Why Would Any Sane Actor Shell The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant?

stalkerzone |   Economist Mikhail Khazin suggested that there is a connection between the shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant and the searches of former US President Donald Trump. In his opinion, the American leader Joe Biden can be keeping a dangerous secret at the facility.

According to Khazin, the shelling of the Zaporozhye NPP by the Ukrainian Armed Forces may be directly related to the scandalous searches at Trump’s house. The economist admitted that Biden, during the period of vice-presidency and overseeing Ukraine under Barack Obama, could have agreed with Ukraine and, possibly, Turkey to facilitate their receipt of an atomic bomb. For this purpose, uranium enriched much higher than the standards could be delivered to storage facilities on the territory of the nuclear Power Plant. Under Trump, the plan could have been covered up and its documents could have disappeared from the White House, which seriously alarmed Biden and forced him to conduct searches of his predecessor after the release of the nuclear plant by Russia.

“Then a special operation begins, and the Russian army discovers containers sealed by Westinghouse in a storage facility in Zaporozhye, where highly enriched uranium is found. Please note that the IAEA experts have already tried to go there twice, but the UN is blocking this trip. Russia, of course, could have stolen this uranium, but then go and prove that it was not it who made the false seal. And if the IAEA commission arrives, it won’t be possible to get away with it,” Khazin said.

The Biden administration is very afraid of revealing the truth about the storage facility at the Westinghouse nuclear power plant, so it blocks any trip there by IAEA experts and tries to wipe the object off the face of the earth with the hands of the UAF. If the theory is confirmed, the US president will not be saved from impeachment even by his Democratic supporters, the expert is sure.

“Somewhere, Trump may have pieces of paper that were worthless until the information about this uranium was widely available, but which will become very expensive if this information gets out. If it turns out that Biden violated the nuclear non-proliferation Treaty with his decision, even the Democrats will vote for impeachment, because this is a thing that the American establishment is terribly afraid of,” Khazin said on the “Interpretation” YouTube channel.

U.S. Desperate To Provoke An Escalation In Ukraine

indianpunchline |  Meanwhile, from the US perspective, Kiev’s drone attacks on Crimea already serve three purposes. 

First, this is meant to be a blow to the Russian morale. Indeed, Putin’s towering popularity within Russia has become an eyesore for the Biden Administration. Putin’s masterly navigation of the Russian economy out of crisis mode is an incredible feat that defied all logic of power in the American calculus — inflation is steadily falling (in contrast with the European countries and the US); the GDP decline is narrowing; foreign reserves are swelling; the current account is on the plus side; and lo and behold, the Biden Administration’s so-called “nuclear option” — Russia’s removal from the SWIFT messaging system — failed to cripple foreign trade. 

Second, both Washington and Kiev are desperately scrambling for “success” stories to distract attention. The Times playing up the story speaks for itself. In reality, Russia’s Donbass offensive has created a new momentum and is steadily grinding the Ukrainian forces. Within the week, Russian forces will have encircled the lynchpin of the Ukrainian defence line, Bakhmut city, which is a communication hub for troop movements and supply logistics in Donbass. Russian forces have reached the city outskirts from the north, east and south. The fall of Bakhmut will be a crushing defeat for Zelensky. 

On the other hand, even after two months after Zelensky promised a “counteroffensive” on Kherson near Crimea, it is nowhere in sight. Even his most ardent votaries in the western media feel let down. To be sure, there is growing disenchantment in Europe. 

The Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, undoubtedly the smartest European politician today (with an economy registering over 6% growth when the rest of the continent is mired in recession), told German magazine Tichys Einblick in an interview last week that this war marked the end of “western superiority.” Interestingly, he named Big Oil as “war profiteers” and singled out that Exxon doubled its profits, Chevron quadrupled, and ConocoPhillips’ profits have shot up manifold. (Of course, all three are American companies.) Orban’s message was clear: America has weakened the EU. This thought must be troubling many a European politician today. 

Third, Washington has thrown down the gauntlet in a measured way. But there is no way the war can be brought into the drawing rooms of the average Americans the way Times says is happening in Russia. Twenty  Americans were killed in Kharkiv two days ago in a high-precision Russian missile strike, but there aren’t going to be any body bags returning to Arlington Cemetery; nor does it make headline in the cooperative American media. 

The US plans to go further up on the escalation ladder. Escalation is the Biden Administration’s last chance to stall a Russian victory. The American strategic thinker and academic John Mearsheimer has written that the risk of a disastrous escalation is “substantially greater than the conventional wisdom holds. And given that the consequences of escalation could include a major war in Europe and possibly even nuclear annihilation, there is good reason for extra concern.” 

Moscow’s preference is to avoid any escalation, since the special military operation is achieving results. Whereas, it is the US that is in some visible despair, and in immediate terms, Russia’s plans to hold referendums in Kherson and Zaporozhye in September must be stalled. Herein lies the danger.

The US’ current build-up over Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant points toward a hidden agenda to intervene in the war at some point directly. Kiev’s attempt to arrange a nuclear explosion in Zaporozhye can only be seen in this light. Moscow seems to anticipate such an eventuality.

Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu disclosed yesterday that Russia has begun mass production of Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missiles and is already deploying them. The US lacks the capability to counter Tsirkon, which is estimated to be 11 times faster than Tomahawk with far superior target-penetration characteristics. Shoigu may have given a stark warning that Russia will not be cowed down if there’s a NATO intervention in Ukraine.

As Goes Blackness - So Goes America...,

blackagendareport |  The Black Misleadership Class continues its descent into utter political irrelevance, dragging 48 million African Americans ever deeper into the abyss with them. Like a soap opera whose central pathologies endure through decades of changing casts of characters, the misleaders cling to their demeaning subservience to the Democratic Party in hopes of one day becoming honored and respected partners. The Black supplicants are always betrayed, of course, but prefer a bad marriage to no relationship at all. Indeed, the Black misleaders and the Democrats have been locked in what Malcolm X would describe as a house Negro/slave master   relationship for so long – certainly since the late Sixties – that the Black junior partner knows no other way to behave.

In the latest installment of “The Black and the Powerless,” the usual gaggle of national Black civic organizations are awarded a closed-door meeting with their love-object, president-elect Joe Biden. The civic leaders respectfully requested that the Party protect the voting rights of its most loyal constituency, and use the powers of the executive branch to curtail the police violence that has plagued the Black community since the days of the slave-disciplining “paddy-rollers” – in addition to their perennial concern that more Black faces be elevated to high places in the new administration.  However, as senior editor Margaret Kimberley recounts in this issue of BAR, Biden immediately put the house Negroes in their place:

“In a loud voice and in the manner of a bullying boss Biden dashed any hopes that he would use executive orders to enact policies that he can’t get passed because of Republican congressional opposition. He accused Melanie Campbell of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, of not reading his policy paper because she disagreed with him. He was vehement about not using the power of executive orders to thwart congressional Republicans and claimed concerns about constitutionality as an excuse for doing as little as he possibly can.”

“Biden immediately put the house Negroes in their place.”

As Margaret Kimberley observes, it is unclear who leaked the Zoom meeting – either one of the Black participants or Biden, himself, to demonstrate his eagerness to put the Black notables in their place and warn them not to encourage Black Lives Matter’s demand to de-fund the police. “We’re not,” said the Great Incarcerator, ruling out any rollback of the cops. “We’re talking about holding them accountable. We’re talking about giving them money to do the right things.”

Melanie Campbell, president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable, wrote the letter that requested the lopsided confab, which included NAACP President Derrick Johnson; former Department of Justice Civil Rights Division leader Vanita Gupta; National Action Network founder Rev. Al Sharpton; Sherrilyn Ifill, NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League; Kristen Clarke, executive director of the National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; and New Orleans congressman Cedric Richmond, who will serve Biden as director of the White House Office of Public Engagement  .

Clearly, Biden was not impressed by these would-be power brokers, knowing that the Black misleaders have no bite and have not even dared to bark in the half a century since they collaborated in shutting down the Black Liberation Movement to become operatives of the rich man’s duopoly. In the 21st century, the misleaders have so debased themselves at the feet of Democratic power, it is impossible for the Party’s leaders to pretend they represent a constituency beyond their own dark faces.

FUKUS Will Be Broke, Cold And Hungry This Winter - Just To Spite Russia

nakedcapitalism  |  The Military Summary channel has observed that once Russia secures Donbass, there are no major lines of defense to the west until the Dnieper. That may also explain the claim he made in his latest report (at 12:50), that Zelensky told the troops in Donass that the US told him if they lose the so-called Zaluzny defense line (Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are on this line) that it would be considered to be the total collapse of Ukraine forces and no more Western support would be forthcoming. I doubt that politically that the US can totally abandon Ukraine but they can certainly send only eyewash, and more importantly, stop funding the Ukraine government, which has become a money pit.

tThe remaining major troop concentration is around Kiev. The question is what Russia does next.

My belief is still that Russia will give priority to taking Odessa unless there are logistical considerations that argue against that. The Ukraine military is so close to collapse that Russian forces going to Odessa sooner rather than later is a real possibility. It’s the psychologically most important target for the Russian people, and economically more valuable than Kiev. The West would recognize that Russia getting control of what was Ukraine’s entire Black Sea coast as an enormous loss.

I suspect what Russia decides to do with or about Ukraine to the west of the Dnieper is event dependent. However, the West has decided to tie itself even more tightly to the Ukraine albatross. I had said to Lambert that it was not impossible for Russia to have decisively won (as in taken Odessa) by sometime in October, but even with the Western forces clearly unable to rout Russia, that Europe and the US would keep its citizens cold and hungry this winter just to spite Russia.

It’s already official. From TASS:

The EU will not withdraw the sanctions, imposed on Russia over the situation in Ukraine, if Moscow and Kiev sign peace treaty on Russia’s terms, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in his article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagzeitung, published Sunday.

“The part of the new reality is that the EU has also consolidated. It has reacted to the Russian aggression quite unanimously and imposed unprecedentedly harsh sanctions,” Scholz said. “We knew it from the start that we will potentially have to keep these sanctions for a long time.”

“And it is also clear that not a single one of these sanctions will be withdrawn in case of peace, dictated by Russia,” he continued. “There is no other path for an agreement with Ukraine for Russia than the one that could be accepted by the Ukrainians.”

It does not seem to occur to Sholtz that even Ukrainians who are not that keen about Russia would choose having Russian or Russian-lite rule over the West’s plan of fighting to the last Ukrainian. It also seems likely that Russia will hold referendums, again to legitimate its actions in the court of non-collective-West opinion. But of course those will be deemed to be bogus even if the most reputable independent observers say otherwise.

So this is not going to end well for the West. But you knew that already if you were paying attention.

As The Mighty Wurlitzer Admits Defeat In Ukraine Brandon Throws Zelensky Under The Bus

apnews  |  President Joe Biden, speaking to donors at a Democratic fundraiser here, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “didn’t want to hear it” when U.S. intelligence gathered information that Russia was preparing to invade.

The remarks came as Biden was talking about his work to rally and solidify support for Ukraine as the war continues into its fourth month.

“Nothing like this has happened since World War II. I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating. But I knew we had data to sustain he” — meaning Russian President Vladimir Putin — “was going to go in, off the border.”

“There was no doubt,” Biden said. “And Zelenskyy didn’t want to hear it.”

Although Zelenskyy has inspired people with his leadership during the war, his preparation for the invasion — or lack thereof — has remained a controversial issue.

In the weeks before the war began on Feb. 24, Zelenskyy publicly bristled as Biden administration officials repeatedly warned that a Russian invasion was highly likely.

moa  |   The New York Times, here via Yahoo, has some rather weird piece over alleged lack of intelligence on Ukrainian warplanes:

U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine's War Strategy, Officials Say

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has provided near-daily updates of Russia’s invasion on social media; viral video posts have shown the effectiveness of Western weapons in the hands of Ukrainian forces; and the Pentagon has regularly held briefings on developments in the war.

But despite the flow of all this news to the public, U.S. intelligence agencies have less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations and possess a far better picture of Russia’s military, its planned operations and its successes and failures, according to current and former officials.

Governments often withhold information from the public for operational security. But these information gaps within the U.S. government could make it more difficult for the Biden administration to decide how to target military aid as it sends billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine.
...
Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, testified at a Senate hearing last month that “it was very hard to tell” how much additional aid Ukraine could absorb.

She added: “We have, in fact, more insight, probably, on the Russian side than we do on the Ukrainian side.”

One key question is what measures Zelenskyy intends to call for in Donbas. Ukraine faces a strategic choice there: withdraw its forces or risk having them encircled by Russia.

Andrei Martyanov rants about the piece:

Well, NYT decided to start steering clear of this whole Russia "lost in Ukraine" BS it promoted together with neocon crazies, and begins this ever familiar tune of the "intel failure". Right.

U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine's War Strategy, Officials Say

Hm, how about I put it bluntly--the U.S. never had clear picture on anything, especially on Russia, or, as a private case, [the Special Military Operation] and completely bought into Ukie propaganda, which shows a complete incompetence of the "intel" in the US.
...
The narrative on [the Special Military Operation], in reality, is dead and the failure is not being set, it already happened. It is a fait accompli no matter how one wants to put a lipstick on the pig.

Larry Johnson thinks there is another another motive behind the story:

Frankly, I find it hard to believe that there are not solid analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency who know the answers to all these questions. The real problem may not be a lack of intelligence. Nope. It is the fear of telling the politicians hard truths they do not want to hear.

Given the billions of dollars the United States is spending on “intelligence” collection systems, it is time for the Congress and the American public to demand that the intelligence services do their damn job.

I do not believe for one moment that U.S. intelligence services do not know what is going on in Ukraine and in Kiev. They know that the Ukraine has lost the war and will have to sue for peace as soon as possible.

They also have told the White House that this is a case and that the whole idea of setting up the Ukraine to tickle the Russian bear was idiotic from the get go. The question now is who will take the blame for the outcome. Who can the buck be passed to?

 

Joe Biden Indisputably The Worst President In U.S. History

caitlinjohstone |  Antiwar libertarian hero Scott Horton has a viral tweet going around which reads simply, “Biden’s refusal to attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine is the greatest scandal in American political history.”

Biden's refusal to attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine is the greatest scandal in American political history.

— Scott Horton (@scotthortonshow) May 5, 2022

Kind of smacks you in the face, doesn’t it? I’ve never seen anyone put it quite like that before, but if you think about it, how could it not be true?

It’s just a simple fact that the Biden administration is actually hindering diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to this war, and that it has refused to provide Ukraine with any kind of diplomatic negotiating power regarding the possible rollback of sanctions and other US measures to help secure peace. Washington’s top diplomats have consistently been conspicuously absent from any kind of dialogue with their counterparts in Moscow.

Statements from the administration in fact indicate that they expect this war to drag on for a long time, making it abundantly clear that a swift end to minimize the death and destruction is not just uninteresting but undesirable for the US empire. Ukrainian media report that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Zelensky on behalf of NATO powers that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.”

And this isn’t just another war. This is a proxy war being waged by one of the world’s two top nuclear forces against the world’s other top nuclear force. This is more serious than Iraq. It is more serious than Vietnam. It is more serious than any US war that has happened in the lifetime of anyone likely to be reading these words, because Russia has increasingly valid reasons to believe its very existence as a nation is being threatened. This is therefore a war that could very easily result in the death of everyone on earth.

The US Secretary of “Defense” has openly said that America’s goal is to “weaken” Russia in this war. Biden himself has made statements which can only be interpreted as calls for regime change in Moscow. US officials have been leaking to the press claims that US intelligence has directly facilitated the killing of Russian generals and the sinking of a Russian war ship.

The imperial political/media class are not even denying that this is a US proxy war anymore. In an alarmingly rapid pivot from the mass media’s earlier position that calling this a proxy war is merely an “accusation” promoted solely by Russia, we’re now seeing the use of that term becoming more and more common in authorized news outlets. The New Yorker came right out and declared that the US is in “a full proxy war with Russia” the other day, and US congressman Seth Moulton recently told Fox News that the US is at war with Russia through a proxy.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got to realize we’re at war, and we’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians,” Moulton said. “We’re fundamentally at war, although it’s somewhat through proxy, with Russia. And it’s important that we win.”

 

When It Comes To Boot Licking Brandon, JUST BELIEVE YOUR LYING EYES!!!

 

 

Skinning, Grinning, Sharting, And Not Doing A Dayyum Thing For Black American Voters!!!

BAR |  Having a new Black SCOTUS justice or bringing Barack Obama out of retirement for a photo opportunity won't raise Joe Biden's poll numbers or stave off defeat in the mid-term elections. Only fulfilling campaign promises and giving the people what they need will help Biden and the democrats.

The Black political class and the democratic party are once again infantilizing Black voters instead of giving them what they need and want. They pass useless legislation and stage political performances because they have lost the trust of the people. Biden’s poll numbers continue to drop. He now has a lackluster 40 percent approval rating for the simple reason that he hasn’t done what he promised during his 2020 presidential campaign.

Biden said he would provide student loan debt relief, raise the minimum wage, and improve the government response to the covid crisis. His friends in corporate media covered for him by claiming that stimulus and child tax credit payments would “cut child poverty in half.” That claim was never true and now that tax credit is gone along with the much touted Build Back Better legislation. Not only does covid continue to kill, with 1 million dead in the past two years, but the millions of Americans who are uninsured no longer have free treatment, testing, or vaccinations.

The Black political class have so little to show for their efforts that they now resort to passing legislation so meaningless that it insults the collective intelligence of Black people. One example is the passage of the Emmett Till Anti Lynching bill. Congress failed to pass anti-lynching legislation when the public murder of Black people was a common occurrence. But now the lynchers are not local white citizens councils and Ku Klux Klan members. It is the police who kill an average of three people every day, and one of those persons will be Black.

Despite this continuing bloodshed committed against their constituents, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has never even attempted to pass legislation which would protect the public from summary police execution. There is plenty of kente cloth and posturing but the CBC go along with Biden’s plan to add $30 billion in funding to states and localities to hire more police, the people who actually commit lynch law in this country.

When they aren’t virtue signaling about lynching, Black politicians are passing legislation about hairstyles. The legislation, Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair (CROWN Act) would prohibit discrimination against people with natural hair. The House of Representatives passed the CROWN Act but it faces what is called an uncertain future in the Senate. That means it probably won’t be taken up at all.

No Black person is in favor of hair based discrimination, but there are far more important issues that need to be addressed. The democrats are rightfully worried about the November 2022 mid-term elections and are in danger of losing control of the House. Their response is what one would expect from a faux leftish party.

They bring out their faux leftish former president, Barack Obama . Obama appeared at the white house to celebrate the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare. Obamacare enshrined corporate control over health care and gave people the right to purchase insurance which is too expensive. Medicaid expansion was the most important aspect of Obamacare but it was never accepted by most of the southern states, the region with the largest Black population.

Pulling out the Barack Obama card didn’t help Hillary Clinton secure votes where she needed them in 2016. Similarly, his presence is unlikely to help Biden in 2022. Biden and the democrats are hamstrung by their reliance on the oligarchic class, the people he promised, “Nothing will fundamentally change.” They won’t allow Build Back Better or student loan debt relief or universal health care and so the people go without what they need the most. Thus the CROWN Act is born.

The problem for Biden and the democrats is that the entire political system is in disrepute. They post on Twitter about expensive health care and give the impression they will actually do something about this crisis. But they can’t fool all the people all the time. Inflation is eating away at the well being of millions of people. The party in power takes a hit when times are hard. Ridiculous propaganda about “Putin’s price hike” won’t get the votes they need.

Brandon IS A Corrupt, Doddering Revenant - But Lying On His Worthless Ass Wins No Points Hereabouts...,

rollingstone  |  Biden’s effectiveness as a president is up for debate, but conservative media feeling the need to doctor video clips of the president proves there isn’t as much evidence that he can’t do the job as they’d like there to be.

The end of this one stops early before you see he was introducing someone pic.twitter.com/l55K5ibMpx

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 6, 2022

THIS Is The State Of The Union Right Now...., (Full Biden Video In Context)

 

Brandon Is Just So F**king Pitiful....,

libertarianinstitute |  Are Biden’s off-the-cuff-and-wall remarks signs of dementia? Or are they just the Bidenesque “Kinsley gaffes” we’ve become accustomed to? (A Kinsley gaffe occurs when someone important speaks his mind when he or his handlers know he shouldn’t.)

By now, Biden’s irresponsibly provocative remarks have made the rounds. He has said that Russia’s use of chemical weapons in Ukraine would bring a NATO response, but left the nature of the response vague. His administration seems to be shying away from explicitly declaring “red lines.”

And yet, when ABC News asked Biden, “If chemical weapons were used in Ukraine could that trigger a military response from NATO?” Biden responded, “It would trigger a response in kind. Whether or not — you’re asking whether NATO would cross — we’d make that decision at the time.” (Emphasis added.)

Say what? Response in kind? Does that mean he might order a chemical-weapons counterattack?

As others have pointed out, even a de facto red line is an invitation for a false-flag attack in which a Ukrainian group, hoping to bring NATO into the fight, would use chemical weapons while making the perpetrator appear to be Russian. This sort of thing seems likely to have happened in Syria.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky is still lobbying for even more NATO intervention (in addition to arms and sanctions) in the form of a no-fly zone, which is now called “close the sky.” The shameless public appeal includes this video, with the lyric “If you don’t close the sky/I will die.” The lyricist neglected to point out that if the sky is closed and the U.S. Air Force shoots down a Russian jet, we all could die in a nuclear exchange.

Biden still says no to closing the sky, but if he started saying the opposite, who’d be surprised?

As everyone knows, while abroad Biden also seemed to call for regime change in Russia with this ad-lib: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” History teaches that implied policies such as that do not facilitate ceasefires and peace. The Gaffer-in-Chief and his people tried to walk it back, but the attempts were lame. “I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel,” he said while insisting he wasn’t walking back his statement, “and I make no apologies for it.” (American presidents are always morally outraged whenever countries they don’t like do what the U.S. government regularly does.)

A White House official dutifully insisted that what his boss meant “was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.” If you buy that, they have a bridge you might be interested in.

Clean Up On The Pringles Aisle...,

 

Brandon: A Hypersonic Missile Is A Consequential Missile That Is Unstoppable

I wonder whether Biden coming out and admitting that the Russian hypersonic missile “is a consequential missile” that can penetrate any US/Nato air defense system, when paired with the realization happening right now in the cold light of day that the damage inflicted by sanctions is a two way street - together - signal a potential change in the US/EU calculus with respect to either fanning or dousing the flames of war. 

It’s highly unusual for a US president to puncture the narrative infinitum that Russians are technologically backward. This comes with yet other stupid bon mots like “their missiles have probably fallen into disrepair”, they'll use chemical weapons on civilians. To say what Biden said is rather profound narrative breach at a time when the incentive is highest to project Russia as weak and ineffectual.

Biden acknowledges that Russia’s hypersonic missile is simply unstoppable.

It is, “a consequential missile,” he says. pic.twitter.com/7NkAkGJj2c

— Sentletse 🇷🇺🇿🇦 (@Sentletse) March 22, 2022

The hypersonics don’t show desperation, they show a degree of escalation dominance outside the use of nuclear weapons. If reports are true, the Kinzhal struck a Soviet nuclear bunker and was able to ignite the ammunition stores inside it. If other reports are true, Russia demonstrated that it can erase the Pentagon without going nuclear and not only is there no defense, but there’s a good chance there will be no warning. The time from over the horizon identification to impact may be as short as 3 seconds.

Death Robots Terrorizing Little Kids Don't Play Well On Cable News

theweek |  Our infamous drone war has largely faded from the headlines. Aside from one strike that went horribly wrong during the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan, there has been vanishingly little coverage of what's going on with the signature American tactic of the war on terror: remote-controlled death robots.

So I was rather taken aback to discover President Biden has almost totally halted drone strikes, and airstrikes in general, around the world. It's a remarkable foreign policy reform, but also a remarkable failure of both government communication and media coverage. A hugely significant change in foreign policy has happened — and almost nobody is paying attention.

Not long ago, the drone war was subject to fierce public debate. It started under former President George W. Bush, then became a favored tactic of former President Barack Obama. He'd come to power on the strength of his record opposing the Iraq War but was, at bottom, a devoted imperial chauvinist. Obama wanted to avoid being bogged down in new overseas occupations (except in Afghanistan, where he idiotically boosted troop levels to no positive effect) but never truly questioned U.S. global imperialism or the military-industrial complex.

The drone strike was thus the perfect tool for his presidency: a cheap, high-tech, and supposedly super-accurate method of fighting terrorism (and extending U.S. military hegemony) at no risk to American soldiers. (U.S. airstrikes with human pilots increasingly operate in similar safety, rarely flying over targets with anti-aircraft defenses.) "Turns out I'm really good at killing people," Obama told aides in 2011. "Didn't know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine."

That was only true if "really good" is measured by quantity, not quality, of the strikes. The intelligence used to pick targets was routinely atrocious, and airstrikes blew up weddings, markets, and random civilian houses. A C-130 gunship annihilated a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan in 2015. Many people in drone-ridden areas, especially children, developed chronic PTSD from the constant buzzing whine of a machine that could and quite often did kill them out of nowhere for no reason.

The "Masters" Don't Quite Know What To Do With A Woke And Out LGB Community

tinkzorg |  In recent days, the phrase ”Let’s go Brandon!” has taken on a life of its own. At one point, four out of ten songs on the Spotify top 10 list were called ”Let’s go Brandon”. People are saying it as a form of greeting, or wearing it on t-shirts. For some, this is just a funny gag. For others, it is a source of significant and growing dread; dread about what is happening politically in the United States, and what the future now looks to have in store for them.

For those of you who don’t know the context: at a recent NASCAR event in New Jersey, the crowd could be heard chanting ”Fuck Joe Biden!” after the race. During an interview with the winner of the race – a man named Brandon Brown – the flustered reporter, hearing the chant, then says on camera that the crowd must be very enthused for Brandon, as they’re all chanting ”Let’s go Brandon!” in his honor. Of course, they crowd is doing no such thing, and she and everyone else knows it. This little episode, on its own, is hardly very remarkable or significant. Others slowly pick up on the story and mock the journalist involved. But at this point, it is merely just another day of ”fake news”, another day of the liberal media being the liberal media.

However, like a dangerous respiratory virus, this little ”Brandon incident” then incubates for a week or two, before blossoming out into something far more serious, into a true social event. People start saying ”Let’s go Brandon!” at random, both as a mockery of the sitting president, but also as a way to mock the now increasingly toothless media apparatus, who fewer and fewer seem to take seriously at all. And this is where things become truly interesting: as at least one pilot then tells his passengers ”Let’s go Brandon!” before takeoff, liberal America starts to actually freak out. At this point, think pieces are produced by NPR and others claiming that there’s a new form of conspiratorial ”code speak” that ”racists” are now using to note their displeasure with the sitting president. Others demand the offending pilot be fired, as it is obvious that he isn’t really saying ”Let’s go Brandon!”, he’s actually saying ”Fuck Joe Biden!”. The irony here should be quite obvious, as liberals are now decrying people for playing along with the very same cover story they invented out of thin air to cover up what is clearly growing dissatisfaction with president Biden.

Some have taken this to be just another funny episode of ”internet humor” leaking into the real world. But this is, to put it frankly, the delusions of an intellectual class who themselves enjoy being ironic on the internet, and who then quite myopically assume that everyone else must think and act the way they do. Middle aged female nurses, as a rule, do not use 4chan, nor are they versed in, or at all interested in, the finer points of ironic ”internet humor”. Political humor, coming from normal, working class people, might superficially resemble that of irony-poisoned college graduates. But in reality, they have very little in common.

Moreover, there’s a very large, very obvious flaw in this explanation of events. Again, the crowds at that NASCAR race weren’t chanting ”Let’s go Brandon!” they were chanting ”Fuck Joe Biden!”, and by all accounts, they certainly weren’t being ironic about that. No coded language was intented, no mental jiu-jitsu performed. Only when the media tried to use its incredibly hollow and thoroughly unimpressive powers of ”mind control” did people start with ironic mockery, and that mockery was aimed both at the president as well as the clear powerlessness of the chattering classes to control the narrative or get people to believe them. And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, when airplane passenger hear the phrase ”Let’s go Brandon!” spoken over the intercom, they don’t necessarily hear just a joke, but also a reminder that a political conflict they had tried to suppress is very much still real.

But even with all this said, many a reader will probably want to ask a simple question: why does any of this matter? Though I would argue that the sudden explosion of ”Let’s go Brandon!” in American culture actually means a very great deal, to truly explain why this joke is so funny to some, and so unnerving to others, we have to do so by way of a metaphor. To truly understand why many liberals are so scared of what others consider to still be merely a harmless joke, we have to talk a bit about a concept known as Kantai Kessen, the Japanese naval war doctrine during World War II. Do not worry, the relevance of this concept to today’s America will hopefully become clear as we go along.

Uh Oh..., Cornpop Blinks And Now There's "Wiggle Room" In The Federal NeoVaccinoid Mandate

dailymail  |  The White House coronavirus coordinator said that Biden's December 8 vaccine deadline for government contractors is 'not a cliff' at a press briefing on Wednesday.

Jeffrey Zients said of the deadline, which is when Biden all federal contractors have to be vaccinated by: 'Even once we hit those deadlines, we expect federal agencies and contractors will follow their standard HR processes and that, for any of the probably relatively small percent of employees that are not in compliance, they'll go through education, counseling, accommodations, and then enforcement.'

Federal workers should be vaccinated by a deadline of November 22. 

The statement means that employers with more than 100 workers will not have to fire unvaccinated employees in two month's time. Instead of immediate lay-offs there will be time for education, counseling and other measures before potentially ending employment.

Prior to the press briefing millions of workers were left believing they'd be jobless come December 9 unless they got a religious or medical exemption. 

 Zients added: 'These processes play out across weeks, not days. 

'And so, to be clear, we’re creating flexibility within the system. We’re offering people multiple opportunities to get vaccinated. There is not a cliff here.'

The coordinator was also sure to note that the purpose of the deadline, 'most importantly, is to get people vaccinated and protected, not to punish them'.

Southwest Airlines Chief Executive Gary Kelly said last week: 'We want our employees to know that nobody is going to lose their job on December 9 if we're not perfectly in compliance... We're not going to fire anybody who doesn't get vaccinated.'

Meanwhile, American Airlines Chief Executive Doug Parker said he did not expect any employees to leave as a result of the vaccine mandate.

A group representing FedEx Corp, United Parcel Service Inc and other cargo carriers told the White House last week it would be virtually impossible to have 100 percent of their respective work forces vaccinated by December 8.

His statements came after it was revealed that just 68 percent of the US military is vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Many federal contractors have told employees that they risk losing their jobs if they are not vaccinated by December 8. Raytheon Technologies' Chief Executive Greg Hayes warned in a CNBC interview Tuesday the US aerospace and defense firm will lose 'several thousand' employees who refuse to take Covid-19 vaccines, as it prepares to meet the December 8 deadline.

On Wednesday Republican Senator Roger Wicker urged Biden to abandon the plan completely and said: 'We cannot afford to gut our transportation network of tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of essential, good-paying jobs.'

Nationwide, about 191million Americans have been fully vaccinated - nearly 58 percent of the population, according to CDC data. 

Old Cornpop's Preposterous Covid NeoVaccinoid Mandate Encounters Some Serious Turbulence

 

denvergazette |  Republican lawmakers are pressuring President Joe Biden to drop or pause his vaccine requirements for federal defense contractors over fears they will compromise national security supply chains.

The Washington Examiner reviewed a letter Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville sent to the White House Tuesday afternoon claiming that Biden's "federal contractor vaccine mandate will have negative effects on our national security" and called on the president "to remove — or, at a minimum, delay and clarify — vaccination requirements on private companies and academic research institutions that are actively supporting the Department of Defense."

"I share your desire to see our country through the COVID-19 pandemic as quickly as possible, and, I — like you — have elected to take the vaccine. But your administration's mandate is short-sighted, ill-conceived, and threatens our national security," Tuberville wrote in a letter sent to the White House on Tuesday. "The American warfighter is ultimately harmed when skilled workers leave the defense contractor workforce, a foreseeable consequence of your order."

Tuberville specifically noted that Alabama alone employed nearly 100,000 federal contractors in 2020, and "more than 5,000 contractors who support the Department of Defense."

"They provide capabilities to the Pentagon that are often difficult to replicate. Losing any sizable share of a small firms' workforce means a direct reduction in the ‘economy and efficiency' that your Order purports to seek to advance. When these firms are unable to perform, our country is at risk," he continued. "It is quite possible that your mandate will result in individuals leaving the workforce to avoid the vaccine, thus, resulting in increased worker absences and labor costs, and decreased efficiency. During this time of increasing worry about the technological advances of near-peer adversaries, we should focus on policies that will ensure our national security interests are protected. This order does the opposite."

"We will lose several thousand people," Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes said on CNBC Tuesday. "It's not just the prime contractors, but it's also all of our subcontractors that need to follow that mandate as well."

Tuberville's letter follows on the heels of a similar offering from nearly a dozen Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee. On Oct. 22, those lawmakers petitioned the White House and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to suspend the Pentagon's vaccine mandate for contractors over fears that it could lead to military supply chain problems.

"We strongly urge you to reconsider the manner in which you are seeking to address this issue so as not to harm the livelihood of civilian contractors, industry partners, and strategic goals of our armed services," the letter reads. "Those who adamantly refuse the vaccine will accept termination. We will lose critical experience in skilled labor. We will lose opportunities for mentorship and on-the-job training from veteran craftsmen. In the long-term, we will miss quality control standards. We will face endemic cost overruns and rework as decades of lessons are not passed to the next generation."

Roughly 100 employees at United Launch Alliance, a joint venture funded by Lockheed Martin and Boeing that contracts to both the Department of Defense and NASA, walked off the job Monday over the federal government's vaccine mandates and pledged to continue protesting in the days leading up to the deadline to be vaccinated.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has affected virtually every facet of life over the past 18 months. COVID-19 also is a challenge for our business, a business that is critical to national security and civil space endeavors," a ULA representative said in a statement. "ULA decided to require vaccinations to ensure the health and safety of our employees and to align with our U.S. government customer and industry direction. This places ULA in a much better position to meet the nation's needs and our manifest commitments while protecting the health of everyone at our facilities."

 

Lesko Brandon Using Your Employers Power To Mandate Jabs And Terminate For Cause If You Refuse

marketwatch |   “Typically, an employee who is terminated for failing to comply with company policies is not eligible for unemployment benefits, which would include refusing to comply with a company’s COVID-19 prevention policies, masking requirements or vaccine requirements,” Ackels told MarketWatch.

But an employee who has proof of a medical exemption or religious objection to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine may still be eligible to collect unemployment benefits if fired, said Rebecca Dixon, executive director at the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit that advocates for worker’s rights.

Otherwise, refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, if your employer requires one, “is akin to an employee’s refusal to submit to permissible drug tests or participate in safety trainings,” said Ronald Zambrano, employment law chair at West Coast Trial Lawyers, a Los Angeles–based law firm. That is, such an employee, when terminated, would not qualify for unemployment benefits, Zambrano said.

Ultimately, “this could lead to tens of thousands of people across the United States without work or access to unemployment benefits because they refuse to get vaccinated,” Zambrano said.

What if employees quit because they don’t want to get vaccinated?

Quitting over refusal to get vaccinated when an employer requires it appears unlikely to improve one’s chances of securing unemployment payments.

“If you quit because of the mandate then you’d have to have good cause attributable to the employer in order to collect unemployment benefits,” Dixon said. “Good cause is usually viewed from that of a reasonable person. Given the overwhelming evidence of the safety of the vaccine, it’s likely that good cause would not be found” in the case of a person who quits a job because of a vaccine mandate.

That said, state workforce departments can update “eligibility requirements such that, depending on the circumstances, employees fired for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine could be eligible for unemployment benefits,” Ackels said.

The Department of Labor didn’t respond to MarketWatch’s request for comment.

The Texas Workforce Commission, noting that “[e]very unemployment insurance claim is reviewed on a case by case basis” and that “what happens in an unemployment claim is dependent upon the individual facts,” said that an employee “may be eligible for benefits if you were fired for reasons other than misconduct.”

The commission, while noting that most people who quit jobs are deemed ineligible for unemployment compensation, observed that it is possible to qualify if it is demonstrated that they quit “for good cause connected with the work.”

Officials at the commission did not indicate whether any individuals fired from a job for refusing to be vaccinated had qualified for unemployment benefits or whether any employer have been charged, as the commission suggested was possible.

Biden Should Force NeoVaccinoidation On Americans Whether We Want It Or Not!!!

theweek |  President Biden is in trouble. As my colleague Damon Linker writes, his approval numbers have been steadily declining for months, now hovering in the low 40s in some surveys. Without some upward movement, that will spell disaster for the Democrats in the upcoming midterms.

There is one straightforward policy Biden can undertake, completely on his own initiative, to turn this around: vaccine mandates. Strict policies to force vaccine-resistant populations to get their shots would do more than anything else under Biden's direct control to improve the condition of the country — and his own polling numbers.

Now, there are no doubt many reasons Biden's approval is down. The shrieking tantrum from the mainstream media over the American empire being humiliated in Afghanistan plays a part, as does the general tendency for presidential approval to decline following inauguration. The relentless drumbeat of conservative propaganda takes its toll as well.

But the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is surely the largest part. Political science has shown for years that the incumbent party in the White House tends to be blamed for bad things that happen on its watch — even if that assignment of blame makes little sense. That's what's happening here. 

As long as the pandemic continues, it will play hell with the economic recovery. Unemployment is relatively low, but recent jobs numbers have been weak, and supply chains are badly snarled up across the globe. That, coupled with the worst mass casualty event in a century — more people have died of COVID-19 this year than in 2020 — is surely sandbagging presidential popularity.

What's more, Biden did promise to end the pandemic. "I'll immediately put in place a national strategy that will position our country to finally get ahead of this virus and get back our lives," he said in a campaign speech last year. So even if it's not exactly his fault things are still bad, he still appears to be breaking his word. Early this summer, it appeared life was finally going back to normal after an absolutely horrible year — as it finally is in Western Europe, thanks to super-high vaccination rates. Instead, we got sucked right back down into the pandemic sandpit.

Southwest Airlines Widespread Cancellations Blamed On NeoVaccinoid Mandate

NYTimes | Southwest Airlines canceled more than 1,000 flights on Sunday and just over 800 on Saturday, wreaking havoc on weekend travel plans for thousands of passengers.

The airline had canceled 24 percent of all scheduled flights on Saturday, according to FlightAware, a tracking service. By noon on Sunday, Southwest had already canceled 28 percent of flights scheduled for the day, with hundreds more flights delayed.

“We experienced weather challenges in our Florida airports at the beginning of the weekend, challenges that were compounded by unexpected air traffic control issues in the same region, triggering delays and prompting significant cancellations,” the airline said in a statement on Sunday. “We’ve continued diligent work throughout the weekend to reset our operation with a focus on getting aircraft and crews repositioned to take care of our customers.”

Southwest added that recovering from the disruption was more difficult than usual because it is operating fewer flights than before the pandemic, complicating efforts to reschedule passengers.

“We know the frustration flight cancellations are creating for our customers and employees and we apologize, and we again thank everyone for patience as we work first to be safe, and second to be as quick as possible in solving disrupted plans.”

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement on Sunday that it had briefly suffered an air traffic control staffing shortage, but that the issue had long since been resolved.

“Flight delays and cancellations occurred for a few hours Friday afternoon due to widespread severe weather, military training and limited staffing in one area of the Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center,” the agency said. “Some airlines continue to experience scheduling challenges due to aircraft and crews being out of place.”

Indeed, the weekend disruption appeared to be limited to Southwest. American Airlines had the second highest number of cancellations among U.S. carriers on Sunday, with fewer than 70 flights — about 2 percent of those scheduled for the day — affected.

Southwest suffered similar widespread disruptions over several days in June, which it attributed to technological problems, both internally and with a third-party weather data supplier. The delays prevented crews from reaching flights they were scheduled to work, exacerbating the problem.