"War does not determine who's right... only who's left."
- Bertrand Russell
"The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting
each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals."
- Edward Abbey
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, June 8, 2024
"Alert! USA Goes Full Nuclear, B-52s Nuclear Strike Drill Near Kaliningrad, Russia; Putin Responds"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/8/24
"Alert! USA Goes Full Nuclear, B-52s Nuclear Strike
Drill Near Kaliningrad, Russia; Putin Responds"
Comments here:
"Damned..."
“Damned is the soul that dies while the evil it committed lives on. And the most damned of all are those who see the evil coming for others and refuse to confront it. For it is not out of fear that heroes are born, but rather out of their selfless love that will not allow them safety bought from the torture, death, and degradation of others. It is better to die in defense of another than to live with the knowledge that you could have saved them but chose to do nothing. And to those who think that one person cannot make a difference, I say this… the deadliest tidal wave begins as an unseen ripple in a vast ocean. Live your life so that your integrity will motivate others to strive for excellence long after you’ve passed on, and know that no good deed or sacrifice, or offer of sincere friendship or love, is ever forgotten by the one who receives it.”
- Sherrilyn Kenyon
Free Download: Jack London, "The Iron Heel"
"I know nothing that I may say can influence you. You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy."
- Jack London
Freely download "The Iron Heel", by Jack London, here:
Read online The Project Gutenberg eBook
of "The Iron Heel", by Jack London, here:
"The Devastating True Scale of Nuclear Weapons"
Full screen recommended.
Science Time, 5/8/24
"The Devastating True Scale of Nuclear Weapons"
"The devastating true scale of nuclear weapons began on July 26, 1945, when the Allies demanded the unconditional surrender of Japan, warning of "prompt and utter destruction" if compliance failed. Japan ignored this ultimatum. By summer, the Allies' Manhattan Project had developed two atomic bombs: the uranium-based "Little Boy" and plutonium-based "Fat Man." A top-secret mission saw six B-29 bombers heading to Hiroshima, with the Enola Gay carrying Little Boy. It was released over Hiroshima on August 6, releasing 15 kilotons of TNT, devastating a 1.6 kilometers radius.
Three days later, Bockscar dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki, resulting in a 21-kiloton explosion. These bombings led to 129,000 to 226,000 deaths, prompting Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945, ending World War II and igniting a nuclear arms race, especially between the USA and the Soviet Union.
The US's most powerful nuclear weapon today is the B83, with a maximum yield of 1.2 megatons of TNT, designed for enhanced safety and varied applications including the "Nuclear Bunker Buster" project and asteroid impact avoidance strategies.
Castle Bravo, detonated on March 1, 1954, remains the most powerful device tested by the US, yielding 15 megatons. The Soviet Union responded by developing the Tsar Bomba, detonated on October 30, 1961, with a yield of 50 megatons, marking the largest human-made explosion.
The nuclear arms race led to the development of extensive arsenals capable of mutual assured destruction (MAD), a doctrine suggesting that nuclear conflict would result in the annihilation of both attacker and defender, effectively deterring outright nuclear war. These developments have left a lasting impact on global politics and security."
Comments here:
o
"Nuclear states admit to owning about 13,000 warheads,
but the real number could be higher."
"What Would Josey Wales Do?"
“To hell with them fellas. Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms.”
– Josey Wales
"What Would Josey Wales Do?"
by Jim Quinn
“Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.” – Josey Wales
"As our political, economic, civic, and social structures continue to degrade, dissolve, and disintegrate before our very eyes, it is easy to become apathetic and surrender to hopelessness. There are relentless powerful forces actively trying to destroy the fabric of our society and force the masses into economic servitude while caged in an electronic gulag, controlled by an oligarchy of evil totalitarian minded billionaires and their lackeys in key governmental, political, banking, military, media, and corporate positions of power. We are in the same situation as Josey Wales in Clint Eastwood’s epic 1976 film – "The Outlaw Josey Wales."
The film tells the story of Josey Wales, a Missouri farmer, just trying to live his life in peace without interference from the government, uninterested in the violent Civil War between two monolithic forces fighting for their created causes. His wife and son are brutally murdered by Union Redleg militants, led by the despicable Captain Terrill, while he was away from his homestead. After burying his family, his mind naturally turns towards seeking revenge against the perpetrators, and he begins to practice shooting. He joins a group of pro-Confederate bushwackers who become the scourge of Union forces until the war’s conclusion.
At the conclusion of the war, Josey’s friend and superior, Captain Fletcher, persuades the guerrillas to surrender, having been promised by Senator Lane that they will be granted amnesty if they hand over their weapons. Josey refuses to surrender because he knows you can never trust the government or the politicians who make promises they never keep. They have been pissing down our backs since the last Civil War, while telling us it’s just raining, so everyone can relate to this scene in the movie.
Senator: "The war’s over. Our side won the war. Now we must busy ourselves winning the peace. And Fletcher, there’s an old saying: To the victors belong the spoils."
Fletcher: "There’s another old saying, Senator: Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining."
Wales having refused to surrender, along with a young guerrilla named Jamie, are the only survivors when Terrill’s Redlegs massacre the surrendering men. Wales intervenes and wipes out many of the Redlegs with a Gatling gun before fleeing with Jamie, who dies from a bullet wound sustained in the massacre after helping Josey kill two pursuing bounty hunters.
Fletcher: "Damn you, Senator. You promised me those men would be decently treated."
Senator Lane: They were decently treated. They were decently fed and then they were decently shot. Those men are common outlaws, nothing more."
The remainder of the movie entails Union soldiers and bounty hunters trying to track and kill Josey, while he accumulates a rag-tag group of companions, including Indians, foul mouthed grannies, and a slew of other settlers trying to live their lives unhindered by the government. Clint Eastwood’s character maintains a stoic meanness throughout the film towards his government enabled enemies, but has empathy and kindheartedness towards the downtrodden people who represent the vast majority of citizens in this country.
I found it interesting the film was based on the novel "Gone to Texas," written with a virulent anti-government slant by a former George Wallace speechwriter. When the script writer/director tried to tone down the anti-government aspects, Eastwood told him no and eventually fired him, taking over as director for the remainder of the film. Eastwood’s refusal to bow to Hollywood pressure and soften the dialogue and story line is a tribute to his resolute dislike and mistrust of governmental authorities. He has essentially gone his own way and made his films his way, never letting the Hollywood elite dictate his path.
Released in 1976 when anti-war sentiment was at its peak, following the government created Vietnam war debacle, which slaughtered over 50,000 American boys, Eastwood later referred to it as an anti-war film. And we all know it is governments and those Deep State operatives who control the levers of power, and start wars to increase their wealth, power and control. War never ends because it is extremely profitable for those waging it, while the youth doing the fighting are just cannon fodder for corporate interests. Eastwood was dead on, as we have waged wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine and Palestine, benefiting the military industrial complex at the expense of you and me.
“As for Josey Wales, I saw the parallels to the modern day at that time. Everybody gets tired of it, but it never ends. A war is a horrible thing.” – Clint Eastwood
Eastwood equates the plight of the Confederacy with the plight of the American Indian, as both groups were bullied, bloodied and crushed under the weight of the Federal government, which began its unfettered growth during the Civil War and has now reached its zenith of incompetence, arrogance, lawlessness, and hatred towards the citizens it is supposed to serve. Most people just want to be left alone, like Josey Wales, to live their lives in peace and harmony with their fellow community members. But the federal government makes that impossible, with their rules, regulations, taxes, fees, and enforcement thugs harassing the public on a daily basis.
In Eastwood’s movie they murder his family, murder his comrades, and are hell-bent on murdering him. The song remains the same. Our government murdered people minding their own business at Ruby Ridge. They murdered women and children at Waco. They murdered a rancher at Bundy Ranch. They send young men to war for bankers and corporations. They have been unlawfully imprisoning protestors in dungeons for a fake insurrection fomented and initiated by government agents. They rigged the presidential election and have convicted the leading political candidate of fake crimes he did not commit in order to maintain control over the political system.
The list could go on for pages, as the totalitarian methods and abuse of power against the citizens of this country accelerate at a breakneck pace. Fear of seeing their wealth and power slip away has created an almost psychotic spasm of unhindered chaotic flailing about, in an ultimately fruitless effort to retain control. They are fearful of the masses wakening from their technology induced slumber and realizing the enemy is not the groups they have been programmed to hate, but the very government pulling the strings of this clownshow.
The government needs a sedated, dumbed down populace who fear what they are told to fear and obey the instructions of their overlords. But the covid scamdemic and continuing death of loved ones from the toxic jabs, has opened the eyes of millions. The debt death spiral induced by Biden’s handlers, supercharged by the coordinated and financed invasion of our southern border by third world mutts, and resulting in raging inflation for average American families, has angered and infuriated the masses. We are approaching our moment of truth.
The government is in the midst of creating millions of vengeful Josey Wales characters. As political chaos increases in the coming months, the threat of global conflagration escalates and the economic plight of the masses deteriorates, revenge against politicians, government drones, and the globalist financial elite for creating this madness will expand rapidly. We know what Josey Wales would do. The question is what will we do.
Eastwood made his final Western masterpiece, sixteen years after Josey Wales, with the release of the Academy Award winning "Unforgiven." He paid tribute to Josey Wales in the climactic scene in the saloon when confronting Little Bill. In The Outlaw Josey Wales Grandma Sarah’s initial reaction to meeting Josey Wales was: “This Mr. Wales is a cold-blooded killer. He’s from Missouri, where they’re all known to be killers of innocent men, women and children.”
He closes the loop with Will Munny, out of Missouri, with the same false accusation that he killed women and children, as he also seeks retribution on government authoritarians who murdered an innocent man. Both Josey Wales and Will Munny tried to live out their lives as peaceful farmers, but were forced to revert to violence because the government would not allow them to live in peace.
Little Bill Daggett : “You’d be William Munny out of Missouri. Killer of women and children.”
Will Munny : “That’s right. I’ve killed women and children. I’ve killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I’m here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.”
Eastwood’s first and last epic Westerns both examined the harsh reality of violence and retribution as the logical consequence for crimes committed against innocent people just trying to lives their lives. His meditations on the concepts of age, repute, courage, and the cloudy definition of heroism, make for far deeper and complex examinations of the old West than other western films. Eastwood distinguishes between the brutal reality of a world controlled and run by tyrannical psychopaths acting as government agents, and people living peacefully, with no government intervention.
Eastwood’s ideal vision of America as a pluralist society of individualists of all races and backgrounds who put aside the past and their difference to live in harmony, contrasts with the reality of a society controlled and manipulated by those referred to as the “invisible government” by Edward Bernays. The ruling elite do not want people to live peaceably in a self reliant manner. The climactic scene in Outlaw Josey Wales between Josey Wales and Ten Bears captures the nature of our world and the difference between governments and the people.
Josie Wales : “I came here to die with you. Or to live with you. Dying ain’t so hard for men like you and me. It’s living that’s hard when all you’ve ever cared about has been butchered or raped. Governments don’t live together – people live together. With governments, you don’t always get a fair word or a fair fight. Well, I’ve come here to give you either one or get either one from you. I came here like this so you’ll know my word of death is true, and my word of life is then true. The bear lives here, the wolf, the antelope, the Comanche. And so will we. Now we’ll only hunt what we need to live on, same as the Comanche does. And every spring, when the grass turns green, and the Comanche moves north, you can rest here in peace, butcher some of our cattle, and jerk beef for the journey. The sign of the Comanche, that will be on our lodge. That’s my word of life.”
Ten Bears : “It’s sad that governments are chiefed by the double tongues. There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life… or death. It shall be life.”
I had previously used Josey Wales as the basis for Part Four of my five part series based on Clint Eastwood movies in 2012, documenting how the Federal Reserve, under the control of the Wall Street banking cabal, had destroyed the middle class and set in motion the ultimate destruction of the American economic system. Here we are twelve years later and that destruction is approaching its climax. As the powers that be are flailing about in a final destructive apocalyptic spasm of hate, greed, and war, the average American needs to channel their inner Josey Wales.
We can either give up and allow those running this shitshow for their own benefit to enslave us in perpetual debt, culling us with their toxic “vaccines”, making us eat meatless meat and bugs, forcing us into their digital currencies, 15 minute cities (aka electronic gulags), electric cars, and social credit system, or we can get plumb, mad-dog mean and man up. In order to reverse our totalitarian spiral, being executed by powerful mega-wealthy men and their highly compensated double tongued lackey politicians, bankers, media moguls, and corporate chiefs, those 300 million guns will need to be put to use.
If we want to live together peacefully, unhindered by an overbearing, corrupt government behemoth, controlled by evil men with evil intentions, then we will have to fight. That’s just the way it is. Ask yourself, “What would Josey Wales do?”, and act accordingly."
Huge hat tip to Jim Quinn and
The Burning Platform for this material!
Jeremiah Babe, "US Retail Blood Bath Getting Worse, Store Closures Flood America"
Jeremiah Babe, 6/8/24
"US Retail Blood Bath Getting Worse,
Store Closures Flood America; All The Jobs Are Part Time"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Some spiral galaxies are seen nearly sideways. Most bright stars in spiral galaxies swirl around the center in a disk, and seen from the side, this disk can appear quite thin. Some spiral galaxies appear even thinner than NGC 3717, which is actually seen tilted just a bit. Spiral galaxies form disks because the original gas collided with itself and cooled as it fell inward. Planets may orbit in disks for similar reasons.
The featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a light-colored central bulge composed of older stars beyond filaments of orbiting dark brown dust. NGC 3717 spans about 100,000 light years and lies about 60 million light years away toward the constellation of the Water Snake (Hydra)."
The Poet: Charles Dickens, "Things That Never Die "
"Things That Never Die "
"The pure, the bright, the beautiful
that stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulses to wordless prayer,
The streams of love and truth,
The longing after something lost,
The spirits longing cry,
The striving after better hopes -
These things can never die.
The timid hand stretched forth to aid
A brother in his need;
A kindly word in griefs dark hour
That proves a friend indeed;
The plea for mercy softly breathed,
When justice threatens high,
The sorrow of a contrite heart -
These things shall never die.
Let nothing pass, for every hand
Must find some work to do,
Lose not a chance to waken love -
Be firm and just and true.
So shall a light that cannot fade
Beam on thee from on high,
And angel voices say to thee -
These things shall never die."
- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
"Are People Really Stupid?"
“All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has about
as much interest in the life of the mind as does your average armadillo.”
- Morris Berman
“Think of how stupid the average person is,
and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
- George Carlin
"Are People Really Stupid?"
by Fred Russell
"On the face of things, judging from the general level of knowledge and understanding, not to mention the intellectual pursuits, of most of the human race one is tempted to say that the overwhelming majority of mankind lacks the intellectual capacity, the intelligence, to contribute to human progress. And it is in fact a very small elite that has carried us beyond Neanderthal Man, without whom, if the truth be told, we might still be living in caves. It is, in a word, appalling to contemplate the level at which ordinary people use their minds, what they read, if at all, what they watch on TV, the movies they go out and see, and the ease with which they are seduced and manipulated by the technicians of the psyche, namely, politicians and advertisers.
The impression one gets when contemplating these tens and hundreds of millions of people glued to their TV screens for the reality shows and sitcoms or fiddling with their smartphones from morning till night is of complete empty-headedness. This is not to say that such people cannot be shrewd, resourceful, or, for that matter, simply decent. It is to say that at the average level of intelligence displayed by the human race, the great intellectual achievements of mankind seem to be beyond the scope of the vast majority of men and women. But are people really stupid? And if they aren't, who or what has held them back?
Now one may be inclined to place all the blame for our ignorance on the television producers and gadget makers, but the truth is that by the time they get to us the damage has already been done. All they really succeed in doing is dragging us down a little further. The problem starts in childhood. It starts in the schools with all those empty cells waiting to be filled and no one, not entire educational systems, really knowing how to fill them. In fact, the opposite result is achieved. By the time the child finishes elementary school, unless he is destined to join the intellectual or scientific or economic or political elite and is self-motivated, as the saying goes, he will have developed an aversion to the learning process that will persist for the rest of his life.
It is not hard to understand why. School bores him, and oppresses him. Its premise, fostered in the West by the Church the virtually exclusive supplier of teachers until fairly recent times, historically speaking is that as a consequence of Original Sin all men are born evil and must therefore be coerced into doing what is good. The result has been rigidly structured frameworks where teachers hammer away at the captive child until his head is ready to explode. Within just a few years, the public school system thus destroys the natural curiosity of the child and dooms him to a life of total ignorance, dependent, for whatever sense of the world he does have, on second rate journalists, who themselves lack the knowledge, understanding, discipline and integrity to be historians or even novelists and therefore shape his perception like the ignorant clerics of the Middle Ages, raining down on his head a disjointed and superficial body of information presented largely to produce effects, and even this is beyond his capacity to retain.
The man in the street may thus be said to have a great many opinions but very little knowledge, mindlessly repeating the half-truths of experts and analysts who reflect his own biases and constructing out of them a credo of dogmatic views that remain embedded in his mind for an entire lifetime like bricks in a brick wall.
Does it matter? After all, we have all the scholars and scientists we need, and besides, a world where everyone became one would be a dull place indeed. It can even be argued that it is better for the race if progress is opposed, since, judging from its products, it mostly expresses itself materially and economically in an unholy alliance of greed and technology. However, progress of this kind cannot be fought if all that people have on their minds is to wire themselves into this technology, and that is what they will be doing until their minds are engaged in less frivolous pursuits. They are thus doubly victimized, first by the schools, whose methods are not attuned to the temperament and capacity of the average child, and then by the economic elites who control the technologies and consequently the flow of information and whose only interest in the man in the street is as a consumer of their products.
Unfortunately, there is very little hope that any of this will change. The wrong people control human society and will continue to do so, because they created the model and are the only ones who know how to operate it. The sad truth is that today's man in the street is neither wiser nor more knowledgeable than a medieval peasant. Calling ourselves Homo sapiens, or even Homo sapiens sapiens, seemed like a good idea once but very few of us have lived up to the billing."
Apologies to armadillos for the comparison! lol
The Universe
“Believe me, I know all about it. I know the stress. I know the frustration. I know the temptations of time and space. We worked this out ahead of time. They're part of the plan. We knew this stuff might happen. Actually, you insisted they be triggered whenever you were ready to begin thinking thoughts you've never thought before. New thinking is always the answer.”
“Good on you,”
The Universe
“Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!”
"The Height of Idiocy"
"The Height of Idiocy"
by Doug Casey
"The only element in the universe more
common than hydrogen is stupidity."
– Einstein
"I’m not a fortune teller. In fact, the only things anybody knows about predicting – even if you gussy the concept up by calling it "forecasting" – are 1.) Predict often and 2.) Never give both the time and the event.
The worst offenders are those who pretend they know where the economy’s headed. Statistics – so often the basis of conjecture with regard to the economy – are so subject to interpretation, and so easy to take out of context, that most of the time they’re best used as fodder for cocktail party conversations. Still, as potentially wrong-headed and tendentious as the subject is, "the economy" is occasionally worth talking about simply to establish a clear point of view. In fact, I place the phrase "the economy" in quotes because I don’t even accept the validity of the concept, nor that of "the GDP"; they’re both chimeras.
The idea of GDP gives the impression that it is not individuals that produce goods and services, but rather a machine called "the economy." This leaves the door open to all manner of nonsense, like the assertion that what may be good for individuals may not be good for the economy, and vice-versa.
For instance, an advance in the GDP doesn’t necessarily mean increased prosperity: What if the government embarked on a massive pyramid building program, an archetypical example of public works? GDP might rise, but it would add absolutely nothing to the well-being of individuals. To the contrary, the building of the pyramid would only divert capital from wealth-generating activities.
On the other hand, if a scientific breakthrough was made which cut energy consumption by 80% for the same net output, or magically eliminated all disease, the GDP would collapse because it would bankrupt the energy and health industries. But people would be vastly better off.
Entirely apart from that, the whole idea of GDP gives the impression that there actually is such a thing as the national output. In the real world, however, wealth is produced by someone and belongs to somebody. We’re not ants or bees working for the hive. The whole idea of a GDP just allows the "authorities" to bamboozle people into believing they can actually control "the economy," as if it were some giant machine.
The officials pretend to be the Wizard of Oz, and Boobus americanus is trained to think they’re omniscient. Thus whenever the rate of growth slips "too low," officials are expected to give "the economy" a suitable push. Conversely, whenever "the economy" is growing too fast, the officials are supposed to step in to "cool" it. It’s all an embarrassing and destructive charade.
Nonetheless…I remain of the opinion that we’re headed into the biggest economic smashup in history. That’s an outrageous statement, and it’s always dangerous to say something like that. After all, the longest trend in motion is the Ascent of Man, and that trend is unlikely to change; indeed, it’s likely to accelerate. And it’s usually a mistake to bet against an established trend. Furthermore, science and technology will continue advancing, people will continue working and saving, entrepreneurs will continue to create.
Even most of those who talk of a recession tend to write it off as either a simple reversal of recent "irrational exuberance," or a passing change in people’s psychology, or a temporary shock. Unfortunately, it goes much deeper than that. Those things have very little to do with what recessions are all about.
A recession, according to the conventional parlance, is a period when economic activity declines for two or more quarters. That’s a description of what happens, but it’s really not very helpful, much like saying a fever is a period during which your temperature is above 98.6 F. A better definition of a fever might be a period when the body’s temperature is elevated as a consequence of fighting an infection, in that it gives you some insight into the cause as well as the effect. That’s why I prefer to say a recession is "a period of time when distortions and misallocations of capital caused by the business cycle are liquidated."
What causes the business cycle? Excess creation of credit by a central bank (e.g., the Fed). The injection of artificially created money and credit into a country’s economy gives both producers and consumers false signals, causing them to do things which they otherwise would not do. The longer the upswing of a business cycle continues, the longer and more severe the down cycle will be. A depression is just a really bad recession.
One thing that – contrary to popular opinion – can help get an economy out of a recession is a large pool of savings; savings give people the money to invest in new production, as well as the money to buy that production. That’s why it’s the height of idiocy for pundits to talk about how patriotic it is to go out and shop. It can only deplete the capital that will be needed in the future, and deepen the bottom with more bankruptcies, stealing consumption from the future.
That’s why the Fed’s artificially low interest rates was such a bad idea; it encouraged people to save less and borrow more. This engineered decline may well, after a certain lag time, cause a cyclical upturn – but it will only aggravate the underlying problem, guaranteeing yet a bigger bust.
This isn’t just an American problem, because the U.S. is truly the engine of the world’s economy. But a lot of the drive behind the engine is the gigantic trade deficit. The hundreds of billions the U.S. sent abroad in the last year alone, after over a decade of increasing deficits, has caused a lot of capital investment that will become uneconomic, and created a lot of economic activity that will come to a screeching halt when that deficit inevitably reverses. The whole world is levered on what happens in the U.S.
The effect in economies around the world will be devastating. The Smoot Hawley tariff of 1930, which acted to collapse world trade, greatly exacerbated the last depression. It could be that economic conditions in the U.S. alone could do it this time, without the overt "assistance" of the government. I don’t believe we’re looking at just another cyclical downturn this time. We could be – but I don’t think so.
Of course, since the dollar is by far the biggest market in the world, constituting the reserves of almost every government on the planet, the de facto currency of probably 50 countries, and the savings of hundreds of millions of people around the world, when it collapses, it will cause a financial earthquake, Magnitude 10."
"Soon Or Late..."
“A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.”
- George R.R. Martin
"Trump’s Conviction, Washington, and the Appeal of a High-Throughput Guillotine"
"Trump’s Conviction, Washington, and the
Appeal of a High-Throughput Guillotine"
by Fred Reed
Everybody and his dog is writing about the Trump conviction, so I guess I’ll add my few grains to the sand pile. Otherwise I’d kill something, preferably a New York judge. Or several of them.
On the observable principle that each succeeding President is worse than his predecessor, Biden has, barely, taken the title for godawful worthlessness and foreign-policy bafflement. But the question is not whether Trump has the morals of a politician, or whether he and some porn queen made the beast with two backs. How many readers would have done the same, given a shot at Stormy? The point is that the uniparty, the bicephalous brigandage that is the real government, has turned the entire political apparatus of Washington against Trump, while ignoring the behavior of its own miscreants.
The media make constant reference to the “insurrection” supposedly martialed by Trump against the Capitol. What “insurrection” for God’s sake?
During the Floyd riots, mobs surrounded the White House and threatened to assault it, resisting police who ordered them to disperse. In Portland they took over land in the city and declared it independent of the government, attacked police with Molotov cocktails and bricks, both being deadly weapons. In Minneapolis they burned a police station. This was insurrection on a massive scale. Martial law should have been declared, with the announcement , “Looters will be shot.”
Who was prosecuted for insurrection? Why not? Because Floyd was black. The looters were black. The white rioters were heavily middle class and Democrats. They were against Trump.
Yet savage sentences have been handed out to the mob of overexcited dingalings and damned fools who invaded the Capitol. Yes, their behavior was illegal and yes, they deserved punishment – but not the wildly disproportionate time they got. The idea that it was an attempted coup can only be sold to yokels with no faint idea of what a coup is or how coups are done.
All of this is utterly political. Who is prosecuted for what depends on almost anything but law. Trump is tried for a mildly sordid affair with a porn star but Biden is not prosecuted for being neck-deep in corruption in Ukraine along with his dirtball son. Curious, isn’t it, that a President known for this corruption frantically sends more and more money to Kiev. What do the Ukrainians know that we don’t? Diddling a porn star is without meaning. Being corruptly involved with the government of a country militarily entangled with America in a shooting war leaves open a real question of who is getting paid for what, and who has what dirt on whom.
There is a saying in sports reporting that you can bullshit the fans, but you can’t bullshit the players. When Violeta and I go to Washington we stay with journalist friends, and they are friends, on Capitol Hill, across the street from Lincoln Park. One is a high-end executive with a major network. The Hill crawls with media rabble and opinion mechanics. All of these people are wildly partisan against Trump. What they do cannot remotely be call journalism. One has in her kitchen, always on, a television, tuned to MSNBC. I’ll guess that seventy percent of its non-commercial time consists of raving, raving, raving against Trump. There is no trace of reportorial self-respect, the principle of always seeking the other side, of fact-checking. In newspapering a saying used to be, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Not now. Pure political advocacy.
At higher levels of the media anthill, people are not stupid Yet many seem to know little of the world beyond the ring road. Nor do they care. They do not even try to practice real journalism. Another dictum in the reporter’s trade was, “A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. A reporter should know the difference.” They usually don’t, at least as regards the mysterious and inexplicable reaches of Flyover Land.
For all the brainsthat many of them deploy, they are not savvy pols. In Trump’s first victory, Washington had no idea why he won, why people voted for him, no idea of the anger in the country and why it was there.
On Capitol Hill, you sit around the kitchen drinking good wine and wondering whether to order out for Thai or maybe from this chic Mongolian kitchen, or perhaps go to this really great Turkish restaurant. Even in the kitchen it can be at least a hundred bucks for two people, delivered by motorcycle including wine and tip. I’m not sure, because no one bothers to check.
In Middle America, where sometimes the water isn’t fit to drink, the Deplorables think that Saturday night out for the family at KFC is a treat. A meal at an Indian restaurant in classy Washington would be remembered for a lifetime. Vi and I were recently guests in DC at an all-you-can-eat Brazilian joint where doing the squat-and-gobble will set you back at least a cool C-note each. The place was packed. This is Washington. Those people hadn’t been in a KFC since college, if then.
The contempt of Washo-York elites for most of the country is intense, and the hostility is reciprocated. If Trump goes to jail, I will vote for him because of his incarceration and, if he doesn’t, from loathing of Washington. So there.
Probably none of this matters. America is so far gone in chicanery, bribery, price-fixing, and general immorality that repair is not possible. The country may go parboiled in an ego-fueled nuclear explosion. It may die gurgling as it drowns in moral slime. But I will vote for Trump , in jail or not, from sheer loathing of the whole fetid cloacal gush in Washington. He isn’t fit to be head of toilet maintenance in a Ugandan bus station, but neither is Joe, It will be a joy to see the faces on Cap Hill if Trump pulls it off."
"Life..."
"Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to
whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Adventures With Danno, "Grocery Items At Walmart You Should Be Buying!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/8/24
"Grocery Items At Walmart You Should Be Buying!"
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Dan, I Allegedly, "Lunacy is Alive in California"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 6/8/24
"Lunacy is Alive in California"
"The state of California is completely upside down financially. We have such a large deficit that the governor is proposing to eliminate things like police officers and jails. Welcome to the lunacy of California."
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"Douglas Macgregor Breaks Down: Putin's Bold Move - Arming Global Enemies of NATO!"
Full screen recommended.
មាតុភូមិ Studio HD, 6/8/24
"Douglas Macgregor Breaks Down:
Putin's Bold Move - Arming Global Enemies of NATO!"
"In this video, Douglas Macgregor reveals shocking details about Putin's asymmetric warfare strategy and its potential impacts on NATO. We will explore Medvedev's statements on supplying weapons to anti-US nations and how Russia is leveraging proxy warfare to pressure NATO. Macgregor also analyzes the defense agreements between Russia and Belarus and their strategic implications. Don't miss out on crucial updates and in-depth analysis from military expert Douglas Macgregor."
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"Are They Trying To Start A Nuclear War?'
"Dire warning from economist Jim Rickards! Must-read article I hope everyone will share with their sleeping friends and family members; If our people knew how close we are to nuclear war they would be in the streets demanding peace talks now!"
by Leo Hohmann
"I’ve been warning for two years about NATO putting itself on an escalator toward World War III. Many people thought I was a little over the top in my analysis, but now suddenly I’m not feeling so alone in my assessment. Over the last several weeks and months, many other astute observers have finally taken off the blinders, opened their eyes and acknowledged just how close we are to the point of no return in the rush to war with the world’s largest nuclear-armed country, Russia.
I can’t tell you how many times in recent weeks I’ve read or heard comparisons to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The only difference is back then we had sane American leaders who realized the importance of diplomacy and talking directly with our adversaries in order to avoid a devastating nuclear exchange. Some Westerner commentators, even some very smart ones, still deny that nuclear war is a real possibility in today’s world, or if it is, it’s very remote. My sense is that it’s not remote at all, given the leadership we now have in Washington.
If what we’ve seen so far is any indication, the Third World War will start as a conventional war between the U.S./NATO and Russia and quickly escalate to nuclear warheads exploding on military and civilian targets.
Why to I believe this? It doesn’t matter if you like Putin, hate Putin or are indifferent towards Putin, there are some indisputable facts:
• Putin is a popular nationalist leader with the backing of 70 percent or more of the Russian people who believe NATO has become an offensive, existential threat to Russia’s existence.
• It is also a fact that NATO has expanded greatly over the past 20 years, against Putin’s clear warnings about how that could destabilize East-West relations. Just in the last year, NATO has added Finland and Sweden to its ranks, while treating Ukraine as if it is a de facto NATO partner and promising to make it an official member sooner rather than later. This completes the surrounding of Russia’s western flank by hostile countries, all of which will host Western military assets.
• Fact number three: Given Russia’s history of being invaded three times from the West, each time through the area of Ukraine, Putin will not let it happen a fourth time. He will blow up Europe and the U.S. before he lets his country be invaded and conquered by globalist puppet politicians in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin. So, if these puppet politicians persist in poking the bear, there will be no winners. We will all suffer and many of us will die, either instantly or slow and painfully via nuclear fallout.
Below is an excellent analysis by economist and attorney James Rickards explaining how we got to this point and why it’s not likely to end well."
o
"Are They Trying To Start A Nuclear War?'
by James Rickards
"The steady path toward World War III continues. U.S. and NATO support for Ukraine in the war with Russia has been one long failure, but that hasn’t stopped them from escalating the war with new weapons and tactics. Russia has met the escalation with its own escalation every step of the way. At what point do rational leaders in the West (if there are any left) pause, consider that the war is lost in Ukraine, deescalate and seek a treaty to end the war? There’s no sign of that yet. In fact, all of the signs point to further escalation, which is a sure path to nuclear war. What good has escalation accomplished?
The West supplied Ukraine with HIMARS precision-guided artillery, but that largely failed because the Russians quickly learned how to jam the GPS guidance systems, so the missiles went off course. That doesn’t mean the Russians shoot down or jam every HIMARS rocket Ukraine launches. Some will always get through. But overall, their effectiveness has been limited compared with expectations.
The U.S. and NATO also supplied Ukraine with Abrams, Leopard and Challenger tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles that have been left burning on the battlefield. They also require intensive maintenance Ukraine can’t necessarily provide, and are often unsuited for the battlefield conditions in Ukraine. Many Ukrainian soldiers have actually expressed a preference for Russian-made equipment over NATO’s.
Not Wonder Weapons: Meanwhile, the Patriot anti-missiles systems cannot shoot down Russian hypersonic missiles and have been destroyed one-by-one at a cost of $1 billion each. F-16s are the next wonder weapon promised. But Russia fields the most sophisticated air defense system in the world. Many planes will be shot down by Russian S-400 anti-aircraft batteries and other systems.
These planes are also old, obsolete models from NATO inventories at the end of their service lives. And they can’t even be flown by Ukrainian pilots since they barely read English (the training manuals and maintenance manuals are all in English) and have not had enough time to train. It takes about two years to become a competent F-16 fighter pilot; the Ukrainians have barely had six months to learn. F-16s are also unsuited for the often rugged airfield conditions in Ukraine (they require pristine runways so debris doesn’t get sucked into their engines on takeoff). They can be operated from NATO bases but that opens another can of worms.
NATO’s Latest Harebrained Scheme: What’s the next harebrained scheme from NATO? Here’s the latest example. The U.S. and its allies have green-lighted missile attacks deep inside Russia using U.S.-made ATACMS ballistic missiles with a range of up to 190 miles. These attacks have hit civilian targets such as the Russian city of Belgorod and critical military targets such as the Russian nuclear missile radar warning arrays. Both types of attacks are prompting a severe Russian response, including the final destruction of the entire Ukrainian power grid.
The attack on Russia’s early warning system is particularly provocative. Ukraine used U.K.-supplied drones to strike this radar system used by Russia to detect incoming nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles. The U.S. and Russia already adhere to what’s called the “launch on warning” doctrine. This means that if you detect incoming nuclear missiles, you don’t wait for them to hit their targets. Instead, you launch your counterattack as soon as you detect the missiles. When it comes to nuclear war, it’s use it or lose it. That puts the world on a hair trigger. Hitting a radar facility that’s part of a nuclear defense creates a blind spot in that defense and makes the hair trigger even more sensitive and launch prone.
And while Ukraine may have technically launched the missiles into Russia, it could not have done so without precise targeting data provided by the U.S. and its NATO allies. How do you think the U.S. would react if Mexico attacked U.S. targets using targeting data provided by Russia? It would directly implicate Russia and hold it responsible.
Here’s another question: Why would Ukraine attack this radar system at all? Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear missiles so it has no reason to compromise Russia’s nuclear defenses. The radar has no impact on the ground war in Ukraine. It wasn’t an airfield or ammo depot or any other militarily relevant target. This plan is just another example of dangerous escalation by the U.S. and NATO and moves the world one step closer to nuclear war. Ukraine is all too happy to comply.
“Don’t Worry!” Proponents of escalation dismiss these concerns, saying we’ve already crossed multiple “red lines” and Russia hasn’t directly retaliated against us. Maybe against Ukraine, but not us. We can therefore go ahead and cross another red line, the Russians won’t do anything.
First off, that just provides more evidence that Vladimir Putin isn’t some bloodthirsty maniac who can’t be deterred. He obviously can be, and clearly recognizes the dangers of escalation. He doesn’t want war with the U.S. and NATO. Why would he?
Secondly, and more importantly, NATO’s arming and equipping of Ukraine was never a red line for Russia. Western observers simply assumed that providing HIMARS, ATACMSs and tanks would be red lines for Russia. But Russia never specifically said they were. They warned about the overall threat of escalation, but these weren’t specific red lines.
But direct attacks on Russian soil are a different matter. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin himself have issued specific warnings about NATO facilitation of attacks within Russia itself. That’s the difference. Here’s what Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, had to say: "Russia regards all long-range weapons used by Ukraine as already being directly controlled by servicemen from NATO countries. This is no military assistance, this is participation in a war against us. And such actions could well become a casus belli. Nobody today can rule out the conflict’s transition to its final stage."
It doesn’t take a genius to understand what he means by the conflict’s “final stage.” Now, Medvedev often issues provocative statements. But listen to the comments of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. It’s about as strongly worded as a diplomatic statement can get: "I would like to warn American leaders against miscalculations that could have fatal consequences. For unknown reasons, they underestimate the seriousness of the rebuff they may receive. Except the reasons aren’t unknown. It’s because the West is led by incompetent and reckless people who don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t understand that they’re playing with fire."
How Nuclear War Starts: I began studying nuclear war fighting in 1969 and have continued my studies for decades, which includes all the leading thinkers about nuclear war. While the experts disagree in certain respects, they all agree on one thing: The most likely path to nuclear war is escalation. No one wakes up and says, “Nice day for a nuclear war. Let’s start one.”
Instead, war will be the result of a process of one side raising the stakes, the other side responding in kind and escalating further and so on in successive rounds until one party is backed into a corner and has no choice but to use nuclear weapons in an existential response.
Ironically, in that situation, the party that is less threatened may actually start the nuclear war in order to get the first-strike advantage. The result is annihilation: not just World War III, but possibly the end of most human life on Earth. Those that survive would probably wish they hadn’t.
This is incomprehensible. Ukraine is trying to drag the U.S. directly into the war with U.S. boots on the ground. Events may not get that far. We may be destroyed in a nuclear World War III if this reckless escalation continues. Will anyone stop it?
o
The Strategist, 6/8/24
"Prof. Mearsheimer Warns About Macron's
Calling for Striking the Russian Homeland"
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