Hollar At Y'Boy When The "Stochastic Terrorism" Body Count Approaches The Fentanyl Body Count...,

asiatimes  |  With key assistance from China, Mexico is keeping at crisis level the flow of fentanyl into the United States.

At least 70,000 Americans, mostly between the ages of 18 and 35, have died after ingesting fentanyl pills so far this year. That’s close to the 71,000 dead out of more than 100,000 drug fatalities in 2021 and a big jump from 57,000 deaths the year before. Millions of pills have illicitly passed through the US southern border in recent years.

In 2020, US President Joe Biden declared a “whole of government” campaign to stem the opiate flood into the country. However, the illicit flood of drugs continues unabated due to Washington’s inability to persuade – or pressure – China and Mexico to halt their roles in it. In particular:

• China won’t stop criminal gangs from providing the chemicals used in Mexico to manufacture fentanyl.
• Mexico won’t fully crack down on illicit industries that make and transfer the finished product to the US.

Relations between Mexico and the United States have long stumbled over differing views of the cross-border drug problem. Mexico traditionally blames America’s insatiable appetite for narcotics, while the US regards Mexico as irretrievably crippled by massive corruption that lets criminal narcotics traffic flourish.

Almost two years into his term, Biden has fashioned an excuse to explain the massive traffic: Victims of drug use are afraid to acknowledge their addiction.

“We’re looking at continuing to make progress because we know there’s still a ways to go,” Biden said Thursday.

“We’re not going to let stigma drive us anymore,” he added. “We’re going to go where we need to go to help people thrive.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkus has reassuredly claimed that the border is “secure.”

Taking a less boastful view, Drug Enforcement Administration chief Anne Milgram said the administration had been overly focused on heroin commerce, even as Mexican traffickers made and shipped more fentanyl than heroin. “It is a new, deeper, more deadly threat than we have ever seen, and I don’t think that the full extent of that harm was immediately seen,” she said.

Unable to get sufficient help from either Mexico or China to stem the flow, the Biden administration instead is focusing on educational efforts to curb drug use. Rahul Gupta, director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the government is concentrating on “expanding care” for addicts and on taking “harm reduction” measures to expand access to medical counseling and care.

 

Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda: Former Mexican SecDef And Drug Cartel Padron

propublica  |  Two years ago, the DEA arrested a Mexican general, hoping to lay bare the high-level corruption at the heart of organized crime. Then the case fell apart — and took down U.S.-Mexican cooperation on drug policy with it. 

When the Cienfuegos family landed at Los Angeles International Airport on Oct. 15, 2020, they looked excited and maybe a bit relieved. With the pandemic still ravaging Mexico, they had come to vacation in Southern California. Arranging such a visit wasn’t a problem, even on short notice: The patriarch, retired Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, had made powerful American friends during his six years as Mexico’s defense minister. When he needed a favor — like visas for his wife, daughters and granddaughters — he could still call someone at the Pentagon or the CIA.

But as the family approached the passport line, an immigration officer waved them to one side. A trim, middle-aged man — dressed, like the general, in a blue blazer and jeans — stepped forward and introduced himself in Spanish as a special agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Could he speak with the general privately? he asked.

The two men crowded into a small office with several other law-enforcement officers. “There is a warrant for your arrest, sir,” the agent said. “This is a copy of the indictment against you.”

Cienfuegos wore a face mask with a clear plastic shield over it, but there was no hiding his confusion and anger. There must be some mistake, he insisted. “Do you know who I am?”

The agents did. For years, U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies had been watching Cienfuegos as he rose through the Mexican army to become defense minister in 2012. Since late 2015, the DEA had been investigating what it believed were Cienfuegos’ corrupt dealings with a second-tier drug gang based in the small Pacific Coast state Nayarit. In 2019, he had been secretly indicted on drug-conspiracy charges by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn.

“I have worked with your CIA,” Cienfuegos protested. “I have been honored by your Department of Defense!”

“I understand,” the DEA agent said. “But you have still been charged.”

In the tumultuous days before the 2020 election — with COVID-19 cases surging, President Donald Trump barnstorming and Senate Republicans rushing to confirm a Supreme Court justice — the jailing of a retired Mexican general didn’t make the front pages, even in Los Angeles. It did make headlines in Mexico City. But President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, who had long promised to vanquish the country’s deeply rooted corruption, seemed to take the news in stride. “It is a very regrettable fact that a former defense secretary should be arrested on charges of having ties to drug trafficking,” he said the next morning. “We must continue to insist — and hopefully this helps us understand — that the main problem of Mexico is corruption.”

Marco Antonio Ortega Siu: Former Mexican Naval Admiral And Drug Cartel Nemesis

WaPo  |  Organized-crime groups were carrying out acts of spectacular violence and growing savagery, ambushing military and police convoys on rural highways and filling mass graves with travelers hauled off buses. U.S. officials grew alarmed as violence exploded in Monterrey and other northern Mexico cities where Fortune 500 companies had invested heavily in plants and factories after passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

With the threat to the stability of the Mexican government worsening, both countries were hungry for a crime fighter who could stand up to the cartels.

Using informants, wiretaps and surveillance, U.S. agents tracked drug bosses and relayed their locations to Águila’s commandos for the kind of “high-value target” operations the Americans used successfully in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Águila’s forces didn’t hold back. Mexican commandos in helicopters took out Gulf cartel boss Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, a.k.a. “Tony Tormenta,” in a wild urban gun battle in 2010 that left bodies scattered in the border city of Matamoros. Two years later, special forces killed the leader of the Zetas, Heriberto “The Executioner” Lazcano, after a firefight against cartel gunmen wielding a grenade launcher.

“Tactically, they were just awesome,” Evans said. But the special forces were trained to kill, not to make arrests and gather evidence for criminal prosecution. Their targets were extremely dangerous, but Evans would offer a “friendly reminder” that from time to time “it might be good to bring the guy back alive.”

In his response to The Post, Águila wrote that drug bosses were killed because they resisted arrest. “We never planned an operation to eliminate anyone,” he wrote.

To the Americans, the navy commandos seemed to be the rare entity capable of quickly launching complex, dangerous operations. Águila was indefatigable, working 16-hour days. He didn’t drink or smoke. And when U.S. agents shared sensitive information, Águila and his commandos acted fast — unlike the army. “There was never a leak,” Evans said.

One DEA agent recalled following Águila, then in his 50s, as he bounded off a helicopter during a hunt for a drug kingpin in northern Mexico. “I’m trying to catch up to him,” recalled the agent, who was not authorized to comment on the record. “I was embarrassed. Here I am, this younger buck, fumbling with my stuff.”

Even more startling: The Mexican officer wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest. He rarely did; it was too bulky. “He had no fear,” the American agent said.

The DEA agents knew little about Águila’s personal life or why he didn’t seem tainted by some of the worst aspects of Mexican officialdom — the corruption, the timidity, the wariness of foreigners. Maybe, they figured, he was a kindred spirit.

“He’s blue-collar,” said Donahue, the former Mexico DEA chief. “Just like us.”

Indeed, the admiral was the son of a small-town salesman in Mexico’s southern Veracruz state, and the grandson of Chinese immigrants. “My family fought to get ahead every day,” Águila said in his written responses.

He entered the Heroic Naval Military School in 1975, a shy, diminutive 15-year-old in a world of “juniors” — sons of high-ranking officers. The academy was so rigorous that half his class of 150 dropped out before graduation, recalled a former classmate, retired Rear Adm. Jesús Canchola Camarena. Águila joined the marines, like other young men “drawn to adventure,” Canchola recalled. But what stood out was the young cadet’s leadership; he often served as coach in the students’ informal wrestling matches. He eventually became a decorated helicopter pilot.

Later, under Calderón, when the navy sought senior officers to build a top-flight special forces corps, many were reluctant, recalled another of Águila’s former classmates.

“It was very, very risky,” he recalled, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be frank. “The navy had to protect itself from everyone” — both drug traffickers and their allies in government.

Águila was undaunted.

“He felt that if they called on him, and he had the ability, he should do it,” the friend said.

 

One Hopes For "Dying American Influence" Rather Than "AMLO Dying"...,

CTH  |  Joe Biden and Canada’s Justin Trudeau are in ideological alignment, willing to destroy the entire North American economy as they construct the new climate change energy systems for the U.S and Canada.  However, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador (AMLO) has already indicated -including direct statements to Joe Biden at the White House– that he is not willing to put the Mexican economy into collapse and try to engineer an economic future on solar panels and windmills.

That puts Mexican President AMLO in the crosshairs of a unified climate change agenda as outlined by the World Economic Forum and western leadership under the guise of the Build Back Better agenda.  In essence, AMLO goes from socialist hero of the unionized left to becoming a target.  CTH has been saying we need to watch carefully how this plays out because a great deal of the western economic agenda hangs in the balance.

Now that AMLO has taken a pragmatic position on energy development {Go Deep} his lack of alignment means the apparatus of the United States government, the proverbial Eye of Sauron, will target him.  Not coincidentally, the public relations firm for the deepest part of the interventionist intelligence apparatus, the Washington Post, now outlines AMLO as the specific person responsible for the explosion in fentanyl use.

(Washington Post) – […] A new Mexican leader rejected the $3 billion anti-narcotics agreement that had spanned three U.S. presidencies, known as the Mérida Initiative. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a veteran leftist who took office in December 2018, argued that the drug war strategy had sent homicides spiraling in Mexico while failing to curb U.S. demand.

The sniffer flights stopped. Águila was sidelined and his battle-hardened commandos were reassigned. López Obrador rebuffed U.S. offers for new drug-detection technology. Mexico shut down a pivotal base where the special forces had worked with U.S. agents. It even took away the parking spot for the DEA’s plane at an airport outside Mexico City. (read more)

The Washington Post defining ALMO as “a veteran leftist” as if that is against their interests is rather funny. The article walks through AMLO, a devout Mexican nationalist, trying to remove the influence of the U.S. government, and by extension contributing to the explosion of cross-border drug trafficking.

To accept the ‘AMLO is the cause of U.S. drug deaths’ narrative is to ignore the Biden administration effort to weaken the Southern U.S. border, but that’s a mere detail when you are constructing a narrative that has deeper intentions than appear on the surface.   The bigger picture is shaping a narrative intended to create AMLO as an enemy of the American people.

Nice country you got there AMLO, it’d be a shame if something happened to it… Now, about that oil, coal and natural gas use…

Without a doubt this narrative building will escalate, step by step until pressure mounts and AMLO acquiesces to join the economic model demanded by the WEF as executed by the United States through Biden energy policy.   There are trillions at stake and multinational corporate laundry operations to maintain.

Just keep watching… look for how the Biden administration specifically messages toward and around Mexico.

Mexico.

Mexico is in a position to get Brazil’d.

I’m fairly confident we are going to hear a lot more about Mexico very soon.

 

 

The Concept Of A People-Centric Government Is Foreign And Unfamiliar To Americans

mexiconewsdaily  |  There is no shortage of reasons to participate in a pro-government march to be held in Mexico City this Sunday, President López Obrador declared on Tuesday.

AMLO last week called on his supporters to demonstrate in defense of the government’s proposed electoral reform, but said Tuesday that the purpose of the march had changed.

“It’s not about the electoral reform, that’s already set out, it’s already in Congress,” he told reporters at his regular news conference. He then proceeded to offer no less than 16 reasons why citizens should join him and march from the Angel of Independence on Reforma Avenue to the zócalo, Mexico City’s central square.

The march, the president and leader of what he calls Mexico’s “fourth transformation” said, is meant to accomplish the following:

1. To celebrate that an oligarchy no longer dominates in Mexico.
2. To celebrate that corruption is not allowed.
3. To celebrate that tycoons now pay tax.
4. To celebrate that we have healthy public finances.
5. To say that 85% of Mexican homes now receive at least a small portion of the public budget (via social welfare programs).
6. To say that we feel very happy to be supporting the poorest people.
7. To say that we don’t want racism in Mexico and that we’re winning that battle.
8. To say that we don’t accept classism or discrimination.
9. To say that our strategy to attend to the root causes of violence is succeeding.
10. To say that peace is the fruit of justice.
11. To say that 12 million seniors now have a pension and they’ll get a 25% increase starting in January.
12. To say that workers’ salaries are going to continue going up.
13. To say that 11 million young students from poor families receive scholarships.
14. To say that we’re saving 50 billion pesos by not paying the media for advertising.
15. To say that there is hope and happiness among our people.
16. To say that, despite the pandemic and other calamities, Mexico is moving forward and its prestige among the nations of the world is growing.

“That’s why [we’re holding] the march,” López Obrador said.

“Everyone who wants to attend should wear the color of their choice and shoes, sneakers, [or traditional sandals called] huaraches. Take your hat, your sombrero, because it will be sunny; and if you have a guitar, take your guitar or accordion. … We’re going to celebrate that we’re making progress in the transformation of the country, and that we’re doing it without violence, peacefully, and that [the transformation] is for the good of all,” he said.

On Wednesday, AMLO, who has participated in countless protests over the years, said that Sunday’s march – which will be held four days before he celebrates four years in office – might be his last.

 

Huntergate 2.0 - The MSM Largely Blacked Out Coverage Of The Twitter File Drops

FoxNews |  CBS News, ABC News and NBC News did not cover the story, while CNN only mentioned it once.  While the files have dominated discussion on Twitter, a site known to facilitate discussions among members of the press, on-air coverage of the internal documents has been almost nonexistent. 

Since Friday, networks have only discussed the Twitter files for a combined total of 14 minutes. The term "Twitter files" has only been used six times on-air over the same span of time, according to a review of Grabien transcripts by Fox News Digital. 

The fifth installment of Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" Monday revealed that staffers believed that tweets written by former President Trump around the events of Jan. 6 had not actually violated its policies against incitement despite the company saying so at the time.

The Twitter Files began on Dec. 2 with Matt Taibbi revealing internal efforts to suppress the New York Post's Hunter Biden story in 2020.

Bari Weiss reported the second installment of the Twitter Files Thursday which revealed the company "blacklisting" or shadow banning certain tweets and users. 

Parts three and four were dedicated to outlining what led to Trump being removed from Twitter on Jan. 8, 2021. Musk reinstated Trump's Twitter account in November.

CBS News, ABC News, and NBC News have not discussed the Twitter files in the last week.  

"You look now, and they’re talking of course about Hunter Biden’s laptop. They’re in the middle of this Twitter thing that I swear I’ve tried to read through a thousand times and figure out exactly what they’re trying to prove, and if they’re proving anything, what, maybe that Twitter made decisions that they didn’t like," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said on Monday, briefly alluding to the files. 

The Monday evening newscasts were filled with discussions about Twitter, including criticisms of Musk and the re-release of Twitter Blue. However, the Twitter files never came up on the networks, except a brief reference on NBC News when a reporter discussed how former top Twitter official Yoel Roth was forced to leave his home after receiving death threats. 

Left-wing MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan was the one pundit who offered a full on-air block to the story Sunday, in which he argued that the Twitter files showed no evidence of a company bias against conservatives. 

"Do the Twitter files show evidence of left-wing bias on Twitter?," Hasan asked rhetorically. "No. In fact, the whole Twitter-discriminates-against conservatives-line that Elon or his spin merchants, conservative journalists, like to spout, is literally the opposite of the truth."

 

I Too Have Questions..., Can You Name The CEO Of Tik Tok?

piratewires  |   Dangerous alliance. In 1787, Edmund Burke said there were “Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there [sits] a Fourth Estate more important than they all." The notion of some vital power beyond our government was imported to the New World, and today constitutes a core belief of the American liberal: there is no free people, we’re often told, without a free press independent of congress, the courts, and our president. But throughout the 20th Century thousands of media outlets gradually consolidated, and by the dawn of our internet era only a few giants remained. These giants largely shared a single perspective, and in rough agreement with the ruling class the Fourth Estate naturally came to serve, rather than critique, power. This relationship metastasized into something very close to authoritarianism during the Covid-19 pandemic, when a single state narrative was written by the press, and ruthlessly enforced by a fifth and final fount of power in the newly-dominant technology industry.

It was a dark alliance of estates, accurate descriptions of which were for years derided as delusional, paranoid, even dangerous. But today, on account of a single shitposting billionaire, the existence of the One Party’s decentralized censorship apparatus is now beyond doubt.

Altogether, the Twitter Files — an ongoing story — paint a portrait of clear and inevitable partisan bias at one of the most dominant speech platforms in history. A small handful of very left-wing executives, who naturally perceived most opinion right of center as dangerous, worked tirelessly to limit those opinions from view. Empowered to censor “unsafe” content, and protected by a team of people who shared their political orientation, the executives produced, in a legal and decentralized manner, a key component of our defacto state censorship apparatus. While we don’t know for sure this is also happening at Google, Meta, or TikTok (which is for some reason still allowed to operate in this country), I think it’s a safe bet we’re looking at an industry-wide affliction.  

But I do have questions.

Where is the full list of shadow-banned accounts? Which political campaigns, specifically, communicated with Twitter, and what specifically was taken down? What about requests from foreign governments? What about requests from our own government? We need to know which of our government agencies, if any, had content removed from the platform, and we need to know the nature of this content. Taibbi alluded to Trump’s White House — did someone from the Trump administration request a takedown? Who made the request? Who received the request? Was it answered? What, if anything, was removed?

The Trump line of questioning is, in particular, something you might assume attractive to the media, which has waged all-out war on the populist clown king for the last seven years. Alas, the press seems broadly disinterested. Is this because they don’t believe the former president ever made such requests, or is their lack of interest rather stemming from a fear of validating a major story most of them are currently trying to frame — for their own obvious political reasons — as not worth reading?

A brief selection of positions from our cherished Fourth Estate: This entire story is a “dud” (The Washington Post) — no bombshells here! (Forbes). The Twitter Files, in which a handful of committed partisans enthusiastically censor large swaths of the conservative base, including a former president, actually prove the company was not politically biased. It is, however, now biased against Democrats (New York Magazine). Elon’s exposé is a flop that doesn’t matter. It has also placed multiple “trust and safety experts” in mortal danger (The Verge, predictably). Then, my favorite: it is good to finally see the blacklist tools I have been curious about for many years, which we have by the way always known existed, and therefore don’t matter (The Atlantic).

The charge of shadow banning evoked uniquely loud jeering from the press, including Charlie Warzel in particular, a man formerly of the position “Twitter isn’t shadow banning Republicans.” Now, in the face of evidence the company absolutely shadow banned Republicans, the official position is we are using the term “shadow ban” incorrectly.

It’s a game of semantics, in which the public is dragged through the exhausting, useless question of how much invisible speech suppression, precisely, constitutes a “real” shadow ban, rather than the glaringly important questions of both ethics and, frankly, safety. In the first place, is it right to run a decentralized censorship apparatus, and to make your rules invisible? In the second, what happens to a free country when the bounds of acceptable speech are set by a small cabal of unelected partisan cops? Because my sense is the answer isn’t “freedom.”

Is Twitter Actually An Intelligence Gathering And Propaganda Tool?

CTH  |  Once you change your reference point and review the Twitter File release from a different perspective, things make sense.  DHS doesn’t operate on the backbone of Twitter, in this scenario Twitter is operating on the backbone of DHS.  The information and content on Twitter exist, or not, by the permission and authority of the national security state, DHS.

Influencing public opinion take on the priority dimension.  Created narratives, established by media partners, can be enhanced or throttled (think Russiagate). Public perceptions can be uplifted or deemphasized.  Political candidates can be boosted or dismissed.

Control over the public conversation is not simply in the hands of the Twitter ‘safety council’ executives, the platform content is shaped by the guiding hand of the controlling interest – the government.  Under this scenario the defining of disinformation, misinformation or malinformation by DHS/CISA takes on a new level of influence.

So why did they permit it to be sold?  Again, control.

Every non-Twitter, non-DHS controlled, information and discussion site is a watering down of the influence of Twitter.  The inability to influence a platform like Truth Social would be particularly troublesome.  So, launder the handling of the DHS platform to Elon Musk and create the illusion of a refresh.

Twitter 2.0 now rebrands with a renewed ability to influence.  Not accidentally, a pro DeSantis shaping is part of the objective.  In the eyes of the control state, Rumble and Truth Social represent the threat of Donald Trump. Meanwhile Twitter and YouTube represent the controlled alternative, Ron DeSantis.

There are trillions at stake.

The ‘magic’ inside Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop is the intelligence community ability to shape, mold and create the illusion of choice.  Remember, shaping opinion is the goal and within that dynamic some voices must be removed, throttled and controlled, while other voices must be amplified.

♦ Elevator Speech: Twitter is to the U.S. government as TikTok is to China. The overarching dynamic is the need to control public perceptions and opinions. DHS has been in ever increasing control of Twitter since the public-private partnership was formed in 2011/2012.  Jack Dorsey lost control and became owner emeritus; arguably, Elon Musk has no idea, well, at least no more of an idea than he does about the financial underwriting of the purchase itself.

The larger objective of U.S. involvement in social media has always been monitoring and surveillance of the public conversation, influencing public opinion, and then ultimately controlling the outcomes.

Tens of millions of Brazilians are on the streets in protest of their fraudulent election.  Do you see those voices on Twitter?

The Twitter social media company residing on the backbone of DHS would help explain why.

The Government Is Now Provably In The Business Of Monitoring And Moderating Speech

CTH  |  Arguably, Glenn Greenwald has been the most critical voice about the rise of the U.S. surveillance state and generational shift of the U.S. intelligence apparatus to conduct domestic surveillance on American citizens.  There’s a reason Greenwald lives in Brazil where no extradition treaties with the U.S. government exist.

Curiously, when it came time to release information about DHS connections to Twitter, Glenn Greenwald was not considered as an acceptable outlet for the information.  Instead, Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss were selected by Elon Musk to represent his sunlight and transparency interests.  However, in this brief video Greenwald gets to interview Taibbi about his findings. {Direct Rumble Link}

Interested viewers will note Taibbi’s #1 takeaway from his review of the Twitter Files data is that evidence of the DHS connection to Twitter exists.  Taibbi speaks of the “instructions” coming into Twitter from U.S. government officials.  Yet, curiously missing from the documented evidence provided by Taibbi was anything showing a paper trail of this instruction pathway he is describing.

Greenwald is smart, strategically smart; Greenwald also knows why he was not selected to review the files.  Glenn artfully guides Taibbi to discuss elements of the story that perhaps Taibbi himself doesn’t recognize are being shaped for his reporting.   Note: “we don’t know how the ‘ask’ works yet.”

Did You Ever Imagine Having Ringside Seats To The Onset Of WW-III?

RT  |  Mikhail Podoliak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, has accused Twitter of hiding trends related to the ongoing conflict in the country. The official took to the social media platform on Tuesday, blasting the platform’s CEO, billionaire Elon Musk, directly.

“‘War in Ukraine’ disappearance from Twitter trends. Radical curtailment of tweets mentioning ru-aggression coverage. Users aren’t allowed to register or log into accounts with Ukrainian phone number,” Podoliak wrote.

According to Twitter, its trends are “determined by an algorithm and, by default, are tailored for you based on who you follow, your interests, and your location.” The algorithm “identifies topics that are popular now, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis.”

The presidential aide was apparently referring to Ukrainian media reports that users with Ukrainian phone numbers were no longer able to log in or register on the platform. While the social media giant has not produced any statements on the issue yet, Musk cryptically warned on Saturday that Twitter “bots” were “in for a surprise tomorrow.”

Podoliak was also critical of the recent release of ‘Twitter files’, which disclosed censorship practices on the platform amid the 2020 US presidential campaign. The official apparently hinted that Twitter’s new leadership was now censoring coverage of the Ukraine crisis.

“Elon Musk, I wonder if we will ever see ‘Twitter Files’ about Fall/Winter 2022?” Podoliak wrote.

In recent weeks, Musk has repeatedly engaged in a bitter back-and-forth with the pro-Ukrainian echo-chamber on the platform, including the country’s top officials. The spat began with a peace plan, floated by the billionaire, who suggested Ukraine should commit to neutrality and relinquish its claim to Crimea, while Russia “redo” referendums in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as in Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions “under UN supervision.”

The remarks angered Kiev officials, who raided Musk’s feed in order to vent. The poll on the peace plan itself was subjected to what the billionaire called the “biggest bot attack I’ve ever seen.”

The spat has been aggravated by Musk, who threatened to stop payrolling Starlink’s services, which are actively used by the Ukrainian military. In early November, Twitter also began labeling tweets from Ukrainian state-run media – in the same way it does with a number of Russian government-owned outlets – causing a new meltdown among Kiev’s backers.

Circling The Wagons Of Total BS Gives Us Still Less Reason To "Trust The Science"...,

newenergytimes |  Omar A. Hurricane, chief scientist for the inertial confinement fusion program at the NIF lab, explained the facts to New Energy Times:

The total laser energy delivered to the target was 2.05 MJ and the total fusion yield was 3.15 MJ of energy. The laser pulse duration was about 9 nanoseconds long. The duration of the fusion reaction was 90 picoseconds long. Very short time-scales, obviously, which are the nature of inertial fusion systems.

Practically speaking, the result is irrelevant. The NIF device did not achieve net energy. The scientists who are promoting this result to the news media are playing word games. They use multiple definitions for the phrase “net energy.” Only the fuel pellet achieved “net energy.” This does not account for the energy required to operate the device.

The 3.15 megajoules of fusion output energy were produced at the expense of 400 megajoules of electrical input energy. A fusion device that loses 99.2 percent of the energy it consumes, in a reaction that lasts for 0.00000000009 of a second, does not indicate technology that could provide an abundant zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.

On Monday, CNN implied that the reactor produced a small amount of power, but too little to be practical:

“It’s about what it takes to boil 10 kettles of water,” said Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College in London. “In order to turn that into a power station, we need to make a larger gain in energy – we need it to be substantially more.”

The “10 kettles” represents the 3.15 megajoule output. CNN didn’t mention the 400-megajoule input. It’s a deceptive material omission, bordering on fraud.

The public promotion of this result as evidence that fusion is a potential energy solution is a scam and promotes false hope. NIF is a taxpayer-funded project that is never going to power any house. NIF is useful only to test nuclear weapons. Are there other laser fusion results that are better than NIF? No.

We have already explained the technical details but it seems that some journalists didn’t get the memo. See our reports #73, #102, #103, #104.

P.S.: Let us not forget that half of the fuel mixture required for commercial fusion reactors does not exist. Does. Not. Exist.

Sorry BeeDee - That's A NOPE On The Fusion Ignition Front - Your Grandkids Still Waiting For Godot....,

To summarize: The “breakeven” achieved was between the output energy of the lasers and the fusion. Even just looking at that, Houston we have a problem. 2.1 megajoules of laser output energy went into a pellet and 2.5 megajoules of heat energy came out. So a 0.4 megajoule gain in energy! Woohoo!

But let’s use more familiar units. One kWh of energy is 3.6 megajoules so 0.4 megajules is 1/9 of a kWh or around 111 Watt hours. So enough energy to run an old-school 100W light bulb for a bit over an hour

1) Lasers provoke the fusion. The amount of electrical energy dumped into those lasers yields an approximate energy of 1%.

2) Capturing the heat energy produced by the fusion and transforming it into actually usable current would incur a conversion loss on the order of 60% (heat to electricity).

3) The technology used (relying upon lasers focused on a pellet of material that is compressed to fusion) was originally designed and is only useful to manufacture detonators for atomic bombs; it is not a viable technical path to a power plant.

So, the end-to-end cycle (electricity to power lasers – fusion – heat transformed to electricity) would require a 250 times factor improvement in energy efficiency.

In other words: a meaningless "achievement" about which very big and very misleading lies are being mass broadcast at a clueless and non-technical audience.

For decades it has been touted that fusion will be feasible and power our societies maybe 50 years from now. I contend it is time to pull the plug on these never-ending projects that never come to fruition. If Russia or China don't turn their attention to fusion, it will never get done period. The U.S. needs to redirect the gargantuan resources devoted to this white elephant to something feasible — it is becoming urgent.

llnl.gov  |  “We have had a theoretical understanding of fusion for over a century, but the journey from knowing to doing can be long and arduous. Today’s milestone shows what we can do with perseverance,” said Dr. Arati Prabhakar, the President’s chief adviser for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

“Monday, December 5, 2022, was a historic day in science thanks to the incredible people at Livermore Lab and the National Ignition Facility. In making this breakthrough, they have opened a new chapter in NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program,” NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby said. “I would like to thank the members of Congress who have supported the National Ignition Facility because their belief in the promise of visionary science has been critical for our mission. Our team from around the DOE national laboratories and our international partners have shown us the power of collaboration.”

“The pursuit of fusion ignition in the laboratory is one of the most significant scientific challenges ever tackled by humanity, and achieving it is a triumph of science, engineering, and most of all, people,” LLNL Director Dr. Kim Budil said. “Crossing this threshold is the vision that has driven 60 years of dedicated pursuit — a continual process of learning, building, expanding knowledge and capability, and then finding ways to overcome the new challenges that emerged. These are the problems that the U.S. national laboratories were created to solve.”

“This astonishing scientific advance puts us on the precipice of a future no longer reliant on fossil fuels but instead powered by new clean fusion energy,” U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (NY) said. “I commend Lawrence Livermore National Labs and its partners in our nation’s Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) program, including the University of Rochester’s Lab for Laser Energetics in New York, for achieving this breakthrough. Making this future clean energy world a reality will require our physicists, innovative workers and brightest minds at our DOE-funded institutions, including the Rochester Laser Lab, to double down on their cutting-edge work. That’s why I’m also proud to announce today that I’ve helped to secure the highest-ever authorization of over $624 million this year in the National Defense Authorization Act for the ICF program to build on this amazing breakthrough.”

“After more than a decade of scientific and technical innovation, I congratulate the team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Ignition Facility for their historic accomplishment,” said U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA). “This is an exciting step in fusion and everyone at Lawrence Livermore and NIF should be proud of this milestone achievement.”

“This is an historic, innovative achievement that builds on the contributions of generations of Livermore scientists. Today, our nation stands on their collective shoulders. We still have a long way to go, but this is a critical step and I commend the U.S. Department of Energy and all who contributed toward this promising breakthrough, which could help fuel a brighter clean energy future for the United States and humanity,” said U.S. Senator Jack Reed (RI), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“This monumental scientific breakthrough is a milestone for the future of clean energy,” said U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (CA). “While there is more work ahead to harness the potential of fusion energy, I am proud that California scientists continue to lead the way in developing clean energy technologies. I congratulate the scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for their dedication to a clean energy future, and I am committed to ensuring they have all of the tools and funding they need to continue this important work.”

“This is a very big deal. We can celebrate another performance record by the National Ignition Facility. This latest achievement is particularly remarkable because NIF used a less spherically symmetrical target than in the August 2021 experiment,” said U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren (CA-19). “This significant advancement showcases the future possibilities for the commercialization of fusion energy. Congress and the Administration need to fully fund and properly implement the fusion research provisions in the recent CHIPS and Science Act and likely more. During World War II, we crafted the Manhattan Project for a timely result. The challenges facing the world today are even greater than at that time. We must double down and accelerate the research to explore new pathways for the clean, limitless energy that fusion promises.”

Russia: Gas Station With Nuclear Weapons That Has Mastered The Complete Nuclear Fuel Cycle

nuclear-news  |  The plutonium for this was produced from uranium during the operation of other nuclear power plants and recovered from the used fuel assemblies through reprocessing.

MOX fuel is manufactured from plutonium recovered from used reactor fuel, mixed with depleted uranium which is a by-product from uranium enrichment.

“Full conversion of the BN-800 to MOX fuel is a long-anticipated milestone for the nuclear industry. For the first time in the history of Russian nuclear power, we proceed to operation of a fast neutron reactor with a full load of uranium-plutonium fuel and closed nuclear fuel cycle,” said Alexander Ugryumov, Senior Vice President for Research and Development at TVEL JSC.

“This is the original reason and target why the BN-800 was developed, and why Rosatom built the unique automated fuel fabrication facility at the Mining and Chemical Combine. Advanced technologies of fissile materials recycling and re-fabrication of nuclear fuel will make it possible to expand the resource feed-stock of the nuclear power, reprocess irradiated fuel instead of storing it, and to reduce the volumes of waste.”

​The unit is a sodium-cooled fast reactor which produces about 820 MWe. It started operation in 2016 and in 2020 achieved a capacity factor of 82% despite having an experimental role in proving reactor technologies and fuels.

Silly Coal Burning Frogs Won't Be Fulfilling Their Zero Carbon Delusions...,

emeatribune |  The end of France’s coal era seemed so certain last year that the operator of one of the country’s last coal-burning plants posted an upbeat educational video on YouTube titled “Let’s visit a coal plant that’s going to be destroyed!”

The plant in the northeastern town of Saint-Avold indeed halted coal production as scheduled earlier this year — but not for long. This week, its workers were back at the controls, transporting coal from storage heaps and refiring furnaces, as part of emergency efforts to keep the heat and electricity on this winter.

The energy crisis across Europe unleashed by Russia’s war in Ukraine has paved the way for coal’s comeback in some regions, to the dismay of politicians and activists who warn this endangers climate goals, the climate itself and public health.

“Working here we know the negative impact of the coal plant, but nonetheless we see it as a necessary evil,” said shift supervisor Thomas About at the Emile-Huchet Power Plant in Saint-Avold.

“Given the current state of the electrical network, I nonetheless fear greatly that this production tool is necessary in the medium term,” he told The Associated Press.

Nearby, wheel loaders scooped mounds of coal and dumped it onto conveyor belts, and gray fumes rose from the plant’s smokestacks.

In France the return to coal is surprising because the country started phasing it out decades ago and relies heavily on nuclear power instead. But this year, on top of Russia largely cutting off natural gas to Europe, nearly half of France’s nuclear reactors shut down for maintenance or corrosion and other problems.

Facing a worst-case scenario of rolling power cuts to households, the government issued a decree in September to allow Saint-Avold to start again and continued activity at another coal plant in western France, citing the “exceptional” and “unforeseeable” context of energy supply challenges.

President Emmanuel Macron had initially vowed to close all coal-burning plants in the country by the end of this year due to climate-related concerns.

As an aside: France does not depend on Russia for uranium: everything comes from Niger (34.7%), Kazakhstan (28.9%), Uzbekistan (26.4%), and Australia (9.9%) and is then processed into actual fuel in France.

However, it is entirely dependent on Russia for reprocessing depleted uranium. The French can perform a first phase (separating plutonium from spent fuel), but their much-touted prowess in turning “nuclear waste” into usable fissile uranium is only possible thanks to the Rosatom reprocessing plant in Seversk.

The last transport with depleted uranium from France to Russia took place in October, and the French firm Orano, which supplies French atomic power plants, does not intend to renew the contract. Which means that spent fuel may soon start to accumulate as genuine waste on the premises of French power plants…

 

There Is A Ton Of Liberal Whitewashing When It Comes To Khazarians In Ukraine

thegrayzone |  A November 9 email from the Anti-Defamation League to The Grayzone provided a twisted defense of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion. Despite its self-proclaimed “anti-hate” mission, the ADL  insisted in the email it “does not” consider Azov as the “far right group it once was.”

The Azov Battalion is a neo-Nazi unit formally integrated into the US government-backed Ukrainian military. Founded by Andriy Biletsky, who has infamously vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led untermenschen,” Azov was once widely condemned by Western corporate media and the human rights industry for its association with Nazism. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In the months that immediately followed, Azov led the Ukrainian military’s defense of Mariupol, the group’s longtime stronghold. As the militia assumed a frontline role in the war against Russia, Western media led a campaign to rebrand Azov as misunderstood freedom fighters while accusing its critics of echoing Kremlin talking points. The New York Times has even referred to the unit as the “celebrated Azov Battalion.”

Like the Washington Post and other mainstream outlets, the ADL ignored Azov’s atrocities this April in Mariupol, where locals accused the group of using civilians as human shields and executing those who attempted to flee. One video out of Mariupol showed Azov fighters proudly declaring the Nazi collaborator and mass murderer of Jews, Stepan Bandera, to be their “father.” 

The Azov Battalion has long served as a magnet for the international white nationalist movement, attracting recruits from the terrorist Atomwaffen Division to a US Army Specialist arrested on charges of distributing bomb-making instructions.

Back in March 2022, just a month before the battle of Mariupol, the ADL itself issued a report acknowledging that white nationalists see Azov “as a pathway to the creation of a National Socialist state in Ukraine.” 

Eight months later, however, the ADL has changed its tune, asserting to this outlet that Azov has rooted the fascists from its ranks. So did Azov change its Nazi ways, or did the ADL simply shift its messaging to conform to the imperatives of a Biden administration still intent on sending billions in military aid to Ukraine?

Nothing To See Here But An Ethnically Pure Ukrainian State - Slava Ukraini! Heroiam Slava!

NYTimes | President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine spoke with the leaders of the United States, France and Turkey on Sunday, stepping up diplomatic activity in the 10th month of the war and shoring up military and humanitarian support. 

Mr. Zelensky’s push comes as the latest round of Russian airstrikes have targeted and damaged critical Ukrainian infrastructure, leaving millions without reliable heat and power as winter sets in, and ahead of meetings this week — a virtual gathering of the Group of 7 nations, a meeting of E.U. foreign ministers, and an international conference focused on aid for Ukraine. 

In Yesterday's NYTimes - An APC Proudly Bearing The OUN Banderite NAZI Flag

While the weekend calls with Mr. Zelensky touched on issues central to the war, including grains, the global economy and defending against Russia, there were no signs that Russia and Ukraine were closer to meeting to discuss an end to the war that began in February when Russia invaded. 

Mr. Zelensky “coordinated positions” with President Biden about the upcoming G7 summit in their phone call on Sunday, the Ukrainian president said on social media, adding that Ukraine would participate in the meeting. The White House said in a statement that Mr. Biden emphasized that the U.S. would prioritize strengthening Ukraine’s air defense system. 

President Biden had said earlier this month that he was open to speaking with the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, about ending the conflict but had “no immediate plans” to do so. Despite some hope that a recent prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia might lead to more substantial talks on Ukraine, Mr. Putin has not expressed a willingness to advance talks. 

In the call with the French leader, Mr. Zelensky said that he and President Emmanuel Macron discussed how to “synchronize positions” ahead of the G7 talks on Monday. In his nightly address, he described the hour-long phone call as “very meaningful.” He added that Mr. Macron supported his peace plan. 

Mr. Macron said on Twitter that he discussed with Mr. Zelensky two upcoming conferences taking place in France, including one that will link French companies seeking contracts in Ukraine with officials from that country. The other event will focus on raising money to help Ukraine get through the winter. 

Mr. Zelensky also spoke with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey about building on the grain deal that Mr. Erdogan brokered between Ukraine and Russia. Earlier in the war, Mr. Erdogan pushed for talks between the two nations that ended without a peace deal, but got Ukraine and Russia’s top diplomats to sit down. 

Mr. Erdogan also spoke to Mr. Putin earlier on Sunday by phone, during which he expressed to Mr. Putin his “sincere wish” for the war to end as soon as possible, according to Mr. Erdogan’s office.

The Specific Degenerate Mentality That Wielded A Stranglehold Over American Political Discourse

kunstler  |   Startling fact of the week: Twitter’s senior ranks of content moderators included over a dozen former FBI and CIA agents and analysts who let child porn run loose all over the app while surgically removing any utterance contradicting the government’s claim that mRNA “vaccines” are “safe and effective” — not to mention the effort this elite crew expended against anyone objecting to the Woke-Left’s race and gender hustles. Wouldn’t you like to know how much they were paid? Probably more than government work.

     Here’s another awful reality (better fasten your seatbelts): What also emerged in the tweet record of Yoel Roth, the company’s chief censor (former “Head of Trust and Safety”), begins to look like a gay mafia assault on the collective American psyche. Having gained official federal government sanction and protection, a statistically tiny homosexual demographic left in charge of the country’s main public forum has been out for revenge against their perceived enemy, political conservatives — Americans disinclined to join the cheerleading for drag queen story hours, “minor-attracted persons,” transsexuals in the military, and other LBGTQ cultural pranks.

There seems to be little limit to Elon Musk's predatory and malevolent nature. He is now insinuating that the fmr head of Trust & Safety at Twitter, an openly gay Jewish man, is a pedophile. Just another level of this is that Roth actually stayed on for several weeks under Musk.. pic.twitter.com/hTHZ6SNQEO

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 10, 2022

     In the process, that gay mafia running the public dialogue supported every lie that the government, its protector, put out, to keep it happy and well-fed. Shocking, I’m sure… but there it is. That means they also promoted the most-deadly psy-op in world history: the Covid-19 scare and the mass “vaccination” crusade that will end up killing many millions world-wide, after destroying the economies of the Western Civ nations. The whole package looks like an attempt to turn the world upside down and inside out. Is it any wonder that so many feel the USA has gone crazy?

    Of course, that aroused the widespread suspicion that these now-exposed nefarious operators in social media were merely tools for some murky plutocrat elite led by the likes of the WEF, Bill Gates, and George Soros. Could that be the greatest “conspiracy theory’ of all? More likely, I hesitate to suggest, all these characters in one way or another are merely tools of history itself, as the world enters the darkest days of a Fourth Turning secular winter. As TS Eliot observed: “Humankind cannot bear too much reality.”

      Thus, so many sense we live in dangerous times. Everything appears to veer out-of-control, including thought itself. Disorder incites more disorder. While all this madness is going on in-country, the US government, led by the phantom president “Joe Biden,” continues to prosecute its insane proxy war in Ukraine in order to antagonize Russia. Lately the US has sent drones hundreds of miles inside Russia to blow up military airfields. How is that not an escalation of hostilities, and exactly how far do the American people want their government to take this crazy project?

Stochastic Terrorism: The New Term Of Art For Thought Crime

theatlantic  |   If leaders have to answer for the violence they inspire, they will have a harder time gaining traction in the future. Since the beginning of the Trump era, far-right groups have recruited new members with fantasies of armed conflict; adherents are convinced that they can be on the winning side of history. Rhodes, a Yale Law School graduate, floundered for years until the Oath Keepers found kinship with the Trump movement and with Trump himself, who flirted with extremist groups before fully embracing them after his election loss. This week’s verdict further dispels the idea that the Oath Keepers are winners in any way. Every criminal conviction of figures implicated in the January 6 attack at any level—even on the misdemeanor charges facing some rank-and file rioters—helps discourage would-be recruits from seeing militia groups as a path to glory.

Although the jury likely did not debate the intricacies of how violence works, Rhodes’s conviction is a condemnation of stochastic terrorism—a technique the Oath Keepers share with the Islamic State. Leaders of such groups incite their followers in ways that make bloodshed all but inevitable, even if the specifics of how the violence will play out are unknowable beforehand.

From the November 2020 issue: A pro-Trump militant group has recruited thousands of police, soldiers, and veterans

In recent weeks, right-wing commentators have criticized the very notion of stochastic terrorism, treating it as just another broad accusation that Trump’s political opponents level against the former president and his supporters. Yet Rhodes’s trial points to a highly specific way in which some groups incite and normalize violence. They have used tools of intimidation, such as wearing military costumes and brandishing weapons, to achieve political goals—while also acting like what they’re doing is no big deal. Casual threats of civil war, when coupled with the means to wage it, are no longer casual. The standard for criminal conviction for promoting violence is justifiably high, but some leaders of some groups act egregiously enough to reach it.

Rhodes’s jury made a statement for the future. Although a single criminal case will not deter all hate and violence, a series of similar verdicts could significantly hamper violent groups’ ability to organize. Fomenting a bloody riot isn’t a game, and it isn’t mere protest. Criminal prosecution will find you.