Thursday Open Thread

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206 comments to Thursday Open Thread

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    What’s on second

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      Jojodogfacedboy

      Say what?
      https://www.thegatewaypundi
      Possible two Reserve Currencies?
      More slings and arrows flying too as EURO won’t allow Russia any printed EURO paper as it wants to switch Reserve Currency.

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        Jojodogfacedboy

        That site didn’t allow upload so I’m trying this one.
        https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/fed-chief-powell-says-possible-one-reserve-currency-world-diminishing-uss-dominance-world/
        Stating that it possible to have two.
        But the United States has gone full economic crush that forces Russia off the current US Dollar and all the countries that buy its energy is threatened by the US even though going off of it is economic suicide.

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          KP

          That’s when the nuclear missiles will fly! America knows its whole existence relies on the rest of the world giving them a free ride by buying $US to trade. Anyone trying to get out of that arrangement must be destroyed.

          They want to cut Russia off from world trade to destroy it, not to have it work around the Petrodollar. They may have scored an own goal with this approach, certainly they will split the world into those who are the Yank’s vassals and those who desperately need Russian-Chinese goods and energy, and are willing to defy America to get them.

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            exsteelworker

            What and you think Russia China are going to be all good honest trusted global currency citizens, goodluck with that comrade. Putin and Jiping with the founding Soviet and PLA families own everything in Russia, China.

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            OldOzzie

            Zoltan Pozsar Warns Russian Sanctions Threaten Dollar’s Reserve Status

            But the most surprising take comes from former NY Fed staffer, current repo guru and Credit Suisse money market guru Zoltan Pozsar – who on any other day would be a stalwart advocate of the status quo – and who ominously said that the response to Russia may have set off a sequence of events in motion that eventually leads to the demise of the dollar as the reserve currency.

            never seen weaponization of money on this scale before – you only get to play the card once. china will make it a priority to need no USD before going for Taiwan. it’s a turning point in monetary history: the end of USD hegemony & the acceleration towards a bipolar monetary order

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              Ted1

              Why would that be surprising?

              Vlad would have had it in mind before he started.

              I’d say he has enough assets to write his own currency. What do you need dollars for when you have unlimited gas?

              I’d say we are in heaps of trouble.

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                robert rosicka

                “Had enough assets” , from what I hear Vlad had most of his billions stashed in a very safe Swiss bank account . Until the Swiss changed 100’s of years of tradition and suddenly froze god knows how much from Putin and the oil barons .

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                Ted1

                I wasn’t thinking in personal terms.

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      Lance

      Who’s on First.
      What’s on Second.
      I Don’t Know, Third base.

      Prompted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTcRRaXV-fg&t=112s

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      Kneel

      Blackrock is an “investment” company with about US$10T in assets. (yes, Trillion with a T!)
      Recently they have been buying up newly created and built “suburbs” in the US at $50k over asking price, and then renting the houses out.

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        farmerbraun

        ” they have been buying up newly created and built “suburbs” in the US at $50k over asking price, and then renting the houses out.”

        Part of the plan for you to own nothing . . . and be happy.

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    SimonB

    Interesting with climate alarmists, they ignore history and count damage in lost lives and property destruction!
    Surely the actual cost to the environment itself would be their primary focus. Doesn’t create the fear and scaremongering required for incompetent easily led politicians to wring their hands for though. Palascuk’s quote yesterday would be laughable if it wasn’t from a supposed leader. They’re now so convinced that when something happens, it’s their place to fix it. If only she was a real leader and had learned from 2011 and the projected increase in population, she may have had increased storage ready to go ten years later.
    Sure there still woulda been flooding but she’d have taken meaningful action showing she understands, rather than whining when the rain falls, because a paleontologist told her party 15 years ago it’d never rain again!

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    John Connor II

    Cracker night sparkler. Not a bombshell at all.
    So..what will be the fallout from the latest batch of Pfizer data?
    Safe & effective?
    Nope.
    They can’t possibly continue with the lying narrative at this point.
    If they do then the evidence would destroy them in any class action launched.
    Masks don’t work.
    Distancing doesn’t work.
    Lockdowns don’t work.
    Vaccines don’t work.
    How is ScoMo btw? 😅
    Talk about a lose-lose situation.

    Better move to stage 2. Oh they already have.

    Strike 3.
    Russia’s space agency chief warns hackers could start war
    The chief of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, has warned hackers attempting to disrupt the operation of the country’s satellites that their actions could be construed as a “casus belli – that is, an event that justifies a war.”

    Dmitry Rogozin’s comment came shortly after a cyberattack on Russia’s RKA Mission Control Center. Speaking to Russia’s Rossiya 24 news channel on Wednesday, the official said that “those who are attempting to do this” should know that “it is a crime, which calls for a very severe punishment.”

    https://www.rt.com/russia/551061-russia-space-agency-cyber-attack-response/

    Well at least RT isn’t blocked in Oz. Yet..

    ScoMo on Russia: “Australians always stand up to bullies”
    Meanwhile in Oz when they stand up to coercion for deadly vaxxes what happens?
    Pepper sprayed, beaten, LRAD’ed, arrested.

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      Forrest Gardener

      Yep. FUBAR.

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      PeterS

      Yes but Foxtel has blocked the associated RT News channel. It was my only source of news that’s closer to the truth albeit not completely, compared to other news channels including Sky News. How come they don’t also block Chinese news channels given China is on the side of Russia? Typical hypocrisy by the West. Such hypocrisy will be the death of the West, assuming the emissions reduction agenda doesn’t achieve it first.

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        max

        PeterS

        Such hypocrisy will be the death of the West,

        PeterS you are just late for about 140 years:

        In 1882 Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy formed the Triple Alliance. The three countries agreed to support each other if attacked by either France or Russia.

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          PeterS

          I’m a slow learner but I eventually got there about 20 years ago. That makes me 120 years late, not 140 🙂

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        Grogery

        PeterS.

        Different sources concerning Russia/Ukraine.

        I’ve been looking at The Vineyard of the Saker website the last few days.

        https://thesaker.is/

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          PeterS

          Thanks. It’s only common sense and logical to study all news sources regardless of the source and then make our own conclusion as best we can. It’s called thinking objectively. I find it sad that so many only get the news from MSM. They must have such boring lives and a very fake view of the world.

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          Ted1

          How many Ukrainians did Stalin murder by enforced famine?

          That will never be forgotten.

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          PeterS

          More evidence we are being fed fake news by the MSM. The fact that Western leaders keep ignoring such fake news is the real news and it’s not good.
          Russia-Ukraine War Propaganda Exposed

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        OldOzzie

        Why we must not ban RT

        Free speech must be defended – especially in times of crisis.

        Besides, do we not get some value in knowing what the other side thinks, or at the very least, how it wants to present its actions? RT’s reporters may be talking nonsense about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but banning RT would still leave us far less informed about the biggest issue of the moment.

        Finally, the clampdown on RT is not an isolated case. Yes, the calls to ban it are in response to Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. But they also stem from a broader, long-standing panic about mis- and disinformation. The political class believes that free expression has got a bit too free and needs reining in, regulating or banning. RT is by no means the only target for state censorship – and if it’s taken off the air, it will not be the last.

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          PeterS

          Yes it must be defended since it’s under attack by our own Western governments and the MSM. The solution is to stop voting for them, with the ballot paper and with your feet. If we don’t then we might as well just pretend all will be OK and then one day people will wake up one day and find it’s too late to defend the very freedoms we cherish. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” That’s exactly what most people are still doing, and I suspect will continue to do at the next federal election here but hoping I’m wrong.

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    OldOzzie

    Whilst you’ve been distracted by Russia’s Invasion, the UK Gov. released a Report confirming the Fully Vaccinated now account for 9 in every 10 Covid-19 Deaths in England

    The latest data published by the UK Health Security Agency confirms deaths are rising dramatically among the triple vaccinated population whilst declining steadily among the not-vaccinated population in England.

    With the most recent figures showing the fully vaccinated accounted for 9 in every 10 Covid-19 deaths over the past month; and the triple vaccinated accounted for 4 in every 5 of them.

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      Klem

      Where I live 79% of hospitalized Covid patients are fully vaxxed, about 1/3rd of them have had the booster shot.

      They never say how many fully vaxxed people have died of Covid, and none of our fearless journalists have the balls to ask. Wouldn’t want to upset the apple cart.

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      MrGrimNasty

      I never had the Vax, health has gone down hill somewhat dramatically since I made that decision, it’s the end of winter and I’ve hardly been outside for months so D levels likely low. Just had covid courtesy of a hospital appointment, it was a mild URTI initially, cleared up, then back as an intermittent rather harsh chesty cough. All better in under 2 weeks, no hint of after effects/long covid.

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        robert rosicka

        Just had Covid and lead a very unhealthy life , not vaxxed and feel ok apart from the back but that’s nothing to do with Covid . Very heavy smoker for over 45 years and still smoke .

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      OriginalSteve

      A leftie relative of mine is hassling unvaxxed people they know to take the shot.

      I shake my head. 9 out of 10 deaths are vaxxed.

      Leftism has to be a mental illness….

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    OldOzzie

    Confused Old Man Yells at Nation for an Hour

    3,720 seconds of lies, fearmongering, and malapropisms.

    A confused political hack from Delaware staged a one-man insurrection by invading the sacred precincts of the Capitol building, hijacking all the TV networks, and yelling that the planet would be destroyed unless we gave him all our money so he could burn it and turn it into green energy.

    Joseph Robinette Biden Jr, who loves the sound of his voice more than his crackhead son or the bastard grandchild of a stripper, had already inflicted the second longest opening address in the history of this nation with a 2021 marathon address that killed more brain cells than meth.

    Like the star of a slasher movie sequel, Biden Jr., returned to ramble through a worse sequel, but kept it down to a mere hour and two minutes of torture. The two minutes are significant because when you have to endure the Vogon poetry of word salads, non-sequiturs, mumbles, grumbles, malapropisms, and random interjections, 120 extra seconds is an eternity.

    During those 3,720 seconds of lies, fearmongering, and malapropisms, Biden took credit for defeating COVID, Putin, and the English language. While viruses and nations can’t be defeated with hot air, English never stands a chance once Biden’s mouth gets its slimy tongue on it.

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      OldOzzie

      Who is Joe Biden?

      Joe Biden, an incoherent jumble, is practically no longer a creature of human biology; indeed, he is a metaphysical imponderable. He has entered the phantasmagoria of quantum physics.

      Is Joe Biden a particle, a wave, or an elusive subatomic phenomenon like a neutrino with no mass, no charge, barely detectable, leaving only obscure radiation tracks?

      For an invisible subatomic something, Joe Biden sure leaves unambiguous tracks. It is a certainty that wherever Joe Biden spins, a destructive wave set follows. No need for a Heisenberg-style probability. It is certain.

      Well, the image of the real Joe Biden has emerged on the film: Joe Biden is like a composite sketch from a committee of police artists.

      Anyone paying attention to Joe Biden’s political life over nearly five decades knows he is an intellectual flyweight, an unrepentant plagiarist, a self-serving corrupt hack who could not get elected anywhere but Delaware, an ignoramus unable to command any aspect of policy — foreign or domestic — an inveterate liar, a morally despicable fraudster.

      Who is Joe Biden?

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        Graham Richards

        President Joe”Fraud “ = 1 x @sole De Luxe. Americans insist on doing everything bigger than everyone else & this time the USA electorate has exceeded any previous attempt at being biggest & best.

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      OldOzzie

      Note the Size of the Crowd!

      President Biden’s first post-State of the Union event will be on the University of Wisconsin-Superior campus this afternoon.

      He’ll use the trip to tout the 2021 infrastructure law and push for his package of climate and child care initiatives, which is stalled in Congress.

      vs

      A 360 Degree Look At The Huge Crowd At The Trump Rally

      and

      Crowd at Trump Rally

      Then

      Do you realy believe Hiden Biden in 2020 US Election got 81,281,888 votes vs DONALD TRUMP 74,223,251 votes ?

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    OldOzzie

    Has The Great Global Food War Just Begun?

    If you remove the raw material fertilizer products from China, Belarus, Russia and now Ukraine from the global marketplace, that’s over two-thirds of the total global supply gone. As bumbling Joe would say, “That’s a big effen’ deal,” big enough to create havoc when it comes to the 2022 farm growing season in just about every country.

    Apply hindsight and the answer seems obvious, yes.

    Overlay what we have previously discussed about the geopolitical dynamic of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

    BRICS is a key strategic geopolitical trade partnership that was created during Obama, was weakened during Trump, and now with Obama back at the helm of globalist advancement – likely way more important. The core of BRICS’ purpose is a countermeasure against the coordination of globalist multinational corporations. BRICS is somewhat an anti-WEF assembly.

    Do you remember everyone getting mad at India for not supporting the U.N Security Council resolution against the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Well, again, apply hindsight. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) have a strategic geopolitical relationship framed around trade.

    Given the scale of their population, food security is a BIG issue for India. If we are about to enter a food war, specifically where food now becomes a national security issue, there’s no way India would want to be on the short end of that conflict.

    Things are sketchy as heck right now, because this food war picture is pretty clear.

    However, if the BRICS group join in a digital trade currency together, which would effectively negate any sanctions the rest of the world might attempt, we can katy-bar the door, because actual rockets and missiles come next. The U.S./EU/UN message will shift from Putin killing Ukrainians, to Putin/Xi starving the world.

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      Ted1

      Switch from biofuel to food production.

      I doubt that Russia and China would gain from denying the west their fertiliser imports. It probably would not greatly increase their own food production. The “West” has only to dump the AGW scam to catch up inside a year.

      Probably Australia’s commodity in shortest supply would be ships to deliver our coal and gas to whoever wants it.

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    OldOzzie

    Judge Unseals 400 Pages of Evidence, Clears Way for Pfizer Whistleblower Lawsuit

    For instance, Jackson alleges:

    “From 2020 to the present, Defendants [Ventavia and Pfizer] knowingly made, used, or caused to be made or used, false records or statements that were material to false and/or fraudulent claims paid or approved by the United States [Department of Defense, or DoD]. These false records or statements include the clinical trial protocol Pfizer submitted to the United States and the falsified source documents and data behind Defendants’ trial results and EUA application.

    “By creating and carrying out their fraudulent schemes, Defendants knowingly and repeatedly violated … the False Claims Act. Defendants’ false records were material to Pfizer’s claims for payment for the vaccine at issue. The United States DoD would not have paid Pfizer if it knew that the clinical trial protocol was not complied with by Defendants, because the protocol violations call the integrity and validity of both the entire clinical trial and Pfizer’s EUA into question.

    “Defendants’ false records also went to the very essence of the bargain the United States contracted for. DoD contracted to purchase vaccines found effective by a valid clinical trial conducted according to the protocol submitted by Pfizer. The integrity of the entire clinical trial was compromised by the trial protocol violations, false source documents, and the false data that resulted, which calls the vaccine’s EUA into question. Had the United States DoD known of Defendants’ false records, it would not have paid Pfizer.

    “Defendants’ use, or causation of use, of material false records was a foreseeable factor in the United States DoD’s loss and a consequence of Defendants’ schemes. By virtue of Defendants’ actions, the United States DoD has suffered actual damages and is entitled to recover treble damages plus a civil monetary penalty for each false and/or fraudulent claim.”

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        Bruce

        There is a REASON that Biden was “SELECTED”. With his “vice” president hovering impatiently in the 25th Amendment wings, maneuvering with San Fran Nan, the future looks “Interesting”, in that special Chinese-curse way..

        Actually, more than one reason; but the primary one was to take the US off the global 3D chessboard, whilst firing as few shots as possible, so as the noise would not wake up the domestic peasantry or the foreign sheep.

        The role of the LSM in all of this will be furtively discussed in caves and shattered basements for decades.

        Time to tip over the chess-board? Anyone have any better suggestions that might avoid the attention of “peace-keeping” forces?

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      • #

        What a first class “fruit loop”……….Goofy (Disney cartoon character) would make a far better US President along with my right toe………….

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      OldOzzie

      Joe Biden is in denial

      Americans have lost faith in his leadership. But he shows no desire to win them back.

      Heading into last night’s State of the Union address, US president Joe Biden faced a grim political situation.

      Some 70 per cent of Americans believe the country is going in the wrong direction, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll. Worse still for Biden, Americans have lost faith in his leadership during his first year in office. His approval rating has dropped to 37 per cent in a recent ABC News-Washington Post survey. Some six in 10 say Biden is not a strong leader, and a majority says he doesn’t have the mental sharpness to serve effectively.

      The State of the Union was an opportunity for Biden to start to turn things around. But judging by his speech, it seems that Biden and his team have no idea of the degree of Americans’ disenchantment with him. Biden hardly acknowledged the dismal state of affairs, and offered no course correction.

      All in all, Biden’s address showed a president and administration that is in denial. Despite all the polls showing that Americans largely hold him responsible for the various problems the country faces, he made clear that not much will change.

      erhaps Biden hopes his handling of the war in Ukraine will boost his image at home. But that seems unlikely. Returning to that conflict as he ended his speech, Biden went off script and implored Congress to ‘go get him’. All were left scratching their heads, wondering what he meant.

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        OldOzzie

        Biden’s State of Delusion

        President Joe Biden had two options when it came to his State of the Union address. On one hand, he could have recognized the dire straits within which his policies have this nation and made a complete U-turn on the issue of leadership and policy.

        He could have apologized for the choices he made. He didn’t have to admit his Trump Derangement Syndrome resulted in his frenzied, nonsensical reversal of the majority of President Donald Trump’s policies simply for the sake of reversing them with no consideration of their impact. All he needed to do is admit his mistakes, experienced daily by the American people with inflation, high gas prices, crime, a strangling of our energy production, and empty shelves.

        Abroad, Mr. Biden’s weakness and folly have emboldened our enemies, leading in part to a European war, abandoned American embassies, and scorn heaped upon us by our allies because of the catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal.

        But he didn’t choose that route. Instead, he doubled down on the Democrats’ catastrophic social agenda and culture war, then threw in some occasional and insulting gaslighting by insisting Democrats want to fund the police, and implied they always have.

        Did someone tell him we would all be hypnotized into believing whatever he said to the contrary of provably true reality?

        At one point, he also insisted we need to “secure our border.” That’s right, the same guy whose own policy has erased our southern border and facilitated the deliberate transfer of illegal aliens into the interior of the country. He touted border security as though it’s been leprechauns causing all the havoc, blinding Border Patrol agents with laser lights of rainbows and pots o’ gold.

        Breitbart reported, “Trump endorsed candidates on fire in Texas. Former president undefeated in primaries. Every candidate endorsed by former President Donald Trump in Texas’s Republican primaries have either won or are substantially leading their races as of 11:00 p.m. ET, potentially solidifying Trump’s kingmaker status in the first primaries of 2022. The 45th president gave his stamp of approval — a much coveted prize among Republican hopefuls — to 33 candidates.”

        At this rate, November’s midterm election will be the American people doing what Mr. Biden should have done tonight— taking the first step to admitting a mistake was made in 2020 and promising that we are committed to reversing course.

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          OldOzzie

          Biden’s Worst Days are Yet to Come

          Big speech foretells big problems

          Joe Biden’s first state of the Union address should be his last. His sanctimonies, blame shifting, misstatements, false accusations, and adherence to failed policies only reinforced what an increasing number of people know: this man is a walking disaster—America’s worst modern president.

          The real takeaway from the speech is that for Biden, the worst is yet to come. Nothing he said indicated the slightest change from the disastrous woke activism and incompetence that have brought us to this point.

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          OldOzzie

          Biden Shows the Light Is ‘Out’ but No One’s Home With His Take on Thomas Edison

          Jill Biden spoke first, and claimed Joe was all about trying to bring people together: “Things are so much better. You were right to put your faith in Joe Biden a year ago.”

          Seriously? Where are they better? How are they better? Certainly not in this country, where Americans are being crushed by Biden’s inflation. And the gas prices – already high – are going to skyrocket even more with what’s going on with Russia.

          Either Jill’s a desperate liar, or she’s as deluded as her husband. Maybe she means things are better for her because she has more power. But, the Biden team has no intention of doing anything to get back the energy independence we had under President Donald Trump.

          Speaking of which, not only did Jill tell us a ridiculous untruth, but her husband seems to have forgotten the name of Thomas Edison. Here he is, talking about the “purchase of the largest ever purchase” of electric locomotives at the same plant that the “guy who turned on our lights” built a factory.

          You know the guy. Like you know the thing. How do you forget Thomas Edison’s name? This is where Biden’s brain is at this point. Unfortunately, part of the problem with Biden is that the ‘light is out and no one is home.’

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        Stuart

        the votes for the mid terms have already been cast and counted.

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    John Connor II

    ‘Pro-Russian’ hacking group hits back at Anonymous

    Awww..poor Anonymous.

    Hackers Killnet claim responsibility for the attack that knocked out Anonymous’ and Zelensky’s website.
    A group of purportedly pro-Russian hackers calling themselves Killnet has taken down a website associated with the Anonymous hacking collective, a site belonging to the far-right Ukrainian militia group Right Sector, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s own website.

    https://www.rt.com/russia/551080-killnet-hackers-anonymous-retaliation-russia/

    Hacker wars..definitely popcorn material 😊

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      KP

      So long as no-one hacks the big red button on the nuclear missile launch controls.. either Russian or American!

      Those 1960s launch protocols with suitcases and keys might not have been updated! Even a few of them getting a “Fire” command inadvertently would cause a giant retaliation, and then a re-retaliation until there was nothing left to launch.

      There’s around 1500 warheads on each side, so that’s 3000 cities wiped out, or 1500 cities thoroughly wiped out, or even 700 cities vapourised! …and some guy sitting in his parent’s basement saying “Wow man…”

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    John Connor II

    US Military Responds To Russian Invasion Of Ukraine By Training Soldiers On Wokeness, Pronouns And Transgenderism

    https://en-volve.com/2022/03/02/us-military-responds-to-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-by-training-soldiers-on-wokeness-pronouns-and-transgenderism/

    Yeah bring it on I say.
    Let the LGBTwhatever cupcakes go fight real soldiers or battle hardened Spetsnaz.
    No safe spaces or crying cupboards on the front lines.
    I’d pay to watch that! 😈
    Like “The condemned”..
    Popcorn and vodka.

    https://i0.wp.com/clownuniverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/66C72065-CFA3-4939-9738-5765E12AFADA.jpeg

    https://i0.wp.com/clownuniverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/8F1DA2DA-870B-43BC-B241-EC549B11D4EF.webp
    That last guy…oh please…😅😅

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    John Connor II

    ‘A Pound of Ukrainian People’? 10 Brain Freezes in Joe Biden’s State of the Union Delivery

    https://www.cracknewz.com/2022/03/a-pound-of-ukrainian-people-10-brain.html

    ..and Pelosi in the background thinking “stupid old fool. At least we won’t need him much longer”

    Interesting though how Pelosi rubbed her knuckles together after the burnpit comment.
    I wonder how much she actually knows about the horrific effects of burnpits?
    Or cares..

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      TdeF

      Biden used to be a very lucid impromptu speaker. He is now bumbling at best. Barely able to read
      and not reading with meaning. He is too busy trying to look Presidential.

      Biden referred to “a pound of Ukrainian people.” His prepared text said “proud.”

      That was a simple misread.

      Which means he has not even read his speech before let alone written it.
      No fluent speaker who had a grasp of a sentence would say this.

      So the big question for the planet is, who is writing these speeches. And who is telling Jen Psaki what to say?

      Who is really President of the United States because it sure isn’t Joe Biden.

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        TdeF

        And Pelosi is over 80. She probably had a cramp or pain and had to disguise it, so she jumped up
        and started to restore the circulation in her hands. It was totally inappropriate timing for
        such fake enthusiasm, but she had no choice.

        So there you have it. A President suffering senile dementia and an octogenerian Speaker trying to hide
        her own health problems.

        At least Angela Merkel recognized that the world knew she had serious age related problems and resigned.

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    OldOzzie

    Hyundai hydrogen upgrade highlights the real problem with climate action
    Big business like carmakers, governments and corporates all struggle being green. Sounding green is dead easy, but accountants don’t get it

    Best example of the massive speed hump on the road between here and future green utopia, is buried between the lines of this recent press release from Hyundai Australia

    Fuel cells sound very hi-tech, but they’re really just a black box where hydrogen gas combines with oxygen gas, and makes water, a process which releases energy in the form of electricity.

    So it’s just a box, inside which anti-electrolysis happens.

    A fuel cell-powered car is therefore just like an EV that you’d see on the road today, only it doesn’t have an enormous battery. The electricity comes from hydrogen, which is compressed to about 700 atmospheres, in a tank.

    A fuel cell EV po@@ps out chemically pure water, and it can be refuelled in minutes – provided you can find a bowser labelled ‘hydrogen’. Good luck with that, at least here.

    It’s yet another reason to be sceptical when you hear the words ‘net zero’ or ‘zero emissions’ in the car industry

    Now, forgive me if hydrogen sounds like green utopia. It’s really not. Hydrogen is one of the filthiest gasses – in practise. Hydrogen gas is very rare on earth. Hydrogen – the element – is everywhere, but the gas is rare. They’re different things. So, if you want the gas, you generally have to make it.

    And this is where ‘green utopia’ crumbles, today, and for many years to come. You can, of course, make hydrogen by sticking electricity in water. Kids do it at school, in science. Lesson 15: Electrolysis. But the cheapest way to make hydrogen, for industry, is simply to crack methane gas with superheated steam, twice.

    Methane is the cheap, raring-to-go gas.

    Sure, they’re talking up their new refueller, because it’s a $1.7 million investment, and now they’re finally going with that electrolyser. (They’ve already got the solar panels.)

    This upgrade will allow them to make 20 kilos of hydrogen gas per day, which is quite a lot. They’ll need to rip apart almost 200 litres of water to do that, which takes quite a lot of energy.

    They’re not even the first in Australia to achieve this. The ACT Government got there first. Mainly because governments don’t have to be economically rational. They can just do cool, green sh@t and lead the way – in fact, that should be one of their core functions.

    If you’re not from around here, the ACT – the Australian Capital Territory – is like a proper, grown-up state, except its b@lls never dropped. It’s really just Canberra’s backyard.

    Canberra is like Antipodean Pleasantville. It pretends to be the nation’s capital, but everyone knows that’s really Sydney.

    So it seems oddly fitting that the ACT Government has a fleet of fuel cell cars for which it makes its own fuel by electrolysing water onsite. Well done,

    Hyundai Australia is about to clone that refueller, a carbon copy of Canberra’s electrolyser-type refueller is about to go in, in Sydney, albeit almost a decade late, in my view.

    But don’t get me wrong. This is still a significant achievement. Infrastructure is the real problem with rolling out hydrogen for transport, and someone has to take a stand and actually make this happen. And so far in Australia, only our most tiny state government, and Hyundai, are taking that stand.

    Once the Sydney one is up and running, you (as, you government employees) will even be able to drive between them, and back. So that’s nice.

    There are two fundamental problems with hydrogen for transport, and technology’s not one of them. That’s sorted – Hydrogen fuel cells work. They’re not perfect – in fact, they are very intolerant of contamination, and I’m not totally sure about durability in mass production/automotive. But the tech is sound. It works.

    The first problem is purely economic. Doing it dirty is cheaper than doing it clean, with hydrogen, for now. But that can change.

    The second problem is: Leadership. Governments should be incentivising the sh@t out of green hydrogen infrastructure, in order to get it out of its economically irrational blocks. Hydrogen is one of the few fuels you can make onsite. Anywhere, no matter how remote. And the vehicles don’t require toxic heavy metals, like batteries do.

    If we transition to hydrogen, we divorce our dependency on foreign oil. We become impregnable, from an energy security perspective. This means a lot more for national security than those useless submarines (against the world’s largest air force) and disgracefully inadequate F35 Lightning IIs – the Land Rover of the sky. Way to go, Defence procurement morons.

    Why isn’t the NSW Government kicking the tin for hydrogen? I’d suggest it’s because the premier, in my personal opinion cannot understand that the health of the population is inseparable from the health of the economy. Flipsides of the same coin. In the same way the climate crisis is kinda inseparable from the overpopulation of humans on earth, and he’s about to have a seventh kid.

    Long but excellent read as is the lin to Why ‘Zero Emissions Vehicle’ will be the great auto industry lie of 2022

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      OldOzzie

      WHAT’S IN A TESLA DISCLAIMER? – Why is Tesla selling 2021 cars with 2017 batteries?

      So when I saw that warning about 12 per cent lower range in the Tesla disclaimer, urging us all to ‘learn more’, I had no choice. I felt compelled to click:

      Leaving aside the politics of se@xing up vehicles as purportedly new when in fact they have up to 1600 kays on the clock and were presumably used as demonstrators, why is the battery pack on these cars that old? And how can the pack be from 2017 if the car is that new?

      I mean, if the battery pack was “brand new when the vehicle was built”, then the car was built in 2017. So how the hell can it be a 2021 model? That’s a real logical hurdle for me. If GM or Ford tried that, there would be an outcry. The palatability of bullsh@t is certainly not a level playing field.

      And if it’s a demonstrator, it’s an extremely old demonstrator. Can you imagine how many self-righteous EV snobs have test driven them, since 2017? Imagine how worn out all those parts will be – the expensive bits – underneath.

      Anyway, Elon moves in mysterious ways, including the Hyperloop. It’s coming…

      Another typically unanswered question is, ‘Why is Tesla sitting on battery packs which are four to five years old?’ Last time I looked, the bullshi@t rhetoric from them was everything’s booming, demand is grossly out-stripping supply, and they can’t keep up.

      And, frankly, this is not the same kind of thing as having a bunch of headlamps left over from 2017, like Holden might’ve done with all those last-run Commodores. That battery is the single most expensive component in the car, and it degrades over time.

      Why store them?

      WARRANTY PROBLEM

      What strikes me as even more relevant here is they’ve suffered a 12 per cent reduction in range over four years, on cars that have driven fewer than 2000 kays.

      Just part of the Tesla ownership experience.

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        OldOzzie

        The truth about electric cars
        They are far more environmentally damaging than normal cars.

        The danger of using larger lithium-ion batteries in larger configurations has been recognised by authorities since their commercial introduction in 1991. For instance, US airlines do not permit laptops with integrated batteries larger than 100 watt hours on board. The likelihood of the battery catching fire is relatively low. But in the event of a fire, to extinguish it, you can’t use water. The fire risks are even greater for an EV, which is a bit like a tightly packed sandwich of hundreds of laptop batteries.

        The dangers of lithium-ion batteries are evident in the number of high-profile product recalls. Dell recalled four million batteries in 2006. HP recalled more than 100,000 laptops in 2019 because of battery-fire risks. After causing fires on flights, Samsung’s Note 7 smartphone was recalled – twice – and then sidelined completely.

        The costs and risks only increase with larger products. Fires originating in the battery in Chevrolet Bolt vehicles are estimated to have cost General Motors around $2 billion. Audi had to recall its E-Tron SUV for the same reason. Parked Teslas keep bursting into flames – and the company has been castigated for not recalling the vehicle

        Yet last week, Britain’s most popular car YouTuber, Tim Burton (more widely known as Shmee), announced that he was replacing his electric Porsche with a petrol-powered Ferrari V12 – because it’s greener and cleaner. His reason may surprise many who believe that EVs are either ‘low’ or ‘zero’ CO2-emission vehicles.

        Burton cited a study that Volvo released during the COP26 climate summit. – 43 Pages This study, led by Andrea Egeskog of the Sustainability Center at Volvo, received remarkably little attention at the time. Volvo is unusual in being able to make direct comparisons between two versions of the same car model, the XC40 SUV. One is electric, the other has an ICE. Volvo calculated the CO2 emissions over the full lifecycle of the two products: from mining the minerals, like lithium and cobalt, to the end of their lives, including disposal.

        Many of the EVs sold today are ‘urban runabouts’ – that is, vehicles that will never reach the CO2 ‘break even’ point, and will therefore emit more CO2 than a petrol equivalent. Since the practical value of an EV today in reducing CO2 emissions is zero, its value is merely to signal moral superiority, showing others that you care and they don’t. It is a status good. It makes the owner feel better.

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          yarpos

          It received little attention because its key findings are actually in line with the EV narrative.

          Its only if you extract parts and put your own spin on it that it looks interesting. At COP it would just be more brochureware

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      Sambar

      “A fuel cell EV po@@ps out chemically pure water”

      One of those prickly little things that I think about between 2.00am and dawn, what happens to local weather in big cities with a million cars/ trucks etc all belching out “pure water” on a day when temperatures are in the high 30’s . Does the local humidity increase to the point of great discomfort. What happens, tonnes of water vapour being pumped out endlessly, where does it go? Do we get cloud shrouded cities? How does this “new” environment affect peoples health or the durability of buildings etc.
      I can see a solution to one percieved problem producing several new and additional problems that may have more damaging consequences than the first.

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        TdeF

        Normal combustion produces the same amount of water, so I don’t think it is a problem.
        Hydrocarbons burn to CO2 and H2O. It’s the same process in our bodies as we burn carbohydrates to CO2 and H2O, which is why you can blow steam on a cold mirror. Neither CO2 or H2O are pollution. In fact both are essential for all life and a herd of cattle would have a comparable output.’

        Besides, the normal level of water in the air in most countries is vastly higher. It is very scary in Saudi or Egypt with 0% humidity and you can lose a litre of water an hour just breathing.

        So fuel cells are just combustion but converted directly to electric energy not heat energy. Which is a really good thing as heat has great losses around 60% in being converted to mechanical energy and then to electrical energy because of the principle of the Carnot cycle.

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          TdeF

          The real loss in this process is in discarding the carbon to get the hydrogen and throwing away that energy. And the cost and energy required for this magical process of sequestration, which has never been shown to work. And all based on a fantasy that CO2 released will pile up in the atmosphere because the IPCC says it is insoluble. Which is a lie, but they do not say that exactly. They have standardized all ‘greenhouse’ gases on the 80 year half life of CO2 in the atmosphere. Which means CO2 takes say 200 years to be absorbed. That is past ridiculous, so it is fraud.

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    • #
      yarpos

      Maybe its just me, but 700 atmospheres of hydrogen makes me feel a bit queasy; I must be OK, just not for me.

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      Lucky

      Quote from AutoExpert
      “If we transition to hydrogen, we divorce our dependency on foreign oil.”

      Fact is Australia is very rich in fuels- uranium, coal, and natural gas.
      What prevents use- The green delusions which control federal and state governments.

      It is time to throw out those delusional governments and their subservience to the crackpot pseudo-environmental scare mongers.

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    OldOzzie

    A Lesson in Energy Masochism

    Here’s how Europe made itself vulnerable to Putin’s gas blackmail.
    By The WSJ Editorial Board

    European governments are scrambling to shore up their natural gas supply if Russia cuts off exports. But one question worth raising: How in the world did Europe leave itself so vulnerable to Vladimir Putin’s energy extortion?

    The nearby chart shows how Russian gas exports have increased in tandem with declining European production. A mere 15 years ago, countries in the European Union produced more gas than Russia exported. Yet European production has plunged by more than half over the last decade. Mr. Putin has happily filled the supply gap.

    Europe offers another reminder to the U.S. that blocking fossil-fuel development here won’t keep carbon “in the ground.” It merely hands a strategic weapon to dictators that they will turn around and use against us.

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    John Connor II

    Strrrrike 4
    Russian cyber attacks against US banks increasing:

    Russia appears to have officially declared cyberwar on the US, taking what’s been described as preliminary steps at crippling its banking system and possibly other major industries, The Post has learned.

    https://nypost.com/2022/03/01/russian-cyber-attacks-against-us-banks-increasing/

    Down in Tassie the other day they lost all internet due to cut cables. Total chaos for stores.
    A cyberattack could do FAR worse.

    Like I said before – it’d pay to stock up and have some cash on hand just in case.
    Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

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    John Connor II

    Be afraid, be very afraid.

    Via Martin A.

    Biden has seriously lost his mind and is now talking about banning all Russian sales of energy. Biden and world leaders are taking advice from Bill Browder who is telling them now to confiscate all Russian assets belonging to what he claims are Oligarchs. There is ZERO consideration of how pension funds and mutual funds have also invested in Russia. They will now have all their assets seized. Worse still, this has the distinct risk of migrating to China for the West has demonstrated that they have turned the world economy into a political weapon. This is why SWIFT is no longer a viable international payment system when it is subject to politics. Hence, China is now moving in high gear to launch its alternative to SWIFT. This is now destroying the world economy and it is no longer beneficial to be dealing in international trade that once provided the foundation for world peace. This is expanding beyond just Russian cyberattacks against US banks. This is unleashing World War III in the financial markets.

    This is the most DANGEROUS advice in modern history. One of the key components in making the decision on international investment is COUNTRY RISK. I would never have advised a client to invest in Iran for they have simply nationalized assets wiping out private investment. These words coming from Biden’s mouth following the advice of Bill Browder is just unimaginable. Chinese now have been put on notice that their personal assets can also be seized if there is a political dispute with China.

    This is absolutely insane. This is tearing the world economy apart at the very seams. This is why the West will lose the distinction of the Financial Capital of the World post-2032. We are witnessing the very decision that will undermine the entire West all because of its refusal to be objective and its personal hatred of Putin who the US created by the attempted take over of Russia via the bankers back in 2000.

    While this Ukrainian Crisis is taking the headlines, there is no attention being given to the implementation of the digital passport in Europe and other regions across the globe. They are using this diversion to implement total surveillance upon we the people under the pretense of looking for Russians now. Perhaps you can now see why our computer will be correct again. China will emerge as the financial capital of the world post-2032. Biden has just agreed with other world leaders to drive a stake into the heart of freedom and capitalism in one fell swoop.

    PS. Make sure you all pile into city-based real estate, and have kids, v8 Prado’s to go to Woolies, and 30 year mortgages 😅😅😅
    Oh the wake-up call later this year (prediction 2) is going to be a b**ch.

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    OldOzzie

    Revealed: The hidden cost of going green

    ‘Hang on a minute, my home can’t deal with this’

    Gino Pooley, 59, a retired engineer from mid-Wales, enquired about improving his electricity supply to three-phase to enable him to install chargers for his family’s two vehicles and a heat pump.

    He was sent a letter from his distribution network operator, SP Power Networks, stating that the work would cost £14,678 and has abandoned plans to install a heat pump.

    He said: “Having your first charger, with a gas boiler, it won’t affect you. But it will start affecting people nearer the time when they are going to be really pushed to go electric and [get] heat pumps. Then they are going to start realising – hang on a minute, my home can’t deal with this.”

    Laurent Schmitt, the chief executive of smart home startup dcbel, who previously worked on electricity grids in Europe, said most UK households could not handle the electricity demand of car charging and heat-pump heating at the same time.

    “If you have your normal electricity appliances, plus an electrical car charging at a decent speed – the standard is around seven kilowatt – plus a heat pump, then you would already exceed this 100 amps,” he said.

    Pleased I installed three phase early 80s, when doing rear extension, along with 3 pool and spa motors

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    John Connor II

    Maybe you should rethink that 5G dumbphone purchase

    “The engineering design of cellphone and base-station antennas and wireless networks are not optimized for energy efficiency. Further, these new devices often produce dangerous amount of radiation close to the antennas and evidence is building that this is particularly harmful to a whole host of biological species.”

    https://principia-scientific.com/led-industry-expert-shines-new-light-on-5g-safety-mystery/

    Very interesting, being a radio comms guy.
    Will keep tabs on this one.

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      yarpos

      This is classic push technology that doesnt deliver much to most even though becoming standard.

      I will be sticking with 4G. It will be around for a long time as it fills the many holes in 5G coverage.

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      Graeme#4

      Being a radio comms guy, you should also realise that radiation from a point source drops off by the square of the distance, I.e., to virtually nothing in a short distance. Also being a radio comms guy, you should also note that the international human emissions regulations clearly define what energy can and cannot be radiated, and how it affects the human body. And finally, you will know that data, not emotions, are important, and that you can purchase a field strength meter to accurately measure the exact radiation at any distance for around $20. When you come back with the exact amount of 5g energy measured and the distance at which it was measured, then you might have some facts, not emotive beliefs.

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    farmerbraun

    Here’s the current state of the Ukrainian military , ex The Saker.

    Air Force: gone
    Navy: gone
    Long range, standoff capabilities: gone
    Air defenses: gone
    Regular ground forces: no less than 65% (some say up to 80%) of the Ukie military is surrounded and condemned
    Assorted Nazi units: I don’t have the figures, but A LOT of them are now either in the Donbass cauldron or in Mariupol. They will mostly not be taken prisoner, except for the leaders who will be tried and sentenced for their innumerable crimes.

    So, in terms of the Russian goals, here is how I would score this:

    Ukrainian disarmament: mostly already done, the Ukraine has nothing to threaten Russia with
    Ukrainian denazification: only at the early start, but conditions are excellent and I am confident that most of the hardcore Nazis will soon be dead

    One more thing I forgot to mention about the “no man’s land” west of the Donbass operational cauldron.

    The Donbass operational cauldron :-

    it’s not only that only small groups, maybe civilian cars at high speed can get out, it also means that the entire Nazi force in the Donbass is not getting resupplied.
    Not by air, not by sea and not by road.

    Right now, amazingly, the Ukronazis are STILL shelling the LDNR, today 5 civilians were murdered by Ukie shelling near Donetsk.

    So they are not even trying to break out, I suppose they know the score and with their supplies running out (many destroyed by heavy bombs) their lifespan is now counted in days.

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      OldOzzie

      ‘Madman Putin’: The Globalists’ Misinformation Play

      The most remarkable thing about the Mad Vlad claim is that it is obviously false.

      Whatever Vladimir Putin may be, he is certainly no irrational madman. This much should be obvious to everyone with the eyes to see.

      A former KGB operative, Vladimir Putin is a wily person of demonstrated ability. After all, he managed to bring control and order to a vast country that was largely in disarray when he took it over at the age of 48. He adroitly managed to keep himself in power for over two decades while navigating and overcoming a number of crises and challenges along the way. Through it all, he has shown himself to be intelligent, steel-willed, calculating, shrewd, self-controlled, determined, cunning, and patient.

      These are hardly the qualities of a lunatic.

      We have dealt with Putin for 22 years and, during that whole time, no one seriously suggested or maintained that he was crazy. Quite to the contrary, for almost a decade after his ascent, he was viewed as a capable man of considerable talents.

      And yet less than a week ago, on the day he invaded Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was nearly unanimously declared – contrary to all evidence – a “madman” by members of the Western establishment.

      The question is this: Why did they decide to suddenly gaslight and brainwash people with such a patent lie that so obviously contravenes reality?

      They did this to hide and conceal the gargantuan blunder they have committed over Ukraine.

      By convincing the public that Putin is a madman, they can portray his move on Ukraine as an irrational, unexpected, impulsive, and unjustifiable act of an unbalanced mind.

      Nothing could be further from the truth. Putin’s move was not irrational, impulsive, or unjustifiable. And it was certainly not unexpected.

      Putin, however, would not bend to the globalist chicanery and did exactly what he had kept warning about for years if Russian concerns were not adequately addressed: He invaded Ukraine to stop NATO’s expansion into the country with which he shares nearly 1000 kilometers of border, and which once hosted Russia’s capital.

      The invasion of Ukraine was a pre-announced, rational act of a strongman who felt increasingly encircled and threatened by what he deems to be an antagonistic military block.

      Putin’s move came as a great shock to the Western elites who could have not imagined someone standing up to them in such a bold way. They were completely unprepared for the obvious and went into panic mode as they realized how many innocent lives could be lost to their incompetence and pomposity.

      Greedy for ever more money, the globalists sought to pull Ukraine into their World Order so they could suck out money from it to line up their own pockets even further. They have been shown the way by none other than Globalist-in-Chief Joe Biden whose family has already siphoned millions of dollars out of Ukraine through his son Hunter. It is fully in character that Biden is also a Covidista par excellence who forced millions of unwilling Americans to take the Covid injections by pressuring employers to institute illegal mandates.

      Now the globalists’ arrogance and ruthlessness got us into the Ukrainian crisis where we potentially face the threat of nuclear war.

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        TdeF

        Yes, it is incredible that no one is examining the reasons behind this awful war.

        Hitler had his published story in Mein Kampf. You only had to read it. Stalin did not declare war and was attacked by Hitler.

        But Putin had his reasons and they are well known in the West, but the overwhelming narrative is ‘Mad Bad Murderous’ Putin. Why?

        He has given his reasons, but no one listens and no one reports his side of the story. As if he does not have one.

        Which is likely why Putin calls the the Empire of Lies. It seems accurate.

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        farmerbraun

        “the threat of nuclear war. ”

        Putin won’t press the button , at least not first. He has nothing to gain from it.
        But completely unnecessary anyway , given that it will be all over in Ukraine very quickly.
        Mind you , people come to their senses slowly and one at a time. But the Ukrainian people will realise what has been done to them by the puppet leaders they have had forced on them , starting with Obama’s effort.

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          TdeF

          Yes, the clarion call around the world to intervene in what is a civil war is itself thoughtless, at worst manipulative and deadly.

          Ukraine is virtually indistinguishable in language, culture and history from Russia except in the current Ukranian government, which is appalling. Kiev was the capital of the Kievan Rus which predated modern Russia.

          But no one says a thing. Intervention in a civil war is almost always crazy. It is impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys but even the Japanese and Brits are now wanting to volunteer to fight Putin until they find both sides speak only Russian.

          I have real concern about Zelensky playing the innocent victim of Russian aggression when he never stopped shelling.

          And the real people responsible at the top in Germany, France, Britain, NATO, the EU and America sit back and smile at the mutual damage to both Ukraine and Russia. Could this be the end and the breakup of the world’s biggest country. The same countries have tried to achieve that for over 200 years.

          And where is any attempt at international mediation? Where is the urging to calm down, step back, accept talks. No, its war, war, war. Go for it. Vengeance. Justice. As Joe Biden said in his last remark, “Go get him”.

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        OldOzzie

        Putin is NOT crazy and the Russian invasion is NOT failing. The West’s delusions about this war – and its failure to understand the enemy – will prevent it from saving Ukraine, writes military analyst BILL ROGGIO

        Bill Roggio is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of FDD’s Long war Journal. From 1991 to 1997, Roggio served as a signalman and infantryman in the U.S. Army and New Jersey National Guard

        Wishful thinking has the upper hand in the battle to shape Western perceptions of the war in Ukraine.

        Sympathy for the outnumbered and outgunned defenders of Kyiv has led to the exaggeration of Russian setbacks, misunderstanding of Russian strategy, and even baseless claims from amateur psychoanalysts that Putin has lost his mind.

        A more sober analysis shows that Russia may have sought a knockout blow, but always had well-laid plans for follow-on assaults if its initial moves proved insufficient.

        The world has underestimated Putin before and those mistakes have led, in part, to this tragedy in Ukraine.

        We must be clear-eyed now that the war is underway.

        Yet even the professionals at the Pentagon are letting sympathy cloud their judgement.

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        Chris

        Thank you for this. I have wondered what is being hidden by calling Putin a mad man.

        We have known for ages that the Ukraine government was corrupt and I’m sure Biden was not the only one to take advantage of the opportunities a corrupt government offers; now it appears that all has been forgiven. The US has 6 ? bio military laboratories in the Ukraine close to the Russian border and no one has asked WHY ? I’m sure America would not tolerate Canada or Cuba having bioweapons close to their borders.

        And why am I uncomfortable with the Left and the Right joining forces and supporting war?

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      OldOzzie

      Elections Have Consequences, And 2020’s Was War

      The weakness and incompetence of the Biden administration was irresistible to a tyrant like Vladimir Putin. And it may be to more tyrants, like Xi Jinping.

      The weakness and incompetence of the Biden administration was irresistible to a tyrant like Putin. That left Ukraine pretty much on its own as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and United States were essentially irrelevant. The Ukrainian forces have exceeded expectations, but thus far Putin has not gone full Golden Horde on them. There is also a lot of smoke and mirrors in play, and as noted information warfare strategists Chuck D and Flavor Flav have advised, “Don’t believe the hype.”

      That is a tremendous narrative of the plucky patriots fighting for their families and freedom. Those stories are all true, or maybe not. Zelensky is confirmed to have made his request for ammo, but the Snake Island heroes were captured, not killed. The supermodels are at least real on Instagram, and the same with the old guy and his lunch.

      At some level, perception is reality, and Ukraine has done a brilliant job of getting its message out. Now they are getting support based on the combination of information warfare and actual battlefield action.

      But reports are not reality, and it’s worth examining them. Many came from the notoriously reliable interwebz and have run the gamut from unverified to happened seven years ago to absolute B.S.

      Video of Spetsnaz looting food from a store can show their troops are starving. Or it’s a reminder that Spetsnaz are commandos who operate well ahead of the chow wagons in the rear. It is clear that Ukraine was not toppled in a weekend, but that does not mean it couldn’t still be or that was even the goal.

      It has been my belief all along that Putin never wanted to own and occupy Ukraine. Assuming he does topple the government, and I think it’s premature to say he couldn’t, then he will face a massive insurgency. He was around for Afghanistan, and I can’t see why he would take that on again.

      Now we confront the worst-case scenario of a Dragon/Bear alliance between Russia and China. Xi and Putin met during the Olympics and Xi likely told Vlad. “Just hold off until after the closing ceremonies.” Then they made an energy deal to ensure Vlad had an outlet to replace Nordstream2.

      Love him or not, Donald Trump kept Putin, Xi, and even Kim Jong Un from causing major problems. He kept the Russians engaged and far from partnering up with the Communist Chinese. He put all of them on their back feet wondering kind of a deal might be possible but also worried what he might do if they stepped over the line.

      Biden can barely be certain what decade this is, let alone present a worthy adversary for these world-class tyrants. They are stealing Joe’s (and the world’s) lunch money while he wonders if today is butterscotch or chocolate pudding.

      What happens when Xi decides Taiwan and all its chip factories are perfectly ripe for the picking with no one even marginally competent to be found in the U.S. leadership? One year and one month have led us to the point where World War III is not a joke; it may have already started. That hype you can believe and the only thing we can do is “Fight the Power.”

      But first we need to hope Biden doesn’t somehow throw more gas on this potential nuclear barbecue. Elections have consequences.

      Sadly, the vision of Biden as Slim Pickens riding the nuke like a cowboy in Dr. Strangelove seems an actual possibility.

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    Clem Cadiddlehopper

    All of the polar bears are dead, nearly all of the Pacific Islands are submerged under a hundred metres of rising water with millions of fleeing refugees, the Great Barrier Reef is completely dead and to top it all off, we havn’t had a single drop of rain in Australia for the last twenty years. Wer’re doomed I tell ya,doomed.

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      wal1957

      Comment of the day!
      Nice one Clem. Gave me a chuckle.

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    • #
      OldOzzie

      Said Hanrahan

      “We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
      In accents most forlorn,

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      • #
        TdeF

        Exactly what I was going to write. Well done. Rooned is a favorite word and Hanrahan was a role model for Professor Tim Flannery, an alleged scientist with a degree in English from Latrobe because he could not get into any science course.

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          TdeF

          Except he is overshone in fame and massive income now by Melbourne University Professor Bruce Pascoe who claims to be an aborigine and obviously isn’t. This is despite the requirement of the $200K job that you must be an aborigine, but in a post modern world who needs facts?

          And he claims aborigines invented agriculture, animal husbandry and manufacturing long before Europeans despite the obvious lack of cloth, metal, stored food, animals, cups and pots, buildings, fences or a single brick. It’s a wonder they were not expert horsemen as well, despite the lack of horses. He makes no claim on the invention of the wheel however. But his inventions and they really are inventions are now taught as historical fact, which beggars belief.

          “Even the rain which falls will not fill the dams”. Tell that to the operators of that mud pile Wivenhoe in 2011 and 2022.

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            OldOzzie

            Aboriginal Achievement: Positions Available

            2nd March 2022 Peter O’Brien

            For a demographic that claims to be marginalised and victimised, our ‘First Nations’ people are certainly front and centre.

            Obnoxious demagogues like ‘Senator’ Lidia Thorpe and Tarneen ‘Burn down Australia’ Onus-Williams, have carte blanche to excoriate the very society in which they flourish. And well-heeled organisations, like Their ABC, give them free rein to do just that, suggesting, for example, that we should ‘burn stuff’. Most rational people dismiss this rhetoric as fringe element ratbaggery.

            But more subtly, we are being constantly bombarded with less offensive memes, such as ABC announcers telling us they are broadcasting from, for example, Gadigal country. Well, it’s offensive to me but unfortunately not to most.

            I would like to offer two examples of this trend.

            Associate Professor Duane Hamacher has released a book titled The First Astronomers – how indigenous elders read the stars. Predictably, it has been endorsed by Professor Marcia Langton, who is always the first to leap to the support of any spurious proposition that patronizes Aborigines by claiming for them knowledge and accomplishments that they did not possess:

            So how does Leftist academia overcome this apparently insuperable disconnect? Simple. By doing what they always do. Moving the goal posts to redefine astronomy. Or at least establish a new branch of it, as Melbourne University did with agriculture when it created its chair of Indigenous Agriculture and gracing it with the august person of Uncle Professor Bruce Pascoe.

            In this case we have a new field of study called ‘cultural astronomy’.

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              TdeF

              What has allowed Woke at universities and now throughout society is the adoption of “post modernism”, across all academia. Not just in history and philosophy but now science. Goodbye Rational Science and mathmatics. 2+2=3 if you believe it does.

              This came out of France in 1968 and set itself against science and traditional history by abandoning something previously essential, facts.

              In post modernism, facts are all subjective. There are no absolute facts. And this has allowed new science by consensus of which Climate Change is the most significant example but also history where dates and times and people and what actually happened just don’t matter. And biology where genes and genitalia are nothing compared to someone’s personal opinion.

              You cannot lose an argument as a Post Modernist. Because based on your facts, your view is fully supported by your facts and the proposition that Bruce Pascoe is an aboriginal is fully supported by Bruce Pascoe and therefore it is a biological fact.

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              Mal

              Cultural astronomy.
              Hey look up, is that sun?

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          Forrest Gardener

          Interesting how the big lumps like flannery float to the top of the tank.

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          GlenM

          But he did ” discover ” a tree kangaroo didn’t he? It was named after him because of facial similarity.

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    OldOzzie

    The ABC That Might Have Been

    3rd March 2022 – Christopher Akehurst

    Not long ago I idly turned on ABC television in the middle of the evening. An Aboriginal woman was speaking, or rather yelling, and the first words I heard were a complaint in graphic terms about an@l r@pe (I will spare you the exact phrase). Not exactly what one is used to hearing by one’s own domestic hearth.

    Dear me, I thought, switching off, how our national broadcaster has changed since its courtly days more than six decades ago.

    This set me delving into my misty impressions of the ABC as it was in that remote era when manners and opinions were so alien to our own. To start with, it was dignified. It never in those days tried to touch the lowest common denominator of vulgarity. Its hierarchy was headed by serious-minded public-spirited men (none of whom had made their careers publishing a magazine that encouraged teenage girls to lose their virtue). Its radio announcers (also male, though no longer in dinner jackets—that was before the war) would never have dreamt of trying to be “edgy”, even if they’d known what that meant, as they guided “listeners” through the programs in the clipped accent “educated” Australians essayed then and that were supposed to sound like the English upper class. They would never have hinted at their politics, but you couldn’t have pictured them voting Labor.

    From the Comments

    just don’t care anymore.

    The ABC and the cabal of degenerates who run and appear on it are just not worth any consideration.

    It’s a possible value for my 14 cents a day (or whatever the current calculation happens to be) to keep the imbeciles in one, easily avoided position on the dial.

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      Ronin

      Yes, their standards certainly have slipped over the years, I watch landline and some detective shows, the rest is rubbish.

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      Hanrahan

      Dear me, I thought, switching off, how our national broadcaster has changed since its courtly days more than six decades ago.

      I don’t think it has changed too much in 60 years. They have always been politically biased.

      I only realised that when I got broadband and read more broadly.

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    • #

      It’s a possible value for my 14 cents a day (or whatever the current calculation happens to be) to keep the imbeciles in one, easily avoided position on the dial

      .? “One position on the dial “ ?…..really ?
      There are at least 4 ABC TV channels on my dial !
      And dont ask how many ABC radio stations ..(20+ ?) available !
      I do wonder why so many are neccessary , let alone the standard of content and bias.

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    OldOzzie

    VicPol’s Shame: Smelly Cans to Open

    28th February 2022 Keith Windschuttle Editor-in-chief

    Editor, Quadrant Magazine
    [email protected]

    Fascinating Read

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      KP

      But.. but… Australia isn’t corrupt! That’s Russia or Iraq or Iran or Burma… We’re a free democracy full of sunshine and mates who work hard for their people!

      As a foreigner, that’s a real eye-opener of a read!

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    OldOzzie

    Doomed Planet

    Roads, Rates, Rubbish and Climate Ratbaggery

    2nd March 2022 Tony Thomas

    To date, 108 of 537 Australian local government councils have declared “climate emergencies”. This initiative involves saving the planet, as distinct from attending to councils’ tradition role of concerning themselves primarily with the three Rs of local government: roads, rates and rubbish. A green activist site, Climate Emergency Declaration and Mobilisation In Action (CEDAMIA) tracks all these councils on a spreadsheet. Globally, there the group boasts 2000-plus councils.

    The Port Macquarie-Hastings City Council’s “Climate Emergency” declaration of March 2021 is listed at CEDAMIA’s site but the sad compilers have put a delete-line through it with the note, “rescinded 16 February 2022.”

    The rescinding was, like the 1914 deed of Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, a shot heard around the world. Or anyway, enjoyed on sceptic blogs in both hemispheres. I hope it will inspire other councillors to push back against the Greens who have used their dark arts (“How Green Zealots Take Over Councils”) to marshall council assets to stoke their own socialist ambitions.

    Getting back to Port Macquarie, Cr Sharon Griffiths is a third-termer and 30-year small business owner. She sponsored the rescission motion and is (incredibly) quoted by the ABC, saying, “I actually don’t believe that climate change is as big as an issue as people think it is really.” She has teamed with Mayor Pinson, a self-styled “community warrior” who became the town’s first female mayor in 2017. Pinson runs the newly-elected “Team Pinson” ginger group of five on the nine-member council. She’s been on holidays and sadly incommunicado.

    Phoned by Quadrant, Griffiths seemed impressed to discover her global fame. She said there hasn’t been much hostile feedback about the rescission because Emergency! supporters had their say when the Council Agenda was published. “Those people always present the same climate story and information, with nothing substantial underneath,” she says. “We’re a conservative area and we don’t like waste of council resources [on climate activity].” She’s hostile to council pursuing climate concerns about “what might be”, rather than urgent practical matters. In particular, the council should be making good on tens of millions of dollars in damage from the 2021 floods, she says. (Our interview was just before the latest floods). The ABC quoted Mayor Pinson on the so-called Emergency!: “Yes, we note that we’ve had these natural disasters but the world has had natural disasters. They’ve had it over the history of man and these things unfortunately do happen.”

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      RickWill

      The council workers get to drive around in very expensive BEVs. Is that good use of ratepayer’s money?

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      yarpos

      Our local Council is on board with all this. They are looking at replacing its fleet, with the usual EV enthusiasm.

      They also launched a “Climate Action” survey, which I happily completed. To their credit they actually had some response options for people like me , it wasn’t all lets just agree how far the sky has fallen and how much we are panicking about it.

      One question I found a bit said it asked about what actions (if any) you had taken in regard to Climate Change. One response to tick was “sought help from a mental health professional” Good f’in grief.

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    MP

    I have been watching these and other live cams in the Ukraine a lot over this week, hear the air raid sirens go off every morning (Their time), heard nothing but dogs bark. Have not seen one military vehicle let alone a military person, no civilians with guns.
    Kiev lit up like a Christmas tree.

    Apparently there is a war?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIPNVm6lNfM

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    • #
      PeterS

      Yes, I’ve noticed that too. Either the feeds are fake or it’s all a show master minded by the NWO already in play but not yet revealed with some limited fighting in places for effect. It would not surprise me if the world leaders are talking to each other discussing how to play us and stage the next big crisis. Not really sure. In time we’ll know what’s really going on. Be patient, more will be revealed, at least for those who are awake, which is the exception rather than the rule.

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      OldOzzie

      Thomas Schelling’s MAD MAD World

      COMMENTARY

      Le Drian’s warning was welcome. But was his threat credible? Having nukes isn’t the same as a willingness to use them. The paradox of “mutually assured destruction,” as it was once called – or even the dicey prospect of using “tactical” nukes against military targets – has always been that to avoid nuclear conflict, political and military leaders have to signal a readiness to fight a nuclear war, and they have to make it clear they aren’t bluffing. Putin is already prodding the West with threats meant to test NATO’s resolve. As his invasion seemed to stall Sunday, Putin placed Russia’s “nuclear deterrence force” on alert.

      It is a dilemma not unlike the one confronting JFK in the summer of 1961, when the three-year-old Berlin Crisis risked escalating into a shooting war. Kennedy turned to a variety of advisors to write strategy papers for how he should meet the Soviet challenge. Among the “Dr. Strangeloves” drawing up strategic plans was an economist, Thomas Schelling, who decades later would be honored with a Nobel Prize for his work on the wonky science of strategy called Game Theory. But in the summer of 1961, Schelling was tasked with setting forward rules for something that was very much not a game – the use of nuclear weapons.

      Schelling’s response was remarkable, and not just for its clear-eyed analysis but for its brevity. (Memo to those who would write policy papers hoping to influence decision-makers: Keep your briefs brief. What leader has the time, particularly in a crisis, to read a hundred pages of options and proposals? If you can’t make your case in a few pages, you probably haven’t thought the issues through well enough.) Schelling achieved an astonishing feat. In just two pages he laid out a complete strategy for if, when, and how to use “nuclears” if the Berlin crisis led to war in Europe. Kennedy read Schelling’s memo at Hyannis Port over the weekend of July 21, 1961. Taking notes was National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, who wrote that the paper had made a “deep impression” on the president.

      The most important part of Schelling’s memo to Kennedy was his observation that the traditional metrics of winning a war don’t apply when dealing with nuclears. For example, the sort of bombing that was typical in WWII – attacks meant to degrade an enemy’s war-making capacity – were no longer relevant. “A target in a city is important because a city is destroyed,” Shelling wrote, “not because it is a local supply or communication center.”

      “We should plan for a war of nerve, of demonstration, and of bargaining, not of tactical target destruction.” Schelling recommended. “Destroying the target is incidental to the message the detonation conveys to the Soviet leadership. Targets should be picked with a view to what the Soviet leadership perceives about the character of the war and about our intent, not for tactical importance.”

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      PeterS

      This shows yet again that the MSM are largely providers of fake news:
      Russia-Ukraine War Propaganda Exposed

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    • #
      KP

      Meh- pretty biased language, rather like reading mainstream media.

      I’ve read differently.. Time will tell.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Dr Suneel Dhand talks about why India rejected Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

    https://youtu.be/U22DmAyvaT0

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    • #
      Fran

      Why any country would give blanket indemnity is crazy. The fact that Pfizer insisted on it tells a story.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Timcast talks about deliberate lies from the Leftist “fact checkers”.

    https://youtu.be/uwlKaNfsH0A

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    David Maddison

    Ben Shapiro comments on Biden”s State of the Union Address.

    https://youtu.be/KlmQKmk0FIw

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Paul Joseph Watson talks about more Leftist “fact checker” lies with respect to Ukraine.

    https://youtu.be/sfArW6zppYw

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      MP

      Here is a good breakdown of Ukraine https://www.bitchute.com/video/cklE52QyOQs4/

      Tonyb, what say you.

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        TdeF

        Unfortunately true. The idea that this war is unexpected, unjustified, irrational and about good guys and bad guys is naive. But given that the Western press has been silent on so much, the ignorance is deliberate. Ukranian cluster bombs on children? I had not heard that one. As I write later, we are given no explanation of the war, no explanation at all.

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    RickWill

    EMBARRASSING for global warming prognosticators-
    The 30-year base period for determining ENSO gets updated every 5 years:
    http://bmcnoldy.rsmas.miami.edu/tropics/oni/NINO34_baseperiods.png
    In the 2021 update to produce the base period 1991 to 2020, the actual temperature for determining the anomaly REDUCED for 7 of the twelve months. Not what would be expected for a steady warming world with no natural variability.

    In fact, for the satellite era from 1980 to present, the NINO34 temperature has actually FALLEN at a rate of 1.8C per millennium.

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      Graeme#4

      No sign of that huge cool pool of water out there decreasing. Also no sign of the hot water off the WA coast going away. So it looks like we are in for a long hot summer here in Perth…

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    John Connor II

    Just to counter the irrational anti-Putin nonsense.
    Blame the war-mongering USA instead.
    When your back’s against the wall…
    As trends forecaster Gerald Celente has said for years:
    “Once the business of America was business. Now the business of America is war”
    The USA has been a war machine for decades, realistically post WW2.

    Video clip can be downloaded here:
    https://ufile.io/l5q6duk2

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    OldOzzie

    At the Moment Western Australia

    Western Australia will officially open its hard border to interstate travellers from 12.01am Thursday 3 March 2022.

    Under the new rules, all people arriving into WA must:

    – Have a registered G2G Pass
    Be triple dose vaccinated, if eligible
    – Undertake a Rapid Antigen Test upon arrival within 12 hours and report any positive result.

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  • #
    John Connor II

    Wow. What did I say days ago about Taiwan & TSMC?

    Taiwan hit by widespread power outages

    TAIPEI/KAOHSIUNG, TAIWAN — Taiwan reported a massive blackout on Thursday that is affecting its two biggest cities as well as its most important iPhone processor production hub.

    Government officials estimate about 5 million households are affected by the power outages, including in Taipei, the capital, and Kaohsiung, the second-biggest city.

    https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/Taiwan-hit-by-widespread-power-outages

    They say a “malfunction” but maybe more than that…
    Something else to watch.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      Chicomm cyber attack?

      20

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        David Maddison

        When the Chicomms invade Tawain I’m guessing they’ll launch simultaneous cyber attacks on the already-weakened Western Nations and possibly launch a bioweapon for good measure.

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    David Maddison

    Another Australian human rights violation is that the unvaxxed are not allowed to leave the country.

    This serves no practical purpose except punishment of those that wish to maintain their bodily integrity.

    You’d think the Government would be glad to get rid of political dissidents.

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    • #
      John Connor II

      Should be the other way around.
      “Political dissidents” aka Australian citizens stay and we “export” the commie pollies and their lackeys to a nice communist country like Venezuela where they can “satisfy” Schwab to their hearts content.

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      Serp

      There’s no problem getting out (separate queue for the unvaccinated at the airport) but trouble will surely arise when trying to reenter unvaccinated.

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    John Connor II

    Ukraine war due to end?

    Russia’s secret documents: war in Ukraine was to last 15 days

    https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/03/2/7327539/

    Could be total BS but we’ll find out by next week…

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    David Maddison

    Online advertisers on the legacy Leftist social media websites such as YouTube and Facebook as well as clickbait sites seem to be obsessed with advertisements for earwax removal potions and apparatus. It’s rather off-putting and I don’t understand it. Any idea what’s going on?

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    John Connor II

    RUSSIA & UKRAINE: “WE LIE TO YOU NEWS”

    Daily dose of too-close-to-the-truth satire

    https://www.bitchute.com/video/uTLtlesZE8Pw/

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    David Maddison

    I would like to hear your opinions on the following video. Pierre-Marie Robitaille is a serious scientist and not a crank and says the cosmic microwave background which is claimed to be evidence of the Big Bang is an invalid measurement and the microwave signal measured is of terrestrial origin. This is an introductory video to his multi-part series.

    https://youtu.be/O13ApQvUfb8

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    David Maddison

    Someone sent me this message re Ukraine, something to think about when choosing sides:

    Turns out in 2013 / 2014 the US goverment (Obama) may have funded terrorists to create a false flag attack to oust the Ukrainian goverment at the time and install new goverment as puppet regime to poke the Russian bear, by aligning Ukraine, a border state to Russia, with the West and NATO

    The biggest tell that things are not as they seem is the same people that are pro vax, pro lockdown, pro Biden, anti Trump… are the same people that are telling you Russia is bad

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    • #
      KP

      If Jo’s site was up then it would have been full of the Americans directing the whole protest movement that overthrew the elected Govt. The snipers that shot the protesters that got blamed on the Govt of the time, the usual rent-a-mob to throw bricks and overturn cars & burn them.

      Once they had their foot in the door with the new president they forged on ahead to set Ukraine up to take on Russia, and this is the result they wanted.

      America will fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.

      Ph’d my Mum today, she’s the same age as the Queen, and her recall of WW2 when she was in the WAAFs is still as sharp as ever. These days she can see how they were lied to by Churchill and co, and how innocent & stupid they were to believe them when they were only 19.

      You need a life behind you to see things clearly.

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        Honk R Smith

        KP, American here, I was out producing greenhouse gasses yesterday, the hot war rhetoric on the radio was disturbing.
        Juvenile chest thumping from both sides of the political spectrum.
        Two years of “we must prevent all possible deaths from Covid,”to “send all the ammo possible to Ukraine and Putin must be removed.”
        Maybe it will go as smoothly as removing Saddam and Osama.
        The Teutonic Knights, Napoleon and the Wehrmacht weren’t as smart as us.
        I hope they start in early Spring.

        Bad Orange Man!
        Russia, Russia, Russia!
        Impeachments fails.
        Look! a Virus! (Every death is a tragedy and it’s Trump’s fault.)
        Midterm polling looks bad.
        Russia, Russia, Russia! (Some people must die and it’s Trump’s fault.)

        Clown World (the John Wayne Gacy kind).
        Embarrassing.

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          Dave in the States

          Well The Swamp removed Trump. But removing Putin can’t happen by the same means, and who knows they might be allied beyond the optics and virtue signaling?

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    OldOzzie

    The West’s Green Delusions Empowered Putin

    While we banned plastic straws, Russia drilled and doubled nuclear energy production.

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      David Maddison

      Meabwhile, Australia’s top priority is to ban convenience products (hated by the Left) such as plastic bags and straws and to ban large areas from oil and gas exploration, and even responsible, sustainable commercial fishing.

      No wonder the rising powers of the world such as China and Russia laugh at us and the Chicomms know one day they will have Australia and will actually develop it while enslaving the present population. (Much as they are starting to do in Africa.)

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    John Connor II

    Who you calling bird-brained?

    Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain.

    Birds are remarkably intelligent, although their brains are small. Corvids and some parrots are capable of cognitive feats comparable to those of great apes. How do birds achieve impressive cognitive prowess with walnut-sized brains? We investigated the cellular composition of the brains of 28 avian species, uncovering a straightforward solution to the puzzle: brains of songbirds and parrots contain very large numbers of neurons, at neuronal densities considerably exceeding those found in mammals. Because these “extra” neurons are predominantly located in the forebrain, large parrots and corvids have the same or greater forebrain neuron counts as monkeys with much larger brains. Avian brains thus have the potential to provide much higher “cognitive power” per unit mass than do mammalian brains.

    https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517131113

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      David Maddison

      I guess their brains are optimised for light weight for flight, just like their blood and respiratory system and bones.

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      Chris

      I heard a bird scientist describe their brains as ‘birds run on I-phones and humans run on desk top computers’. To watch a flock of birds take off simultaneously without crashing and bumping into one another, reflects how efficient their brains are by instantly processing a lot of variable information.

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    KP

    Lovely article!! You start out with ‘limited censorship’ to stop the anti-vaxxers endangering the people, and you end up banning Russian media in support of democracy and freedom of the press!

    Defending Freedom And Democracy Sure Requires An Awful Lot Of Censorship

    “The purge of RT and other Russian media outlets in the US and Europe is 100% censorship,” tweets journalist Michael Tracey. “Go ahead and argue it’s justified, but at least don’t be a coward and admit you are advocating censorship.”

    “The western world believes that it has a monopoly on what constitutes ‘political truth’ and that their ideological worldview is the only correct, valid and authoritative one,” writer and analyst Tom Fowdy observed. “They preach freedom of speech and the press to other countries, but exempt themselves from it.”

    https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/defending-freedom-and-democracy-sure?s=r

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      PeterS

      We’ve been experiencing censorship on YT, FB, etc. for some time now so RT News is not alone. Makes one wonder who is our real enemy? Putin is certainly no angel but who is? To be consistent all news channels should be censored, in particular all MSM news. As for the ABC, well many of us have stated for a long time it ought to be defunded for being outright biased to the left. Some would argue more left than Russia. At least in Russia one can be outspoken on Christian moral values without being attacked or arrested for slander or similar.

      20

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    another ian

    Government picks another winner (/s)

    “Stinging, swingeing review for Australian & WA Government supported musical in London.”

    https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/stinging-swingeing-review-for-australian-wa-government-supported-musical-in-london.html

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    Liberator

    According to an op ed in The Age, when heavy rains are not a disaster – its weather, when its a disaster it’s the changing climate, i.e. climate change. We haven’t got bush fires this year we have floods – thank god for that, something else to blame climate change for.

    Make no mistake: these floods are climate change playing out in real time.

    Pay walled and I’m not even going to bother reading the usual clap trap but you can find the op ed if you search the web by the quoted heading.

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      TdeF

      Written a century ago by Dorothea Mackellar.

      “I love a sunburnt country,
      A land of sweeping plains,
      Of ragged mountain ranges,
      Of droughts and flooding rains.”

      This was 120 years ago. Clearly the Climate has NOT changed.

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    David Maddison

    In vitro study shows Pfizer vaccine mRNA is turned into DNA in liver cells and possibly incorporated into nuclear DNA.

    https://youtu.be/MjxlvduyJyc

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    TdeF

    I hate being told what to think.

    On the war between Russia and Ukraine, has anyone read a debate of the reasons behind it? Or attempts to resolve those problems?
    What are the reasons for the conflict, from each side? 3,000 Ukranians have lost their lives already, before this escalation. Why?

    But there is no debate at all, no detailed exposition of the facts, events, incidents and motives. This situation is not new or particularly sudden. It has been going on for most of a decade. Why?

    And what are the demands of each side? Is there fault on the Ukranian side or not? Why have they been shelling their own people?

    Has there been serious provocation by Ukraine and her allies? Have foreign powers like the US under Biden or Germany under Merkel or NATO been playing high risk games, setting Ukraine against Russia. It’s not the first time that European powers have conspired to create a war of opportunity, like the British backed Greek invasion of Turkey in 1919, an attack after the WW1 armistice which devastated both countries. A war of opportunity. And the Australian/British/French invasion of Gallipoli under Churchill in 1914 which was a total failure but was Turkey even a threat at the time? Or was it just the first attempt to bring down the ‘sick man of Europe’ and divide the spoils.

    And what would it take to create a ceasefire in Ukraine today? Is either side open to negotiations? Or is that the problem? Is any neutral party offering to mediate? Everyone is just attacking verbally, financially, with cash and weapons. Do they want resolution or do they want devastation?

    What is the international community doing to help bring the parties together? What is the point of the UN? After WHO, Wuhan flu and the IPCC the UN is potentially the biggest enemy we have, hell bent on a new world order.

    And in the emotional outpouring of support for Ukraine, are we being misled?

    Is the worldwide condemnation of Putin and Putin’s Russia, cancelling of Russia going to help the situation or make it impossible to
    be resolved? And no one seems to want to even start to talk about ending the conflict. Why are they waiting?

    It’s a very popular war in the Western Press, a good war with really good guys and really bad guys. A sort of Justice League Hollywood story. Oppose the Russians with all the cash and weapons we can give the Ukranians. Won’t that just get a lot more people killed? Why? What is the objective?

    Why is there no debate at all in the press, no laying out of the many problems. Where are the experts? Do we really care what Whoopi Goldberg thinks? Is it really just irrational sudden impulse by an evil madman as we are told, because we are told nothing else?

    And if you even suggest that Putin might be telling the truth or even part of it, you are mad. But if he is not utterly bad and mad, what is the story behind eight years of continuous war? It is a story we are not being told, and that makes me think we are being used. Which makes the war doubly tragic because it is popular entertainment and a distraction from all the many failures of the Biden disaster. Or is that it?

    As Ann Coulter wrote, Putin should have invaded Mexico.

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      TdeF

      It was the same in that other proxy war, Vietnam in the 1950s and 60s.

      The Americans had lost their overseas empires in WWII, especially the Phillipines. They kept Hawaii though which even in 1940 was 40% native Japanese. And made it a state of America in 1959.

      And they were now fiercely anti Imperialists, determined to see France out of Indochina, Britain out of India and Holland and Portugal out of the East Indies. So they trained insurgents including Ho Chi Minh in French Vietnam where the local communists had popular support in an uprising against their ultra rich Chinese Catholic bosses who dominated Vietnamese business and society.

      And when the French lost and left a shattered country, the Americans stepped in to ‘save’ Vietnam from the dreaded communists and we Australians conscripted our young people to fight and die. For what? Clearly they had not thought it through. And how did that end up? What is Vietnam like today?

      The irony was when the Americans finally left, China and Vietnam went to major war because that was always the underlying problem.

      The Ukraine war is tragic, like all war. But it is more than likely that foreign powers are behind it all and that is intolerable. We will likely have to wait years before the real story appears. And people who really cared should be using their embassies to lobby Russia and Ukraine to settle, not encouraging war. Threats not action because once you have made the move, the threat ceases to exist. You cannot do it again. Because we all know that in the end, it will have to happen anyway and the embassies will return and trade will resume.

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        TdeF

        And haven’t those British tank busting weapons been great! So effective. So many dead Russian soldiers who likely had not fired a shot. It should make the designers very happy. And the Turkish drones have proven effective opening fire on columns of Russians. Really high value low cost weapons. Must get some of those.

        Now the US is sending hundreds of deadly Stinger missiles to bring down any aircraft. Just like they did in Afghanistan against the Russians. I hope they are keeping track of them. How did that work out?

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          TdeF

          And Putin has responded by putting his country on Nuclear War alert. Clearly he has overreacted. I hope the people provoking Russia have a good plan if he is serious. No, he must be joking.

          21

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          Hanrahan

          I know it’s true, I read it on the web.

          20

      • #
        Len

        The Hawaiian flag has the Union Jack in the corner.

        10

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          TdeF

          That’s because the King of Hawaii made it a condition for the deal. He flew the British flag by choice as his flag. He was a great admirer of a world power which still had a monarch at the head of government. And Captain Cook met his end in the Sandwiches, which was the name chosen by Cook, like so many place names in the Pacific. The name was changed in 1840 to the original name.

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        Bill+In+Oz

        There are no Ukrainian troops invading Russia !
        So your logic is dopey !

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      PeterS

      Not sure yet but I think it’s staged by an already established NWO that snuck in under the radar. Need more evidence to show it’s true. The COVID-19 saga, which we now know was staged ought to have taught us something but the Russian-Ukrainian “incident” has already done a good job of misdirecting a lot of people. We just have to wait and see. In any case, we need to be aware that the globalist agenda hasn’t changed. There are elites and some in governments who want to control us completely. Confidence in governments is on the decline and they know it. So, they want to deal with it somehow to prepare for the inevitable backlash. That means all our freedoms will be taken away, bit by bit. Some kind of Orwellian future will come to pass but with some pleasures attached in an attempt to excite our passions and make the swallowing of the bitter pill more palatable. Many will choke on it though and suffer dearly. Evil is on the rise and we need to be aware and prepared as much as possible.

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    David Maddison

    Why anyone would expect better decisions to be made by third parties who pay no price for being wrong is one of the mysteries of our time.

    Thomas Sowell

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    Bill+In+Oz

    PUTIN is a murderous thug
    And this blog a nest of Putinistas
    Ukraine will triumph over the Russian forces who are all conscripts wondering why the fark they are invading their neighbours
    And Putin himself disposed of by his own people for stuffing thier lives completely

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    TdeF

    I was very happy to read the news just in “Emmanuel Macron held a new 90-minute phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, his office says, the third conversation since the invasion of Ukraine.

    An aide to Mr Macron said the French President had spoken with Mr Putin ‘then called President (Volodymyr) Zelensky’ in Kyiv.”

    That is what is needed, mediation. Respect. Get the problems out in the open. Talk. Negotiate. Bargain. Solve problems.

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    Harves

    “If you are capable of shovelling sand, are fully vaccinated, and willing to do a RAT on arrival, please come into 1 Pateman Road, Erina at 4pm. Your help is greatly appreciated,” NSW SES Gosford posted on Facebook.”

    The fully vaccinated healthy young sandbag fillers still need to be protected from the unvaccinated? That vaccine must be working so well.

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    DP

    Dear Miss Nova

    Meanwhile in dear old Blighty, something strange happened to 0-44 age group excess mortality in 2021:

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/189200946@N04/51912421013/in/dateposted-public/

    It should be interesting to see how 2022 develops.

    Source ONS mortality data for England and Wales – https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales

    DP

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    CHRIS

    And just how many conversations does Macron and Putin (AKA Cockroach) need before Russia withdraws from Ukraine, TdeF? You are nothing more than a 21st Century Chamberlain. Mediation…respect…bargain. What a lot of old hogwash. Putin is the reincarnation of Stalin, and he won’t stop until Russia has Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, The Baltic States and Finland in it’s tentacles. ERWACHE!!

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      TdeF

      As many as he can.

      You have an odd history. Stalin did not conquer these countries, Hitler did. And Hitler and friends slaughtered tens of millions of untermenschen plus six million Jews in an area where up to 40% of the people were Jewish unlike the 3% in Germany.

      Finland was an active combatant and NAZI ally against Russia, as were Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Japan. France and Norway were conquered and Sweden was neutral, but they all provided volunteers to fight and kill the Russians. Even Galicia in Poland.

      90% of all the people who died in WWII were Russian, not American or British or Australian. And all of these countries were given their independence back in time.

      This is a long running regional and deadly dispute between Russian speaking countries over the independence of a region. And the allegedly innocent Ukranians have been shelling their own people with deadly effect for eight years in a civil war. But you would escalate it to World War III? Who is going to fight your war and why?

      Consider Russia is already on nuclear alert. And Nuclear missiles travel at 24,000km/hr, but I am sure our defences will cope. If talks fail, we are no worse off.

      But feel free to catch a plane to Kiev and pick up a gun. They are handing them out. And make sure you speak Russian because very few people speak English.

      And perhaps do not try “Deutschland Erwache”, Germany Awake. It was one of Hitler’s favorite NAZI slogans. That might not endear you to the locals.

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        Graeme No.3

        Sorry TdF, but Finland was invaded by Russia (under Stalin) in 1939/40 (the Winter War).
        Austria & Czechoslavia had no say as they were completely under German control. France didn’t go to war with Russia.
        Japan had a war with Russia in Siberia before the German invasion and got beaten. They may have been on the Axis side but weren’t involved in hostilities with Russia until the end of WW2 when Russian armies invaded the Japanese conquests in Manchuria.

        The Ukraine was a main battleground for the invading (and retreating) Germans. The Ukrainian partisans fought the Germans and then the Russians when they came back (it took the Russians around a year and several divisions to stamp that out).

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          TdeF

          Yes, I know the history of Finland and the first Finnish war. It was what encouraged Hitler as the Russians lost easily. Hitler and Stalin were partners in Poland and the Baltic states fell without a struggle and very small countries at that time. But at least when Germany covered the West of St. Petersburg, the Finns were cautious about closing off Lake Ladoga, which saved St. Petersburg. They had a bet each way and refused the German demands.

          Austria and Czechoslovakia largely welcomed Hitler enthusiastically, but who really knows with so much propaganda. Hungary was still fighting as loyal NAZIs when Berlin fell. It kept the Tigers out of Berlin.

          Technically war was not declared on Japan until the fall of Berlin and by the time the atom bombs fell, the Russians had six million men who had cut the Manchurian army to pieces and were ready to invade Japan, which was a major motivation for the Japanese Emperor to surrender. The Americans were afraid of mass casualties. Stalin was not. But Japan and Russia could be at war in an instant except they both had their hands full in December 1941 and his spies knew there was no immediate war planned on Vladivostok. Information allowed Stalin to recall the tough winter Siberian troops for the critical battle in the snow at the gates of Moscow. Meanwhile at the same time Japan bombed Pearl Harbour before declaring war. Neither Japan nor Russia wanted a declared war on two fronts as Hitler then also declared war on the US.

          My point though was that at one stage Hitler and cronies controlled Europe from the Channel to the Volga, from Finland to Turkey. And Stalin did not invade these countries except to eject the Germans. And they quickly switched sides again, especially Romania and Bulgaria and with the great exception of Hungary. But their armies were active partners with the NAZIs all the way to Stalingrad and the mass slaughter in Kiev at Babi Yar was apparently mainly the Romanians who hated the Russians.

          So comparing Stalin to Putin as invading these countries is wrong. All were under absolute German control when the Russians moved West in 1944, which was my point. This conflict however is a common border civil war between largely Russian speaking peoples, except for the piece of Southern Poland around Lviv which Stalin kept. And Moldava is at peace. Some friends just escaped from Odessa to Moldava and on to Bucharest. People are escaping war but also terrible poverty and rampant disease and food shortages with one of the most corrupt governments in the world.

          The idea that this should turn into a punitive, even world war against Russia is as inappropriate as it is very dangerous and unthinking. Australia is in no position to start encouraging wars on the other side of the planet because the press whip people into a frenzy of righteous indignation. We have enough to worry about.

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            another ian

            “Austria and Czechoslovakia largely welcomed Hitler enthusiastically, but who really knows with so much propaganda. ”

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland

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            Graeme No.3

            TdeF:
            It appears that both of us had trouble sleeping last night.

            I was just pointing out that Stalin made trouble for himself by trying to grab lots of adjoining territory. And the Russians were fighting the Turks in Rumania and Bulgaria in the nineteenth century. They also took part in the partition of Poland (with Germany and Austria) before that. Didn’t make a lot of friends there.
            The reason behind Putin’s grab is
            1. exasperation with the expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia, contrary to many statements made by the West over many years (back to Gorbachev), and taking advantage of Russia being weak.
            2. Europe leaving themselves dependent on Russian gas (thanks to their stupid obsession with “Climate Change”).
            3. The USA is leaderless.

            Ukraine is mess. People are in poverty, the government is corrupt and semi-private armies have been attacking various minorities (there are 6 language groups) including those in the SE with 14-16,000 deaths. And he has made sure that those biowarfare sites aren’t a threat.
            You can’t really blame those countries that joined NATO and the EU. Lots of thoughts of safety from those Russians along with lots of subsidies from the EU. I am sure that Putin factors in that the enthusiasm for NATO will drop.

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    RicDre

    The New Climate Strike – What a Good Idea

    Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen – 1 March 2022

    Glavovic, Timothy F. Smith and Iain White are mad and sad. They are so sad and so mad that they published a comment … in the journal Climate and Development last December: … the comment is simply titled: The tragedy of climate change science.

    In the abstract they say:

    … Given the urgency and criticality of climate change, we argue the time has come for scientists to agree to a moratorium on climate change research …

    Go ahead, make my day!

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/02/the-new-climate-strike-what-a-good-idea/

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    Richard+Ilfeld

    Well, let’s see where we are.
    A vast range of opinions seems represented and reported here, so in this little corner of the universe, at least, censorship,
    which we all deplore, has been relatively ineffective. Is it fair to assume that any of our fellow citizens who are as perspicacious as we are can also seek out their own sources of info? And what do we make of those who seem to lack the capacity or will to do so, whom the “leaders” of this mess presume to speak for?

    The GDP of the US is about 21T. We would have some adjustment to make if the current war forced the world into two competitive transaction systems, one based on the dollar and the other based on the Yen. Both come with baggage.

    The US is, or could readily be self-sufficient in food and energy.
    If there are manufactures in China that, once removed, would leave the “west’ critically short of some goods they are not things that
    are outside the capability of the US or Europe; Pharma would have to ramp up immediately, doing without batteries for electric cars would be irrelevant to overall economic capacity. We’d have to ask folks to use their TV’s and phones for a bit longer, perhaps, while we adjusted to changed trade patterns.

    On the other hand; the world would have to judge the net cost of alliances in the stark light of the current conflict, and any though that a binary system might be stable has to exist under the assumption that Russia will be happy as the junior partner and exploited resource for Chinese hegemony in the dyad.

    The US may have lost some trust; we are bound by trade and culture to a Europe that may have gained some. Have the Russians or Chinese gained any? For trust is the essential currency of a trading system.

    The Germans seem to have rather quickly readjusted some of their thinking. For them, the balance of the “existential” threat from climate change and the other threats they face has changed.

    So too. I think, for many in the US and elsewhere farther from the fray; caught in the liberal echo chamber but understanding what a tipping point looks like and looking for an off ramp that preserves their personal power and position.

    By November (a US election) one might expect many formerly true Greens facing election threats to become “all-of-the-above-responsible-transition” folks. A Congress-person has two ends, a thinking end and a sitting end, and their position in life depends on their seat….so as always consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds.

    Notwithstanding the thunderous applause, there are things they care far more about that the Ukraine.

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      PeterS

      Yes some things are changing through sheer necessity but the most important one has not. We are still facing an Orwellian-like future thanks to the fake MSM and the politicians who are at the behest of globalists like Klaus Schwab, who have only one thing in mind; reduction of mankind to a status not much above that of a mindless robot simply because there is a war looming between governments and the people as the curtain is slowly taken away hiding the wizard. We’ve already seen how our own governments at all levels have suppressed a lot of the truth about the COVID-19 issue, and successfully done so for the vast majority of the people. They can’t keep the lid on it for long so our governments have to keep propping up diversions. The Russia-Ukraine war is one of those diversions. The good news is it will be all over one day but the world will go through but more turmoil first. Martin Armstrong give a gloomy picture short term but he too has some good news later on but I have to disagree as to what that good news will be. I think some already here know what I’m talking about. He however does offer some good short term advice that’s worth acting upon before things get really our of hand in the coming years.
      Ukraine & Reality

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    PeterS

    The Russian ambassador to the UN said that Trump was the legitimate president and that he was ousted (by election fraud). Most of us here know that’s true. Is it so strange to think that most Westerners are treated like fools by our own governments? I’m not saying Putin is a nice guy – on the contrary but let’s be truthful here. Our current leaders are not much better and are arguably worse.

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    farmerbraun

    Macron Says “Prepare For The Worst” In Ukraine After Disheartening Putin Call. LOL
    For “worst” , read “best”.
    Best possible , that is.
    🙂

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    PeterS

    If this is all true then Putin is doing the right thing after all. Can anyone truly show the story below is false? I wish it were but wishing does not uncover the truth.
    Russia Declares War on the Straussians

    Russia is not waging war on the Ukrainian people, but on a small group of people within the US power that has transformed Ukraine without its knowledge, the Straussians. It formed half a century ago and has already committed an incredible amount of crimes in Latin America and the Middle East without the knowledge of the United States. This is their story.

    Read the full story to see how extraordinary it sounds.

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      farmerbraun

      This is where we are at ; getting rid of our politicians who are collaborators with , or , in many cases simply compromised by , the Straussians cf Helen Clark. “Having identified the Straussians, we must admit that Russia’s ambition is understandable, even desirable. To rid the world of the Straussians would be to do justice to the million or more deaths they have caused and to save those they are about to kill. Whether this intervention in Ukraine is the right way remains to be seen.

      In any case, if the responsibility for the current events lies with the Straussians, all those who let them act without flinching also have a responsibility. Starting with Germany and France, who signed the Minsk Agreements seven years ago and did nothing to ensure that they were implemented, and then with the fifty or so states that signed the OSCE declarations prohibiting the extension of Nato east of the Oder-Neisse line and did nothing. Only Israel, which has just got rid of the revisionist Zionists, has expressed a nuanced position on these events.

      This is one of the lessons of this crisis: democratically governed peoples are responsible for the decisions taken for a long time by their leaders and maintained after alternations in power.”

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    another ian

    “America’s NFL lifts all Covid restrictions – for them, the pandemic is over”

    https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/03/americas-nfl-lifts-all-covid-restrictions-for-them-the-pandemic-is-over.html

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    another ian

    Canada

    “Rex Murphy: Tamara Lich Doesn’t Deserve the Humiliation She’s Been Subjected To”

    Via

    “She’s in Leg Shackles?”

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2022/03/03/shes-in-leg-shackles/

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    Robber

    Keeping the lights on.
    At 2.30am Friday, in Victoria coal delivered 107% of demand, wind 9%, exports 16%.
    Wind delivered just 374 MW from nameplate capacity 3,105 MW.
    And last night in SA at 7.30pm, wind delivered 9%, gas 58%, and Vic imports 33%.

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    Steve of Cornubia

    Mask mandate in QLD ends tonight, 4th March, with easing of some other restrictions. However:

    “To ensure we don’t overwhelm our hospital system when we have outbreaks, some restrictions on unvaccinated people are necessary.”

    So much for ‘the science’. Once again, the MSM is failing to hold their favoured pollies to account, who should be forced to produce the evidence they are relying on, showing that unvaccinated people spread Covid but the vaccinated do not.

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    another ian

    “We’re no longer preparing for an emergency. The emergency is HERE.”

    https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/03/were-no-longer-preparing-for-emergency.html

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    philemon

    https://archive.org/details/utopia-2013-s-01-e-01-episode-1-blu-ray

    Yeah, it’s predictive programming, if you’re a brain dead Malthusian.

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    OldOzzie

    Perfidy in Vienna?

    If this is correct, there are just four days left to save America and the world

    Melanie Phillips
    Mar 3

    The air is currently loud with the sound of people prognosticating that the shattering events in Ukraine have shocked the west out of its previous torpor and forced it to realise that it needs to stand up to tyrants rather than appease and even profit from them.

    Really?

    A profoundly alarming thread has surfaced this evening on Twitter. It is written by Gabriel Noronha, a former Iran official at the US State Department.

    Twitter avatar for @GLNoronha

    The thread is about the activities of America’s Iran envoy Robert Malley in the current Vienna talks with Iran about a renewed nuclear deal.

    This is a lightly edited version of what Naronha writes: – 40 items

    If this is correct, then under cover of the Ukraine crisis an act of supreme treachery is being perpetrated by the Biden administration against America and the west in empowering the Iranian regime — an enemy of civilisation that has been at war against America, Israel and the west since it came to power in 1979.

    The west now knows it has been sleepwalking over Putin’s Russia. The time for it to wake up from its similar trance over Iran — and over the Biden administration’s astonishing desperation to give the Iranian regime everything it wants — has almost expired. If Naronha’s information is true, it would seem Congress has just four days left to save America and the world.

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      OldOzzie

      Biden Admin Relies on Russia To Finalize Iran Nuclear Deal as Putin Invades Ukraine

      Even as Moscow invades Ukraine, the Biden administration is relying on Russia to solidify a revamped nuclear agreement with Iran, a deal that senior Republican foreign policy leaders say will be approved in the coming days without any input from Congress.

      As Russian forces press further into Ukraine, threatening to spark a world war, the Biden administration is rushing to finalize a Russia-brokered nuclear deal with Iran, Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), the lead Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Washington Free Beacon.

      “Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine is reprehensible, but we can’t lose sight of the next national security crisis as it forms before our eyes: The Biden administration is reportedly rushing to finalize a deal with Iran, brokered by Russia, that it does not want Congress to review, in violation of U.S. law,” McCaul said.

      Throughout the conflict, the Biden administration has kept diplomatic channels with Moscow open in the hopes it can push Iran into accepting a deal that will provide the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism with billions of dollars in cash windfalls.

      McCaul and other Republican foreign policy leaders who spoke to the Free Beacon about the situation warned that this reliance on Moscow is undermining American and European efforts to isolate Russian president Vladimir Putin for his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. These lawmakers say the conflict threatens to distract attention from negotiations surrounding a new nuclear deal, providing the Biden administration with an opportunity to skirt congressional review of any deal.

      “Congressional review of any Iran nuclear deal was enacted with broad bipartisan support to ensure legislative oversight of any dealings regarding the nuclear program of the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” McCaul said. “If the administration circumvents Congress, that is a blinking red light for the American people that this is a bad deal.”

      Congressional Republicans stand mostly united in opposition to a new deal and have warned the Biden administration that if it signs an agreement without first consulting Congress, as required by law, that deal—and sanctions relief included within it—will be dead on arrival.

      “This is a Reagan moment for our country, but we have a Carter president in the White House,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), also a House Foreign Affairs Committee member, told the Free Beacon. “The Biden Doctrine for foreign policy is acquiesce to our enemies and hope for the best. It’s bound to fail everywhere it’s been tried.”

      While President Joe Biden has vowed to break relations with Russia as a result of its Ukraine invasion, the reliance on Moscow in Iran talks signals that these promises will not be enforced.

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