This year began on February 24. Without prefaces and preludes. Sharply. Early. At 4 o'clock.
It was dark. It was loud. It was hard for many and scary for some.
311 days have passed. It can still be dark, loud, and complicated for
us. But we will definitely never be afraid again. And we'll never be
ashamed.
It was our year. Year of Ukraine. Year of Ukrainians.
We woke up on February 24. Into another life. Being another people.
Another Ukrainians. The first missiles finally destroyed the labyrinth
of illusions. We saw who was who. What friends and enemy are capable of,
and most importantly, what we are capable of.
On February 24, millions of us made a choice. Not a white flag, but a
blue and yellow flag. Not escaping, but meeting. Meeting the enemy.
Resisting and fighting.
The explosions on February 24 stunned us. Since then we have not
heard everything. And we don't listen to everyone. We were told: you
have no other option but to surrender. We say: we have no other option
than to win.
On February 24, we began to create our victory. From many bricks – hundreds of other victories.
We have overcome the panic. We did not run away but united. We have
overcome doubts, despair, and fear. We believed in ourselves and in our
strength. The Armed Forces of Ukraine. Intelligence. National Guard.
SBU. Special Operations Forces. Border guards. Territorial defense
forces. Air defense forces. The police. The State Emergency Service. All
our defense and security forces. I am proud of you all, our warriors!
This year can be called a year of losses for Ukraine, for the whole
of Europe, and the whole world. But it's wrong. We shouldn't say that.
We haven't lost anything. It was taken from us. Ukraine did not lose
its sons and daughters – they were taken away by murderers. Ukrainians
did not lose their homes – they were destroyed by terrorists. We did not
lose our lands – they were occupied by invaders. The world did not lose
peace – Russia destroyed it.
This year has struck our hearts. We've cried out all the tears. All
the prayers have been yelled. 311 days. We have something to say about
every minute. But most of the words are superfluous. They are not
needed. No explanations or decorations are needed. Silence is needed to
hear. Pauses are needed to realize.
More #Ukranian soldiers telling their president that they are coming for him and all the other politicians if they can only survive this. pic.twitter.com/S30gKpdtAR
Pravda |Background: On 13 December, the Verkhovna Rada approved
and directed the President to sign draft law No. 8271, which
significantly strengthens the criminal liability of the military. A
petition asking Volodymyr Zelenskyy to promise this law gained more than
25,000 votes in a day.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,
stated that he supports the law No. 8271, which increases the criminal
liability of military personnel for disobeying combat orders, deserting
the battlefield or a military unit.
Quote: "Today I have to raise a rather difficult
topic: increased responsibility [of military personnel — ed.] for
voluntarily leaving a military unit or place of service, desertion,
voluntary leaving the battlefield or refusal to act with weapons,
disobedience, and failure to comply with combat orders.
I support the relevant amendments to the legislation adopted by the
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine [Ukrainian Parliament — ed.] and ask the
President to sign the law. My opinion clearly reflects the position of
commanders of groups and military units, who demanded a systematic
solution to this set of issues."
Details: The army exists on discipline, Zalyzhnyi empasised.
And if gaps in the legislation do not ensure its compliance, and
"refuseniks" can pay a fine of up to 10% of combat pay, or receive a
probationary sentence, this is unfair, the Commander-in-Chief believes.
Quote: "Furthermore, this is key: exposed areas of
the front are forced to be covered by other servicemen, which leads to
increased losses of personnel, territories, and civilians on them.
Often, lost positions have to be restored by assault actions at a very
high cost. This should not be the case."
BBC | Speaking
after Vladimir Putin delivered a New Year address flanked by people in
military uniform, Mr Zelensky said the Russian president was hiding
behind his troops, not leading them.
At least one person died and dozens were injured in the attacks.
The
head of Ukraine's armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhny, said air defences had
shot down 12 of 20 Russian cruise missiles on Saturday.
There
were further missile strikes on Kyiv just hours into the New Year on
Sunday, officials said. The Ukrainian Air force said it had shot down 45
Iranian-made kamikaze drones overnight.
But
the strikes, which came in the opening hours of 2023, fuelled anger and
hate among Ukrainians already tired of Russia's unrelenting air
campaign.
As
explosions rocked the capital, some residents sang the national anthem,
while officials accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians
while they gathered to celebrated the New Year.
Andriy
Nebitov, the head of the Kyiv police, posted an image to social media
of a downed drone with the words "Happy New Year" scribbled across it in
Russian.
"That
is everything you need to know about the terror state and its army," he
wrote on Facebook, adding that the remains had crashed in a children's
playground.
emeatribune | The end of France’s coal era seemed so certain last year that the
operator of one of the country’s last coal-burning plants posted an
upbeat educational video on YouTube titled “Let’s visit a coal plant
that’s going to be destroyed!”
The plant in the northeastern town of Saint-Avold indeed halted coal
production as scheduled earlier this year — but not for long. This week,
its workers were back at the controls, transporting coal from storage
heaps and refiring furnaces, as part of emergency efforts to keep the heat and electricity on this winter.
The energy crisis across Europe unleashed by Russia’s war in Ukraine has paved the way for coal’s comeback in some regions, to the dismay of politicians and activists who warn this endangers climate goals, the climate itself and public health.
“Working here we know the negative impact of the coal plant, but
nonetheless we see it as a necessary evil,” said shift supervisor Thomas
About at the Emile-Huchet Power Plant in Saint-Avold.
“Given the current state of the electrical network, I nonetheless
fear greatly that this production tool is necessary in the medium term,”
he told The Associated Press.
Nearby, wheel loaders scooped mounds of coal and dumped it onto
conveyor belts, and gray fumes rose from the plant’s smokestacks.
In France the return to coal is surprising because the country
started phasing it out decades ago and relies heavily on nuclear power
instead. But this year, on top of Russia largely cutting off natural gas
to Europe, nearly half of France’s nuclear reactors shut down for maintenance or corrosion and other problems.
Facing a worst-case scenario of rolling power cuts to households, the
government issued a decree in September to allow Saint-Avold to start
again and continued activity at another coal plant in western France,
citing the “exceptional” and “unforeseeable” context of energy supply
challenges.
President Emmanuel Macron had initially vowed to close all
coal-burning plants in the country by the end of this year due to
climate-related concerns.
As an aside: France does not depend on Russia for uranium: everything
comes from Niger (34.7%), Kazakhstan (28.9%), Uzbekistan (26.4%), and
Australia (9.9%) and is then processed into actual fuel in France.
However, it is entirely dependent on Russia for reprocessing depleted uranium.
The French can perform a first phase (separating plutonium from spent
fuel), but their much-touted prowess in turning “nuclear waste” into
usable fissile uranium is only possible thanks to the Rosatom
reprocessing plant in Seversk.
The last transport with depleted uranium from France to Russia took
place in October, and the French firm Orano, which supplies French
atomic power plants, does not intend to renew the contract. Which means
that spent fuel may soon start to accumulate as genuine waste on the
premises of French power plants…
NYPost | White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday it was
“not healthy” for Twitter owner Elon Musk to publish internal company
files revealing Twitter’s censorship of The Post’s 2020 reporting on
Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“What is happening — it’s frankly, it’s not healthy. It won’t do
anything to help a single American improve their lives. And so look, we
see this as an interesting, you know, coincidence, and you know, it’s a
distraction,” Jean-Pierre concluded during her Monday briefing, offering
a lengthy denunciation of Musk’s Friday reveal of how Twitter execs decided to suppress The Post’s damning expose.
“We see this as an interesting, or a coincidence, if I may, that he
would so haphazardly — Twitter would so haphazardly push this
distraction that is full of old news, if you think about it,”
Jean-Pierre said, brushing off the politically motivated denial of free
speech protections raised by Musk’s document dump.
“And at the same time, Twitter is facing very real and very serious
questions about the rising volume of anger, hate and anti-Semitism on
their platform and how they’re letting it happen.”
The voice of the Biden administration did not note that the Musk-led Twitter booted rapper Kanye West
last week for tweeting a swastika after making a series of anti-Semitic
remarks — or that as of Monday, the nation’s most famous Jew-basher’s
18.4 million-follower account on Facebook-owned Instagram remains
active.
Jean-Pierre’s denunciation of Musk’s moves toward transparency came
in response to questions from Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich.
“On Twitter, because you guys said you’re keeping a close eye on Elon
Musk’s ownership and this is the first time we’ve talked to you since
he released the files a few days ago — is it the White House view that
decisions at Twitter were made appropriately in terms of decisions to
censor this reporting ahead of the election?” Heinrich asked.
strikefoundation | Plasmoids are doughnut or toroidal shaped clusters of net Protons or
net Electrons that once captured and placed into a Toroidal orbit are
capable of absorbing, storing, and releasing enormous amounts of energy
present within their self-generated and structured electro magnetic
containment field. Plasmoids, in effect, function as an atomic battery
that can be-self charging due to the ability to convert matter to
available clean energy. Plasmoids by their unique geometry cause a
consequential electromagnetic containment field to generate a Zero point
naturally and casually, without much effort, have the ability to
convert the nuclear Mass of Protium (Atoms) into energy.
The
Plasmoid Unification Model (PUM) posits that Plasmoids are epoch-making
and that the knowledge of them has been hidden in plain sight for
centuries. This PUM 'slide rule' reveals the algorithmic relationships
life's elements critical to mankind's existence and development, its
parts with Protium which has a melting point of -259.2C and is the most
abundant element in our solar system. Protium determines the 25,920
Great Year frequency of our Solar System. The resonant frequencies of
all other elements can then be calculated when the 25,920 years is
reduced from years to days, hours, and seconds.
The PUM is
evidence that the Universe is an intelligent design. The design is in
perfect octave tangenic resonance with itself. Therefore all of creation
from Galaxies to Planets to Elements all resonate in unison with a
collective chord "As Above So Below”. This is interconnected with an
Energy “web”, the 24 components of laws which we are all based and
governed on the same 16 sector Torus Plasmoid precepts shown. The
concepts and ruling principles of the PUM can and have been applied to
make Energy to Matter and Matter to Energy conversient. When applied to
the modern hydrocarbon powered internal combustion engine, PUM
technology removes exhaust toxic waste products and increases the engine
power output by transforming waste energy back into fuel. Plasmoids
employed in conjunction with Plasmoid Toroidal Implosive Turbine provide
a new novel Matter to Energy and Energy to Matter propulsion device for
water, land, air, and space travel.
NYPost | San Francisco’s transgender guaranteed income program application provides over 130 gender, sexuality and pronoun options, and encouraging enrollees to “check all that apply.”
The “Guaranteed Income for Transgender People (G.I.F.T.)” program will provide 55 “economically marginalized transgender people,” who have a monthly income of less than $600 with $1,200 per month for a year-and-a-half. Although, enrollees can make a maximum of $4,000 a month and still be enrolled in the program, according to the program’s website.
Pronoun options on the application include “Zie/zim/zis,” “Fae/faer/faers” and “Tey/ter/ters.”
Under the gender identity category, applicants can choose from options like “Aggressive (AG),” which is an “identity label claimed by some African-American and Latin@ masculine of center lesbians,” according to the University of Florida LGBTQ+ Affairs office.
“Genderf—” is another option in the gender identity category, which is “the idea of playing with ‘gender cues’ to purposely confuse stereotypical gender expressions, usually through clothing.” according to the University of Connecticut Rainbow Center. Another option is “Two-spirit,” which is an “identity label used within many American Indian and Canadian First Nations indigenous groups to describe an individual that possesses both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ spirits.” according to the University of Florida.
Other gender identity options included “Feminine-of-center,” “Demigirl,” “Boi,” “Tomboy,” “Khanith/Xanith” and “Ninauposkitzipxpe.” Applicants could also choose between sexual orientations like
“BDSM/Kink,” which is defined as a “sexual activity involving such
practices as the use of physical restraints, the granting and
relinquishing of control, and the infliction of pain,” according to the
Merriam-Webster Dictionary, as well as options like “pansexual” and
“skoliosexual.”
dailymail | Childcare experts are expressing alarm over transgender
TikToker Dylan Mulvaney’s popularity bump after her White House debut,
saying social media is driving a spike in teens seeking sex-change
procedures.
Clinicians say Mulvaney’s sit-down time with President Joe Biden
has raised the social media sensation’s profile, extending her reach
and likely influencing teenage fans who may themselves be questioning
their own gender identity.
Mulvaney’s TikTok
following grew to 8.4 million after her White House appearance, and
while she is entitled to share her experiences online, experts told
DailyMail.com that online influencers like her in part drive an alarming
uptick in teen transitioning.
dailymail | 'A lot of the initial deals were tailored to my queerness and to my transness,' she told The Creators newsletter last month.
'For
some of these major corporations, I was actually their first trans
creator. It's exciting to make money to support myself since I lost my
job, and to have my transition surgeries be covered too.'
Her agency, CAA, did not answer DailyMail.com's interview request.
Mulvaney's
ascent has not been without hiccups. Her appearance on Ulta Beauty last
month led to controversy and calls to boycott the cosmetics firm.
Critics called her 'misogynistic' for 'appropriating' womanhood.
Likewise,
a post about Tampax feminine hygiene products left some viewers shocked
and confused. Two replied: 'Is this a joke?' She is frequently bashed
for referring to the vagina as a 'Barbie pouch'.
She
has gained a massive following on TikTok as she documents her
transition to a transgender female — originally identifying as
'nonbinary' but telling followers in March that she was a girl.
Mulvaney
interviewed Biden last month as part of a panel of six progressive
activists for NowThis News. In the interview, the Democrat vowed to
protect 'gender-affirming care,' saying states should not limit access
to transgender treatments.
theatlantic | Everyone I spoke with believes
that the very future of how the internet works is at stake. Accordingly,
this case is likely to head to the Supreme Court. Part of this fiasco
touches on the debate around Section 230 of the Communications Decency
Act, which, despite its political-lightning-rod status, makes it
extremely clear that websites have editorial control. “Section 230 tells
platforms, ‘You’re not the author of what people on your platform put
up, but that doesn’t mean you can’t clean up your own yard and get rid
of stuff you don’t like.’ That has served the internet very
well,” Dan Novack, a First Amendment attorney, told me. In effect, it
allows websites that host third-party content to determine whether they
want a family-friendly community or an edgy and chaotic one. This,
Masnick argued, is what makes the internet useful, and Section 230 has
“set up the ground rules in which all manner of experimentation happens
online,” even if it’s also responsible for quite a bit of the internet’s
toxicity too.
But the full
editorial control that Section 230 protects isn’t just a boon for giants
such as Facebook and YouTube. Take spam: Every online community—from
large platforms to niche forums—has the freedom to build the environment
that makes sense to them, and part of that freedom is deciding how to
deal with bad actors (for example, bot accounts that spam you with
offers for natural male enhancement). Keller suggested that the law may
have a carve-out for spam—which is often filtered because of the way
it’s disseminated, not because of its viewpoint (though this gets
complicated with spammy political emails). But one way to look at
content moderation is as a constant battle for online communities, where
bad actors are always a step ahead. The Texas law would kneecap
platforms’ abilities to respond to a dynamic threat.
“It says, ‘Hey, the government
can decide how you deal with content and how you decide what community
you want to build or who gets to be a part of that community and how you
can deal with your bad actors,’” Masnick said. “Which sounds
fundamentally like a totally different idea of the internet.”
“A
lot of people envision the First Amendment in this affirmative way,
where it is about your right to say what you want to say,” Novack told
me. “But the First Amendment is just as much about protecting your right
to be silent. And it’s not just about speech but things adjacent to
your speech—like what content you want to be associated or not
associated with. This law and the conservative support of it shreds
those notions into ribbons.”
The
implications are terrifying and made all the worse by the language of
Judge Oldham’s ruling. Perhaps the best example of this brazen
obtuseness is Oldham’s argument about “the Platforms’ obsession with
terrorists and Nazis,” concerns that he suggests are “fanciful” and
“hypothetical.” Of course, such concerns are not hypothetical;
they’re a central issue for any large-scale platform’s
content-moderation team. In 2015, for example, the Brookings Institution
issued a 68-page report
titled “The ISIS Twitter census” mapping the network of terrorist
supporters flooding the platform. The report found that in 2014, there
were at least 46,000 ISIS accounts on Twitter posting graphic violent
content and using the platform to recruit and collect intelligence for
the Islamic State.
sonar21 | Let me state up front that there are many brave, courageous Ukrainian
soldiers fighting for their nation. Unfortunately, many of these
soldiers are irredeemable bigots. It is indisputable that many in the
ranks of the Azov battalion celebrate Nazi “theology” and embrace Adolf
Hitler. No amount of rewriting history can erase the bloody legacy
Hitler carved into the land and peoples of Europe during the Second
World War.
So what are we to make of Justin Banse? You will meet him in the
following video. He does not strike me as a racist or an anti-semite. He
seems like a fairly normal 22 year old who is not a deep thinker and
not well educated. Maybe that explains how he could have joined forces
with some modern day Nazis.
If you take the time to watch the video — warning, it is more than 3
hours long — you will understand my confusion. It is a shame that the
guy conducting the interview is so clueless. He should have pressed
Justin to explain how he could excuse the Nazi beliefs and then fight
along side the Azov guys. But he did not.
In a way, Justin is a victim of his prior military service with the
United States. What he experienced as combat against the Taliban (I’m
assuming that he did), was not real war. His testimony in this video
perfectly illustrates a point that Andrei Martyanov makes repeatedly —
i.e., the United States has not experienced a peer to peer war since
Korea. Justin’s account also confirms a point I have made in previous
posts about the lack of artillery and air support for attacking
Ukrainian units. They are relying solely on ground forces and vehicles
and those are no match for heavy artillery, rockets, missiles and aerial
strafing.
Justin does inadvertently reveal the problems facing the Ukrainian
soldiers. For example, he states that the 200 man company he was
assigned to was ordered to Mariupol. He was left behind and the company
was wiped out. None returned, according to Justin.
I feel sorry for the kid. His very soul was scarred by this
experience and it will haunt him for the rest of his life. He has
discovered the sickening reality of war that combat veterans of World
War I and World War II experienced, regardless of the army they fought
for.
WaPo | U.S.
Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
Tuesday night that 20,000 to 30,000 Russian forces remained on the
western bank of the river and that it would take time for them to
withdraw. But he, too, saw “initial indicators” that the retreat was
underway, he said.
“This
won’t take them a day or two,” Milley said, speaking at an event at the
Economic Club of New York. “This is going to take them days and maybe
even weeks to pull those forces south of that river.”
Ukrainian
forces have been slowly advancing toward Kherson for weeks, targeting
ammunition centers, command posts and supply facilities in the region
and putting pressure on Russian forces, said Yuriy Sak, an adviser to
the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
“Literally
it’s no longer possible for them to stay in Kherson because they’re
unable to provide munitions to their army, provide provisions,” Sak said
in an interview. “It’s no longer possible for them to continue to
fight.”
Despite
exuberant troops posting social media videos and selfies of retaken
villages, Ukrainian military commanders are reluctant to broadcast their
next moves.
“The
winter will be a factor,” Sak said. “It could be slower, it could be
faster depending on weather conditions. But we’re not going to stop.
We’re going to continue our counteroffensive meter by meter, village by
village.”
Departing
Russian forces are laying mines and blowing up bridges as they pull
back from Kherson city, and there is concern that some troops may be
hiding in the city, waiting to spring a trap, Ukrainian officials said.
Advancing Ukrainian soldiers also will be within range of Russian
artillery on the opposite bank of the river.
But
a full retreat from Kherson city is now seen as inevitable. Ukrainian
forces have targeted Russian supply lines and choked off Moscow’s
ability to support front-line troops.
“The
Russians can definitely organize some traps in Kherson still, but they
never had enough troops or logistics to keep those right-bank
positions,” said another adviser to the Ukrainian government who was not
authorized to speak to the press and commented on the condition of
anonymity.
guardian | The US and its allies would destroy Russia’s
troops and equipment in Ukraine – as well as sink its Black Sea fleet –
if the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, uses nuclear weapons in thecountry, former CIA director and retired four-star army general David Petraeus warned on Sunday.
Petraeus
said that he had not spoken to national security adviser Jake Sullivan
on the likely US response to nuclear escalation from Russia, which administration officials have said has been repeatedly communicated to Moscow.
He
told ABC News: “Just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by
leading a Nato – a collective – effort that would take out every Russian
conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea.”
The
warning comes days after Putin expressed views that many have
interpreted as a threat of a larger war between Russia and the west.
Asked
if the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine would bring America
and Nato into the war, Petraeus said that it would not be a situation
triggering the alliance’s Article 5, which calls for a collective
defense. That is because Ukraine is not part of Nato – nonetheless, a
“US and Nato response” would be in order, Petraeus said.
Petraeus
acknowledged that the likelihood that radiation would extend to Nato
countries under the Article 5 umbrella could perhaps be construed as an
attack on a Nato member.
“Perhaps you can make
that case,” he said. “The other case is that this is so horrific that
there has to be a response – it cannot go unanswered.”
Yet,
Petraeus added, “You don’t want to, again, get into a nuclear
escalation here. But you have to show that this cannot be accepted in
any way.”
Nonetheless, with pressure mounting
on Putin after Ukrainian gains in the east of the country under last
week’s annexation declaration and resistance to mobilization efforts
within Russia mounting, Petraeus said Moscow’s leader was “desperate”.
“The
battlefield reality he faces is, I think, irreversible,” he said. “No
amount of shambolic mobilization, which is the only way to describe it;
no amount of annexation; no amount of even veiled nuclear threats can
actually get him out of this particular situation.
“At
some point there’s going to have to be recognition of that. At some
point there’s going to have to be some kind of beginning of
negotiations, as [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy has said,
will be the ultimate end.”
voltairenet |It was immediately after the creation of the United Nations that
American leaders found it necessary—as a matter of interest—to break the
new rules they publicly lauded. In doing so, they developed new systems
by which to evade accountability for lawbreaking–including an enormous
apparatus for covert intervention–and, by means of extraordinary effort,
to present the United States’ actions, whatever their nature, as in
accord with international law. [5]
At the same time as the west was planning its covert actions against
its WWII ally, it also created the formation of the terror club known as
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Almost in its entirety it
was a Nazi enterprise. Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, for example, who
had headed the Russia Desk in the Oberkommando der Wermacht (OKW -
Hitler’s Supreme Headquarters) and a consultant on the Final Solution,
was secretly brought to the United States where he would deliver his
vast storehouse of previously hidden files on the Soviet Union and then
set up the Russia Desk for the soon-to-be-formed CIA. [6]
Gehlen would then be returned to postwar Germany where he was put in
position as head of Germany’s new Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the
German Secret Intelligence Service. In essence, two Russia desks (at
least) now functioned instead of just one; both with the same ultimate
aim: destroy the Soviet Union and communism.
Hundreds if not thousands of old Nazis found new life working for the US,
Britain, and Canada as the Cold War was cranked up and now the mass
murderers were brought into policy making for the same Lords of the
Manor who had supported Hitler to begin with. And, with the same old
Nazis back in charge, every foul means was employed against the Soviets
to prevent any challenge of global capital’s right to dictate the terms
of enslavement.
West Germany, now being run by ex-Nazis under Chancellor Konrad
Adenauer, joined NATO in 1954 and Gehlen liaised with his pro-Nazi
mentor Allen Dulles who would become head of the CIA, with brother John
Foster as Secretary of State. Soon NATO began appointing the old tried
and true Nazis into high positions within the organization.
General Hans Speidel, for example, became commander-in-chief in 1957
of AFCENT (Allied Forces Central Europe). Nazi Admiral Friedrich
Guggenberger joined the highly important NATO military committee in
Washington and General Adolf Heusinger (Gehlen’s old chief at Hitler’s
OKW), became its chairman. At Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in
Europe (SHAPE), Gehlen managed to install several Nazi collaborators
into vital positions [7].
Amongst these was Col. Hennig Strumpell, who became deputy to British
Maj. Gen. Charles Traver, the Assistant Chief of Staff (Intelligence) at
SHAPE. Col. Heinz Koller-Kraus was made head of logistics at Speidel’s
AFCENT. Many other Gehlen men would soon join NATO to define its
policies. [8]
With the same Nazis well integrated into NATO and the CIA becoming an extension of Gehlen’s old Nazi intelligence agency, the Nieue World Ordnung was essentially relocated from the Reichstag in Berlin and dropped into the Pentagon and CIA Langley, Virginia.
Added to the anti-Soviet battle plans, US elites recognized the value
of Goebbel’s Ministry of Truth and turned the lessons learned into the
world’s most sophisticated propaganda network ever created. All western
wars would now be given illusionary titles, such as: "wars for
democracy", "wars for peace", "wars for justice", "wars for
humanitarianism" and on and on. The corporate funded elites that run the
UK and Canada were quick to adopt the same essential elements.
Two of those components of the propaganda wars for the US/UK/Nazi Nieue World Ordnung was the creation of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty - both staffed with Gehlen’s old Nazis and funded by the CIA. [9]
These Nazi mass murderers set up an Hungarian Desk, provided arms and
assistance to underground pro-Nazi elements in Hungary and together
with the CIA, instigated the Hungarian uprising - which the Soviets
brutally put down [10].
The prime use of this episode however, had little to do with the dead
and dying, rather it was the propaganda value which portrayed an "Evil
Empire" that had to be destroyed. [11]
Dr. Eberhardt Taubert joined the Nazi party in 1931 and was soon promoted to the rank of Sturmführer,
following Goebbels to the Ministry of Propaganda. After the war Taubert
slid down to South Africa where he found comfort among the neo-Nazis in
power in Johannesburg busy designing the apartheid system. In 1950 he
returned to Germany and joined his old Nazi pal Reinhard Gehlen,
becoming a member of the BND. In his new BND/CIA post, Taubert became
chairman of the CIA-backed "National Association for Peace and Freedom"
becoming also an adviser to German Minister of Defense, ex-Nazi Franz
Josef Strauss and was then assigned by Strauss to NATO as adviser to the
"Psychological Warfare Department". Goebbel’s Ministry of Truth being
recirculated to feed the Christian fundamentalists some newly
constructed, yet old and familiar Tales from the Dark, only having
different packaging. [12]
NATO has also been closely linked to a series of terrorist bombings
in Italy in the 1980s in order to create a "Strategy of Tension"
designed to allow the fascist right wing into power and thereby bring
"stability" to the country. This program made use of numerous far right
terrorists like Stefano Delle Chiaie of Ordine Nuovo and other
demented souls who planted bombs in public places that killed hundreds,
aided in implementation by Gehlen’s NATO/Nazi terrorists. Though well
covered in Europe, thanks to media complicity, the story barely made a
blip here.
WSJ | To make
life easier for the algorithms that will be coming for our jobs, we in
the journalism business apply a template to labor disputes: management
is bad, labor is good. Joe Biden
molds his administration to simple stereotypes too. He defines himself
as the most pro-labor president in history. The favor is not returned,
apparently.
In
the wee hours of Thursday, after anticipatory ripples of destruction
were already spreading through the economy, an all-night effort by the
White House barely averted a national rail strike, supposedly. The deal
was dubbed “tentative,” but expect the unions to approve it. Leveraging
the president for one last squeeze of the fruit, after all, was how they
planned it from day one.
Mr.
Biden’s skin in the game was real, and not just the risk to the economy
and inflation but fear of voters going to the polls in a few weeks
believing the country was slipping into 1970s-style chaos. But something
else about this episode should also be plain: its nuttiness. The angst
was absurdly disproportionate to the dollar value of the employee
benefits at issue, which concerned sick days. A national crisis was
spawned for no better reason than an 88-year-old legal throwback to a
bygone era of (to borrow a recent Bidenism) semi-fascist corporatism,
which is the exact flavor of the Railway Labor Act amendments of 1934.
This
obsolete law forces big government, big labor and big business into bed
in a way that hardly makes sense anymore in a mostly free-market
economy. If not for the law’s legacy, a nationwide strike encompassing
the whole of the rail transportation system (33 private companies) would
be all but unthinkable, much less the industry’s leverage to force the
White House to dance to the industry’s exceedingly penny-ante economic
disputes.
In
the briefest recap, under the antiquated railroad law, a
Biden-appointed emergency board had already tried to split the
difference between the 12 unions and 33 carriers, recommending a 24% pay
hike and $5,000 in bonuses.
But
rejecting the deal were the important engineers and conductors, who
insisted on trying further to leverage Mr. Biden over something called
attendance policy, which the board considered outside the negotiation’s
statutory ambit.
Trains can’t run if crews don’t show up, at least until algorithms take over their jobs, which is not at all farfetched.
mysteriousuniverse | The entire saga of the US military's modern investigations into UFOs
has been clouded in confusion, obfuscation, and a whole alphabet soup of
acronyms—AATIP, AAWSAP, UAP, etc.—which have enabled the Pentagon's
avoidance of actually answering the real question: is there something
weird going on or not? Since the story of the Advanced Aerospace Threat
Identification Program broke in 2017, the Pentagon's story has gone from
acknowledging that AATIP investigated "unidentified aerial phenomena"
(UAPs, not UFOs, which is rather important to them), to saying AATIP had nothing to do with UAPs.
Add to this the strange list of AATIP funded projects and the former
head of AATIP starting a side-project with Blink-182 frontman Tom
DeLonge and you've got the dumbest possible byzantine labyrinth that
could maybe lead to "soft disclosure."
This week, however,Popular Mechanics reported
that they had obtained leaked documents dating to 2009 which show that
not only did AATIP investigate UFOs, but investigated them as possibly
otherworldy or interdimensional phenomena and continued to do so beyond
2012, the year AATIP was "officially" shuttered. Furthermore, AATIP took
an interest in the paranormal phenomena at Utah's famed Skinwalker
Ranch with an interest in harnassing whatever's going on there for
defense purposes. Paranormal weaponry, that's just what we need, right?
The leaked documents come from Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space
Studies (BAASS). The centerpiece is a 494-page "Ten Month Report"
compiled by BAASS for the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems
Applications Program (AAWSAP), the contracting division of the broader
AATIP program. Bob Bigelow,
the billionaire founder of Bigelow Aerospace, is a well-known figure in
the UFO world. Bigelow's private research group the National Institute
for Discovery Science (NIDS) was stationed at Skinwalker Ranch
for years after the billionaire purchased the property. Bigelow
Aerospace's involvement with AATIP has also been well-publicized.
In 2008, BAASS was awarded a $10 million contract by AAWSAP for a guaranteed year with a 5-year option. According to Popular Mechanics,
the "Ten Month Report" was one of many such reports given by BAASS to
AAWSAP through the duration of the contract. Throughout the document, it
is clear that what is being investigated is not an unknown foreign
weapons system. From the Popular Mechanics piece:
● Overview of the BAASS Physics
Division’s efforts to conduct research on advanced aerospace vehicles,
including the development of standardization for measurement of physical
effects and signatures associated with UAP.
● Overview of BAASS research for measuring and gleaning the effects on biological organisms from UAP.
● Mention of Skinwalker Ranch in
Utah as a “possible laboratory for studying other intelligences and
possible interdimensional phenomena.”
● Strategic plans to organize a
series of intellectual debate forums targeted to broad audiences
pertaining to the “potential disclosure of an extraterrestrial
presence.”
● Mention of BAASS program dubbed
“Project Northern Tier,” which involved securing documents related to
instances where dozens of UFOs flew over restricted airspaces of
facilities housing nuclear weapons.
● Project databases of UAP-related
materials compiled through various partnerships, and the intent to
expand these databases by coordinating with foreign governments.
● Summaries of multiple UAP events both inside the U.S. and in foreign countries.
● Photographs of UAPs provided by various sources, including foreign governments.
euronews | The director of the CIA has dismissed persistent rumours that Russian
President Vladimir Putin is gravely ill, perhaps suffering from cancer,
by saying Putin is "entirely too healthy."
Speaking at the Aspen
Security Forum in Colorado, William Burns stressed that this was "not a
formal intelligence assessment," but given his expertise with Russia -
Burns served as America's ambassador in Moscow from 2005 to 2008 - it
will certainly give pause to those Putin opponents who hoped for signs
that he could soon die from an undisclosed disease.
"There's lots
of rumours about President Putin's health and as far as we can tell
he's entirely too healthy," adding "that's not a formal intelligence
judgment."
Burns said that Putin's own views about Ukraine, and especially the
will of the Ukrainian people to resist the Russian invasion, were based
on "some profoundly flawed assumptions."
"Putin
really does believe his rhetoric, and I've heard him say this privately
over the years, that Ukraine is not a real country. He believes that
it's his entitlement, Russia's entitlement, to dominate Ukraine."
Giving an update on Russian casualty figures, the CIA director said
that around 15,000 Russian troops had been killed so far, with roughly
45,000 wounded and described them as "quite significant" losses.
"The Ukrainians have suffered as well, probably a little less than that, but significant casualties."
Director
Burns said that the Russian military has adapted after significant
tactical failures at the start of the invasion and that one Ukrainian
contact had told him "the dumb Russians are all dead", meaning the
Russians on the ground who made battlefield errors had paid the ultimate
price, and the Russian military had since learned to adapt.
Russian
forces had been concentrating on the eastern Donbas region over the
last 90 days, said Burns, advancing between six and 10 miles in that
time.
"But it's come at great cost, and it's been very painful to both sides," he added.
foreignaffairs |As the world looks on while Ukrainians fight
for their lives and their freedom, many feel a burning desire to do more
to support them. The problem is not a lack of forces or resources—it is
fear of provoking a wider, perhaps nuclear, war with Russia. That fear
is why U.S. President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders have consistently
made clear that they will not intervene directly in the conflict,
instead limiting their help to weapons, money, intelligence, and
sanctions. As devastating as events in Ukraine are today, a nuclear war
with Russia could kill more people than Ukraine’s entire population of
roughly 44 million.
NATO
leaders understand that they must walk this fine line between aiding
Ukraine and risking war with Russia, but they have no theory of how to
do it. The German and French governments hem and haw about whether to
provide Ukraine with tanks. When Poland proposed a plan to transfer
MiG-29 fighter aircraft to Ukraine, the United States refused. U.S.
Defense Department spokesperson John Kirby warned that it “raises
serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance” and therefore was not
“tenable.” Yet the United States was already shipping Javelin antitank
missiles and Stinger surface-to-air missiles. Soon after, it began
sending other weapons, including M777 howitzers and now HIMARS
multiple-rocket launchers. What is the difference? Those weapons do more
to strengthen Ukraine’s combat power than MiG-29s, so the theory cannot
be that Russia reacts more strongly to policies that do more harm to
its interests. Why, then, missiles and artillery but not planes? The
answer is that there is no answer. It is simply arbitrary.
NATO needs a strategy predicated on a theory of what it can do to aid Ukraine
without widening the war to a direct conflict between it and Russia.
Lessons from past crises point to the principles that should guide such a
strategy. History shows that NATO would recklessly risk war only by
crossing two Russian redlines: openly firing on Russian forces or
deploying organized combat units under NATO-member flags into Ukraine.
As long as NATO stops short of unmistakably crossing those lines, it can do more to help Ukraine at an acceptable risk of war.
Arms transfers and sanctions are both wholly
consistent with this approach, so it is tempting to conclude that NATO
members are doing all they can. They are not. They should build on
current policies by dispensing with arbitrary limits on the types of
conventional weapons they are providing Ukraine and expanding sanctions.
Moreover, there is a third way to support Ukraine besides arms and
sanctions—one that NATO is neglecting. It is time for NATO to encourage,
organize, and equip its soldiers to volunteer to fight for Ukraine.
mashable | In the last few years, corporations have been trying to capitalize on
Pride month — usually by adorning rainbow logos and releasing rainbow merchandise. This year, however, Pride campaigns are cranking up the sexual innuendo (all while conservatives are calling us "groomers," but I digress). Burger King Austria, for example, released their "Pride Whopper" featuring burgers with either two "top" buns or two "bottom" buns.
How did we go from delivering dinner to anal sex??
Postmates partnered with anal surgeon and sexual health and wellness
expert Dr. Evan Goldstein to develop a menu for those who want to be
penetrated during anal sex without mess.
"If you're a top, it
seems like you can eat whatever you want," says the ad narrator,
comedian Rob Anderson. "But if you're a bottom, you're expected to
starve? Not this Pride!" The tops are portrayed as eggplants and bottoms
as peaches, of course.
The ad goes on to list some foods that a
bottom should avoid in the day before sex — like whole grains,
cauliflower, and legumes — that contain insoluble fiber. This means they
can't dissolve in water, and are harder to flush out...if you catch my
drift. Instead, Postmates and Dr. Goldstein recommend foods with soluble
fiber and protein, such as white rice, citrus, and fish, as these
digest easily and slowly. The menu will offer "bottom-friendly" dishes
from restaurants in New York and Los Angeles.
Begrudgingly Acknowledged Country Bangers
-
When someone says they hate country music, they’re typically referring,
whether they know it or not, to the neotraditionalist “young country” that
arose in...
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
As an aside: France does not depend on Russia for uranium: everything comes from Niger (34.7%), Kazakhstan (28.9%), Uzbekistan (26.4%), and Australia (9.9%) and is then processed into actual fuel in France.
However, it is entirely dependent on Russia for reprocessing depleted uranium. The French can perform a first phase (separating plutonium from spent fuel), but their much-touted prowess in turning “nuclear waste” into usable fissile uranium is only possible thanks to the Rosatom reprocessing plant in Seversk.
The last transport with depleted uranium from France to Russia took place in October, and the French firm Orano, which supplies French atomic power plants, does not intend to renew the contract. Which means that spent fuel may soon start to accumulate as genuine waste on the premises of French power plants…