Russia readies for a brave new world

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-10T16:52:07+00:00

Ukraine will remain a priority issue for Russia and that is one main reason why the Russian elite and the nation at large want Putin to remain in power until 2030. The heart of the matter is that Putin also brilliantly tweaked the economic and social policies to sequester the lives of ordinary Russians from the usual deprivations characteristic of a ‘war economy’. Life moves on, and the ‘new normalcy’ is working well.

Putin tested the waters and has put Russia on the right side of history, so to speak, which presents a study in contrast with the disarray and lack of conviction and mediocre leadership in the US and the transatlantic system as a whole.

If the above-mentioned essay by [chief of Russia’s foreign intelligence service] Naryshkin (entitled 2024 Is the Year Of the Geopolitical Awakening) is taken as benchmark, the world in transition can be expected to have a trajectory on the following lines:

A fundamental conflict between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ world, which has been maturing below the surface through the three decades since the end of the cold war, has “moved into an open phase” with the commencement of Russia’s special military operation and has “acquired a geographically all-encompassing character” in the last year.

An increasing number of countries that “share the ideas of multipolarity and adhere to a traditional worldview” are pushing back the West’s globalist and anti-humanistic agenda.

Consequently, the risks of instability are multiplying, which lead to “an increase in the chaotic nature of the processes taking place in the foreign policy arena.” The emergent situation demands “remarkable restraint and foresight” from world leaders.

In sum, the current situation is “increasingly reminiscent of a class revolutionary situation, when the ‘upper classes’ in the face of the weakening United States can no longer provide their own leadership, and the ‘lower classes’, as the Anglo-Saxon elite refer to all other countries, no longer want to obey Western dictates.”

In order to preserve their global hegemony, the Euro-Atlantic elite will follow the well-trodden path of creating controlled chaos — de-stabilising the situation in key regions by pitting some ‘recalcitrant’ states against others and “forming a sub-system around them as operational and tactical coalitions controlled by the West.”

However, “responsible world players, especially Russia, China and India and some others demonstrate their readiness to resolutely resist external threats and independently implement crisis management.” Even the closest allies of the US are striving to diversify external relations faced with lack of confidence in America as provider of security. The eruption of Israel-Palestine conflict is “a sobering example” for many Western politicians.

In such a backdrop, “the world stage will be marked by a further intensification of the confrontation between the two geopolitical principles — namely, the Anglo-Saxon, or island, ‘divide-and-rule’ and the continental ‘unite-and-lead’ directly antagonistic to it. Manifestations of this fierce confrontation in the coming year will be observed in even the most remote regions of the world.”

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-10T05:26:38+00:00

Totally agree, this is how you do it. And I also agree with Ritter on this, especially this observation:

Intelligence agents, State Dept spooks, constantly & willingly telling only one journalist said information this often, has an agenda. And that’s been clear for months from these anonymous revelations.

This is why it's so critical to read/listen to a variety of trusted sources and compare and contrast what they say before drawing your own conclusions.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-09T20:13:51+00:00

Nice to have an extra $2 million lying around. But of course, this could have the potential for a good ROI.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-09T20:11:46+00:00

Gosh, wonder why no one believes them.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-09T16:31:26+00:00

Numerous voting machines across different districts in Northampton County have malfunctioned, with issues including vote flipping and improper recording.

The affected locations include Palmer Township, Bethany Wesleyan Church in Lehigh Township, College Hill Presbyterian Church in Easton, and the Allen Township Fire Hall.

Issues with the voting machines were specifically observed in the retention race for the Pennsylvania Superior Court, involving Judge Jack Panella and Judge Victor Stabile, where votes were being incorrectly flipped.

PRESS RELEASE: “It appears that when a voter selects a “Yes” or a “No” for one of the candidates for retention to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, the selection is recorded on the paper ballot and on the machine for the other candidate.”

“The issue is limited to the retention of Superior Court Judges and is only an issue when recording the votes for when a voter selected a “Yes” for one candidate and a “No” for another candidate.”

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-09T03:09:51+00:00

"first amendment activity" = citizens exercising their Constitutionally protected rights.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-09T00:39:13+00:00

The T-Rex fighting the raptors allowed the humans to get away.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-08T22:51:29+00:00

Same. It will be entertaining to see how they manage to shove Kamala aside and promote him, though. Time to stock up on popcorn.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-08T19:40:33+00:00

Outstanding comment that really explains what exactly we're seeing and how it's just more manipulation of the mindless masses who fall for it. That group includes some close friends who I know will walk right into the trap because they love their toys and the convenience of tech and never count the cost.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-08T19:26:35+00:00

h/t u/3andfro for pointing me to this article, which seems to show this is more than the usual toothless posturing. As I pointed out to u/3andfro:

The details of the indictment in combination with Hunter's own memoirs - wow. As ZH notes, he "spent like a man who thought he operated under a different set of rules." More than a half a million for hookers? And that's while average Americans struggle to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. This is elite privilege writ large.

To your point, the fact that the indictment mentions his financial bonanza from Ukraine and China, it does seem like there's an inside plan to make Joe step down, no doubt because he's turned everything he's touched into an unmitigated disaster and is currently doubling down on making the US even more of a pariah by not just ignoring genocide but actively aiding it.

And, too, it's pretty obvious the American people are royally pissed at the current state of their own lives, thanks to the free-wheeling lifestyles of those who make the rules. Maybe they decided it would be no loss to throw the Bidens under the bus since they're the poster children for corruption.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-08T05:33:28+00:00

Interesting observations, esp. this part (paraphrasing): Israel enjoys the support of western governments and elites but it has lost support of civil societies. It's probably the only state in the world that lobbies for its existence. Not for its policies or better economic performance, but for its very moral justification, and it's losing that battle.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-08T04:06:14+00:00

This is not good.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-08T01:42:38+00:00

My brain cells start committing suicide if I try to listen to her at all so I obviously avoid that!

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-08T01:35:47+00:00

He sure does bloviate a lot, cocksure in the certainty that benefits only will accrue to him, that neither he nor his will ever pay the price for his misbegotten foreign policy fantasies.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-07T21:10:46+00:00

Help ourselves to what? What another sovereign nation has that we want? That would be my guess, he certainly doesn't give a rip for Americans who are struggling financially.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-07T16:50:11+00:00

From the linked Washington Examiner article by Gabe Kaminsky:

"They might consider TAC a ‘high-risk’ publication because we have consistently taken on the bipartisan establishment’s sacred cows, whether it's the war in Iraq, nation-building in Afghanistan, or the harm done by free trade and open borders — and we’ve been proven right time and time again," Emile Doak, executive director of the American Conservative, told the Washington Examiner. "They know they can't say we're wrong, only that we're biased and 'high-risk,' so we will wear that designation as a badge of honor."

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-07T16:45:31+00:00

A last note, and a word of encouragement to reporters everywhere. The Daily Wire/Federalist suit would likely not have been possible had Gabe Kaminsky of the Washington Examiner not done such excellent investigative work on GDI in his “Disinformation Inc.” series. Kaminsky said he was “thrilled” to have an impact, and Cleveland generously credited the work. This is proof that if journalists work at cranking out true material, someone will put it to use.

In a related observation, it’s a little odd that breakthrough investigative reporting is needed to expose public programs like this...the public shouldn’t need deep sourcing and/or IG reports to see basic budgeting information, like which agencies are being paid how much, and for what, by the State Department.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-07T16:39:43+00:00

While the State Department has a massive budget for domestic propaganda operations (the #CTIFiles described $250 million for the year 2020), there’s a reason they’re not simply pouring more money into Voice of America or its “fact-checking website” Polygraph and trying to reach people that way.

That wouldn’t work, due to the increasingly obvious fact that government propaganda efforts are not trusted. Worse, traditional legacy organizations like The New York Times and the Washington Post are seen now as transparent vehicles for official propaganda, which is leading to significant loss of trust for them. The only way to correct that is to err less often, but since that doesn’t appear to be an option, NewsGuard and GDI and organizations like them are needed to correct the “mistake” of the media market. We can’t have people simply choosing what to read organically, can we? No matter how big a bullhorn you give the State Department or the Pentagon, they still need forms of censorship just to compete.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-07T16:36:20+00:00

lol

Highlighted above are both the plaintiffs in this case and unusual entries on the “least risky” side. Now-dead Buzzfeed blazed real trails in disinformation by publishing the Steele Dossier, which it knew was not only “unverified,” but “contains errors.” Meanwhile there are interstate gas stations whose lavatory wall writings are more reliable than HuffPost, which for years now has been jumping on obvious fake news tales like the pee tape with the enthusiasm of a dog humping a leg

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-06T16:53:03+00:00

The apologists in that thread are really disgusting.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-06T16:13:33+00:00

Andrei Ilnitsky has been employed at the Ministry of Defense as an advisor to Minister Sergei Shoigu since 2015. He is ranked State Councilor of the Russian Federation 3rd class, and is deputy chief of the Central Executive Committee of the United Russia Party and head of the ruling party’s Department for Work with Environments, Public Associations and the Expert Community. At the Defense Ministry he is considered an expert on information warfare, and is reputed to have been the inventor of the “Z” symbol for the Special Military Operation.

Interesting piece, thanks for posting this.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-06T16:11:56+00:00

non-aggression treaties it presented the US and NATO on December 17, 2022.

2021?

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-05T17:39:11+00:00

This was a good interview. An interesting point Crooke made in a recent article that Napolitano asked about was that Blinken told Israeli Defense Minister Gallant, "You only have a few weeks" (about 14:15ish). What he meant was that what Israel is doing isn't sustainable beyond a few weeks because the whole world is turning against Israel and it will lose support in the US as well. What the US is actually worried about is wider loss of support for Biden in the coming election year.

Because psychopaths only concern themselves with what benefits them, and if brutally killing more Palestinians improved Biden's polling, they would be actively calling for Israel to do just that.

A tragic byproduct of all of this is that Jews worldwide who vocally reject zionism and what Israel is doing will become the targets of the blowback, just as German-Americans and Japanese-Americans became the targets domestically during WW2.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-05T15:53:03+00:00

That seemed off to me as well. Yes, they got stimulus checks but they were never flush with cash and most people used them for necessities.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-05T05:34:17+00:00

Guess I shouldn't be surprised.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-05T00:53:44+00:00

Best part: "If one more person brings up religion and says it's anti-semitic - no one gives a fuck that you're Jewish."

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-05T00:40:08+00:00

Yes, helps to remember that.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-04T20:29:39+00:00

I'm glad to see this post from Doctorow. I have the greatest respect for Sy Hersh but agree with Doctorow that he knows very little about Russia, how the power hierarchy operates, and I've been discouraged by how often Hersh repeats narratives from his sources that those of us following events in Ukraine closely know to be untrue. I was less caught by the disconnect that Doctorow points out here, these supposed secret talks between Gerasimov and Zaluzhny, but what I had sincere doubts about was the claim that Putin was willing to accept Ukraine being part of NATO if NATO promised not to put troops or offensive weapons there. Because if one thing is clear from the events of the past year and a half it's that Putin understands US/NATO promises are utterly worthless.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-04T19:27:16+00:00

These people are vile. How convenient that those letters can be transposed into another apt word, evil.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-04T06:24:47+00:00

That's what I was thinking as I listened to it, that people should only fly when they absolutely have to. Pity the people who have to fly all the time for work.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-04T04:20:01+00:00

This leads to the one inescapable question about new “anti-disinformation” programs that is never discussed, but must be: who does this work? Stanford’s Election Integrity Project helpfully made a graphic showing the “external stakeholders” in their content review operation. It showed four columns: government, civil society, platforms, media.

One group is conspicuously absent from that list: people. Ordinary people! Whether America continues the informal sub rosa censorship system seen in the Twitter Files or formally adopts something like Europe’s draconian new Digital Services Act, it’s already clear who won’t be involved. There’ll be no dockworkers doing content flagging, no poor people from inner city neighborhoods, no single moms pulling multiple waitressing jobs, no immigrant store owners or Uber drivers, etc. These programs will always feature a tiny, rarefied sliver of affluent professional-class America censoring a huge and ever-expanding pool of everyone else.

It isn’t just one side or the other that will lose if these programs are allowed to continue. It’s pretty much everyone, which is why these programs must be defunded before it’s too late.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-04T02:27:41+00:00

Excerpt:

It could have been worse. King Charles could have ascended to his desert dais and pronounced that we had just 96 months to avert “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse”. But that was the Right Charlie back in 2009, giving us the benefit of his sandwich-board scientific wisdom. These days it is all fashionable bad weather and undefined “tipping points”. The man is now King, and at COP28 he threw away his irksome politically-neutral constitutional role, wrapped himself in Guardianista pseudoscience, and punched down hard on the poor who will be forced to pay for the collectivist madness that is the Net Zero project.

In 2009, Charles said we can no longer afford consumerism and the “age of convenience” was over. Not for the new British King, it need hardly be observed. He lives a life of pampered indulgence where no expense is spared to ensure his every comfort. On his accession to the throne, he added considerably to his Palace Portfolio. To spread his malevolent Net Zero fantasies, he has a fleet of cars, private planes and even a personal train at his command. He uses these to call for “transformational action” to be taken to save the planet. In his COP28 speech, he called for the restoration of nature, the need for sustainable agriculture, and co-operation between the public and private sectors.

Few calls could be more political in tone. The restoration of nature and sustainable agriculture is shorthand for largely meat-free diets and massive reductions in nitrogen fertiliser. The latter, in particular, will lead to worldwide famine. COP28 seems set to announce new food and agriculture restrictions using the tactic of demonising methane, a gas emitted by animals and humans that is barely measurable in the atmosphere due to a very short lifecycle. Whenever the subject of ‘co-operation’ between public and private sectors is raised, there is an immediate dash to count the spoons, since it can only signal a large transfer of cash from productive industries to unproductive and inferior green operations.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-04T01:59:54+00:00

John Leake interviews Australian veteran pilot Shane Murdock, who recently published a paper titled: [Impending Disaster in the Global Aviation Industry]. Highlights from video, Murdock speaking unless otherwise noted):

Shane Murdock is a forcibly retired airline pilot (because he refused to take the jab) who flew over 20 years for Virgin Australia. He also has training in accident investigations, statistical analysis, risk management. He's been a commercial pilot for 43 years, has accumulated well over 22,000 hours in his career and has a Master's degree in Human Factors, which identifies and isolates risk before it becomes a disaster.

There were three primary data sets I used, and it was the correlation between these that raised red flags.

We're seeing a massive elevation of emergency declarations (Squawk 7700s) globally. In isolation you'd be concerned but there could be valid reasons. But you put it alongside the "all causes mortality" rise globally since the introduction of the jabs, and that's the second data point. In Australia it settled at about 16% above the 5-year average, so that's an extra 41,000 people in Australia dying of unexplained causes.

The third data point was discovered with a Freedom of Information application by a colleague to our regulator. In Australia airline pilots have a First Class ATPL - Airline Transport Pilot License - which is supported by a Class 1 medical. I'm over 60 so I have to have that every six months. The regulator is responsible for monitoring these and has the capacity to put restrictions so if someone's medical identifies a subclinical health issue that may - may - cause some kind of incapacitation in the course of a flight, the regulator can impose a restriction saying they can only fly with anothe pilot.

We wanted to know whether there had been a rise in conversion from 1st Class ATPLs to ones with a medical restriction. And in calendar year 2022 in Australia, that went up 126%. Executives of our aviation authority omitted the 2022 data when they were asked about this in a Senate hearing.

At a minimum, pilots should be getting a cardiac MRI and a D-dimer at their regular medicals. The extra expense should be borne by the people who imposed the vaccine mandates; further, if these vaccinated pilots lose their medical (clearances) on a permanent basis, they need to be compensated for the remainder of their careers by the same people.

The mantle of safety provided to passengers over the last three years has actually decreased. In the US, the FAA increased the (acceptable) bandwidth of EKGs for pilots; it used to be .25 to 1.5, it's now .25 to 3.0. Does a pilot have to be having a cardiac arrest on the surgical floor before they lose their medical? In New Zealand, a pilot under 40 isn't required to have an EKG anymore.

(from earlier in the video) Regulators expect that pilots will self-report a medical issue but here's the kicker. Most of the insurance pilots have to cover the loss of their license through loss of a medical (clearance) actually state that they won't cover adverse reactions. So pilots aren't likely to self-report if it means losing their medical (clearance), their career and their income and will never be compensated.

Want to also talk about this. The ICAO, International Civil Aviation Organization based in Montreal, was formed under the Geneva Convention after WW2. It set out a series of tenets/annexes for Western countries to set up their aviation industries. These aren't mandatory but they're recommended practices.

Within these annexes there's a section for medical examiners. And in it there's a section that speaks to new medications to market, stating that no pilot should be administered a new medication to market till it's finally and fully approved, not conditionally or provisionally, and been in the free market for at least a year. We can't even take analgesics when we're flying. And here we are, our regulators, knowing what's in the ICAO recommendations, willingly turned a blind eye to something ICAO clearly recommended they not do.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-03T04:20:26+00:00

So, what will the comedy bits look like, one guy telling another guy to pull his finger?

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-03T04:19:01+00:00

Or Richard Pryor, or Robin Williams or many others whose names I can't think of at the moment.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-02T21:07:06+00:00

Because we don't want to be dependent on assholes like you, maybe?

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-01T17:29:09+00:00

Ever since I first saw how over the top the efforts were to sell the COVID vaccines, my belief has been that marketing and sales would predict everything which would happen with them. More specifically, each time a market was capped, the rules would be changed so a new market could be opened up. To illustrate:

•Initially the vaccines were sold under a scarcity model to get as many people as possible to receive them.

•Once the scarcity model stopped working, they were traditionally marketed to the population.

•Once that market was capped, bribes (e.g., gift cards) were given to incentivize more people to vaccinate. Note: many of those bribes were so ridiculous (e.g., drugs, donuts and sex) they made many realize there had to be something wrong with the vaccines.

•Once that market was capped soft mandates (e.g., to travel or go to a bar or to a concert) were implemented.

•Once that market was capped, hard mandates were implemented (e.g., losing your job or being kicked out of your educational program).

•Once that market was capped, they started pushing the vaccine on children.

•Once that market was capped, they decided the vaccine actually didn’t fully protect you and boosters were needed.

•Once that market was capped, they decided more boosters were needed and eventually that the vaccine would instead become an annual shot.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-01T17:08:43+00:00

Because it's not just the manufacturing itself that would have to be revived, it's the entire supply chain of components that go into that manufacturing that either off-shored itself or dried up when they didn't have enough domestic buyers to stay economically viable. Talk about burning bridges behind you.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-01T17:01:59+00:00

And we're gonna kill 'em all, even the babies and children who aren't Hamas, who didn't vote for Hamas, who don't even know what Hamas is.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-01T05:58:15+00:00

Max is succinct, informative and articulate as usual.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-01T04:51:21+00:00

Excerpt:

A recent article by Major General (ret.) Dennis Laich and Colonel (ret.) Lawrence Wilkerson notes a crisis in military recruitment in America.

Laich and Wilkerson would like to see a return of a lottery-based military draft for young men and women in America. I respect these men; we are part of the same organization, the Eisenhower Media Network. Yet I see this issue in a different light.

In essence, young Americans are voting with their feet by not joining the military in the numbers the AVF desires. This is not a bad thing. The U.S. military, if it was focused truly on national defense, would and should be considerably smaller. What enlarges our military (and its recruitment quotas) is imperial sprawl. Does the U.S. truly need to garrison roughly 800 military bases overseas? Does the U.S. Army truly need big brigades and battalions to fight conventional wars in Asia? Why does the Air Force need so many people? Why must the Navy have so many ships? Why do we need a growing Space Force?

We don’t need a revival of the draft. We need a revival of sanity. We need a foreign policy in which we mind our own business. In which we don’t dispatch military forces to every hotspot in the world. In which we don’t pummel other countries into submission, as we attempted to do with countries like Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Of course, the U.S. military’s answer to its alleged recruiting crisis is to hire an expensive advertising agency, giving it more than $450 million in taxpayer money to craft new ways of enticing young Americans to join the AVF. It just goes to show how much money the Pentagon has to throw (or throw away) at perceived problems.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-01T04:45:57+00:00

Excerpt:

Kissinger helped to prolong the Vietnam War and expand that conflict into neutral Cambodia; facilitated genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; accelerated civil wars in southern Africa; and supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America. He had the blood of at least 3 million people on his hands, according to his biographer Greg Grandin.

There were “few people who have had a hand in as much death and destruction, as much human suffering, in so many places around the world as Henry Kissinger,” said veteran war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody.

In his 2001 book-length indictment, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger,” Christopher Hitchens called for Kissinger’s prosecution “for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture” from Argentina, Bangladesh, Chile and East Timor to Cambodia, Laos, Uruguay, and Vietnam.

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-01T03:20:23+00:00

It's this, you should be able to click the "jpg" icon at the end and see it.

Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize

penelopepnortney · 2023-12-01T02:25:10+00:00

Great line from Jimmy Dore: DEI is there to put a shield of virtue around the companies raping the planet and crushing workers.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-30T22:02:26+00:00

Full documentary here for anyone who's interested.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-30T21:46:45+00:00

Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-30T21:23:16+00:00

(continued, because of SaidIt's stupid character limits)

The 30-year (Treasury) bond auction we had a few weeks ago was absolutely abysmal and it was a preview of what the Treasury is facing. We're borrowing so much that the likelihood we're going to have a tsunami of debt in the near future is rising every day we run the kind of deficits we have.

The US Treasury and US dollar are the global reserve asset and the global reserve currency, which gives us a very long runway on this debt issue. It doesn't mean it solves it, but it does give the Fed and the Treasury a whole lot of rope to keep playing this game.

The Treasury isn't deciding the spending, they just have to figure out a way to facilitate all this government spending and operate in that budget. The way they've been doing it is issuing debt. So they put out a report in February of this year, it's basically "the state of the Treasury, how we're doing" and the subtitle was "an unsustainable fiscal path." I believe they took it down recently. They showed a chart that showed how quickly debt to GDP was rising. It was a red flag for the government to say, "we can't keep doing this, at some point this breaks and we enter some kind of hyperinflation because of a loss of confidence in our currency."

You look back and when did this start? In 1971, when Nixon officially took us off the gold standard and we got Saudi Arabia to agree to transact the sale of its oil in US dollars. That makes other countries that are energy-dependent have to hold US Treasuries in order to have access to dollars at all times so they can buy that oil. So they sell their Treasuries, get the dollars and buy the oil.

But the world is waking up and you're hearing frustration from countries like Brazil and Saudi Arabia and India and Russia, the BRICS. They don't want to be beholden to the US dollar anymore because they know we're running these huge deficits and have no choice but to have long-term, perpetual, structural inflation. Inflation that we don't admit to, and that's the biggest problem.

We're starting to feel it across the economy, individuals are starting to feel it. Every day there's thousands of videos of people on social media saying "I don't know how people are making it, everything is costing so much. Who has a job that pays them enough to buy food that costs this much, or houses or cars that cost this much?" So it's becoming a problem internally and that's a big red flag for us.

Back in the 80s we had a similar inflation problem but because we were running 30% debt to GDP, Volcker was able to raise interest rates up to 20%. That's not an option now, now we're running debt to GDP of 130%, deficits of about $2 trillion, interest payments of $1 trillion.

The way I look at it is that we're in a debt spiral and we can't get out of it. When you're running such large deficits, what are your choices as a government? Either austerity, which is cutting expenses, but that's political suicide; each party is trying to trick the other into doing something like that because it loses the confidence of their constituents and they lose votes, so neither party is going to do it.

Second, you could raise taxes. But the reality is when you do that you disincentivize investment in those companies; you disincentivize research and development; you disable the ability of companies to expand on their product line, to expand into new products, to hire more people, to pay people more. So even when you raise taxes and get more money in, the revenue is smaller so you end up getting to the same place.

Third, you can issue more debt. When debt matures in this country, we don't have the money to pay back what we borrowed. So we have to issue more debt to have the money to pay the principal back on the earlier debt, and we hope that investor we pay back turns around and invests in the new debt. That's why you're seeing the debt grow and grow. $2.4 trillion in debt we've issued in 5 months.

The other option: you can default on your debt; you can declare you're only going to pay 50% of what you owe - we've seen this happen in countries that have gotten into this debt spiral problem. But why would a country that issues debt in the same currency it can print? You wouldn't. You'd just print more money and monetize your debt.

The last option and the one we're obviously going to implement is a soft default. That's having high perpetual, structural inflation forever. That enables you to grow your GDP nomimally - those are on your fake dollars because now you have more dollars in the system. You've got inflation of prices but there's more money in the system. So those dollars you borrowed 10 years ago on that debt, now you're going to pay that back but you're using dollars that are cheaper, they're worth less because there's more of them out there.

The people who lose are the ones whose real wages aren't really keeping up. So, who is that? It's the ones who don't have any assets; they don't have any debt so they're not benefiting from paying back cheaper dollars; but also they're being hurt by this hidden inflation. You can't tell me that the price of goods and services over the last couple of years are only up 12% or something. The CPI numbers are absolutely being manipulated.

So the issue is, are those metrics true? Are the low-wage earners, the real wages, really keeping up with inflation? Because if you ask anyone at the lower end of that eschelon, you'll likely be told "no." The other thing is, how many jobs do they have to work in order to keep up with that inflation?

The Fed oversees stable pricing in the system, i.e., that we don't have inflation or deflation that runs out of control. And they want full employment. That supposedly is their two mandates. In reality - go to first principles - why do we need stable pricing? Because we need confidence in the dollar. Okay, who are they answering to? They're answering to the Treasury. The Treasury needs a stable dollar because they need to keep borrowing, to keep issuing debt; they need to be sure they have that avenue to facilitate all the spending that's going on in Washington. When real inflation, true inflation, is so high that people don't want to hold dollars anymore, that's when lack of confidence in the dollar happens.

This is the problem and what maddens me: when you have the manipulation of money and you continually go in these ebbs and flows of the economy and then you get into one of these downturns, who gets hurt the most? Who loses their job? Typically you have a swathe of wage earners that aren't critical to a company that get laid off, so all those layoffs in a recession winds up just doling out economic pain across the board.

So we've been conditioned that the Fed and Treasury are going to make sure large companies don't fail; that large banks don't fail; that the market doesn't melt down; that the Treasury market stays liquid, even if it means they have to dump liquidity in to make sure of it. And who makes out from that? The ones closest to the liquidity spigot are the ones who benefit the most. So, asset owners. People who own large houses, gold, bitcoin - they're going to benefit in this cycle IMO.

(they discuss bitcoin a good bit at the end of the video for those who are interested)

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-30T21:22:42+00:00

Highlights, James Lavish speaking:

There's a lot of confusion about what's going on in the economy. The information we get from the Fed and the Bureau of Labor is a little obfuscated, so when you get CPI they break out components that are kind of critical to the everyday person, like housing and energy and food costs, and they call it a core inflation indicator. They give you numbers that may not match up with reality.

Consumers have had a lot of cash on hand and part of that is because of the stimulus checks and the programs the Fed ran during the pandemic, just handing out money to a lot of small companies and people. But that's running out so now you see consumer credit at all time highs, you're starting to see that delinquencies are up and the younger generations under pressure. But I was reading this morning on Bloomberg that the interest payments have surged, it's almost like a cliff face, that personal interest payments as a percentage of income are now up where they were right before the great financial crisis (2008). You can see it spike every single time before a recession and though we haven't seen "a recession" yet I fully believe it's coming.

What the Fed likes to point to is "the job market is still strong and the jobless rate is still near historic lows." But the reality is they're rising; the other reality is that jobless rates don't spike until after a recession starts, you'll see it spike every single time when a recession starts.

Now you look at the market and we've got seven stocks - the Magnificent Seven - that have been driving the S&P 500 for months now, ever since the AI hype. And there is some reality around this, Nvidia is selling a lot of chips because a certain type of processor is needed for these AI processes... they're the ones with the highly skewed P/E ratios (price/earnings).

I believe we're headed into a recession. The question is, how hard are we going to land, how deep is it going to go, how long is it going to last?

Housing prices have stayed high because they aren't selling. Because who wants to sell their house, even if it's greatly appreciated in price, and give up their 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 interest rate on that house in order to buy another house that would likely be smaller for the same price at an 8% interest rate?

The other thing is we've been running massive deficits and that's inflationary. Debt in and of itself isn't a bad thing, if you can use it responsibly and borrow an amount that makes sense, then no harm no foul. But the government isn't doing that.

We got into the position at the end of May, early June, where we were about to trip the debt ceiling. So instead of trying to figure out how to lower expenses, we just kicked the can down the road on the debt ceiling, put a moratorium on it and now we don't really have one. Between then (May/June) and now, we've added over $2 trillion in debt. The government spending has been massive and that's going to come home to roost.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-30T19:54:50+00:00

Excerpt, see tweet for greater detail and explanations:

The First Amendment protects a vast range of speech and expressive conduct.

But it doesn’t protect all speech and expressive conduct.

The categorical exceptions to the First Amendment are few, narrow, and carefully defined.

To protect freedom of expression, they must remain that way.

But they do exist, each for good reason.

And as campuses grapple with students and faculty expressing raw anger, fear, and shock over events in Israel and Gaza, it’s useful to revisit the boundaries between protected expression and actionable misconduct.

Violence is never protected by the First Amendment.

Just as violence is unprotected, so too are true threats and intimidation.

Incitement — speech that is both “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” — is unprotected by the First Amendment.

Colleges and universities that accept federal funding — the vast majority of campuses, both public and private — must maintain and enforce policies prohibiting discriminatory harassment on the basis of certain protected class statuses.

The heckler’s veto: taking action to silence the lawful speech of others is illiberal and, in some cases, unlawful. When a speaker is silenced by those who disagree with their speech, the heckler’s veto is at work, and the First Amendment is under threat.

Times like this may seem to present the most righteous justifications for bending the rules in one direction or the other, to either permit the censorship of protected speech or to allow unprotected speech or violence to go unpunished. But we cannot let either happen.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-30T17:19:23+00:00

I definitely thought, "Yay, early Christmas present!"

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-30T17:17:20+00:00

her beloved mentor,

Criminals of a feather flock together.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-30T05:40:22+00:00

Can't wait for Bernie to eulogize him as a great humanitarian.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-30T05:39:33+00:00

How about Dr. Strangelove - "Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!"

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-29T16:07:45+00:00

From 2018: What’s stored in your school Google Drive account? You might be surprised.:

WATCH THIS FOX 5 NEWS CLIP from Springfield, MO [no link to clip] . They show one teacher log into her school issued Google Drive account where her personal information, including 139 passwords and audio of voice to text messages and Siri searches were stored, allegedly unencrypted.If you or your child have a Google account through school, you are going to want to read this.

The Elys claim that the SPS Google Drive, given to all SPS employees and students, automatically begins to store information from any device the drive is accessed on. This includes browser history, but also personal information such as files and passwords. They add that even if you log out of the drive, it stays running and recording in the background.

"My voice to text was being stored as well as any search my kids did, and I could say ‘sure my daughter was searching on Google,’ but my phone uses Safari. When I used my texting app on my iPhone , it recorded my voice, as well as typing out the words and saving it on my Google Drive,” said Brette Hay, the Ely’s daughter and a teacher at Pershing Middle School.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-28T20:11:17+00:00

Any effort to undercount disabled people is alarming as the prevalence of disability is rising, not declining, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

That probably explains it.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-28T19:25:01+00:00

Unfortunately, a huge segment of the population wouldn't recognize a double standard if it bit them on the ass.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-28T19:22:45+00:00

Excerpt:

i had some tinfoil left over from thanksgiving, so i thought i might spread it around a bit and see if we could explore the interesting and oddly repetitive state of affairs where so many politicians seem fully corrupt and yet fully repercussion proof right up until they step out of line or become a liability at which instant it’s suddenly “scandal time” and they get run out of town on a rail.

...all that you really need to believe to accept these ideas is that power corrupts, that corrupt people are attracted to power, and that many will happily trade their ethics for patronage and position.

i doubt we’re really debating ideas like “does this happen?” rather, it’s a debate about “to what extent?” and “to what degree of deliberation and sophistication?” with perhaps a side order of “and how many actors are in the game and what ends are they pursuing?”

the solution is obvious: only elect people you can, at whim, destroy. if you do not have career and reputation ending dirt on them, don’t back them.

if there’s no dirt, demand they cross the line and produce some so that you can hold it over their heads or set folks upon them to indulge their vices and trap them.

there is a long mooted suspicion than many of the high powered secret societies (such as skull and bones which purportedly produces so many politicians) or the infamous lolita express to epstein island and honeypot parties full of bad mistakes to make (and more importantly be seen and documented making) are all bent around this basic purpose. it’s how you get big groups of high achievers in line and keep them in line and how a machine keeps control of large numbers of egotists, narcissists, sociopaths, and other cluster B denizens.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-28T18:27:34+00:00

Excerpt:

From the start, it's been clear a considerable no. of Ukrainians didn't fit the image we were sold of happy warriors who'd fight forever & pay any cost to win. Many Ukrainians, incl. leftists, backed negotiations. The pro-"agency" crowd simply pretended they didn't exist.

Most astoundingly, the ones simply ignoring all of these Ukrainian "voices" to instead hold up the most bellicose ones (i.e. the ones that agreed with their own pre-conceived views) then turned around and accused the pro-negotiation contingent of being arrogant, not listening etc

As one e.g. the "agency" crowd loves to cite public opinion for the foolish decision to get Ukr. into NATO. They mysteriously have nothing to say about how Ukrainians were actually against NATO when Bush got the ball rolling, that this has involved steamrolling Ukr. "agency".

Nor did they consider how their insistence on respecting Ukrainian "agency" by backing Kyiv's maximalist war aims clashed with the "agency" of the people Kyiv wanted to reconquer, many of whom opposed such a thing or favoured a quicker end to the war.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-28T00:19:11+00:00

There's another really interesting comment thread that starts off about Victoria Nuland and segues into Kosovo/Serbia; the first commenter, Norma Brown, was a US diplomat there and has some pretty scathing things to say about the whole thing in explaining why she retired shortly thereafter from the State Dept.:

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-112523-major-avdeevka-breakthroughs/comment/44295368

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-27T17:33:29+00:00

Currently, US media reports have been alleging widespread antisemitism on X - and have sought to highlight Musk's own personal interaction with posts on the platform, resulting in some major advertisers to exit.

But Musk's invitation to Israel, where he's also slated to meet President Isaac Herzog later in the day, begs the question: if Musk is "antisemitic" - as his detractors and enemies claim - why would the Jewish state readily invite him for such a high-level visit where the prime minister takes him on a personal tour? As if admitting and underscoring the discrepancy and glaring contradiction, those same voices are now lashing out at the Israel government for hosting the official trip.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-27T16:01:15+00:00

Excerpt:

The lead foreign story for the BBC on 13 November should have been a no-brainer. As Israeli soldiers surrounded al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza, preparing to storm it, dozens of premature babies inside the facility had been removed from their incubators. The hospital no longer had any power to run the machines.

Israel had been repeatedly warned by the United Nations that this would be one of the terrible consequences of its collective punishment of Gaza’s population, denying the fuel needed to generate electricity. Israel simply ignored the warnings.

But editors at the BBC’s News at Six decided to lead the foreign coverage not with the babies being killed by Israel’s withholding of fuel but with a story from the other side of the divide. It must have been one of the most perverse news judgments on record.

Instead, the BBC led with the brother of a British-Israeli man who had been killed during Hamas’ attack on 7 October. The attack itself was by then more than a month old, which even the BBC seemed to understand could not justify demoting the dying babies from the top foreign news slot.

A better angle was needed. And it was this: the BBC reported that the brother was increasingly wondering whether it was safe for him to remain in Britain. This was a sentiment shared by many other Jews, according to the report.

The problem is not just that many British Jews assume the UK has an antisemitism problem based on a highly dubious interpretation of the chant’s meaning. It is that establishment media organisations are echoing that misunderstanding and treating it as more newsworthy than Israel killing Palestinian babies, with the UK government’s blessing.

It is just one illustration of a pattern of reporting by western media outlets skewing their news priorities in ways that reveal a racist hierarchy of concern. Jewish fears are of greater import than actual Palestinian deaths, even babies’ deaths.

Another unmentionable is that western war correspondents, so ready to risk their lives for a story in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, are keeping out of Gaza...

Their news outlets refuse to let them in because they know that Israel’s bombing campaign is so ruthless, so untargeted, so unpredictable, that there would be too much danger of their reporters being injured or killed.

That very fact ought to be part of the news story. But that would require turning upside down the narrative framework underpinning western reporting.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-27T03:38:26+00:00

More of tweet introducing clip:

This report is one of the most gut-wrenching documents I've seen of Israel's state terror

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-27T02:47:40+00:00

Excellent, thanks for posting this.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-27T01:28:34+00:00

Same mentality as "we have to destroy the village to save the village." These idiots need to sit down and let someone less sociopathic give it a shot.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T22:13:17+00:00

There's no such way to sugar coat this.

Many will try anyway.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T22:09:59+00:00

I'm shocked! /s

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T22:08:20+00:00

Funny that, how you can't prettify the real life effects of a genocidal campaign.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T21:48:29+00:00

Cross-posted from https://saidit.net/s/WayOfTheBern/comments/bv74/can_a_socialist_exmarine_fill_joe_manchins_seat/

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T21:41:32+00:00

Excerpt:

A United States court held an extraordinary hearing on November 16, where a judge carefully considered a lawsuit against the CIA and former CIA director Mike Pompeo for their alleged role in spying on American attorneys and journalists who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Judge John Koeltl of the Southern District of New York pushed back when Assistant U.S. Attorney Jean-David Barnea refused to confirm or deny that the CIA had targeted Americans without obtaining a warrant. He also invited attorneys for the Americans to update the lawsuit so that claims of privacy violations explicitly dealt with the government’s lack of a warrant.

In August 2022, four Americans sued the CIA and Pompeo: Margaret Ratner Kunstler, a civil rights activist and human rights attorney; Deborah Hrbek, a media lawyer who represented Assange or WikiLeaks; journalist John Goetz, who worked for Der Spiegel when the German media organization first partnered with WikiLeaks; and journalist Charles Glass, who wrote articles on Assange for The Intercept.

The lawsuit alleged that as visitors Glass, Goetz, Hrbek, and Kunstler were required to “surrender” their electronic devices to employees of a Spanish company called UC Global, which was contracted to provide security for the Ecuador embassy.

UC Global and the company’s director David Morales “copied the information stored on the devices” and shared the information with the CIA. The agency even had access to live video and audio feeds from cameras in the embassy.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T20:13:13+00:00

What's especially astounding is the cluelessness with which they propose the type of concessions that no winning party in a conflict in the entirety of history has ever agreed to, because why would they?

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T20:07:38+00:00

Yep, that pretty much sums it up. And of course they showed their true colors when they rejected even considering Russia's reasonable proposal for a new security framework in 2021.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T20:06:10+00:00

I fear that will only happen if they ever manage to set aside their enormous (American) egos. "Top of the world, ma!!"

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T18:46:42+00:00

Excerpt:

Almost 10 years ago, I sat in a secure conference room at the Pentagon and explained to a group of U.S. national security officials from the military, CIA, Treasury and other agencies that the overuse of the U.S. dollar in financial warfare would eventually drive countries away from using dollars in international transactions for fear that they could become the next target of U.S. displeasure.

We’re destroying the dollar with the sanctions (and through other misguided policies). The U.S. is doing more to destroy the dollar than our enemies.

None of the sanctions would be effective or even possible without the use of the dollar and the dollar payments system.

Many others have pointed out the same weaknesses in the weaponization of the dollar. It seems the only parties who don’t see the danger to the dollar are the Wall Street cheerleaders and top U.S. government officials.

Right now, the U.S. holds about $300 billion of Russian assets that were frozen after the Ukraine war broke out in February 2022. Most of those assets... consist of U.S. Treasury securities.

Technically, those assets have not been converted to U.S. ownership; they have merely been frozen and still belong to Russia even though Russia cannot use them. Now [House Speaker] Johnson wants to convert those assets to U.S. ownership and use the proceeds to pay for the war in Ukraine.

Such an action would amount to a default on U.S. government debt since the securities were legally owned by Russia.

Nations around the world would take note and accelerate their dumping of Treasury securities and their flight from the U.S. dollar. This would increase interest rates in the U.S. and hurt everyone from homebuyers to everyday consumers.

It would make U.S. debt permanently more difficult to sell and less desirable to hold...At its worst, it could trigger a dollar panic and full-scale flight from the dollar.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T18:25:18+00:00

And as per usual, they're busily making their plans without even trying to take into consideration what Russia would agree to. Meanwhile, even amateur observers of the conflict (who aren't being paid to be stupid) know Russia most assuredly would not agree to the fantasy "resolution" the West is pimping.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T18:05:54+00:00

Excerpt:

Political movements derive cohesion from the momentum and energy they command. With the wind at their backs, adherents are willing to overlook their divergent interests and fight for a common cause. As these movements lose momentum and face hardening opposition, they suddenly find themselves rent by infighting and factionalism... In such situations, it is everyone for himself; there is a great scramble to leave the sinking ship, and it becomes convenient to blame erstwhile allies for failures.

This is happening in Germany right now. Signs of disarray are pervasive in the ranks of their street-level shock troops, the climate activists. For months now, Letzte Generation have had a particularly bad time. Extinction Rebellion, an important source of early inspiration and advice, has been distancing itself from the group...

All this is happening as that other great climate organisation in the Federal Republic, Luisa Neubauer’s Fridays for Future chapter, fights to distance itself from its child prophet, Greta Thunberg, and the pro-Palestinian stance she has taken since the start of the Gaza conflict on 7 October...nobody has fought so hard to make Thunberg the living saint of climate change as Neubauer and her gaggle of carbon dioxide hysterics.

The catastrophic overreach of the pandemic response, the energy crisis of 2021, the ensuing economic chaos and the decline of unipolar American hegemony have brought about an enduring sea change. The water now flows with growing momentum to the right, and not just in Germany.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T04:35:23+00:00

Military action against Poland (if that's what you're referring to) does sound preposterous for exactly the reason you give. What Korybko is talking about is a scenario where Poland becomes the new front against the "war with Russia" and German troops under the auspices of NATO being put there. Whether that's a reasonable reading of the "Military Schengen" proposal, I don't know. But NATO is obviously determined to keep this war going one way or another, and the decision-makers are stupid and petty enough that there's not much they could do that would surprise me. That includes further fueling existing spats between member states.

I've gotten the impression that Poland doesn't play well with its neighbors. They've definitely had their eye on their former territory in western Ukraine. I also seem to recall that they were demanding reparations from Germany in the last year, and also remember something about some demands they were making of whichever of their Scandinavian neighbors was going to fill some of the energy gap caused by the Russian sanctions, seems like it had to do with sharing the revenue.

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T04:18:32+00:00

(public post on Patrick Lawrence's substack, letter to Biden from novelist Peter Dimock)

The White House, Washington. 22 November 2023

Dear President Biden,

Thank you for the kindness of your letter of November 15th in response to my plea to use all the power at your disposal to bring about a ceasefire in Israel’s U.S.–supported and –enabled genocide against the Palestine population of Gaza following Hamas’s attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.

I realize your intention was not to invite further correspondence from me. I am nevertheless compelled to trouble you further in the sincere hope that this letter will remind you of your obligations under international humanitarian law and the Genocide Convention, to which the U.S. is a signatory along with 148 other nations.

Under the Genocide Convention the United States government and its citizens are required to intervene to redress the commission of genocide as “the crime of crimes.” Signatories to the Genocide Convention are legally obligated to intervene to stop genocide and to prosecute its perpetrators to the full extent of the law as a matter of jus cogens, that is, the peremptory norm, in times of peace and in times of war, against “violent attacks with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”

Current U.S. policy lends unqualified and unquestioning support—in word and deed—for what Israeli leaders have announced is their determination to slaughter unlimited numbers of Palestinian civilians. Under your leadership, American policy constitutes the absolute evil of the crime of genocide. Such evil should never be invoked in support a nation’s “right to defend itself.” Not to oppose the crime of genocide is to join in its commission. If genocide is not opposed now, it will forever become the norm in international relations. In retrospect, the logic of exterminist Nazi political ideology will have proven itself not to have been an aberration—the temporary and unrepeated suspension of humanity’s implicit universal valuing of every and all life—but the fulfillment of the depravity of political power’s assertion that the unlimited exercise of the violence of unanswerable force finally constitutes power’s only universally recognized relevant currency of self-justification.

In the present instance of genocide your administration’s policies enact a willingness to create—and then to exercise demented global leadership within—an unlivable world. I sense you do this in the name of an ill-advised claim to an entitlement to exercise, with unopposable legitimacy, unlimited “full spectrum dominance” in global affairs through American national militarized force.

Your and your administration’s active participation in the commission of genocide over the last forty-six days implicitly makes every American citizen complicit in that crime to the extent that we do not directly and actively oppose your policies. By refusing to investigate, prosecute, and intervene to prevent the genocide now unfolding in Gaza—as is required by law under the Genocide Convention—you force every American to participate in the unmaking of our moral and ethical selves and of our coherence as a democratic people dedicated to a universal pursuit of human emancipation and universal historical justice.

The complicity of every American with genocide implicit in your administration’s policies destroys our political, ethical, and moral world as a livable form of human solidarity and forces us all into a necessary consideration of first principles. I do not believe that anyone pursuing the policies you are now pursuing regarding Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza can be elected President of the United States on November 5, 2024. At least I hope that is the case.

As I suspect you inwardly know, the inhumanity of your present conduct of American foreign policy will surely cost you the next election. I suspect you also inwardly know that by betraying your own humanity and compromising that of every American citizen, you are opening the doors to the unspeakable criminality represented by the full-blown fascism of Donald Trump.

For all our sakes, I beg you to change course in giving enabling support to the present Israeli government in perpetrating the crime of genocide in Gaza. It is not too late to do the right thing.

Thank you for considering this second request to do everything in your power to bring an end to the crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza by forcing upon the Israeli government an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

Sincerely,

Peter Dimock

penelopepnortney · 2023-11-26T01:44:14+00:00

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