Meet world”s first edible robot Bangkok Post (furzy)
Scientists have discovered a 50,000-year-old herpes virus – and perhaps how modern humans came to rule the world Guardian (Kevin W)
Is Christianity Based on Psychedelic Trips? Nautilus (Micael T)
Misinformation was named the top global health threat in the coming years Your Local Epidemiologist (Kevin W). Kill me now.
>Holy Shit<
Whooping Cough cases in England
— tern (@1goodtern) May 30, 2024
#COVID-19
Long Covid at 3 Years Eric Topol (Robin K)
UMD Study: N95 Masks Block Almost All Airborne COVID-19 Mirage News(Jay Ess)
Climate/Environment
Cut In Ship Pollution Sparked Global Heating Spurt Guardian
White House to support new nuclear power plants in the U.S. CNBC (Kevin W)
China?
TikTok Preparing a US Copy of the App’s Core Algorithm Reuters
Myanmar
European Disunion
European Parliament Still just a sham parliament Hintergrund via machine translation (Micael T)
Downgrade to French credit rating stings Macron government Financial Times
German inflation increases in May Think.ing
Old Blighty
Gaza
Hamas no longer poses major threat to Israel, Biden says Politico (Kevin W). So why is the US still providing arms, particularly those super heavy bombs?
Exclusive: Inside America’s Secret Efforts to Free US Hostages Vanity Fair (Dr. Kevin_
Egypt tight-lipped over Israeli takeover of Gaza buffer zone Guardian (Kevin W). As has been the US.
Israeli embassy in Mexico set on fire (VIDEOS) RT (Kevin W)
You Can’t Turn Back the Clock on Genocide: “Easily 200,000 Deaths in Gaza.” Counterpunch
New-Not-So-Cold War
NATO boss seeks 40 bln euros per year for Ukraine military aid, source say Reuters
Biden partially lifts ban on Ukraine using US arms in strikes on Russian territory, US officials say Associated Press. This account says more clearly than other did (perhaps in response to press questions) that the policy for Ukraine not to use long-range missiles to strike “offensively” in Russia has not changed. But WTF does that mean in practice?
US to offer Ukraine security pact as tensions rise between allies Financial Times. Alexander Mercouris reads this as an empty gesture.
Ukraine: Russia won’t escalate, US will Indian Punchline (Kevin W)
Le Pen Sees Macron’s Backing of Ukraine’s Strikes Inside Russia as Step Toward World War Sputnik
Orban: Europe has entered the phase of preparing for war with Russia (Micael T). Anti-Spiegel via machine translation
MARK RUTTE, THE DUTCH INVADER, IS SINKING IN THE HUNGARIAN GOULASH John Helmer
G-7 to Target Banks Helping Russia Evade Ukraine War Sanctions Bloomberg
Russian grain will find new buyers instead of Europe Vzglyad via machine translation (Micael T)
Syraqistan
‘Lucrative’ trap: Egypt lured by billion-dollar IMF deals RT (Robin K)
Exclusive-US to Boycott UN Tribute to Iran Leader Killed in Helicopter Crash US News (Kevin W)
Imperial Collapse Watch
BRICS: $260 Billion in Trade Without a Single Dollar InfoBRICS. Yours truly favors mulitpolarity, but the frequency with which fans grossly overhype their case is frustrating. Russia was trading oil with China outside the dollar in 2015. This hyped $260 billion (no time frame specified) compares to $24.9 trillion dollars in exports in 2022. So if we assume the $260 billion took place over a year, it’s 1% of total trade. Oh, and even worse: this is “plan to conduct”!!! It hasn’t even happened!
The number British Army troops has fallen below 73,000 for the first time since the Napoleonic era Telegraph. Yet they are, or wanna be, the #1 bear-pokers.
Trump
McConnell comes to Trump’s defense after guilty verdict The Hill. As most of you know, McConnell and Trump have often not seen eye to eye.
Ding, Dong, the Witch Still Leads the Polls Matt Taibbi
Wall Street Billionaires Are Rushing to Back Trump, Verdict Be Damned Bloomberg. Banner headline, full width of screen.
Trump’s Republican megadonors shrug off his guilty verdict CNBC
Chartbook 287: After the verdict: American money and Donald Trump Adam Tooze (Randy K)
Antitrust
Apple News+ Subscription Growth Blows Away Major Media Sites CultofMac. Paging Lina Khan
AI
Google is Putting More Restrictions On AI Overviews engadget
Civil unrest can spread fast through generative AI Fast Company
Falling Down Boeing Airplanes
Boeing’s New Legal Nightmare: Potential Damages Of $235 Million In Trade Secrets Suit Forbes (Kevin W). That number is not all that bad but it does come on top of lots of other setbacks
The Bezzle
Science Has a Nasty Photoshopping Problem New York Times (Dr. Kevin)
Why policymakers are more likely to risk high inflation during periods of economic uncertainty Guardian
The fading Fed reign of economics PhDs Financial Times (Kevin W)
Commercial Property Meltdown Clobbers Pension Funds Wall Street Journal (Robin K)
The American shopping spree is losing steam CNN (Kevin W)
Class Warfare
You Can Thank Private Equity for That Enormous Doctor’s Bill Wall Street Journal. First in a three part series. What is the world coming to? Would have written this up as a media story (substance already covered here) but Friday was an awfully busy news day.
Newsflash: Inequality in Neoliberal America CADTM (Micael T)
Cash-Strapped Shoppers Are Sending Budget Chains Into Bankruptcy Bloomberg
Why Are People So Down About the Economy? Theories Abound. New York Times (Kevin W). The big one is that voters are still suffering from the big increase in prices over earlier years, which lower inflation now does not reverse.
Right to repair is now the law in Colorado The Verge (Kevin W)
US sues Hyundai, others over child labor at Alabama parts plant Reuters (Kevin W)
Capitalism, with friends like these, you don’t need enemies Steve Keen (Micael T)
Antidote du jour (Mike M):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
217 comments
Comments are closed.
“Is Christianity Based on Psychedelic Trips?”
Hard to say. Do we have the context for the use of natural psychedelics in the ancient world, much less to those attached to the religious establishment? Were they commonly used/ One thing is sure. Whoever wrote the Book of Revelations did so after a particularly bad trip of which I have no doubt.
At least some Christian mystics (Simone Weil) managed to do it without drugs. No idea if that was unusual of course.
There were cannabis ashes found in the remains of cauldrons from the Jewish temple so those priests were likely high af. Combine that with the constant animal burning and that place must have been intense. Sort of like the ghats in Varanasi. Different animals there though.
RK you may find this interesting – first ran across mention of it reading Julian Jaynes’s book on consciousness – here’s an old article from the NYT about the Oracle at Delphi –
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/science/for-delphic-oracle-fumes-and-visions.html
back in the day over 50 years ago i found ingesting Dr Albert Hofmann’s discovery quite fascinating – these days shrooms every once in a while is quite nice –
Thanks. I heard about the Oracle of Delphi and how they were likely high when giving their predictions. I’m sure that those priestesses over the centuries were convinced that it was because the temple was a holy site and wondered why this place and no other in Greece. But no wonder Delphi was treated as so special by the ancient Greeks and it must have been magnificent in its heyday-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi
‘in its heyday’ – we need Mr Peabody’s Wayback Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oyd6f_qNQA
I believe Robert Graves, in The White Goddess, refers to John Mark Allegro’s work on the same subject – Allegro lost his reputation as a Biblical scholar over his speculations on the mushroom source of Christianity. Julian Jaynes may have too, having read both in the 70’s.
Today, scholars realize that much is unknown about the (possible many) origins of Christianity in first few hundred years after Jesus.
well…i cant look at a roman cardinal and not see an ambulatory amanita.
same with santa claus.
i’m thoroughly in the Terrence McKenna Camp on all this.
it comports with both my own experiences in Otherworld, as well as my lifelong study of comparative mythology.
Just a thought, and purely speculative. Apparently there is no corroborating evidence of Christian miracles or the existence of JC in the annals of contemporaneous Roman scholars. So the evidence for the existence of JC is self-referential.
But an aggregate religion, borne of psychedelic practices, where various visions of a JC like figure could be cobbled together, would seem real to the participants. And so real that they would fervently want to spread the word. There are quite a few references to “visions” in Christian mythology.
There is debate as to whether Constantine was converted, or used Christianity as a political weapon to keep his empire under his control. Nicaea was a political meeting called by Constantine and attended by invited clergy, as they hammered out acceptable interpretations of Christian lore.
I find it fascinating that the power that Constantine bestowed on his Christian church and enforced across his Empire, which may have been a political feint to keep control, persists to this day in his Holy Roman Catholic Church.
And afaik, Christianity was the last religion created that revolved around the sacrifice of human life as a central religious theme.
Allegro was the 1960s and The White Goddess was the 1940s, so the influence may have gone the other way. R. Gordon Wasson and his wife were both investigating amanita muscaria in the 1960s, so they may have influenced Allegro also. The Wassons thought that mushroom was the source of the legendary soma mentioned in the Vedas.
Christianity had a strange start, because Jesus and Paul were (like some other Jewish prophets) predicting the end of the world within the lives of the first generation, and most of the religion’s big wins came after that prophecy failed. There have been religions that persisted after their end of world prophecies failed, but not with even greater success than before their prophecy turned out wrong.
The article in Links is well written and thought provoking, as far as it goes. “Notorious” ethnobotanist Terrence McKenna wrote a book titled “True Hallucinations” – in it he theorized that magic mushrooms (typically found in ‘cow patties’) led to the creation of religion through “group orgiastic experience” – also possibly explaining why cows are still held as sacred in Hindu tradition. I learned in a comparative religion lecture once that the Upanishads are some of oldest religious texts known. Anyway, psilocybin mushrooms need proper soil and climate conditions (besides cow poop) for the spores to ‘hatch’ and establish the mycelia necessary for eventual fruition- climate change over the millennia forced ‘seekers’ to turn to other mind altering substances (even beer!) to achieve communion with the divine. McKenna’s book is a hoot, btw – loosely chronicles his jungle search for the ingredients for ayahuasca and inadvertently finding a native encampment just teeming with ’shrooms. After a month or more of substantial partaking he has a revelation/vision that the psilocybin spore is extraterrestrial in origin, seeking out sentient life in the cosmos to evolve and join the ‘cosmic overmind’. Another recommended read is “Mind Games” (R. E. L. Masters and Jean Houston) – which inspired John Lennon to write the song so titled. The ‘games’ are group exercises designed to induce ‘altered states of consciousness’ without the use of drugs. The authors were the founders of the Foundation for Mind Research and had already published books on psychedelic research and were rather derailed by Timothy Leary “ turning meaningful research into a circus” – grant monies vanished and LSD and other hallucinogens were promptly outlawed. I had the good fortune to work for them in the early 80’s ( after Lennon’s assasination, sadly) and became a student of Bob Masters who was developing a mind/body technique called “Psychophysical Reeducation”. Jean continued her studies into powers of mental imagery and published a book titled “The Possible Human”, among others. She received some notoriety a few years later when ‘tapped’ by Hilary Clinton – who wished to ‘connect’ with the essence of Eleanor Roosevelt (I hope the money was good- the tabloids and late-night shows had a good hoot). Anyway, I digress. Many paths to the mountaintop – happy trails!
In my teens I bought a tape deck and ran Mind Games as guided meditation. Some of the imagery is still strong fifty years later.
Wrt origins of Christianity and psychedelics I recall at least one more old book, “The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross” by J.M.Allegro. But don’t hold your breath, it’s more an amusement than an actual study. When it appeared, it was characterized (and I tend to concur) as “ravings of a hippie cultist” and “a Semitic philologist’s erotic nightmare”.
Many years ago, maybe 40 or so, a book was written the postulated that Christianity came from the use of the Amanita Muscaria mushroom which grew in great abundance across the middle east.
I’m sorry I can’t remember the name of the book or author, but it made a big splash in the religious and history communities.
I’m not sure if any of these theories are correct, but I believe that humans have an innate desire to investigate the deeper recesses of their subconscious so there is good reason to believe that some kind of mind-altering substances were involved in the beginnings of many religions.
Another confounder may well be mental issues like schizophrenia.
Jaynes addressed that very issue in
The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
I can just see it now-
‘Look. that man is sprouting crazy talk and waving his arms around in the air while dressed in rags.’
‘Yes. He must be the true prophet indeed! And I should know. I have followed enough.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9czBBKof7Yo (3:25 mins)
thankfully George Harrison funded The Life of Brian – it was X-rated for 18 years! – the quiet Beatle left us way too early
Can you imagine if they remade “The Life of Brian” these days? No, I can’t either.
Bring back Otto.
That brief segment where he gets suddenly scooped up by aliens and then just as quickly unceremoniously dumped back to Earth just completely, utterly blew my mind 🤯! I’ve never been quite the same since.
I was broken at ” myrrrrh”.
Supposedly, higher altitudes and Khat produce hallucinations such as a source of light from an unusual source speaking.
What, no toad-lickers?
Or ergot smugglers?
Where have the
tabloidsinvestigative journalists been on the subject? /sWe went to Delphi and Greece on our backpack honeymoon over 45 years ago. The ancient world most assuredly ran on psychedelics around the world no less. Delphi unique due to the vapors emanating from a fissure. Burning Oleander and other “herbs” inhaling, and sitting over spring water emanating hallcinogens might be a unique combination. Absorbing hallucinogens through genitalia and like a suppository is something I never tried, but wow! Amanita Muscara is how reindeers fly!
Finding the source of the Christian Eucharist in pagan celebrations or rites is quite a stretch. The oldest reference to the sacrament is in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (I Cor. 11: 17 et seq.) written around 55 CE, not that long after its purported institution in 33 CE. At the time, the church was composed of both Jews and Greeks, and this cultural diversity gave rise to a number of controversies which Paul addresses in his letters to the Corinthians, the Romans and the Galatians. These issues were also covered at length in the book of Acts. Prominent among these disagreements were questions whether male Greek Christians had to be circumscribed and whether Christians could consume meet “sacrificed to idols” since temples served as abattoirs in Hellenic culture. Nowhere is there a discussion in the letters or Paul, Peter or John or in Acts about a controversy over the Lord’s Supper, something that would be expected had the rite entered Christian practice from Greek rather than Jewish religious practice.
There is no need to find “foreign” influence in the practice of the Eucharist anyway since the Passover, with its themes of sacrifice and blood, had been part of Jewish worship for centuries earlier.
Or maybe Paul was tripping on the road to Damascus.
Well, the root word of fungi, is fun.
And I’m a fun guy. I read the Muraresku book “The Immortality Key” because of an earlier discussion here at NC and it’s pretty hard not to agree. I mean, there are ergot remains in the beer vats, for Christ’s sake, heh.
Them Greeks were trippin’ balls.
For the record, I feel somewhat immortal 45 minutes after indulging, but come back to Earth eventually.
It’s based on fairy tales and fantasy.
Gore Vidal, in his book “Creation” posits that indo-european religions IS based on psychedelics and tripping.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/home/vidal-creation.html
March 1, 1998
VIDAL’S 5TH CENTURY B.C.
By PAUL THEROUX
CREATION
By Gore Vidal.
As every schoolboy used to know, the greatest historical period in the world was the fifth century B.C. The Buddha was alive, and so were Confucius, Herodotus, Thucydides, Pericles, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Protagoras, Anaxagoras, Socrates and Aristotle. Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Nebuchadnezzar and Lao-Tzu had recently died and left zealous students; the caste system had just been established in India; Darius I of Persia ruled from the Nile to the Indus, and after his death, Xerxes became King of Kings; the great battles of Marathon and Salamis were fought; coins were entering general circulation. Cartography was beginning as triremes left the ports of Asia Minor for points east; and in Mexico the Teotihuacan civilization had developed hieroglyphic writing at Monte Alban in the Mixtec states.
Except for the Mexicans, all the people and events listed above, and some others, figure in Gore Vidal’s 17th novel ”Creation.” This is a historical novel with knobs on – not ordinary knobs but Persian, Greek, Indian and Chinese. It takes the form of the memoir-autobiography of one Cyrus Spitama, a half-Persian, half-Greek grandson of the prophet Zoroaster.
Text:
Spitama regards himself as a ”counter-historian,” which is not a bad description of Gore Vidal, who has offered his own interpretation of Roman and American history in such novels as ”Julian,” ”Burr” and ”1876,” not to mention his numerous graceful essays. ”Myra Breckenridge” had a historical dimension, too, even if it was only the movies; and ”Kalki” can be seen as a kind of history of the future. But ”Creation” is different from any of these. It is wider-ranging and more ambitious; it is much more learned; it entertains by giving a bystanders’ view of great events and men, but it never intends humor. It argues the case for monotheism, but is, of course, firmly pre-Christian…
thats on the shelf….but i havent gotten around to reading it.
And what have you been reading if you did not read Creation?!
Personally, after finally tackling Moby Dick (read previously in abridged format for school in the mid 80s, if anyone is interested in timing the degradation of education), I’ve moved on to Look Homeward Angel, A Voyage for Madmen, Two Years Before the Mast (yes, I like seafaring adventures) and now Bob Stanley’s Let’s Do It.
I’m sorry I missed your memo on required readings for June 1 links.
There are many other books
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There is nothing hard to say about Christianity with respect to the psyche, or soul; though following Christ is or can be hard to do.
Belief in Christ has nothing to do with taking mindaltering drugs. It is very sad that this has been even considered to be the case. It speaks to our times that such a ‘rational’ explanation of belief is considered ‘ hard to say’, by Rev Kev, whose name I take to be clerical, but in a clever way. And that you have ‘no doubt’ of a ‘bad trip’ is also very sad indeed, even if that too is meant in a clever way, .
There is nothing in Christ’s teachings nor in the witness of Christians that supports such a conclusion. The message is forgiveness of sins leading to a real understanding of who we are meant to be, what makes for a healthy psyche. We all very much need this forgiveness, as we need to forgive one another. We don’t do this by supposing this path to be inherently achieved by such means.
The texts of Christianity do not support such interpretation. If you read them you will see that many observers erroneously thought such things about the followers of Christ. Not that the followers of Christ were on drugs, but that they must be drunk, which was psychodelic enough for that time.
They were wrong.
Trump needs some good lawyers, not billionaires and McConnell.
Can good lawyers turn the tide when the judge is suffering from extreme TDS?
Yes the fix was in.
More importantly, the “fix” was obviously “in.”
Law has a phrase for this: “The appearance of impropriety.”
Another relevant phrase, referring to the Judge specifically is: “Misprision.”
More specifically, this could also fall under the aegis of “Deprivation of Rights Under Colour of Law.”
See: https://www.justice.gov/crt/deprivation-rights-under-color-law
Trump’s legal team was denied specific information; the specific charges being used to boost some of the charges into felonies. That opens up the proverbial “can of worms.”
That will all come out on appeal, well after the election and the payoffs, book deals and money laundering have completed.
The whole goal appears to have been to ensure unelectability, or at least attempt that. The alternative, once any change in control happens with White House, Senate and House, is that there is a tidal wave of evidence that will hit the fan. Mixed metaphors will be the order of the day.
People have begun to see more the fundamental corruption of the self-dealing circle of jerks in DC, MIC, Pharma (paging Fauci, Pfizer et al) and NGOs. No inquiries allowed to complete on W, Cheney, Holder, Hillary, Biden and all the other PMC scum that have been ruining the country and destroying whatever is left of an international reputation for, well, much of anything.
On the bright side, all of Biden’s Newcomers see the beacon illuminating the shining city on a hill, and the open borders. They are leaving the old countries for more freedom, more opportunity, more handouts, free citizenship, voting and less suppression. Maybe the joke is on them, as well.
End rant /s :/
Maybe. I’m not a lawyer, but sounds like a Supreme Court case, where you need really good lawyers and a lot of time, which is money. Trump not paying his lawyers a lot is coming back to bite him at a bad time.
Probably not wise, if one is a “good” lawyer, to hire out to the Trump brand. A whole lot of downside risk to life, liberty and reputation. Lawyers feed off billable hours, but if they can’t collect? The PTB have no qualms or shame, behind that long-nurtured, impenetrable shield of impunity.
Maybe none of this matters, per Scott Ritter. He rightly observes that a sheltered cadre of lifeless PMCs and Rapturists are and have been planning and courting nuclear war for generations. Notes their core “belief” is that the US can win a nuclear war on the whole world, the operative notion is that more of US “civilization” will “survive” than that of any other bloc, like 40% of US “assets” vs approaching zero for every other place on the planet. No other place, China, India, Africa, South America, is off the US target list since US is supposed to be the “sole remaining power.” The discussion: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S00kSHWrwJY
This is a guy who is close to the subject and is genuinely scared at where the Imperial Idiocy is leading everyone. Having watched the issue for maybe fifty years myself, I have to second his concern. See “With Enough Shovels,” https://archive.org/details/withenoughshovel0000sche_c5b3_updateded, and of more recent vintage, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/heres-american-gameplan-nuclear-war-russia-199451
But nah, nobody could be that stupid, right? The Rooskies are bluffing. Jesus is Coming!
>>>Notes their core “belief” is that the US can win a nuclear war on the whole world, the operative notion is that more of US “civilization” will “survive” than that of any other bloc, like 40% of US “assets” vs approaching zero for every other place on the planet. No other place, China, India, Africa, South America, is off the US target list since US is supposed to be the “sole remaining power.”
Paging Curtis LeMay… LeMay to the curtesy phone, please..
I do not know what the future is, but as for the past, despite all the horrors, we have been very lucky.
I could be wrong but I have always had the impression that Trump does not use the best lawyers. In the past I have read of cases where his lawyers lost him the case through incompetency and blunders. Were his lawyers in this case top notch? Certainly Trump has fertile grounds for appeals on the impropriety of how this case was fabricated, provided he has good lawyers.
After years of firing people incessantly and stiffing his vendors, he’s long since ripped through all the quality people who were willing to work for him, and is stuck with whoever will put up with his tantrums.
That’s why you get the big retainer up front and hope its big enough not to run out before the job is done.
Greatest comment evah from the comment section at the Taibbi link:
Thank you, I needed that. Kudos to the commenter. (I might have to make up a tee shirt with that. Even with an added Vote for Jill Stein, I might be risking my life here in NY but it could be worth it.)
yeah.
i just wrote it in the wilderness bar.
…with the “vote for Jill!” attached.
fwiw.
Just a few weeks to the first debate! Let’s make up a drinking game!
Joe ‘ the Teetotalitarian Dictator’ versus Donald ‘the Ayatollah of Diet Coca Cola’.
What if both master debaters were to take a strong drink when a trigger word came about?
The current bunch were fairly weak. Todd Blanche was all over the map in his closing argument. I think all three of Trump’s lawyers were on a short leash from Trump himself.
Appeals are based on the trial itself. Judge Merchan was surprised that Trump’s lawyers didn’t challenge more testimony, particularly that of Stormy Daniels.
Trump needs some good lawyers, not billionaires and McConnell.
Related to the linked article “Newsflash: Inequality in Neoliberal America ” is this following clip from Jimmy Dore Show talking about the neoliberal takeover of the US Left.
Jimmy Dore, utube, 20+ minutes.
“Wokeness” Is A Corporate Plot To Divide Us! w/ Dave Smith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvJvvh-FpDQ
Biden partially lifts ban on Ukraine using US arms in strikes on Russian territory, US officials say
Others are also saying this is not – officially – authorizing strikes inside Russia.
We probably can say we will know Russia has won back the peace it lost in 2014, when The West does not speak or advocate long range strikes inside Russia because it knows any association with long range strikes inside Russia will be met with Russian long range strikes inside The West. It took a long series of Russian mistakes over several decades to get this point of normalizing The West doing and advocating long range strikes inside Russia, and it will probably take time to undo these mistakes so that Cold War norms are restored, which did not allow strikes inside Russia because retaliation was certain and not worth the cost.
On the bright side, Putin no long refers to Western leaders as his “partners” – but Zelensky does. Prophetic?
Is the Kremlin considered to be “inside Russia” because that’s really the only place these monkeys would like to strike.
“mistakes” lol. So you would have had Russia threatening nuclear war “over several decades?” That the minute the west/NATO broke its promise of “not one inch” further towards Russia there was more that Russia could have done, other than putting up with it until it became existential… all the while pleading with the liars to be let into the fold? Never mind Yeltsin the US puppet’s intoxicated help, and even he ultimately said “nyet” only to be dropped like a hot potato after finding some semblance of a spine (actually, more probably self preservation). What exactly would have been your monday morning quarterback’s advice?
Shiver me timbers. You need to pow-wow with Feral Fenster in a place where you can fool yourselves into believing that you’re the smart ones.
It’s déjà vu all over again:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/links-5-27-2024.html#comment-4046507
1). “mistakes” lol.
Yes mistakes. Even Putin has admitted he make many mistakes trusting The West, among other ways with Minsk 1 & 2. That process covered many years. Also, the Donbass malitia reportedly defeated and encircle Ukraine forces that had attacked them, then Putin intervened and saved the Ukraine forces from their fate. Putin then watch for almost 8 years as The West armed Ukraine to the teeth.
I baffled why it is wrong to note this.
I also just looked at Yves comment yesterday after mine. Honestly I have no idea what she is saying.
2). “So you would have had Russia threatening nuclear war “over several decades?”
Your words, not mine. How is Russia defending herself equal to Russia starting a nuclear war? I don’t accept Western narrative that Russia defending herself = starting nuclear war. In fact, I think that is part of the problem. What I am saying is Russia has a right to defend herself. What you are in affect saying, is that is not starting nuclear war if The West attacks Russia, but it is if Russia defends herself in kind from Western attacks. If that is true, you are limiting Russia’s right to defend herself and excusing The West’s aggression. Please explain why it is Russia who starts a nuclear war by responding to Western aggression to herself?
This should be obvious, but you are so stuck to sounding like a broken record, and wedded to this ridiculous position, that you refuse to see it. Russia simply lacked the power to defend herself with anything other nuclear weapons. As it gradually gained power, it began pushing back. Now we are at the point where it’s the west that is left with nothing other than the literal nuclear option. This is all a matter of the historical record.
“you are so stuck to sounding like a broken record…”
Broken record this:
80,000 Russian soldiers have died only to reclaim what Putin gave away by his self admitted mistakes in 2015 or there abouts. Had Putin acted logically, 2022 would have started with no NATO fortifications, and Russia firmly in control of the ENTIRE Donbass. Ukraine would have lost Donbass in it’s ENTIRETY in 2015.
2022 would have started with The West attacking a Donbass that Russia totally occupied and able to defend.
Instead, Putin made mistakes. He has said so.
Broken record that. Any why hasn’t Yves blacklisted YOU?
So who’s the broken record?
Russia simply lacked the power to defend herself…
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1d4Cy
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Russia and Germany, 1990-2022
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1d4CJ
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Russia and Germany, 1990-2022
(Indexed to 1990)
Russia simply lacked the power to defend herself…
Russian Real GDP decreased by an astonishing 42.5% between 1990 and 1998. The problem was the Yeltsin government.
“Also, the Donbass malitia reportedly defeated and encircle Ukraine forces that had attacked them, then Putin intervened and saved the Ukraine forces from their fate.”
That was the battle of DeBaltsevo, during which Merkle went to Moscow to beg for mercy on behalf of NATO. Putin’s agreement to curtail the battle was what ultimately produced the Normandy Process that created Minsk I.
I think that even Putin, put to the test, would have to agree that it was about the only thing they could have done at the time given how weak Russia still was after the fall of the Soviet Union. A lot of these determinations (“mistakes were made”) are made in hindsight but Russia always does the conservative thing, and destroying what was actually a de facto NATO army at the time would have been considered a radical idea for a country unsure of its’ abilities to resist a larger conflict with less rational adversaries.
What all of those “mistakes”, from the warning at the Munich Security Conference in ’07 all the way up to the Istanbul Treaty, produced was a paper record that is invaluable the Russian position today. No one knows the value of receipts like a good lawyer, and all of those “mistakes” are what has the RoW on their side right now.
The problem I always had with Feral Finster’s analyses is that he knew better than they did, but they are winning. Second guessing the winners decisions in conflicts seems to me to be a losing proposition, because there is nothing simple about the process of getting there.
Putin’s principal goal is to improve the well being of Russians and strengthen the society, after the hell they went throu in the late 1980s and 1990s. Only with a stronger society Russians could have tried to really draw a line in the sand. Makes sense to me. Otherwise, Russians would have been maybe easier to convince to go on the path of color revolution.
So Putin was too bidding his time.
This thinking that there is some magic trick, some one bullet shot that will instantly put Western rulers back in line and make them do what Russia says, looks very much like mirror image of these Western rulers constantly babbling about restoring deterrence, teaching Russia lesson, showing bully Putin who is chef on this playground, etc.
What if there is no such trick and deterrence will not be achieved by firing one Kalibr on some random Polish airfield? What if it requires military defeat serious enough that critical mass of inhabitants of West can no longer avoid seeing through the propaganda about Russia being two weeks away from collapse?
I don’t think there can be such a defeat for the West, short of T90s rolling down Pennsylvania Ave. The war’s devastations have to come to the doorsteps of the fanatics, lest they can just dismiss them as the “,little’s problem” that is “worth it” for the sake of “the Great Cause,” whatever that is. That will never happen: Russia does not need a “win.”. It needs only results. They can get close enough without paying inordinate costs. It won’t be perfect: it’ll suffer from terrorism problems and all, but not enough to seek a once-and-for-all solution, I imagine.
I imagine that Russia/China don’t have to put tanks on Pennsylvania Ave. They just have to create a general economic inflation in the USA that replays the Civil War. (All the weapons are already here in garages and bedrooms throughout the land.)
When Wal*Mart starts selling uniforms in red & blue hues, that’ll be your clue we are about to go toe to toe with one another.
“…short of T90s rolling down Pennsylvania Ave.”
isnt that what all the alternative, parallel institution building is all about?
brics, shanghai, ect, etc?
a nonviolent, indirect method of putting the hurt on western imperialist nutjobs?
and all the subtle soft-power/trolling things…like making a museum in moscow featuring various western wunderwaffen?
i see russia, china and the rest of the ROW turning their backs on USA…shunning us.
more and more, but incrementally…and this because they still fear our idiocy…and our unwillingness to abandon all these hubristic dreams of world domination.
Pepe referenced Daoism twice in a recent sputnik thing…and thats sure what it looks like to me, from my tarpaper shack on the moon.
then i spend all day, today, slowly gnawing through a long conversation the blob had with itself in FP,lol…
if in Putin or Xi’s shoes, would you think it prudent to overtly poke right back at such a bully?
as a sort of seceded microstate, i just want to be forgotten by godzilla and mothra.
(we’re a landed trust, now…after 20+ years of me lobbying for it, both subtly and at times vehemently…close as we can get to allodial title)
Countries like the United States don’t care about non violence as long as they can commit atrocities far away from home. BRICS, etc hasn’t stopped Herr Biden from sending weapons to Gaza. Americans will only care about world affairs when the flow of goods get interrupted but that’s not going to happen because of China’s mercantilist policies.
Only nature will fix the United States of America.
I’m skeptical that alternative institution building will be as successful as people seem to believe. International institutions are difficult to build: even if successful, they’ll take decades to get right. The more likely outcome is that the incumbent institutions will be broken but the new ones will be dysfunctional. A most difficult situation for all involved, but probably not enough to get Western elites to repent, so to speak. That’s the sort of situation I had in mind, where Russia does not “win,” but succeeds in its goals, albeit with a lot of loose ends and persistent problems. In some ways, reminiscent of 1920s, perhaps. That thought does not exactly fill me with optimism.
I completely agree with your first statement (there is no magic bullet for either side), and while your second statement (inflicting overwhelming defeat) might be correct, it does not appear to be the Russian strategy.
After the initial miscalculations and “difficult decisions”, Russia seems to have settled into a conservative* game of escalation. The West escalates too, but seemingly with much less forethought.
Mearsheimer says Russia is also escalating with its war goals. Fair enough. Meanwhile the West seems to be stuck with its original plan: ‘bleed Russia every way short of direct war, they’ll collapse any minute.’
I guess Russia dominates the escalation game up to point of fighting local NATO armies in Ukraine. The calculus gets tricky if Europeans launch attacks from their soil. But things really fall apart if the US starts to commit at large scale. At that point, Russia may have no choice but to respond pre-emptively or risk grievous damage. Hence the talk of deep strikes and tactical nukes.
Russia seems to have concluded it must be very careful–escalate, but slowly. Optimal? Possibly. Maddening to Russia supporters? Certainly. Less erratic, less blinded by hubris and dogma than the West? Absolutely.
* Conservative by Russian standards, with a high tolerance for losses. 50k KIA while continuing to advance into waves of consumer drones seems pretty profligate to me.
If Putin had reclaimed Donbas in 2015, 80,000 Russian soldiers who have died fighting to reclaim what Putin could have taken in 2015, would be alive today. And even now, Russia still has failed to completely reclaim what she could have take with minimum opposition in 2015. If that is magic, I am a believer in magic.
Even now, Russia is still fighting and still dying, only to reclaim what Putin could have had in 2015 or there abouts.
Putin made mistakes. He has said so several times. I am a huge admirer of Putin. But he did make mistakes.
I always wondered what might have happened if Russia intervened more actively then. The lack of intervention did not prevent “friends” of Ukraine (and, well, Ukrainian leaders themselves) from concocting the myth that Donbass militias were actually Russian invaders and such. Some western countries had somewhat more competent leaders who could have steered their country without too overtly confronting Russia,(thinking of Merkel, mostly) but I doubt the backlash against Russia would have been, on the whole, much milder if any, while Russia was much less ready.
In a sense, I wonder if the Munich analogy is apt, after all, except with Putin as Chamberlain, Novorossiya as Czechoslovakia, and Minsk as Munich…
As historical footnote it should be noted that it was allies who won that one in the end, and it was Hitler who ultimately failed with his strategy of aggressively pressing forward no matter what.
The broken record people on the Internet would turn their record to the other side. It would be still be broken, though.
“Russia-Ukraine War: G-7 to Target Banks Helping Russia Evade Sanctions”
This sounds like it might be a move to target BRICS’s banks as they are in competition with the G-7. But it gets complicated. The EU is still importing a lot of resources from Russia as is the US. Take titanium for example. France had to lobby Canada to give a waiver for titanium as France needs it for Airbus and other aerospace firms in manufacturing. And the EU is still importing Russian oil via third parties. And the US is still importing nuclear materials for its own industry. If the sanctions suddenly became 100% effective, then you really would see economic chaos. So the G-7 is likely to target some banks but not those that they need for vital trade with Russia-
https://www.rt.com/business/598475-france-canada-russian-titanium-sanctions/
The west is lucky that the Russians don’t go all Soup Nazi on the west and say ‘No Titanium for you!’
Imperial Collapse Watch
Troops. For Western nations, I see only demoralized accounts of citizens shunning joining national armed forces – and proposals for mandatory conscription. The accounts never if rarely mention pay rates, instead focusing only those various aberrant human mutated species called Gen X or whatever for not being appropriately keen on current US wars or political reasons. The US has a long standing under enrollment situation. Contrast this to Russia which has no problem finding volunteers. It’s been reported the Russians target generous pay to get volunteers and have bonuses for destroying Western military equipment, yet this former Communist nation’s policies using “free market” tools to generate recruitment goes unreported in the Western Capitalist nations which face a dearth of enrollment.
Are the elites so greedy they can’t even allow spending a few extra dollars on decent pay might help them get more sheep to send into the grinders in service to their globalist agendas?
Too busy recruiting woke troops, which would join the ranks to support a nation playing above its station.
The emperor’s new army, navy, supply chain, society.
No, that’s what the migrants are for! We starve them, they come north, and then we ship them to some godawful place along with confused national guardsmen to defend our failed state! No need to offer bonuses. No need to even ask the sons and daughters of the well to do to come up with excuses for not serving. We’ll eliminate the immigrant problem and the issue of not enough military bodies at the same time. The keepers of the market have spoken! Amen…
And create a cadre of the Swiss Guards (of the French ancien regime that is) on top, no doubt.
There’s precedent for migrants turning into a Swiss Guard: that was the Civil War-era Bolsheviks’ relationship with their Chinese units made up of former railway workers who signed in with them for the money and survival (though later the ideological fervour caught on with some of them, at least). Notoriously, they constituted both bodyguard units for the leadership and death squads, since they had no inconvenient attachments to local populations and were wholly dependent on their employers. No motive to rebel, nowhere to go with China far away and not in much better shape than Russia at the time. And notably, those really were crack units; they did fight on the frontlines as well. So that option might be of interest to more than just the current rulers, in a pinch.
According to Wikipedia (well) Russian men between ages 18 – 27 are subject to conscription, and after a year of active duty are placed in a reserve system where they may be called for further service if needed. Some information about the mix of volunteers, conscripts, and reservists is classified:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Armed_Forces
Yes, though there are many exemptions and also many contract soldiers (often also people who served the necessary term and then voluntarily signed on to stay).
My understanding (can’t remember where I heard this from) is that Russia prefers to recruit its professional soldiers among the conscripts at the end of their term, is that true? In a way, that seems a more efficient way to build up a professional core of the military.
Yes, though I don’t know the actual numbers. Still, that is a well-known policy here, and it does make a lot of sense. It means conscription works a little like an internship, letting the army get a good look at potential contract soldiers while they learn the basics.
Israel does the same. This is basically a tautology. If you have universal conscription, and don’t recruit foreigners, then all potential professionals have to be conscripts.
In the history rhymes department Turley says the Trump prosecution and Biden in general is the return of John “Alien and Sedition” Adams.
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/01/the-ghost-of-john-adams-how-the-trump-trial-harkens-back-to-a-dark-period-of-american-law/
Of course back then the Adams over reach both strengthened his opponents and dented his rep until a recent wave of zealous Hamiltonians have been seeking to bring back the Federalists.
Don’t forget the guy in the running for America’s worst President, Woodrow Wilson: “ The Sedition and Espionage Acts Were Designed to Quash Dissent During WWI ,” https://www.history.com/news/sedition-espionage-acts-woodrow-wilson-wwi
Land of the free, my a$$..
Woody has my vote (for the worst prez).
Woody Wilson at least had war as his excuse even if it was a war that many Americans came to view as a mistake. Adams and his pique make a better analogy.
At this point the entire Dem party seems devoted to helping a senile old man run for re-election. Faction is all.
Woody had help, with his shadow campaign rep Samuel Untermeyer. Look him up. That guy got around.
Not to mention a newly created (privately owned) Federal Reserve Bank, with plenty of funds to lend for the purchase of armaments. I believe he was elected on a campaign promise to remain neutral in the snowballing WW1……
Just like our Jewish Russian speaking friend in “Keev”.
I always note that the Federal Reserve Bank was signed into law on December 23rd which tells me that it kinda came in through the back door as those legislators would have wanted to go home for Christmas.
Woodrow Wilson was elected President on November 5, 1912. World War I began on July 28, 1914.
It was his reelection promise. He campaigned in 1916 with the slogan “he kept us out of the war” (may not be the exact slogan–I’m going off of memory.). To be fair, there were plenty of warmongers who attacked Wilson for bring too timid–Theodore Roosevelt, foremost among them. Granted, that promise lasted long…
Wilson’s “reelection promise. He campaigned in 1916 with the slogan, ‘he kept us out of the war’ “…
Wilson asked for a war declaration on April 2, 1917.
[ Thank you.for the important clarification. ]
Wilson’s 3/4/1917 2nd Inauguration address is here.
His call for war 4/2/1917 address to the joint session of congress is here.
At 3,685 words, I won’t repeat it. If the link fails there are others.
He begins with the German use of unrestricted submarine warfare as his foremost aggravation (there are unrelated counter-factual statements in the speech), and, in my understanding, the Germans understood that the unrestricted implementation could/would bring the US into the war. They thought it would impact an allied capitulation before the US could mobilize. The implementation began before his inauguration.
I am only a lowly observer, not a scholar.
But again, in my understanding, and this is a critical point, very little general understanding then (and not mentioned in his 4/2/1917 address), though increasingly later, focused on the loans made by J.P. Morgan to Britain and France in the realm of one billion dollars (many billions in today’s dollars) which could not be recouped if they did not have the means to extract them from the loser, i.e. Germany. (Austria/Hungary and the Ottomans are on another page)
And Americans thought he was saying “He will keep us out of the war”.
“NATO boss seeks 40 bln euros per year for Ukraine military aid, source say Reuters”
And how much of that is for the mercenaries that will make up Ukrainian ranks?
Not as much as you might think. After all, they are an “expendable asset.” Much like the $60 billion for the Ukraine as voted for by Congress, I would imagine that the bulk majority of this money will be spent on the local MIC corporations to make weapons and ammo for the Ukraine and for the European countries themselves. Of course by the time those factories are online, the war in the Ukraine will probably be over but you can see the generated hysteria about arming up to fight off the Russians will be used to keep these factories producing. First NATO was demanding that each country spend 2% of their GPD on NATO contributions. Then the demand was for 4%. Just today I read of demands of from 4% to 6% be spent. By this time next year I expect the demand will be 10%.
I believe the policy of the Imperial capitol (Washington, DC) is to continue the war forever. Unlike the petty wars that the Empire fought against weak opponents this war is perfect for Imperial policy. It will continually bind the Euro-vassals to Washington, create a new meaning and goal to life for the people (war against bad guys) a Europe as a cultural center continues its devolution back into glorifying war as was the case in past centuries.
I see no movement towards peace among the citizens of the West (the Empire) and even if there was such a movement it would be ruthlessly repressed and its champions destroyed. The lineaments of repression are becoming more and more clearly visible.
“E-USA has “always been at war with Putin and Xi”
Give the felon 4 more years!
There is a growing consensus amongst the geopolitical analysts I have been watching (Mearsheimer, Ritter, Sachs, etc.) that the rise in anti-war right wing parties, and even some fledgling left wing ones, in Europe is a direct reflection of a reversion toward a status quo ante in which they traded freely with Russia. The attempted quashing of Germany’s AFD notwithstanding, there is a growing movement to get rid of the present EU leadership that will ultimately leave the Washington led neoconservative consensus isolated to the degree that they no longer matter.
So it looks like the citizenry is on the move, hence their repression by TPTB.
The $60 billion will mostly be skimmed by financial engineering and kickbacks to pols and pundits.
I expect European NATO members will be contributing ever smaller amounts to NATO ‘defense’, but that can still represent a growing share of their plummeting GDP.
Don’t forget the 10% for the “big guy.”
10% of $60 billion is a lot of money.
IIRC the newest US gifts:
$20B for low cost support and reonn assist for the Ukraine to kill Russian soldiers.
$13B to refill the DoD war materials gifted to Kiev by Presidential Drawdown authority.
$13B is new drawdown authority, which next time will be funded.
The rest for Blinken to squander in Kiev!
Of the money given for Israel, $5 billion is for missile defense after shooting on 13 Apr!
Why not elect a felon to be president?
E-USA has always been at war with Putin and Xi!
A slight quibble: you misspelled “grifts.”
So, that’ll lower the EU countries’ defense spending, right, considering the speed at which their economies are tanking? /S
New Nuke Plants…
At a White House event on Wednesday focused on nuclear energy deployment, the Biden administration will announce a new group that will seek to identify ways to mitigate cost and schedule overruns in plant construction.
HEY WHITE HOUSE!!!
I can save you 15-20% on total cost of plant construction. That’s like $200-400 million per plant, or over $40 billion for 100 plants(75% of total US electric production)!
Ready, your gonna love this….
Have the Treasury finance the construction with 0% loans, cut the f’n private banks out of the deal completely.
Woah, woah, slow down now. If you cut the banks out of all the government financing, how are the J Street lobbyists going to be funded? Let’s try to stay real, here, pardner.
If there’s no money to squeeze out that or any other major project it can’t happen. Clearly, the government only exists to funnel money to the oligarch class a long as we have a “business as usual” government. Could that change?
“Science Has a Nasty Photoshopping Problem”
Some good advice to scientific publishers at the end of the article, I do hope that at least some of the points get implemented, for all our sakes
I will never forget the first demonstration of digital image manipulation I saw while the representative was showing us how to use the first phosphoimager. This was probably in the late 1980s, and my first thought was “there goes the neighborhood,” despite the extension of the dynamic range of detection from a factor of 10x for x-ray film to 10,000x with the imager. But: cut/paste, adjust contrast linearly or especially nonlinearly to get the image you want, add color, flip, stretch, crop, resize…It did become an irresistible temptation for some, and most journals now run figures and photo images through detectors that identify manipulated images. FWIW my students were taught that the original image, however it was produced, was primary data and was not to be tampered with in any way. If the experiment worked, manipulation was not necessary. If it didn’t, do the experiment better or come up with another hypothesis. They have listened. In the meantime, Sylvain Lesne still seems to have a job.
The Vanity Fair article is appalling. Blithely claiming that Osman Khan is innocent based on the claims of an American marine jailed next to him (gee I wonder how he got there) and that he was tortured by the “ruthless far left dictatorship”?
Utter trash. I guess there’s a an argument to read it to see what my overlords want me to believe but I really can’t stomach going through the rest of it.
This article mention Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich that is in a Russian slammer though the WSJ is trying to make out that he was just a journalist. Whatever. This made me remember an article that I read a few hours ago. Hollywood A-lister George Clooney set up an organization called the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ). So what is he getting them to do? He is pushing for secret arrest warrants for Russian media figures. He wants prosecutors to issue sealed arrest warrants as ‘We don’t want these people to know about the warrants. On the contrary, we want them to travel to other countries and be arrested there.’ I imagine that they would then be extradited back to the US for prosecution and imprisonment. Journalism is supposed to be a protected profession but it looks like George Clooney has decided otherwise and I am sure that he would support the jailing of Julian Assange. More of those ‘liberal’ values at work-
https://www.rt.com/russia/598608-george-clooney-foundation-zakharova/
Ironic, coming from the person who directed and co–wrote “Good Night, and Good Luck”.
my revelation, as well,lol.
i mean…wth happened?(trump happened, of course)
and thats one of my favorite movies from that decade…when evil was easily identified(lil george, darth cheney, etc)…has one of my top 5 soundtracks.
The Clooney’s are going to be hosting a big fundraiser for Biden, and I have to wonder how Amal will be treated after her advocating for a war crimes trial at the JCC for Netanyahu. I suspect she may find that she has unavoidable prior commitments.
Well they were already part of the group behind the big fundraiser that took place at Radio City Music Hall. But seriously, it won’t be a problem, the more zealous Hollywood Zionists will hold their own fundraisers for Joe. Those she won’t be attending, and they won’t be attending any of the Clooney’s multiple fundraisers.
And as long as she is part of handing Joe a couple of million, he won’t even need medication to treat her like she’s one of the best people around.
George Clooney’s job is to put a pretty face on whatever the intelligence community has decided to do. He is experienced at it. Remember the White Helmets?
Thank you! They unmasked themselves to prop up a genocidal dying order. I will not forget. I will not forgive.
I hope Palestinians, Jordanians, and all people of good conscience have noted their actions/inactions. I also hope that they will soon be parted from their money and respectability.
Clooney and his wife are doing it on the grounds of the “genocide” that Russia is doing in the Ukraine. Hello? What about Gaza George.
They keep telling everyone how “liberal” they are and yet people refuse to believe them. Being a liberal nowadays just means someone who is bereft of any decency, free of annoying morals and 100% self serving.
If you see an article about e.g. “Putin’s war” what you are seeing is propaganda. The implication is that (Putin) is some sort of lone-wolf madman, not the leader of a national government which is pursuing certain policies (whether you or I agree with them or not). I suppose there are nations that really are run by one crazy guy, but for most the reality is more complicated.
“lone-wolf madman”
Err…the US? I guess Joe isn’t alone.
Quite a few people (Max Blumenthal, foremost) have been noting that about another world leader: Netanyahu. People have fantasies about a “liberal” and “virtuous” Israel that would do “the right (and impossible)” things if it weren’t for the evil Netanyahu and all. I suppose, in a way, the same problem prevails in our domestic politics, too: if it weren’t for W, 9/11 wouldn’t have happened (or we wouldn’t have gotten stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq, or whatever.). I think I’m not overstepping if I say nobody here believes that nonsense, but plenty of other people not only believe this, they are perfectly happy to deny multiple realities to justify their beliefs….
“Downgrade to French credit rating stings Macron government”
Of course there might be a deeper cause to France’s economic troubles. In reading this article it occurred to me that recently that France has been kicked out of at least three African nation. More to the point, France was siphoning out the natural resources of each country while paying only Centimes on the Franc for them. Now that has come to a grinding stop with Niger being the latest one. I don’t know if France is still importing resources from those countries or not but I would imagine that those African nations will be demanding market prices for them now. And if they do not want to pay market prices, I am sure that the Chinese will.
Aurelien’s views may help provide more ongoing color and background.
Brian Berletic – Barack Obama created YSEALI.
The narrative…
The Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, also known as YSEALI a highly-competitive cultural exchange program for Southeast Asian emerging leaders sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs. YSEALI programs are known to have 1-2% acceptance rates and are usually awarded to emerging leaders with outstanding work and potentials in their chosen fields or advocacies.
The initiative was launched by President Barack Obama in Manila in December 2013 as a way to strengthen leadership development, networking, and cultural exchange among emerging leaders within the age range of 18 to 35 years old from the 10 member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Timor Leste. YSEALI’s programs include prestigious exchange fellowship programs to the United States, professional short courses and diplomas, virtual and on-ground workshops within Southeast Asia,[3] and seed grant funding opportunities.
The Reality…
YSEALI is Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama’s version of the already existing regime change tool, the National Endowment for Democracy, which supports regional conflicts and wars to make all nations subservient to US interests at the expensive of their citizens interests.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BkhYL6HNms
Israeli embassy in Mexico set on fire
Great headline writing! The content of the article and the video show that the police barricade wall was on fire… not even the ‘wall of the embassy”.
I know it is unrealistic to expect any truth from any traditional media outlet on the subject and we know why they write headlines like this but… I am seeing “journalism” like this more and more. It is not unreasonable for people who only browse headlines to believe there is so much “anti-Semitism”.
“MARK RUTTE, THE DUTCH INVADER, IS SINKING IN THE HUNGARIAN GOULASH”
‘But the Hungarians have been able to put together a small group, starting with their historical neighbours and even opponents – the Romanians. [Prime Minister Viktor] Orban and Szijjarto are now lobbying Romanian President Klaus Iohannis for the position of NATO secretary general. The idea of Budapest is precisely that the representative of Eastern Europe has never been the Secretary General of NATO.’
That Orban really is a smartie and not a false one like Blinken or Rutte. This is some 3 dimensional chess by him here. He gets the Romanians onside though they oppose his wartime policies, potentially gets the Germans onside as this candidate has German ancestry and it may even sideline the northern countries as well as the warmongering Poland/Baltic States as well. And as NATO is building that ginormous base in Romania, are they really going to tell the Romanians no?
Has there been any report in western media that the shot down passenger jet in Ukraine was not shot down by Russians? I have never seen one.
The closest I have seen is the Malaysians had a total gag order on the issue.
This article might give some insight-
https://www.mintpressnews.com/mh17-trial-presuming-fairness-geopolitically-driven-enterprise/276867/
Try the Consortium News archives. They were all over it. Of course the MSM were just the opposite.
John Helmer was also all over it. Kangaroo court trial in the Netherlands and all. 70 posts on his site as well as at least one book.
Romanians (Main Street) do not appreciate the war indeed, but do not necessarily blame the Russians for it. After all, like with the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, the Romanian minority in Ukraine (thank you Mr. Stalin and especially Mr. Hitler) is persecuted and has been deprived of some historical rights.
Plus issues with the Danube, Black Sea and Snake Island, plus issues everyone in the neighbourhood knows how a$$holes and pigheaded and full of themselves ukies can be (some inherited Polish trait someone asks from the back bench…). And then all these American bases open all over the country (making Romania a target for russian nuclear attack). Like with the Turks, they won’t ever want to leave.
But there are Romanians out there willing and eager to sell their country’s interest. History is rife with them. One is Mircea Geona, NATO’s second in command…
It’s a gelatine stick on a vibrator.
On that note, i am continually amazed at the ease Japanese can ascribe a personality to something.
Goodness that is about the most useless point of technology since the Juicero was an actual product available for purchase. I really got a good chuckle from the first seconds of the embedded video.
I enjoyed today’s antidote from Mike M. That’s a heck of a picture capture. I wouldn’t think that bee was just hanging around in frame to get his picture taken. Impressive camera trigger-finger.
Agreed. It’s a good snap capturing a natural moment in a garden.
I know that handsome cat, heh heh. His name is Jean-Claude Killy. He smacked that hornet a nanosecond after the shot.
Jean-Claude Killy – or Jean-Claude Kitty?
Champion skier, of course.
I was so busy oohing and aching over the lovely cat I missed the bee. :)
Me, too. What a Snugglepuss!
US wants child labor to be where it belongs, overseas.
“Exclusive: TikTok preparing a US copy of the app’s core algorithm, sources say”
it doesn’t matter if Tik Tok does this or not. The truth of the matter is that the attacks will continue until Tik Tok is controlled by a Silicon Valley associated corporation where the appropriate back doors and data harvesting algorithms can be installed. I fully expect Telegram to be next as it too is not controlled by western interests. How can you control the latest narrative unless you have all sources of social media locked down first?
Well darn, how time flies.
Apparently Napster launched on this day 25 years ago.
Nap-who? (25 years is a looooooooong time in Mooresville.)
I case you are not joking:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster
I was thinking of the imaginary television program “Moore’s Law,” a cybercrime detective show. Starring Gene ‘Edited’ Barry. And yes, I wish I still had the old mp3 player.
A play on Burke’s Law as it has Gene Barry?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke%27s_Law_(1963_TV_series)
“Russian grain will find new buyers instead of Europe”
Won’t effect Russia much as not only will they send that grain to new markets, they are giving up on Europe anyway and have said so. Of course people in the EU will find that the cost of food using these grains will go up but that is a sacrifice the leadership of the EU is willing to accept. I suspect that they did this to clear the way for Ukrainian grains to be imported into the EU, in spite of the wonky chemical usage. There was mention of having France make up for the loss of Russian and Belorussian grain but as they mention, because of the sanctions the cost of fuel and fertilizers has gone up which may mean that they will need ongoing subsidies. This will not end well.
I am amazed that the Europeans and to a lesser amount the Americans are willing to have the price of food increase so much that people cannot afford to eat; food shortages are not only a way to control a population, it is often the reason for a government’s collapse. If the perception is that of mere accident or temporary failure, that might be forgivable, but being uncaring or deliberate means civil strife and collapse.
That is what happened in France, circa 1789. The “reformers” (including many eventual would-be revolutionaries) wanted to get rid of subsidies and such that kept food prices in cities down (which, apparently, contributed to inefficient agriculture–although that gets more complicated). Not surprisingly (except to the “reformers”), riots started and the ball started rolling from there.
(I seem to remember that “Arab Spring” had high food prices as a major contributing factor, as a more recent example…but the ball didn’t quite roll as far…yet.)
Yves…could you please (roughly/quickly…10 or so essential items..energy, commodities, ag, health.. etc) break down the $25 trillion.
“Russia was trading oil with China outside the dollar in 2015. This hyped $260 billion (no time frame specified) compares to $24.9 trillion dollars in exports in 2022.”
Thanks.
Global exports per Statista. The InfoBRICS types are trying to make the China-Russia non-dollar trade sound like a big deal relative to global trade. It isn’t. Non-$ trade will increase but not anywhere near as quickly as the “death of dollar” types want to believe. Too much black and white thinking going on in general.
Apologies if already covered. Yesterday from The Hill
Bipartisan leaders officially invite Netanyahu to address Congress
FTA:
Will we see Israel flags and standing ovations?
Isn’t there a move afoot to remove Natanyahu as the PM in the Knesset? Will he still be the PM in the eyes of congresscritters even if that happens?
I half wonder if this was the excuse to get out of the country to live with his son in Miami before the lawsuits, both international and domestic, close in. Someone was joking the other day on one of Napolitano’s shows that he can move in with Guaido and Zelenski.
Well we know it wouldn’t be to set him up for arrest as a war criminal (my choice), but it is an interesting thought that things may be bad enough that he can’t wiggle out of legal actions again.
That’s my Senator, who has already sworn allegiance to Israel, but not my Congressman. Goldman would have signed it in a hot minute, well if he wasn’t too busy prepping Michael Cohen for his testimony in Trump’s trial. (Who knew a freshman Congressman could almost make Schumer look like a piker when it comes to being a toady to the worst of the establishment.)
It will be like when the Canadian Parliament cheered for Yaroslav Hunka.
And you just know that a bunch of Democrat women will be dressed in blue and white.
>>>Bipartisan leaders officially invite Netanyahu to address Congress
Gee, let’s insult the probable majority of Americans who know about the Gazan genocide. Most people, whatever they believe, are not fine with dropping two thousand pound bombs on families in tents.
The Israelis must have some serious kompromat on file. I wonder if the pedophile pimp Jeffrey Epstein provided any?
Starting July 1st, users who want to be monetized on X will need to provide Israeli intelligence company AU10TIX with access to their government-issued ID and biometric data.
https://x.com/StopZionistHate/status/1796627822200373703
Users who choose not to be monetized, will be demonized instead.
Most X users are not monetized, including most big accounts. Still bad but nowhere near as bad as it sounds.
If there are any legal experts, I do not understand why the Trump team cannot immediately appeal to a federal court based on a constitutional violation of the arraignment clause of the 6th amendment. Given that many legal experts never understood the nature of the second crime (which was not specified in the indictment) and still do not seem to understand even after the verdict, it seems that a constitutional question is given.
Over my pay grade, but the Supreme Court pretty much never hears appeals of trial court rulings. Team Trump will almost certainly have to go through the NY court appeals process first.
Kind of hilarious from the WSJ. Apparently, someone there discovered the public commons:
(bold mine)
But I thought investment decisions made by private actors were all to the good? Whoopsie.
November surprises are always a fun thing. I’m looking forward to this years. In 2016 we were treated to the POST headline that read Weiner Probe Hurts Hillary and in 2020 the detailed story of Hunter’s laptop.* Here a little ditty to the tune of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. Laughter is the best medicine and the best weapon.
Hunter Biden dropped three Macs at Mac Isaac’s shop
April of ’19, make those things work clean
The fee’s eightyfi-i-i-ive.
When the work was finally done, nothing from the favored son.
Ownership is passed John Paul is aghast
at files on the dri-i-i-ive.
And when he’s reading files from the drive a thought comes to his mind
(Chorus)
Buff buff that boy has his porno out on full display.
Puff puff smoking something funny at least that what I’d say.
Data from the sticky Mac took things in a different tack
Income file reveals cash from shady deals
flowed through Hunter’s ha-a-a-nds.
Daddy didn’t coddle him, a bottle of laudanum
Emptied out his mind. The drive he left behind
Showed his life was gra-a-a-and.
Living rough in seedy motels, he whiles away his time
(Chorus)
Buff buff that boy has his porno out on full display.
Puff puff smoking something funny at least that what I’d say.
Hunter’s anatomy takes his cues from Anthony
Wiener stands alone save it on the phone
To surprise a few, ickey ew.
Papa Joe’ll save the day, 51 ex-CIA
Guys who will attest it’s a Russian mess
It’s just some poo-o-o-o.
It looks like things are simmering down, it’s time to celebrate!
(Chorus)
Buff buff that boy has his porno out on full display.
Puff puff smoking something funny at least that what I’d say.
“Paid it all for thirty years,” told his daughter all his fears
Cash cow for his pop, but he just can’t stop
Being the point ma-a-a-an.
Burisma was a big pay day but the money’s gone away
Taken by ‘the brand’. Lying on the stand
Wasn’t in my pla-a-a-ans.
Secrets can be kept by a group as long as it’s just one,
(Chorus)
Buff buff that boy has his porno out on full display.
Puff puff smoking something funny at least that what I’d say.
*I don’t remember that either. ‘Tis a puzzle.
Since we’re going down memory lane and suppressed information, anybody but me remember when the Times, the newspaper of record, suppressed a story about the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance on Americans until after Bush was re-elected.
Good times.
please forgive my tardiness…
this…i think from yesterday:https://www.foreignaffairs.com/responses/what-does-america-want-china?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tw_daily_soc&utm_source=twitter_posts
been chewing through it since real early this morning(this is my busiest time of year)…and wow.
i think Yves related that the Heer person was the sanest…and i agree…
still, what planet are these people living on?
Xi’s sinister plan to rule the world!
Chinese Aggression!
China stirring up multiple proxy wars!(that one made me laugh out loud and scare the bar kittens)
if these are the people in charge of “foreign policy”…we’re in big, big trouble.
of course, the guys from the original article that this is a response to are certifiably batshit…like they’re john bolton’s intellectually challenged cousins.
i get maybe 2 free articles from FP per month…unless i want to fool with archive.ph, or whatever…so i try to choose carefully, and really get a glimpse into the hive mind.
this one certainly fits the bill.
You might try clearing the cookies from your browser. I hit foreign affairs just to see what happens, and they dropped 4 cookies on me. Can’t say it will help you but it might.
Our local news rag only allows us 2 articles over a certain time period, so I clean them out every day. I like to read the obits to make sure me or my friends are not in there. :-)
Foreign policy people are certifiably batshit? Without a doubt. I would love to see Kirby, Sullivan, Nuland, Bolton, Biden and whoever the hell else with a helmet, cammys, and a gun. Have at it.
You know, Kirby is supposed to have been an admiral…
Yeah, I have trouble believing that, or maybe not. So not only are these people occupying policymaking positions, they also hold flag ranks in US military, too…
You wonder if Kirby had stayed an Admiral, if he would have gotten caught up in the Fat Leonard scandal-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Leonard_scandal
Even worse is retired Admiral James G. Stavridis who is a stark staring lunatic Neocon.
He was an admiral but only of toy boats on his desk. Seriously. He’s never had any operating responsibility.
I certainly don’t mean to compare them, but Grace Hopper was a rear admiral….
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1778279521898389864
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
This is the most insane article on US-China relations of the year so far, and by a VERY long mile:
https://foreignaffairs.com/united-states/no-substitute-victory-pottinger-gallagher
The 2 authors, the infamous Matt Pottinger (former Deputy National Security Adviser) and Mike Gallagher (former chair of the “House Select Committee on the CCP”), argue that “the United States shouldn’t manage the competition with China; it should win it”. What does that even mean, you ask? To them winning is:
1) “China’s communist rulers would give up trying to prevail in a hot or cold conflict with the United States and its friends”… Last I checked it’s not China that has the U.S. surrounded with military bases… What this means concretely is that they want a defanged China that would be militarily and diplomatically submissive to the U.S.
2) “The Chinese people would find inspiration to explore new models of development and governance that don’t rely on repression at home and compulsive hostility abroad”. In other words, they want regime change. And in case anyone wasn’t clear on this, they straight up write this later in the article: “Washington should not fear the end state desired by a growing number of Chinese: a China that is able to chart its own course free from communist dictatorship.” So pretty damn clear that’s what they seek… The accusation of “compulsive hostility abroad” for China is also particularly rich coming from the U.S., when one has been constantly at war for decades and the other hasn’t fought a single war in 45 years…
And how do they plan to achieve this? That’s where things get totally insane. Here’s a list of measures they advocate….
The Chinese that like nothing more than build walls around their country so that the damn foreigners let them be in peace… These Chinese want to conquer the world, eh…?!
The Chinese that burned their expeditionary fleet, to not be corrupted by the outside world, eh…
SO much projection…
ANd I think it would be appropriate if the US were to try some of the democratic experiments it envisions on China. Oh, silly me, they already did and they are happy with their plutocracy…
The Chinese that like nothing more than building walls around their country so that the damn foreigners let them be in peace… These Chinese want to conquer the world, eh…?!
The Chinese that burned their expeditionary fleet, to not be corrupted by the outside world, eh…
SO much projection…
[ Brilliantly expressed. ]
Russia’s homegrown drone industry:
Dron-kamikaze “Upyr” goes into mass production
FPV drone “Hurry”, Developed in the Sverdlovsk region for attacks on the enemy in the front, including to stop the supply of ammunition and to destroy armored vehicles in closed positions, it goes into mass production.
As Vladimir Tkachuk emphasized, the Sverdlovsk region is self-sufficient and can provide itself with high-tech work. Serial production of drones, he said, is at the stage of coordination with the Ministry of Defense.
https://www.nakanune.ru/articles/122187/
I remember that 70’s inflation, and after it got tamed in the 80’s was pretty much forgotten, and left to its own devices can be ruinous.
The USA has been through 3 hyperinflation periods in the past, and should we embark on a 4th, you’ll see crazy stuff happen as hoarders of long green attempt to get rid of them asap.
There is precious little in our country to really spend large amounts on, with houses being it.
Think an LA house at a million is absurd, what about a $45 million fixer upper in Pacoima?
There is precious little in our country to really spend large amounts on, with houses being it.
Well, there is heathcare– that costs a lot. And education– there’s that too. And transportation. Maybe healthy-foods can be thrown into this mix?
The scramble to get rid of something so lustily sought after by so many previously, would be epic in scope to watch happen.
Well, there is Bitcoin…
The Neanderthal article is too ideological.
It’s informative to know that they had herpes, and indeed they may have caught diseases from the Cro Magnons, just like North and South Americans did from the Europeans.
But this doesn’t disprove the argument that the Neanderthal indigenous population disappeared simply because there were so many more Cro Magnons. They would have been absorbed in intermarriages as they assimilated — which is why we have 2% Cro Magnon genes. That reflects the relative proportions of the two populations at their points of contact.
And remember, Cro Magnons were not only in Western Europe. They were in East Asia, alongside the Denisovians, with whom they also intermarried.
Perhaps it was typical upon meeting new groups to exchange women as a sign of peace — like Europe’s royal dynasties arranging marriages.
i’d say “Both”.
plus a bunch of other factors we havent even considered, yet.
ive been rather fascinated by pre-history since i was little.
a local anecdote, regarding the local prehistory:
there were people here before europeans.
the first spanish explorer(name escapes me at the gate,lol) to come through the texas hill country, met them…hung around with them.
recorded their name for themselves in his journal.
but then, somewhere in northern mexico, he spilled wine on that particular page, obscuring the letters in the name of this tribe.
so what was…it is hypothesised…the Sanaa People…turned into Llano(spanish for plains…which this definitely is not,lol).
hence, Llano River, Llano County, city of Llano, etc.
One name stuck with me… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81lvar_N%C3%BA%C3%B1ez_Cabeza_de_Vaca
The crazy thing is that this all happened before the discovery of alcohol. I don’t know if you’ve seen the reconstruction of what Neanderthal women looked like…
Of course it was a lot colder back then, so, any port in a storm I guess.
perhaps i have slightly different standards,lol.
or maybe its just the isolation.
i devoured the Ayla books when i was a tween(Clan of the Cave Bear, etc)…bc that was moms exploration in feminism,so they were layin around the house.
and i was already hot to trot for archaeology, etc.
but whatever…i hear they’re hard workers.
and fiercely loyal.
dont talk a lot, tho…
Misinformation was named the top global health threat in the coming years
well, to the extent that the world was misinformed about a decades long project to create bioweapons that might just have gone awry, i would say this is accurate
Car camping near the Vermillion resort at Lake Edison, and have had great conversations with PCT thru hikers, more young females than males, from what I’ve seen.
The movie Wild with Reese Witherspoon has been quite the catalyst in changing who walks in the back of beyond, whereas it used to be 75% male, its closer to 50% now.
Talked to a 24 year old German miss, who was typical of the new breed on the trail.
When I asked if the movie was an inspiration, her eyes lit up. You get inspiration wherever it comes from, and in the film Reese does everything wrong, from a seasoned backpacker perspective, and walks the first 400 miles through the desert without a hat and manages to keep her pasty white complexion, hooray for Hollywood!
Just watched Dima’s latest Military Summary Channel update. He may be a bit excited but claims the entire Ukraine is in a blackout after the latest missile strikes overnight.
And China has come out with a statement that they’re siding with Russia in order to protect your international law and freedom.
My dear friends:
Subscribe to his Patron; put your likes.
Considering that he is excited all the time, maybe moving from Patreon to OnlyFans would be appropriate.
Good one.
His content while somewhat sensational still doesn’t rise to the level of Busty Daniels and her ilk.
I do wish he would stop saying “greatest counteroffensive” but the name of the game is subscribers and boring doesn’t sell.
His deenergized Ukraine report looks to be on point though, as other reports are on Telegram saying massive Internet outages across Ukraine.
My VPN connection to Kiev still works, so “deenergized” may be a bit of an exaggeration.
> Ukraine: Russia won’t escalate, US will
Note the Putin quote referencing space based ISR coordinating the long range attacks independent of Ukraine.. which means next escalation point will like be taking out West’s ISR capabilities over & around Russia.
file under Imperial Collapse Watch: the Due Dissidence guys, utube, ~10+ minutes.
Biden’s Humanitarian Aid Pier UNVIABLE Due To “Rough Seas”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-1DZcmvnV8
they shoulda called me.
i could build a frelling pier there, dammit.
mighty empire,lol.
cant get food onto an uncontested beach.
and! how much did the half assed effort cost us?
who got the contract?
$300 million, which will look like a rounding error in the overall spending categories combined for Defense, the MIC and our Forever War programs. Empires are costly to uphold and maintain!! SMH.
Unsure about the vendor or contractor. Maybe there’s a clawback or the US management invested in the extended warranty plan when offered? (\sarc)
“After South Africa’s historic election, what now for its global role on issues like the war in Gaza?”
https://apnews.com/article/south-africa-election-explainer-anc-coalition-209935be1d23e859cacb969387ea81e7#:~:text=After%20South%20Africa%E2%80%99s%20historic%20election%2C%20what%20now%20for%20its%20global%20role%20on%20issues%20like%20the%20war%20in%20Gaza%3F
“Public criticism? Only with a lowered voice [google translation]
From 2003 to 2013 I lived in New Delhi as a correspondent, and eleven years later I have now returned to India for the first time. What I found striking was that Modi’s opponents look around to see who might be listening before they criticize the head of government in public – and then lower their voices. I know this kind of behavior from Turkey and other countries where democracy is not in the best shape. It used to be very different in India, even when the BJP was in power. Criticism could be voiced loudly, and the media could report freely. That has now changed”
https://www.rnd.de/politik/die-groesste-demokratie-der-welt-unter-druck-FDCYS2CQLBCAVONIAO3U3NNBYE.html#:~:text=Public%20criticism%3F%20Only,has%20now%20changed
“… Western weapons on Russian territory:
“Military expert Richter does not believe in game changers
Is this decision a game changer in the defensive battle on the border? Colonel (ret.) Wolfgang Richter, formerly part of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), does not believe so.
“The USA has only given permission for the defense of the front line near Kharkiv. So for now, the restriction of long-range systems against targets on Russian soil will remain in place,” the military expert told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND).”
“This means that an attack may only be carried out if a battle takes place so close to the border that the first echelon of a Russian unit is already on the Ukrainian side, but the second echelon is still on the Russian side. Ukraine is still not allowed to attack strategic military targets in Russia, such as missile launch pads, with Western weapons.”
https://www.rnd.de/politik/ukraine-krieg-angriff-auf-russisches-gebiet-mit-westlichen-waffen-ist-das-ein-gamechanger-GYWGX6CJARCQVB4QDTECKNCDD4.html#:~:text=This%20means%20that,with%20Western%20weapons.
“Russia managed to move ahead of Japan in 2021 and take fourth place in the ranking. Russia’s GDP at PPP in 2021 reached $5.7 trillion. This allowed Russia not only to overtake all European countries, including Germany ($5.2 trillion) and France ($3.6 trillion, 2.4%), but – most unexpectedly – Russia also overtook Japan with its 5.6 trillion dollars.
Purchasing power parity (PPP) is …”
Google Translate
https://vz.ru/economy/2024/6/1/1271010.html#:~:text=Russia%20managed%20to,parity%20(PPP)%20is
“on December 22, 2023, the USA issued a presidential decree threatening banks from countries friendly to Russia with secondary sanctions. Namely, if they finance the export of goods with potential military use to Russia or help exceed the restrictions on Russia’s oil exports.
In recent months, more and more banks in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates have reacted to this and brought payment transactions, especially from Russia, to a standstill.”
https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article251781230/Russland-So-viel-Geld-wie-nie-Kriegswirtschaft-tritt-in-neue-Phase.html#:~:text=on%20December%2022,to%20a%20standstill.
“Craig Murray Blackburn Election […]
May 23, 2024: This is it. The election is called and I am standing in Blackburn to offer voters there a viable alternative to the Keir Starmer Genocide Party”
Keir Starmer has calculated that no matter how far he abandons working people and moves the Labour Party to the right, those voters who are themselves getting the short straw in the vastly unequal distribution of wealth in society, or who simply wish to see a fairer world, have nowhere else to go. In doing so he has completely sold out the…
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/#:~:text=Craig%20Murray%20Blackburn,Starmer%20Genocide%20Party
If that is what Keir Starmer is doing, it worked for Bill Clinton and the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council).