teri
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Dear Ilargi,
You know, some photos, artwork, or altered videos are very funny and can be used to make a clever satirical point or to simply provoke a chuckle. Some photos and altered videos are just kind of dumb. The picture near the top of today’s post, the one of Biden and Harris as the couple from the Titanic, is an example of the “just dumb” category. It’s like those really inane pictures you sometimes post that show Trump as Jesus, or Trump with Jesus, or Trump with a lion boldly striding forward as the conquering hero.
One can scroll over those with an eye-roll.
But I gotta tell you, the video up there where someone has taken footage of MLK jr and altered his words to make it appear as if he is endorsing Trump is neither funny nor witty. It is abusive to the memory of MLK, Jr. and perhaps even actionable, should his family want to sue for the defamation of his legacy.
MLK, Jr. was affiliated with neither party. No-one knows who he voted for in any given election. He did mention in many speeches that he thought capitalism was a major problem for the country and that we needed to move on to a form of democratic socialism. However, he never committed his support to any party, as he did not want his views to be used for their political purposes. He never endorsed any presidential candidate; for one thing, he strongly felt that as a minister it was wrong for him to issue endorsements for any politician. For another, he wanted to remain completely non-partisan and free of political attachments so that he could criticize both major parties when he felt it necessary.
The text in that altered video is so exaggerated that it becomes repulsive. Donald Trump as the champion of the black man? Are you shitting me?
We have had very few Americans during my lifetime that could be consider “great men”. MLK, Jr. was one of them. And they assassinated him; gunned him down like a dog to stop him from speaking. It was a truly grievous loss for the country.
And now, some twit somewhere has decided to make a complete mockery of this courageous (and very dead) great black leader and you, for inscrutable reasons (You think it is amusing? You think MLK, Jr. really said those things? You just like anything that supports Trump?) have decided this video deserves your promotion.
It’s easy enough to ignore the silliness that sometimes appears on otherwise informative websites like yours, Ilargi, but this video is too repugnant and offensive to pass over without remark. I really wish you had not chosen to feature this piece of crap.
– Teri
@ Zerosum @ 150515
I posted that comment over at Moonofalabama earlier today and just signed in to post it here as well, only to see you have already done that for me.
When those two Navy Seals went missing, I got curious about the strange wording of some of the articles. This led me to read quite a few articles about the subject and eventually some of the writers started being more open about the circumstances. Until now, I had no idea we (the US) were doing this sort of thing. All I can figure is that the people at the top of the pile no longer care if everyone knows about our lawlessness; they are openly bragging about these actions.
I’m probably the only one who finds it shocking and noteworthy, but then I tend to be less blasé about our slide into chaos and criminality than a lot of people.
@ Phoenixvoice:
Milei is no doubt well-educated, but has some very strange personal beliefs. For instance, he claims that his dead dog sits at the right hand of God and advises him through visions. Weird dude. Also, a very cruel dude.
Economically, he is a neoliberal. Neoliberalism predates libertarianism, and is perhaps more extreme than the latter. His embrace of Milton Friedman and “shock treatment” should have been a glaring red light to the voters, although given Argentina’s stumbling around under the IMF strictures has no doubt left them seeking any alternative, no matter how unrealistic. Milei will not give them what they seek. They are in for a world of hurt.
Milton Friedman and the Chicago boys ruined Chile under the rule of Pinochet, who brought the group in to run the economy when he overthrew Allande. Chile is just now starting to come out from under the effects of that, all these many decades later. Here is a fairly recent article on what the Friedman people did to Chile:
The Friedman doctrine embraces extreme individualism at the cost of social cohesion. Friedman’s “shock treatment“, a term that Milei is currently using to describe what he is doing in Argentina, leads to extreme wealth inequality, lack of gov’t support for social programs, the implementation of austerity programs, the privatization and market capture of all economic activity; aka: neoliberalism. There is no “common good” worth saving or investing in, according to the neoliberals; it is dog-eat-dog and may the strongest man win all the prizes.
Here is what Milei has already started to do in Argentina:
I sometimes check on Michael Hudson’s website (he is a great economist – one of the best, in my opinion) to see what he is saying about current events and serendipitously, his latest article is about neoliberalism. He also discusses Marxism along the way:
Also, you may want to read the book “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klien. I read it years ago, and have found that she was prescient in her predictions that shock doctrine would be coming home to the US.
Of course, I am totally on the wrong website to be recommending such readings; everyone around here seems to think that Hillary Clinton is a “liberal” (LOL), Joe Biden is a “progressive” (LOL), and that socialism/communism/fascism/wokeism/Marxism/Jacobism/dictatorship are all completely interchangeable terms.
I wish the people of Argentina well. There is enough pain in the world now, and it doesn’t look any too rosy going forward into the new year no matter what country you live in.
Peace to you and your house.
– TeriIsrael begins pumping seawater into Hamas tunnels: Wall Street Journal
12/12/23, 3:40 p.m. EST:Israel’s military has begun pumping seawater into Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing US officials briefed on the Israeli military’s operations.
A spokesperson for the Israeli defence minister declined to respond to the newspaper’s request for comment.
Critics have warned that flooding the tunnels could hurt Gaza’s freshwater supply.
Found on yahoo news, of all places. Guess they can’t hide it any more.
“More than a quarter of people injected with mRNA Covid jabs suffered an unintended immune response created by a glitch in the way the vaccine was read by the body, a study has found. […]”
https://news.yahoo.com/more-one-four-had-mrna-171724613.html
Updates from Middleeasteye; they are doing real time updates here:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/israel-palestine-hamas-war-gaza-live-invasion
These are from today, Sunday 12th Nov, 2023 (2:30 EST in US):
————-
16 minutes ago
A spokesperson for Palestine’s Ministry of Health told Al Jazeera Arabic that stray dogs have started to eat the bodies of the dead piling on the streets. According to the spokesperson, relentless Israeli bombing and nowhere to bury the dead as well as a lack of resources has meant that bodies have been strewn across the street. Al Jazeera English reported that dozens of bodies remain abandoned near the al-Shifa hospital and in its courtyard, as survivors are unable to bury them due to ongoing bombing. “We asked to be able to bury the bodies, but anyone who goes out into the courtyard of al-Shifa hospital gets shot,” said Mohammed Zaqut, director-general of Gaza hospitals.
———————————
40 minutes ago
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported that their staff in Gaza are seeing dead people in the streets as Israel continues to bombard the besieged enclave. “We see people being shot at. We can see injured people. We hear them crying for help, but we cannot do anything. It is too dangerous to go outside,” one of their staff members in Gaza said. The organisation also said that all medical staff, including theirs, as well as patients in critical condition are still inside al-Shifa hospital. “We call for a cessation of attacks on hospitals, for an immediate ceasefire, and safe passage for those who wish to leave hospitals,” they said, on social media platform X. MSF reiterated that they have not been able to contact their staff inside the hospital since last night, while their staff in other locations said that hostilities around the hospital have not stopped. “We are worried for their lives,” they said.
——————————
54 minutes ago
Three out of 39 premature babies have now died at al-Shifa Hospital due to Israel cutting off all resources in the Gaza strip, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Sunday. The neonatal intensive care unit stopped working on 11 November due to a lack of electricity, the facility’s director said. The remaining babies in the neonatal intensive care unit are at risk of losing their lives as the hospital runs out of fuel. The spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health also said that four people have also died as a result of inability to carry out surgeries on them.
—————————
2 hours ago
According to Mustafa Surour, a journalist speaking from Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, five buildings have been targeted in Israeli bombing and have been partially destroyed. The journalist made the comments live to Al Jazeera Arabic.“Investigation disproves Israel claim of Hamas tunnel under Gaza hospital
“The hatch Israel claimed was a Hamas tunnel is only a water reservoir for the hospital.
“Sanad, Al Jazeera’s digital investigation agency, has disproved the latest claim by Israeli authorities that there is a tunnel for Hamas fighters under the Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetic Hospital, commonly known as the Qatari Hospital.
“Israeli authorities have often claimed that there are command bunkers and main tunnels running under Gaza hospitals as a justification for targeting health facilities, which are protected in war by international law. […]”
What a surprise. Two of the guys who brought us the mRNA vaccines are getting the Nobel prize in medicine for their ‘contribution to society’. They will share the $1 million award.
https://www.rt.com/news/583893-nobel-prize-covid-vaccine-mrna/
This website has been really quirky for a month or so.
Sometimes the daily post is up for awhile and then disappears for hours before showing up again. The number of comments is different at the top of the page versus the actual number of comments at the bottom of the page, and throughout the day the number listed in both places randomly changes. Today, we had 6 comments, then it was over 20, then back to 5, etc. Right now, it says 13 comments at the top of the page, and 24 at the bottom. I didn’t actually count to see if either of these is correct.
What’s up with this?
Another American institute bows to the Great Green Sweatshirt and proves their administration is filled with idiots:
“Before Johns Hopkins University graduates moved their tassels to the left on Thursday, they were sent off with a virtual livestream from a surprise commencement speaker: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. […]
“Following the address, Zelenskyy was awarded with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the university. [Teri’s note: A Doctor of Humane Letters is an honorary degree, generally awarded for significant contributions to society. Given that ‘humane’ can be defined as showing compassion, understanding, mercy, and tolerance, one can only marvel at Zelensky receiving such an honor.]
“It’s Zelenskyy’s first commencement speech since May 2022, three months after Russia invaded his country. In a video address to Stanford graduates [at that time], he outlined how the West can support Ukraine and urged students to pursue their passions, as many draftees into the war won’t have the chance to attend college.”
Stanford and Johns Hopkins invited this mush-head grifter to address their graduates. That’s just dismal.
So Sinema is not a Democrat any more.
I gather that the people you “elect” can just switch parties part-way through their term in office, because no-one in either party is calling her out on it as a verboten move. If this is the case, why should any of them claim to be members of one party or the other in the first place? Sounds kind of like it ought to make them unfit for office because they are being deliberately deceptive in their nominal party affiliation – and that’s the most basic item on their curriculum vitae. It sounds shiesty.
What a bunch of assholes they all are.
I’m going to post this entire article here, since some people can’t access RT any more.
************************
US funded Chinese lab for intelligence op – whistleblower
America’s technology transfer to China resulted in the Covid-19 pandemic, a former EcoHealth Alliance executive claimsUS-funded bioresearch on foreign soil appears to be a “giant intelligence operation” for assessing biowarfare capabilities, according to a whistleblower. Collecting and tinkering with bat coronaviruses in China ultimately resulted in the accidental release of SARS-CoV-2, the infection that causes Covid-19, he believes.
Dr. Andrew Huff once worked as the vice president of EcoHealth Alliance, an NGO involved in funneling US taxpayer dollars to bioresearch projects around the world. One of them, which was conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), was the origin of Covid-19 pandemic, and both Beijing and Washington were involved in a massive cover-up, he claimed. On Saturday, British tabloid The Sun reported on the allegations, which Huff has detailed in an upcoming book.
According to his revelations, in 2009, EcoHealth Alliance launched a program called PREDICT. Funded by foreign aid agency USAID, it was aimed at collecting samples of potentially harmful diseases throughout the world, ostensibly to prepare humanity for potential outbreaks. The Wuhan lab was one of the foreign partners of the program, studying coronaviruses in bats, Huff said.
According to the whistleblower, who has a background in bioweapons threat assessment for the US military, the PREDICT program was not collecting the data that it should have, but appeared to be an intelligence operation for assessing foreign biolab capabilities.
Huff was also involved in assessing a 2014 funding proposal for gain-of-function research at the WIV. The work was funded through EcoHealth Alliance by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Gain-of-function is the modification of pathogens to enhance them in various potential ways, including transmissibility. The rationale is that scientists can study new strains and find ways to stop them before similar adaptations emerge naturally.
“EcoHealth Alliance … was responsible for the development of the agent SARS-CoV-2 during my employment at the organization,” Huff alleged. He believes that the virus was created at the Wuhan lab with technologies it received from the US and accidentally leaked into the general population.
“It could be reasonably argued that EcoHealth Alliance set up China to fail,” he said, claiming that the Chinese institute suffered from shortage of qualified personnel and that US government officials were well aware of it.
The ‘lab leak’ theory – that the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab – was popularized by then-US President Donald Trump, who made the allegation amid a trade war with China. Major US media organizations and tech platforms initially labeled it as ‘disinformation’ and tried to suppress the theory from public discourse.
The World Health Organization investigated the origins of Covid-19 and concluded that natural evolution was the most likely explanation. Beijing also says accidental transmission from animals to humans is the most plausible theory, blasting the ‘lab leak’ allegations as ‘lies’.
https://www.rt.com/news/567682-bioresearch-intelligence-operation-wuhan/
“Despite appearances, they don’t have brains.” – said a dolphin talking to an octopus about the humans they saw on the shoreline.
@John Day; “When Queen Elizabeth died, there was a question of whether it was related to COVID-vaccination. She had multiple myeloma, a form of cancer of the blood-forming elements in the bone marrow. That means “it could have been related”, since spike-protein , created by the body after receiving the “vaccine-products”, suppresses the immune-system’s ability to fight these cancers.”
Well, that and the fact that she was 98 years old.
“Interestingly, almost every financial media outlet is using the same Retail Federation talking point about anticipating an 8% increase in holiday sales this year.” – from the Conservative Treehouse article.
Well, of course there will be at least an 8% increase in sales dollars (which is what they are talking about): inflation is at least 8% YoY (year over year). If the same shit costs 8% more this year, their sales figures are 8% higher. It doesn’t mean that you got 8% more stuff or that they sold 8% more stuff, it just means it cost 8% more to buy the same stuff you bought last year.
And I’m sure after Christmas, they will tell us how this was the highest increase in holiday spending ever. And that will be correct, because inflation is actually way above 8%. And then there will be some news-people scratching their heads as they ponder the paradoxical situation where although the stores had such a “huge increase” in “sales”, they have an “inexplicable” amount of goods left over.
The Martens at wallstreetonparade have quite a few good articles up about FTX. (I hope this comment goes through. I tried to leave a comment a couple of days ago, and it never appeared.)
The latest article is very good – and a good warning:
FTX’s Latest Casualties: Federally Insured Crypto Banks
No, Dr D, the point I was making is that putting up a chart showing the names of some donors and who they donated to doesn’t prove any of what you are talking about, although the things you are alleging may all be true as well. The list by itself does not prove anything about anyone on the list, except that they have lots of money and they gave some to political parties.
Ilargi,
I posted this comment on the last thread, but I see you have a new article up, so I’ll re-post it here:Ilargi, that chart you posted [showing the political donors] is interesting. Not really because of the crypto guy, though, unless one thinks it’s “really bad” to donate to Dems but “not so bad” to donate to Repubs. If this chart is correct, the Republicans got $34,667,000 more than the Democrats from all the top ten donors combined.
2 of the top ten gave only to Democrats, 5 gave only to Republicans, and 3 others (including Bankman-Fried) spread their donations around. The fact that Bankman-Fried gave more money to the Democrats than to other parties he donated to is meaningless in and of itself. The top 2 Republican donors gave only to Republicans; that is also meaningless. What is consequential is that there is so much mad money (overall) sloshing around the system.
The top 2 Republican donors are Ken Griffin (owns hedge fund Citadel) and Richard Uihlein (owns ULine shipping and supply company, and is heir to Schlitz brewery). I’m sure the Mercers gave more to the Republicans than anyone else, but they use a dark money fund that allows the donors to keep the recipient’s names and party affiliations secret, so their names aren’t on the chart you show. And yes, it is legal to donate in secret now.
I think the more interesting aspect of this list is that it shows there are too many people with way too much ‘walking around’ money buying the politicians in this country, and that the Citizen’s United decision was one of the most corrupting decisions in the history of the Supreme Court.
@ Ilargi @ #120850:
Ilargi, that chart you posted is interesting. Not really because of the crypto guy, though, unless one thinks it’s “really bad” to donate to Dems but “not so bad” to donate to Repubs. If this chart is correct, the Republicans got $34,667,000 more than the Democrats from all the top ten donors combined.
2 of the top ten gave only to Democrats, 5 gave only to Republicans, and 3 others (including Bankman-Fried) spread their donations around. The fact that Bankman-Fried gave more money to the Democrats than to other parties he donated to is meaningless in and of itself. The top 2 Republican donors gave only to Republicans; that is also meaningless. What is consequential is that there is so much mad money (overall) sloshing around the system.
The top 2 Republican donors are Ken Griffin (owns hedge fund Citadel) and Richard Uihlein (owns ULine shipping and supply company, and is heir to Schlitz brewery). I’m sure the Mercers gave more to the Republicans than anyone else, but they use a dark money fund that allows the donors to keep the recipient’s names and party affiliations secret, so their names aren’t on the chart you show. And yes, it is legal to donate in secret now.
I think the more interesting aspect of this list is that it shows there are too many people with way too much ‘walking around’ money buying the politicians in this country, and that the Citizen’s United decision was one of the most corrupting decisions in the history of the Supreme Court.
It’s “toe the line” (or “toeing the line”). It means to obey authority, to follow the rules set forth by others. “Tow the line” would mean to pull something.
@ Aspnaz (“Reading Kamala Harris makes me think of Josep Borrell, maybe they are related.”).
As Positive Dennis said a few comments above: Harris did not say that. Someone put it up as a spoof on Facebook and people started passing it around.
That little clip of Biden (Illuminatibot tweet) is from 1987. What’s interesting to me is that Biden did not seem to have trouble with stuttering then. People keep saying his speech issues are because he had problems with stuttering which still surfaces occasionally (they claim), but I don’t ever remember noticing a stutter when Biden spoke. And I’m getting pretty old and have heard him talk on the campaign trail or in interviews for some decades now.
His speech patterns now don’t sound like stuttering to me; they sound like slurring. I don’t think he is a drinker, so the slurring may be an old-age thing where his tongue is not working properly.
It doesn’t help that his brain doesn’t work so well now either.
So now we’re going to rehab Meloni. Shape-shift her into a different creature cleaving more to our desires than to her own. Sigh. We are so hopelessly hopeful and shit.
I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger, and not much on organized religion, but there is one Bible verse that I try to keep at the front of my mind any time a politician opens his (or her) mouth:
“Ye saw I was a stranger and ye took me in.” – Matthew 25:35.
[It’s a double entendre. You may need to think about it for a minute.]
What could go wrong here?:
“The National Institutes of Health is providing more viral research funding, including related to bat coronaviruses, to U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance, linked to an infamous Wuhan lab. […]”
@ Mister Roboto:
“I also know of a high-school classmate of mine who died of a mysterious illness earlier this year from Facebook…”
I don’t know anyone that actually died from Facebook, but I sure know a lot who have suffered brain damage from that source.
Mister Roboto;
As you note in your comment, that shop teacher in the photo in Kunstler’s current article lives in Canada. Kunstler then ties himself in knots in an attempt to explain the inclusion of a picture of this sad person from up north by calling out Trudeau as a “Woke-Marxist”. What is a “woke-Marxist”? Who the fuck knows? Whatever else Trudeau is, he is not a Marxist. But Kunstler knows the reader will not know what Marxism is, nor will the reader look it up. In Kunstler-speak, Marxists are the exact same thing as Jacobins (he used those two terms in tandem as descriptors of Obama in an article he posted in August, where he referred to the Obama reign as the “Jacobin-Marxist crusade”, although the two movements are polar opposites in most ways.) For his own reasons, Kunstler constantly uses remarkably different political movements interchangeably. Marxists = socialists = Jacobins = communists = reds = democrats = wokesters = the left collectively = all the bad and evil things in the world.
And what do Trudeau and one silly citizen of Canada have to do with Trump saving the US and returning it to its spiritual roots, which is what the bulk of the article is about? Well, nothing, if Kunstler were to be honest. Trump is not living in Canada, will not run for office in Canada, is not seeking to save Canada, and may not be able to locate Canada on a map. Likewise, Trudeau is not living in the US or running the US government or setting policies in the US. The inclusion of Canadians into the article is a non-sequitur.
As to looking to Trump for our renewal….ha, ha, ha, ha, well, that’s quite a reach. You could substitute Clinton or Bush or Biden or Obama and it would sound just as inane. None of these people – including Trump – give one rat’s tiny little ass about the working people in this country.
The last few days, I have been puzzled by random items placed in-between the articles without explanation here at TAE. I’ve even reloaded the page, thinking the titles or the captions are just not showing up on my browser, but that does not seem to be the case. They are really just sitting there without any context.
Aug 31, near the top of the page, there’s a photo of Reagan with – I’m pretty sure – Gorbachev and Bush Sr. Why? What does this picture mean – no caption, not associated with any article, why is it just tossed in there? Then further down the page is a picture of a younger Putin and Gorbachev and someone else. Also not captioned. I know Gorbachev just died, but I’m not sure if these photos are supposed to be important for some reason, or if they are just stuck into the line-up of articles as a substitute for some sort of Gorbachev obituary.
Sept 1, random photo of Reagan with… well, I’m not sure who that is, although I am pretty sure I should recognize the person. But why is this photo displayed at all? Does it mean something? Was it some important moment in history? Or are we just admiring Reagan, like, in general?
Sept 2, near the bottom of the daily line-up, there’s a photo of a newspaper clipping from a German (?) newspaper. “GEA-ONLINE. Umfrage – sind sie zufrieden mit…”. Maybe a poll taken in Germany? Under the photo of the clipping, there is a line written in English, “ ‘Are you happy with the Chancellor’s work?’ Find the trick.” Hmmm, might be easier to find the trick if I knew what this clipping is and what it says.
Today, under the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon (which is not attributed, btw), is a partial map of the USA. It would appear that the highlighted parts are the rivers that feed into the Gulf of Mexico. Is there something we are to gather from this map? Is this map giving us important information about something to do with recent events? Surely there was a reason to post it, but what is it?
I feel like I am taking a Rorschach test here lately.
The Colossus of the Apennines statue is amazing. Built in 1579 and 35′ tall. Just wow.
Thanks for that, Ilargi.
I’ll do you one better on the guitar video.
This kid (he’s 21, so a kid to me), was born in Poland, plays acoustic guitar. Started learning the guitar at age 10 and was re-arranging music and writing his own compositions by age 15. Amazing musician. He goes by his first name, Marcin (mar-cene). What it takes 4 musicians to do in the “perfecto” video, he does by himself. And then some. Very gifted musician.
Marcin – Kashmir on One Guitar (Official Video)
Pelosi says, “We come in peace.” [“We come in friendship to Taiwan, we come in peace for the region,” Pelosi said during the meeting with Tsai Chi-chang, the deputy speaker of Taiwan’s parliament.]
Yeah, uh-huh. I think that most of the planet has by now grokked to the fact that the US may come in peace, but wants to leave in war. The US can take any difficult situation – or even a minor somewhat-difficult situation – that requires a bit of careful, mature diplomacy and turn it into a cage match to the death. Preferably other people’s deaths, but with weapons supplied to all sides by the US.
Did it in Afghanistan, creating the mujahideen, who became the Taliban, to get the Russian-Afghanistan war started. Later, got a bunch of countries to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, because now they were the enemy. Told Iraq we were going to rid them of their despot, Saddam Hussein, then got a coalition of the willing to bomb the fuck out of the place. In real democratic-like fashion, held a 5-minute show trial and hung Hussein faster than shit through a goose. Left the country in ruins and full of deleted uranium. Got some countries to do a kinetic action in Libya to help them with their despot, Ghaddaffi. Didn’t even bother with a trial for the guy – just raped him with a knife and killed him beside the road. Left Libya in even worse straits than we left Iraq.
Sold/sell weapons to Saudi Arabia to blast Yemen into starvation. Here’s our stance on Saudi Arabia; try to suss out what our policy is, exactly:
The Biden administration in 2021 announced an end to U.S. military support for “offensive operations” carried out by the Saudi-led coalition against Yemen’s Houthi rebels and suspended some munition sales.
On June 8 2022, the Biden administration confirmed that United States military personal were deployed and conducting operations within Yemen.
This is just some of the fairly recent stuff. Immediately, we also have Ukraine going on. Here’s Lindsey Graham gloating that as long as the US arms Ukraine, “they will fight to the last person.” And, he says, “I like the structural path we’re on here.”
https://mobile.twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1554486803431886848
So now we have to do something about Taiwan too, given that, you know, it’s so close to das homeland and part of our sphere of influence, under our purview so to speak, and all that horseshit. So we come in peace and offer war:
This is about a new bill introduced by Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham together:
Senator Menendez’ remarks on the bill:”We noticed the warning indicators for Ukraine in 2014 and didn’t take motion which may have deterred additional Russian aggression. We can’t afford to repeat that mistake with Taiwan.
“That is why I’ve labored with Senator Lindsey Graham to introduce the bipartisan Taiwan Policy Act of 2022.
“Our legislation would reinforce the safety of Taiwan by offering virtually $4.5 billion in safety help over the subsequent 4 years and recognizing Taiwan as a “major non-NATO ally” — a strong designation to facilitate nearer navy and safety ties. It would additionally increase Taiwan’s diplomatic area by its participation in worldwide organizations and in multilateral commerce agreements.
“The laws would additionally take concrete steps to counter China’s aggressive affect campaigns, impose crippling financial prices if Beijing takes hostile motion towards Taiwan (reminiscent of monetary, banking, visa and different sanctions) and reform American bureaucratic practices to bolster assist for Taiwan’s democratic authorities. In quick, this effort can be the most complete restructuring of U.S. coverage towards Taiwan since the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979.”
“We come in peace.” Snort. Somebody sure hocked a mighty big loogie into the gene pool on this side.
Well, Ilargi, if Picasso “adored” them, it was a funny kind of love. Picasso seduced Walter when she was 17 years old. He was 45 and married. He and Walter had a child together. He promised to divorce his first wife (which he did) and marry Walter (which he did not do). The relationship went on for awhile, even though in the last years Walter knew she was sharing him with his new mistress – Dora Maar. Walter eventually committed suicide. (To be fair, she did that after Picasso’s own death, so he was spared from having to ponder how the relationship had affected her.)
Picasso enjoyed pitting Maar and Walter against each other for his attention until Walter had the sense to leave him. With Walter out of the picture, Maar got more “loving” from Picasso. He physically abused her and deliberately sabotaged her photography career. Maar became clinically depressed and suffered a nervous breakdown which required years of therapy. She spent the last decades of her life alone and never received the attention she deserved for her own art and photography. It was only posthumously that her later experimental work in photography was found and put on exhibit.
Sad stories.
Ilargi,
I don’t think I’ve ever commented on the art you open your posts with, but today I will offer an opinion.
Enough already with Picasso’s repulsive, louche, peculiar, and disrespectful renderings of women. The guy was an overt misogynist, who treated women like doormats and sexual toys. His paintings of women, with odd placement of boobs and bizarre extra appendages or strangely misshaped parts are not “interesting” – they are the signal of his inner psychological need to demean and mock the females in his life. Two of the women in his life committed suicide and two others were put away after having nervous breakdowns. His own granddaughter wrote about him, “He [Picasso] submitted them to his animal sexuality, tamed them, bewitched them, ingested them, and crushed them onto his canvas. After he had spent many nights extracting their essence, once they were bled dry, he would dispose of them.”
Plus, his art is just ugly.
Ah, but I don’t come only to complain about your taste in art; after all, each to his own, and I can easily scroll past the picture of the day. So rather than just offering the personal aghastitude and revulsion I feel toward Picasso, I have a suggestion for some other artwork that would make subtle political statements about these times in which we find ourselves.
How about some Russian art? The Russians are being banned all over the place. Let’s celebrate them instead. Here are some names of Russian masters as a for-instance:
Valentin Serov
Ivan Shishkin
Isaac Levitan
Ivan AivazovskyOr, how about this? Some Dutch painters to show solidarity with the farmers of the Netherlands:
Pieter Claesz
Johannes Vermeer
Rembrandt
Ferdinand Hart Nibbrig
Jan van GoyenBoris Johnson has resigned:
https://news.yahoo.com/uks-johnson-defiant-even-opponents-063839678.html
@My parents said know:
“The Constitution didn’t address abortion, and there were abortions then.
The Ten Commandments didn’t address abortion, and there were abortions then.
Abortions would have fallen under “property law”, not murder.
Women are no longer property.”Interesting you would say that. The history of the US clearly records that white women in the US were legally allowed abortions (up to the point of “quickening”; i.e., feeling the fetus move within the womb, at about 15 – 20 weeks after conception) until some individual states began to outlaw abortion. Most states started with laws that made it illegal to have an abortion after the quickening. These laws started going into effect in the 1820’s – 1860’s. Gradually, some states added laws to make abortions illegal at any point, except to save the life of the mother. Abortions were considered “common law” until then, both in the US and England; common law being a term that basically means “the body of unwritten laws based on legal precedents established by the courts”.
But abortions were not allowed for black women even while they were legal for white women. And that was because of property laws – black women were considered “property” and they were deemed to be depriving their white owners of his “property” by aborting one of his future slaves.
I’m pretty sure you already knew all that, which is why you wrote the comment, but I wanted to add some details for others who might not be aware that in fact abortions were related to property laws.
On that damned ethanol additive: It doesn’t just damage small engines like lawnmowers, it damages car engines. The manual for my ’12 Civic warns that using above 10 % ethanol will degrade parts of the engine rapidly and using anything more than 10% will nullify the engine’s warranty. (Not that a warranty is still in effect in my car’s particular case, but the point is obvious.). Furthermore, ethanol reduces gas efficiency – you get at least 10% fewer miles per gallon with gas that has ethanol added to it.
So they sell you a product diluted with corn oil that “costs less”, but you have to buy more of it to go the same miles (thereby nullifying the “costs less” mantra) and it ruins your engine.
Boy, here’s some right-in-your-face shit: after getting the EU to commit economic suicide by sanctioning Russian oil (following orders from their “ally”, the US), Joe Biden now says that the US can benefit from the reduced prices that Russia will surely have to offer in order to sell their oil. I guess the US is going to end its own embargo of Russian oil and LNG soon; certainly before the mid-terms.
I wonder if anyone in the EU is paying attention. Biden is flatly laying out how they were just sold down the river in this US game and he is more or less gloating about it. For its part, Russia responded by saying they won’t sell without a profit and will find the profit in whatever markets that the demand for oil products opens up – a remark which very subtly points out that this whole shit-show has sent prices up, and the US won’t be getting bargain basement pricing after instigating the whole thing.
see:
https://www.rt.com/news/556489-biden-cheap-russian-oil/The Supreme Court released some of this session’s rulings. No, they didn’t release the official ruling on Roe yet. I read about this one at 4 a.m. Eastern time, and it has since disappeared from the news compilers. It basically does away with the idea that a defendant is entitled to adequate representation, and also says that even if you are later proven innocent, you can still be put to death. The majority opinion was some blabber about how the original guilty finding has to be honored even if it turns out you had a shitty attorney who didn’t bother to present evidence that would prove your innocence. Does away with the idea of adequate representation and means that the appeals process pretty much doesn’t exist any more.
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The Supreme Court Just Said That Evidence of Innocence Is Not Enough[…] On Monday morning, by a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court concurred: Barry Jones’ innocence is not enough to keep him off of death row. The state of Arizona can still kill Jones, even if there exists a preponderance of evidence that he committed no crime. […]
https://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-just-said-evidence-024506252.html
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