the some of the Model T cars : “Any customer can have a car painted any colour [sic] so long as it is black.”

Of course, rationing soon becomes unpopular in peacetime.

Mao’s death created a crisis in the Communist Party, with the so-called “Gang of Four” trying to continue his policies, while other officials, led by Deng Xiaoping, called for a different system.

In this system, the economists are supposed to work out the methods to achieve results.

This system could be described as part “market” and part “market socialism” and part “socialism.”

The market part involved privately owned factories and stores producing and selling civilian goods to the public.

The market socialism part involved the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) using army-owned factories to produce civilian goods for sale to the public.

In the socialism part, the PLA-owned factories continued to produce weapons for the military.

The engineering vs economics issue came up in the West at the time of the 1972 Club of Rome report, The Limits to Growth.

This document was based on computer simulations of economic growth which were very pessimistic.

The book was very popular around the world, and it and subsequent reports have been extremely influential in the debates over global warming, climate change, and other policy issues.

The critics, however, claimed the report was based on simplistic scenarios and amateur scholarship.

In essence, the critics said that the report was produced by engineers trying to model the economy without understanding economics.

In addition, the critics pointed out that the computer models did not take into account the changes in price that would come about with scarcity.

The criticism did not seem to deter the Club of Rome in its efforts to remake the world.

Perhaps the members had more confidence in engineers practicing economics, than in economists practicing engineering.

In any event, the same controversy continues to this day concerning the degree to which public policy should rely on computer simulations and models that are sensitive to a few key assumptions.

Computer simulations are well known always to be subject to the “garbage in, garbage out” phenomena, but less well known is that even with good input data, the output can be drastically different with just a few little tweaks in the assumptions.

III. MONEY & CREDIT

China has a problem with asset bubbles and potential busts, as does the US.

China has “ghost cities” and other investments that are symptomatic of malinvestment and too much easy credit.

In the US it was the ill-considered financial enthusiasms of the roaring twenties, the dotcom bubble, the housing bubble, and now the so-called “everything bubble” that have led to recessions and depressions.

There have been scholarly attempts to explain why these episodes keep happening. For example, 100% Money by professor Irving Fisher back in the 1930’s, detailed the problems with fractional reserve banking.

Fisher wrote this with the benefit of hindsight after losing his fortune in the Great Depression.

The book, however, fell on deaf ears.

Much later, in 1983, another book on the subject was published, The Mystery of Banking by Murray N. Rothbard. It had no better success.

In 2016, the former head of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, wrote a book called The End of Alchemy, about the same problem and proposed some solutions.

Nothing much was done.

The gist of these books is that fractional reserve banking is inherently unstable.

Yet this is the system used all over the world.

The national security agencies of China, the US, Russia, and others might benefit from some serious study of these books and the issues with money and banking that they explain, as these issues may be more likely to determine their nations’ economic fate.

In the US, other isolated prophets have explained the mistakes in money and banking policies, yet, again, nothing much has been done, resulting in potentially grim future prospects.

If these books are correct in their analyses of the situation, then the first country to adopt a proper solution would gain significant advantages over other countries.

IV. NATIONAL SECURITY

National security studies and analyses spend a lot of time and effort on competing weapon systems, elections, coups, revolutions, as well as on culture, space, cyber, energy, and psychological warfare.

The studies appear to spend much less effort on education and economic security issues.

Out of all these types of warfare, the USSR turned out to be grossly deficient in two important areas: Culture and economics.

Western commercial culture was simply more attractive to the Soviet public than what they had at home.

As more and more Soviets learned about the difference, the more trouble Moscow had in getting the public to believe in the Soviet system.

The question is whether China will experience the same problem.

It appears that China has plenty of Western commercial culture and its own adaptations, as well as conducting a re-invigoration of its traditional culture that goes back thousands of years.

This may help to immunize China against this aspect of the Soviet problem.

As for economics, the USSR followed a less desirable path.

There are many competing schools of thought concerning what happened, but a basic view is that the planned sector of the USSR economy got into a fight with the unplanned sector and they knocked each other out.

The USSR was not able to come up with a solution to the command vs. market problem that worked.

China studied the USSR disaster and decided to follow a different path.

V. COMPETITION & MONOPOLY

It appears that China is ahead of the US in realizing that certain policies favored by the oligarchs could be dangerous to the economy and the State.

However late to take action, China has recently cracked down on the chiefs of many giant enterprises in a move to curtail their power and influence.

They were beginning to rival the authority of the Communist Party.

There is always a potential for oligarchs to find common cause with oligarchs in other parts of the world and joining in schemes such as the New World Order, thus possibly escaping control by the national governments.

This power struggle in China will have ramifications throughout the world.

In the US, it is not even a struggle—the oligarchs are generally considered to be on the top of the heap and nothing much is even considered in the way of curtailing their power.

Considering former President Trump’s experience with them, they are way ahead in the power game and are also alleged to be behind the curtain as far as President Biden is concerned.

In the past, the US came up with the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act in order to help control monopoly power.

President Theodore Roosevelt campaigned as a trust-buster and the laws were used to break up the Standard Oil Company.

Later on when President Franklin Roosevelt was in office, the US instituted the Glass-Steagall Act to address problems which were said to have contributed to the Great Depression.

The act separated commercial banking from investment banking.

At that time, brokerage houses were a separate feature of the US economy.

These laws were also used to break up some of the concentration in the telephone industry.

However, things went into reverse during the President Clinton era, when the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed and banks could combine all forms of banking and brokerage into a single enterprise.

It was not surprising when the resulting conglomerates grew so large that they were termed “too big to fail” and had to be bailed out by the government.

In addition, the anti-trust laws did not seem very useful in controlling the very large tech companies of recent times.

Thus to call the US a “capitalist” or “free market” economy is not very helpful since the economy has had very different features at different times, as well as differing degrees of competition.

Thus a question in analyzing the Chinese economy might be to ask if China has the equivalent of the Sherman, Clayton, and Glass-Seagall Acts, and are they actually used or enforced?

Does China have other laws and regulations that promote competition or manage monopolies in the public interest?

When the Chinese first opened up the economy after Mao, there was relatively little in the way of funding for the military to pay for modernization.

The solution was to allow the military to go into producing civilian goods for sale to the public and then keep the profits to help pay for military goods.

Analysts would need to research whether the military eventually stopped producing its own weapons and purchased them from commercial industrial companies.

How is the military-industrial complex actually structured in modern China?

Who owns the armaments factories?

More recently in China, the central government has encouraged the military to get out of the civilian goods business and stick to the military side.

Again, much more detail is needed in order to comment on the Chinese economic system than to only use the generic terms “capitalism” and “socialism.”

It is even more ineffective to toss about the word “communism.”

Another example of the difficulty in pasting labels on different economies: In Russia it appears that the armament-producing factories and companies are owned by the government.

In early US times, the military arsenals and navy shipyards were also owned by the government.

Pretty much the embodiment of “socialism” in both cases.

Now, however, weapons in the US are produced in factories owned by private or non-government companies.

However, there seems to be very little real or practical competition in much of the US military-industrial complex, so maybe it would be better described as part “mercantilist” or with some other term?

Some experts have claimed that the US has already lost the arms race with Russia, so perhaps the US should try a different tack and return to having the military set up its own factories to produce the exotic weapons needed to compete with Russia?

The US has approximately six arsenals currently operating, but they do not produce the types of weapons that are made in Russia.

Would this partial return to a variety of “socialism” help the generals to get the weapons they really want, instead of the weapons that produce the most profits?

The US Army went back a century to find a design for its latest uniform, maybe the army could consider a return to the old-fashioned arsenals of a century ago.

VI. CONCLUSION

Any discussion of “isms” such as capitalism and socialism cannot shed much light unless more rigorous and detailed definitions are employed, since both “isms” have many varieties.

In addition, any serious discussion should address the extent to which mercantilism and imperialism are part of the mix.

All this gets very complex very rapidly, so it is not surprising that such is seldom done.

In addition, there is little evidence of any current investigation concerning the command versus market issue in national economies, despite its historical importance in China and Russia.

The problems with computer modeling and simulation are well known, but continue to arise in studies of economic growth, climate change, and spread of disease.

This difficulty has serious implications for China as the nation is faced with vast disagreement between engineers and economists in designing computer simulation models.

Finally, the “skeleton in the closet” that almost no one wants to address is the design of the money and credit system for a nation.

Such a look would impinge on the currently politically correct belief in the proper role and nature of commercial banks, investment banks, and central banks.

It is interesting from a national security standpoint that China has seemingly adopted much of the US and UK system of banking, despite centuries of having panics, booms and busts, recessions and depressions in the latter countries.

“Red Capitalism” is an amalgam of many “isms,” with Chinese characteristics. So far, it appears to be relatively successful, certainly more so than the system employed in India.

However, one can see the same maladies creeping into China that currently beset the US: Malinvestment, stock market excesses, interest rate manipulation, real estate speculation, and increasing concentration of wealth.

The question for the world is which country will be the first to find and implement a cure for these maladies.

The point herein is that anyone who refers to China as a “regime”, and that possesses a “Communist” for of governance DOES NOT UNDERSTAND modern, contemporaneous China and their article and opinions whould be ignored as noise of the ignorant.

You can quote me on that.

A rainy evening in New York’s Times Square under the neon lights of the “Black Widow” marquee.

Article 5

Now, that we know that China has developed and improving on their greatly improved model of governance, and has aligned with the Russian powerhouse, what of the United States? Is it just sitting by the sidelines, or is it in great distress, as the “house of cards” collapses all around it?

Speed Wobble

Things are turning, indeed, out there… out in the truck stops and the households fending off repossession and the small businesses struggling desperately for survivial — even in the degenerate halls of government….

Clusterfuck Nation


If the ads on the Superbowl each year are like a Rorschach test for the nation’s mental condition, then this year’s ad-roll was a cavalcade of frantic hallucinations suggesting a near-complete detachment from reality for an audience of ADD-disabled cell phone slaves locked into a Big Tech induced consensus trance. You could barely tell what these advertisers were trying to sell in their commercials, the psychotic dazzle of half-second jump-cuts was so ferocious. One interesting note, though: people of non-color (PONCs) seem to have been magically sucked out of the universe. There, that fixed things for everybody else.

Snoop Dog’s half-time house party — Hollywood’s G-rated version of a BLM riot — heralded a real riot later on in downtown LA after the Rams’ victory. Fans lit-up a metro bus and tagged it with spray-paint. The police moved in… objects were thrown at them. I’m just sorry that Snoop didn’t bring out his friend and sometime co-star Martha Stewart to twerk for the multitudes — while, say, whipping up a pumpkin mousse. That might have brought the country together after all these months of rancor. But, like I said, sorry, PONCs need not apply. Nor did Da Dawg invite onstage my favorite new pop star, Ski Mask the Slump God, composer of the hits “Faucet Failure” and “Foot Fungus.” Maybe next year… if there is a next year….

All this hearty good fellowship marks the journey of our country from a convocation of be-wigged founding fathers wielding quill pens in defense of liberty to a security-and-surveillance state of hebephrenic zombies lurching to a kind of failure that will make the fall of the Roman Empire look like a lawn sale of someone’s dead uncle’s chattels and effects. The drain-pipe beckons… but will America answer that call… or take a different turn?

Things are turning, indeed, out there… out in the truck stops and the households fending off repossession and the small businesses struggling desperately for survival — even in the degenerate halls of government, state-by-state. The armature of Covid-19 tyranny is getting rapidly dismantled by politicians close to running for their very lives. The home-folks have had enough of their insolence and they’re sharpening the tines of their pitchforks. Events also conspire to put the schnitz on the alleged Globalists’ dream of digital tyranny — if there even is such a cabal of Globalists, which I’m not sure about, or just a coterie of feckless hacks swept along by a malefic zeitgeist, Canada’s Justin Trudeau being the poster-boy for that breed.

The timing has gone all awry on them. The Covid-19 hysteria draws to a close against their wishes to drag it on forever. Even the triple-vaccinated are sick of it — and not a few of them are sick because of it. Governments and the corrupt medical establishment won’t touch this info with a stick, but the morticians and insurance execs are hopping up and down about what looks like a supernatural die-off of folks between 18 and 60 generally not susceptible to early death. Kind of worrisome, a little bit. Anybody with half-a-brain left is declining the offer of yet another booster — though Dr. Fauci was still tirelessly selling them last week.

Mainly, though, the window-of-opportunity has closed, in the USA, anyway, for anymore vaccine passport nonsense, and with that goes the dream of roping every last citizen into a corral of total social control, including central bank digital currencies that would turn everyone into a yo-yo to be jerked-around by government.

“Joe Biden” has so far failed to deliver that war with Russia over Ukraine he promised us — which would be like two Craig’s List customers fighting over a twenty-year-old Jeep Wrangler up on blocks with the engine missing. Ukraine president Zelensky is a professional comedian, of course, so one must admire his gag of inviting “Joe Biden” to visit his country, the Gem of Eurasia, “in the coming days,” Mr. Zelensky said, “which will be a powerful signal and contribute to de-escalation.” Plus, all the pierogi and cabbage the US president can eat. All this made National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gnash his teeth for the trouble he has gone to in prepping the sore-beset American people for World War Three.

But Mr. Sullivan has, perhaps, other things to think about. Like… what are all these offstage noises Special Counsel John Durham is making in the grand jury chambers? Something about Hillary Clinton, and the helpmeets surrounding her in the 2016 election (including especially Jake Sullivan), alleged to have fabricated the Russian collusion whopper that deranged the nation for four years and disabled a sitting president. They even managed to enlist the FBI and the CIA in that task. How’d that happen? Could Hillary have been that peevish? Anyway, it looks kind of bad for the National Security Advisor to “Joe Biden” having such an epic political fraud tacked onto his resume, with perhaps an indictment to follow. Standing by on his resignation….

Our NATO allies must be enjoying the rise of natgas prices beyond the level that many middle-class households in Euroland can afford to keep the heat on in the dead middle of winter, since they have to get so much of the stuff from Russia. Maybe jamming Ukraine into NATO, as America’s Deep State has been wishing and hoping to do, wasn’t such a great idea after all. Maybe NATO itself isn’t such a great idea anymore.

If World War Three doesn’t pan out for “JB,” there’s always a global meltdown of financial markets, banks, and currencies waiting in the wings to amuse and distract everybody from the post-Covid call for a long, hard look at what the pandemic was actually about. The story, in all its multiple, gruesome levels, has gotten away from them. So many public officials are standing naked that Washington looks like a nudist colony.

Do You Know, In the year 1951, Libya was the world’s poorest country. Gaddafi made it Africa’s most developed country with $150 billion foreign reserves And zero debt. Under Muammar Gaddafi, Libya had one of the world’s strongest currencies.

1 Libyan Dinar equalled $0.82781 in 2011. Gaddafi wanted to give all African countries the Dinar to strengthen their economies. He also had more than 140 Tonnes of Gold and similar amounts in silver which he wanted to distribute across Africa to be used in trading.

▪️Libya under Gaddafi.

-Free health care
-Free Electricity
-Free housing, owning a house was considered a human right in Libya
-Free medicine
-Free Education in the country including for all Libyan students who were studying abroad.
-Free water, he built a river.
-Interest Free loans
-Newly weds received $50,000
-Mothers received $5,000 on birth on child.
-All citizens received a percentage of all oil sales
-Petrol was $ 0.14 per liter
-Government paid 50% of the price of your car
-Unemployed Libyans received the average salary of their profession.

▪️These were the reasons why so many individuals wanted to travel to Libya for greener pastures, but now, reverse is the case. Thanks to America bombing it into dust…

America used to be a land with so much potential. A “melting pot” of cultures, and of freedom. Why, you could have “bunnies” serving men in the open at bars, and massage parlors and no one said anything. Not today. Try that today. It will never happen.

Bunny Girls taking an order in a club restaurant in London, 11th February 1963.

Yeah. Look at those prices!

I jsut cannot control myself. I really must stare hard to see the prices and the food items in the menu.

Article 6

From MoA

The Big White House Plans Behind Its ‘Russian Invasion’ Scam

As the ‘Russian invasion’ scam reaches new heights it is time to look at the motives behind it.

The noise has become deafening.

> The U.S. intelligence briefing included specific reference to next Wednesday, February 16, as a start date for the ground invasion, three officials — based in Washington, London and Ukraine — told POLITICO. <

‘Could’ is doing a lot of work in those headlines.

Can we get it a bit more precise?

1am or 3am?

Which is it?

And in what timezone?

And 200,000 troops? Yesterday there were only 100,000. How can those have doubled over night?

There is also the question of why.

Why has the Biden administration created an artificial ‘crisis’ about a Russian invasion of Ukraine when such an invasion is neither planned nor likely to happen? Why is it claiming that a Russian invasion of the Ukraine is ‘imminent’ when Russia as well as the Ukraine deny that any will be coming.

Why does it distribute misleading satellite pictures of allegedly deployed tanks when those are directly next to the barracks where they belong? Why does it hype a ‘Russian buildup’ when that is something that is claimed each and every year?

Jack Matlock, the last U.S. ambassador to the USSR, has one answer:

Maybe I am wrong – tragically wrong – but I cannot dismiss the suspicion that we are witnessing an elaborate charade, grossly magnified by prominent elements of the American media, to serve a domestic political end. Facing rising inflation, the ravages of Omicron, blame (for the most part unfair) for the withdrawal from Afghanistan, plus the failure to get the full support of his own party for the Build Back Better legislation, the Biden administration is staggering under sagging approval ratings just as it gears up for this year’s congressional elections.

Since clear "victories" on the domestic woes seem increasingly unlikely, why not fabricate one by posing as if he prevented the invasion of Ukraine by "standing up to Vladimir Putin"?

Actually, it seems most likely that President Putin’s goals are what he says they are – and as he has been saying since his speech in Munich in 2007. To simplify and paraphrase, I would sum them up as: "Treat us with at least a modicum of respect. We do not threaten you or your allies, why do you refuse us the security you insist for yourself?"

Alastair Crooke points to a different motive:

The authoritative Global Times in an editorial warns that the U.S. is instigating conflict in Ukraine in order to tighten bloc discipline – to corral European States back into the U.S.-led fold. No doubt, China makes the connection that Ukraine provides the perfect pivot for shepherding Europe towards America’s next stage of requiring a united front with the U.S. for the later task of barricading-in China, behind her borders.

In play, therefore, are key decisions that will define Europe for the future. On the one hand, (as Pepe Escobar noted some two years ago), “the goal of Russian and Chinese policy is to recruit Germany into a triple alliance locking together the Eurasian land mass à la Mackinder into the greatest geopolitical alliance in history – switching world power in favour of these three great powers, and against Anglo-Saxon sea power”.

And on the other hand, NATO was conceived, from the outset, as a means of Anglo-American control over Europe and more precisely for keeping Germany ‘down’, and Russia ‘out’ (in that old axiom of western strategists). Lord Hastings (Lionel Ismay), NATO’s first Secretary General, famously said that NATO was created to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”.

This mindset lingers on, but the formula has acquired today a greater import, and a new twist: To keep Germany ‘down and price uncompetitive’ versus U.S. goods; to keep Russia ‘out’ from being Europe’s source of cheap energy; and to keep China ‘fenced out’ from EU–U.S. trade. The aim is to contain Europe firmly within America’s narrowly defined economic orbit and compelled to forgo the benefits of Chinese and Russian technology, finance and trade – thus helping towards achieving the aim of barricading China within its borders.

I find both explanations, the domestic one and the foreign policy one, very plausible and a combination of them is the most likely motive behind the plan for is affair.

The Washington Post explains how the campaign was hashed out and directed from the White House. Its headline though is misleading:

Inside the White House preparations for a Russian invasion
A “Tiger Team” of administration officials has spent the past several months preparing a clear series of responses, gaming out scenarios from cyberattacks and limited intervention to an invasion of Ukraine.

A more correct headline would have been “Inside the White House preparations of the ‘Russian invasion’ scam”.

Lets look into that:

As fears grow of potential Russian aggression against Ukraine, a “Tiger Team” led by the White House is quietly gaming out how the United States would respond to a range of jarring scenarios, from a limited show of force to a full-scale, mass-casualty invasion.

The White House team has staged two multihour tabletop exercises — including one with Cabinet officials — to bring the scenarios to life and assembled a playbook that outlines an array of swift potential responses, starting with Day One and extending through the first two weeks of an envisioned Russian invasion.

The effort, senior administration officials said, has not only helped them anticipate possible complications, but has also prompted them to take actions ahead of time, such as exposing Russian information warfare before it’s carried out to blunt its propaganda power.

The team preplanned their daily propaganda releases step by step:

The “Tiger Team” — a term referring to a diverse group of experts who are tackling a specific problem and that suggests alertness and a readiness to pounce — was created after National Security Council officials last October detected troubling signs of a massive Russian troop buildup on the Ukrainian border.

NSC officials readily admit they may be unable to precisely anticipate the moves of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military leaders. But the exercise and robust planning is still worth it, they said.

“The reality is that what the Russians may end up doing is not likely to be a 100 percent match for any of these scenarios,” [Jonathan Finer, deputy national security adviser to President Biden,] said. “But the goal is for them to be a close enough facsimile of what they end up doing that the plans are useful in terms of reducing the amount of time we need in order to respond effectively. That’s really the whole goal.”

The ‘massive Russian troop buildup on the Ukrainian border’ has never happened in real life. Most of the Russian troops are hundreds of miles away from Ukraine.

It was the Washington Post which on October 30 2021 was the first to publish the claims by ‘anonymous officials’ of a ‘Russian buildup’.

(Side remark: The name ‘Tiger team’ or ‘Tiger squad’ was also used for the Saudi group that killed and hacked up a Washington Post opinion writer Jamal Khashoggi. Funny that the Washington Post piece does not mention that fact.)

Back to the ‘tic toc’ the WaPo provides:

The Tiger Team was officially born in November, when national security adviser Jake Sullivan asked Alex Bick, the NSC director for strategic planning, to lead a planning effort across multiple agencies. Bick has brought in the Departments of Defense, State, Energy, Treasury and Homeland Security, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development to look at a possible humanitarian crisis.

The intelligence community is also involved, gaming out various courses of action the Russians might pursue and the risks and advantages of each, officials said.

While the official launch of the ‘Tiger team’ might have been in November it is clear that the whole operation started earlier when the Ukrainians were asked to take part in the sham:

Simon Shuster @Shustry - 8:29 PM · Feb 14, 2022

Source close to Zelensky told me the U.S. first warned his team of a Russian invasion last fall, putting the chances at 80%. The Ukrainians didn't buy it, but they saw an opportunity -- "more aid, more attention" -- and played along. Now they have regrets. Too much attention.

The CIA has flown paramilitaries from Ukrainian Nazi groups to the U.S. to train them:

While the covert program, run by paramilitaries working for the CIA’s Ground Branch — now officially known as Ground Department — was established by the Obama administration after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and expanded under the Trump administration, the Biden administration has further augmented it, said a former senior intelligence official in touch with colleagues in government.

By 2015, as part of this expanded anti-Russia effort, CIA Ground Branch paramilitaries also started traveling to the front in eastern Ukraine to advise their counterparts there, according to a half-dozen former officials.

The multiweek, U.S.-based CIA program has included training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like “cover and move,” intelligence and other areas, according to former officials.

These groups will be the forces to use when the U.S. decides to launch some false flag ‘Russian attacks’ on Ukrainian civilians.

As you watch it consider that every move in this is preplanned:

The playbook itself goes far beyond battlefield scenarios, looking at questions like how to address Ukrainian refugees who might stream into Poland and Romania, how to secure the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, exactly what sort of sanctions to impose on Moscow, and how to fight back against a sophisticated cyberattack.

The playbook — which synthesizes nearly three dozen papers and intelligence assessments commissioned by the team from various agencies — has been distributed to the various officials, including military and civilian leaders at the Pentagon.

The playbook also considers “second order” consequences, such as Russian retaliation for any penalties.

Those ‘sophisticated cyberattacks’ will most likely come from the National Security Agency which is part of the Pentagon. When the White House will claim that it has evidence of a ‘Russian cyberattack’ on Ukraine, which it is likely to do, keep in mind that anyone who claims to be able to find the real source of such an attack is selling snake oil.

Along the playbook the White House also released disinformation which claims that Russia will use such:

Among the Tiger Team’s top concerns is a Russian effort to promote the false narrative that it is Ukraine, aided by the West, that is preparing to launch an offensive in eastern Ukraine, and that Russia is the victim.

In recent weeks, the U.S. government has declassified intelligence about such efforts, including a potential “false flag” plot in which Moscow would stage an explosion that kills ethnic Russians in Ukraine or in Russia itself, and then blame it on Kyiv as a possible pretext for an invasion.

The White House has declassified nothing that anyone was allowed to see. As the NYT correctly remarked:

For all the disclosures, the Biden administration has provided no evidence of the disinformation plots they say they have uncovered.

The ‘Russian invasion’ scamp was approved from the top:

In December, the Tiger Team held two virtual tabletop exercises to road-test various scenarios and responses. The first brought together deputy secretaries and the second involved Cabinet officials. Biden has reviewed the playbook and was briefed on the results, officials said.

“It’s one thing to consider each of these problems — energy, sanctions, military posture — in isolation. It’s quite another to put them all together and execute a plan on all of them,” the NSC official said. “What I saw over the course of this planning exercise was, including at the most senior levels, lightbulbs go on about the way the pieces fit together.

The plan is integrated enough to allow for aims and achievements in multiple fields.

That is why I believe that both, Matlock and Crooke, are right in their guesses of the motives behind the ‘Russian invasion’ scam.

There are domestic aims and there are foreign policy aims and the pieces of the plan fit them together.

But that is only so if the whole thing does not unravel. In real life no battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy.

Zelensky’s much criticized unwillingness to play his part of the show may just be one of the elements that will let it all fall apart.

Then there is Russia which is always good at creating real surprises. I bet that its security demands and the draft treaties it provided where not foreseen in the playbook. They already succeeded in pressing Biden into concessions the U.S. had previously been unwilling to make. More surprises in different areas will follow. As soon as the Olympics are over China may also come to play a role in this.

Big plans make for big failures.

So here we are, eh?

Asia has their shit together and the USA is run by “old dinosaurs” that cannot change as they fear that if they do they will lose everythign and have to accept a new lifestyle. So they ae off threatening war…

…everywhere.

I’ll tell you, it make me yearn for the days when America used to stand for something; when it used to represent something. When families mattered.

When people… mattered.

When pets… mattered.

When food… mattered.

When life, family and friends…mattered.

Where has it gone? Well, I tell you that it’s due to the American leadership. And what evil monsters that they have become. Maybe they would act and behave a little bit differently if they had regular, and normal lifestyles. If they acted and behaved normally, and if they participated within their own open and free communities, instead of living like robber barrons on methamphetamines.

Baseball.

Yeah.

I miss the “good old days”…

When you could pull over and have a picnic without have a police car “investigate” what you are doing…

Article 7

I truly need to spend more time with cats.

I miss Leonardo. He was a good kitty.

What does Russia think about all this?

Tim Kirby
February 15, 2022

No progress can be made until the West either sees the Russians as equals or at least fears them enough to create respect like they did in the Cold War, Tim Kirby writes.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s particular take on politics has created many memes on the Russian Internet. His personal frustrations having to negotiate and deal with the West are very relatable to the Russian masses who also want to normalize relations. His crestfallen yet visibly angered words “F’n Morons” have become the stuff of meme legend throughout Russia, although few realize that it was actually said during discussions with the Saudis and not America or Britain as most would assume. But this statement so resonated with the pure frustration that Russians have been feeling, that the populace just sort of shifted the target of his words to the ultimate source of their dismay that started the Maidan Color Revolution in 2014, which has been spiraling downwards ever since. Foreign Minister Lavrov has proved not to be a one hit wonder and his recent trolling of his British counterpart Liz Truss exploded over the Russian internet. This interesting strange moment in the endless and pointless battle of The West vs. Russia is a real microcosm of the nature of how both sides see themselves and the other and demands a full breakdown.

So the situation looks like this, again an annoyed and worn down Lavrov tried to prove a point about how little the West actually understands about the Ukrainian Crisis with some verbal fencing…

MOSCOW, February 10. /TASS/. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss refused to recognize Russia’s sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov Regions at talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday, a source close to the negotiations told TASS.

After Truss’ statements urging Moscow to move its forces, located on Russia’s soil, away from the border with Ukraine, Lavrov asked his British counterpart if she recognized Russia’s sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov Regions.

According to the source, Truss insisted that the UK would never recognize Russia’s sovereignty over these regions.

Although the Russian internet was smugly proud of this quippy achievement there is a level of pure honesty in the reaction from the British that most Russians simply are incapable of seeing. The Russians are all laughing at her answer taking it as a literal reaction, but metaphorically she told the God’s honest truth from an Anglo-Saxon perspective.

Truss clearly refused to recognize two regions of Russia as being part of Russia out of willful ignorance. There are fine lines between idiocy, ignorance and willful ignorance, but behind the latter of the three there can often be a very crafty and hateful intelligence. No truth pith-helmeted British colonizer would dare to learn anything about her barbaric adversaries, and in this display of pure willful ignorance she perfectly articulated the view of the West towards Russia – they don’t recognize any of Russia’s concerns, demands, leadership or even statehood as legitimate, nor do they need to justify their positions with facts and knowledge when dealing with Untermenschen.

The reaction of the British Foreign Secretary was an unintended act of pure and total dominance. Can you imagine, just how low she and her colleagues must view the Russians as to be charged with dealing with them and yet know absolutely nothing about their country, their geography and the nature of the Ukrainian Crisis? Discussing a situation that has killed thousands of people yet choosing to learn zero basic information is “alpha-chad” to say the least.

Truss answered like a Roman general forced to lower himself to speaking to unwashed Barbarians, who has zero concern for any details about these subhuman animals and their pathetic pseudoculture. All the Roman needs to know is that the allied Barbarians in Ukraine are right and the enemy ones in Russia are wrong. What town or river is where doesn’t make any difference. This Roman attitude of seeing the world as one of civility vs. barbarity hasn’t gone anywhere, and a true sign of a “civilized person” is having zero knowledge or tolerance for the ways of the backwards.

Although Russians may find tricking Anglo-Saxon counterparts into revealing how ignorant they are as a coping mechanism for losing the Cold War, they forget that the supposedly 80 IQ gender-queer limp-wristed twits on the other side of the line have beaten them time and again. My Russian children, living in Russia, have already asked me numerous LGBT-related questions yet have not once asked anything about Multipolarity, Traditional Values or Orthodox Christianity. Russians may find narcissistic joy in mocking the English-speaking world for being ignorant, but apparently being able to quote Pushkin doesn’t win 21st century info wars now, does it? When you’ve got Hollywood, the entire Mainstream Media, Big Tech and so on, you don’t need to know where anything is on a map. The Anglo-Saxons have plenty of knowledge, they just feel they don’t need to know a damn thing about you Russians. That is the nuance the Russians cannot perceive on their mental radar.

This trolling by Lavrov really shows that the joke is actually on Russia. The Russians continue, after years of failing, to try to reason with those who see them as subhuman animals. Perhaps we are moving towards a Multipolar World due to economics, geography and the West shooting itself in the foot, but as far as cultural/info wars are going if you look at the youth around Moscow you can clearly see who is winning.

Perhaps it is actually Lavrov’s side who is ignorant as to how to deal with the Romans from a Barbarian standpoint, and simply cannot wrap their brains around the fact that no progress can be made until the West either sees the Russians as equals or at least fears them enough to create respect like they did in the Cold War. It would also help if the Russians would wake up to the fact that they are considered Barbarians, the fact that Hitler killed millions of them due to his belief that they are racially inferior, just won’t sink in for some reason.

Russia continues to step on the same rake over and over again by seeing itself as equal to the West and believing that the stress between both sides is caused by some sort of cultural misunderstanding. The real intellectual question the Russians should be asking themselves is by what means could a Germanic Barbarian chief convince a Roman general that they are equals?

How could they make him see the villages and culture of the Rhine as just as human and glorious as Rome? This first step to this particular negotiation is really the necessity for the Russians to hack through layer-upon-layer of Anglo-Saxon cultural superiority that creates the type of willful ignorance displayed unabashedly by Liz Truss. Although it is hard to formulate a winning strategy for this problem, it surely lies in the fact that deep down the Civilized man will always secretly envy the freedom and uncastrated status of the Barbarian, but that is a topic for another day.

Behind all the intensifying huffing and puffing of the US in the geopolitical arena. “More than 60% of all foreign currency reserves in the world are in USD – but there are big changes on the horizon … some of the biggest economies on earth have been making agreements with each other to move away from using the USD in international trade (Image: https://lnkd.in/eAP8tF3B) … [this shift is] going to have massive implications for the US economy.

10 reasons why the reign of the dollar as the world reserve currency [may] come to an end:

#1: China And Japan To Use Own Currencies In Bilateral Trade
The 2nd largest economy (China) and 3rd largest economy (Japan) struck a deal [to] use of their own currencies. This was an incredibly important agreement that was virtually totally ignored by the US media. [Read an extract of the BBC in the article].

#2: The BRICS Plan To Use Own Currencies When Trading
A new agreement will promote the use of their own national currencies when trading with each other. [An extract from a news source in India is in the article].

#3: China and Russia Use Own Currencies In Bilateral Trade
[In fact,] Russia and China have been using their own national currencies when trading with each other for more than a year now.

#4: Use Of Chinese Currency Growing In Africa
In 2009, China became Africa’s biggest trading partner, and is aggressively seeking to expand the use of Chinese currency. At this point, approx. 70,000 Chinese companies are using Yuan in cross-border transactions.

#5: China and UAE To Use Own Currencies In Bilateral Trade
– in oil transactions with each other. The UAE is a fairly small player, but this is definitely a threat to the petrodollar system.

#6: India To Use Gold To Buy Oil From Iran
Iran has been one of the most aggressive nations when it comes to moving away from the USD in international trade.

#7: Saudi Arabia Likely to Abandon Use of Petrodollar in Dealings With China
[China] imports the most oil from Saudi Arabia. [They] have teamed up to construct a massive new oil refinery in Saudi.

#8: The UN Continues to Push For A New World Reserve Currency

#9: The IMF Has Been Pushing For A New World Reserve Currency
– published a series of reports calling for the USD to be replaced.

#10: Most Of The Rest Of The World Hates The US
Global sentiment toward the US has dramatically shifted, and this should not be underestimated.

What will happen if the USD’s reign as the world reserve currency comes to an end? It will bring very undesirable changes to the American lifestyle through:

1. massive inflation,
2. high interest rates on mortgages and cars,
3. substantial increases in the cost of food, clothing and gasoline; and
4. a much harder time financing its debt [$30 trillion and counting].

Under the right conditions, a shift in momentum can become a landslide.”

So stop with cruel sanctions and printing of new US dollars to fund senseless wars.

Read more:
https://lnkd.in/emZkSn4d

Life in Florida when things were affordable, and people could raise families on a single income without having to ascribe to “systems” and pay “fees” in support of “taxes” all to go to a “government” to generate more “wars of distraction”.

Ford Fairlane, 1956

Article 8

I see all of this as late-stage decay, and the beginnigns of a rebirth. Whether or not it will be catastrophic has yet to be seen, but I do remain hopeful.

Democracy Enters Its Endgame

From HERE.

As Plato observed, democracy runs through a life cycle from good feelings at having escaped oligarchy to a semi-oligarchic period until it reaches its final stage, narcissistic mob rule under protection by tyrants.

Then the tyrants import diversity to vote against the majority interest so the tyrants can rule, and then the society collapses into a third world ruin.

Modern people, who understand nothing other than human social intentions, thought the cycle did not apply to them, not realizing that it accurately diagnosed the cause/effect relationships that occur as people react to the precedent of equality.

When democracy enters its endgame, the destroyers have a leg up because they have taken over the institutions that formerly worked for the population and are now seeking to destroy that population so the foreigners can enthrone the tyrant.

As some have mentioned, tyranny is rule for its own sake, or people seeking power for their own benefit at the expense of the interests of the society. Tyrants would rather rule over ashes than be normal people in a healthy society.

Liberalization — the political arm of individualism, or the same “me first at the expense of all else” bourgeois pathology that underscores tyranny — creates inversion that eventually destroys the society.

It begins with liberating individuals by relaxing rules. These rules, derived from reality and culture, restrain individuals from selfishness and self-destructive pathologies. When they are removed, selfishness takes over.

After some time, this proves destructive, so people speak out. The inversion begins: the society bans any criticism of some liberalization, since the critics will upend the “progress” toward a Utopia of equality.

The more time passes, the worse things get and the louder the critics whine, so more stuff gets demonized, made taboo, or outright banned until all that is left are terms that praise the system as it is.

Language has become inverted at that point, as has meaning. Nothing can be said but praise of the inevitable march from Enlightenment™ to Communism, and anyone who wants to be allowed to speak in public must affirm that the “arc of history” leads toward this progress.

Eventually, however, this order inverts. The things that people praise become seen as failing or failed. The terms that were once positive become handy shorthand for describing things which do not work so well. The inverted is in turn inverted.

These civilizations die from disinterest in a wave of combined apathy and anarchy. The system sucks, but no one who says this will be allowed to be anything but desperately poor, so the “experts” form an echo chamber that agrees that things are not failing, but better than ever before!

Then things fall apart. Those who thought they were running a successful society start to see that they are running a failure. They rush to implement their tyranny before the population bails out.

Unfortunately for them, however, they think in terms of enemies only when the real threat to them is lack of belief. Conjectural, messianic, and Utopian (CMU) systems like liberalization require people to believe that things are getting better.

When anyone succeeds without them, people realize belatedly that the whole liberalization project was never needed, and life is in fact better without that overhead of management, bureaucracy, administration, regulation, and wealth transfer taxes.

At this point, no one in the real world believes in the system, but those who depend on it — celebrities, media, minorities, government employees, regulations lawyers, and academics — defend it, fooling most of the people for some time.

Then at some point, that time ends, and the average person starts to see the system as the parasite that it always was. They do not oppose it so much as withdraw their support, sort of like how people stopped watching the NFL or Netflix shows.

Those who know that the system sucks but rationalize it so that they can continue to act out positions that were once important (here, we are speaking of post-Buckley “conservatives”) keep trying to explain the bad as good and failing.

People turn away. They turn toward their homes. They cheat aggressively on taxes and buy everything through the black market. They hide any wealth they have, and most importantly, do only a perfunctory job of their work role.

The would-be tyrants, in response to this loss of faith, crack down on those who visibly protest, in doing so revealing how they have been inverted. The defenders of equality and freedom have now become favoritists and authoritarians.

We are seeing this in real time as Democracy, Inc. prepares to arrest peaceful protesters who pointed out that the COVID-19 lockdown regimen is failing:

“These blockades are illegal, and if you are still participating the time to go home is now,” Trudeau declared after meeting virtually with leaders of the country’s provinces.

Invoking the Emergencies Act would allow the government to declare the Ottawa protest illegal and clear it out by such means as towing vehicles, Wark said. It would also enable the government to make greater use of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the federal police agency.

Over the past weeks, authorities have hesitated to move against the protesters. Local officials cited a lack of police manpower and fears of violence, while provincial and federal authorities disagreed over who had responsibility for quelling the unrest.

If you blow off a summer of burning cities and violence in the name of egalitarian causes, but then crack down on those who merely want you to slow your acceleration of transfer of wealth, power, and status from the naturally talented to the rest of the “equals,” then you reveal that you have been inverted.

The good guys, who made bad=good so that society could liberalize, now have become the bad guys.

Even the numb and slumbering voters realize at this point that now they are in an authoritarian regime. You either obey the dogma and read another “The Conservative Case for Pre-K Transsexual Sodomy” article, or you become an enemy of the State.

Modern society — liberal democracy, civil rights, market socialism, and Keynesian entitlements — took over the world after WWII.

Following the collapse of its erswhile allies in freedom with the fall of the Soviet Union, modernity expanded according to precedent, increasing each one of these things through a world financial network known as globalism.

Now it has become clear that this New World Order has collapsed from within as disorder breaks out across the globe:

Looking back at the past 14 years, it is with some consternation that Wolfgang Ischinger “cannot recall a time when there were so many overlapping crises.” That’s a reference to the challenges posed by Iran, China and the evolving Euro-Atlantic security architecture. A long list that could still encompass many other global hot spots.

Indeed, the extraordinary profusion of unresolved crises is itself the central topic in this year’s MSR.

The report describes a mood of “collective helplessness.” In the same way as ordinary individuals, whole societies can be overcome by a sense that they simply have no answer to the challenges they face.

In other words, people have lost faith in the system and now are reverting to pre-civilization behaviors by acting toward their own personal and civilizational interests without regard to other groups.

This means that not only has democracy failed, but the underlying belief in equality, altruism, pluralism, utilitarianism, and socially-accepted individualism has faded away.

We are seeing a crisis of confidence in that no one is betting on democracy being around much longer. The collapse of American government shows us how little people believe in the goodness of modernity anymore:

In a poll last month, 66 percent of Democrats wanted Clinton questioned, a whopping 22 percentage points higher than how many in her party demanded a probe last October, according to TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics (TIPP) research.

The amount of Republicans demanding answers is also swelling, rising to 91 percent in January from 80 percent last October. Among the independent crowd, those wanting the former secretary of state probed rose to 74 percent from 65 percent.

Clinton, 74, is being accused of hiring a tech term to ‘infiltrate’ servers at Trump Tower and the White House during the 2016 campaign.

Previous generations would have been shocked at this abuse of power, but in the current time, less care for the shared space of civilization seems evident. This seems to be changing.

In particular, for Democrats to know about Clintonian abuses of power — something essentially embargoed by the Left-leaning media and social media — requires them to be reading non-Left leaning sources.

This in turn means that they have already lost faith, even in their own party. The supposedly “good guys” inverted into the “bad guys,” leading people to see this as a systemic problem with the modern system.

I’ll tell youse guys. It all makes me yearn for a simpler time…

Playboy-style “bunny girls” serving a customer with a champagne lunch at Paul Raymond’s Bal Tabarin nightclub in Hanover Square, London, 11th February 1963.

Maybe our grandparents and our parents really knew better than us, with all of our new “progressive” ideas on life and relationships. Eh?

I’ll tell you what, they certainly ate better.

Steak Devine.

And they certainly dressed better. Not only the very attractive women…

Stunners!

But men did as well…

In style.

Sigh.

Article  9

One day, maybe twenty years from now, the United States government will rewrite the narrative and concoct some kind of illusion as to what really is going on now. But let this article stand as a reminder of this historical period of time of great change and the threat of great terror.

The Russians are so grateful!

2022-02-10

You may be aware of the fact that things aren’t going very well for the United States, but you may not know that things are going quite well for the Russian Federation.

You may also think that Russia is an evil force that needs to be contained, or that it is ruled by an evil dictator, or any number of such things while the US is a prosperous democracy and a superpower (whatever that means) but this makes no difference.

If you’ve been following recent events, you may be aware that Russia has recently presented the US with something like an ultimatum—demanding that the US provide it with certain security guarantees.

But you will probably be quite surprised to learn that the granting of these security guarantees will be automatic as the US continues to collapse and retreat into its hollowed-out, bankrupt shell, its rout from Afghanistan being by no means its last.

Nor would you be able to appreciate the fact that the security demands are designed to make America’s retreat from Eurasia maximally humiliating: not only will it retreat, but it will retreat because the Russians ordered it to do so.

Once that retreat takes place, Russia will no doubt be immensely, effusively grateful that America has finally faced up to its responsibilities and did the right thing by getting the hell out of Eurasia, gleefully rubbing salt into America’s wounds.

Russia will then joyfully make mincemeat of the Monroe Doctrine, spreading its influence, hand in hand with China, over the American continent, from Argentina to Mexico, leaving the US (whatever remains of it) sulking in its corner eating a pot of glue.

But there is a lot more gratitude that’s due for what’s already transpired. In fact, Russia should be thanking the US for all it’s done to make Russia a winner and the US a loser at every opportunity.

Continue reading… on Patreon (paywall)

I wonder what kind of false flag operation the USA has for it’s narrative…?

I wouldn’t put anything past the evil United States psychopaths.

Here’s an American conservative radio talk show host that claims that nuclear weapons are being detonated in the Ukraine.

I don’t believe it.

video

But now the American conservative “news” is saying that there is a big war in the Ukraine just like Biden promised…

 

screen capture .

Hum.

They even have a nice detailed map. See…

Why I do not believe this…

If it was a full scale war, there would not be any picures, cell phones or anything. Russia would be saturation bombing the living Hell out of the Ukraine.  And, the NATO forces, and American bases would be under fire as well.

Some people want war so badly. Go to the link (opens in a new tab) and read al the great screeching details about the end-of-the-world, and Russian agression. It’s like a FOX “news” wet dream.

They have no idea what a REAL war is like.

I don’t believe it.

Some glimpses of the future

Let’s take a peek at what the world has in store for all of us if we adapt and embrace the Chinese model…

A RUFUS Does good works . video

A Rufus Being kind and considerate of others. video

Rufus massive rescue. video

Rufus helps out girl with baby video

The Rufus community puts out the fire. video

Rufus Stranger helps a girl on the bus. Video

A Rufus says take my money. Don’t worry. Video

A Rufus serves the people. Video

A Rufus saves all creatures. Video

A Rufus takes action immediately! Video

A Rufus saves a motorcycle.Video

Conclusion

YOUR future is in YOUR hands.

Do not get too caught up.

Spend time with friends and family. Don’t take your cats and dogs for granted. They need you and love you. That is precious, and their thoughts WILL influence your life.

Yes they will.

These are historic times. These are serious times, and these are times of opportunity. Do not allow yourself to be boxed in by the fear-generation mechanisms used to control, but rather rise up from them.

Carve out your own life.

Live it well.

This is a message we need to hear. Gut out the programming, and the rush-rush-rush. Hurry is the enemy of deep work, excellence, health, relationships, and the spiritual life. Period!

Live life well.

And, well, be the best that you can be within it. I beleive in you.

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my “New Beginnings 3” Index here…

New Beginnings

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Articles & Links

Master Index

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News and stuff a collection of tidbits

Well, here’s some stuff for thought. I’m going to be all over the place here. With Scotland, China, the United States, food, girls, and being a Rufus all thrown together to make a disjointed point about being a human and showing humanity. So enjoy my ramblings and take a nice stroll in MM land here today. I hope you all enjoy it.

We start off with America

America’s Judges Are Putting My Life on the Line

Sara Nelson [New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 11-12-2021]

America needs more judges who understand and support the rights of workers. For too long, the courts have sided with corporations over labor, fundamentally and perniciously reshaping American law, life and liberty. Today, they are doing their part to unravel the American dream — and the social contract that has been in place since the 1940s, offering the working class a good life if they spend 40 hours on the job, the means to enjoy it in off hours and a secure retirement.

In one stark example, a judge in Alabama in October barred union mineworkers from picketing within 300 yards of mine entrances, even as the authorities there have failed to charge the drivers of vehicles that struck lawful picketers. In a more common infringement of free speech, a judge in Iowa limited United Auto Workers picket lines outside a John Deere plant in Davenport last month to just four people at each entrance to the plant….

This didn’t happen by accident. Republican presidents have stacked the federal courts with judges who hail from elite law schools, white-shoe law firms and corporate boardrooms. (More than a quarter of all federal judges on the bench in January had been appointed by Donald Trump.) As a result, the corporate win rate in American courts is sky-high.

This is especially true in cases heard by the Supreme Court, which has sided with the Chamber of Commerce 70 percent of the time since 2006. A study published in 2013 ranked Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas among the five most-corporate-friendly members of the court since 1946, and the pro-corporate voting rate of its conservative wing is only growing. According to one recent report, the court agrees with the Chamber of Commerce more now than it had at any other time in recent history….

This isn’t just an academic question, or even an economic one — it’s often a matter of life and death. Before he joined the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, as a judge on the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, voted to allow the firing of an employee who abandoned an unheated company truck in a blizzard to avoid freezing to death. This is just one example of the judicial callousness toward workers that has put our livelihoods and lives in real danger.

How Other Nations Pay for Child Care. The U.S. Is an Outlier.

[New York Times, October 6, 2021, via The Big Picture 11-7-2021]
Rich countries contribute an average of $14,000 per year for a toddler’s care, compared with $500 in the U.S.

GRAPH

The truth HURTS. Exceptional, my ass!

The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

Yves Smith, November 10, 2021 [Naked Capitalism]

Broken chain of supply

We chartered a boat with a logistics expert to look at port congestion up close and saw how American greed is leading to shortages and empty shelves

[Business Insider, via The Big Picture 11-7-2021]

A second tour of the The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. “‘I blame 150 years of supply chain optimization,’ Nathan Strang, Flexport’s director of ocean trade lane management, told Insider of why ships are still steaming towards Los Angeles and Long Beach. ‘It’s a sign of their success, that’s causing the congestion.’”

….the ports can’t just stack up the containers until a driver comes to pick them up: “There’s no space,” Rice said…. “A lot of the congestion is due to the fact that there’s nowhere to put the empty containers.” Flexport’s Strang said. “Having some way to get those empties stored and off the chassis so that we can pick up live containers, that would actually go very far.”

American GREED. Stop blaming China.

How American leaders failed to help workers survive the ‘China Shock’

[NPR, via The Big Picture 11-7-2021]
But most economists, like most American leaders, had believed that workers would adapt somewhat smoothly to economic change and that they would find solid places to work in other sectors. “We had this notion that the American economy is this incredibly dynamic place,” says Hanson, an economist at Harvard Kennedy School. “We create millions of jobs every year, and we destroy millions of jobs every year. 

We thought we could handle moving a couple of million manufacturing workers from one sector to another.”

Autor, Dorn and Hanson’s first peer-reviewed papers from their China Shock saga were published in 2013. The economists found that between 1990 and 2007, trade with China killed about 1.5 million American manufacturing jobs, or about a quarter of all manufacturing jobs lost during that period. 

But what was even more startling: These losses were heavily concentrated in small- and medium-size communities dotting America’s heartland — and workers who lost their jobs in those areas struggled to find other work. The China Shock created what looked like miniature Great Depressions in these places.

Standard economic theory said that the non-college-educated workers who lost their jobs would move or retrain and find work in other places or sectors. But they didn’t. 

Most stayed put and were never fully employed again. “It ended up creating these pockets of distress,” Hanson says. “That was the surprising part. That’s what we economists didn’t know was going to happen.”

As Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1791: 

Experience teaches, that men are often so much governed by what they are accustomed to see and practice, that the simplest and most obvious improvements, in the [most] ordinary occupations, are adopted with hesitation, reluctance and by slow gradations … To produce the desirable changes, as early as may be expedient, may therefore require the incitement and patronage of government…

Too bad Hamilton is not required reading for economics students…

Bill Mitchell — When labour shortages just signal management caprice

[via Mike Norman Economics 11-9-2021]
I have been researching the so-called labor shortage that business types are talking about relentlessly as part of their on-going strategy to undermine the conditions of work and make more profit. 

In the course of that inquiry, I came across an interesting juxtaposition between two US companies that illustrate a lot of what we have known about for years but have allowed this relentless, neoliberal, race-to-the-bottom to obscure. 

Well-paid workers with job security, work better and are happy workers. 

Companies that pursue the ‘race-to-the-bottom’ strategy and seek to build profits by trashing the conditions they offer workers eventually struggle to prosper because their bad reputation undermines their ability to attract productive workers. 

In the case we discuss today, the so-called ‘labor shortage’ is really just a signal of management caprice. 

Rather than being a shortage of workers, there is a shortage of workers who will tolerate the indignity of low wages, onerous conditions and capricious management. 

It is also a union versus non-union type of discussion where the unionised work places generate high productivity and worker attachment, while the non-unionised workplaces find it hard to attract reliable staff and blame it all on ‘labor shortages’….

It’s all over the “West”. The capitalist democracies are all falling apart.

They’re not capitalists – they’re a criminal predatory class

[International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, via Mike Norman Economics 11-10-2021]

No shit! Dick Tracy.

David Dayen, November 12, 2021 [The American Prospect]

A new report identifies 20 major corporate recidivists, with rap sheets that should be in the sights of the Justice Department’s new approach to white-collar crime.

Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 12, 2021 [Wall Street on Parade]

Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 10, 2021 [Wall Street on Parade]

Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 9, 2021 [Wall Street on Parade]

As for leverage at hedge funds, yesterday’s Fed report had this to share:

“Hedge fund leverage remained somewhat higher than its historical average in the first quarter of 2021, according to the most comprehensive available measures. On-balance-sheet leverage at hedge funds, based on confidential data collected by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), decreased in the first quarter to a level close to its historical average. Gross leverage at hedge funds—based on the same source but including off-balance-sheet derivatives exposures—continued to be above its historical average in the first quarter.”

One needs to carefully parse the above paragraph. Why does the Federal Reserve, which has bank examiners in every mega bank that owns a trading house on Wall Street, need to ask the SEC for data about hedge fund leverage? The prime brokerage operations of those mega banks are the ones making those highly leveraged loans to hedge funds. (See our report: Archegos: Wall Street Was Effectively Giving 85 Percent Margin Loans on Concentrated Stock Positions – Thwarting the Fed’s Reg T and Its Own Margin Rules.)

Climate and environmental crises

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-12-2021]
Take a look at who actually emits the most carbon. And take a look at how much rich people in the US emit, compared to absolutely anyone else https://t.co/XGjRhj1OKE pic.twitter.com/UbNjGlx9Ld

— Vincent Bevins (@Vinncent) November 8, 2021

Yeah blame China, instead of looking at yourselves.

[Financial Times, via Tweet above]

The fight to protect the planet is shifting in ways that could soon exacerbate conflicts within countries, particularly between social classes. Or, to put it bluntly, between the rich and the rest. The top 1 per cent by income of the world’s population account for about 15 per cent of emissions, according to UN data. That is more than double the share of the bottom 50 per cent.

[Digg, via Naked Capitalism 11-13-2021] [Slate, via The Big Picture 11-10-2021]
The challenge is not identifying the solutions, but rolling them out with great speed.
[South China Morning Post, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-11-2021]
“The Iceland plant, called Orca, is the largest such facility in the world, capturing about 4,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. But compared to what the planet needs, the amount is tiny. Experts say 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide must be removed annually by mid-century…. Leading scientific agencies including the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say that even if the world manages to stop producing harmful emissions, that still won’t be enough to avert a climate catastrophe. They say we need to suck massive amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air and put it back underground – yielding what some call “negative emissions”… As dire warnings have accelerated, technology to vacuum carbon dioxide from the air has advanced. Currently, a handful of companies operate such plants on a commercial scale, including Climeworks, which built the Orca plant in Iceland, and Carbon Engineering, which built a different type of direct air capture plant in British Columbia. And now that the technology has been proven, both companies have ambitions for major expansion. At Climeworks’ Orca plant near Reykjavik, fans suck air into big, black collection boxes where the carbon dioxide accumulates on a filter. Then it’s heated with geothermal energy and is combined with water and pumped deep underground into basalt rock formations. Within a few years, Climeworks says, the carbon dioxide turns into stone.”
[Pro Publica, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-11-2021]
“ProPublica’s analysis of five years of modeled EPA data identified more than 1,000 toxic hot spots across the country and found that an estimated 250,000 people living in them may be exposed to levels of excess cancer risk that the EPA deems unacceptable. The agency has long collected the information on which our analysis is based. Thousands of facilities nationwide that are considered large sources of toxic air pollution submit a report to the government each year on their chemical emissions. But the agency has never released this data in a way that allows the public to understand the risks of breathing the air where they live. Using the reports submitted between 2014 and 2018, we calculated the estimated excess cancer risk from industrial sources across the entire country and mapped it all.”

Creating new economic potential – science and technology

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 11-9-2021] [MIT Technology Review, via Naked Capitalism 11-11-2021] [Brighter Side, via Naked Capitalism 11-13-2021]
  • Information Age Dystopia

Securing your digital life, part one: The basics

[ars technica, via Naked Capitalism 11-13-2021]

Collapse of Independent News Media

David Sirota [The Daily Poster, November 8, 2021]

This morning, the New York Times published a screed from pollster Mark Penn and former New York City lawmaker Andrew Stein demanding Democrats abandon their promised agenda ahead of the midterm elections. The massive 1,500 word op-ed — designed to define the political news cycle for the coming week — echoes a house editorial from the newspaper making much the same argument, and it mirrors previous Penn diatribes that the Times has platformed in the past.

In the process, this essay offers a rare glimpse of how corporate media imperceptibly puts its thumb on the scale for a particular ideology that is decidedly neither centrist nor objective.

The Times’ original headline on Monday’s piece (which has since been changed) read “A Way Forward for Biden and the Dems in 2022 & 2024.” It argues that President Biden should “listen to centrists (and) push back on the left” and insists Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema “are in fact the very heart of the Democratic Party.”

It’s a hot take that might be mildly interesting, if it came from voices who genuinely had the Democratic Party’s best interests in mind. However, the Times decided to not tell readers that Penn is a private equity mogul with myriad connections to the corporate world that’s looking to kill the Democratic legislative agenda that the op-ed seeks to curtail. The paper doesn’t mention Penn’s ties to No Labels, a dark money group funded by big donors that’s been vilifying Democrats’ reconciliation bill. The paper also declines to mention that Penn advised President Donald Trump during his first impeachment, nor does it mention that Stein is the guy who

The Windows XP wallpaper is now a vineyard

Who would figure?

Ammonia-based fertilizers

Ammonia-based fertilizers are made from nitrogen (it’s most of our air, so never in short supply) and natural gas or methane (CH4), and make up almost 70% of all fertilizers used world-wide to support major agriculture crops such as wheat, corn, rice and even coffee. As natural gas prices have soared by anywhere from 300% to 500% over the past months, this has had a devastating impact on world fertilizer production, where some 80% of the cost of making ammonia fertilizers is due to the natural gas cost.

What’s more, big Ammonia plants in many countries are now closing (for how long?), and  China, who is said to make 30% of the world supply of ammonia, has just banned its export.  (Check to verify).  Early next year this will all become very evident.  First hit will be animal feed so it looks like meat eating will diminish greatly.  I don’t see any way it won’t happen.

https://journal-neo.org/2021/11/12/now-the-organized-takedown-of-global-fertilizer-supply/

Here’s Guangzhou, China.

It’s a very middle class city. Full of factories and just blue-collar Chinese people. Check it out. Video.

“Where’s Waldo” Beach addition for warmer wallpaper weather!

Some stuff on China

From the Daily Stormer

Since Biden has taken over, there have been nonstop threats against China, and US warplanes and warships are racing in and out of their territories. Biden’s Secretary of Defense flew to Japan to demand that they sign a blood pact to defend Taiwan. Most of the US military activity is not much reported on in the American media (I usually read about it on RT), but we are hearing rising nonsense about the poor and pitiful Moslems, and the importance of Americans devoting their military to defending the sacred democracy of the very important nation of Taiwan.

What is incredible to me is that both the right and the left are so easily manipulated into thinking conflict with China is a good idea. For the left, I guess it makes sense. As we’ve mentioned before, the Antifa type neo-socialists who have been so heavily force-memed on social media as the Democrat Party’s internet defense force (Vaush, for example) spend a lot of time talking about how China is a “fascist state.”

For the right, the support for anti-China sentiment makes no real sense, and is mostly based on stupidity and a lack of information. Republican leaders are openly saying that they need to protect Antifa in Hong Kong, Islamic terrorists in Xinjiang, and gay marriage in Taiwan. But Sean Hannity and Mark Levin continue to talk about “the threat of Chinese communism.”

As I’ve written about before, China is not a “communist country.” The average Chinese person knows nothing about Marxism. They have a very free market (much more free than America’s), where small business is encouraged.

As I’ve written before, the fact that it is even called “The Communist Party” in English is sort of deceitful, and an exploitation of the fact that Westerners know nothing about China or its culture, including the total difference of the nature of their language. “中国共产党” is translated as “communist party” consistently, yet a direct translation, as it would be spoken in Chinese, would be something like “The Party of People Working Together to be Productive.”

That’s how Chinese people view it.

Even with their supposed “communist” connections to Southeast Asian countries, they frame it as a historical cultural connection, rather than one based on a political system designed by a German Jew in London in the 19th century.

If you asked a working class Chinese person why China, Laos, and Vietnam all use the hammer and sickle, they would say something like: “this is the symbol of Asia people,” and laugh and point at their eyes, then say “eat rice, eat noodle,” and laugh again. A more educated Chinese person might be vaguely aware of the history, but would claim that no foreigner ever influenced China in any way, ever, in all of history: “we make a big, strong wall. Cannot allow.”

Under Emperor Xi, China has become increasingly more traditional, and backing away from the kind of modernism that had been encroaching. He is attempting to reestablish a form of Confucianism.

The Chinese are effectively the opposite of everything the modern West stands for:

  • Extreme ethno-nationalists
  • Patriarchal
  • Anti-feminist
  • Anti-gay
  • Pro-family
  • Pro-middle class and anti-elitism
  • Meritocratic
  • Militaristic in individual discipline

The Chinese government recently announced a program to build masculinity among boys, as they recognize that the school environment (which was largely imported from the West) is too feminizing, that the high tech environment itself is feminizing, and they recognize masculinity as a foundation of society.

In February, the Chinese government published “The Proposal to Prevent the Feminisation of Male Adolescents,” and said that they would use sports to toughen boys up.

The Western media outright declared this to be evil. (You might not have noticed, but at some point between 2018 and 2020, the media made the jump from talking about “toxic masculinity” as a social evil to simply referring to “masculinity” as a social evil. When they began talking about “toxic masculinity,” I noted that they were playing a terminology game, and that “toxic masculinity” just meant “masculinity.”)

Chinese cultural values are virtually a direct inversion of the modern Western values created and promoted by the Jews. But it is simply the basic order of nature they are promoting. No one in any society anywhere in history before the development of the modern West could have imagined a reality in which instilling masculinity in boys or discouraging family-destroying feminist ideology was a negative thing.

Most of us still living are not old enough to even be able to imagine a situation in which a Western government encouraged masculinity or discouraged feminism. So it’s hard to say how a right-winger in America can look at Joe Biden’s government, then look at the Chinese government, and say “yes, Joe, I agree – these people are so evil that we need to put our own nation’s problems on hold and use our military to defend the Taiwanese secessionist movement from this encroaching communism or fascism or whatever.”

The only thing right-wingers can ever say about the Chinese is that they are “too authoritarian.” Generally, that person will then immediately move to “muh social credit system.”…

…Conversation falls apart…

No “Where’s Waldo” Wallpaper? Couldn’t be me.

And about the US and Taiwan…

From HERE.

…the possibility of conflict between China and Taiwan, between whom tensions have been steadily rising.

Most members of the Blob, as the foreign policy establishment is called, believe the U.S. should be ready to go to war with China over the island, which escaped the Chinese Communist Party when Chiang Kai-shek and his defeated Nationalists fled there after their defeat on the mainland.

Indeed, U.S. analysts have been debating the idea of dropping Washington’s currently ambiguous stance—refusing to say yes or no—and making a clear commitment. Although the idea of not going to war is almost entirely absent in the capital, most analysts have convinced themselves that talking tough would be enough to scare off the Chinese.

"Scare the Chinese". Fools. 

-MM

However, Taiwan is the final Chinese territory stolen away during the “Century of Humiliation,” and even younger Chinese back their government’s claim. In such a contest angry nationalism commonly trumps good sense, as in America’s Civil War.

Americans who believe Beijing will yield its claim to Taiwan without a fight risk sleepwalking into a major war, as have so many other self-assured fools throughout history.

In any case, the president recently went off-script and declared that America would fight.

His aides quickly corrected the record, so to speak, as did President George W. Bush after making a similar promise in 2001. Nevertheless, Beijing has seen more than enough continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations toward China and assume the worst, irrespective of Washington’s verbal legerdemain.

So if the People’s Republic of China decides war is necessary and believes the U.S. will fight, the People’s Liberation Army will act swiftly and brutally, hoping to win before the U.S.—nearly 8000 miles away—can interfere.

War with China would be even worse than with Russia.

The PRC would have more at stake in the fight, local superiority, a couple score bases on the mainland roughly 100 miles away, and a victim that so far has shown little inclination to defend itself.

In combat the U.S. would have little choice but to strike the mainland, which would trigger escalation, with no obvious endpoint.

Indeed, Washington, attempting to fight from half a world away, has done poorly in wargames.

It is far easier for Beijing to deter the U.S. than for America to project sufficient power to defeat the PRC. And even a U.S. victory would probably be just the first round, as a nationalistic Chinese public prepared for round two. How much is Taiwan worth to the U.S.?

Worse, imagine if Washington faced simultaneous crises, perhaps with Iran, Russia, and China at once. While most of America’s allies discovered that they were busy, very busy, but nevertheless wished the U.S. well. Indeed, they would make a very strong statement as the bullets and missiles started flying.

President Biden has always seen himself as an internationalist. That doesn’t mean he should start a war, however. Indeed, he is one of the few policymakers who today understands the reality of war. He entered public life about the same time that the Nixon administration was pulling the last U.S. troops out of Vietnam. It has been almost a half century since America fought a conflict with heavy casualties, extended ground combat, heavy air action, and mass protest at home.

However, all could return if the administration managed to stumble into one or more major wars. At least a conflict with Russia or China would make the American people forget Biden’s ragged exit from Afghanistan. However, if he wants to be reelected—and, more important, to be a good president, however long he serves—then he should concentrate on avoiding real war with real opponents, and especially multiple conflicts at once.

It’s never a good thing.

Do something to make others happy

Like this subway artist. This gal was obviously having a bad day, but the emotion on her face says it all. video.

Oh, and don’t even think about starting a war with China or Russia

"Should there be any loss of life in the US as a result of a conflict the US federal government would disintegrate. Immediately as in ungovernable. Russia as a country has strength in the solidarity of it's people. The US and Europe not so much. A price to be paid for letting the ruling class and it's masters destroy the poor and the middle class."
-So | Nov 12 2021 20:27 utc | 15

A Brief History of the Cheez-It

From HERE.

Dayton’s historic Edgemont neighborhood is cocooned inside a crook in the Great Miami River, a winding waterway that snakes through the heart of southwest Ohio. Two miles from downtown, with its air of industry, the community hearkens to a time when Dayton was hailed “The City of A Thousand Factories.”

Cheez-It crackers.

In the early 20th century, inside a foregone factory on the corner of Concord and Cincinnati Streets, Green & Green cracker company cooked up its Edgemont product line, a collection of grahams, crackers and gingersnaps that were shipped across the region. But of the company’s four Edgemont products, only one, in particular, a flaky one-by-one-inch cheese cracker, would revolutionize snack time. On May 23, 1921, when Green & Green decided to trademark the tasty treat’s unique name, the Cheez-It was born.

“In 1921, Cheez-It didn’t mean anything, so Green & Green marketed the cracker as a ‘baked rarebit,’ ” says Brady Kress, president & CEO of Dayton’s Carillon Historical Park, a nationally recognized open-air museum centered on the city’s history of innovation. (Inside Carillon Brewing Company, a fully operating 1850s brewery at the park, costumed interpreters still bake crackers over an open hearth.) “People were familiar with rarebit, a sort of melted cheddar beer cheese spread over toast. Cheez-It offered the same great taste, only baked down into a cracker that will last.”

Cheez-It’s 11-month shelf life is impressive, but so is the company’s history. In May 2021, America’s iconic orange cracker turned 100. But the Cheez-It story stretches even further back than that.

In 1841, Dr. William W. Wolf moved to Dayton to practice homeopathy, a branch of alternative medicine that believes in the healing power of food. Hailed Dayton’s “Cracker King,” Wolf concocted the Wolf Cracker, a curious hard-butter snack made for medicinal purposes.

“In the 19th century, crackers were linked to Christian physiology and sectarian medical practitioners,” says Lisa Haushofer, a senior research associate at the University of Zurich’s Institute for Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine. “Christian physiologists like Sylvester Graham, of Graham Cracker fame, were concerned about a modern diet that contained too many stimulating substances.” (In addition to being a cracker evangelist, Graham was also a pro-temperance Presbyterian minister who preached a vegetarian diet). Wolf echoed Graham’s concerns that food was far too rousing (though Graham also dubiously believed his crackers could cure licentiousness), so he launched the Wolf Cracker Bakery to churn out his wholesome snacks.

“They believed there was too much nourishment per food unit in modern bread, too much excitement,” says Haushofer. “So they recommended grain products made from coarse flour, which, they believed, contained a more natural ratio of nourishing and non-nourishing parts. Crackers were considered health food.”

Cheez-It

According to Haushofer, homeopaths at the time were also concerned about digestibility, and since they believed heating food aided digestion, baked Wolf Crackers were just what the doctor ordered. But Wolf’s patients weren’t the only ones after his crackers. What started as a medical remedy soon became a sought-after treat.

In the 1870s, while living on the barren plains of North Dakota, Dayton natives J.W. and Weston Green often longed for a taste of home. “In those days food supplies were both expensive and scarce in that region,” wrote the Dayton Journal Herald in its October 31, 1907, edition, “and the father and son regularly sent back to their old home city, Dayton[,] for those necessities that could not be obtained there. ‘Invariably,’ Mr. Green says, ‘we would include in that order a good supply of … the ‘Wolfe Cracker’ [sic].”

J.W. Green never forgot the savory, buttery, nut-like flavor of Wolf Crackers. In 1897, when Wolf died, Green purchased the Wolf Bakery Company, then enlisted his son, Weston Green, to join him in business. The Greens renamed the enterprise Green & Green Company, and while Wolf’s recipe remained the same, they rebranded the doctor’s famous treat as the “Dayton Cracker.”

By the turn of the 20th century, Dayton held more patents, per capita, than any U.S. city; surrounded by this innovative environment, Green & Green flourished, expanding its operations to nearby Springfield and Lima, and delivering baked goods across southwest Ohio. But soon, the company’s crackers became more than a regional concern. During World War I, Green & Green fired up its ovens for the war effort.

“All our facilities but one little oven that can’t be used for Hard Bread will be speeded up to keep two car loads a day going by express,” read a Green & Green ad in the Dayton Daily News’s July 14, 1918, edition … “that OUR BOYS at the front may have their Fighting Bread.”

Cheez-It

Though far less tasty than the Dayton Cracker, Dayton’s Fighting Bread sustained countless soldiers during the Great War. Typically made from salt, flour and water, Hard Bread—also known as hardtack, teeth dullers or jawbreakers—was often soaked in water before being served. If stored improperly, weevils and maggots made Hard Bread their home, prompting soldiers to dub the wartime ration “worm castles.”

“We are mighty glad and proud to be a cog in the big machine that will win the war,” read Green & Green’s ad. However, Doughboys weren’t the only ones helping win the war. “P.S. We could still use a few more women in the packing of Hard Bread.”

After World War I, Green & Green Company sidelined Hard Bread in favor of more flavorful fare. By Armistice Day, the Dayton Cracker (still made with Wolf’s original recipe) had been baked in Dayton for nearly 80 years. But while the hard butter-cracker was a local treasure, customers yearned for a delicate, flakier treat. Soon, Green & Green launched its Edgemont line, and in 1921, unveiled the “baked rarebit,” known as the Cheez-It.

“Welsh Rarebit, at its most basic form, is essentially a cheese sauce spread on toast,” says Rachael Spears, a living history specialist at Dayton’s Carillon Historical Park. “Some 19th-century English recipes specifically call for cheddar cheese. To this day, Cheez-It still advertises 100 percent real cheese, which draws a connection to its rarebit roots.”

But in 1921, Americans needed more than a novel snack. Following the Great War, the global economy dipped, and American wallets were increasingly thin. “Rarebit is a lesson in frugality,” says Kress. “It’s a nutritious dish that doesn’t cost a lot of money. When it’s baked down into a Cheez-It, it becomes a tasty treat. And just like hardtack, if you store it correctly, it will stay for a very long time. You don’t run the risk of it growing weevils.”

Cheez-It

In 1915, one pound of Green & Green crackers sold for 10 cents, roughly $2.65 in 2021 dollars. “When Uncle Sam picked men for his army overseas,” read a June 1920 Green & Green ad, “he also picked foods that would keep those picked men robust and healthy—fit for the strenuous duties ahead of them. Just as the crackers for our soldiers kept sweet and fresh in tins, so Edgemont Crackers … keep crisp and creamy in the Family Tin. Ask mother to keep a tin in her pantry.”

Cheez-Its kept Americans fed during the post-war recession, throughout the Roaring Twenties, and at the onset of the Great Depression. But by 1932, Green & Green packed up its last Family Tin and sold the business to Kansas City’s Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company.

In 1947, the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company became the Sunshine Biscuit Company; in 1996, Keebler acquired Sunshine; and in 2001, Kellogg acquired Keebler.

“The Cheez-It name has accompanied the baked cracker since its creation in 1921,” says Jeff Delonis, senior director of marketing for Cheez-It. “The original Cheez-It packaging was green and white. In the 1930s, red was introduced into the brand logo, and by the 1940s, the box included the iconic red and yellow-orange colors that remain today. The general shape and look of the cracker has largely stayed the same.”

Cheez-Its may still look the same, but the cracker’s production has soared. Once baked on the corner of Concord and Cincinnati Streets in Dayton’s Edgemont neighborhood, then shipped to regional grocers, Cheez-It sold more than 400 million packages in the U.S. alone in 2020.

Scene from Ghostbusters. Cheez-It crackers and bud beer.

“It’s super fun to think about all the cities around the country that were producing foods for local audiences,” says Kress. “Every city had them. Here’s an idea that came out of Dayton, Ohio.”

But “baked rarebit,” once a prevalent idiom used to describe an obscure cracker, has since faded, replaced by the now-ubiquitous term, Cheez-It.

“When you bake a cracker, you roll the dough out thin, kind of like a pie crust,” says Spears. “But at the heart, it’s like a thin, crispy biscuit. When you bite into a Cheez-It, you get those nice layers. Those are the layers that form if you cook it a bit.”

Like the Cheez-It itself, we need only bite into the snack’s history to uncover countless compelling layers.

“Cheez-It is a survivor from a bygone time,” says Kress.

Why I like Chinese girls…

A big smile. Happy times. Food. video.

A local Chinese girl shows you her life…

Sure, I make a couple of videos, but there are other people who are more photogenic than myself, and easier on the eyes. They show their life, and their food, and their homes.

Here’s one such girl. A friend. video.

American “democracy”…

China slams the US:

“The electoral democracy of Western countries are actually democracy ruled by the capital, and they are a game of the rich, not real democracy.

I would gladly ignore this and write it off as Soviet style propaganda, were it not for some shocking statistics from Pew research poll that supports the thesis.

According to a new Pew survey published last week, many American’s seem to share concerns about the direction of the US’s democracy. The survey can be found here: (https://cnb.cx/3ooDsKw)

“Americans largely share the view that their democracy is no longer a model: 72% say U.S. democracy used to be a good example for others to follow but has not been recently.”

Frankly, I thought the number was shocking and perhaps reveals a nation tired of covid and legislative gridlock.

Pew continues with more stunning statistics from polling in 17 advanced economies:

“Few believe U.S. democracy, at least in its current state, serves as a good model for other nations. A median of just 17% say democracy in the U.S. is a good example for others to follow, while 57% think it used to be a good example but has not been in recent years. Another 23% do not believe it has ever been a good example.”

For the record I am not agitating for a change in government, nor professing undying love for China’s communism. Some will undoubtedly make these accusations.

I present this because I think it is important to acknowledge that the US’s “global brand” has been severely tarnished. Covid, Afghanistan and an assault on the nation’s capital among others are taking their toll on the US across the globe.

If it takes harsh critique from China to get the US to pay attention so be it. And it does seem to have hit a nerve , as this article is No 1 in google news search for “China” 24 hrs running.  That’s why I’m running it.

China isn’t making this critique up out of the blue, they are going for the jugular and calling out a problem at least roughly supported by global sentiment. Interestingly, they don’t often criticize the US so this inflammatory rhetoric is a bit of a departure especially after progress with the climate deal.

You can see the influences of large banks or techs on the American government. Money has created enormous lobbying groups that make Banks and large industry unassailable. Big tech seems impossible to control. Whistleblowers from Meta, election interference, and consumers asking for privacy don’t seem to count for much.

Lest I get comments that I am “paid by China.”  This isn’t about China but about a the real problem of money’s influence in government.

If the US’s economic rival China, sees the problem, as do American citizens, why doesn’t anyone in Washington?

Hum?

China schools compared to American schools…

Check out this little dialog. video.

And this followup. Also good. video

And, thus how it manifests for a typical Chinese family. Video.

Data Testing Julian Cope’s Dunnideer Hill Alignments Theory

A great adventure in Scotland.

It’s the story or tale of how one person took the time and effort to investigate ancient ruins in his own backyard. I applaud him, and you should too. -MM

From HERE.

In his popular guidebook to British prehistoric monuments, The Modern Antiquaria n, rock musician and poet Julian Cope proposed that a distinctive Aberdeenshire hill in Scotland, the 264 meter (866 ft) high Dunnideer Hill, formed a visual focal point of reference in the landscape in relation to the positioning of ten nearby Scottish Recumbent Stone Circles (RSCs).

Notably, no physical survey data was presented by Cope so I can only assume his comments were intuitively based, undoubtedly after physically visiting each circle and seeing for himself their collective inter-visibility with Dunnideer Hill (Figure 1). A reasonable assumption, but as an archaeologist I have to be careful when accepting such intuitively based information. More so given the fact that he used emotive language such as “Mother Earth Hill” to describe it. However, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and test his “inter-visible-theory” by conducting a quantifiable survey using GPS technology .

Figure 1. Dunnideer Hill. The remains of the hill’s medieval Chapel enhances its visibility amongst the surrounding landscape. (Author provided)

Recumbent Stone Circles (RSCs) Surrounding Dunnideer Hill

The stone circles surrounding Dunnideer Hill belong to a greater class of stone rings known as Recumbent Stones Circles (RSCs). A distinctive class of prehistoric circles which were confined to North-east Scotland.

Their architecture was consistent, set out in a ring, they often contained between ten or eleven standing stones plus an outlandishly large recumbent stone that was deliberately laid flat in the southern quadrant of the respective circle – hence their name (Figure 2). Amazingly 156 of these monuments were built across the entire landscape of Aberdeenshire.

Regrettably, only 71 of them survive today.

Carbon dating places their construction to the Late Neolithic, circa 2500 BC. The original purpose for building these stone circles remains unknown but what we can say with certainty is that no human burials have been found in any of their primary contexts.

I have already written about these RSCs in a previous article published on Ancient Origins . In that paper I proposed that a single specialist was responsible for designing every one of these RSCs.

As I also mentioned in that article, these RSCs were positioned across the landscape so that they were astronomically aligned towards each other forming clusters of circles within their respective landscape settings.

See the first of my freely available YouTube videos here explaining more about how these alignments work at the circles.

Although I had suspected that these clusters of circles were deliberately aligned towards natural features of the landscape, such as hilltop summits, I did not have any survey data to prove it.

So here was an opportunity to not only test the extent of stone circle alignments towards natural hills but also see if Julian Cope was correct.

Figure 2. The distinctive architecture of an RSC. A ring of standing stones plus its recumbent stone as seen at the Strichen House RSC. (Author provided)

The Ancient History of Dunnideer Hill

Of course my starting point was Dunnideer Hill. Located close to the small town of Inch, Aberdeenshire, this hill possesses its own long archaeological history.

Unfortunately, if ever a stone circle stood on the summit of this hill then whatever evidence for it is now lost.

Nevertheless, some 440 meters (1,443 ft) downslope, north-west of the summit, are the remains of the Dunnideer RSC (B), indicating that the hill was at least known to the Neolithic communities as far back as 2500 BC.

Survey Method Used at Dunnideer Hill

To survey the alignments between the Dunnideer Hill and its surrounding cluster of ten stone circles , I utilized GPS technology in the following manner. Standing on the summit of Dunnideer Hill, the GPS plotted my precise position on the ground.

This information was then relayed back to me via a positional coordinate for where I was standing.

Then systematically moving to each of the surrounding RSCs, the GPS plotted my successive positions, each time providing me with the corresponding coordinates. Using the “go to” facility on the GPS, I could then obtain the distance and direction travelled between each coordinate.

After completion I was able to cross-reference the combined GPS data to produce the maps discussed here.

What I was particularly looking for with the GPS data was to search for astronomical alignments between the hill and the surrounding ten stone circles .

Now, if I know the angle of the ecliptic (between the Sun and Earth) at around 2500 BC, I can divide that angle by the exact latitude for the hill and whichever stone circle I was standing at.

This “scientific calculation” then gives me the directions of where the Sun rose or set on the days of midwinter and midsummer for Aberdeenshire around 2500 BC.

With some adjusting (to cater for the angle of the moon’s orbit around the Earth), I could also determine similar positions for the Moon as well. After obtaining this scientific calculation I was ready to start.

The Dunnideer summit has been subjected to many alterations and much disturbance since that time. For instance, during the British Iron Age, a hill fort (circa 700 – 500 BC), was dug out across its summit. 1,500 years later, a medieval Chapel with both solid stone flooring and walling was built above the foundations of the fort, destroying anything below it.

Still, the views from the top of Dunnideer Hill are amazing (and well recommended – despite the short climb). Certainly, I could imagine the Neolithic specialist builder standing here some 4,500 years ago, viewing the landscape below, pondering where to position the ten stone circles in relation to those areas of land below being opened up for domestication and cultivation.

Figure 3. The ten RSCs selected for survey that are also inter-visible with Dunnideer Hill. (Dr. John Hill)

Dunnideer Hill Survey Results

I had established with my GPS an arbitrary distance equal to a radius of 6 km (3.72 mi.) circumnavigating Dunnideer Hill.

This radius immediately captured the ten RSCs (Figure 3). The logic behind this arbitrary distance being that (at the most) it would take an hour to walk from the farthest RSC to the hill. Secondly, all ten circles were physically inter-visible with good views of Dunnideer Hill.

Incidentally, another interesting observation uniting this cluster of circles is that they all shared similar oval-shaped large but thin recumbent stones – usually these recumbent stones are very broad and thick (Figure 4).

Possibly, these thin recumbent stones signified a specific local identity associated with this particular cluster surrounding the Dunnideer Hill.

Figure 4. Three examples of the thin, oval-shaped recumbent stones. 1 = Dunnideer RSC; 2 = Wantonwells RSC; 3 = Stonehead RSC. (Author provided)

After compiling the GPS data from Dunnideer Hill, the rock musician’s theory of it being a focal point for the surrounding stone circles was proving to be disappointing. I could not find any data that would indicate that the hill possessed any astronomical correspondences towards the surrounding ten circles other than them being inter-visible with the summit.

Incidentally, Dunnideer Hill is not the only hill in this landscape, there are other hills which could have acted as alternative focal points. Nonetheless, I wanted to give Cope the benefit of the doubt, so I continued to collect GPS data from the surrounding stone circles.

As I visited each of the stone circles I needed to re-compute my original scientific calculation. When I was standing on top of Dunnideer Hill’s summit I was looking downward towards the directions of the surrounding stone circles, so the altitude factor (within my first equation) did not matter with regard to the astronomical data I collected.

Now, standing at the circles, I was looking upward, towards the summit of the hill, so I had to make the necessary adjustments for the “upward” angle of altitude.

Having made these adjustments to my second equation the results I was anticipating began to materialize but not in the manner I expected. Yes, Dunnideer Hill was important to the astronomical alignments connected with the ten circles, but it was not the single focal point as I thought it would be.

Rather than being a single point of reference in the landscape for any one of its surrounding RSCs, the data suggests that Dunnideer Hill appears to have acted like an axis mundi around which the rising and setting of both the Sun and Moon would be seen to rotate during the seasons.

And it all depended on when and where one was standing in order to see the corresponding astronomical event at each of the respective stone circles. Indeed, one would have to follow a circular route around the hill, visiting each circle at different seasons to appreciate how the Neolithic communities organized their agricultural and ceremonial calendars.

In short, they were using the hill as a gigantic beacon in the landscape to monitor the movements of the Sun and Moon. Or rather, the cosmos above revolved around the earthen-hill below, with the hill acting as the axis mundi .

Let me explain further.

In Figure 5 we see an alignment between Ardlair RSC (A), Dunnideer Hill and Old Rayne RSC (F). Taking into account the altitude factor for the hill, then the alignment runs due east / west. So let us imagine that we are standing at Ardlair RSC, looking eastward, and watching the Sun as it appears to rise behind the eastern summit of Dunnideer Hill. When the Sun appears to rise in this direction then we have an astronomical alignment between the two circles (and the hill between them).

Now, this is the alignment that would only occur on the morning of either the spring, Vernal (21st March), or autumn equinox (21st September). And vice versa, standing at the Old Rayne RSC, looking westward we can watch the equinox sunsets, setting behind the hill in the direction of the Ardlair RSC. Thus, the two circles and the hill align with the equinoxes and as such we have an ingenious method of predicting the times in the agricultural calendar for sowing (i.e. spring) and harvesting (i.e. autumn).

Figure 5. The equinox alignments between two RSCs and Dunnideer Hill. (Dr John Hill)

Similarly, in Figure 6, we can see an alignment between Wantonwells RSC (G) and Dunnideer RSC (B), with Dunnideer Hill again positioned in the middle of the two circles. The axis of this alignment corresponds to the direction of the summer solstice sunset (21st June) and vice versa the direction of the winter solstice sunrise (21st December). So if we were to stand at Wantonwells RSC and watching the sunset behind the hill then we would be looking in the direction of both north-west and the Dunnideer RSC (at the time of midsummer sunset). Such an observation might have been a cue for the Neolithic farmers to move their cattle northward, during the warm summer months, to the higher pastures around the Candle Hill RSC (D).

Alternatively, standing behind Dunnideer RSC and watching the sunrise behind Dunnideer Hill in the direction of Wantonwells RSC, then we would be looking towards the direction of the midwinter sunrise. Seeing the sunrise in this direction may have been the cue for the Neolithic communities to commence the culling of their surplus livestock which would have provided them with plenty of meat for the cold winter months.

The GPS also provided data to support the statement that the Neolithic communities were also using Dunnideer Hill as a means to monitor the movements of the Moon. For instance, the alignment between Wantonwells RSC (G), the hill and the Stonehead RSC (C) captures the setting position of the midwinter full moon at its most southerly position on the distant horizon. In effect, by using Dunnideer Hill as an axis mund i, the Neolithic communities could operate (albeit a basic) solar-lunar calendar.

Figure 6. Solar and lunar alignments revolving around the axis mundi of Dunnideer Hill. (Dr John Hill)

I did not want to bombard the reader with too much of the astronomy in this article, so the above examples are just a sample of the alignments I have obtained for this particular cluster of stone circles. For sure, there are many more alignments that I could have discussed here. Of course, the reader may question as to how these astronomical alignments were achieved when their inter-visibility between the stone circles mentioned here was blocked by Dunnideer Hill.

Certainly, this is an important question and in in my recent book The Recumbent Stone Circles of Aberdeenshire I propose a number of solutions. But for now, I would ask the reader to view my second freely available video which demonstrates how the geometry used to construct these circles and captured the symbolism associated with the astronomical alignments across the landscape: Ancient knowledge, Sacred geometry at the Loanhead of Daviot stone circle .

But here is another one of my solutions. That is the people were using “smoke signals” across the landscape in order to set out their stone circles in alignments (Figure 7). We have good archaeological evidence that fires were regularly set alight before, during and even after these RSCs were constructed. Although whatever the reasons for these fires remains conjectural, I can reasonably propose that they were a sure way for the Neolithic communities to set out their stone circles in straight lines across the landscape, especially when their visibility was blocked by natural hills such as Dunnideer Hill.

Figure 7. The Neolithic communities used smoke signals to set out accurate alignments across the landscape. (Dr John Hill)

Dunnideer Hill as Axis Mundi

As well as acting as a visible focal point in the landscape, Dunnideer Hill also operated as an axis mundi for the local Neolithic communities to organize their agricultural activities. Of course, I have so far interpreted the GPS data within the practical terms of farming and there is no reason why sacred explanations could not also be offered. Social ceremonies such as weddings or funerals could have been scheduled around the hill in accordance to the relative positions of the Sun and Moon.

Indeed, at certain times of the year the solar and lunar orbs may have even been invited guests to visit the stone circles. An ethnographic analogy springs to mind here with the ancient Japanese, shamanistic religion of Shinto, which was populated by kami-spirits who lived on the summits of certain sacred hills across the Nippon landscape. The Shinto-shamans would place special stones and rocks at the bases of such hills in order to entice the benevolent spirits to come down from their summits and enjoy both the seasonal gatherings and offerings left by the people in exchange for good fortune and productive harvests.

Finally, I should thank Julian Cope for his intuitive observations. Had he not written about his ideas about the “inter-visibility-theory” between Dunnideer Hill and its surrounding stone circles then I would not have undertaken this GPS survey nor written this report.

MM video riding in the taxi on tuesday

Here’s what it’s like in my “neck of the woods”…video

I do love watching people who love their jobs…

We should all be doing what we love.

And more about China from the Daily Stormer…

“Jewish conservatives” and shill conservatives in general have a script to inject China into everything, despite the fact that China is not running Western governments. This is partially a way to protect the people who are running our governments, by offering the distraction of a foreign enemy, but also a way to pump up anti-Chinese sentiment so that people will support conflict with them.

My goal is first and foremost to simply tell the truth. My goal is not to defend every aspect of Chinese society and culture. Politically, however, I am opposed to a war with the Chinese. Even more than that, I am against this obsession with the Chinese, which is so obviously a result of the fact that they are not on board with the globalist agenda. If you go around talking about China all the time, the only thing you are doing is shifting blame from our own leaders and feeding this drive for world government.

To the extent that I am a Chinese shill, this is the thing: as long as China is standing as an independent country, this world government cannot exist. Therefore, I am “pro-CCP” in that I am against this lunatic plan for a global tyrannical government. I also admire their strength as a people, nation, and race. How could I not admire them, when they’re the only thing standing between me and a brutal hell on earth? Furthermore, the Chinese haven’t ever done anything to me. Well, I take that back. One time I was staying at a hotel in Bangkok, and a group of Chinese tourists checked in, and they were spitting in the hallways and the elevator, so I had to switch to a different hotel. Eventually, in Bangkok, you learn that there are hotels that do not allow Chinese tourists.

But even with the spitting/yelling/cigarette-flicking – you can uncover something admirable about the Chinese. The reason that so many Chinese tourists behave in ways that we consider crude is that the overwhelming majority of the Chinese middle class are the children of literal rice farmers, who grew up in fields without electricity. Now, in one generation, their children are rich, living in a futuristic society.

China’s social credit system is a result of something called “being Asian.” The Asian social contract is totally different than the white one. No one in China other than criminals and CIA cults opposes the social credit system.

Everyone has seen this clip (regularly used by Ezra Levant), and talked about how terrible it is.

‘Social Credit Score System China’ … and how it works! 😡 pic.twitter.com/vOzt0lZphf
— daisymay4263 (@daisymay4263) October 1, 2021

But in the clip, the Chinese all say they support social credit scores. The response is “oh they’re scared not to say that.” Okay, well, we don’t see Chinese diaspora around the world opposing this system.

You can disagree with that, and I certainly would not want a social credit system in America, but nations should have self-determination.

Whining about the social credit system and supporting anti-CCP policy because of it is no different than saying that you support the war in Afghanistan because you’re against Sharia Law.

All of this stuff about how America is becoming like China is totally nonsensical.

I have a few simple questions for conservatives making these claims:

  • Where are my masculinity classes for young boys? Where is my program to discourage feminism?
  • Where is my nonstop propaganda about the superiority of my race, culture, and nation?
  • Where is my economic program to strengthen the middle class?
  • Where are my low taxes for family businesses and high taxes for large corporations?
  • Where are my anti-trust laws?

Comparing the Chinese social credit system to the attempts to force this vax pass thing in the West is apples to Doritos. “We’re becoming more like China because of the vaccine passport being like the social credit system” is a shallow, stupid take aimed at people who have low IQs or are just uninformed about the world.

It’s like saying America is becoming like Afghanistan because women have to cover their faces in public because of the virus.

It’s moronic on par with Dinesh D’Souza saying that Black Lives Matter is inspired by Adolf Hitler.

The only reason someone would make an argument so obviously dumb is if they were trying to manipulate you.

I will say again that I have no specific desire to defend everything the Chinese government does. I will certainly not defend everything they have done since the revolution.

However, while I do not agree with it, the “one child policy” is very overstated by Western critics. Westerners generally have no idea at all how Asian culture works. And they shouldn’t be expected to.

I personally find it interesting, but outside of that, no one in America should be under any obligation to understand the dynamics of Chinese culture.

Unless of course, they are making judgements about them – which apparently everyone in the West feels compelled to do now.

There are many things that Westerners simply could not possibly ever understand about Asia, no matter how much information they had, simply because the historical development of the culture, and the genetics behind it, are too different.

The role of law and the concept of law enforcement is an example of something no white person is ever going to grasp.

Here’s a big think for you: during most of 2020, Christians in America were banned from attending church, while Chinese Christians were not.

In Australia, the number two country which claims to be fighting against China to create freedom, Christians are still banned from attending church.

It’s again just utterly dishonest and slimy to have these publications that express open hatred for Christianity claim that the Chinese government is at war with Christianity, while the CIA is using these home churches to incite revolution against the government.

It’s like if the CIA were using hamburger stands to traffic guns into China and the Chinese government arrested them and the New York Times ran the headline “Inside China’s Brutal Crackdown on Hamburgers” – of course, right next to “You Must Eat Bugs: Americans Have Only One Week to Stop Eating Burgers Before Cow Farts Cause Deadly Earthquake.”

By pointing to “authoritarianism,” people who are trying to demonize China can make a superficial surface level critique without any context and leap to “China is the model for the New World Order.”

The attacks on China are disorganized and weird, but they are working very well.

Frankly, I’m the only person I’m aware of that is offering meaningful analysis of the China situation in the English language, aside from a few white guys who live in China.

China is a closed society, due not to communism, but to the massive language and cultural gap.

Food cubes – Can you name them all?

Food cubes.

And some more stuff from the Stormer…

Though it is clear that the globalist agenda hinges on regime change in China…

… that rampant anti-Chinese propaganda abounds…

… and that the entire political and military apparatus in Washington supports using the military to “defend Taiwan,” ….

… the US plan to destroy the CCP is completely unclear.

Right now, China is finally standing up and pushing back against this bullying.

If they decided to “invade” Taiwan, the Taiwanese military would put up less of a fight than the Afghan military.

Americans have no idea what is going on in Taiwan.

I would be surprised if even one soldier fired a shot if the CCP military landed in Taipei, and at least 40% of the people would openly greet them as liberators.

The people who are still against reunification in theory would just shrug, and carry on with their day.

No one in Taiwan even understands the concept of the mainland “taking their freedoms.”

No one thinks that anything substantial that affects them personally would change, other than gays and maybe some feminist women.

A lot of people want the CCP to come in and ban gay marriage.

The US forcing the gay marriage thing really rustled a lot of Taiwanese people.

Imagine the internet being flooded with videos of PRC troops landing in Taiwan and people either smiling and waving or just going about their business.

Imagine the female president of Taiwan giving a public statement apologizing to the Chinese people for “disrespectful behaviors and mean-spirited actions.”

Chuck Schumer and Ben Sasse could call a bipartisan press conference to release secret satellite photos of buildings in Taiwan that look shockingly similar to the infamous Hitler steam chambers.

They could bring in the daughter of the Taiwanese ambassador to cry and say she saw CCP soldiers eating babies.

But the jig would be up.

Seriously: what is the US going to do if China takes Taiwan? They’re going to start World War III?

I guess?

Every US military simulation about defending Taiwan from an “invasion” shows China winning, meaning the only option would be for the US to escalate.

China has consistently said they are going to fire nukes.

So we’re going to go to nuclear war for gay sex in Taiwan?

I sure looks like it.

How prepared is the US for nuclear war?

Who has been running the strategy on that front for the last two decades or so?

Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin?

Do what you can to help others.

Again, this subway artist strikes again. video.

Mysterious Carved Stone Balls Found in Scottish Isle Tomb

There’s a lot of interesting history in Scotland. Like this very curious article.

From HERE.

A 5,500-year-old tomb discovered on a Scottish island will soon be reclaimed by the sea. Archaeologists racing to excavate the site, “before it’s lost forever,” have discovered two enigmatic carved stone balls at the site.

Over the last two centuries archaeologists in Scotland have only discovered about 500 of these mysterious balls.

Dating back to between 3500 BC and 1500 BC, most carved stone balls measure around 3 inches (7.6 cm) in diameter, therefore, fitting easily into the palm of a closed hand. A 2017 Ancient Origins article explored a range of possible purposes for these stone balls.

While some archaeologists maintain they were hunting projectiles and fishing weights, others point out that most are flawless, and suggest they were sacred artifacts passed down from generation to generation.

The Press and Journal article reported that Dr Hugo Anderson-Whymark, senior curator of prehistory (Paleolithic – Neolithic) at National Museum of Scotland, posted about the discovery of the two balls on Twitter.

He pointed out that only about 20 carved stone balls dating to the Neolithic have ever been found on Orkney.

The two balls recently discovered on Orkney were described by Dr Anderson-Whymark as a “cracking find from the tomb.”

The researcher described one of the balls as “size of a cricket ball,” and that it was “perfectly spherical and beautifully finished.”

The second carved stone ball found in the Neolithic tomb site at the edge of the sea at Tres Ness, Sanday, Orkney, Scotland. ( University of Central Lancashire )

The Rare Carved Stone Balls Of Scotland: Purpose Unknown!

Carved from both hard and soft stones, most carved stone balls have six projections (knobs) but they have been discovered with as many as 160. In 1876, J. Alexander Smith suggested that when bound to wooden handles the balls would have made efficient “ axe-like weapons .”

However, in the 1970s Dorothy N. Marshall pointed out that most of the balls are nearly flawless, and that ancient people wouldn’t have spent that much time and effort on spherical accuracy for a weapon.

The most recently discovered stone balls were found on what is, arguably, the most astoundingly beautiful of the many spectacular beaches in Orkney .

Tres Ness, on the island of Sanday, is according to Orkney.com “a special place.”

The website says you will often be the only people on the beach, “soaking up the ancient scenery as if you’re on a deserted island.”

However, for the last few years the prevailing silence has been disturbed by the chinking and chipping sounds of archaeologist trowels resounding from one of the island’s Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement that is about to fall into the sea forever.

Changes Times, Changing Coast Lines

The two Orkney stone balls were discovered within a Neolithic burial tomb. According to a report in Press and Journal the tomb on Tres Ness is formally known as “a stalled cairn” where the burial space was compartmentalized.

Dating back to around 3,500 BC the burial structure represents one of the oldest remaining buildings in Scotland and it was here that a team of archaeologists found the two rare stone balls. And luckily too, as the site is quickly being clawed away by the encroaching sea .

Professor Vicki Cummings is a reader in archaeology at the University of Central Lancashire.

She speculates that the tomb at Tres Ness was probably associated with the Neolithic settlement at the Cata Sand archaeological site.

Located about a mile-and-a-half away from the Tres Ness tomb, Cummings said that both sites and the beautiful beach at Tres Ness are under immediate threat from coastal erosion .

Another view of the Neolithic cliffside tomb side on Sanday. The left edge of the tomb is a seaside cliff that is eroding quickly. (University of Central Lancashire)

Sadly, The Sanday Orkney Site Is Vanishing Into The Sea

In the early Neolithic period both sites would have been located on a headland high above the coastline overlooking the sea from the distance and from above.

However, like sugary drinks working away at the roots of teeth, over time, the headland has been eaten away leaving the sites on the edge of a new, super-erosive, tidal coastline.

Cummings added that one major factor for the rapidly changing environment is the lack of trees, whereas in the Neolithic the entire area was wooded.

Cummings said, “sadly the site is vanishing into the sea,” so the focus of the site archaeologists is to extract as much information as possible “before it is basically lost forever.”

The discovery of the two rare carved stone balls really is what Dr Anderson-Whymark said, “a cracking find from the tomb.”

More from the Stormer…

Who is even running the US government?

Where are the adults?

The people running the US government are going around trying to force vax everyone, turn children into trannies as part of a program to normalize sex with children, and claiming that there’s a secret QAnon terrorist group planning to overthrow the government.

Then behind those freaks you’ve got freaks like Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab planning to turn themselves into genetically-engineered cyborg immortals.

Everything that is going on in the Western world is just as absurd and unserious as it is sickening and evil.

Here’s a thing which is happening: people – probably most of you reading this – are confusing the total power of the current US government for competence.

This is very natural, psychologically – it makes fundamental sense that people with absurd amounts of power would have to have competence.

But, if we break down the fact that these people inherited this power structure, then you might look at it like the logic of assuming a guy driving a Lamborghini must be rich, before you find out it was stolen.

It took me a long while to process it myself, and I definitely didn’t have a full understanding of it until Joe Biden took over as our overlord, but these people are not competent.

Upon closer inspection, we realize they are actual morons.

As a thought experiment: try to think of one single thing that the Democrats have done since assuming total domination of America that is indicative of competence.

The only thing you will likely be able to think of is the fact that they’ve managed to keep this virus thingy rolling, but that is obviously virtually entirely managed by the media.

And the success of the project is entirely dependent on the docility of the American people.

Same people, ten years later

MM home video

I took a minute to record what China is like. I was on my way to my office, and the contract of what China is compared to the crazy insanity that America is is breathtaking. It’s calm here. It’s nice and pleasant here. It’s clean, safe, relaxed, and healthy. video.

K-pop dance studios

As I have repeatedly stated in previous other articles, There’s three k-pop studios in my office building, and I often do down to watch the girls dance, make some friends, and find an opportunity to “pal around” with all the pretty girls there.

Here’s a gal performing vibrato by Stellar. video.

Some fine butt action there. LOL.

Some more from the Stormer…

China is understandably tired of having their country surrounded by the US military…

They are tired of being threatened and bullied.

And they’re tired of the humiliation of not being able to control their own internationally recognized national borders.

Yes, even the US recognizes Taiwan as a part of China…

…I guess people apparently don’t even know that.

Maybe the US will go to war, maybe they won’t – I have no way of predicting that.

I think it’s impossible to predict, given that there is no real order to the decisions being made by the people running the US government, other than that they are following this “New World Order” plot that was laid out by people who are already dead.

Most likely, if China took Taiwan, the leaders of the US would flinch, and that would signal the end of US global supremacy.

The empire would then enter into rapid decline, as without US military supremacy, there is no logic to the dollar as global reserve currency.

This would be a total tailspin, and America would look like the opening of that Dawn of the Dead remake.

It’s going to be a rough scene.

The best thing for you in such a situation would be if you – wait for it – lived in a rural community.

There will be serious rioting and all of the Walking Dead type stuff.

The blacks will probably form cannibal gangs pretty early on, but they’ll just end up eating each other. After eating his last remaining lieutenant, the last cannibal warlord in any given city will be totally alone, and his last words before he starves to death will be: “muffuggen wite ppl did dis.”

What will not happen: the Chinese will not invade America to enslave people in communism with their social credit system.

If you think that the Chinese want to invade America and enslave people, then you basically need to accept that you just don’t really have any idea what is going on.

Why would the Chinese want to invade and enslave Americans?

Just to be mean?

Do Chinese people strike you as that emotional, that they would waste huge amounts of resources in order to engage in an act of geopolitical meanness?

The entire Chinese mindset, and their entire marketing strategy as a superpower, is that they don’t invade countries, and instead trade with countries and invest in countries’ infrastructure.

There are all of these books published by Western universities over the last five years talking about how the US strategy of trying to convince countries to side with them over the Chinese was failing, and that all the countries who had made economic pacts with the Chinese were generally happy with the results.

China’s strategy has been to basically portray the US as a country of violent lunatics trying to enslave the planet with their military and their debt economic system.

And they are 100% accurate. -MM

Anthony Blinken was apparently chosen as Secretary of State because, along with being a Jewish Zionist, he’d given a bunch of speeches about the need for a new strategy to confront China in order to maintain US dominance.

It turns out he does’t have any such strategy, but he’s adamant that there needs to be a new one, which is more than the other candidates for Secretary of State were able to offer, apparently.

During his March meeting with Chinese adults, his first and thus far only major appearance on the global stage, Blinken brought a woman with purple hair and channeled Holden Caulfield when the Chinese “phonies” said that Americans need to start applying themselves to their job of maintaining world order.

America is viewed as weak by the rest of the world under the Biden administration. 
Putin is challenging Biden with live debate. 
And at the Alaska Summit, China told Blinken how he views America. ⬇️⬇️⬇️

pic.twitter.com/dNvSHFa0GN

— Rob Stark (@starkrob21) March 19, 2021

It’s rumored that during his interview for the job, Blinken did a pretty decent rendition of “Stairway to Heaven,” which Biden’s wife and caretaker “Doctor” Biden found “so dreamy.”

(Yes, Blinken actually was in a band and has admitted that his first choice for a career was “pop star.” Yes, he really had a single called “Lip Service,” which he wrote for Kamala Harris. Yes, that last part is a joke. I mean the Kamala Harris part. He really did release a single called “Lip Service,” which is on Spotify. This is going to go down in history alongside Caligula marrying his horse.)

Yes, after the total collapse, if you survive, then in 2050, there’s a high likelihood you will have a Chinese landlord.

Except maybe not, because if you survive the meltdown, it probably means you own rural land.

The point is: everything is probably all going to work out.

The ZOG empire is going to collapse, and the world is going to then be controlled by a Chinese merchant network, where the concept of “empire” is based on trade rather than military strength.

People will be fine in such a situation.

Certainly a lot better than we are now, under these guys.

In the Chinese version of Star Wars, Darth Vader has a pet triceratops.

Also, instead of blowing up Alderaan, he blows up the Kennedy Space Center.

Furthermore, Obi-Wan rides a motorcycle and wears a knight’s armor.

Han Solo is heavily grizzled, but he wears a heart locket.

Ask yourself: wouldn’t the new Star Wars movies have been better if instead of being about feminism and race-mixing, they explored Darth Vader’s relationship with his triceratops?

I rest my case.

Built like a fish.

In China, the idea of the perfect shape is one that resembles the smooth thin lines of a fish. Much like this girl does. video.

Or this woman who is shaped like a fish…

Nice bouncy Chinese woman. My guess is that she had implants, and the only way you can achieve such an aggressive bouncy softness is with the Motiva Ergomax implants. video. Yeah, these sixth generation implants are truly something.

It makes me want to play with her boobies. Jiggle. Jiggle. Jiggle.

China infrastructure projects.

It’s all totally under reported in the West.

video

Delivery guy stops and becomes a Rufus…

Just an ordinary guy, doing ordinary things, when he sees a boy drowning. In a split second he make the decision to dive in and save the boy. video

How to make authentic Pepper-pork

Here’s how you do it. It’s so easy, and OMG so very, very delicious. Give it a try, you will not regret it. video.

What it is like leaving the KTV going to the hotel…

Ah. For those of you who are not aware. This is what it is like leaving the business KTV hostess and having an evening of fun. It’s riding in the car to the hotel for the final enjoyment of the evening.

It was a fun evening. video.

Finally, Be the Rufus!

Imagine a world where everyone is nice to each other. Where families can live without worries, fear or threats. Imagine a place where everyone is helpful. Well, you don’t have to wait. You can start doing it now. Today. Just go forth and do some random acts of kindness. Smile at people. Go out of your way to be nice. Just put a little bit of sunshine in the lives of others. Be the Rufus. video.

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

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Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • 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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A Metallicman Video Narrative; Home in Zhuhai 8

Well, this is my eighth try at making a Vblog.

Home movies time! Woo! Woo!

I have gotten some positive feedback on them, and I appreciate it. I really do. I think that you can tell, at least, that what I experience doesn’t even remotely resemble the bullshit that pretends to be “news” out of the United States these days. China does not resemble anything like what is being “reported”.

The US government owns all the major media. Alt-left, alt-right, and mainstream. And they do not want anyone inside of China being made aware of the sheer bullshit that they are pumping out. They have blocked China from finding out what they are saying about it.

But that can be expected.

As the influence of the USA wanes, the people within the USA who promote hate, racism, and encourage world war III are going to find themselves on lists. Lists that they don’t want to be on, and which will get them into very, very “hot water” once they step foot outside of their protective enclaves.

But, you know, little-town local papers do have things to offer.

Like this, the Boston Globe. I like how it is laid out, and jeeze, $1 for 6 months is cheap. The only thing is that since I don’t live in Boston any longer, much of the “news” just doesn’t apply to me. Never the less, when I see it, I see hope.

I see hope.

Not everyone was bought out by the huge mega-companies, and dish out the processed swill out of Washington DC. There are people who report on local things, and local events, for local people.

Heck! If I were still in Boston, I would certainly contribute.

This vlog consists of a bunch of videos.

Some narrate while others don’t. What is special here is that (for all the videos on you-tube about China) note seem to tackle the kinds of “everyday life” that I want to provide here. For me, it’s nothing fancy. Yet when I show glimpses of my life to others outside of China, they seem to like it. Cool, I guess. So… this is just myself walking around the neighborhood; my house, and filming it while I discuss the world around me. I hope that you like it.

Keep in mind when you watch the videos, a comparison of your life, with what you are watching on my videos.

The videos

Video One. HERE. 94MB. Public internet is free in China. You can pay for great service at home, but all the public areas have free internet. This is because using the internet is considered a necessity inside of China. You need to for tracking, buying, registering and accessing. And inside China, it is against the law for anyone to profit off of people when they require access to fundamental services. This is a big change compared to the United States where there are a million tiny hands in your wallet and everyone makes a profit off of you.

Video Two. HERE. 319MB. Zhuhai is much larger than Seattle, WA USA, but far better managed. The role of a government is to provide services for it’s people, to protect them, and to allow them to live good, healthy and productive lives. it is not to treat them as sheep to be fleeced, debit slaves, serfs, or cannon fodder so that the oligarchy can profit off wars. For the last 30 years America has blown up thousands of mud huts, destroyed countless flocks of sheep and reduced hundreds of communities to rubble all in the name or personal greed. China didn’t. And what you see is China is what America should be, but isn’t.

Video Three. HERE. 95MB. This is another mall. This is on the center West side of Zhuhai, and  you can see that it isn’t so different from American malls. Or at least what they used to be, back in the 1980’s. You can see American restaurants such as Pizza Hut, and Hagen Dias and watch the average people come and go. Do they look like they are “evil”? Do they look like they are starving from famine? Do they look they they are being oppressed while living in a police state by the evil CCP? Does anything resemble “poor and deteriorating” infrastructure? Is the area full of pollution, litter, and refuse? Are the people eating dogs and cats?

Video Four. HERE. 305MB. Here we talk about bicycles and the reality of owning a bicycle in an American city. Most Americans who have cars do not ride bicycles, they just hop in their car to go anywhere. Walking more than a block is a rarity. In fact most suburbs and communities have pretty much given up on sidewalks. So most are unaware of the reality of owning a bicycle inside the United States. The reality is that it will be stolen, or chopped up. The urban ethnic youth just loves to steal your seats and tires for the hell of it.  It’s a fun pastime for them. (That’s what happens when strong parental leadership is missing from their lives.) We discuss life in China, and the love of walking and strolling because in China, the cities are designed for living. Not as a place that you look out the window of when you go from point A to point B.

Video Five. HERE. 34MB. A little park on the ocean. The entire coastline is a series of parks, walking and bike trails and rest areas. They are well maintained so that the citizenry can use them. This differs substantially from the United States where every beach has a for-profit parking lot where the local community can profit from. The role of the government is to provide an environment for the people to live and prosper in. Not one where the rich oligarchy can profit off the people and keep them living in fear so more money can be generated.

Video Six. HERE. 62MB. People contributing to the greater good. In America you will see a parking lot go up, and a park bulldozed. This happened all throughout the 1960’s and well into the 1980’s. And after a while the entire landscape was nothing but big large enormous empty asphalt spaces devoid of trees. Then when the business moved away, or when business died off, no one planted trees or grass. Instead they were permitted to collapse and fall into disuse. Not in China. This is because society matters. People matter.

I used to live in a small town in Massachusetts called Wrentham. For the longest time, both Wrentham and it’s neighboring town of Plainville resisted all changes and from the 1960’s up until the 1990’s no new business, or enterprises were permitted. This was true for the nearby community of Frankin as well. The entire area maintained it’s 1950’s charms.

Then the town elders decided to leave and move to Florida, and all of them left. And they all sold their property holdings to wealthy developers and within six months was all sorts of construction everywhere.

All of which held zero interest in the community, and all of which were money making, for profit enterprises run by their children.

You had the Wrenthan outlet mall, and the Wrentham water slide park, and a number of parking garages, and a few new strip malls, and after nine months the feel of the old Mayberry RFD community was displaced with semi-urban strip malls, and for profit venues.

Parking lots sprouted up. McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Panera Bread, Payless shoe store, and a Dunkin’ Donuts moved next to the old 1950’s style airstream diner, and the large oak trees were cut down to widen the road for heavier traffic flow.

When I left, right after 9-11, the local communities were outraged and all the growth was stopped. But what happened afterwards is unknown. Money could have changed hands, the the encroachment of modernity might have continued. I do not know.

That will never happen in China. China grows and builds and creates and makes, but the community and the society comes first. Not the profit can can be generated from it.

Video Seven. HERE. 30MB. One of my typical meals in China. You see, eating fish is very rare in the United States. When you do it is usually part of a sandwich, like a “fish fillet”, part of a chain like “Long John Silvers”, or deep fried like Southern Fried Catfish. Well, China cooks fish like they should be cooked, and while the bones need to be carefully removed by us Americans, the rest of the nation has no problem and eats the fish with glee and spits out the bones machine-gun style. Not only is the fish meal healthy and good for you, but it is so amazingly delicious.

Video Eight. HERE. 145MB. The beach in front of my house. I normally do not go to the beach, but it’s a pleasant place to be. Here you can see the guys roll up their tee-shirts to expose their bellies which is a very Chinese thing to do in hot climates. It’s called the “Beijing Bikini”. And it’s an on going joke.

You will also notice some little kids running around without clothes on or being partially dressed. It’s no big deal here. Kids are allowed to be kids. Unlike the United States where you could spend the rest of your life in prison as a sexual offender to being near them.

You will also notice that the access to the beach is free. You do not have to pay any fees or fines to go there. This is quite unlike many places in the United States today. This is a typical boardwalk and notice how it is protected with shady trees. Not left to bake in the sun because in America you need to pay for people to rake the leaves and it will cut into your profit margins.

Video Nine. HERE. 44MB. New construction everywhere. the Chinese have mastered the art of construction and people (!) they do not play. I have said this over and over and over again, but it is really true. And unless you are here and see it with your own two eyes, you will have zero comprehension of what you are dealing with, and that is most especially true if you get your Intel from FOX “news” or CNN.

Video Ten. HERE. 75MB. A toddler playground. I would guess that this playground is for children up to six years old, and requires supervision. You will note that there are many, many parents here. If anything happens, any one of them will come to the rescue. You will also notice that there are quite a selection of toddler appropriate play structures from mazes, to jungle gyms, to swing sets and rocking horses.

I am a big believer in age-appropriate playgrounds and outlets. You cannot have “one size fits all” and then make it so safe that only cripples on wheelchairs can use it safely. Play requires independence, safety with a level of risk. Sure, kids can fall, and things can go wrong, but in China all the toddler play areas come with a ton load of adult supervision, and no one is going to allow anything to happen if they can prevent it.

Video Eleven. HERE. 184MB. Wet Market. This is what a wet market is like. It looks a lot like a high-end American supermarket. And that’s because it is. The only difference is that fish are sold while alive. Thus the “wet” portion of the market. I ask, does Forbes, Rush Limbaugh, Hall Turner, or FOX “news” have any video of what a “Wet market” looks like. Nope. They just repeat the ugly narrative, and the ignorant believe it.

I know that I am a bit brash and “in your face” regarding this particular video, but I just read a fully bullshit article out of Forbes that angered me to no end. Still pushing the Wuhan “bat virus” hoax and the China dirty and filthy hoax. Jeeze!

Video Twelve. HERE. 75MB. Activity Center. This is a very common sight all over China. There are these little areas where you spend $5 USD for the kids to play safely. They can play with play-doh, splash in water, feed fish, slide and climb indoors, play dress-up, go to an activity table, play with toys, and paint, or build. The parents must be present, so it is not a Day-care. It’s something else entirely.

Video Thirteen HERE. 37MB. A Dim Sum restaurant. This is about as typical China as you can get, and these places are everywhere in the Southern crest of China. Everything is typical. From the tables and the table cloths to the tea, the types of people, the environment, the decorations and the food provided. This is China.

Video Fourteen HERE. 77MB. This is rush hour in front of a regional mall in a residential section. The sun is setting, the dusk is deepening, and the shade under the trees are lush, moist and green. It’s one of my favorite times of the day. This is when people go outside in China and gather together for meals, some companionship and just to socialize.

To Open the Files

Just unzip to whatever folder you want and then just play the first video, the other videos will play immediately afterwards (if you follow the default settings on your OS). Most videos are between  one and a half to four minutes long. All told, it’s roughly 45 minutes in total.

Some key points

This is what China is like.

Is it dirty, smoggy, filthy? Do the people eat dogs and cats? Is the infrastructure failing, and flailing?

From Bing. “China City”.

Here’s a Bing search for “China Street”.

Is it a police state with constant “big brother” surveillance 24/7?

No it’s not.

From Bing “China people”.

What comes up when you do an image search for “China people” on Bing.

But it’s difficult to get the message through when the United States government owns 99.99% of all American media; mainstream, alt-Right and Alt-Left. NAd spend millions of dollars, with bot’s, AI, and armies of people to flood the internet with bad things to say about China.

They WANT to create the great lies of hate, and illusions of what China is.

From Bing. “China military”.

What Bing search engine comes up with when you do a search for “China military”.

Do you want more?

This article is going into a new sub-index that I am creating for it titled VLOG. You can access it here.

Video Blog

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • 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.

 

 

 

 

.

 

A Metallicman Video Narrative; Home in Zhuhai 7

Well, this is my seventh try at making a Vblog.

One thing is for certain it takes a different set of skills to do. And, maybe this methodology is better suited to me. I won’t have people complaining about spelling and grammar, or idiom mistakes so often.

This vlog consists of a bunch of videos. Some narrate while others don’t. What is special here is that (for all the videos on you-tube about China) note seem to tackle the kinds of “everyday life” that I want to provide here.

For me, it’s nothing fancy. Yet when I show glimpses of my life to others outside of China, they seem to like it. Cool, I guess. So… this is just myself walking around the neighborhood; my house, and filming it while I discuss the world around me. I hope that you like it.

Keep in mind when you watch the videos, a comparison of your life, with what you are watching on my videos.

The theme behind these videos areLook at everyday life inside of China”

The videos

Video One. 92MB. Reuse of discarded lighters, and hand sanitizers at the Zhuhai airport. This is common throughout China, but not so common in the United States. My experience is that the lighters are discarded in the United States.

Video Two. 56MB. Vet’s office part I. Bringing my dog into the vet’s office. What it is like and what is a going on. You get a very good idea about animal care inside of China with this particular video.

Video Three. 55MB. Vet’s office part II. Showing some of the customers to the vet clinic, and the pets that they bring in. It’s a big change from the American / UK narrative that the Chinese only eat dogs and cats. Isn’t it, eh?

Video Four. 29MB. This is a local government Social Security office. It reminds me of the United States Post Office. But I will tell you that they were efficient. You use the QR to apply and submit documents via the app. Then you arrive for your appointment. Waiting time is under five minutes, as the AI bases wait times on an individual-by-individual basis.

Video Five. 55MB. Playing with 5G AI in the local mall. You just scan the QR code and then run the APP. Then what you film interacts with the various programs and have you interacting with things. In the one that we choose, we point and push and do imaginary things in the air, and the APP interprets it to be myself pushing jellyfish, moving bubbles, tickling whales and chasing dolphins about.

Video Six. 69MB. A ride in the taxi through Jida, showing all the construction everywhere, and what it is like here in Zhuhai. I am told that China is ugly, filth and run by evil chicom crooks. I am also told that I am “blind” to the “real” China. Kind of difficult to buy a coke when you are “blind”, don’t you know.

Video Seven. 91MB. This is my local medical clinic in my neighborhood. It is in the old section of town, and filmed on a busy Saturday. As you can see, the things are a bit more used, distressed and in use. There is nothing wrong with that. The clinic will be replaced in a year or two anyways.

Video Eight. 21MB. This is a semi-normal, semi-regular meal that the MM household tends to have on the weekends. This particular meal is at a Vietnamese restaurant that we are VIP members of. (VIP membership is a regular feature throughout China.) And this dish is curried Chicken with potatoes and hot peppers with a side of okra. Actually how it is cooked makes all the difference in the world. It goes great with beer in a glass filled with crushed ice, pineapple rice with squid and shrimp, and shrimp / coconut chips.

Video Nine. 79MB. Pre-Kindergarden. Here you can bring your 9 month old baby to three years to Pre-Kindergarden. The babies, toddlers and youth learn social skills, stories, language and communication skills as well as some basic math, and history through stories, songs, and dance. Since many of the children are not toilet trained, and many are still nursing, the parents must be present with the children.

Yes, I can add streaming video code instead. And I am researching it. The thing is that I do not want code that is connected to the American oligarchy in any way. And most available codes are. 

Sure, you can host the video on your site, but the video will be directly tied to Google, which is then tied to the NSA, which is then under the control of the American Federal Government. So I am looking into this. 

I'll keep you all posted on my successes or failures in this matter. Maybe I'll ask Jeff Brown for some pointers....

To Open the Files

Just unzip to whatever folder you want and then just play the first video, the other videos will play immediately afterwards (if you follow the default settings on your OS). Most videos are between  one and a half to four minutes long. All told, it’s roughly 45 minutes in total.

Some key points

This is what China is like.

Is it dirty, smoggy, filthy? Do the people eat dogs and cats? Is the infrastructure failing, and flailing? Is it a police state with constant “big brother” surveillance 24/7?

No it’s not.

But it’s difficult to get the message through when the Untied States government owns 99.99% of all American media; mainstream, alt-Right and Alt-Left. And then makes i had for people inside of China to post videos on You-Tube or Facebook.

They WANT to create the great lies of hate.

Do you want more?

This article is going into a new sub-index that I am creating for it titled VLOG. You can access it here.

Video Blog

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • 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.

 

 

 

 

.

 

A Metallicman Video Narrative; Home in Zhuhai 6

Well, this is my sixth try at making a Vblog.

Here's my MM dirty little secret; I'm beginning to get a little touch of Carpal Tunnel in my wrists. So I really need to lay off the heavy typing aspects of MM. Sorry, but I am a human and my body is a human body with all sorts of physical limitations. Ugh!

One thing is for certain it takes a different set of skills to do. And, maybe this methodology is better suited to me. I won’t have people complaining about spelling and grammar, or idiom mistakes so often.

This vlog consists of a bunch of videos. Some narrate while others don’t. What is special here is that (for all the videos on you-tube about China) note seem to tackle the kinds of “everyday life” that I want to provide here.

For me, it’s nothing fancy. Yet when I show glimpses of my life to others outside of China, they seem to like it. Cool, I guess. So… this is just myself walking around the neighborhood; my house, and filming it while I discuss the world around me. I hope that you like it.

Keep in mind when you watch the videos, a comparison of your life, with what you are watching on my videos.

The theme behind these videos areLook at everyday life inside of China part three”

As opposed to…

The videos

Here I am providing some videos, narrated as is my want, and thrown at you all with wild abandon. Yee Haw!

Video One HERE. 282MB. The tax office, a Chinese bird, and a six lane intersection. This first video is a honker, and it is enormous. It might take some time to download. Sorry guys.

Video Two HERE. 55.4MB. A tale in the elevator. Not much of a tale, rather just what it is like when you are captive inside an elevator with commercials playing.

Video Three HERE. 34.3MB. At the Chinese version of Social Security. If it reminds you of the US Post office, yeah, well, it’s all pretty similar. Except that in China, they are for more compassionate and nicer than what I remember everyone back in the States to be.

Video Four HERE. 40.5MB. At the mall and experiencing 5G AI by QR code. Well, almost actually, the AI and all that fancy stuff happened after I filmed this segment. Because, after all, you need the cell phone to active the AI effects.  And while they were impressive from a technical point of view… my hands moving jellyfishes and other fishes and bubbles about, I really just thought of it as a cute gimmick for kids.

Video Five HERE. 88MB. A ride in a taxi from the mall during rush hour. My daughter was playing with the kid’s version of Tictok and the noise in the background is one of her videos. Ai! Oh! LOL.

Yes, I can add streaming video code instead. And I am researching it. The thing is that I do not want code that is connected to the American oligarchy in any way. And most available codes are. 

Sure, you can host the video on your site, but the video will be directly tied to Google, which is then tied to the NSA, which is then under the control of the American Federal Government. So I am looking into this. 

I'll keep you all posted on my successes or failures in this matter. Maybe I'll ask Jeff Brown for some pointers....

And my point is…

This is my life. Please point out where I experience the same kind of narrative that the American (and UK) government says exists within China.

To Open the Files

Just unzip to whatever folder you want and then just play the first video, the other videos will play immediately afterwards (if you follow the default settings on your OS). Most videos are between  one and a half to four minutes long. All told, it’s roughly 45 minutes in total.

Do you want more?

This article is going into a new sub-index that I am creating for it titled VLOG. You can access it here.

Video Blog

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • 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.

 

 

 

 

.

 

A Metallicman Video Narrative; Home in Zhuhai 5

Well, this is my fifth try at making a Vblog.

One thing is for certain it takes a different set of skills to do. And, maybe this methodology is better suited to me. I won’t have people complaining about spelling and grammar, or idiom mistakes so often.

This vlog consists of a bunch of videos. Some narrate while others don’t. What is special here is that (for all the videos on you-tube about China) note seem to tackle the kinds of “everyday life” that I want to provide here.

For me, it’s nothing fancy. Yet when I show glimpses of my life to others outside of China, they seem to like it. Cool, I guess. So… this is just myself walking around the neighborhood; my house, and filming it while I discuss the world around me. I hope that you like it.

Keep in mind when you watch the videos, a comparison of your life, with what you are watching on my videos.

The theme behind these videos areLook at everyday life inside of China part two”

The videos

Here I am providing some videos, narrated as is my want, and thrown at you all with wild abandon. Yee Haw!

Video one HERE. 77MB Futility, or a sense of belonging?

Video two HERE. 208MB. Banking and taxation within China.

Video three HERE. 163MB. Wasted away again in Lipton-baijiu-aville.

Video Four HERE. 123MB. At the airport.

Yes, I can add streaming video code instead. And I am researching it. The thing is that I do not want code that is connected to the American oligarchy in any way. And most available codes are. 

Sure, you can host the video on your site, but the video will be directly tied to Google, which is then tied to the NSA, which is then under the control of the American Federal Government. So I am looking into this. 

I'll keep you all posted on my successes or failures in this matter. Maybe I'll ask Jeff Brown for some pointers....

To Open the Files

Just unzip to whatever folder you want and then just play the first video, the other videos will play immediately afterwards (if you follow the default settings on your OS). Most videos are between  one and a half to four minutes long. All told, it’s roughly 45 minutes in total.

Some key points

This is what China is like.

Is it dirty, smoggy, filthy? Do the people eat dogs and cats? Is the infrastructure failing, and flailing? Is it a police state with constant “big brother” surveillance 24/7?

No it’s not.

But it’s difficult to get the message through when the Untied States government owns 99.99% of all American media; mainstream, alt-Right and Alt-Left. And then makes i had for people inside of China to post videos on You-Tube or Facebook.

They WANT to create the great lies of hate.

Hey! Here’s the latest “news” about China today. What issues are being promoted, and how are they being described?

Does it resemble anything like what is really going on?

Do you want more?

This article is going into a new sub-index that I am creating for it titled VLOG. You can access it here.

Video Blog

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • 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.

 

 

 

 

.

 

A Metallicman Video Narrative; Home in Zhuhai 4

Well, this is my fourth try at making a Vblog.

One thing is for certain it takes a different set of skills to do. And, maybe this methodology is better suited to me. I won’t have people complaining about spelling and grammar, or idiom mistakes so often.

This vlog consists of a bunch of videos. Some narrate while others don’t. What is special here is that (for all the videos on you-tube about China) note seem to tackle the kinds of “everyday life” that I want to provide here.

For me, it’s nothing fancy. Yet when I show glimpses of my life to others outside of China, they seem to like it. Cool, I guess. So… this is just myself walking around the neighborhood; my house, and filming it while I discuss the world around me. I hope that you like it.

Keep in mind when you watch the videos, a comparison of your life, with what you are watching on my videos.

The theme behind these videos areLook at everyday life inside of China”

The videos

Here I am providing some videos of riding on a public bus in China, A video showing just the insane level of construction everywhere that is all over China, and what it is like to take my little dog to the vet.

Video one HERE. 39MB. Taking public transportation to get around.

Video two HERE. 23.3MB. Construction everywhere.

Video three HERE. 40MB. My dog visits the local vet for his shots.

Video four HERE. 72MB. A visit to the tiny Zhuhai airport.

Video five HERE. 107MB. A study of trash receptacles near my home.

Yes, I can add streaming video code instead. And I am researching it. The thing is that I do not want code that is connected to the American oligarchy in any way. And most available codes are. 

Sure, you can host the video on your site, but the video will be directly tied to Google, which is then tied to the NSA, which is then under the control of the American Federal Government. So I am looking into this. 

I'll keep you all posted on my successes or failures in this matter. Maybe I'll ask Jeff Brown for some pointers....

To Open the Files

Just unzip to whatever folder you want and then just play the first video, the other videos will play immediately afterwards (if you follow the default settings on your OS). Most videos are between  one and a half to four minutes long. All told, it’s roughly 45 minutes in total.

Some key points

This is what China is like.

Is it dirty, smoggy, filthy? Do the people eat dogs and cats? Is the infrastructure failing, and flailing? Is it a police state with constant “big brother” surveillance 24/7?

No it’s not.

But it’s difficult to get the message through when the Untied States government owns 99.99% of all American media; mainstream, alt-Right and Alt-Left. And then makes i had for people inside of China to post videos on You-Tube or Facebook.

They WANT to create the great lies of hate.

Do you want more?

This article is going into a new sub-index that I am creating for it titled VLOG. You can access it here.

Video Blog

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • 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.

 

 

 

 

.

 

A Metallicman Video Narrative; Home in Zhuhai 3

Well, this is my third try at making a Vblog. I do believe that it is a popular thing to do and I am told that I could open up an account on You-Tube and get a bunch of followers. Well, maybe. If I wanted that.

One thing is for certain it takes a different set of skills to do. And, maybe this methodology is better suited to me. I won’t have people complaining about spelling and grammar, or idiom mistakes so often.

Here’s the videos in more or less the same kind of format as my first Vlog. Except that the videos are longer, and thus are bigger. They take more time to download.

This vlog consists of one cluster of three videos.

For me, it’s nothing fancy. Yet when I show glimpses of my life to others outside of China, they seem to like it. Cool, I guess. So… this is just myself walking around the neighborhood; my house, and filming it while I discuss the world around me. I hope that you like it.

The theme behind this video (or collection of smaller videos)  isLook at how polluted China is and compare it to the BBC, and the Bloomberg articles.”

What am I talking about?

Well, it is so easy to find pictures about pollution in China. That’s all the western media seems to talk about.

Like this,

And this,

And this, Look at the bikes and clothing. This picture is at least twenty years old. But what it is doing in a 2020 article?

And this,

And this as well…

About the methodology that I use…

The videos themselves are but a collection of short movies, and they are all zipped up. You just unzip to a folder and then just play the movies. It’s not as convenient as You-tube, but I won’t end up getting shadow banned either.

And I am tying to make a point.

From the article titled; “Officials have issued a red alert and warn that Beijing …

Obviously, what I see, and what the “journalists” are reporting on differs substantially. Why? Is it because I am lying, or that I am viewing China through “Rose colored glasses”?

Idiom: rose-colored glasses to see things as better than they really are to see only the positives in a situation (and therefore in a way that is unrealistic)

-Idiom: Rose-colored glasses

I do narrate, but … well, you watch.

China as described by NPR.

I really want you, the viewer, to “feel” what “my China” is like. It’s my reality. It’s my world. And, by extension, MM readers / followers’ world as well.

Toxic air catastrophe triggers scrap metal revolution in China

The videos can be downloaded here…

And I am truly sorry that they are so darn large. If you cannot download them, please accept my apologies.

Cluster One

Only three videos in this installment. But they are large. Please (again) accept my apologies.

Video one HERE. 100MB.

Video two HERE. 250MB.

Video three HERE. 247MB.

Yes, I can add streaming video code instead. And I am researching it. The thing is that I do not want code that is connected to the American oligarchy in any way. And most available codes are. 

Sure, you can host the video on your site, but the video will be directly tied to Google, which is then tied to the NSA, which is then under the control of the American Federal Government. So I am looking into this. 

I'll keep you all posted on my successes or failures in this matter. Maybe I'll ask Jeff Brown for some pointers....

To Open the Files

Just unzip to whatever folder you want and then just play the first video, the other videos will play immediately afterwards (if you follow the default settings on your OS). Most videos are between  one and a half to four minutes long. All told, it’s roughly 45 minutes in total.

Some key points

The purpose of this vlog is to show how out of touch the Western media is with the day-to-day reality of those of us living within China. It is so absolutely crazy out-of-touch that there MUST be an agenda behind it. Certainly no “journalists” can end up being that absolutely incompetent.

And thus this incisive and detailed, and particularly important vlog.

I do hope that you enjoy it.

Ah.

Compare my reality with American reality

While I was filming these videos, this is the hysteria going on in America. Now compare reality against the perception of what is important via the “news”.

I mean, don’t you know, that it’s all bullshit.

So I am just gonna hang out here. Have a few beers, and eat some delicious food with some friends, both old and new. And that’s my reality.

Do you want more?

This article is going into a new sub-index that I am creating for it titled VLOG. You can access it here.

Video Blog

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • 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.

 

 

 

 

.

 

Examples about how the Chinese teach their children to be successful

When I was growing up, my father did his best to give me an education. And throughout this time, he repeatedly emphasized that my future depended on the type of job that I had, and the size of the company that employed me. Larger companies offered more opportunities than smaller companies, and the more education that I would have would provide two things for me. Firstly, they would increase the job pool that I could choose from, and secondly they would enable me to start off with a higher salary than others.

He meant well, and certainly that formula worked well for his generation, but my generation suddenly became the “disposable worker” generation and layoffs became more common than not, and no one ever ended up with a job for life. Couple that with my role in MAJestic, and it was really a dog-eat-dog survival life with more than enough highs and lows.

And what you want to do, as a parent, is to make sure that your children have it better than you. Maybe not necessarily easier, but certainly better; more opportunities, and a chance, a real honest-to-goodness chance that they will be able to make a life for themselves in a world that is subject to whims and changes beyond their control.

Well, I am in China. And the Chinese have seen dramatic changes in their lives over the last thirty years, and many generations of Chinese have sacrificed and existed in a situation where there just wasn’t much in the way of any opportunities. And so they remain cautious, but guarded, about their children.

And thus, knowing that the (proverbial) rug “could be pulled out from under their feet”, many middle-class Chinese do what ever they can to guarantee that their children are equipped with the kinds of skills to make it, and survive in a contentious and changing world. And while China (as a nation is secure and prosperous), things could change. And as such, no one is taking any chances.

The educational system in China is not only great, but absurdly so. Not only do elementary students learn Chinese languages, and history, but they learn English as well, and their entrance into university is predicated on their ability to speak and pass English qualification exams.

Which makes things very interesting, as I will often see children studying all the time, jut about everywhere. Couple that with secondary classes that their parents also provide for them. These other classes range from swimming to dancing, to archery, to martial arts and everything in between. Some go into robotics, while others study the arts. And with that in mind I would like to present some videos of Kindergarten to first grade Chinese students…

They are all zipped up in a small 30MB file. I think that you all will enjoy them.

You can get the file HERE.

Conclusion

These children are not the exception. They are the normal average. If America believes that it can compete against China then they will need to reconfigure the school curriculum towards STEM subjects, and less on the soft social and humanities. They will also need to be very serious about the environment hat they are raising the children within.

For a nation of “lone wolves” can never truly work together without fighting, squabbling, and performing uncharacteristically self-defeating behaviors.

Do you want more?

This article is going into the China vs. America comparisons index.

USA vs China

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • 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.

 

 

 

 

.

 

A Metallicman Video Narrative; Home in Zhuhai 2

Well, this is my second try at making a Vblog. I do believe that it is a popular thing to do and I am told that I could open up an account on You-Tube and get a bunch of followers. Well, maybe. If I wanted that.

One thing is for certain it takes a different set of skills to do. And, maybe this methodology is better suited to me. I won’t have people complaining about spelling and grammar, or idiom mistakes so often.

Here’s the videos in more or less the same kind of format as my first Vlog.

Well, actually, it’s a string of around 12 or so, 2 to 5 minute long videos that I have zipped together in a folder. You just unpack and watch at your pleasure.

I took extra care for them not to be as long as the other videos so that they would be easier to watch.

For me, it’s nothing fancy. Yet when I show glimpses of my life to others outside of China, they seem to like it. Cool, I guess. So… this is just myself walking around the neighborhood; my house, and filming it while I discuss the world around me. I hope that you like it.

The theme behind this video (or collection of smaller videos)  ishow China manages society, allocates resources, and works to improve the environment for it’s citizenry..

The videos themselves are but a collection of short movies, and they are all zipped up. You just unzip to a folder and then just play the movies. It’s not as convenient as You-tube, but I won’t end up getting shadow banned either.

This is all pretty much unlike the typical expat in China vblogs that visit this town, or that town and talk about what they observe. I do that as well, but overall, this effort is about me and where I live. The purpose of this particular segment is to concentrate on the idea that the role of the government, at all levels, is to improve the lives of the citizenry.

Something that has been missing in the American government for at least two centuries/

I do narrate, but … well, you watch.

I really want you, the viewer, to “feel” what “my China” is like. It’s my reality. It’s my world. And, by extension, MM readers / followers’ world as well.

Keep in mind this video by Bernie Sanders 30 years ago…

Thirty years ago, 90% of the Chinese people lived in absolute poverty. All they had was their skills and the ability to work hard. The government took time, planning and enormous investments to improve the lives of the citizenry.

Unlike the USA they did not decide to destroy the rest of the world. They used the money on their people. Not on the richest, and the desire to destroy everyone else. And you can see the results today.

That is what this Vlog is all about.

The videos can be downloaded here…

Group One

Group one HERE…73MB

Group Two

Group two HERE… 61MB

Group 3

 

Group three HERE … 51MB

Group 4

And this group is about me doing some shopping in the little stores that line the lower income areas.

Group four HERE… 43MB

Group 5

I discuss fixing my bicycle, automobile repair, and riding a bike in China; the most bicycle friendly nation on the planet.

Group five… HERE 65MB

 

Yes, I can add streaming video code instead. And I am researching it. The thing is that I do not want code that is connected to the American oligarchy in any way. And most available codes are. 

Sure, you can host the video on your site, but the video will be directly tied to Google, which is then tied to the NSA, which is then under the control of the American Federal Government. So I am looking into this. 

I'll keep you all posted on my successes or failures in this matter. Maybe I'll ask Jeff Brown for some pointers....

To Open the Files

Just unzip to whatever folder you want and then just play the first video, the other videos will play immediately afterwards (if you follow the default settings on your OS). Most videos are between  one and a half to four minutes long. All told, it’s roughly 45 minutes in total.

Or around 12 minutes per VLOG group (1 through 4) for the bite-size MM version that I used to test on my computer.

I really hope that you are not too bored.

How the videos are set up

The first video starts off quiet and then I break out into my narrative. I really, and sincerely hope that you all can get the real “feel” for China like I have. And understand WHY I say that it reminds me so much about what the United States was like back in the late 1950’s, and early 1960’s.

Some key points

The purpose of this second Vlog is to underscore the role of government.

I look at China that has placed the fundamental and primary role of government to be to improves the lives of the citizenry at all levels.

This differs substantially from the role of the American government; which is to do the bidding of the wealthy oligarchy that put the “democratic” representatives into power within the government.

Each video takes one small item, often overlooked by other vloggers, and amplifies it upon this narrative. It’s not that they are wrong, but visiting a town or community for a week isn’t going to tell you or inform you the way that a long-term expat would.

And thus this incisive and detailed, and particularly important vlog.

I do hope that you enjoy it.

I love the steam locomotive in the background.

Ah.

You could reasonably argue that I miss the old culture, and the older styles of cars, clothing and other attributes of the past. you could say that I miss the prices and my now dead relatives. I suppose that many of those points are actually true. But with every good point, is an equally bad point.

And I suppose that people would argue that I am looking with fondness of the past. And it’s true, I am. But what I am describing is the “feeling” of that time. And I am comparing it to the “feeling” that I have now.

Today, here inside of China, no one is on the radio, or on the internet yelling at me to buy! Buy! Buy!. It’s only $98.98.

I am not hearing from radio, television or the internet about all sorts of emergency dangers and that the world is out of control.I don’t hear advertisements that ask if I am depressed, have marital or legal problems, or how great a pill will help me in my life.

Instead I hear that things are under control, and I see that with my very own two eyes. There’s a calmness in the air that I haven’t experienced since the 1960’s, and it is refreshing to experience it.

I hope that you too are able to experience it in my VLOG herein.

Compare my reality with American reality

While I was filming these videos, this is the hysteria going on in America. Now compare reality against the perception of what is important via the “news”.

Cox complains about 1,000-lb bear dominating coverage…

I mean, don’t you know, that it’s all bullshit.

So I am just gonna hang out here. Have a few beers, and eat some delicious food with some friends, both old and new. And that’s my reality.

Do you want more?

This article is going into a new sub-index that I am creating for it titled VLOG. You can access it here.

Video Blog

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • 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.

 

 

 

 

.

 

A Metallicman Video Narrative; Home in Zhuhai 1

Well, this is my first try at making a Vblog. I hear that it is a popular thing to do and I am told that I could open up an account on You-Tube and get a bunch of followers. Well, maybe. If I wanted that.

So I made a video.

It’s of my neighborhood.

Well, actually, it’s a string of around 12 or so, 2 to 5 minute long videos that I have zipped together in a folder. You just unpack and watch at your pleasure.

For me, it’s nothing fancy. Yet when I show glimpses of my life to others outside of China, they seem to like it. Cool, I guess. So… this is just myself walking around the neighborhood; my house, and filming it while I discuss the world around me. I hope that you like it.

The theme behind this video (or collection of smaller videos)  isthe feeling in China is near identical to the feeling that I had while a small boy living in the USA in the 1960’s”.

The videos themselves are but a collection of short movies, and they are all zipped up. You just unzip to a folder and then just play the movies. It’s not as convenient as You-tube, but I won’t end up getting shadow banned either.

This is all pretty much unlike the typical expat in China vblogs that visit this town, or that town and talk about what they observe. I do that as well, but overall, this effort is about me and where I live. It’s purpose and intention is to get you, the viewer, a “feeling” of the environment as opposed to someone watching a narrated adventure.

I do narrate, but … well, you watch.

I really want you, the viewer, to “feel” what “my China” is like. It’s my reality. It’s my world. And, by extension, MM readers / followers’ world as well.

The entire video set can be downloaded HERE. But, it’s super large at 392 MB. And many computers cannot download it due to the cache memory size, or clutter in their browsers. Like your’s truly.

So… Here’s the MM version. For me, I need to download things in smaller mouth-fulls.

Or if you keep on getting errors, you can download the file in small batches and then go folder by folder.

Yes, I can add streaming video code instead. And I am researching it. The thing is that I do not want code that is connected to the American oligarchy in any way. And most available codes are. 

Sure, you can host the video on your site, but the video will be directly tied to Google, which is then tied to the NSA, which is then under the control of the American Federal Government. So I am looking into this. 

I'll keep you all posted on my successes or failures in this matter. Maybe I'll ask Jeff Brown for some pointers....

To Open the Files

Just unzip to whatever folder you want and then just play the first video, the other videos will play immediately afterwards (if you follow the default settings on your OS). Most videos are between  one and a half to four minutes long. All told, it’s roughly 45 minutes in total.

Or around 12 minutes per VLOG group (1 through 4) for the bite-size MM version that I used to test on my computer.

I really hope that you are not too bored.

How the videos are set up

The first video starts off quiet and then I break out into my narrative. I really, and sincerely hope that you all can get the real “feel” for China like I have. And understand WHY I say that it reminds me so much about what the United States was like back in the late 1950’s, and early 1960’s.

Some key points

One of the things that I am trying to get across is that China reminds me of what America used to be. Whether it was the 1950’s, 60’s or 70’s. It clearly has something, a “feeling”, a pace of life, a way of living, a society that has long evaporated away in the United States.

I argue that what America is today is a direct reflection on it’s leadership. And the fact that the leaders are not smart, (are terribly corrupt and behave as psychopathic fiends with no shame or attempt to hide their behaviors) reinforces this point. For them, being surrounded by sycophants and other psychopaths they are unable to see what they have created or the world that they live in is not good. It is not healthy and it is most certainly, not normal.

A Metallicman 1960’s America.

Ah.

You could reasonably argue that I miss the old culture, and the older styles of cars, clothing and other attributes of the past. you could say that I miss the prices and my now dead relatives. I suppose that many of those points are actually true. But with every good point, is an equally bad point.

And I suppose that people would argue that I am looking with fondness of the past. And it’s true, I am. But what I am describing is the “feeling” of that time. And I am comparing it to the “feeling” that I have now.

Today, here inside of China, no one is on the radio, or on the internet yelling at me to buy! Buy! Buy!. It’s only $98.98.

I am not hearing from radio, television or the internet about all sorts of emergency dangers and that the world is out of control.I don’t hear advertisements that ask if I am depressed, have marital or legal problems, or how great a pill will help me in my life.

Instead I hear that things are under control, and I see that with my very own two eyes. There’s a calmness in the air that I haven’t experienced since the 1960’s, and it is refreshing to experience it.

I hope that you too are able to experience it in my VLOG herein.

A “real” car. From Shorpy.com.

Compare my reality with American reality

While I was filming these videos, this is the hysteria going on in America. Now compare reality against the perception of what is important via the “news”.

I mean, don’t you know, that it’s all bullshit.

So I am just gonna hang out here. Have a few beers, and eat some delicious food with some friends, both old and new. And that’s my reality.

Do you want more?

This article is going into a new sub-index that I am creating for it titled VLOG. You can access it here.

Video Blog

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

.

  • 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.

 

 

 

 

.

 

A great rant from a Chinese expat in America who says “I want to talk about China”.

This is a wonderful rant by a girl currently in the United States. She is absolutely “fed up” with the anti-China news, attitude, and general opinions of American regarding China. And she want’s it all to end. She is shouting loud and clear “Shut Up!”

The Chinese people are getting fed up with the lies that come out of the American, and Western “news”. They are tired of it. They are starting to get angry about it. And it must stop.

I've got a bunch of small and short embedded videos in this article. You really need to watch them to get the full impact of this article. -MM

Again, here is a dialog rant by a Chinese-America who lives inside of America, but well knows the reality of her home nation; China. And so, being sick and tired of the endless lies, and bullshit from the American “news”, she lashes out…

I Want To Talk About China

China is nothing like the fake version that exists only in imagination, that is painted in the media and absorbed into the minds of the people who gape at me when I tell them, "You know, life in China wasn't really all that different."

By Lily Chang

“Where are you from?”

“China,” my mom says, with audible pride.

“Oh,” said the lady at the thrift store, her eyebrows disappearing into her thick brown hair. “Was it scary over there? Were you not allowed to say things or use the internet?”

“China is a repressive dictatorship where the government exercises total control over people’s lives. The citizens have very few human rights compared to in the US.”

“That’s not true,” my sister blurts out. “I lived there and it wasn’t like that at all.”

“Don’t talk out of turn,” said her fourth grade teacher.

“You know, life in China wasn’t really all that different,” I say.

I watch the shock in my friends’ eyes. Feeling awkward, I continue on.

“I went to school in the morning and came home at night. I had a lot of homework. On the weekend, I would go out with my friends, and we would go to the park, or go window shopping, and gossip about our teachers and classmates.”

They gape at me, and I change the subject.

I want to talk about China.

I want to talk about my country and the many years I lived there, the laughter and the tears and everything in between. I want to share the experiences that shaped me and the people that changed me and the places where it happened.

But I can’t.

I cannot because the China in their eyes, in their minds, is not the China I come from, where I lived for most of my life.

It’s a sick, distorted version.

It is like what you see through a funhouse mirror, except there’s no fun in this house, only propaganda and racism and lies.

From those materials they built this diabolical interpretation of China that exists only in fantasy, and put me in it like a doll in a dollhouse.

And thus I was expected to play my part…

…as (some kind of) liberated victim of horrific oppression, grateful for my salvation, for my new life in the “enlightened” west.

I refused.

I’m going off script.

We, the Chinese people, are spoken of like birds in locked cages…

(Being) afraid to sing, the keys held by a brutal totalitarian government that cares nothing for our welfare.

We are huddled together, suffering, waiting for civilized countries to swoop in and rescue us…

To rescue us from our awful plights, to unlock our cages and heal our wounds and set us free.

We are dehumanized, reduced to objects of pity and victims in need of deliverance.

And thus they cry, “I love the Chinese people! I only hate the Chinese government!”

But they cannot love us, because to them, we are NOT human.

We are things.

The citizens are not humans, but caged birds desperate for a fairy tale hero to save them.

The government and those who compose it, are not humans, but blood-sucking demons.

Yes. demons. Demons who are bent on surveilling, controlling, destroying the citizens for their own gain.

But all this is just a fantasy; a lie. It’s a make-believe world that doesn’t exist, and one that never existed.

The people of China are not caged birds, and the government of China is not a group of cartoonishly evil demons.

But, this is the China they built in their minds, that they project onto me when I stand in front of them with my yellow skin, black hair, brown eyes.

And I want to tell them, that’s not the real China.

The real China is neither a paradise, but nor is it a hell.

The people of China are not helpless caged birds, but human beings.

Human beings with hopes and dreams and interests and opinions and stories. And yes, human rights.

We can travel, and many do.

More than 100 million Chinese go abroad every year, for school, work, tourism, and other reasons.

We can practice religion.

Religion is not allowed to influence politics.

And it is especially not allowed to promote separatism, terrorism, or other types of extremist thought.

We can criticize the government.

We can even hold protests. 

But we cannot humiliate or slander our leaders, we cannot spread lies, and again, we cannot promote separatism or incite mass unrest. 

Maybe that seems like a lot of conditions. 

But swearing at our leaders isn't productive engagement. It doesn't lead to problems being fixed.

We can vote.

There are elections in China, but not for the president. 

The people directly elect district representatives to the People's Congress, who then elect representatives at the city and province level. 

These representatives, just like Congresspeople in the US, are responsible for expressing their constituents' suggestions and grievances. 

They provide oversight for politicians. And if they don't do their job, they can be fired via petition from the people.

All citizens of China are entitled to these rights. All fifty-six ethnicities.

The people of China are not caged birds, and the government of China is not a group of cartoonishly evil demons.

In fact, China enjoys high levels of support among the people – not because there are no other options, as often claimed, and not because we are brainwashed. To say so takes away our agency, puts us back in the cage. We are supportive because the government serves the people.

Because…

…they lifted 850 million people out of absolute poverty in 40 years (100 million just since 2013),

…built them free homes,

…provided them with jobs and healthcare and education.

(The government) invested into infrastructure to ensure people in the most distant areas can live a better and more convenient life.

(And they) traversed deep into dangerous mountains to find those in need of help.

Chinese people respect their government…

…because they made enormous financial sacrifices made to combat the COVID-19 pandemic…

… from the initial lock-down of Wuhan…

… to implementing the massive contact tracing infrastructure, to free treatment for all patients.

They built hospitals in ten days, then mobilized of doctors and medical equipment from all over the country to the center of the epidemic.

It’s been stunning.

Increased life expectancy.

Increased quality of life.

Unparalleled safety.

Absolute happiness.

That is what the Chinese government does for the people.

That is not to say things are perfect.

Corruption exists.

Incompetence exists.

Dissatisfaction with the government exists. And the people express it. They make their voices heard.

The government is constantly monitoring public opinion on social media. Vocal criticism, of which there is much, is noted and taken into account.

Government agencies have open comment boards online where people can leave complaints.

Responses are then published online.

      • Unpopular policies get changed.
      • Unpopular politicians get replaced.

Whether you believe this is because they want the best for the people, or because they’re afraid of being violently overthrown by angry mobs, the result is the same.

They want to know what’s working and what’s not working. The needs and desires of the population are heard.

In the end, the Chinese people and the Chinese government are one, and cannot be separated.

Together, they are not oppressors and the oppressed, or even the rulers and the ruled, but two sides of the same coin, working together for a better China and better lives for all her citizens.

China is like a “bee hive”…

And America and the rest of the West, govern like “herding kittens”. The only solution is to divide up everyone so that everyone is fighting and the wealthy get wealthier…

China is not a paradise.

There are problems and unhappy people and bad decisions and things that fall through the cracks.

But it’s nothing like “that” China; The fake version of China that exists only in imagination, that is painted in the media and absorbed into the minds of the people who gape at me when I tell them…

… “You know, life in China wasn’t really all that different.”

And no one believes.

Because everyone is living within this fake world image that does not exist.

I want to talk to them about China, but I can’t.

Not until they tear down that twisted caricature in their minds; that fake world that they have been taught to believe.

Not until they see China for how she really is, good and bad.

I don’t wish for everyone to love China, or worship China. I want them to know China, understand China. The real China.

And when they do, then we can work together, learn from each other. Become better. That is what I hope to see.

Conclusion

It’s a great impassioned rant. And the thing is, that it could be written by just about any of the 120 million Chinese people who visit the the United States and return back to China. To put this number in perspective…

Population figures;

Some perspectives on WHY this is going on…

…it’s to create an evil villain. One that the people can point their fingers at and say [1] It’s another Nazi Germany!, and [2] We must do something to free the poor people! It tends to unite people against a common cause so they don’t get their torches, and pitchforks on the way to lynch the assholes in Washington DC.

It’s called “atrocity propaganda”…

Atrocity propaganda
Atrocity propaganda is the spreading of information about the crimes committed by an enemy, which can be factual, but often includes or features deliberate fabrications or exaggerations. This can involve photographs, videos, illustrations, interviews, and other forms of information presentation or reporting.

And… it continues…

And…

Why this demonization is going on; it’s because the USA must be the biggest, largest and most powerful nation in the world. If it isn’t, then all of it’s faults, it’s history of evil deeds, and the massive flaws within it’s system, and the economic crimes will come to light… to an angry world that is just now waking up to the reality of what the Hell the United States has been doing for much of the last century….

Indeed, for certain…

A time has come…

But that is not what is happening,

What is happening.

The United States is a terribly corrupt and flailing military empire and it is sinking, going down the drain in so many ways that everyone can watch and understand what is going on. The only people that do not understand this fact are those who are so absolutely blinded by the American propaganda of “exceptional greatness”, and intentional censorship of the reality outside of America.

We call them “sheeple”.

They are people that are emotionally entangled about things that they have NEVER physical experienced first hand. Only by what they read or watched on the internet.

Comedians joke about it, but it is a real problem.

And here…

The Bottom Line

As the United States collapses there are a host of options available to prevent the collapse.

America could…

  • Convene an emergency Constitutional Convention.  And though it, seriously reorganize the government to be more efficient and more focused on serving the needs of the people.
  • Redirect spending. Control the terrible fiscal irresponsibility. And set up policing organizations for fraud and waste.
  • Work on Win-win solutions. Work with other nations to improve positive international relations on the basis of a win-win philosophy.
  • Shut down the Military Empire. Seriously reduce the global military empire and redirect it’s task to domestic needs.

But that is not what it is doing. Instead it is picking fights with both Russia and China. In both cases trying to provoke an “incident” so that America has an excuse to unify America against a common enemy. It doesn’t matter who, at this point in time, and stage in the game. It just needs some kind of big, fierce enemy.

Note what is actually happening…

  • The Military Empire is expanding.
  • Provocative actions are proceeding and it’s only a matter of time when one will trigger a serious war.
  • The debt is getting larger, not smaller.
  • And an enormous budget (by Biden) to correct infrastructure problems has been proposed with zero changes to the already corrupted and inefficient system that is supposed to support it.
  • America is trying to provoke military engagements.

This cannot end well.

Metalicman’s Interview

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my China Index here…

China

.

Articles & Links

Master Index

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How America is viewed by the rest of the world.

Most Americans don’t care how others view America. They believe, incorrectly, that everyone thinks that America is the best nation on the face of the earth. They believe that everyone wants to move to America. They believe that America has “freedom“, and “democracy“. Well, it’s a big lie. It’s kind of true that some people do want to come to America; the uneducated, the poor, the slothful, and the criminals. But for educated, learned, skilled and talented folk… no so much. It’s a big problem. America has become the dumping ground for the world’s riff-raff instead of a beacon for the best and brightest. Here we talk about that.

We also talk about how just fucking weird America looks to the rest of the world.

'merica /ˈmerəkə,ˈmərəkə/ 
 
Noun: 
1) A humorous way to say America, meant to point out things that  are stereotypically about the country or the people. “In ‘Merica, we  like God, guns, and sticky buns.”
2) Stereotypical way rednecks say America. “Woo! Merica!”
3) The way to sum up over-the-top parts of American culture. 
America is really strange. As Americans, we don't realize how weird and strange our lives are.
America is really strange. As Americans, we don’t realize how weird and strange our lives are.

This is a reprint of the most wonderful article titled “The View from Abroad – America as Others See it ” by Fred Reed . It was written June 13, 2019. All credit to the author. Included are my photos, interjections and comments. Edited to fit this blog format.

The View from Abroad – America as Others See it

By Fred Reed, with interjections from Metallicman.

American Homeless picking their way through garbage.
American Homeless picking their way through garbage .

Americans are brought up to believe that the United States is a shining city on a hill, a light to mankind, that the world envies us for our values and freedoms, and hates us because we have them.

This is ground into us from birth.

Those of us now long in the tooth remember the Fifties when Superman jumped out of a window while the announcer spoke of a strange visitor from another planet fighting for “truth, justice, and the American way,” then (all) thought to be related.

The weirdly intimate toilet stalls.

Toilet  stalls are thoroughly private everywhere around the world, with the  walls extending all the way down to the floor. It's only in America that  you get to enjoy the lovely view of your stall-neighbor's feet whilst  peeing. 

As one who has traveled much and lived in several countries, I can tell you: It ain’t so.

The world does NOT regard America with admiration.

The outrageously expensive college tuition.

In most of the  world's countries, school is school. You go to school to study. The  university experience in the US is far more than just school. It comes  with athletics, student facilities, living and boarding, recreation  space, social events and so much more. Creating a rich student life  experience is often a deciding factor in choosing a college, making the  cost incredibly high. University tuition in the U.S. can range anywhere  from $10,000 to $35,000 per year, as opposed to many universities  outside of the U.S., with tuition costs at $6-7,000, sometimes even  less, sometimes even free.  

Today the internet profoundly affects the world’s view of America.

The Web makes graphic and easily found things that in earlier times would have been out of sight from abroad.

The customary unit system.

Besides Burma (Myanmar) and  Liberia, the United States is the only country that doesn't currently  use the metric system of measurement, because we apparently prefer  dealing with wacky conversions instead of nice, neat multiples of 10.  

For example, people in Kathmandu and Moscow can see horrifying and entirely truthful photos of the homeless living in piles of garbage in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and dozens of other American cities.

America has ZERO freedom of speech.
Functionally and practically, America has ZERO freedom of speech.
America goes to war everywhere. 

"My image of America is  a country that goes to war anywhere in the world," according to an  82-year-old retired agricultural lab technician from Tokyo, Japan. And  at least one Italian has a similar view: "Trump, fast food, NY,  Hollywood and wars." 

They can read of trade conventions avoiding San Francisco because of needles and excrement on the sidewalks.

Such scenes are rare even in most upper-Third World countries.

To the orderly Japanese, accustomed to spotless cities and responsible government, such things are, in the strict sense of the word, incomprehensible.

In America, you must obey all rules and laws without question. This is something that is taught at an early age and enforced through discipline.
In America, you must obey all rules and laws without question. This is something that is taught at an early age and enforced through discipline.
Driving literally everywhere. EVERYwhere. 

Everyone has a car. And everyone drives his or her own car. Alone.  Public transportation is so heavily relied upon in most other countries,  whereas in most of the US, people have this vital need for personal  space. 

Home of the brave, land of the free, the envy of the world. Just ask us.

The estimated homeless population of LA is 58,000 and climbing.

Swarms of flea-carrying rats, which certainly exist, are said to cause outbreaks of typhus, a medieval disease. Anyone with a smartphone can see this.

Confusing tipping rules.

Do  you always tip 15 percent? Or 20 percent? Or 10 percent? Do you tip  regardless of the quality of service? Are you supposed to tip at cafés  where you order up front? Do you tip delivery drivers or does the extra  delivery charge count as the tip? Are there even rules? 

The frequent mass shootings in the United States astonish most of the world. Opening fire on a country music concert, randomly shooting to death people in a gay nightclub, seems to most of the world a breakdown of civilization.

It is.

Stop being afraid.
Stop being afraid.
The skewed meaning of "How are you?"

If you are a foreigner  in the US, don't be fooled when an American says "Hi, how are you?" He  or she doesn't actually care how you are. You're just supposed to say  "I'm doing great!" and move on. 
"How are you" is synonymous with "hello". It's just the way it is.  

Many of these matanzas involve children gunning down their classmates.

Even in a country like Mexico, accustomed to recurring slaughters of narcos by other narcos, the school shootings are a shock.

The ginormous food portions.

Entrées  and common portion quantities are often enough to serve three, or at  least two people for one meal. And Americans wonder why the rest of the  world calls them 'fat.' 

Americans are now used to things that in any other country would be unthinkable: bulletproof backpacks for high-school students, police walking the halls, metal detectors, proposals to arm teachers, “active-shooter” drills.

To the rest of the world (or to Americans who were in high school in the Sixties) this is insane.

We need a rebirth of courage.
We need a rebirth of courage.

But normal in the Indispensable Country.

Extra charges for tax.

In most of the world, tax prices are  included in the list price, which actually makes a lot of sense. How is  it at all logical to decide on buying something without knowing how much  its actually going to ring up to when checking out?  

The now-predictable annual harvest of 700 successful homicides in Chicago, the 300 in Baltimore, plus thousands of wounded, seem to outsiders like something out of Blade Runner.

Much of the civilized world looks with wonder on an American overflowing with guns and using them on each other.

Barney Fife.
Barney Fife.

Only in America.

Interestingly the most heavily armed countries in the world, Israel and Switzerland, have virtually no gun crime.

Rarely taking a vacation 

In most countries outside the U.S., vacation time is a highly utilized way to get away from work for a few weeks (or even months) every year. In America, on the other hand, taking time off  is often treated like a sin. Many people's vacation days tend to pile  up as the months of 50-hour workweeks roll on. Our collective workaholism is totally bizarre to outsiders—and quite frankly, we can see why. 

This is the country Americans believe the world wants to imitate.

No.

America's legacy is there for everyone to see.
America’s legacy is there for everyone to see.

From outside, it seems more a country in political and cultural free-fall.

Carding people who are obviously not under 21 

Whether you're heading into a bar or buying a six-pack at the grocery  store, there's a good chance you'll be asked for your ID in the United  States—even if you're well into your 50s. This is baffling to many foreigners, especially since, by the time they're in their 30s, they've been drinking legally for more than two decades.
 
Americans are nothing if not by the book  about the little things, so most foreigners quickly learn that it's  wise to keep some form of ID on them at all times if they plan on having  a drink. 

To everyone else, the militarism of the United States, its absurd military expenditures, its huge number of nuclear weapons, its desire to upgrade them, to develop small tactical nuclear weapons, its preparation for nuclear war with specialized flying bunkers–seems nutty.

No other country does this.

None wants to.

America has been a warring nation—a military empire intent on  occupation and conquest—for so long that perhaps we, the citizens of  this warring nation, have forgotten what it means to live in peace, with  the world and one another.
 
We’d better get back to the fundamentals of what it means to be human  beings who can get along if we want to have any hope of restoring some  semblance of sanity, civility and decency to what is progressively being  turned into a foul-mouthed, hot-headed free-for-all bar fight by  politicians for whom this is all one big, elaborate game designed to  increase their powers and fatten their bank accounts. 

-Johnathan Whitehead

In Mexico people roll their eyes. What the hell is wrong with the gringos?

Doomsday Plane.
Doomsday Plane.
““Affectionately  known as the “doomsday plane,” the modified Boeing 747 is used to  transport the Secretary of Defense and is born and bred for battle. It  stands nearly six stories tall, is equipped with four colossal engines, and is capable of enduring the immediate aftermath of a nuclear detonation.”

The language is that of a little boy of twelve watching Star Wars. It is the attitude of much of America.

America is unhealthy food. 

People all over the world  associate America with supersized food portions. Many foreigners also  link America's fast food culture to health problems and the demise of  small family farms. 

Easily found online: the racial disaster in the US, the dozens of cities with domestic Sowetos in their hearts, the huge, hopeless, entirely black regions where whites dare not walk.

Americans no longer possess Rights.
Americans no longer possess Rights.

In these, entirely black schools turn out millions of barely literates who for the remaining fifty years of their lives will be unemployable.

This is all online with photos and statistics.

“Man,  just out of jail, arrested in rape of woman, 78….” Another face of race  in America.
Man, just out of jail, arrested in rape of woman, 78….” Another face of race in America.

These stories, common as potatoes–a similar gentleman just threw a white child of five from three floors up–are suppressed to the extent possible by the American media, but often show up in British dailies.

Such things almost never happened in Europe before the arrival of African and Muslim immigrants.

The whole world can see.

Having drive-throughs 

In most other countries, you take the time to at least park the car and  walk through the front doors of the place you're patronizing—not in  America, though! Here, we're far too busy to waste time, so we have  drive-through restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores, liquor stores,  and more. 

Freedoms?

More sophisticated readers abroad know of our intensifying censorship, the words that can get you fired, the controlled press, the surveillance.

Americans know what you can’t say and who you can’t say it about.

We know the police are militarized and out of control.

We see the cell-cam videos of beatings.

So does the world.

Having lawyers that advertise 

There are few countries in which you'll encounter a billboard or bus ad for a divorce attorney or see several personal injury spots while watching half an hour of daytime TV. In America, however, these advertisements are everywhere—and unsurprisingly, they confuse foreign visitors. 

America’s foreign policy makes it hated in most of the world.

It seems murderous, thuggish, brutal, a menace to everyone.

America's military is hated all over the world.
America’s military is hated all over the world.

For example, the U.S. killed over a million people in Iraq. This does not bother Americans.

Since 2000 it has destroyed Iraq, Syria, Libya, enters its eighteenth year of butchering Afghans, bombs Somalia, sends troops to Africa.

It militarily threatens North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, seeks to destroy the economies of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, China. It sanctions Europe.

No other country does this.

Americans put too much ice in drinks. 

You ask for water  and you get ice with some water. The same goes for soda or other soft  drinks. Americans also love to put ice in whiskey and even wine.  America's obsession with ice cubes dates back to the 1800s when a man  was trying to expand his ice harvesting business by convincing people to  use it to cool their drinks. 

This is not the griping of Fred. It is what the whole world sees, daily, in detail.

Prescription drug makers that advertise 

Another oddity of American advertising are those spots you see for prescription medication  during every commercial break. Foreigners might not realize right off  the bat that those soft-focus commercials featuring happy couples  prancing through corn fields are advertising medications for diabetes and back pain.  However, if the commercial itself isn't clear, the long list of side  effects the narrator rattles off at the end should at least tip them  off. 

Number of wars started since 2000 by Iran: 0. Russia: 0. China: 0. North Korea: 0. America…?

Number of countries openly running torture sites while talking of human rights? 1. The country with the largest prison population? The answer is left to the reader as an exercise.

Democrat anti-Trump propaganda.
Democrat anti-Trump propaganda.

Even today, many Americans speak of American Values, of the country’s devotion to democracy and human rights and freedom.

Maybe Americans believe it.

No one else does.

The United States has a horrendous history of installing or supporting hideous dictators, supporting repressive regimes, overthrowing elected governments.

Human rights? In Saudi Arabia? Israel? The world is not blind.

You shouldn't have to pay more than expected. 

It's  confusing to many non-Americans that the price you see on an item is not  necessarily the one you end up paying at the register. Basically, you  have to have a degree in math to calculate how much your final bill will  be. This is because stores don't include tax on price tag, and tipping  is, technically, not mandatory. 

Americans, self-absorbed, perhaps the most historically ignorant of First-World peoples, shrugs such things off.

“Oh, get over it.” Whatever it was.

The nations involved do not shrug them off.

The names of the Presidents might change, but their policies do not.
The names of the Presidents might change, but their policies do not.

You can bet the Chinese know about Legation days, America’s role in forcing the opium trade on China, extraterritoriality.

Deep-frying everything 

Sure, fried chicken is hardly a foreign concept—but try  explaining chicken-fried steak or deep-fried Oreos to a non-American.  Finding creative ways to fry things that probably shouldn't be fried is  an American specialty and something that definitely confuses tourists. 

From abroad, America is a feral, amoral, remorseless empire, rotting from within, willing to do anything to maintain its dominance.

From inside the U.S., it seems otherwise.

Do you, an American reader, want to kill Afghans? Buy another trillion dollars of nuclear weapons? War with Iran? Russia?

But Americans have no influence over what Washington does, and the world judges by what it sees.

Americans are arrogant. 

Many people in Southern Europe,  Greece, France, and Italy think Americans look down on people,  according to Norwegian journalist René Zografos, author of "Attractive  Unattractive Americans: How the World Sees America." Ignorant and  arrogant are other descriptions foreigners sometimes associate with  Americans. 
This picture pretty much describes America, sort of.
This picture pretty much describes America, sort of.

Other Stuff

While China is often politically reprehensible, its engineering is amazing. This, on the Hong Kong Macau sea bridge, is long at twenty minutes and a bit rayrah. It is representative of the huge scale and ambitiousness of Chinese infrastructure programs.

Conclusion

Fred did get on a bender ranting on so.

But listen to what he is saying.

  • The world views America as a dangerous out-of-control bully.
  • Americans are blind to this reality

With that in mind, I’ll chime in with my “two cents”;

  • This situation is not sustainable.
  • If anyone thinks that Trump or his successor can suddenly change the course that America is on, they are delusional.
  • The only thing that is going to change the path that America is on today, is rapid and abrupt (internal) change. NO OTHER SOLUTION IS POSSIBLE.
I’m outraged at what has been done to our freedoms and our country. You should be, too.
 
We have been subjected to crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns,  showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns,  lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns.
 
We’ve been held up, stripped down, faked out, photographed, frisked, fracked, hacked, tracked, cracked,  intercepted, accessed, spied on, zapped, mapped, searched, shot at,  tasered, tortured, tackled, trussed up, tricked, lied to, labeled,  libeled, leered at, shoved aside, saddled with debt not of our own  making, sold a bill of goods about national security, tuned out by those  representing us, tossed aside, and taken to the cleaners.
 
We’ve had our freedoms turned inside out, our democratic structure  flipped upside down, and our house of cards left in a shambles.
 
We’ve had our children burned by flashbang grenades, our dogs shot, and our old folks hospitalized after “accidental” encounters with marauding SWAT teams.
 
We’ve been told that as citizens we have no rights within 100 miles of our own border, now considered “Constitution-free zones.”
 
We’ve had our faces filed in government databases, our biometrics crosschecked against criminal databanks, and our consumerist tendencies catalogued for future marketing overtures.
 
We’ve seen the police transformed from community peacekeepers to  point guards for the militarized corporate state. The police continue to  push, prod, poke, probe,  scan, shoot and intimidate the very individuals—we the taxpayers—whose  rights they were hired to safeguard. Networked together through fusion  centers, police have surreptitiously spied on our activities and snooped on our communications, using hi-tech devices provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
 
We’ve been deemed suspicious for engaging in such dubious activities as talking too long on a cell phone and stretching too long before jogging, dubbed extremists and terrorists for criticizing the government and suggesting it is tyrannical or oppressive, and subjected to forced colonoscopies and anal probes for allegedly rolling through a stop sign.
 
We’ve been arrested for all manner of “crimes” that never used to be  considered criminal, let alone uncommon or unlawful, behavior: letting our kids walk to the playground alonegiving loose change to a homeless manfeeding the hungry, and living off the grid.
 
We’ve been sodomized,  victimized, jeopardized, demoralized, traumatized, stigmatized,  vandalized, demonized, polarized and terrorized, often without having  done anything to justify such treatment. Blame it on a government  mindset that renders us guilty before we’ve even been charged, let alone  convicted, of any wrongdoing. In this way, law-abiding individuals have  had their homes mistakenly raided by SWAT teams that got the address wrong. One accountant found himself at the center of a misguided (armed) police standoff after surveillance devices confused his license plate with that of a drug felon.
 
We’ve been railroaded into believing that our votes count, that we  live in a republic or a democracy, that elections make a difference,  that it matters whether we vote Republican or Democrat, and that our  elected officials are looking out for our best interests. Truth be  told, we live in an oligarchy,  politicians represent only the profit motives of the corporate state,  whose leaders know all too well that there is no discernible difference  between red and blue politics, because there is only one color that  matters in politics: green.
 
We’ve gone from having privacy in our inner sanctums to having nowhere to hide, with smart pills that monitor the conditions of our bodies, homes that spy on us (with smart meters that monitor our electric usage and thermostats and light switches that can be controlled remotely) and cars that listen to our conversations, track our whereabouts and report them to the police. Even our cities have become wall-to-wall electronic concentration camps, with police now able to record hi-def video of everything that takes place within city limits.
 
We’ve had our schools locked down and turned into prisons, our students handcuffed, shackled and arrested for engaging in childish behavior such as food fights, our children’s biometrics stored, their school IDs chipped, their movements tracked, and their data bought, sold and bartered for  profit by government contractors, all the while they are treated like  criminals and taught to march in lockstep with the police state.
 
We’ve been rendered enemy combatants in our own country, denied basic due process rights,  held against our will without access to an attorney or being charged  with a crime, and left to waste away in jail until such a time as the  government is willing to let us go or allow us to defend ourselves.
 
We’ve had the very military weapons we funded with our hard-earned tax dollars used against us, from unpiloted, weaponized drones tracking our movements on the nation’s highways and byways and armored vehicles, assault rifles, sound cannons and grenade launchers in towns with little to no crime to an arsenal of military-grade weapons and equipment given free of charge to schools and universities.
 
We’ve been silenced, censored and forced to conform, shut up in free speech zones, gagged by hate crime laws, stifled by political correctness, muzzled by misguided anti-bullying statutes, and pepper sprayed for taking part in peaceful protests.
 
We’ve been shot by police for reaching for a license during a traffic stop, reaching for a baby during a drug bust, carrying a toy sword down a public street, and wearing headphones that hamper our ability to hear.
 
We’ve had our tax dollars spent on $30,000 worth of Starbucks for Department of Homeland Security employees, $630,000 in advertising to increase Facebook “likes” for the State Department, and close to $25 billion to fund projects ranging from the silly to the unnecessary, such as laughing classes for college students and programs teaching monkeys to play video games and gamble.
 
We’ve been treated like guinea pigs,  targeted by the government and social media for psychological  experiments on how to manipulate the masses. We’ve been tasered for  talking back to police, tackled for taking pictures of police abuses,  and threatened with jail time for invoking our rights. We’ve even been arrested by undercover cops stationed in public bathrooms who interpret men’s “shaking off” motions after urinating to be acts of lewdness.
 
We’ve had our possessions seized and stolen by law enforcement agencies looking to cash in on asset forfeiture schemes, our jails privatized and used as a source of cheap labor for megacorporations, our gardens smashed by police seeking out suspicious-looking plants that could be marijuana, and our buying habits turned into suspicious behavior by a government readily inclined to view its citizens as terrorists.
 
We’ve had our cities used for military training drills, with Black  Hawk helicopters buzzing the skies, Urban Shield exercises overtaking  our streets, and active shooter drills wreaking havoc on unsuspecting  bystanders in our schools, shopping malls and other “soft target”  locations.
 
We’ve been told that national security is more important than civil  liberties, that police dogs’ noses are sufficient cause to carry out  warrantless searches, that the best way not to get raped by police is to “follow the law,” that what a police officer says in court will be given preference over what video footage shows, that an upright posture and acne are sufficient reasons for a cop to suspect you of wrongdoing, that police can stop and search a driver based solely on an anonymous tip, and that police officers have every right to shoot first and ask questions later if they feel threatened.
 
Are you outraged yet?
 
You should be. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and right these wrongs.
 
Stop waiting patiently for change to happen, stop waiting for some  politician to rescue you, and take responsibility for your freedoms:  start by fixing what’s broken in your lives, in your communities, and in  this country.
 
Get mad, get outraged, get off your duff and get out of your house,  get in the streets, get in people’s faces, get down to your local city  council, get over to your local school board, get your thoughts down on  paper, get your objections plastered on protest signs, get your  neighbors, friends and family to join their voices to yours, get your  representatives to pay attention to your grievances, get your kids to  know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstep with the  Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people and not  lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your  house in order.
 
Appearances to the contrary, this country does not belong exclusively  to the corporations or the special interest groups or the oligarchs or  the war profiteers or any particular religious, racial or economic  demographic.
 
This country belongs to all of us: each and every one of us—“we the  people”—but most especially, this country belongs to those of us who  love freedom enough to stand and fight for it.

  -Johnathan Whitehead 

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You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

  • 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.
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