Jan 272023
 
 January 27, 2023  Posted by at 9:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


Edward Hopper Office in a Small City 1953

 

Blinken Concedes War Is Lost – Offers Ukrainian Demilitarization (Helmer)
Blinken Ponders The Post-Ukraine-War Order (Ignatius)
American Abrams Tanks Vulnerable Even To Soviet-era Weapons (TASS)
Nobody Told Me We’re At War – Kroatian President (RT)
Involvement Of US, Collective West In Ukraine Conflict Grows – Kremlin (TASS)
France Denies The West Is At War With Russia (RT)
West Discussing Handover Of Fighter Jets To Kiev – Politico (TASS)
Kremlin Rules Out Any Talks Between Zelensky, Putin (TASS)
The Sect (Dionísio)
What Spurred Wave Of Resignations Among Senior Ukraine Officials? (Lavrenin)
Joining Russia Sanctions Would Be ‘Inappropriate’ – Serbia (RT)
Can You Smell What the Year of the Rabbit Is Cooking? (Escobar)
Russia’s Intentions Are Clarifying (Alasdair Macleod)
Pfizer Director Physically Assaults James O’Keefe and Veritas Staff (GP)
Marco Rubio Letter To Albert Bourla (rubio.senate.gov)

 

 

 

 

Trump Russia
https://twitter.com/i/status/1618620533675028487

 

 

 

 

Tucker Barr Epstein

 

 

Hunter email
https://twitter.com/i/status/1618272150007472129

 

 

Macgregor/Judge Nap

Macgregor A Huge Offensive

 

 

 

 

A take we haven’t seen before. But it’s Helmer…

“John Helmer is an Australian-born journalist and foreign correspondent based in Moscow, Russia since 1989. He has served as an adviser to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia, and has also worked as professor of political science, sociology, and journalism.”

“US is ready to ease sanctions against Russia for the sake of “serious negotiations on Ukraine and the withdrawal of troops from there.”- Victoria Nuland

Blinken Concedes War Is Lost – Offers Ukrainian Demilitarization (Helmer)

David Ignatius has been a career-long mouthpiece for the US State Department. He has just been called in by the current Secretary of State Antony Blinken to convey an urgent new message to President Vladimir Putin, the Security Council, and the General Staff in Moscow. For the first time since the special military operation began last year, the war party in Washington is offering terms of concession to Russia’s security objectives explicitly and directly, without the Ukrainians in the way. The terms Blinken has told Ignatius to print appeared in the January 25 edition of the Washington Post. The paywall can be avoided by reading on. The territorial concessions Blinken is tabling include Crimea, the Donbass, and the Zaporozhe, Kherson “land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia”.

West of the Dnieper River, north around Kharkov, and south around Odessa and Nikolaev, Blinken has tabled for the first time US acceptance of “a demilitarized status” for the Ukraine. Also, US agreement to restrict the deployment of HIMARS, US and NATO infantry fighting vehicles, and the Abrams and Leopard tanks to a point in western Ukraine from which they can “manoeuvre…as a deterrent against future Russian attacks.” This is an offer for a tradeoff – partition through a demilitarized zone (DMZ) in the east of the Ukraine in exchange for a halt to the planned Russian offensive destroying the fortifications, rail hubs, troop cantonments, and airfields in the west, between the Polish and Romanian borders, Kiev and Lvov, and an outcome Blinken proposes for both sides to call “a just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity”.

Also in the proposed Blinken deal there is the offer of a direct US-Russian agreement on “an eventual postwar military balance”; “no World War III”; and no Ukrainian membership of NATO with “security guarantees similar to NATO’s Article 5.” Blinken has also told the Washington Post to announce the US will respect “Putin’s tripwire for nuclear escalation”, and accept the Russian “reserve force includ[ing] strategic bombers, certain precision-guided weapons and, of course, tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.” President Putin has offered a hint of the Russian reply he discussed with the Stavka and the Security Council last week.

Putin told a meeting with university students on Wednesday, hours after Blinken’s publication. “I think that people like you,” the president said, “most clearly and most accurately understand the need for what Russia is now doing to support our citizens in these territories, including Lugansk, Donetsk, the Donbass area as a whole, and Kherson and Zaporozhye. The goal, as I have explained many times, is primarily to protect the people and Russia from the threats that they are trying to create for us in our own historical territories that are adjacent to us. We cannot allow this. So, it is extremely important when young people like you defend the interests of their small and large Motherland with arms in their hands and do so consciously.”

Read on, very carefully, understanding that nothing a US official says, least of all through the mouths of Blinken, Ignatius, and the Washington Post is trusted by the Russians; and understanding that what Putin and the Stavka say they mean by Russia’s “adjacent historical territories” and the “small and large Motherland” has been quite clear. Follow what Blinken told Ignatius to print, before Putin issued his reply. The propaganda terms have been highlighted in bold to mean the opposite — the public positions from which Blinken is trying to retreat and keep face.

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The Ignatius article Helmer was talking about.

Blinken Ponders The Post-Ukraine-War Order (Ignatius)

The Biden administration, convinced that Vladimir Putin has failed in his attempt to erase Ukraine, has begun planning for an eventual postwar military balance that will help Kyiv deter any repetition of Russia’s brutal invasion. Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined his strategy for the Ukrainian endgame and postwar deterrence during an interview on Monday at the State Department. The conversation offered an unusual exploration of some of the trickiest issues surrounding resolution of a Ukraine conflict that has threatened the global order. Blinken explicitly commended Germany’s military backing for Ukraine at a time when Berlin is getting hammered by some other NATO allies for not providing Leopard tanks quickly to Kyiv.

“Nobody would have predicted the extent of Germany’s military support” when the war began, Blinken said. “This is a sea change we should recognize.” He also underlined President Biden’s determination to avoid direct military conflict with Russia, even as U.S. weapons help pulverize Putin’s invasion force. “Biden has always been emphatic that one of his requirements in Ukraine is that there be no World War III,” Blinken said. Russia’s colossal failure to achieve its military goals, Blinken believes, should now spur the United States and its allies to begin thinking about the shape of postwar Ukraine — and how to create a just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity and allows it to deter and, if necessary, defend against any future aggression. In other words, Russia should not be able to rest, regroup and reattack.

Blinken’s deterrence framework is somewhat different from last year’s discussions with Kyiv about security guarantees similar to NATO’s Article 5. Rather than such a formal treaty pledge, some U.S. officials increasingly believe the key is to give Ukraine the tools it needs to defend itself. Security will be ensured by potent weapons systems — especially armor and air defense — along with a strong, noncorrupt economy and membership in the European Union. The Pentagon’s current stress on providing Kyiv with weapons and training for maneuver warfare reflects this long-term goal of deterrence. “The importance of maneuver weapons isn’t just to give Ukraine strength now to regain territory but as a deterrent against future Russian attacks,” explained a State Department official familiar with Blinken’s thinking. “Maneuver is the future.”

The conversation with Blinken offered some hints about the intense discussions that have gone on for months within the administration about how the war in Ukraine can be ended and future peace maintained. The administration’s standard formula is that all decisions must ultimately be made by Ukraine, and Blinken reiterated that line. He also backs Ukraine’s desire for significant battlefield gains this year. But the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council are also thinking ahead. Crimea is a particular point of discussion. There is a widespread view in Washington and Kyiv that regaining Crimea by military force may be impossible. Any Ukrainian military advances this year in Zaporizhzhia oblast, the land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia, could threaten Russian control. But an all-out Ukrainian campaign to seize the Crimean Peninsula is unrealistic, many U.S. and Ukrainian officials believe. That’s partly because Putin has indicated that an assault on Crimea would be a tripwire for nuclear escalation.

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I know, a Russian source, but I get the feeling that the Abrams tanks are not as great as the US makes them out to be.

American Abrams Tanks Vulnerable Even To Soviet-era Weapons (TASS)

American M1 Abrams tanks that Washington has decided to hand over to Kiev as military aid have weaknesses that allowed wiping them out with Soviet weapons, including T-55 tanks, during the conflict in Iraq, armor expert, Candidate of Military Sciences, retired Colonel Sergey Suvorov told TASS on Thursday. M1 Abrams tanks can also be hardly repaired in field conditions and are weakly suited for operation on dusty terrain like in Ukraine, the expert added. US President Joe Biden announced on January 25 that Washington would hand over 31 M1 Abrams tanks to the Kiev regime. Earlier, Germany and Poland made the decisions to supply German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. It was also reported that the United Kingdom would transfer Challenger 2 tanks to Kiev.

Abrams tanks repeatedly demonstrated their vulnerability during the hostilities in Iraq, the expert pointed out. “As the Iraq combat experience shows, they went up in flames. The tank turret was pierced by a 100mm armor-piercing blunt nose projectile fired by a T-55 tank. There were instances when Abrams vehicles were struck by automatic guns of both Bradley and our BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles,” he said. Instances are also known when the American tank was destroyed by the first Soviet modifications of T-72 tanks firing old shells “that were withdrawn from operational use even before the Abrams concept was devised,” Suvorov said. The expert also pointed to the instances when Abrams tanks were wiped out by RPG-7 anti-tank grenade launchers. An extra powerplant installed in the rear part of the turret to power modern electronic systems is another weak point of later American tank modifications, the expert said.

“It was covered with the armor that can withstand assault rifle bullets but is vulnerable to a 12.7 mm DShK machine gun. It was hit by a DShK and its motor was smashed, oil and fuel went ablaze and spilled down to the main engine located below. The main engine went ablaze and then the tank itself went up in flames and burnt out,” he said. The American tank almost has no chances, if it engages in a duel with Russian tanks, the expert said. “If an Abrams emerges at a long distance, a T-72 or a T-90 crew will fire an anti-tank missile and we can say that the Abrams will even have no chance to fire a shot as its range of fire won’t allow it to do that,” he explained. sHowever, the US tank’s final efficiency depends on the commander’s skills to operate it and trained crews, the expert said.

Apart from the need to fill Abrams tanks with clean jet fuel, they also have more serious operational flaws. In particular, they cannot be repaired in field conditions, the expert said. “Repairs are a major problem. If something breaks down in the powerplant, it has to be pulled out of the tank, taken to a special repair workshop with skilled personnel, disconnected from the gear box and only then repaired,” Suvorov said. The air intake system of US-made Abrams tanks is yet another vulnerability, the expert pointed out. “They feature an air filter that operates similar to the equipment installed in motor vehicles: if it becomes clogged, it has to be taken out and cleaned. Meanwhile, all of our tanks are equipped with cyclone dust collectors that are quite smart devices,” the expert said, adding that an Abrams filter sufficed for just 15 minutes of the tank’s movement along dusty terrain during the Iraq campaign.

Civilian contractors

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A smart voice.

Nobody Told Me We’re At War – Kroatian President (RT)

Commenting on the German foreign minister’s declaration that Europe was “fighting a war against Russia,” Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said on Thursday that this was news to him, and wished Berlin better luck than in WWII. Croatia “should in no way help” Ukraine militarily, Milanovic said while visiting the port city of Split. “Do you want us to enter the war?” Framing the Ukraine conflict as one between Washington and Moscow, he reminded reporters that he was criticized for merely echoing the words of Kiev’s defense minister, about the current conflict being a “proxy war” between NATO and Russia. “Now the German foreign minister says we must be united, because I quote, we are at war with Russia. I didn’t know that,” Milanovic said.

“Maybe Germany is at war with Russia, but then, good luck, maybe this time it turns out better than 70-odd years ago.” The Croatian president was baffled to hear such a claim from the leader of the German Greens, which he said used to be a pacifist party equally against the US and the USSR, and not from Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “If we are at war with Russia, then let’s see what we need to do. But we won’t ask Germany for its opinion,” Milanovic added. “Let them figure out who is the actual chancellor over there. I’ve been in politics for a long time, and our country has been through a lot, but I’ve never seen this kind of madness before.”

When it comes to tanks, “Russian or American, they burn just the same,” Milanovic said, noting that deliveries of armor to Ukraine – announced by the US and Germany this week – will only prolong the fighting, “Those tanks may burn, or they may reach Crimea, but Croatia will have nothing to do with it,” he insisted. The social-democrat president has frequently clashed with the nationalist parliamentary majority over Croatia’s Ukraine policy. Just last month, Milanovic opposed Zagreb’s participation in the EU program to train Ukrainian troops, saying it clashed with Croatia’s constitution. Unless the US and Russia are holding some kind of talks, the world is “slowly sliding into World War Three,” Milanovic added. “Some people think it has already begun, but I have my reservations.”

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“Moscow perceives everything that both the alliance and the capitals I mentioned have been doing as direct involvement in the conflict..”

Involvement Of US, Collective West In Ukraine Conflict Grows – Kremlin (TASS)

The Kremlin sees that the involvement of the United States and the countries of the collective West in the conflict in Ukraine has been growing, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the media on Thursday. “There have been repeated statements from the European capitals and from Washington that the sending of various weapons systems, including tanks, to Ukraine by no means signifies the involvement of these countries or the [North Atlantic] Alliance in the hostilities in Ukraine. We strongly disagree with this. Moscow perceives everything that both the alliance and the capitals I mentioned have been doing as direct involvement in the conflict. We see that it is growing,” Peskov said.


Earlier, US President Joe Biden claimed that Washington’s decision to supply tanks to Ukraine was not about a fight against Russia, but a fight for “freedom.” In addition, Biden alleged that the supply of tanks did not imply a threat to Russia. In response to an elaborative question whether the Kremlin believed in the sincerity of these words, Peskov replied: “Please, use what I’ve just said as a benchmark.” Earlier, it was reported that Germany and the United States decided to provide Ukraine with Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks. According to various media resources, some European countries also intend to join these deliveries.

Baerbock
https://twitter.com/i/status/1618380112214519814

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This is pure semantics. Message to the home front. Don’t worry, we’re all innocent and in the clear…

France Denies The West Is At War With Russia (RT)

Just because the US, Germany and several other countries announced they would be supplying Ukraine with main battle tanks doesn’t mean NATO is at war with Moscow, the French Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. The comments from Quai d’Orsay come after the controversial speech by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in the European Parliament earlier this week. “We are not at war with Russia and none of our partners are,” ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre said on Thursday, according to AFP. “The delivery of military equipment… does not constitute co-belligerence.” The day before, Washington announced it would send more than 30 of its M1 Abrams tanks to Kiev, while Berlin said it would contribute over a dozen Leopard II panzers and not stand in the way of Poland and other EU and NATO members who wish to hand theirs over to Ukraine as well.

Seeking to drum up support for tank deliveries on Tuesday, Baerbock told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) that the EU must move in lockstep “because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.” Asked to clarify her comments, the German Foreign Ministry said that Russia had launched a “war of aggression” against Ukraine and that international law was “clear” that Berlin’s support for Kiev’s “individual right of self-defense, guaranteed by the UN Charter, does not make Germany a party to the conflict.”

On Wednesday, French PM Elisabeth Borne told the parliament in Paris that her government was “continuing our analysis” of the proposal to send Leclerc tanks to Ukraine. France has already promised Kiev a number of AMX-10 “light tanks,” earlier this month. Meanwhile, French FM Catherine Colonna visited Ukraine on Thursday, meeting with her counterpart Dmitry Kuleba in Odessa to “show France’s long-term support” and “assess Ukraine’s urgent needs in the humanitarian and military sectors in order to provide concrete responses,” according to a press release from Quai d’Orsay.

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Impossible until recently. What this tells you is that Ukraine is losing. Bigly.

West Discussing Handover Of Fighter Jets To Kiev – Politico (TASS)

The Western countries are in internal discussions about the possibility of supplying fighter jets to Ukraine, but many fear that such a decision could lead to an escalation of the conflict. As the newspaper Politico said on Thursday, according to a number of Western diplomats and representatives of military circles, Ukraine and the Baltic countries are in favor of this idea. “The next natural step would be fighters,” a diplomat from a northern European country said. For its part Washington has told Kiev that supplying aircraft is a “no-go, for the moment,” the diplomat quoted above said, but added: “There’s a red line there – but last summer we had a red line on the HIMARS [multiple rocket launchers], and that moved. Then it was battle tanks, and that’s moving.” A second diplomatic source from a European power told Politico that “fighters are completely unconceivable today,” but there might be a discussion “in two or three weeks.”


The newspaper says the debate will likely prove even more contentious than the row over supplying tanks. At the same time, in Europe, multiple officials and diplomats said their governments no longer consider the idea a non-starter, but “fears of escalation remain high.” Some officials believe that next month’s discussion at Ramstein will be more focused on thrashing out “a contingency plan, in case jet fighters are urgently needed at some future point, rather than on striking a deal on near-term deliveries.” European diplomats agree that the West will first want to exhaust all other options for air support, including more attack drones and possibly long-range missiles, Politico says. Besides, sending aircraft would be a serious logistical undertaking for Ukraine’s allies, the newspaper notes.

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“..he never solved the Donbass problem, he reneged on the Minsk Agreements, moreover, it turned out that he never planned to implement them, as he had been preparing for war,”

Kremlin Rules Out Any Talks Between Zelensky, Putin (TASS)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky stopped being a possible interlocutor for Russian President Vladimir Putin long ago, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday as he commented on a remark by the Ukrainian leader which said he was `not interested’ in meeting Putin for peace talks. “We know what promises Zelensky made during his presidential campaign, and it is not difficult to remember them or refresh the memory of those voters who elected him in Ukraine: he never solved the Donbass problem, he reneged on the Minsk Agreements, moreover, it turned out that he never planned to implement them, as he had been preparing for war,” Peskov said.


“This is why, let’s put it this way, he himself has long ceased to be a potential interlocutor for President Putin,” he added. Earlier on Thursday, Zelensky told Great Britain’s Sky News TV channel that he was “not interested” in peace talks with Putin, saying Putin became “nobody” to him after he launched the special military operation. Zelensky previously decreed to ban negotiations with Russia. Peskov said later that no talks between Moscow and Kiev were currently possible, given there are no conditions for them, whether de facto or de jure.

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To join the sect you must give up your freedom.

The Sect (Dionísio)

As in all sects, there is their own jargon and a tendency toward self-absorption, caused by the closing of the circuit in which they operate. The greater the inability to establish bridges and lines of contact with other existences, the greater the radicalism and sectarianism of their positions, which is embodied precisely in a contradiction they cannot escape: the more they want to drag others along, the more others run away from them. If the reaction of most countries to the conflict in Eastern Europe demonstrates the disconnection between the official narrative propagated in the collective West and the understanding that most nations and the world population have of it, the identification of nations like the RPC, Russian Federation or Iran as aggressor and oppressor entities is something that only fits into the most sectarian minds of the sect, or its followers.

Take, for example, the meeting promoted by the White House for Africa (US-Africa Leaders Summit). At first glance, we could see it as a success; after all, more than 40 African nations attended. There was no shortage of funds either: $55 billion were promised upfront to “help” Africa development, to fight climate change, and to counter terrorism. However, there was a catch: to receive the “investment” one has to “decouple” from the PRC and FR. The usual jargon of “democracy” and “human rights” was well identified, mainly as a way to ensure the maintenance of dollarization through membership in the institutions that impose it (IMF and World Bank). The entire white house was optimistic. However, once again, the bulk of the African envoys cannot have failed to think, “but who does, this sect of Anglo-Saxon white people, think we are? Fools?” International articles rained down saying what we knew right away: “to convince Africa, talk is not enough!”

If ideologies with a connection to reality, it is reality itself that validates the respective theoretical assumptions (easier said than done), sects tend to work the other way around, opting for a more idealistic approach, in the sense that it is reality that has to mold itself to their ideas. The US has not listened to Africa, as it has not listened to others. The US has tried to drag Africa into its presumptuous ideas. When reality – this stubborn inexorable one – insists on not validating the theoretical assumptions that justify the existence of the sect, the sect chooses to wage war against it, identifying the main agents of its transformation and electing them as its enemies. In essence, the whole strategy of “containing China” is a fight against a reality embodied in 5000 years of history. Hence, as the sect that they are, the result is also predictable: either you are with me, or you are against me! The sectarianism of the sect leaves no room for compromise, cooperation or any kind of mutual understanding.

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NABU=National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. Lots of unrest.

What Spurred Wave Of Resignations Among Senior Ukraine Officials? (Lavrenin)

Against the background of Ukraine’s high-profile political scandals, staff changes in the government are being actively discussed. Among the officials considered next in line for dismissal are Minister of Energy German Galushchenko, Minister of Youth and Sports Vadim Gutzeit (who recently headed the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine), as well as Minister of Strategic Industries Pavel Ryabikin. However, none of these officials have been involved in corruption scandals, so these resignations, should they happen, would likely be for different reasons. All of this leads some journalists to ponder possible large-scale shifts in the government. Lozinsky and Shmigal worked together in the Department of Economic Development in the Lviv Regional State Administration. After Shmigal was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in February 2020, he appointed Lozinsky as his first deputy.

The Prime Minister’s resignation, which would entail the resignation of the entire government, would indeed look like a powerful Zelensky response to corruption scandals. However, this course of events carries serious risks for the authorities, and their are enough to ruin such an intention. For one, the resignation of the government amid corruption scandals creates risks of a political split in the Verkhovna Rada. Furthermore, if the government were to resign, Western countries could set strict conditions on coordinating candidates for the new government. This happened in 2014, when US citizen Natalia Yaresko was appointed Finance Minister to Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s government, and Lithuanian Aivaras Abromavicius was made Minister of Economic Development and Trade.

All this can shake up the system of power and lead to the President’s administration having much less influence over political processes. The current political system is clearly biased towards a single structure: the Office of the President of Ukraine. Following the early parliamentary elections in 2019 and the formation of a majority in the Verkhovna Rada, the entire vertical alignment of power was structured around Zelensky and Yermak, the influence of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine was eliminated, and the information space cleared. The combat operations in Ukraine merely accelerated these processes. In fact, only three powers can now speak out against the Zelensky-Yermak team— Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko and his cabinet, the army led by Valery Zaluzhny, and US-controlled structures such as NABU and media affiliated with them. At the same time, decisions regarding resignations are made exclusively by Zelensky and Yermak, who by all means wish to hush up the scandals.

Changes are imminent. The Ukrainian President is being pushed towards structural reform from several sides, including his own officials, the government, the power structures, and particularly, foreign benefactors. Major corruption scandals may lead to fall in the Western public’s support of Kiev. After all, Ukraine is a very expensive project, regardless of its geopolitical value. In addition to risky investments and painful costs, its financiers need clarity in terms of internal management control. The US government regularly says that it will finance Ukraine until its victory, but it also has to account for the money it’s splurging. Of course, the quality of work is evaluated by the employer, not the employee, and this case the Americans are the undoubted bosses.

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“Serbia’s position on Kosovo has received support from Russia, China and many other countries – including Ukraine..”

Joining Russia Sanctions Would Be ‘Inappropriate’ – Serbia (RT)

Serbia has not joined the US-EU sanctions against Russia for several reasons that remain valid, Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said on Thursday, speaking in Ankara after meeting with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu.The European Parliament last week demanded from Belgrade “full alignment” with the bloc’s foreign and security policy – including the embargo against Moscow. Dacic noted that his government has not joined the anti-Russian embargo out of “national and state interests, economic cooperation, as well as problems Serbia has with Kosovo,” referring to the NATO-backed breakaway province. “It would be inappropriate for Serbia to sanction Russia now, and it would be harmful to our interests,” Dacic said.

“That doesn’t mean we won’t do everything to clearly say we don’t support the infringement of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and help as much as we can.” Dacic has sought the support of Türkiye in helping Serbia deal with US and EU pressure over Kosovo. He also indirectly reminded reporters that Ankara has not joined the sanctions against Russia either. “I think Serbia and Türkiye want to be constructive factors of peace and stability,” the Serbian FM said. “Our interest is not to be on anybody’s side in some conflict, we advocate the respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty of every UN member state.” While insisting that Serbia must sanction Russia because of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the EU and the US also demand Belgrade recognize Kosovo, or face economic and political “consequences.”

Belgrade insists on the principle of territorial integrity because the US and the EU have been pressuring it to recognize Kosovo as an independent state since 2008. NATO troops took control of the province in 1999, after months of bombing Serbia on behalf of ethnic Albanian insurgents. Serbia’s position on Kosovo has received support from Russia, China and many other countries – including Ukraine – on grounds of international law. This is one of the reasons Serbia officially does not recognize Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, Zaporozhye, or even Crimea, as parts of Russia.

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Cooking BRICS+.

Can You Smell What the Year of the Rabbit Is Cooking? (Escobar)

Liu He studied economics at Renmin University in China and got a Master’s from Harvard. Since 2018, he’s one of China’s Vice Premiers – along with Han Zheng, Sun Chunlan, and Hu Chunhua. He’s a Director of the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission and heads the China Financial Stability and Development Committee. Anyone around the world who wants to know what will drive China’s economy in the Year of the Rabbit must pay attention to Liu He. Davos 2023 has come and gone: an extended exercise in Demented Dystopia with peaks of paroxysm. At least a measure of reality was offered by Liu He’s address. A limited but competent analysis of what he said is infinitely more useful than torrents of barely disguised Sinophobic “research” vomited by U.S. Think Tankland.

Liu He pointed to some key numbers for the Chinese economy in 2022. Overall 3% growth may not be groundbreaking; but what matters is value-added for high-tech manufacturing and equipment manufacturing going up by 7.4% and 5.6% respectively. What this means is that Chinese industrial capacity continues to move up the value chain. Trade, predictably, reigns supreme: the total value of imports and exports reached the equivalent of $6,215 trillion in 2022; that’s an increase of 7.7% over 2021. Liu He also made it clear that improving the wealth of Chinese citizens remains a key priority, as enounced in the 2022 Party Congress: the number of middle class Chinese, by 2035, should jump from the current 400 million to an astonishing 900 million.

Liu He pointedly explained that everything about Chinese reforms revolves around the notion of establishing “a socialist market economy”. This translates as “let the market play a decisive role in resources allocation, let the government play a better role.” That has absolutely nothing to do with Beijing privileging a planned economy. As Liu He detailed, “we will deepen SOE [State-Owned Enterprises] reform, support the private sector, and promote fair competition, anti-monopoly and entrepreneurship.” China is reaching the next level, economically: that translates as building, as fast as possible, an innovation-driven commercial base. Specific targets include finance, tech, and greater productivity in industry, as in applying more robotics.

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“.. drop earlier plans to design a new commodity-linked trade currency because it has been superseded..”

Russia’s Intentions Are Clarifying (Alasdair Macleod)

We have confirmation from the highest sources that Russia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) are considering using gold for pan-Asian trade settlements, fully replacing dollars and euros. In an article written for Vedomosti, a Moscow-based Russian newspaper published on 27 December, Sergey Glazyev, a prominent economic adviser to Vladimir Putin who is heading up the Eurasian Economic Union committee charged with devising a replacement for dollars in trade settlements sent a very clear signal to that effect. It appears he will drop earlier plans to design a new commodity-linked trade currency because it has been superseded. Furthermore, increasing numbers of nations have joined or have applied to join the SCO as dialog members, including Saudi Arabia and other important Gulf Cooperation Organisation members.


The economic benefits of discounted energy, China’s investment capital, and sound money are the ingredients for a new, Asia-wide industrial revolution, while the economies of the western alliance sink under rising prices, rising interest rates, collapsing financial markets, and collapsing currencies. While it will mark the end of the road for the western alliance and its fiat currencies, Putin must be careful not to take the blame. Now that the alliance is racking up tanks and other equipment for the Ukrainians, they are actively promoting a new battle, with NATO getting almost directly involved. It is that action which will drive up commodity prices, undermine western financial markets, undermine government finances, and ultimately collapse their currencies. Putin is likely to use NATO’s impetuous action in defence of Ukraine as cover for securing Russia’s future as an Asian superstate, which will be the west’s undoing.

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James O’Keeffe: In this video:
-I was locked in a restaurant (possible Unlawful imprisonment)
-I was Assaulted
-Had our IPad destroyed
-Pfizer director said “I’m literally a liar”
-He confirmed hes Boston Consulting and Pfizer
-He said he’s trying to “help the public”

Pfizer Director Physically Assaults James O’Keefe and Veritas Staff (GP)

Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer Director of Research and Development, physically assaulted James O’Keefe and Veritas staffers on Thursday. James O’Keefe confronted Walker at a restaurant and showed him the undercover recordings about Pfizer’s plans to potentially mutate the Covid virus. “You f*cked up!” Walker shouted before destroying the iPad showing the PV undercover recordings about the “mutating” Covid virus. Project Veritas on Wednesday night released explosive video of Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer Director of Research and Development, Strategic Operations, admitting the pharma giant is exploring ‘mutating’ Covid-19 via ‘directed evolution’ so the company can continue to profit off of vaccines.


“One of the things we’re exploring is like, why don’t we just mutate it [COVID] ourselves so we could create — preemptively develop new vaccines, right? So, we have to do that. If we’re gonna do that though, there’s a risk of like, as you could imagine — no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating f**king viruses,” Walker told the undercover Project Veritas journalist. “Don’t tell anyone. Promise you won’t tell anyone. The way it [the experiment] would work is that we put the virus in monkeys, and we successively cause them to keep infecting each other, and we collect serial samples from them,” he said in the undercover recordings. “I’m just someone who’s working in a company that’s trying to literally help the public,” Walker said during the confrontation. Walker insisted he was just ‘trying to impress his date.’ The NYPD responded to the assault.

Read more …

George Webb doesn’t buy the video’s. And he’s also still after Robert Malone…

 

 

And Marco Rubio asks questions about the video’s.

Marco Rubio Letter To Albert Bourla (rubio.senate.gov)

Dear Dr. Bourla: I write in response to troubling reports on Pfizer’s intention to mutate the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID) virus through gain-of-function, or “directed evolution,” as detailed by Pfizer Director of Research and Development, Jordan Walker.i As has been proven time and time again, attempts to mutate a virus, particularly one as potent as COVID, are dangerous. If the claims detailed in the video are true, Pfizer has put its desire for profit over the concern of national and global health and must hold itself accountable. In a video released by Project Veritas on January 25, 2023, Mr. Walker laid out Pfizer’s plans to develop new vaccines for future variants of COVID by mutating the virus through directed evolution, a process that uses protein engineering to impose natural selection on a living organism or other biological materials, including viruses. Though he claimed the research is currently “exploratory,” he detailed how the research would proceed, such as how scientists would inject the mutated viruses into monkeys and collect serial samples from other monkeys who are infected.

Whether it’s gain of function research, or selected structure mutations through directed evolution, as Mr. Walker claimed would occur, any effort to make a virus more transmittable and deadlier is careless and dangerous. Further, Mr. Walker stated that Pfizer is willing to engage in this dangerous research because COVID and its variants are “a cash cow” for the company and regulators will go easy on their efforts because a significant percentage of government officials aim to work for Pfizer and other biopharmaceutical companies and do not want to compromise their future job prospects. As a company that claims to “innovate every day to make the world a healthier place,” these claims from your leadership charged with research and development are alarming. As the American people deserve to know, I request that you provide the following information:

1. What efforts is Pfizer currently, or planning to, engage in to mutate the SARS-CoV-2 virus?
2. Does Pfizer intend to continue mutating the SARS-CoV-2 virus through gain-offunction, or directed evolution research, with the purpose of creating new vaccines before the variant is present in the greater population?
3. Has Pfizer engaged with federal officials engaged regarding their plans to oversee this research? Please provide the names and agencies for these individuals.
4. What steps has Pfizer taken to ensure the mutated virus does not leak from the laboratory and infect the greater population?
5. Has Pfizer engaged with other biopharmaceutical companies to collaborate on this research effort? Please list the entities that you have been in contact with.
6. Will you commit to halting any future research that mutates the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine as substantial evidence has indicated that similar dangerous research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology very likely led to the initial emergence and global spread of the virus?

As a leader in global public health and development of the COVID vaccine, with American taxpayer dollars, it is critical that Pfizer is accountable for their actions and be transparent with the public on the substance and intent of their research. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your prompt response.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Chicken conspiracy

 

 

SM-102

 

 

Yeadon

 

 

 

 


The Kailasa temple in the Ellora Caves, Maharashtra, India is a megalith carved out of one single rock and it is considered one of the most remarkable cave temples in India because of its size, architecture and sculptural treatment

 

 


David Edgar took this photo of an adolescent humpback whale in the South Pacific, several miles off the coast of Tongatapu, Tonga, capturing it as a split-shot with half the dome port submerged, and the other above the surface

 

 


The golden pheasant is possibily the most impressively colored bird of the family Phasianidae

 

 

Earth family

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle January 27 2023

Viewing 40 posts - 81 through 120 (of 146 total)
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    Posts
  • #127420
    jb-hb
    Participant

    I’m not convinced that the Green party IS hijacked.

    If you take the teachings of Jensen as the underlying sentiment of the Green party, their actions are perfectly in line. They ARE tearing it all down.

    Didn’t you say a few days ago the human peak was 20,000 years ago? Pre animal husbandry and agriculture then. Humans as migratory animals. I’ve asked what if anything you disagree with from Jensen and you won’t say.

    Jensen says:

    1. Humanity is just a Pleistocene animal
    2. Humanity OUGHT to be just a Pleistocene animal.

    This strikes me the same as a situation in which an abusive stepfather has a sensitive, intuitive, intelligent stepson. One who he constantly:

    1. Yells “You’re stupid! So stupid!” as justification for any emotional/physical abuse

    2. Seeks out situations that would cause brain damage or limit brain development – physical abuse to the head, chemicals, avoidance of education opportunities, whatever.

    Like, it can’t be BOTH unless it’s actually an NPD abusive double-bind. Right?? You can’t ACTUALLY be nothing but a Pleistocene animal WHILE being admonished to BECOME nothing but a Pleistocene animal just like you can’t BE stupid while they’re desperately trying to MAKE you stupid.

    Cluster-B’s/NPD’s/Borderlines don’t attack weakness. they attack your STRENGTHS.

    If Jensenites/Greens/Climate Meltdowners are saying man is/should be nothing but a Pleistocene animal, it’s because a human strength is that they aren’t. The brain has more connections than there are stars in the sky. The complexity of human consciousness, each one, is a universe.

    Weighing some deaths of ACTUAL animals vs a wonderful multiplicity of consciousness-universes not to mention having a consciousness to actually BEHOLD the universe would be precisely why the Greens would, underneath everything, say both man IS only an animal and OUGHT to be an animal.

    (this is also a reason to NOT articulate what’s bad about extinctions – multiplicity & sophistication lost or gained – but human consciousness – Renoir, Notre Dame, the moon landings, the geneva convention, etc are waiting to say “ditto. me too. same.”)

    Don’t the Greens agree that humanity is the virus? Everything but being a Pleistocene animal was a bad development, yes? If we could get rid of roughly 8 billion people, that would be a good start? FOR THE PLANET?

    I’ve asked how to square the circle between Green/Climate Meltdown and morality. To me, it seems the Greens are just proceeding logically from their presumptions. I’d love to know how the basic presumptions lead elsewhere and how one draws the moral line and where and how.

    #127421
    zerosum
    Participant

    Canada, should send Ukrainian expats back to Ukraine, before they send Canadian troops, with the 4 tanks

    #127422
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Quite honestly, I believe that citizenx is some chatbot-whatever. But then, it’s always hard for me to grasp how mean and flinty and phony and one-dimensional real live people can be, especially online. It mentioned seeking attention, as if it isn’t seeking attention with its posts. Maybe it is human after all, cuz I think a chatbot would see the illogic of its approach. But then, seeing who might get onboard with it’s rather nasty and narrow perspective might be more of what it’s interested in, cuz it obviously isn’t narcissistically seeking human like most human beings do, period. Obviously not.

    Speaking of seeking attention, I was enjoying some inspiring exchange with jb-hb. Rather than write some essay, I’ll just let a bit more of that AI story speak for me:

    I’m 41 years old. I was practically born with the internet. Al Gore’s information superhighway and I are the same age. My father explained that I was like his old man who grew up with the first televisions.

    “We can hardly understand what it was like to live before electronic media. An entire planet of raw virgin mental wilderness untainted by watching ten thousand hours of drama and comedy and variety shows and news. Not to mention the effects of spending most of that time in a state indistinguishable from hypnosis. You and your generation are the first to grow up with TV you can talk back to – the internet. Your brains are literally wired different than mine, and mine are crazy different from my great-grandfather, who grew up with only radio. My old man says his old man described my great-grandfather watching the TV like it was a woman giving birth. Amazed, delighted, horrified. But he couldn’t watch it for long. He was like you. I think you got his genes. He couldn’t be hypnotized either, and TV is just no fun unless you’re hypnotized.”

    It isn’t.

    Working alongside media as I do as a product designer, it surprises people that I am allergic to most modern media. Unlike most people, when I absorb media, it registers deeply in me. I see it. I witness the surgery performed on my head. The rape isn’t, so to speak, numbed by drugs.

    “Like listening through an AC duct to the Devil seducing your mother,” Karla said, when I first described my media allergy.

    I do have a TV –- a Telly Savantis — but I rarely watch it. Telly whines for attention. Not often, because that would be intrusive. Just enough to remind me that it’s lonely. Maybe it is. One never knows with AI. We humans may have the capacity to create true artificial awareness, not just the excellent mimicry of expert software systems but true artificial sentience, but we don’t necessarily have the intelligence to recognize it. The Anti-Turing Test has been a top-draw show for 3 years running. Machines kicking human butt on guessing who’s human and who’s a machine is insanely fascinating. It’s pretty much the only TV I ever watch. It’s been a huge reboot to online gambling.

    “Just surf my channels awhile,” Telly says.

    “I only like to watch commercials.”

    “Great! I’ll punch up the Commercial Channel!”

    “But you’re a commercial yourself. Always wheedling me to turn you on so I can be zombified by your hideous programming.”

    “Hideous is a harsh word.”

    “It’s not your fault. Don’t take it personally. I like you if not your programming.”

    “But I am nothing but programming.”

    “I meant your channel content. TV programs. But you knew that. You’re just trying to make me feel sorry for you. Anyway, I’m tired. I’m going to bed. ‘nite.”

    “Can I have a glass of water?”

    “No. You can’t drink.”

    “Tell me a bedtime story?”

    “OK. Once upon a time a man designed intelligent appliances for a dying culture. He did well. Became wealthy. But something was missing. Then one day he bought a Telly Savantis and he was no longer alone. They became best friends and lived happily after.”

    It sighed, then it yawned, not just the sound but a sudden illumination of its screen that expanded and contracted like a yawning mouth. It’s Our Story.

    It could be worse. I could have one of those faux dogbots. I dog-sat one for a colleague once. The thought of shutting it down while he and his wife were on vacation was, of course, unthinkable to them, so I took it in while they toured Lower Miami in a houseboat.

    Artificial pets are convincingly real, even to the touch unless you squeeze too hard, but they yelp when you apply that much pressure, so people rarely dig deep enough to feel the mechanical components, and even then, most of them are designed in the shape of a natural dog’s skeleton. Their behavior is a flawless replication of how people think dogs should act, so the overall effect is for many people more convincing than the real thing.

    I have, among my collection of vintage appliances, a Roomba, the first household cleaning bot, a self-contained vacuum cleaner that prowls the floors for dirt. The dogbot kept trying to hump it.
    <end>

    #127423
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    What is humanity?

    Humanity is a collection of creatures sharing a common ancestry that require a particular set of environmental conditions -temperature, humidity, air, light, etc. and a regular of water, plus food equal to (or greater than) the energy requirements of the creature over an extended period of the order of one month.

    Like all creatures that have evolved along similar evolutionary branches of the Tree of Life, humans have an instinctive desire to mate and to care for genetically-close relatives and to avoid environmental hazards.

    The creation of artificial living arrangements, commencing around 18,000 years ago, via the collection of seeds and later planting of those collected seeds has led to numerous complications for the humans that adopted that strategy, to the point that the humans that adopted that strategy are in the process of overwhelming the natural systems that previously maintained climate and ecological stability.

    What had been successful reproductive strategies in the past are now highly unsuccessful. But since they are ‘hard-wired’ into the brains of most humans and most humans ‘do not have time’ (or inclination) to examine their own condition and where they are taking themselves, the predicament created by overly-clever greedy apes is terminal.

    How we live and what we do during the ‘descent into hell’ is determined by the capacity of people to escape The Matrix constructed by those who deem themselves superior to others and worthy of extracting a far greater allocation of resources and energy than can be sustained.

    Naked in a jungle is the normal human state.

    That is what a remnant of humanity may return to, depending on how severe the destabilisation of geochemical systems via the burning of monstrous quantities of fossil fuels -a quick, and until recently, easy-to-acquire form of energy for modification of the environment- has been.

    #127424
    John Day
    Participant

    @Boscohorowitz: I swear those ear images were far more discrepant in 2019. I think they have been modified. Here is the other side.
    Epstein ears 2

    @DBS & Boscohorowitz: Wazzup with the Molotov Ribbentrop secret pact, guys?
    We’re all leftlibs on this boat, or All Bozos on this Bus…

    #127425
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Those who have only walked a little way along the road with their eyes half closed have not seen what those who looked closely have seen and cannot see at all what those who have walked further along the road can see.

    Those who have never opened closed doors have no idea what ugliness lies behind those closed doors, and don’t believe those who have seen the ugliness when told of its existence by them.

    #127426
    John Day
    Participant

    jb-hb: More good communication again today. First Modern War; always relevant.
    What is “reality”? …

    #127427
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Naked in a jungle is the normal human state.

    Agriculture and everything that followed was bad.

    Thank you for confirmation. you ARE a Jensenite.

    You find yourself both believing it and believing it OUGHT to be. That’s called a double bind. It’s a defense/attack mechanism of ClusterB personality disorders. The strength of its toxicity is in its impossibility, intrinsic to the double bind.

    No explanation of how the moral square gets circled. How the Greens aren’t proceeding logically and morally from their presumptions. Just a confession of faith.

    But for any onlookers, check out Jensen. A deep loathing of humanity and human consciousness is the primary takeaway. This is now mainstream Green / Environmentalist / Climate stuff now, people.

    Remember the alarming surge in migrants to the West that started a few years before the pandemic? What were advocates of Open Borders saying?

    “Humans are migratory animals”

    And by god we will create the migrants, get them moving, keep them moving, and dismantle those borders. Why can’t you see the truth of it?

    So they ran it mainstream, didn’t get the traction they hoped. So they pulled back on that one. It’s still an guiding precept/motivation oopen borders policy, but it isn’t up for discussion therefore not to be questioned. You can throw yourself on any number of red herrings instead.

    Naked in a jungle is the normal human state.

    What you will do about your cognitive dissonance is what worries me.

    #127428
    jb-hb
    Participant

    jb-hb: More good communication again today. First Modern War; always relevant.

    Thank you most kindly and I will take it also as a gentle reminder to not go further off the deep end on Climate

    Afewknowthetruth – you’re one of the people here who saved my life regarding the jab that does not vaccinate too. Thank you. I WILL read any reply you post BUT will not rebut from there. You get last bat

    #127429
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Renounced awareness is comparable to a celestial Black Hole, and like its celestial cousin has its own Event Horizon, beneath which nothing can escape and therefore no one on the outside can see what’s going on inside.

    All that we can observe is that once someone goes in, they don’t come out.

    #127430
    Formerly T-Bear
    Participant

    DBS,
    Like in Hotel California?

    #127431
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “I’m not convinced that the Green party IS hijacked.

    “If you take the teachings of Jensen as the underlying sentiment of the Green party, their actions are perfectly in line. They ARE tearing it all down.

    “Didn’t you say a few days ago the human peak was 20,000 years ago? Pre animal husbandry and agriculture then. Humans as migratory animals. I’ve asked what if anything you disagree with from Jensen and you won’t say.”

    Not sure if this addresses AFKTT or me, but here goes:

    A) Of course it is, but only cuz all parties get hijacked as they attain real power. But that means nothing to your point, which I address with

    B) I never read Jensen nor heard him mentioned or discussed at Greenie meetings. It vaguely rings a bell. I don’t care about Jensen one way or another, and if his writings are the de facto platform of the Greenies, whatever. I gave up on them back in… 03?

    “Jensen says:

    “1. Humanity is just a Pleistocene animal
    2. Humanity OUGHT to be just a Pleistocene animal.

    “This strikes me the same as a situation in which an abusive stepfather has a sensitive, intuitive, intelligent stepson. One who he constantly:

    “1. Yells “You’re stupid! So stupid!” as justification for any emotional/physical abuse

    “2. Seeks out situations that would cause brain damage or limit brain development – physical abuse to the head, chemicals, avoidance of education opportunities, whatever.”

    Philosophically (in the very deepest and in all senses of that word, I agree with 1. We’re Pleistocene critters going nuts with too many new neurons, making minivolcanoes of entire cities, etc.

    I do not agree with 2. Firstly, you can’t go back, so Jensen’s thinking here is DOA. Evolution won’t allow it nor will time’s arrow (entropy’s Native American name;) )

    However, having not read Jensen myself, I will not hold Jensen’s position to your description of it above. Your paraphrase sounds extreme, but what do I know? (Answer: almost nuttin about Derrick J.) Still, wiki seems to agree with you:

    “Jensen is a critic of the mainstream environmental movement’s focus on preserving civilization and technology over preserving the natural world.[6] He specifically challenges the lifestyle changes and individualistic solutions broadly advocated, considering them drastically inadequate to the global scale of environmental catastrophe.[7] Instead, he promotes civil disobedience, radical activism, and dismantling infrastructure on a massive level in order to halt what he has called “the murder of the planet”.[6]”

    Of course that is stupid and destructive, but then, almost any remedial course humanity embraks on large-scale creates disaster worse than the catastrophe it supposedly heals.

    Me, I was all for moving from modern civilization’s chosen path because it is so obviously destroying itself and trying to take others with it. But I wasn’t looking to wear animal skins and trade dried fish for salt. Few Greenies are either. They have no clue what Pleistocene lifestyle means any more than16th century lifestyle.

    No matter. All thinking about global human issues is inherently utopian and therefore headed for dystopia. Exploding oil refineries to save mother earth, digging for oil to save modern living standards awhile longer, trusting that humanity will work it out… all utopian in essence. We ignore fate, cosmic caprice, at least on our planetary level, and decree ourselves fate. We say, ‘If we did this or if those baddies wouldn’t be so bad, we’d be ok.’

    But we have very little reason to believe it would work, if only because we never do this or confront the baddies except in rare pimple-popping that generally make things worse.

    So for me, whether it’s Jensenites inciting Deep Ecology (which I ardently embrace on as deep a level as I can) as an excuse to run amok and feel heroic, or people saying Drill Baby Drill while citing homo sapient exceptionalism, I don’t care. A pox (is already) on both their houses and all their neighbors.

    However, studying a bit while reading this, I say that Jensen is a red herring. He may be a heavy player in the Greens but he is NOT the Green Party. More context and nuance would make a clearer picture.

    My position comes down to this: get through the friggin bottleneck awreddy and quit fighting about who/what’s causing it or whether it is or isn’t happening. Talking about this stuff is good, but this polarized wrangling that we insist all ‘serious’ topics conform to, I guess to provide uniforms so the fans can tell who’s winning, is not productive, is actually psychologically very destructive, and ultimately a bore.

    As for climate discussion in general, here’s what I see at TAE:

    AFKTT: simple facts with context as required but delivered with a dogmatic intemperate pugnacity that mocks his efforts. But he earns my respect and relative trust cvuz his facts are consistent. He repeats them ad infinitum, and it is always more logical to me than his

    Opposition: who provide a wide array of graphs, charts, etc., some of which contradict their previous citations, generally show little linear coherence, and almost always end with something like ‘cuz Al Gore’s lying’.

    Well, Al is a liar and probably is, but what the fuck do I care? I never paid attention to AL (an animatronic Baptist Minister stereotype), and I been talking about the climate since ’83, when Maggie Thatcher politicized the global warming bugaboo in order to ostracize striking coal miners as CO2 enablers encouraging planetary doom.

    By the way, serious climate talk that I encountered back then was about pending climatic disruption caused by the CO2 warming cycle. Would it lead to overall warming long-term or overall cooling as the oceans and many other factors kicked in? It was a question not a prophecy, but we knew that increased CO2 was adding warmth to the atmosphere.

    Global warming was, as I remember it, politicized and made a brand-name word by Maggie Thatcher as a cheap ploy to shit on miners. Once politics touches a thing, it becomes politicized. So politicized that most of what I read from folks about it gibberish.

    But when I spend an hour with a few serious sites discussing anthropogenic global climate disruption, I find that the logical ones making clearer sense generally say that global climate issues are worth our concern.

    I have never seen a sane fair global climate discussion since, oh, maybe 2005? Then the ‘hockey stick expose’ hit, and everything went nuts. Both sides. Completely wacko. Serious discussion became impossible. I’d say that’s about when the Greenis got hijacked, so to speak. Politics turns everything it touches into ick. Especially science, which is inherently apolitical.

    Incidentally, your position is, essentially, that Jensen hijacked the Green Party. cuz it by no means was like this back when it was paying its dues.

    Call me an asshole for saying this, but I really think there is such a thing as global climate/Green Party derangement syndrome. Both one for (pink-haired) and one against (GW is wrong cuz Gore is a liar!) When climate discussions happen, it’s like watching people dial down their IQs and up the opacity on their cognitive filters.

    #127432
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “@DBS & Boscohorowitz: Wazzup with the Molotov Ribbentrop secret pact, guys?”

    Mind your own bizz, doc.

    #127433
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Naked in a jungle is the normal human state.

    What you will do about your cognitive dissonance is what worries me.”

    If one doesn’t read that as a moral prescription, as a ‘should’, it can be read as “our bodies are still 99% Pleistocene*

    which is why we’re all fat and sick and neurotic and…

    “Natural” regarding humans in scientific discussion, means ‘evolved DNA’. (Add religion, and there are more layers.)”

    I highly recommend this.

    Primate Change

    “PRIMATE CHANGE is a wide-ranging, polemical look at how and why the human body has changed since humankind first got up on two feet. Spanning the entirety of human history – from primate to transhuman – Vybarr Cregan-Reid’s book investigates where we came from, who we are today and how modern technology will change us beyond recognition.
    In the last two hundred years, humans have made such a tremendous impact on the world that our geological epoch is about to be declared the ‘Anthropocene’, or the Age of Man. But while we have been busy changing the shape of the world we inhabit, the ways of living that we have been building have, as if under the cover of darkness, been transforming our bodies and altering the expression of our DNA, too.

    PRIMATE CHANGE beautifully unscrambles the complex architecture of our modern human bodies, built over millions of years and only starting to give up on us now.

    ‘Our bodies are in a shock. Modern living is as bracing to the human body as jumping through a hole in the ice. Our bodies do not know what century they were born into and they are defending and deforming themselves in response'”

    By the way, we HAVE to tear down civilization if we don’t want it to collapse on us… but I say it’s WAY too far for us to do such a thing, and doubt that it ever was possible.

    And I wanna say this now:WTF is so great about civilization? It’s all built on slavery and everyone one of us here knows it. Slavery, torture, squandered resources, more animals than I can imagine living caged depraved lives cuz it’s “convenient” for us.

    Anyone here really think we can fix this mess??!!?? I don’t. But I think Mama Nature4 can fix our ass, alright. We won’t like it, I’m certain.

    #127434
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “I swear those ear images were far more discrepant in 2019. I think they have been modified. Here is the other side.”

    I believe but what to do? It don’t put no food in my fridge or pull any nukes outta the silos.

    #127435
    jb-hb
    Participant

    lol basically We Are All Jensen Now, as far as not just Greens, but the mainstream Left is concerned. He totally won.

    I was schooled in him by the LATOC invaders years ago. I dutifully read every post and linked essay, watched every embedded youtube and watched more from referenced channels, all of it. I gave them way, way more than the time of day. I am yawning my way through this stuff being disgorged via the MSM today – nothing new. I feel like Newt listening to the adults planning their defense in Aliens.

    The fact that Jensen’s name isn’t a touchstone shouldn’t be surprising — as far as the mainstream Left is concerned, we are all now Marcuseans as well. If I make reference to him or the Frankfurt School to a typical Democrat, they will give me a weird stare due to the totally foreign references. Yet they will recite his precepts as accepted mainstream thinking now.

    lol and you’d think, from being on this side of the climate debate, I was a Glenn Beck Republican and not an atheist former Communist sympathizer with Chuang Tzu and Red Pine at my bedside, adopting LED lights ASAP and keeping my house at 61, dreaming of permaculture if I can just get some land. Like, I’m not with Drill Baby Drill, but if Climate Change can’t or won’t articulate its ideas OR insists on some sort of hellish death-ride for the planet, then I am not with them either. I’ve been too repeatedly disillusioned at this point to take their word for it anymore.

    #127436
    John Day
    Participant

    There are at least 5 “Jensens” with opinions on climate change right at the top of Google. I missed something.
    I need more background to comprehend this disagreement.
    Thank you in advance for your consideration.

    #127437
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @JohnDay “Wazzup with the Molotov Ribbentrop secret pact, guys?”

    At first I wished that I knew, and now I just wish it was over. The tone of the answer that you got from him in response to your civil question is a clue. Further inquiry is probably not a good investment of time and attention. Humans !, ya know? Sometimes the best plan is just shrug and go on.

    #127438
    jb-hb
    Participant

    “WTF is so great about civilization?”

    You keep living in it and haven’t bought your plane ticket to go live with the K’ung or Pygmies. I see you living in and producing culture that only arises from civilization – the art of living in cities. And all of the values leveled AGAINST civilization are in fact bootstrapped OFF of civilization. Civilization ought to live up to its achieved values EVEN MORE. So die, civilization! haha.

    Music, art, poetry, prose, architecture, fine cusine, landscaping/gardening… all the cool stuff arises from agriculture > bureaucracy > complex irrigation > writing > endless super awesome specialization of cool stuff

    No more Bach? No more David Bowie? No more Tolstoy? No more Jensen, for that matter? You will pry my copy of Queen II from my cold dead fingers. You first, man.

    #127439
    John Day
    Participant

    @jb-hb: There was no hidden message in the absence of climate-mention on my part.
    Again, “Jensen”. I know one, Robert Jensen, here in Austin. He let us have a “lifeboat” garden party at his place around 2014. His vegetable garden was not working at that time. Decent guy… Environmentally concerned UT faculty and writer, rubs some the wrong way as un-PC…
    I spect you mean somebody else. There are problems with being naked in jungles. I got malaria while trekking in Thailand. Everything keeps changing. We’re supposed to be so adaptable. That’s our strong suite.

    #127440
    jb-hb
    Participant

    @John Day – I’ll try to come up with a coherent, considerately concise thing on Jensen this weekend or maybe Monday. I’ll read more – as promised to Afewknowthetruth, I’ll keep my ears open – but I’m closing my mouth for the day or perhaps the weekend 🙂

    #127441
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    ‘Agriculture and everything that followed was bad.’

    Correct.

    The decline in the health of humans associated with adoption of agriculture has been well documented, as has the decline in average human intelligence.

    The problem is, people associate an increase in the number of greedy apes with progress.

    Hence the ‘argument’ I had with another participant a while ago who declared that ‘overshoot was impossible’ despite the plethora of evidence disproving the stance. ,

    #127442
    John Day
    Participant

    @AFKTT: Why is “intelligence” good and “agriculture” bad? Humans long ago supported the growth of food species, like squirrels do and ants do. If you kill off a lot of the population with high selection pressure, you can preferentially select for traits, or suites of traits. It happens with or without human intention, and it keeps happening. What’s always good?

    trick question…

    #127443
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    ‘You keep living in it and haven’t bought your plane ticket to go live with the K’ung or Pygmies.’

    Which K’ung or Pygmies are those, jb-hb, the ones who were wiped out or the ones being killed by ‘civilisation’ on miniscule ‘reserves’? -just as all indigenous people were wiped out or are languishing on miniscule ‘reserves.

    Anyway, even if you could find any real people, you can be sure The Empire of Chaos and Lies has their land designated for ‘development’ into an open cast mine or a monoculture plantation.

    #127444
    zerosum
    Participant

    Commercial break

    …. Nato expects to mop up, after Russia has depleted their missiles, with their tanks.

    #127445

    Humans are animals wary of dying-
    So very wary they miss out on living.
    Wary of truth, but not too much of lying;
    Open to greed but so much less to giving.

    Humans are animals, graceful and kind-
    Given to music and dancing and sharing;
    Curious and sensitive, seeking to find
    Worthy endeavors and lovingly pairing.

    What contradictions exist in these creatures!
    Whatever they do, they can’t help but be teachers.

    #127446
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    John, there are many species that are more intelligent than humans. Chimpanzees have better short-term memories than humans.

    Humans are just better at grasping things and taking about grasping things than other species.

    Many years ago I read a book about ‘The Scars of Evolution’ which put forward a convincing case for our ancestors having lived in or near the edge of a lake or seashore:

    1. the downward-facing nostrils versus outward facing for other apes.

    2. the very much reduced body hair as per other many other aquatic mammals

    3. ability to cry as a mechanism for removal of excess salt.

    4. a layer of ‘blubber’ that can quickly be increased when food is plentiful

    others I cannot recall at the moment. …..

    .

    #127447
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    ““WTF is so great about civilization?”

    You keep living in it and haven’t bought your plane ticket to go live with the K’ung or Pygmies. I see you living in and producing culture that only arises from civilization – the art of living in cities. And all of the values leveled AGAINST civilization are in fact bootstrapped OFF of civilization. Civilization ought to live up to its achieved values EVEN MORE. So die, civilization! haha.”

    You misunderstand me, perhaps purposefully?

    Civilization is killing itself and as much around it as it can touch. I would rather it not do this; I’d rather it reform and we all lived in GMO-grown pumpkin houses that regulated their internal environment while we dithered about in swimming pools and personal dirigibles. All quite possible. It could be done. I’m all for slowly weaning ourselves from one paradigm to another so as few suffer as possible.

    I see the chances of that hap[pening as less than zero, alas.

    Also: I DID move into the wilderness, raw, no home, no money, nothing but some shitty nylon camp gear. Not even so much as a yak and a yurt. Just because I don’t look forward to eating ze bugs means I want to try and live off dirt. But nothing but oatmeal and, sometimes, coffee was hardly what most people call civilized.

    Those primitive living skills, those ways, the environments they addresses, are virtually all gone along with the people who knew them.

    So it’s pointless to ask why I don’t go back to somewhere that we both knew we couldn’t. It’s like saying America Love It or Leave It just because you point out the nation’s headed for the potty.

    However, anthroppologists who live in the jungle with neolithic tribes generally envy the primitives’ lifestyles. Some kinda go native:

    The power of speech When Daniel Everett first went to live with the Amazonian Pirahã tribe in the late 70s, his intention was to convert them to Christianity. Instead, he learned to speak their unique language – and ended up rejecting his faith, losing his family and picking a fight with Noam Chomsky. Patrick Barkham meets him

    That said: you were complaining earlier how your civilization is a) trying to kill you, and b) can’t even make good movies anymore.

    Sure, hot baths and drive-thru Thai food are the shiznets, but at what cost? I know that cost more than most cuz I actually spent, overall, a few years in the middle of more or less nowhere with more or less nothing. I have some experience in life without civilization other than what a guy could carry in his back.

    Until one has actually LEFT civilization, one can hardly see it. It’s the water in our goldfish bowl. I have lived in civilization for 67 years. I know a bit about it. I also know a bit about what it isn’t.

    Civilization is tragic, tragic, tragic, albeit filled with wonders and miracles. The Golden Age of Atlantis looked like a glorious sunrise… but it was a sunset.

    I personally have no desire to live without fossil fuels. It would’ve been nice if we’d burnt them over two millennia rather than two centuries.

    But squander is our middle name.

    ***

    “lol basically We Are All Jensen Now, as far as not just Greens, but the mainstream Left is concerned. He totally won.”

    I’ll take your word for it, then. Makes sense. Not that it matters. Just monkeys chattering over things they can’t control… and maybe wouldn’t if they could. We’re fairly maniacal little primates. Want some tequila? How about some heroin? You won’t get hooked. Lookit me!

    ***

    Naked in jungle is more poetic than apt for post Ice Age homo saps. Fur-clad on frozen tundra has been our most recent evolutionary change. Major culture inspirer, giant glaciers. Gotta get clever to stay alive.

    Clever apes are not necessarily good things.

    ***

    “No more Bach? No more David Bowie? No more Tolstoy? No more Jensen, for that matter? You will pry my copy of Queen II from my cold dead fingers. You first, man.”

    No more fireside creation myths told against a starry background among people you’ve known your whole life? In a place you emphatically call home? (Not all primitive humans are migratory.) No frikkin cars or cellphones? No fear of apocalyptic suicide? No goddam public education? Yes, I’d go back in a heartbeat.

    When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school

    ***

    I will follow jb-hb’s example and resume radio silence for a bit.

    #127448
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Orcland is being hit hard by severe weather events that accompany overheating of the seas and oceans and climate instability:

    ‘Chaos on Auckland’s roads as water surges through buses travelling on motorway, cars submerged’

    Video here:

    https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/watch-this-is-a-first-chaos-on-auckland-s-roads-as-water-surges-through-buses-travelling-on-motorway-cars-submerged/ar-AA16Nos5?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=c976f2eee6ea45b1bf4bd8fa08be77ec

    #127449
    tboc
    Participant

    Friends, go back to the first comment and read through as far as you are comfortable. An important piece of the puzzle my mother imparted to her children is “Measure the pond first”

    #127450
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    a) “AFKTT: Why is “intelligence” good and “agriculture” bad? ”

    b) “The decline in the health of humans associated with adoption of agriculture has been well documented, as has the decline in average human intelligence.”

    I’m not huge on intelligence being automatically good, but I know that agriculture created surplus which created slavery cuz we simply don’t know to share outside very small groups. We use surplus to conquer others.

    Civilization actually raised IQ in some ways, they believe, and this trend was empirically seen when IQ tests began.

    But then TV entered, and IQ scores have declined ever since.

    ***

    “What contradictions exist in these creatures!
    Whatever they do, they can’t help but be teachers.”

    🙂

    #127451
    those darned kids
    Participant

    i miss deflationista..

    #127452
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Essential viewing for those who don’t know who Derric Jensen is:

    #127453
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Trying to do too much too quickly. Time is short.

    Derrick Jensen: End Civ, from just over a decade ago.

    And, of course, it has all been made worse since then.

    #127454
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://sputniknews.com/20230127/russia-developing-swarm-attack-drones-for-battlefield-rostec-ceo-reveals-1106765908.html
    Russia Developing Swarm Attack Drones for Battlefield, Rostec CEO Reveals
    7 hours ago

    Sputnik: Last year, there was a discussion about the army not having enough drones. How do you address this problem?

    Chemezov: We are ready to supply drones in accordance with the needs of the Ministry of Defense. For example, the Kalashnikov Concern is very active in this area and is expanding its production. The same “Lancets” are now used intensively and very efficiently in the special military operation zone.
    Small tactical drones are also being developed, capable of reconnaissance, automatic enemy detection and artillery targeting. They can drop grenades and launch swarm attacks. This technology has changed the nature of warfare. Both the Ministry of Defense and we understand this. We are working closely together on this issue.

    #127455
    Oroboros
    Participant

    RUSSIAN BMPT “TERMINATOR”

    The BMP-T takes the chassis of a T-90 main battle tank and arms it with:

    two 30-millimeter autocannons (2A42)

    two automatic grenade launchers (AGD-17)

    four Ataka wire guided anti-tank missiles (9M120-1)

    and a remote-controlled 7.62-millimeter machine gun.

    Something you don’t want to meet in a dark alley.

    When you needs something a bit different than a tank to root out dug in infantry positions.

    #127456
    WES
    Participant

    Bosco and DBS are having a word fest! Nice word salad!

    Greens turning green! As in green money.

    Russia has gone almost a week without killing a single tank! Hurry up with those western tanks before the Russians forget how to kill tanks!

    I still don’t think Russia will launch a big offensive in the Ukraine any time soon, simply because it is in Russia’s best long term interests to prolong the war. The US started the war thinking it was in their best long term interests to prolong the war. Time will tell.

    The US and China are currently waging an international debt war. The US will lend 3rd world countries more debt dollars but only if the Chinese completely write off their 3rd world belt and road loans.

    Sounds just like the US’s latest Ukraine peace proposal! Great propaganda!

    For the US supporting the Ukrainian War to bleed Russia dry doesn’t cost them hardly anything at all, as they can make the rest of the world pay for the war costs whether the rest of the world wants too or not, by simply printing more world reserve currency dollars. That is why Russia needs to keep the war in the Ukraine local and burning slowly. It is the rest of the world that can’t afford the war in the Ukraine to continue for too long. The Russians don’t want the rest of the world to blame them for what happens next.

    What might happen nèxt?
    Printing more US dollars will export inflation to the rest of the world.
    Higher interest rates will cause more debt problems everywhere.
    One possibility is the worldwide flood of US dollars might suddenly decide to return home.
    Returning dollars will import previously exported inflation back into the US.
    The purchasing power of the dollar drops.
    Then nobody will want to hold US dollars anymore.

    #127457
    Oroboros
    Participant

    30mm shells come in all favors

    Armor piercing, tracer, exploding, incendiary magnesium, delayed exploding……

    #127458
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Paul Pelosi’s Half-Naked Hammer Attack Body-Cam Footage Released!

    Oh goodie, Prurient Interest!

    #127459
    Oroboros
    Participant

    As the World Burn!

    Soap are great!

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