In Less Than 15 Minutes - President Vladimir Putin Spelled Out The Next Steps Toward WW-III

 en.kremlin.ru |  President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Friends,

The subject of this address is the situation in Donbass and the course of the special military operation to liberate it from the neo-Nazi regime, which seized power in Ukraine in 2014 as the result of an armed state coup.

Today I am addressing you – all citizens of our country, people of different generations, ages and ethnicities, the people of our great Motherland, all who are united by the great historical Russia, soldiers, officers and volunteers who are fighting on the frontline and doing their combat duty, our brothers and sisters in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and other areas that have been liberated from the neo-Nazi regime.

The issue concerns the necessary, imperative measures to protect the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Russia and support the desire and will of our compatriots to choose their future independently, and the aggressive policy of some Western elites, who are doing their utmost to preserve their domination and with this aim in view are trying to block and suppress any sovereign and independent development centres in order to continue to aggressively force their will and pseudo-values on other countries and nations.

The goal of that part of the West is to weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country. They are saying openly now that in 1991 they managed to split up the Soviet Union and now is the time to do the same to Russia, which must be divided into numerous regions that would be at deadly feud with each other.

They devised these plans long ago. They encouraged groups of international terrorists in the Caucasus and moved NATO’s offensive infrastructure close to our borders. They used indiscriminate Russophobia as a weapon, including by nurturing the hatred of Russia for decades, primarily in Ukraine, which was designed to become an anti-Russia bridgehead. They turned the Ukrainian people into cannon fodder and pushed them into a war with Russia, which they unleashed back in 2014. They used the army against civilians and organised a genocide, blockade and terror against those who refused to recognise the government that was created in Ukraine as the result of a state coup.

After the Kiev regime publicly refused to settle the issue of Donbass peacefully and went as far as to announce its ambition to possess nuclear weapons, it became clear that a new offensive in Donbass – there were two of them before – was inevitable, and that it would be inevitably followed by an attack on Russia’s Crimea, that is, on Russia.

In this connection, the decision to start a pre-emptive military operation was necessary and the only option. The main goal of this operation, which is to liberate the whole of Donbass, remains unaltered.

The Lugansk People’s Republic has been liberated from the neo-Nazis almost completely. Fighting in the Donetsk People’s Republic continues. Over the previous eight years, the Kiev occupation regime created a deeply echeloned line of permanent defences. A head-on attack against them would have led to heavy losses, which is why our units, as well as the forces of the Donbass republics, are acting competently and systematically, using military equipment and saving lives, moving step by step to liberate Donbass, purge cities and towns of the neo-Nazis, and help the people whom the Kiev regime turned into hostages and human shields.

As you know, professional military personnel serving under contract are taking part in the special military operation. Fighting side by side with them are volunteer units – people of different ethnicities, professions and ages who are real patriots. They answered the call of their hearts to rise up in defence of Russia and Donbass.

In this connection, I have already issued instructions for the Government and the Defence Ministry to determine the legal status of volunteers and personnel of the military units of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics. It must be the same as the status of military professionals of the Russian army, including material, medical and social benefits. Special attention must be given to organising the supply of military and other equipment for volunteer units and Donbass people’s militia.

While acting to attain the main goals of defending Donbass in accordance with the plans and decisions of the Defence Ministry and the General Staff, our troops have liberated considerable areas in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and a number of other areas. This has created a protracted line of contact that is over 1,000 kilometres long.

This is what I would like to make public for the first time today. After the start of the special military operation, in particular after the Istanbul talks, Kiev representatives voiced quite a positive response to our proposals. These proposals concerned above all ensuring Russia’s security and interests. But a peaceful settlement obviously did not suit the West, which is why, after certain compromises were coordinated, Kiev was actually ordered to wreck all these agreements.

More weapons were pumped into Ukraine. The Kiev regime brought into play new groups of foreign mercenaries and nationalists, military units trained according to NATO standards and receiving orders from Western advisers.

At the same time, the regime of reprisals throughout Ukraine against their own citizens, established immediately after the armed coup in 2014, was harshly intensified. The policy of intimidation, terror and violence is taking on increasingly mass-scale, horrific and barbaric forms.

I want to stress the following. We know that the majority of people living in the territories liberated from the neo-Nazis, and these are primarily the historical lands of Novorossiya, do not want to live under the yoke of the neo-Nazi regime. People in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, in Lugansk and Donetsk saw and are seeing now the atrocities perpetrated by the neo-Nazis in the [Ukrainian-] occupied areas of the Kharkov region. The descendants of Banderites and members of Nazi punitive expeditions are killing, torturing and imprisoning people; they are settling scores, beating up, and committing outrages on peaceful civilians.

There were over 7.5 million people living in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions before the outbreak of hostilities. Many of them were forced to become refugees and leave their homes. Those who have stayed – they number about five million – are now exposed to artillery and missile attacks launched by the neo-Nazi militants, who fire at hospitals and schools and stage terrorist attacks against peaceful civilians.

We cannot, we have no moral right to let our kin and kith be torn to pieces by butchers; we cannot but respond to their sincere striving to decide their destiny on their own.

The parliaments of the Donbass people’s republics and the military-civilian administrations of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions have adopted decisions to hold referendums on the future of their territories and have appealed to Russia to support this.

I would like to emphasise that we will do everything necessary to create safe conditions for these referendums so that people can express their will. And we will support the choice of future made by the majority of people in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. 

Yesterday Morning President Biden Read Words For 30+ Minutes At The U.N.

whitehouse |  THE PRESIDENT:  Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, my fellow delegates, to all those who dedicate themselves to this noble mission of this institution: It’s my honor to speak to you for the first time as President of the United States. 

We meet this year in a moment of — intermingled with great pain and extraordinary possibility.  We’ve lost so much to this devastating — this devastating pandemic that continues to claim lives around the world and impact so much on our existence. 

We’re mourning more than 4.5 million people — people of every nation from every background.  Each death is an individual heartbreak.  But our shared grief is a poignant reminder that our collective future will hinge on our ability to recognize our common humanity and to act together. 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the clear and urgent choice that we face here at the dawning of what must be a decisive decade for our world — a decade that will quite literally determine our futures.

As a global community, we’re challenged by urgent and looming crises wherein lie enormous opportunities if — if — we can summon the will and resolve to seize these opportunities. 

Will we work together to save lives, defeat COVID-19 everywhere, and take the necessary steps to prepare ourselves for the next pandemic?  For there will be another one.  Or will we fail to harness the tools at our disposal as the more virulent and dangerous variants take hold?

Will we meet the threat of challenging climate — the challenging climate we’re all feeling already ravaging every part of our world with extreme weather?  Or will we suffer the merciless march of ever-worsening droughts and floods, more intense fires and hurricanes, longer heatwaves and rising seas?

Will we affirm and uphold the human dignity and human rights under which nations in common cause, more than seven decades ago, formed this institution? 

Will we apply and strengthen the core tenets of inter- — of the international system, including the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as we seek to shape the emergence of new technologies and deter new threats?  Or will we allow these universal — those universal principles to be trampled and twisted in the pursuit of naked political power? 

In my view, how we answer these questions in this moment — whether we choose to fight for our shared future or not — will reverberate for generations yet to come.

Simply put: We stand, in my view, at an inflection point in history.  And I’m here today to share with you how the United States intends to work with partners and allies to answer these questions and the commitment of my new administration to help lead the world toward a more peaceful, prosperous future for all people.

Following Last Week's SCO - Valodya Answered Journalist's Kwestins

 en.kremlin.ru  |  President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good evening,

I am listening.

Question: Now that the SCO summit is over, summing it up, can you tell us how you regard the SCO’s development prospects and what the most important thing is for Russia in the SCO?

Vladimir Putin: The most important thing always and everywhere is economic development. And the SCO, cooperation with the SCO countries, creates conditions for the development of the Russian economy, and thus for the social sphere and for resolving the tasks related to improving the living standards of our citizens.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation includes countries whose population, as has been said many times, comprises almost or even slightly more than half of humanity. It is 25 percent of world GDP. And, most importantly, the national economies in the region, those of the SCO member states, are developing much faster than others in the world.

Now we had a separate meeting. I sat next to the Prime Minister of India at the working dinner. India’s GDP grew by 7 percent, China’s by more than 5 percent. China was in the lead for quite a time and its potential is tremendous. Our trade with these countries is growing fast. If these rates are preserved, and they are bound to be for many objective reasons, we will be one of these countries, next to them, ensuring our interests. This is what we are doing and this is the main point.

Question: This question is certainly worrying very many people in our country. People have already developed certain concerns over the course of the special military operation in Ukraine. We are increasingly seeing strikes, raids and acts of terror even on Russian territory. We are hearing all the time very aggressive statements that the final goal of Kiev and the West is Russia’s disintegration. Meanwhile, many think that Russia’s response to all of this is very restrained. Why is that?

Vladimir Putin: There is nothing new about this. Frankly, I find it even a bit strange to hear your question because Western countries have cultivated the idea of the collapse of the Soviet Union and historical Russia and Russia as such, its nucleus.

I have already cited these statements and studies by some figures in Great Britain during World War I and after it. I cited excerpts from Mr Brzezinski’s writings in which he divided the entire territory of our country into specific parts. True, later he changed his position a bit in the belief that it was better to keep Russia in opposition to China and use it as a tool to combat China. It will never happen. Let them address their own challenges as they see fit. But we are seeing how they are handling them and, most likely, they are doing harm to themselves in the process. Their tools are no good.

But they have always been seeking the dissolution of our country – this is very true. It is unfortunate that at some point they decided to use Ukraine for these purposes. In effect – I am answering your question now and the conclusion suggests itself – we launched our special military operation to prevent events from taking this turn. This is what some US-led Western countries have always been seeking – to create an anti-Russia enclave and rock the boat, threaten Russia from this direction. In essence, our main goal is to prevent such developments.

With regard to our restrained response, I would not say it was restrained, even though, after all, a special military operation is not just another warning, but a military operation. In the course of this, we are seeing attempts to perpetrate terrorist attacks and damage our civilian infrastructure.

Indeed, we were quite restrained in our response, but that will not last forever. Recently, Russian Armed Forces delivered a couple of sensitive blows to that area. Let’s call them warning shots. If the situation continues like that, our response will be more impactful

Terrorist attacks are a serious matter. In fact, it is about using terrorist methods. We see this in the killing of officials in the liberated territories, we even see attempts at perpetrating terrorist attacks in the Russian Federation, including – I am not sure if this was made public – attempts to carry out terrorist attacks near our nuclear facilities, nuclear power plants in the Russian Federation. I am not even talking about the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant.

We are monitoring the situation and will do our best to prevent a negative scenario from unfolding. We will respond if they fail to realise that these approaches are unacceptable. They are, in fact, no different than terrorist attacks.

Remark: Good afternoon, Mr President.

Kiev presented draft security guarantees for Ukraine the other day…

Vladimir Putin: Wait a second. I have something to add to my answer to the first question. You said that we are seeing activity here and there. But Kiev has announced that it has launched an active counter-offensive operation. Let’s see how it unfolds and how it ends.

Please go ahead.

Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov - Bio Weapons Briefing Sep 19 - Geneva

VK  |  A meeting of States parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons was held in Geneva from 5 to 9 September in connection with the violation of articles I and IV of the Convention by the United States and Ukraine, initiated by the Russian Federation.

The Russian Ministry of Defense analyzed the materials of speeches made by representatives of the United States and Ukraine, working documents of the participating states, joint statements and the final document of the meeting.

Recall that the Russian Federation was asked more than 20 questions concerning the illegal activities of Kiev and Washington in the framework of the BTWC. Here are some of them.

What is the reason for the choice of pathogenic microorganisms studied on the territory of Ukraine within the framework of the Threat Reduction Program and why the nomenclature of pathogens studied is not related to current health problems, for example, the Tep-6 project on the study of the glanders pathogen, cases of which have never been recorded on the territory of Ukraine?

How should the accumulation of highly dangerous strains of infections and their transfer to other countries contribute to improving the state of infectious diseases?

Why was the emphasis placed on studying natural foci and particularly dangerous infections, which according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists are considered potential agents of biological weapons?

What studies using infectious agents and toxic substances were conducted on Ukrainian military personnel and the mentally ill, who are one of the most vulnerable categories of citizens?

And finally, why do the United States and Ukraine hide the facts of cooperation in the military-biological sphere in international reporting under the BTWC, while the United States has blocked the development of its verification mechanism since 2001?

The meeting participants were presented with copies of real documents previously announced by the Russian Ministry of Defense, as well as material evidence confirming the implementation of military biological programs on the territory of Ukraine.

None of the delegations had any doubts about the authenticity of the submitted documents, including the accumulation of pathogenic materials in Ukrainian laboratories, including the Mechnikov Anti-Plague Institute.

In its speech, Ukraine acknowledged the fact that the institute was inspected by a commission of the Ministry of Health, noting that the QUOTE: "... 80 percent of violations were eliminated...". At the same time, the Ukrainian side completely ignored questions about the unjustified storage of dangerous biological agents on the basis of the institution and revealed gross violations of the conditions for their accumulation: storage of biomaterials in stairwells, the lack of a functioning access control system for pathogenic microorganisms.

No explanation was received regarding the nomenclature of accumulated strains of dangerous pathogens, although 19 studies aimed at studying potential agents of biological weapons (Congo-Crimean fever, hantaviruses, anthrax and tularemia) and economically significant ones have been implemented in Ukraine since 2008 under the projects codenamed "Yu-Pi" and "Tep". infections (African and classical swine fever, Newcastle disease).

Neither Ukraine nor the United States has provided convincing evidence that cooperation has helped improve the sanitary and epidemiological situation, which has steadily worsened over the past 15 years.

The practical results of the activities of the US Department of Defense's Office for Threat Reduction DITRA in Ukraine presented during the meeting were reduced to a demonstration of several photos of renovated laboratory facilities. Most likely, apart from these pseudo "achievements", no other results were achieved.

The explanations of the United States and Ukraine regarding the export of strains and biomaterials of Ukrainian citizens and compliance with ethical standards when conducting research on military personnel, low – income citizens, as well as on one of the most unprotected categories of the population-patients in psychiatric hospitals looked extremely unconvincing.

When discussing this issue, the American delegation acknowledged such facts, while noting that the transfer of samples of pathogenic biomaterials to the United States QUOTE: "...was infrequent...".

Apart from this wording, which does not allow estimating the volume and frequency of bioassays transferred abroad, no other explanations were provided to the meeting participants.

Uhmurica Will NEVER Accept Democratic Referenda Held By Majority Ethnic Russian Oblasts

WaPo  |  Russia pushed ahead Tuesday with plans to annex occupied regions of Ukraine, as Moscow’s puppet authorities set dates to stage referendums on joining Russia — moves that could dramatically escalate the war.

Officials in the self-declared separatist “republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk, and in the occupied region of Kherson in southern Ukraine, announced “referendums” to be held from Friday to Tuesday. Such votes, which are illegal under Ukrainian and international law, have been widely derided by Western officials as a sham and merely a precursor to annexation.

After annexing the territories, Moscow probably would declare Ukrainian attacks on those areas to be assaults on Russia itself, analysts warned, a potential trigger for a general military mobilization or a dangerous escalation, such as the use of a nuclear weapon.

White House spokesman Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that the United States would never recognize Russian claims to annexed territory, calling the planned referendums a direct violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. “We reject Russia’s actions unequivocally,” he said.

The head of the Russian-appointed occupying administration of Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky, said a referendum would be held on the same dates in the parts of that region controlled by Russian forces, which includes Enerhodar, where Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant is located.

Balitsky said there was “no point in postponing the procedure.”

Moscow’s proxy leader in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, appealed to Russia for help organizing the referendum, highlighting the thin veneer of pretense that local officials were in control. Denis Pushilin, the puppet leader in Donetsk, said police and members of his administration’s “electoral commission” would knock on people’s doors and “invite” them to vote.

Russia does not have a firm military grip on any of the regions it could move to annex, and the quick staging of votes suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin now aims to accomplish by political fiat what he failed to achieve on the battlefield.

But seizing Ukrainian sovereign territory in flagrant violation of international law, just as world leaders gather at the United Nations for the annual General Assembly, would be a remarkably brazen step, even for Putin, who has shown little regard for global public opinion as he launched the largest land war in Europe since World War II.

 

Johnson And Johnson's New War On Consumer Protection

Hitler outlawed independent unions, removed safety and work hour regulations, and cracked down on any complaining workers. Plus, real incomes for the workers fell. He was doing what his boss's, the aristocracy and oligarchs of Germany wanted - he was always a creation of the German upper class wanting to take back the little gains that the working class had made.

An excellent book on this "Big Business and Hitler" by Jacques R. Pauwels, you can probably fund one of his talks on youtube as well.

The elites installed Hitler (made the Chancellor by Hindenberg against the wishes of the electorate) after the Nazi vote went down and more voters were moving to the left wing parties - producing a panic within the elites.

Fascism is the tool used by the elites when "liberal democracy" cannot be managed in such a way to provide the required outcomes. Just like in Italy, Spain and Portugal in the same period (also the military dictatorship in Poland). The elites attempted a fascist coup in France in the 1930s but it was defeated, then implemented fascism in Vichy France.

newyorker  |  Johnson & Johnson is one of America’s most trusted companies, and as Berg moved through her cycles of chemotherapy she kept thinking about a slogan for its body powder: “A sprinkle a day helps keep odor away.” For more than thirty years, she had taken that advice, applying the powder between her legs to prevent chafing. But that powder wasn’t like her chemo drugs: their side effects were awful, but they were keeping her alive. The powder felt, instead, like an unnecessary gamble, one she thought other people should be warned about.

Slippery to the touch and soft enough to flake with your fingernail, the mineral talc is found all around the world, in deposits that can be more than a billion years old. Such deposits are sometimes laced with actinolite, anthophyllite, chrysotile, and tremolite. These accessory minerals, better known in their fibrous form as asbestos, grow alongside talc like weeds in a geological garden. As early as 1971, Johnson & Johnson scientists had become aware of reports about asbestos in talc. They and others also worried about a connection between cancer and talc itself, whether or not it contained asbestos. By the time of Berg’s diagnosis, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer had designated talc containing fibrous particles a carcinogen and the genital application of any talc powder possibly carcinogenic. The F.D.A. had safety concerns, too, but its authority over products like baby powder was and remains, in the words of Ann Witt, a former senior official at the agency, “so minimal it’s laughable.”

Johnson & Johnson has always insisted, including to this magazine, that its baby powder is “safe, asbestos-free, and does not cause cancer”; however, a 2016 investigation by Bloomberg and subsequent revelations by Reuters and the New York Times, based in part on documents that surfaced because of discovery in suits like Berg’s, exposed the possible health risk related to its powders. Following those reports, tens of thousands of people filed suits against the company, alleging that its products had caused their cancers. In 2020, after juries awarded some of those plaintiffs damages that collectively exceeded billions of dollars, Johnson & Johnson announced that it would no longer supply the talc-based version of its product to American stores.

And then, quietly, the company embraced a strategy to circumvent juries entirely. Deploying a legal maneuver first used by Koch Industries, Johnson & Johnson, a company valued at nearly half a trillion dollars, with a credit rating higher than that of the United States government, declared bankruptcy. Because of that move, the fate of forty thousand current lawsuits and the possibility of future claims by cancer victims or their survivors now rests with a single bankruptcy judge in the company’s home state, New Jersey. If Johnson & Johnson prevails and, as Berg puts it, “weasels its way out of everything,” the case could usher in a new era in which the government has diminished power to enforce consumer-protection laws, citizens don’t get to make their case before a jury of their peers when those laws fail, and even corporations with long histories of documented harm will get to decide how much, if anything, they owe their victims.

Biden Spouting Disinformation, Misinformation And Malinformation About Inflation And The Economy

cbsnews  |  Scott Pelley: Mr. President, as you know, last Tuesday the annual inflation rate came in at 8.3%. The stock market nosedived. People are shocked by their grocery bills. What can you do better and faster?

President Joe Biden: Well, first of all, let's put this in perspective. Inflation rate month to month was just-- just an inch, hardly at all,

Scott Pelley: You're not arguing that 8.3% is good news.

President Joe Biden: No, I'm not saying it is good news. But it was 8.2% or-- 8.2% before. I mean, it's not-- you're ac-- we act-- make it sound like all of a sudden, "My god, it went to 8.2%." It's been--

Scott Pelley: It's the highest inflation rate, Mr. President, in 40 years.

President Joe Biden: I got that. But guess what we are. We're in a position where, for the last several months, it hasn't spiked. It has just barely-- it's been basically even. And in the meantime, we created all these jobs and-- and prices-- have-- have gone up, but they've come down for energy. The fact is that we've created 10 million new jobs. We're in-- since we came to office. We're in a situation where the-- the unemployment rate is about 3.7%. one of the lowest in history. We're in a situation where manufacturing is coming back to the United States in a big way. And look down the road, we have mas-- massive investments being made in computer chips and-- and employment. So, I-- look, this is a process. This is a process.

 

Scott Pelley: Is the economy going to get worse before it gets better?

President Joe Biden: No. I don't think so. We hope we can have what they say, "a soft landing," a transition to a place where we don't lose the gains that I ran to make in the first place for middle-class folks, being able to generate good-paying jobs and-- expansion. And at the same time-- make sure that we-- we are-- are able to continue to grow.

Scott Pelley: And you would tell the American people that inflation is going to continue to decline?

President Joe Biden: No, I'm telling the American people that we're gonna get control of inflation. And their prescription drug prices are gonna be a hell of a lotta lower. Their health care costs are gonna be a lot lower. Their basic costs for everybody, their energy prices are gonna be lower. They're gonna be in a situation where they begin to gain control again.  I'm-- more optimistic than I've been in a long time.

Scott Pelley: Sir, with the Federal Reserve rapidly raising interest rates, what can you do to prevent a recession?

President Joe Biden: Continue to grow the economy. And we're growing the economy. It's growing in-- in a way that it hasn't in years and years.

Scott Pelley: How so?

President Joe Biden: We're growing entire new industries. Six hundred and ninety-five, I think it is, or eighty-five thousand new manufacturing jobs just since I've become president in United States. Continue to grow the economy and continue to give hard-working people a break in terms of we pay the highest drug prices in the world of any industrialized nation. Making sure that Medicare can negotiate down those prices by the way, we've also reduced the debt and reduced the deficit by $350 billion my first year. This year, it's gonna be over $1.5 trillion reduced the debt. So, to continue to put people in a position to be able to make a decent living and grow, and grow, and increase their capacity to grow.

WSJ Attacks The Railway Labor Act As "Semi-Fascist"

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.

Brandon Say: "If You Don't Fully Submit To Your Corporatist Masters - You're Semi-Fascist!"

 washingtontimes |  Students of political and philosophical concepts are required to learn the definitions of socialism, democracy, republicanism, fascism — among many others. Libraries are filled with volumes written by thinkers and theorists explaining the origins of those ideologies and movements. And now President Biden has coined a new term we might add to that list: semi-fascism.

In remarks at a Democratic National Committee reception on Aug. 25, Mr. Biden said former President Donald Trump and his loyalists within the Republican Party represent a distinct threat to American democracy, a theme he has repeated while campaigning for Democrats ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

“And what we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It’s not just — it’s not just Trump. It’s the entire philosophy that underpins — it’s — I’m going say something — it’s almost like semi-fascism,” the president said. When asked to clarify what he meant, Mr. Biden, rather than define the term, said, “You know what I mean.”

The word “fascism” is everywhere on social media these days. And while some folks may use it as a slur to attack those with whom they disagree, a number of professional scholars have embraced the term to describe what they view as the dangerous rise of right-wing radicalism in American politics.

In this episode of History As It Happens, scholars Jeffrey Bale and Tamir Bar-On argue that it is historically inaccurate and politically dangerous to label Mr. Trump and the Republican Party as fascists. They are the co-authors of “Fighting the Last War: Confusion, Partisanship, and Alarmism in the Literature on the Radical Right.”

“We believe the threat posed by fascism and the radical right in Western countries has been egregiously inflated and exaggerated ever since the end of World War II. If you listen to certain pundits, radical left-wing groups, or the self-appointed watchdog groups… they’re always presenting this image that fascism is on the march. They’re still living in the past like it’s the 1930s,” said Mr. Bale, an expert on violent political and religious extremists at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Whatever one thinks of Mr. Trump and his politics, they do not fit the definition of fascism, said Mr. Bar-On, a political scientist at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico.

“Fascism is spoken about as if we should know what fascism is. There’s a whole body of literature on what constitutes fascism and it goes back to the period when fascists rose to power in the 1920s. At minimum, I would think that if you are a scholar, a journalist or a think tank, you should define what fascism is,” he said.

So what is fascism? What is semi-fascism? Listen to this episode of History As It Happens.

 

 

The Oligarch-Induced Rail Crisis Is Far From Over

wired  |  In the early hours of Thursday morning, major US freight railroad companies reached a tentative agreement with unions, narrowly averting a nationwide rail shutdown less than 24 hours before a strike deadline. A work stoppage would have heaped devastating consequences on the nation’s economy and supply chain, nearly 30 percent of which relies on rail. Even a near miss had some impact. Long-distance Amtrak passenger services, which use freight tracks, and hazardous materials shipments are now being restored after railroads suspended them to prevent people or cargo becoming stranded by a strike.

The tentative agreement, to be voted on by union members, came through talks brokered by the Biden administration. It scrambled this week to avoid a shutdown that would have caused major disruption and worsened inflation by restricting the supply of crucial goods and driving up shipping costs. Rail unions and the railroad industry association released statements Thursday welcoming the deal. But freight rail service has been unreliable since long before this week’s standoff, and trade groups representing rail customers say much work remains to restore it to acceptable levels.

Just two-thirds of trains were arriving within 24 hours of their scheduled time this spring, down from 85 percent pre-pandemic, forcing rail customers to suspend business or—grimly—consider euthanizing their starving chickens. Scott Jensen, a spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council, whose members depend on rail to ship chemicals, called the latest shutdown threat “another ugly chapter in this long saga of freight rail issues.”

Although Thursday’s agreement was lauded by companies dependent on rail freight, the ACC, the National Grain and Feed Association, and other trade groups also argue that further reforms to the rail industry are needed. Competition has dwindled as service concentrated among a handful of big railroads, which slashed their combined workforce by 29 percent over the past six years. Rail customers have asked lawmakers and rail regulators to intervene. Suggestions include federal minimum service standards, including penalties for leaving loaded cars sitting in rail yards for long periods, and a rule that would allow customers to move cargo to another service provider at certain interchanges, to work around the fact that many customers are captive to a single carrier.

Major US freight railroads made deep staff cuts in recent years as part of an effort to implement a leaner, more profitable operating model called Precision Scheduled Railroading. Profits have indeed soared—two of the largest freight carriers, Union Pacific and BNSF, owned by Warren Buffett, broke records last year. But after many workers decided not to return to the rail industry after pandemic furloughs, a staffing shortage tipped the network into crisis. At federal hearings this spring, rail customers complained about suffering their worst ever service levels from a network that had been stripped of its resiliency.

Many freight rail jobs have always involved erratic schedules and long stretches away from home, but workers complained that the leaner operations saddled them with still longer hours, higher injury rates, and less predictable schedules. Many workers received no sick leave and were penalized for taking time off outside of their vacation time, which averaged three weeks a year, or holiday and personal time, which reached 14 days a year for the most senior employees.

 

There Is No Contract, Hence No Agreement, Hence No Deal....,

smart-union  |  Since the announcement of the tentative agreement (TA) yesterday morning, a number of posts purporting to reveal the finalized contents or finalized components of the TA have spread rapidly and are being presented as factual.

They are not.

Anyone who states that they have seen a final copy of the TA, have a copy of the final TA or knows the final contents of the agreement is not being truthful. The final documents have not been fully reviewed by both parties’ legal counsel as is required before it can be presented to the SMART-TD District 1 General Chairpersons, nor has it been distributed to officers or membership.

Per the SMART Constitution, the TA’s language, when finalized, will first be released to General Chairpersons engaged in national handling for their review. This is anticipated to happen as soon as sometime next week.

Once the proper steps with our SMART-TD District 1 General Chairpersons have occurred, factual information will be released on the union website for members for them to evaluate and to carefully consider the tentative agreement.

In the meantime, please do not draw conclusions on the information concerning this agreement from what is being circulated on social media until such time that it comes from our official sites.

We thank you for and appreciate your patience.

Greedy Immoral Treasonous Oligarchs Abusing American Workers

slate  |  If you were planning to spend Thursday stocking up on toilet paper in advance of a seemingly imminent freight-railroad strike or lockout, you woke up to welcome news. President Joe Biden has announced a tentative agreement to avert the disruption and the body blow it would have caused the economy and our supply chains. The deal isn’t final—workers will soon vote on it—but, nonetheless, it’s a relief following a week of headlines warning about the potential of $2 billion a day in economic loss, including disruptions to passenger trains, grain shipments, carmakers, and refiners.

What was missing from these headlines? The actual reason for the conflict between railroad workers and their employers. The potential strike or lockout was not because of any dispute over pay, but because of inhumane attendance policies that currently mean railroad engineers and conductors are either working or “on call” 90 percent of the time. When they’re on call, they can be summoned to work on two hours’ notice or less, and then may be away from home for days at a time. Workers report that they have no sick days, paid or unpaid. If they have to take time off unexpectedly, even because of illness, they lose points in a convoluted, points-based attendance system. That means workers are at risk of being disciplined or fired for getting sick, going to a doctor’s appointment or a family funeral, or for any other absence that can’t be planned far in advance.

As railroad worker Hugh Sawyer told the American Prospect, this meant that on his 65th birthday this year, he got home at 7:30 in the morning after working 12 hours the day before, slept for five hours, and then spent the day refreshing his computer to see if he was being called back to work. Another worker, describing the onerous requirements for scheduling off-time in advance, wrote on Facebook, “How do you schedule a funeral in October if it’s only February?” He also noted that he gets 30 days fully off for the entire year, no weekends. And the wife of an engineer told Vice, “They go to work sick, they miss funerals of loved ones, they miss final goodbyes to parents on hospice, they miss holidays, birthdays, all of it.”

As the unions put it in a statement on Sunday, “these policies are destroying the lives of our members.” The unions initially pushed for paid sick leave, but later sought only unpaid sick leave. Yes, really: They’ve had to fight in order not to be punished for taking unexpected, urgently needed unpaid sick leave. It appears that the tentative agreement between the parties would address these attendance and leave policies by creating “voluntary assigned days off,” granting one additional paid day off, allowing workers to attend medical appointments without penalty, and creating exemptions from attendance policies for hospitalizations and surgeries.

It should not be controversial to say it, but: People should have sick leave so they do not have to come to work when they get sick. They should be able to take leave to attend doctors’ appointments or deal with family emergencies without risking their jobs. Workers should also have regular time off, not be on call almost every day of their lives. This strike or lockout was threatened because of the railroad companies’ refusal, right up until the last minute, to accept these basic human needs, and their willingness to bring an already weary country to the brink of yet another economic disaster, all in the name of ever more profits.

The United States, unlike many countries, does not have a national law guaranteeing sick leave; if we did, the railroads’ attendance systems would be clearly illegal. The kind of point-based attendance systems that railroads employ can still be considered unlawful retaliation if workers lose points for taking leave that is legally protected, such as for absences guaranteed by the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, or state or local sick-leave laws. Apart from questions of legality, it is grossly irresponsible to punish people for unexpected illnesses ever, and especially during a pandemic.

 

Arabella Advisors: Why The American Progressive Left Wing Is Neither

tabletmag  | Behind the closed doors of an unassuming philanthropic consultancy in Washington, D.C., is one of the most powerful lobbying forces in the United States. The Atlantic has called it “the massive progressive dark-money group you’ve never heard of” and “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money.” The Washington Post believes its potent lobbying arm is reason enough for Congress to enact forced donor disclosure laws, while Politico labelled it a “dark-money behemoth.” “The system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors, is known as dark money,” wrote The New York Times, “and Arabella’s network is a leading vehicle for it on the left.”

Meet Arabella Advisors, the brainchild of ex-Clinton administration staffer Eric Kessler and the favorite tool of anonymous, billionaire donors on the progressive left. Since 2006, the Arabella hub has overseen a growing network of nonprofits—call them the “spokes”—that collected $2.4 billion in the 2019-20 election cycle, nearly twice as much as the Republican and Democratic national committees combined.

These nonprofits in turn manage and supervise a vast array of “pop-up” groups—mainly political attack-dog websites, ad campaigns, and “spontaneous” demonstrations staffed by Arabella’s network of activist professionals who pose as members of independent activist organizations. These groups—such as Fix Our Senate, the Hub Project, and Floridians for a Fair Shake—typically emerge very suddenly in order to savage the political opposition on the policy or outrage of that particular day or week, then vanish just as quickly. The pop-ups do not file IRS disclosures or report their budgets, boards, or staff. In most cases, their connection to Arabella goes unreported. Many of them have offered sympathetic ordinary voters the opportunity to donate to whatever the “grassroots” cause happens to be, when in fact the money feeds back into Arabella’s enormous dark-money network.

The relatively novel and innovative model of political activism perfected by Arabella, which was founded 2005, went more or less unnoticed until 2018, when I was reporting on the activist groups that attempted to prevent the Senate confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Among the sea of picket signs outside the court in July 2018 was the name of an unfamiliar group: Demand Justice. A search of the IRS nonprofit archives showed the name itself wasn’t listed. What did turn up in an online search was a downtown address on Connecticut Avenue shared by dozens of other organizations, including the Arabella “spoke” that appeared to be running Demand Justice, Sixteen Thirty Fund.

It isn’t uncommon for political groups to share expensive D.C. office space, especially when they’re affiliated, like the Center for American Progress (CAP) and its lobbying arm, CAP Action. But Arabella’s arrangement is unique: A for-profit consultancy (Arabella Advisors) is the central hub; four (perhaps five) tax-exempt nonprofits (New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund, Windward Fund, and possibly North Fund, all founded and led by Arabella leadership) are the spokes; and countless ephemeral pop-ups branching out from the nonprofits.

In early 2019, the Capital Research Center (where I work) released a report on the network. Since then, my colleagues and I have collected large amounts of data on Arabella’s origins, lobbying, pop-up campaigns, board connections, and donors, which helped lay the groundwork for later reporting on Arabella in mainstream outlets like The Atlantic and New York Times—which have since acknowledged that the political “left” has outraised and outspent the political “right” using dark money in recent years by a margin of nearly 2 to 1.

And yet today, the vast majority of American voters remain unaware of Arabella’s existence, even as it promises to play an increasingly central role in American politics, and as the culture wars and fight for control of federal institutions reaches a fever pitch in the fall of 2022.

Never Forget That BLM Was/Is A Warren Buffet Production (Originally Posted 10/13/20)

 Obama's The Poster Child And His Cousin Warren Buffet's The Money Behind Black Lives Matter

tabletmag  |  Tides was founded in 1976 by Drummond Pike, a California real estate investor who named the entity after a Bay Area bookstore popular among left-leaning activists. From the beginning, according to their own documents, Tides was designed unlike most other nonprofit institutions. Rather than building up or spending down an endowment, it sought to become more like a sophisticated piece of software—a financial instrument that would allow wealthy individuals and donors to contribute to the causes of their choosing with more anonymity than is generally allowed by the laws governing ordinary nonprofits.

Recently, after Pike stepped away, the Tides network has taken on a distinctly political role, whose guiding star appears to be Barack Obama. The secretary of the Tides board is Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN America and a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international organizations in the Obama administration; board member Cheryl Alston was appointed by Obama to the advisory committee of the federal pension program. Peter Buttenwieser, the heir to the Lehman Brothers fortune who passed away in 2018, financed a fund in his own name which is administered and distributed entirely by the Tides Foundation. A “major behind-the-scenes supporter of Democratic candidates,” Buttenwieser was one of President Obama’s earliest high profile backers, helping the then-senator organize his bid for the White House.

Moreover, Atlantic Philanthropies, a nonprofit created by billionaire retailer Chuck Feeney in the 1980s, has directed more than $42 million in grants through the Tides network since 2000. Based in Bermuda, Atlantic Philanthropies was able to participate in political lobbying efforts in ways that continental United States nonprofits cannot. Atlantic became increasingly aggressive under the Obama administration. As Gara LaMarche, Atlantic’s president, said in one think tank address, when Obama was elected “we saw opportunities to assist our grantees in moving forward more rapidly and broadly in a number of areas central to our mission.” In return, Atlantic dispensed $27 million to help push Obamacare through Congress. At the ceremony to sign Obamacare into law, LaMarche stood beside President Obama in the East Room of the White House.

In any case, what’s clear is that there is now a sophisticated and complex structure underneath what many assume to be an organic and spontaneous social movement, one with deep pockets and ambitious goals. “After over fourteen years of learning and over 700 million dollars invested ... the collapse we have been expecting is surely underway,” reads the NoVo Foundation’s website. Right now there’s only this one statement on the site, which is under construction as noted: “Working on solutions now so old patterns of power can’t, once again, re-form to rebuild and continue to repress.”

The Eminently Patient And Diplomatic Vladimir Putin Holds Back The Siloviki

thesaker  |  The Special Military Operation (SMO), conceptually, is not about conquering territory per se: it is, or it was, so far, about protection of Russophone citizens in occupied territories, thus demilitarization cum denazification.

That concept may be about to be tweaked. And that’s where the tortuous, tricky debate on Russia mobilization fits in. Yet even a partial mobilization may not be necessary: what’s needed are reserves to properly allow allied forces to cover rear/defensive lines. Hardcore fighters of the Kadyrov contingent kind would continue to play offense.

It’s undeniable that Russian troops lost a strategically important node in Izyum. Without it, the complete liberation of Donbass becomes significantly harder.

Yet for the collective West, whose carcass slouches inside a vast simulacra bubble, it’s the pysops that matters much more than a minor military advance: thus all that gloating on Ukraine being able to drive the Russians out of the whole of Kharkov in only four days – while they had 6 months to liberate Donbass, and didn’t.

So, across the West, the reigning perception – frantically fomented by psyops experts – is that the Russian military were hit by that “hammer blow” and will hardly recover.

Kharkov was preciously timed – as General Winter is around the corner; the Ukraine issue was already suffering from public opinion fatigue; and the propaganda machine needed a boost to turbo-lubricate the multi-billion dollar weaponizing rat line.

Yet Kharkov may have forced Moscow’s hand to increase the pain dial. That came via a few well-placed Mr. Khinzals leaving the Black Sea and the Caspian to present their business cards to the largest thermal power plants in northeast and central Ukraine (most of the energy infrastructure is in the southeast).

Half of Ukraine suddenly lost power and water. Trains came to a halt. If Moscow decides to take out all major Ukraine substations at once, all it takes is a few missiles to totally smash the Ukrainian energy grid – adding a new meaning to “decommunization”: de-energization.

According to an expert analysis, “if transformers of 110-330 kV are damaged, then it will almost never be possible to put it into operation (…) And if this happens at least at 5 substations at the same time, then everything is kaput. Stone age forever.”

Russian government official Marat Bashirov was way more colorful: “Ukraine is being plunged into the 19th century. If there is no energy system, there will be no Ukrainian army. The matter of fact is that General Volt came to the war, followed by General Moroz (“frost”).

And that’s how we might be finally entering “real war” territory – as in Putin’s notorious quip that “we haven’t even started anything yet.”

A definitive response will come from the RSG in the next few days.

Once again, a fiery debate rages on what Russia will do next (the RGS, after all, is inscrutable, except for Yoda Patrushev).

The RGS may opt for a serious strategic strike of the decapitating kind elsewhere – as in changing the subject for the worse (for NATO).

It may opt for sending more troops to protect the front line (without partial mobilization).

And most of all it may enlarge the SMO mandate – going to total destruction of Ukrainian transport/energy infrastructure, from gas fields to thermal power plants, substations, and shutting down nuclear power plants.

Well, it could always be a mix of all of the above: a Russian version of Shock and Awe – generating an unprecedented socio-economic catastrophe. That has already been telegraphed by Moscow: we can revert you to the Stone Age at any time and in a matter of hours (italics mine). Your cities will greet General Winter with zero heating, freezing water, power outages and no connectivity.

Brandon Bootlicks American Oligarchs While Valodya Rules Russia's Greediest Parasites

euractiv  |  The first dollar billionaires from Russia appeared on the Forbes list in 1997, while today, there are 83, all of whom are part of a close circle of oligarchs around Vladimir Putin. As the list shows, they got rich during his rule. Today, this club of the richest returns the favour to their political mentor; they are obliged to support, or at least not hinder, his life project – the aggression against Ukraine.

The history of this club is a story about relationships in mafia organisations, not about the relationship between the “ordinary” state and “ordinary” capitalist companies. The first and most important meeting was held in the Kremlin in mid-2000, just a few months after Putin’s first presidential inauguration. He was the new leader of the state, army and security services and the 21st-ranking businessman at that time.

At this meeting at the giant table in the Kremlin, the first strategic agreement was reached on the game’s rules for the future. Putin promised not to review the privatisation of the 1990s and demanded loyalty in return. In terms of commitment, these influential people could not work against his government through the media they controlled and the political influence they undoubtedly had. At this meeting, an agreement was made on omertà; a code was adopted that would last for two decades.

The next meeting of this importance was held on 24 February this year, the day Russia attacked Ukraine. The hall in the Kremlin was filled with billionaires, and their leader, without whom they would not be what they are, asked for their loyalty again.

The price of that loyalty was much higher than ever before because personal sanctions had already been raised against everyone. Their billions in Western banks were blocked, and their jet planes, yachts, and mansions in London, Nice and Tuscany were seized. The stakes for showing loyalty were also higher because Putin’s country went to war to realise its mythical “Russian world”.

Anyone who thought they should oppose or even not participate vigorously in this work received a clear warning that such behaviour would not be tolerated.

In the past six months, as Russia has been trying to occupy Ukraine, at least eight top Russian businessmen and heads of several major companies have died in unexplained circumstances.

The last of them, the first man of the oil giant Lukoil, Ravil Maganov, may have accidentally fallen from the window (or balcony) of a Moscow hospital or committed suicide, as the controlled Russian media wrote. Maybe he got hurt because he was one of the few top businessmen who did not have kind words about the aggression against Ukraine.

His Lukoil asked for an end to the war back in March, which is hard to forgive. In May, his former executive director Alexander Subotin also died under unexplained circumstances, except for the state propaganda that discredits him, saying that he died “after visiting a shaman”.

The circumstances under which Leonid Shulman, one of the directors at Gazprom Invest and Alexander Tyulyakov, also one of the top managers at Gazprom (found dead in his garage), died are not clear. There is no trace of the murder of Vladislav Avayev, former vice president of Gazprom Bank, his wife and their daughter in a Moscow apartment.

Just like the murder of the head of the gas giant Novatek Sergei Protosenya and his family in their apartment in Spain. It remains unknown why Vasily Melnikov, the owner of the medical company Medstom, his wife and two children were stabbed to death in Nizhny Novgorod in March.

Just as it remains unknown how the Russian gas billionaire of Ukrainian origin Mikhail Watford died in his apartment in England.

It seems unlikely that we will ever get answers from Russian investigations regarding this long and likely increase, string of deaths.

It would be reasonable to ask for only one answer – how did these unfortunate people violate the long-established code of loyalty? Because the death of at least eight top managers from the most prominent Russian companies in just six months of Russian aggression against Ukraine cannot be a “regular” crime.

Warren Buffet Long Ago Needed To Go Out Like One Of These Mysteriously Dying Russian Oligarchs

From the man who brought you, “Suck it in and cope.” https://t.co/WFJqlsNeA3

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) September 10, 2022

Warren Buffet should be sorely ashamed of himself, but Obama called his greedy POS cousin “an example of what’s best in this country” before he became President. And Buffett was widely reported as Obama’s best buddy in 2011. 

Warren Buffett’s Exploitative Mobile Home Investment – Forbes

Warren Buffett’s mobile home empire preys on the poor

Special Investigation: The Dirty Secret Behind Warren Buffett’s Billions

Buffet is the self-same POS who bankrolled and ran the scam shyster Black Lives Matter chicanery and who was just now on the verge of triggering a rail workers strike that would have absolutely crippled supply chains all across the United States.

commondreams |  "Warren Buffett, the owner of BNSF Railway's parent company, worth $100 billion, must intervene," said the Vermont senator. "During the pandemic, Mr. Buffett became $36 billion richer."

With rail workers on the verge of launching a national strike over atrocious conditions and a lack of sick days, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called on billionaire Warren Buffett to intervene and ensure that BNSF Railway—a company owned by Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway—offers its employees adequate pay and quality-of-life policies as negotiations remain stalled.

"In the midst of a potential rail strike, Warren Buffett, the owner of BNSF Railway's parent company, worth $100 billion, must intervene," Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on social media. "During the pandemic, Mr. Buffett became $36 billion richer. He must ensure that rail workers receive decent wages and safe working conditions."

"The railroad industry, which made $20 billion in profits last year, cannot continue to deny workers paid sick leave."

Buffett—who famously said "there's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning"—has previously dismissed Sanders' requests to step in on the side of workers in contract disputes involving the billionaire investor's companies.

Members of several national U.S. rail unions could go on strike Friday as freight rail carriers refuse to budge on workers' push for changes to attendance policies that the unions say are "destroying the lives of our members." BNSF and Union Pacific Railroad both have points-based attendance policies that penalize employees even if they're forced to take a day off due to a family emergency or doctor's visit.

"Penalizing engineers and conductors for getting sick or going to a doctor's visit with termination must be stopped as part of this contract settlement," the heads of SMART Transportation Division and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen said in a statement Sunday. "Let us repeat that, our members are being terminated for getting sick or for attending routine medical visits as we crawl our way out of a worldwide pandemic."

Sanders, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee and a longtime ally of the labor movement, spotlighted the rail workers' fight for better conditions on Tuesday, declaring that "the railroad industry, which made $20 billion in profits last year, cannot continue to deny workers paid sick leave."

"It is unacceptable and dangerous for conductors and engineers to be on call for 14 consecutive days, 12 hours a day, and then get fired for going to a doctor," the senator added.

Vice Say Ezekiel's Wheels Busy Spinnin'An'Spinnin'An"Spinnin Over The Ukraine

vice  |  Ukraine’s airspace has been busy this year—that’s the nature of war. But scientists in the country are looking to the skies and seeing something they didn’t expect: An inordinate number of UFOs, according to a new preprint paper published by Kyiv’s Main Astronomical Observatory in coordination with the country’s National Academy of Science.

The paper does not specifically address the war, but in the United States, the Pentagon has long hinted, speculated, and warned that some UFOs could be advanced technology from foreign militaries, specifically China and Russia (though it hasn’t really given any evidence this is actually the case). The Ukraine paper is particularly notable because it not only shows that science has continued to occur during the war, but also explains that there have been a lot of sightings.

“We see them everywhere,” the research said. “We observe a significant number of objects whose nature is not clear.”

The paper is titled Unidentified aerial phenomena I. Observations of events come from observations made at NAS’ Main Astronomical Observatory in Kyiv and a village south of Kyiv called Vinarivka. According to the paper’s authors, the observatories took on the job of hunting for UFO’s as an independent project because of the enthusiasm around the subject.

It describes a specific type of UFO the researchers call “phantoms” that is an “object [that] is a completely black body that does not emit and absorbs all the radiation falling on it.” The researchers also observed that the UFOs it’s seeing are so fast that it’s hard to take pictures of them.

“The eye does not fix phenomena lasting less than one-tenth of a second,” the paper said. “It takes four-tenths of a second to recognize an event. Ordinary photo and video recordings will also not capture the [unidentified aerial phenomenon]. To detect UAP, you need to fine-tune the equipment: shutter speed, frame rate, and dynamic range.”  Fist tap Dale

Medvedev Quotes Revelations 9:18

 RT |  Western “half-wits” from “stupid think tanks” are leading their countries down the road of nuclear armageddon with their hybrid war against Moscow, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday. Endlessly funneling weapons and support to Ukraine while pretending not to be directly involved in the conflict will not work, added the deputy chair of the Russian Security Council.

The “security guarantees” proposal unveiled by Kiev on Tuesday was “really a prologue to the Third World War,” said Medvedev, calling it a “hysterical appeal” to Western countries engaged in a proxy war against Russia.

If the West continues its “unrestrained pumping of the Kiev regime with the most dangerous types of weapons,” Russia’s military campaign will move to the next level, where “visible boundaries and potential predictability of actions by the parties to the conflict” will be erased and the conflict will take on a life of its own, as wars always do, Medvedev argued.

“And then the Western nations will not be able to sit in their clean homes, laughing at how they carefully weaken Russia by proxy. Everything will be on fire around them. Their people will harvest their grief in full. The land will be on fire and the concrete will melt,” Medvedev wrote, before citing a Bible verse from Revelations 9:18. 

“Yet still the narrow-minded politicians and their stupid think tanks, thoughtfully twirling a glass of wine in their hands, talk about how they can deal with us without entering into a direct war. Dull idiots with a classical education,” Medvedev wrote.

His comments were prompted by Kiev’s publication of a “security treaty” proposal, developed under the tutelage of former NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The draft envisions the US and its allies guaranteeing Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders with weapons, ammunition, financial assistance and training, as well as committing to maintain sanctions against Russia for as long as Kiev wants, and handing over any confiscated Russian property to Ukraine.

 

I Guess The CIA Twitter Didn't Like That...,

 @GonzaloLira1968 

Account suspended 

Twitter suspends accounts that violate the Twitter Rules. Learn more 

Gonzalo posted a video of happy American soldiers in Izium (the Izium sign was shown in the video).

#US and #UK mercenaries took a short video from the entrance of #Izyum #Kharkov after #Russian army retreated from the area.

They are all part of #Nazi #Ukraine army unit #KarpatskaSich

Mercenary Rob-roy Lane who is taking video thinks he is fighting Soviets. pic.twitter.com/e0ncESWzfd

— Luka (@Luka_zgd) September 11, 2022

What About Maurits Cornelis Escher?

mcescher  | Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) is one of the world’s most famous graphic artists. His art is admired by millions of people worldwide, as can be seen by the many websites on the internet.

He is born in Leeuwarden as the fourth and youngest son. After five years the family moves to Arnhem, where he spends most of his youth. After he has failed his final exam, and after a short interlude in Delft, M.C. Escher starts with his lessons in architecture at the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem.
Already after a week he informs his father that he wants to quit his architecture lessons and focus on studying graphic arts. He is supported in this by his teacher Samuel Jesserun de Mesquita, to whom he has shown his drawings and linocuts.

After completing his school, he travels for a long time through Italy, where he meets his wife Jetta Umiker and whom he marries in 1924. They go to Rome, where they live until 1935. During these 11 years M.C. Escher travels every year through Italy where he makes drawings and sketches that he later uses in his studio for his lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings.

For example, the background in the lithograph Waterfall (1961) comes from his Italian period. The trees that are reflected in the woodcut Puddle(1952) are also the same trees that he uses in his woodcut Pineta by Calvi, made in 1932.

During the time that he lives and works in Italy, he makes beautiful, also more realistic works such as the Castrovalva litho in which one can see already his fascination for perspective: close, far, high and low. Likewise is the lithograph Atrani, a small town on the Amalfi coast in Italy, which he makes in 1931 and comes back in his masterpieces Metamorphosis I and II.

He is most famous for his so-called impossible drawings, such as Ascending and Descending and Relativity, but also for his metamorphoses, such as Metamorphosis I, II and III, Air and Water I and Reptiles.

During his lifetime, Escher made 448 lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings and more than 2000 drawings and sketches. Just like some of his famous predecessors – Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer and Holbein – Escher is left-handed.
In addition to his work as a graphic artist, he illustrates books, designs carpets and banknotes, stamps, murals, intarsia panels etc.
M.C. Escher is fascinated by the regular geometric figures of the wall and floor mosaics in the Alhambra, a fourteenth-century castle in Granada, Spain, which he visits in 1922 and 1936.

During his years in Switzerland and throughout the Second World War, he works with great energy on his hobby. He then makes 62 of the 137 symmetrical drawings he will make in his life. He also expands his hobby by using these symmetrical drawings for cutting wooden balls.

He plays with architecture, perspective and impossible spaces. His art continues to amaze and wonder millions of people around the world. In his work we recognize his excellent observation of the world around us and the expression of his own fantasy. M.C. Escher shows us that reality is wonderful, understandable and fascinating.