About Joe Biden's uncle...

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-22T22:27:13+00:00

Alternate title: President Biden put a banana peel under de-dollarization.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-22T21:37:47+00:00

So true, such pablum from this self-satisfied prick.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-22T18:06:43+00:00

Excerpt:

“DISORDER AND DREAMS IN [COUNTRY IN THE NEWS]”

Last week’s events in [country in the news] were truly historic, although we may not know for years or even decades what their final meaning is. What’s important, however, is that we focus on what these events mean [on the ground/in the street/to the citizens themselves]. The [media/current administration] seems too caught up in [worrying about/dissecting/spinning] the macro-level situation to pay attention to the important effects on daily life. Just call it missing the [desert for the sand/fields for the wheat/battle for the bullets].

When thinking about the recent turmoil, it’s important to remember three things: One, people don’t behave like [computer programs/billiard balls/migratory birds], so attempts to treat them as such inevitably look foolish. [Computer programs/Billiard balls/Migratory birds] never suddenly [blow themselves up/shift their course in order to fit with a predetermined set of beliefs/set up a black market for Western DVDs]. Two, [country in question] has spent decades [as a dictatorship closed to the world/being batted back and forth between colonial powers/torn by civil war and ethnic hatred], so a mindset of peace and stability will seem foreign and strange. And three, [hope/freedom/capitalism] is an extraordinarily powerful idea.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-22T03:55:32+00:00

Vile human being.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-20T14:35:43+00:00

Goaded by Republican members of Congress and the Israel lobby, Columbia President Manouche Shafik has sicced the NYPD on the protesters, triggering mass arrests and suspensions of students for supposedly "trespassing" on their own campus.

Like so many contemporary Ivy League presidents, Shafik is not a scholar or academic. She currently serves on the board of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, providing a patina of diversity to a supranational global governing entity guided by a single uber-billionaire. Prior to that, Shafik acted as deputy governor of the Bank of England, the UK bank that confiscated Venezuela's gold reserves under orders from the US government in 2019. She has also served in top roles at the IMF and World Bank, where global south debt becomes a point of leverage for Washington and London. Her own journey to the US began as a young child when Egypt's populist President Gamal Abdel-Nasser seized land from her wealthy father.

Shafik owes her entire career to the trans-Atlantic oligarchy, and has no space in which to defy it. She was not appointed as president of Columbia to instill values like critical thinking or academic freedom. She's there to raise hundreds of millions from her wealthy benefactors. Her leadership not only exemplifies the elite corruption of US universities, it exposes the sham of neoliberal diversity politics.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-20T02:20:55+00:00

His post in full:

The Economist can’t resist sneering at us. It’s an instinct lodged deep in the unconscious of the British commentariat class. They can’t stand that a people they were accustomed to lecturing are now doing better than they are, across the board.

Take governance: DPM Lawrence will be our 4th PM in 59 years. Meanwhile, in the UK, Mr Rishi Sunak is their 4th PM in 4.9 years.

Mr Boris Johnson, when he was PM, accepted a holiday worth £15,000, and £50,000 for renovations of his residence, from donors. In Singapore, anyone who did what Mr Johnson did would have been charged in court.

Or the economy: We started as a British colony, with a per capita GDP of USD 500. Now, it is more than USD 80,000.

According to a recent Forbes report, we have the fifth highest GDP per capita in the world by PPP (purchasing power parity) terms. Well ahead of the UK.

Or our media: the Economist refers to our “docile press”. It obviously prefers a situation like in the UK, where one person can control major media outlets, and have politicians pay court to him, and where media owners can influence who gets elected, and who becomes PM. A similar situation in Australia was described, by a former Australian PM, as a cancer on democracy.

Or in the provision of social services: We provide our people, of all classes and races, with far better healthcare, housing and education.

Or in public safety: the law and order situation in London is well documented. Last year, across England and Wales, investigations into more than 330,000 vehicle crimes (including thefts and break-ins), or 85% of all cases reported, were closed without any suspect caught. In more than a hundred neighbourhoods, 0% of reported car thefts were solved. A situation like that would be unthinkable and unacceptable in Singapore, which has been ranked by Gallup as the safest country in the world since 2015. 95% of adults in Singapore feel safe walking alone at night.

Or in social cohesion: In the UK, a Tory party donor recently said, of a black MP, that looking at her makes him “want to hate all black women”. His party said all should just move on from the comments. That’s it.

In Singapore a person who makes such a comment is likely to be charged in court.

What price your sneer?

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-19T21:44:36+00:00

The US has had how many decades to accomplish this and has failed, because they don't really want a Palestinian state. Evidence for this is their failure to put a halt to Israel's continually adding colonial settlements in Gaza and the periodic "mowing the lawn" Israel does, a euphemism for smaller scale genocide of Palestinians.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-18T15:46:54+00:00

We do not know what at least half the companies in the UK are doing, which is absolutely staggering when those companies may exist to undertake fraud and abuse us.

...it is so easy to form companies in the UK. You don't even have to physically sign a form to pay £12, get Companies House to incorporate your company, and then you have what is in effect licensed identity theft, which you can hide behind to undertake fraudulent activity, collect money, trade without ever having any intention of telling the Revenue that you are, not pay your taxes, then throw your company away at the end of a year or so, and form a new one.

How do I know this is happening? Well, because, the data from Companies House shows it. There are 5.3 million companies in the UK at the time that I'm recording this.

...in the last year for which we've got data, HMRC only got corporation tax returns from three million companies of whom one quarter weren't trading. So that leaves only 2. 2 million or so companies which were actually declaring that they had positive income...About 160,000 said they were making losses, and the rest said they were getting other income like interest, rents, or dividends...But what we do, therefore, know is that the majority of the companies in the UK aren't actually paying any tax at all, and you have to ask why they exist.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-16T15:56:35+00:00

So yes, that was a screenshot of his friend's Zhima Credit score (aka Sesame Credit) within Alipay.

Alipay, the financial transactions platform developed by Alibaba, is one of the two largest digital payment platforms in China (the other one is WeChat Pay, developed by Tencent).

Alipay assigns its users a credit score based on their history of transactions and behavior within its payment ecosystem.

This score is used the same way a credit score is used by financial institutions in the rest of the world: to assess users' creditworthiness or lending risk.

This is my Sesame Credit score: a 681. I try to split my digital payment activity pretty evenly between WeChat Pay and Alipay, so I can maintain scores in both. The scale is 350-950.

The 4 sub-components of your Sesame Credit score are:

Record of abiding by contracts

Accumulated behavior (instances of transactions)

Identity verification (self-explanatory)

Proof of assets (self-explantory)

Other activities that contribute to this item include repayment of credit card debt, mortgage repayments etc. All normal credit score stuff.

The third component is "proof of identity". I've got my passport and Chinese driver's license here, which is necessary if you want to rent a car and waive the deposit using Sesame Credit.

The last component is "Asset Proof" and this is surely where Iose out on a score of 700+, since I don't own a car or house in China, nor have I linked my social security, taxpayer info, provident funds, etc. in Alipay.

Since I don't have any Chinese credit cards or loans, the only way my Sesame Credit score affects me is:

Waiving the deposit on rental cars

Waiving the deposit on power bank rentals

Enjoying "use first, pay later" on some Taobao items

Enjoying upfront refunds on Taobao

I don't know for sure whether Chinese banks would refer to my Zhima Credit or WeChat Pay scores if I wanted a loan or a credit card...but from what I've read online, it seems like they might, the same way a bank in the US would pull your credit score from e.g., Experian.

Anyway, in the original thread, Noah's friend said they didn't want to miss their dinner appointment or they'd have their credit score impacted.

AFAIK Alipay doesn't have a reservation service (restaurants that offer reservations are rare in China) so this should be a joke.

But even if they did, it couldn't impact your Sesame Credit, since Sesame Credit is interested in whether you violate/uphold financial agreements... (like any other credit score system)...and not whether you're an dick who no-shows on a reservation.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-15T23:11:21+00:00

Whatever the Biden administration may have thought it was doing by permitting the [UNSC] resolution to pass and then undermining it, the maneuver exposed the continuing damage Israel’s war in Gaza is doing to the United States’ longstanding justification for being a superpower: guaranteeing what U.S. administrations like to call the “international rules-based order.”

The concept operates as an asterisk placed on international law by the dominant global superpower. It makes the United States one of the reasons international law remains weak, since a “rules-based” order that exempts the United States and its allies fundamentally undermines the concept of international law.

The slaughter in Gaza has disinclined some foreign officials and groups to listen to U.S. officials about other issues. Annelle Sheline, a State Department human-rights officer who recently resigned over Gaza, told The Washington Post that some activist groups in North Africa simply stopped meeting with her and her colleagues. “Trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible” while the U.S. aids Israel, she said.

It really does take some kind of hubris not to realize you're obliterating whatever is left of your credibility, or worse, to think it doesn't matter and you can keep throwing your weight around as usual.

Have to say I was surprised to see this piece in the NYT.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-15T00:22:46+00:00

More excerpts:

...quite literally almost half of the entire current U.S. debt was blown on endless, mindless, genocidal wars in the Middle East.

What makes this historic malappropriation of American funds most tragic is that none of it came at the benefit of American people.

...beyond just the simple kinetic nature of the profligately wasteful wars, America wastes an exorbitant amount of money just on maintenance and upkeep of its global hegemony.

In short: as an empire dies, [it] loses its industrial and manufacturing capacity, finance takes over, pumping up huge bubbles of phony speculative money that gives the brief appearance of economic prosperity—for a time. This is what’s currently happening in the U.S., as it drowns in its self-created agony of debt, misery, corruption, and global destabilization.

China is creating a revolution, striking out a new path of finance which steers away from the wild excesses of the West into a bold new direction. Finance to benefit the real economy, the common man, the people. This is what the fig leaf of Rothschild-pushed ‘stakeholder capitalism’ is meant to be, or better yet: pretends to be.

This is an iconoclastic, paradigm-breaking revolution which ends six centuries of Old Nobility world finance dominion...All those 600 years are going up in smoke with China’s repudiation of the ‘old standards’, which privilege predatory, deceptive, extractive terms and practices meant to benefit only the Old Nobility elite class. China’s system is true stakeholder finance: the government will forcibly bend the bankers to its will, making sure that finance serves the common good and the people first, rather than speculation, financialization, capitalization, and all the other wicked inventions of the Western Old Nobility class.

You see, the U.S. is threatened because it knows it can never compete with China fairly, by squelching or containing its own gluttonous financial elite—so that leaves only one avenue for keeping up: sabotage and war.

This is the real reason the U.S. is desperate to stoke a Chinese invasion of Taiwan by various provocations, including weapons shipments.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-14T23:33:43+00:00

Excerpt:

The U.S.’ growing urgency in ‘containing’ China’s development was thrown in sharp relief this week as Janet Yellen arrived in Beijing for what turned out to be an execrable beggar’s tour. Just days prior to her arrival, she had buzzed the punditry with her historically memorable exclamation that China was now operating at “overcapacity”(!!).

What is overcapacity, you ask? It’s a new word for me, too—so let’s consult the dictionary together:

overcapacity

noun

o·ver·ca·pac·i·ty: ō′vər-kə-ˈpa-sə-tē

1: When an insolent upstart nation’s surging economic activity totally humiliates the reigning hegemon’s own faltering economy, causing the many expensive dentures and porcelain veneers of the ruling class gerontocracy to rattle and grate with moral outrage and jealousy.

1b: An undesirable situation causing Janet Yellen and Nancy Pelosi’s stock portfolio to droop like a pair of botox-sapped jowls.

Granted…my dictionary might be slightly different to yours, I have a rare edition. That said, are we on the same page? Good.

But if you were skeptical about the meaning behind Yellen’s risible “overcapacity” solecism, her speech from inside of China confirms precisely what’s on the regime’s mind:

“China is now simply too large for the rest of the world to absorb this enormous capacity. Actions taken by the PRC today can shift world prices….”

“When the global market is flooded with cheap Chinese goods, the viability of American firms is put into question.”

The fact of the matter is, China is simply leaping ahead of the decrepit, deteriorating U.S. by every measure and the panicked elites have sent Yellen to beg China to “slow down” and not embarrass them on the world stage.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-14T17:26:22+00:00

More from Crooke's piece:

One cannot but notice how bad-tempered Americans and Europeans generally have become. Calm, reasoned discussion of issues is gone; Yelling, emotivism and ‘othering’ is commonplace. These are dark omens for the future.

Why has western society been so supine, so unreflectively supportive to the sheering away of its civilisational ethos? It is truly paradoxical that half of western society sees a revolution, yet the other is too distracted, or simply does not notice. There is no simple answer to this paradox.

What might be the lessons here for the BRICS? Firstly, these cumulative ‘transitions’ clearly require mammoth money-printing. This was just about manageable when the project could be financed at zero cost interest rates; but the scheme’s Achilles’ Heel of inflation and spiking interest rates has arrived. The exponential western debt explosion to fund ‘transitions’ now threatens to take the entire ‘revolution’ into financial crisis and collapsing standards of living.

...the flood of fresh money opened the door to new media: Platforms that previous had relied on selling the news were replaced by entities beholden to advertisers that only cared about grabbing people’s attention and selling it to the highest bidder. A new economy of attention arose.

So, thirdly then, words no longer needed to have objective meanings. Everything is about ‘attention’ – however achieved. True or false. That’s what the advertisers wanted. Words could mean what those in power say they mean. The ‘truth’ behind the narrative was irrelevant. They could lie freely.

Fourthly, the West – in willfully propagating and imposing a morally vacuous ideology that has no appeal in most countries and cultures of the world – simply has no clue as to how much of the world rejects the value system of contemporary globalist neoliberalism. It repels, rather than appeals to them. So, the western Nomenklatura doubles-down on enforcement.

The cold reality is the ‘Blue Revolutionaries’ in the U.S. own the wealth, the key institutions in society and the levers of enforcement. Yes, a nascent counter-revolution – mainly in the U.S. (and somewhat in Europe, too) – is building; they are (rightly or wrongly) defiantly unwilling to recant traditionalist moral values, nor are they prepared to assume ‘guilt’ by submitting to the demands for ‘reparations’ for historic injustices.

Today’s western myth of being the inheritor of superior values from Athens – ‘from Plato to NATO’, if you like – has proved a fatal conceit.

Put starkly, the ‘new values’ we are seeing are intended to drive a stake through traditionalism...Much of contemporary western thinking simply ignores the dimensions of our moral consciousness and dismisses it, as either confused, or irrelevant.

...all the BRICS civilisations employ ‘strong evaluation’. That is, they all involve the ability to discriminate between right and wrong; justice and injustice; and of dynamics that uplift, and those drag society down.

Our ability to discriminate on these key issues lies deep within us. But it is precisely here where the BRICS might seek common cause with Europe. They could adopt a moral language that resonates within the vestiges of such moral sentiments that still linger on in the West.

What makes any conjuncture of this nature so subject to fiery passions is simply that anything that was good and true about Western civilization is preserved and thriving in Russia. This is the unspoken insight that so infuriates the western élites. And it is also why, in part, BRICS states so evidently look to Russia for leadership.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-14T17:06:42+00:00

These observations about Western leadership in Alastair Crooke's latest article ring very true because they look like what we're seeing (reformatted):

The late American thinker Christopher Lasch, near the end of his life, concluded that the American upper class had essentially seceded from the American nation and emigrated into a separate reality in which they envisaged the disassembly of the existing western Order in the name of justice and retribution.

The contemporary French philosopher, Emmanuel Todd, concurs; suggesting, in La Défaite, that America, is no longer a nation-state, but a nihilist empire, in constant revolt against its own past and with a ruling élite determined to break the preponderant hold of the white, blue collar and middle classes over American society.

More from the blurb about Lasch's book, Revolt of the Elites:

The distinguished historian argues that democracy today is threatened not by the masses, as Jose Ortega y Gasset (The Revolt of the Masses) had said, but by the elites. These elites - mobile and increasingly global in outlook - refuse to accept limits or ties to nation and place.

Lasch contends that, as they isolate themselves in their networks and enclaves, they abandon the middle class, divide the nation, and betray the idea of a democracy for all America's citizens. [And this is equally true across the Collective West]

Crooke links to this February piece from Emanuel Todd, French Best-Seller: U.S. Is a ‘Nihilist Empire’.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-13T16:14:53+00:00

The world is now in bona fide tenterhooks mode — i.e., nervously waiting for Iran’s promised military retaliation for Israel’s illegal bombing of Iran’s Consulate in Damascus a week ago. The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations is unambiguous:

The premises of a diplomatic mission are inviolable and must not be entered by the host country except by permission of the head of the mission; likewise, the host country must never search the premises, may not seize its documents or property, and must protect the mission from intrusion or damage (Article 22). Article 30 extends this provision to the private residence of diplomatic agents.

So much for the “international rules-based order.” The United States, Britain and France blocked a proposed UNSC statement drafted by Russia that would have condemned Israel’s unlawful action. This sent the world a clear message — the Vienna Convention is worthless. Just days after the UNSC failed to uphold that Convention, Ecuador stormed Mexico’s Embassy in Quito and kidnapped an Ecuadorian politician who had been given sanctuary by Mexico.

Joe Biden has sent the head of U.S. Central Command to Israel to coordinate defenses and possible responses to an Iranian attack. But the ability of the U.S. and Israel to respond with an air campaign has hit some roadblocks:

Qatar and Kuwait notified the US that they will not allow bases on their territory to be used for attacks against Iran – diplomatic sources.

Turkey informed the United States that they will not be allowed to use their airspace against Iran.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-13T15:32:14+00:00

This is an excellent interview, about 45 minutes of a longer interview, described as follows:

What is this new era of “Hyperimperialism” for the US/NATO Empire? Where do Gaza, Ukraine, and the Cold War on China fit in? How is the decline of Global North hegemony shifting the geopolitical landscape? Are there new possibilities for emergent organizations of the Global South? How do we maintain hope as we watch an exterminationist campaign unfold in Gaza?

To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was joined by author, historian and journalist Vijay Prashad, Executive Director of The Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, which recently published a dossier on “Hyperimperialism.”

The dossier can be found here where it is also available for download.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-12T19:39:42+00:00

Not sure what his aim was in posting this misleading tweet. Pence is a known zionist and people of that ilk want to hide that toxic ideology behind Judaism just so they can call its critics anti-semites.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-11T21:51:52+00:00

Slightly abridged transcription of video, all his references are listed in the "More" section of the video:

International terrorist organizations require a state sponsor. With ISIS, the US is chief among them, always through an intermediary. When they were backing ISIS and Al Queda in Syria it was using its Persian Gulf allies as intermediaries to pass weapons, etc.

6:00 I've cited this many times, the Brookings Institution 2009 paper, "Which Path to Persia? Options for a new American strategy toward Iran." The Brookings Institution is funded in part by the US government (USG) and the largest US corporate and financial institutions.

There's an entire chapter entitled "Inspiring an Insurgency" & the most prominent opposition group is the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), named as a possible US proxy at the same time they're on the USG list of foreign terrorist organizations. In order to work with them overtly the USG would need to remove them from the terrorist list. And in 2012 after extensive lobbying by people in the foreign policy establishment, that's what they did. This is an example of the USG openly conspiring to use a listed terrorist organization to advance its foreign policy objectives.

10:14 about Russia specifically, the US has used extremists and terrorists against the Soviet Union and then the Russian Federation (RF) for decades: the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union in 1980s; in 1990s & early 2000s backing Chechen separatists trying to carve Chechnya off from Russian territory; and to this day backing armed militants in Syria fighting Russians and their Syrian and Iranian allies.

11:00 Chechnya connects directly to the Ukraine conflict. The separatist groups were backed by the US and a lot of them trained in Afghanistan by these extremists, essentially Al Queda. Now all of these separatists are in Ukraine fighting with Ukrainian forces.

From Russia Matters, one of these fact check projects meant to reinforce establishment narratives. This is a product of the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center, saying the claim that the US supported Chechen separatism in 2004, 2015 and 2017 was "partially correct...no evidence the US provided direct material support." But remember they don't do it directly, they use intermediaries. It does admit that US officials met with the Chechen separatist leader and there were many US voices calling to support the "moderate" separatists even though there were none of these.

Then from Yale University, Yale Global Online, "The Arab Connection to Chechen Conflict" dated 2006. "In 2003 the US State Dept designated 3 Chechen groups affiliated with Shamil Basaev as terrorists alleging they had received millions of dollars from Al Qaeda... Several hundred Chechens were trained in Al Qaeda's Afghan camps and provided with weapons. The Al Qaeda-influenced Al-Ansar mujahideen were considered the fiercest and most organised of the three major groups fighting the Russians in Chechnya. Most of the Chechen suicide attacks — an unknown tactic in this part of the world — were initiated by them." This is the same exact playbook used in Syria operated by the USG.

The rferl piece about Chechens fighting for Ukraine against Russia makes it sound like Chechnya is occupied territory but it's recognized under international law as part of Russia. That's USG policy, to go inside a sovereign nation; find religious, ethnic, political fault lines; widen them; use them to create internal strife to divide and destroy a targeted country. Imperialism 101.

Rand paper from 2019 on extending Russia, with chapters on providing aid to Ukraine and increasing support to the Syrian rebels. These are two armed militant groups fighting Russia to overextend them, this is what they're openly advocating.

it's in Syria and Iraq where ISIS sprung to life and is emanating out of. Let's talk about where they're getting all their weapons, equipment, brand new Toyota pickup trucks. Important article written in 2007 by Seymour Hersh titled "The Redirection":

"To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."

Come 2011 the internal conflicts in Syria began. This is how it started: In 2012 NYT, CIA aid in steering arms to Syrian opposition ..."being shuttled across Turkish borders through shadow intermediaries including Syria's Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar."

In 2013 NYT, aid from CIA to Syrian rebels expands..."more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes... landing at Turkish and Jordanian airports."

20:30 From that to this 2017 WaPo piece, "'Al Queda is eating us': Syrian rebels are losing out to extremists". If the USG and its allies were pouring all this money, etc. into the "moderate rebels", who was giving even more money, etc. to the extremists? The answer is that there never were any "moderate rebels" just as Hersh warned, the plan all along was to unleash Al Queda and ISIS across the region. Their chief state sponsors are the US and its allies, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan.

Here's the BBC's 2018 "Islamic State and the crisis in Iraq and Syria in maps." One of them: "How much territory IS has lost since Jan 2015." What happened in 2015? The Syrian government invited Russia to militarily intervene against ISIS and Al Queda. Russia began attacking the supply lines between ISIS-held territory and their foreign sponsors. The CIA and its allies were shipping weapons to ISIS through Turkey and Jordan. You can see the ratline from Jordan and Turkey to ISIS territory on the map.

23:34 Now let's get back to the US insisting the Moscow terror attack was by ISIS, a geopolitical tool used by state sponsors with the US being the primary one. So the US is actually just pointing back at itself. We can't dismiss the involvement of Ukraine in the attacks, the terrorists were fleeing to Ukraine and it could have been the intermediary as the US has used before.

NYT 2022 article that US believed Ukrainians were behind assassination of Daria Dugina, claiming no involvement or prior knowledge. Maybe that was believable until the revelation by the NYT in Feb 2024, "The Spy War: How the CIA secretly helps Ukraine fight Putin."

I'm going to get into this article extensively because it admits the CIA is working with Ukraine, even training armed units that carry out operations inside Russia. "The partnership is no war-time creation, nor is Ukraine the only beneficiary." What they're saying is that the US has intelligence operators inside Ukraine participating in a war against Russia.

"It took root a decade ago...around 2016 the CIA began training an elite Ukrainian commando force known as Unit 2245...one officer in that unit was Kyril Budanov, now the general leading Ukraine's military intelligence and the CIA also helped train a new generation of spies who operate inside Russia, across Europe and in Cuba and other places where the Russians have a large presence. The relationship is so ingrained that CIA officers remained in a remote location in western Ukraine when the Biden administration US personnel in the weeks before Russia invaded." Remember - "commando forces" use weapons to kill people and blow things up.

Graduates of the CIA's training programs were "to approach potential Russian sources. These graduates then trained sleeper agents on Ukrainian territory meant to launch guerrilla operations in case of occupation."

Then it claims the CIA had red lines, "it wouldn't help Ukraine conduct offensive lethal operations" making a distinction before formal intelligence gathering and "things that go boom." Yet just a few paragraphs before, it was admitted they were training armed commando units to cross the border into Russia and kill people.

Then on Budanov at the time being a rising star in Unit 2245, "he was known for daring operations behind enemy lines and had deep ties to the CIA" - because he was part of the unit being trained by the CIA. They just admitted they're carrying out operations inside Russian territory again.

They sent him to Walter Reed hospital in Maryland "for rehabilitation" after he was shot in the right arm..."Disguised in Russian uniforms, then Lt. Col. Budanov led commandos across a narrow gulf in inflatable speedboats, landing at night in Crimea." Remember, on the referendum in Crimea the vote was overwhelmingly for rejoining Russia, even according to US government-funded polling that's what the people wanted.

"An elite Russian commando unit was waiting for them, the Ukrainians fought back...until plunging into the sea and swimming for hours before regaining Ukrainian-controlled territory."

So the NYT admits all this and accepts uncritically the CIA's claims about red lines and not being involved. They're just doing this to distance themselves from their culpability in using Ukraine as a proxy to fight Russia.

32:41 Daria Dugina isn't the only one killed by the Ukrainian government. Now we see this terrorist attack in Moscow earlier this month that the US insists was ISIS, who they built up in Syria from 2011 onward. I'll wait till the investigation is complete and consider all the information that's provided but the US is clearly the prime suspect considering everything we know.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-11T17:05:50+00:00

Especially since he only uses Western sources and the Ukrainian live map.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-11T04:05:37+00:00

In honoring a book depicting Ukrainian volunteers in the Waffen SS as heroes and patriots, the group reveals historical ignorance—or indifference to antisemitism.

America’s largest library association, which annually hands out prestigious literary prizes such as the John Newbery Medal for children’s literature, the Caldecott Medal for picture books for children, the Stonewall Award for LBGTQ+ books for young readers, and the Coretta Scott King award for African American authors and illustrators, has recently honored two authors with a track record of whitewashing Nazi collaborators.

This January, the American Library Association (ALA) published a list of Best Historical Materials for 2023, which includes Enemy Archives: Soviet Counterinsurgency Operations and the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement—Selections from the Secret Police Archives.

This compendium of Soviet documents was edited by Volodymyr Viatrovych and Lubomyr Luciuk. Viatrovych, who is currently a deputy in the Ukrainian parliament, is notorious for drafting laws glorifying Ukrainian Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators. He’s been condemned by Jewish organizations as well as the governments of Poland and Israel. Luciuk, a professor in Canada’s elite military college, has defended a Third Reich division accused of war crimes.

In 2015, Kyiv triggered international headlines after passing laws declaring two World War II–era paramilitary groups—the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its offshoot the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)—to be Ukrainian national heroes and making it illegal to deny that heroism. The OUN collaborated with the Nazis in massacring tens of thousands of Jews, while the UPA liquidated thousands of Jews and 70,000–100,000 Poles.

The laws institutionalizing the OUN/UPA cult across Ukraine were the brainchild of Volodymyr Viatrovych...

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-10T17:02:55+00:00

The tweeter also linked to a recent related substack article he wrote. These are the money quotes for me:

If the current war has done nothing else, it ought to have once and for all disabused the shallow minds of the western intelligentsia that an economy based on the financialization of EVERYTHING is not stronger than an economy based on actual production of stuff.

A two-year-long high-intensity conflict has revealed in unmistakable terms that deindustrialized nations are utterly incapable of prosecuting modern industrial warfare.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-10T16:50:37+00:00

In a recent discussion between Michael Hudson, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen, Hudson said that the sanctions were a windfall for Russia, it was a form of protectionism for Russia and the effects all fell on Western Europe, specifically on Germany.

Alexander agreed but said he thinks there's a more important reason their economy has done so well based on what a friend told him who used to be the treasurer for a huge Russian company:

Up until the 2008 financial crisis and to a great extent right up till 2022, the entire Russian economic system was completely permeated by Western businesses, companies, providers of funding and insurance and various types of services, helping in car production, helping in all sorts of business enterprises. And the money they were making was all flowing back to Europe principally, less to the US. It was in effect rents paid by the Russians to the Europeans. That all stopped completely in 2022. And suddenly there's more money in Russia because the rents aren't moving westward, and it's driving an investment boom in Russia because that capital has to be used.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-09T22:27:14+00:00

Israel is the poster child for "punch, no punch-backs."

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-09T22:24:23+00:00

In September last year we reported, in the article “Back to Business As Usual: The US Is Once Again Vigorously Stirring the Pot in Its Own ‘Backyard‘”, how the US is seeking to reimpose its military and strategic stranglehold over South America — or failing that, to sow enough chaos and division in the region to undermine China’s growing economic influence there.

As the Commander of US Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, explained in disarmingly candid fashion at the Atlantic Council in Jan 2023, the main goal of the US government and military (and, of course, the corporate and financial interests they serve), is to tap Latin America’s abundant natural resources...

Also on Friday, the Mexican government granted political asylum to Jorge Glas, a former Ecuadorian vice president who had been taking refuge at the Mexican embassy in Quito since December last year.

In response to Mexico’s announcement, Daniel Noboa’s government in Quito declared the Mexican ambassador persona non-grata and surrounded the Mexican embassy with hundreds of soldiers and police officers. In the early hours of Saturday (April 6) morning, those soldiers and police officers attacked the embassy in Quito, which is equivalent to an act of war, detaining (or as some are saying, kidnapping) Glas while using force against members of Mexico’s diplomatic staff.

Mexico responded to this “flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention” by severing diplomatic relations with Ecuador, which could, if extended to the commercial space, have unpleasant consequences for the Andean nation’s recession-hit, IMF-dependent economy. Mexico´s Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador government is also threatening to take the case to the International Court of Justice.

"Rules-based order" = No rules, no order...

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-09T21:55:29+00:00

They just rotate between the echo chambers that make up government agencies, defense contractors and stink tanks. Their sinecure is guaranteed by their willingness to do whatever is required of them. Pompeo said about the CIA that they lied, cheated and stole but I would be greatly surprised if this wasn't the case across the board.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-09T15:59:43+00:00

Geoffrey Pyatt

Oh yeah, that's the guy who conspired with Cookie Nuland on who to put into power in Ukraine once the Maidan coup succeeded.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-08T19:14:17+00:00

From Mar. 21st: Romania To Host Largest NATO Military Base in Europe

Analysts say that this is to make it easier to assault Odessa and Crimea.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-08T19:08:14+00:00

Here's a good related tweet about Moldova and Romania that addresses some of this:

In #Chisinau [Moldova] today they remember how the pro-Western opposition 15 years ago stormed the parliament and the presidential administration buildings.

The cause of popular unrest was the election results: the Communist Party won & received 60 seats out of 101. (links to this 2009 Guardian article Anti-communist protesters storm Moldova parliament after election)

Later, the Moldovan authorities accused Romania of interference and participation of Romanian citizens in the unrest.

The most active participants in the 2009 pogroms are today part of the ruling party and occupy high positions, replacing everything Moldovan (including the language in the Constitution) with Romanian occupation.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-08T16:39:21+00:00

That so many people buy into this reflects:

(i) how we as a country are now so far removed from manufacturing that we understand so little of it (as demonstrated here and many similar replies), and

(ii) the difference between ideas and execution.

Responding to this:

When I say that China screwed Elon Musk, this is exactly how they did it:

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-07T22:37:27+00:00

What an ignoramus.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-07T21:07:48+00:00

I love Pepe's names for them - le petit Roi, Norwegian wood, the motley crew of ragged, de-industrialized European chihuahuas. In another piece by him I read recently he called Israel "the biblical psychopathology gang."

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-07T18:28:40+00:00

The conscription exemption for ultra-Orthodox Jews expired on 1 April; they are threatening to flee Israel, whose very survival is dependent on Jews moving there.

If representatives of ultra-Orthodox Jews quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition, it could bring down his extremist government. Internal tensions within Israeli society are escalating, fueled by socio-economic pressures and disillusionment with the government's handling of the war.

Related: https://saidit.net/s/WayOfTheBern/comments/civb/how_ultraorthodox_conscription_could_destroy/

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-07T18:21:18+00:00

This article is from Mar. 29th:

At midnight Israel time on April 1, the government will hit a deadline for changing its policy on the military draft. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will then be required to send conscription notices to roughly 66,000 ultra-Orthodox men, who had been previously exempted by a law carving out special privileges for students at religious academies, or yeshivot.

The conscription issue splits Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government apart at the seams. Netanyahu depends on ultra-Orthodox parties for his parliamentary majority; if he permits mass conscription of yeshiva students, they’ll abandon him. But if he gives the ultra-Orthodox what they want, he’ll run afoul of key members of his own right-wing Likud party, potentially prompting their defections.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that the best and most important thing a man can do is study scripture. For this reason, roughly half of all ultra-Orthodox men do no paid work, depending on government support and charity to survive. Military service in particular gets in the way of studying at a yeshiva, disrupting the traditional life of an ultra-Orthodox man.

But exempting yeshiva students from military service has long struck other Israelis as deeply unfair. Why do their children have to serve, putting their lives on the line and future plans on hold, while the ultra-Orthodox sit and study? Why is attending university or entering the workplace less important than attending yeshiva?

Over the course of decades, Israeli governments have repeatedly attempted to reach some sort of policy compromise that would balance the demands of the ultra-Orthodox with the rest of Israel’s plea for “equality of burden.” Again and again, the Israeli Supreme Court has found that these balancing acts unfairly privilege the ultra-Orthodox over other citizens, forcing the ruling government to go back to the legislative drawing board. Most recently, the Court set an April 1 deadline for conscription to begin.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-07T17:37:27+00:00

And much of their firepower like missiles and rockets are stored underground. Alastair Crooke talked about a red line, what I would call rather a dead man's switch, that if the civil government was taken out the rockets and missiles would fire on Israel as long as they lasted.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-07T17:07:05+00:00

This is good news. Fico has been a sane voice, along with Orban, when it comes to NATO plans for Ukraine, i.e., $ and NATO troops.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-07T00:59:58+00:00

Reading the thread, apparently the charges were dropped:

"The court recognised that Speranza had acted "exclusively" in the interests of people's health and safety after the latest complaint over the vaccinations."

Last COVID case against Speranza shelved. Ex minister's conduct recognised as correct

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-07T00:55:07+00:00

Embedded tweet from Dr. Meryl Nass:

Speranza has been charged with murder in Italy for covering up the side effects of the COVID vaccines and forcing them on the country regardless.

Italy is the only country in Europe where even mainstream media are covering the COVID vaccine debacle and the World Stealth Organization's planned coup-by-treaty, under the pretext of "pandemic preparedness."

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-06T02:56:32+00:00

The goal of this pressure campaign is to somehow convince China to self-sabotage the foundation of their budding prosperity—their means of production—thereby eliminating the competition.

Why don't the capitalist countries try to out-compete China on commodity prices instead?

They've tried!

But due to decades of offshoring productive capacity and hoovering up their best and brightest minds into the financial and "tech" sectors, regaining a competitive edge will require a lot more effort than simply throwing money at the problem.

The disease is, of course, capitalism itself. And at the core of the capitalist mode is commodity production.

Since China's economy is undoubtedly still dominated by commodity production, it is easy to see this as de facto proof that China's model is not socialist.

So how is China progressing from this ‘lower’ stage of socialism toward a ‘higher’ stage?

By undercutting imperialism, the core of global capital's political power.

The beating heart of imperialism is monopoly-like control of the global economy, which is why China’s sovereign command of critical global commodities poses an existential threat to the imperialist order.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-05T20:00:15+00:00

https://archive.md/QNEyn

Restoring trust in elections should be a bipartisan cause, and Wisconsin voters taught the professionals a lesson on Tuesday by approving two state constitutional amendments that increase safeguards for election integrity.

More than 54% approved a referendum banning the use of private grants in election administration. And more than 58% backed a second measure requiring that only public officials “designated by law” can handle election administration.

This is a welcome response to the infusion of so-called Zuckerbucks in the 2020 election. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan handed out cash grants through the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life to state and local officials who run elections and count ballots.

A 2021 report by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) found that more than 86% of the $10 million from the Center for Tech and Civic Life went to the cities of Madison, Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay. “The private money served to increase voter turnout for Joe Biden, but not Donald Trump,” WILL found.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-05T19:58:01+00:00

Restoring trust in elections should be a bipartisan cause, and Wisconsin voters taught the professionals a lesson on Tuesday by approving two state constitutional amendments that increase safeguards for election integrity.

More than 54% approved a referendum banning the use of private grants in election administration. And more than 58% backed a second measure requiring that only public officials “designated by law” can handle election administration.

This is a welcome response to the infusion of so-called Zuckerbucks in the 2020 election. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan handed out cash grants through the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life to state and local officials who run elections and count ballots.

A 2021 report by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) found that more than 86% of the $10 million from the Center for Tech and Civic Life went to the cities of Madison, Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay. “The private money served to increase voter turnout for Joe Biden, but not Donald Trump,” WILL found.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-03T16:25:21+00:00

Highlights from tweet by Arnaud Bertrand, full article at post link:

This is without a doubt one of the most important pieces of reporting on Gaza, and by far one of the most disturbing: https://972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

All by Israeli journalist @yuval_abraham based on whistleblower accounts from within the IDF and intelligence agencies.

Israel has developed an AI called "Lavender" to generate kill lists, with almost no human verification to double check the targets selected by the machine: only a a “rubber stamp” check of about “20 seconds” just to make sure the AI target is male.

Moreover, the Israeli army "systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity". In fact Israel developed another automated system called “Where’s Daddy?” used "specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences" 🤮

One of the intelligence officers who spoke to Abraham is quoted in the article: “We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity. On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”

In fact the article reveals a ratio, I think for the first time: "according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians... The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander."

A ratio of 20 civilians killed for one target works out to about 95% civilian deaths.

Please do read the whole article as it describes in details how the whole process works with the Lavender AI. It's industrialized extermination the likes of which we haven't seen since... you know when.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-02T21:47:16+00:00

I don't have any to offer other than my usual observation that the world is complicated and there are forces at work beyond our idiot leaders; separate forces, some large and some small, not working in tandem but generally moving in the same direction and gaining momentum. And even among the idiots in charge, there's differing degrees of insanity and nihilism but self-interest makes it harder to achieve a clear consensus. There's still plenty of bad stuff happening and more to come but since I have no power to effect a different scenario, my attitude continues to be that only time will tell how it all shakes out.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-02T05:27:29+00:00

Back in 2011, the “collective west” issued an ultimatum to the government of Libya, then grappling with a civil war that resulted largely from the transparent machinations of western states.

An assortment of insurgent groups bearing sophisticated western arms and including elements of Al Qaeda had taken over the coastal city of Benghazi, in a “spontaneous” uprising oddly synchronized with similar regional events then being collectively packaged by western media as an “Arab Spring”.

Yet the Libyan government was told that it must reverse its advance on the city, which advance was being treated by western media (with zero evidence, as usual) as confirmation of an imminent massacre.

Of course it didn’t and couldn’t retreat, and the resulting NATO-led assault on its civil infrastructure and leadership allowed the insurgency to spread and consume the whole country. There was then indeed a massacre — but one perpetrated by the “protesters” against the government and its supporters.

Today, it is a failed state, which hardly ever receives the attention of western media, while its oil industry has been privatized and sold to western oil companies. Its profits now benefit nobody but their shareholders and the local warlords doing their bidding.

Contrast all of this to Gaza today.

In response to the dreadful events of October 7, 2023, Israel...didn’t just “threaten” (as Gaddafi allegedly did) but proceeded to bomb, pummel and pulverize one of the poorest and most densely populated places on earth with unguided heavy munitions dropped from the air.

When history records the moment that the curtain finally came down on the west’s wholly farcical claims of global moral leadership, exposing a monstrous hypocrisy for all the world to see, this will probably be it.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-01T20:56:37+00:00

And of course, it must not be forgotten that ISIS was a creation of the US and UK intelligence services.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-01T20:54:52+00:00

A case can easily be made that the prominence and success of ISIS in this region accelerated following the West's overthrow of the Libyan government.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-01T19:51:32+00:00

NATO is impotent, incompetent, and corrupt, and the Russians can take whatever they want, and do whatever they want, and there's nothing whatsoever that NATO can do about it.

This is basically true but a bit misleading as it implies Russia wants to take more than they've already taken or said in so many words they plan to take - Odessa & Kharkov - because these were historically Russian. They have zero interest in taking or occupying the ultranationalist western Ukraine, and as Putin said in his interview with Tucker, they would only attack a NATO country (in this case, Poland) if that country attacked them first.

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-01T19:46:02+00:00

absorbing all the best parts of Ukraine

A mischaracterization. What they have done is "absorbed" the parts that are predominantly ethnic Russians, and this was at the latter's insistence. Basically they told Russia "we don't want you to come in to help us fight and then leave because the SBU will then come in and destroy us, so either make it permanent or don't help us at all."

penelopepnortney · 2024-04-01T19:42:51+00:00

Russia's initial intention was simply to stage a kind of lightning coup against the Zelensky government, and replace it with a more Russia friendly regime.

Don't recall this being one of their stated objectives. And why would it be? Zelensky ran and won the 2019 election on a platform that included a negotiated peace agreement with Russia. The SMO was intended to show Kiev and the West that Russia was serious about keeping Ukraine out of NATO, and Zelensky was ready to come to terms in March/April 2022 before the West scuttled it.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-30T03:29:34+00:00

Are whistleblower protections and legal counteractions available for members of the military?

I don't know. But even if they were, I'm sure it would be like all whistleblower protection, by which I mean not worth much. They have all kinds of ways they can punish you without appearing to.

Probably a new artifact

Naw, it's Putin laying a special Russian hex on 'muricans! I thought you kept up with the news better than that.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-29T23:50:56+00:00

Navy Medical Service Corps Lt. Ted Macie shared shocking information about the surge in heart failure among military personnel.

..."I’m putting out the DoD’s own data. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not my job to look at the defense database. However, it’s something that is affecting our entire DoD."

According to information published by the U.S. Army, 97% of active-duty U.S. troops are fully vaccinated, 90% of Army National Guard members are fully vaccinated, and 91% of U.S. Army Reserve members are fully vaccinated.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-29T23:38:53+00:00

Poll after poll shows support for Ukraine. Every one of then is flawed because they fail to ask “how much are you willing to pay.”

There’s solidarity in the EU, but it stops with wheat and weapons. In the US, Biden is desperate for the war to go on. But he still has no goal. Is Biden’s goal the same as Zelensky’s: “The war will not be over as long as Crimea is occupied.”

We don’t know because Biden won’t say. Biden also will not say how much he is willing to commit. Is it another $150 billion or is it $1 trillion or more?

Meanwhile, prepare for carnage of the center, Greens, and warmongers in the next European Parliament elections.

A fiscal crisis awaits. The first casualty will be Green energy policies.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-29T23:35:59+00:00

Apparently that's not the only reason.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-29T23:35:19+00:00

In a single word, the EU is dysfunctional. That’s the problem, not technology. The Maastricht treaty itself is a big part of the reason the EU is dysfunctional. The Euro itself, with one common interest rate, is fundamentally flawed.

EU rules make it impossible to fix the basic problem. So the EU has resorted to nannycrat rules to regulate US and Chinese companies instead of fixing anything.

Technology, including AI, and geopolitics is now accelerating the basic problem, the EU is dysfunctional by treaty. It’s showing up in polls everywhere.

Instead of fixing Germany’s aging infrastructure, attempting to compete with the US on AI, or competing with China on anything, EC President Charles Michel promotes war as growth.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-29T23:21:06+00:00

We would like to alert our readers to a theme that has been preoccupying us for a while – the possibility of another financial crisis in Europe. We have generally been restrained in our warning of financial crises. The main exception was the global financial crisis and its cousin, the euro area’s sovereign debt crisis. Fifteen or so years later, we see another financial crisis ahead here in Europe: a crisis of the European social and political model with deep consequences for fiscal and financial stability.

The canary in the coalmine is the overshooting budget deficits in France and Italy, at over 7% and over 5% for 2024 respectively. These numbers are a symptom, not a cause. Behind them lies a lack of economic growth needed to sustain Europe’s social model. Germany’s fiscal policy could not be more different than that of France or Italy, and yet Germany is afflicted by the exact same problem.

The European model was powered by oligopolistic industrial companies, which were heavily supported by the state through regulation that tilted the level-playing field in their favor. The German car industry is a classic example, but everybody did this.

What is killing this model now is a shift in technology and geopolitical fragmentation. Of the two, we would argue the first is the more important. More and more functions in our lives that were previously the realm of purely mechanical processes are nowadays wholly or partially digitalized. Barriers of entry have collapsed. China went from zero to the world leader in electric cars.

With productivity growth that low, Europe’s model has become financially unsustainable. It is unsurprising that the political system is fragmenting everywhere. The argument for sustained deficits, in France for example, is that you need them to keep Marine Le Pen out of power. This means they will persist.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-27T20:07:21+00:00

One of the popular narratives that was disseminated in mainstream American media to explain Hilary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign loss to Donald Trump was post-Obama voter apathy in the African American community. According to the Washington Post , “In 2016, a seven-point drop in black voter turnout was perceived to have cost Clinton the election.

Political commentators often cite black voters’ “enthusiasm gap” as the primary reason for low turnout. This short-sighted perspective fails to consider that Mrs. Clinton ran a terrible campaign. She took the African American vote for granted and failed to craft a message that spoke to the needs and interests of the community. Blaming the community played into a stereotype that labeled African Americans as uninformed and monolithic in thought, instead of being introspective and recognizing her own short-comings. Her campaign ignored a simple reality…African Americans are as “political” as the rest of the country and there are real and substantive political interests that motivate the Community.

The crime act, also known as “3 Strikes and are Out,” contributed greatly to the mass incarceration of African Americans. So-called welfare reform, that Hilary Clinton encouraged her husband to sign, removed hundreds of thousands of poor people of color from the welfare safety-net and plunged them into the ranks of the desperately working poor. Many African Americans never forgot nor forgave her for supporting these pieces of legislation, as well as her referring to members of the Community as “superpredators ” who needed to be brought “to heel .” It was not voter apathy or an “enthusiasm gap” that turned the African American community against the Hilary Clinton campaign, it was the realpolitik of Hilary Clinton.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-27T17:19:13+00:00

Former US Ambassador Chas Freeman: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-27T00:42:36+00:00

The Budanov connection is betrayed by the modus operandi – similar to previous Ukraine intel terror attacks against Daria Dugina and Vladimir Tatarsky: close reconnaissance for days, even weeks; the hit; and then a dash for the border.

A potential handler has surfaced, named Abdullo Buriyev. Turkish intel had earlier identified him as a handler for ISIS-K, or Wilayat Khorasan in Afghanistan. One of the members of the Crocus commando told the FSB their “acquaintance” Abdullo helped them to buy the car for the op.

And that leads us to the massive can of worms to end them all: ISIS-K.

...the real person of interest here is not Tajik Ghafari but Chechen Abdul Hakim al-Shishani, the former leader of the jihadi outfit Ajnad al-Kavkaz (“Soldiers of the Caucasus”), who was fighting against the government in Damascus in Idlib and then escaped to Ukraine because of a crackdown by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – in another one of those classic inter-jihadi squabbles.

Shishani was spotted on the border near Belgorod during the recent attack concocted by Ukrainian intel inside Russia. Call it another vector of the “nasty surprises”.

Ukrainian intel, SBU and GUR, have been using the “Islamic” terror galaxy as they please since the first Chechnya war in the mid-1990s. Milley and Nuland of course knew it, as there were serious rifts in the past, for instance, between GUR and the CIA.

The FSB investigation is establishing a trail: Crocus was planned by pros – and certainly not by a bunch of low-IQ Tajik dregs. Not by ISIS-K, but by GUR. A classic false flag, with the clueless Tajiks under the impression that they were working for ISIS-K.

Ace Russian war correspondent Marat Khairullin has added another juicy morsel to this funky salad: he convincingly unveils the MI6 angle in the Crocus City Hall terror attack (in English here, in two parts, posted by “S”). [Link leads to the translation in comments #1 and #6]

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-26T02:24:54+00:00

The war in Ukraine is only the latest but most obvious demonstration that the 'rules based order' no longer exists (https://archive.md/CMJWA):

Over the past several decades, the United States has continually placed Moscow in a position either to accept the fait accompli of NATO expansion at the expense of Russian security interests, or to escalate with force and suffer the consequences of increased economic and political ostracization. This disincentive to avoid escalation has been effectively removed. Explicating the altered state of international relations is not cheerleading for the Russian position — although it may be treated as such by those who disingenuously present any realistic assessment of the situation as “appeasement” — but rather illustrating how Moscow has insulated itself from Western ostracization, thus changing the entire balance of power in not only Europe, but the world.

Now, it is Russia that has the West on the horns of a dilemma: It can either watch the Kremlin achieve its strategic objectives, guaranteed in a one-sided negotiated settlement or through the continued attrition of Ukrainian forces, or it can escalate with force. Putin’s statement regarding nuclear weapons was not mere rhetoric—it was the Russian president defining the limits of the current conflict from a position of authority.

Anything short of total Ukrainian victory is therefore an implicit admission that the “rules-based” economic and political order has been irreversibly altered.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-25T15:58:49+00:00

“It was a culmination of negligence of the international law that started since the end of the Cold War. Absolutely, [the] 1999 [NATO campaign] was a precedent. We can even say that the international law was in a way abolished at that moment and, of course, after that chaos was introduced into the system of international relations,” Gacic points out.

Sljukic also warns that “as long as the key Western countries are ruled by the current liberal elites, NATO countries will not be put on fair trial because of their crimes in Yugoslavia and all over the world.”

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-25T15:56:03+00:00

Dr. Samuel Hoff, a professor of history and political science at Delaware State University, points to the significant expansion of NATO after the March 1999 incident.

“It is a fact that in 1999, NATO had 16 countries. And as we sit here in 2024, there are 32 members,” Hoff notes in an interview with Sputnik.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-25T15:52:50+00:00

This is the part they want you to forget when they say NATO is not a member of the UN and therefore not bound by its charter:

The members of NATO are not entitled to decide the fate of other sovereign and independent States. They must not forget that they are not only members of their alliance, but also Members of the United Nations.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-25T14:48:59+00:00

So simple, and yet it eludes so many people.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-25T03:53:20+00:00

Hope people click through to see that marvelous graphic: Putin in tux playing a grand piano with a humongous brown bear stretched out across the top of it.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-24T22:36:57+00:00

According to Pepe Escobar, people in France call him Macronapoleon. I mentioned that on Twitter and someone replied it should be Micronapoleon and they may have a point.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-24T22:33:03+00:00

Because I'm more optimistic than you: I just saw this Michael Parenti (partial) quote in answer to someone saying that the ruling elite don't care what we think and I think it's worth thinking about:

That is not true. They care very much about what you think. In fact, that is the only thing about you that holds their attention and concern.

They don't care if you go hungry, unemployed, sick, or homeless. But they do care when you are beginning to entertain resistant democratic thoughts. They get nervous when you discard your liberal complaints and adopt a radical analysis. They do care that you are catching on as to what the motives and functions of the national security state and the US global empire are all about at home and in so many corners of the world. They get furiously concerned when you and millions like you are rejecting the pap that is served up by corporate media and establishment leaders.

By controlling our perceptions, they control our society; they control public opinion and public discourse. And they limit the range and impact of our political consciousness. The plutocrats know that their power comes from their ability to control our empowering responses. They know they can live at the apex of the social pyramid only as long as they can keep us in line at the pyramid's base.

Who pays for all their wars? We do. Who fights these wars? We do or our low-income loved ones do. If we refuse to be led around on a super-patriotic, fear-ridden leash and if we come to our own decisions and act upon them more and more as our ranks grow, then the ruling profiteers' power shrinks and can even unwind and crash - as has happened with dynasties and monarchies of previous epochs.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-24T22:24:32+00:00

You may be right but I hope you're wrong.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-24T21:18:57+00:00

Great article! I watched a clip from Napolitano's recent interview of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who said someone told him "Russia has no reason whatsoever to trust the US ever again," which is true.

He also said, "The rest of the world, lots of people in the world - at least 3 billion people now - are really thinking hard about how, where and when they might oppose us, they're fed up to here with the US."

NATO's assault on Yugoslavia was a direct violation of the UN Charter. Their excuse was, "NATO is not a member of the United Nations and not bound by the UN Charter." It's true that NATO as an entity is not part of the UN but its states are. This is the kind of deceptive reasoning they use to do exactly what they want.

There was a report in December 2010 from the Council of Europe Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights titled "Inhuman treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo" that says the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) incriminated in these human rights violations were, at the time of the conflict, de facto allies of the international forces. Pretty detailed and informative report that probably got very little attention.

Prior to the conflict, KLA was designated by the US as a terrorist organization known for arms, drug and organ trafficking, and by Interpol as the "crime capitol of the world." So Serbian-Canadian documentarian Boris Magilurski is on point when he says "Yugoslavia was a training ground for everything that happened afterwards." We've seen the same pattern of the US and NATO allying with jihadists throughout the Middle East and Africa to achieve their agenda.

The only good thing is that more and more Americans are wising up to the way we actually do business in the world.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-24T20:20:54+00:00

This is a very apt comparison.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-24T20:14:55+00:00

That's certainly how they use it, no argument there.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-24T15:29:37+00:00

Not surprising that, like so many important things about our own history, this isn't taught anymore.

penelopepnortney · 2024-03-24T01:39:28+00:00

He answers questions in this thread about how they compiled their data. And of course, you see some of the usual hasbara denialists in the thread.

penelopepnortney

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