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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Sure.

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My fellow Americans, trickle-down economics has never worked.

With that simple sentence, Biden officially closed the book on the dominant economic theory of the last 40 years: That success by affluent people at the top of the economy would trickle down to the average American. It's been the theory behind every major tax cut pushed by Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan -- including Donald Trump's 2017 cut -- and is so closely associated with our 40th president that the economic idea is known colloquially as "Reaganomics."

www.cnn.com/2021/04/29/politics/biden-speech-congress-sotu/index.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by THG:
I'm a capitalist not a socialist but we need a big swing in how resources are distributed in this country. Something you SECOND have been saying for years.

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Originally posted by second:

Though Biden is rarely described as gifted orator, his speech was a remarkable performance in part because it didn’t soar and largely didn’t even try to. In plain-spoken language, he depicted a breathtakingly large agenda as plain common sense. Instead of imploring partisans to take sides, he projected bewilderment that any practical-minded person of any persuasion could be opposed.

Under a pose of guilelessness, Biden’s speech was in fact infused with political guile. The agenda he promoted to expand both free pre-school and community college, to subsidize the shift to a low-carbon economy, to fund a massive wave of new public works construction by taxing the very wealthy, represented years of pent-up demand by progressives. But much of the money would be spent in ways designed to break up the Trump coalition, which was powered heavily by middle- and lower-middle class whites who do not have college degrees with contempt for many parts of the progressive agenda.

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Originally posted by THG:

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Originally posted by second:

Though Biden is rarely described as gifted orator, his speech was a remarkable performance in part because it didn’t soar and largely didn’t even try to. In plain-spoken language, he depicted a breathtakingly large agenda as plain common sense. Instead of imploring partisans to take sides, he projected bewilderment that any practical-minded person of any persuasion could be opposed.

Under a pose of guilelessness, Biden’s speech was in fact infused with political guile. The agenda he promoted to expand both free pre-school and community college, to subsidize the shift to a low-carbon economy, to fund a massive wave of new public works construction by taxing the very wealthy, represented years of pent-up demand by progressives. But much of the money would be spent in ways designed to break up the Trump coalition, which was powered heavily by middle- and lower-middle class whites who do not have college degrees with contempt for many parts of the progressive agenda.

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It may have a positive affect on the Trump voter but it was not designed to do so. It's about needed changes and yes those changes will appeal to all who benefit.

T

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An estimated 26.9 million people watched the president’s address across 16 broadcast and cable networks, according to Nielsen figures released this afternoon.

That’s a steep drop from the 47.7 million who watched Donald Trump’s first speech to a joint session on February 28, 2017.

Nielsen reported that the bulk of Biden’s audience — 18.5 million — were 55 and older. The figures include out of home viewing. Starting at around 9:10 PM ET, the just over one hour speech aired live last night on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, Telemundo, Univision, PBS, CNBC, CNN, CNNe, Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel, MSNBC, Newsmax, NewsNation and Newsy.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by THG:

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Originally posted by second:

Though Biden is rarely described as gifted orator, his speech was a remarkable performance in part because it didn’t soar and largely didn’t even try to. In plain-spoken language, he depicted a breathtakingly large agenda as plain common sense. Instead of imploring partisans to take sides, he projected bewilderment that any practical-minded person of any persuasion could be opposed.

Under a pose of guilelessness, Biden’s speech was in fact infused with political guile. The agenda he promoted to expand both free pre-school and community college, to subsidize the shift to a low-carbon economy, to fund a massive wave of new public works construction by taxing the very wealthy, represented years of pent-up demand by progressives. But much of the money would be spent in ways designed to break up the Trump coalition, which was powered heavily by middle- and lower-middle class whites who do not have college degrees with contempt for many parts of the progressive agenda.

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It may have a positive affect on the Trump voter but it was not designed to do so. It's about needed changes and yes those changes will appeal to all who benefit.

T

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Not so funny, but I predict exactly zero Republican Senators will vote for any of these "needed changes". Probably Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia won't vote for it either. If Manchin can't be persuaded by Biden, nothing happens and the Republicans will then take back control of the Senate in 2022. At that point, some really stupid and destructive things begin to happen.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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President Biden’s confused and meandering speech to Congress on Wednesday night bombed worse than the Academic Oscars earlier this week.

The half-empty House chamber made it look like a birthday party where nobody showed up. And the sad losers who did show up were all early-vaxxed and double-masked. Their mothers should have made them all wear helmets.

At least you cannot say it was a terribly partisan affair. Democrats and Republicans alike were joined in the profound desire to drift off to sleep. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the world’s reigning experts at pretending to be awake, blinked back the suffocating tedium.

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Originally posted by JO753:
That will work fine for their readerz, kuz they never check anything themselvz.

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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

The real solution: https://fundrazr.com/71jIY1?ref=ab_f9ZUS0

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by JO753:
That will work fine for their readerz, kuz they never check anything themselvz.

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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

The real solution: https://fundrazr.com/71jIY1?ref=ab_f9ZUS0

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Yup. Gotta run everything by Mika and Joe first.

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Imagine the hypocrisy of a government who will allow businesses to card people to get a job or buy groceries, but won't card people to vote in elections and gives millions of non-citizens free money from taxpayers.

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Originally posted by THG:
Some soy fueled cuck tells you why Biden*'s bad numbers are good.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Biden* does his best to read what's on the teleprompter, but he fucks up often.

I think of him as like another GWB: A mentally compromised President (with GWB he was a brain-burned dry drunk, Biden* is just old) with someone's hand stuck up his ass.

With GWB it was easy to see that he was Cheney's sock puppet. With Biden*, it's harder to see who's hand is filling his personna, prolly more than one. Sometimes leading to schizophrenic results, bc they don't all agree. And then,there are the fuckups, making human unreliable puppet.

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=64362

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Once that inflation starts kicking in on an economy that is already on the brink of collapse, you're going to see Biden*'s numbers free fall.

Gas is over $3.00 by me everywhere, and it was only around $2.20 at the beginning of the year. I don't even remember the last time it was over $3.00 here.

I had to buy an extra 8ft length of pre-primed shit pine that cost me only $4.79 two months ago and was $6.49 before tax yesterday.

For those keeping score, that's one hour of minimum wage work minus taxes for a shittly made piece of scrap wood that weighs about a pound.



I guess free lunches aren't free, huh?

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Give me liberty or just come shoot me in my house. I'm so over this ridiculous reality.

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Originally posted by THG:
Sometimes it’s amusing SECOND seeing the trolls post uninformed propagandized drivel. Though mostly I ignore it. I don’t know how you respond to as much of it as you do.

T

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Speaking of Cheney...

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/05/04/liz-cheney-kevin-mcc
arthy-trump-liberals-485390

How Democrats Learned to Love the Cheneys

I'll spare you from reading whatever BS opinion Politico has on the issue.

It's because they're sellouts and hypocrites.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by THG:

Sometimes it’s amusing SECOND seeing the trolls post uninformed propagandized drivel. Though mostly I ignore it. I don’t know how you respond to as much of it as you do.

T

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I was hoping that 6ix was correct about the cause of gasoline and lumber price increases. Finally, he has told me something I had not been aware of. But when I try to verify details about what 6ix wrote I sadly discover he is full of shit, exactly the same as Trump and every Trumptard I know in Texas. I have been disillusioned once again. My hopes have been dashed.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECONDRATE, if you actually read the article that you posted, you'll see that it says that price increases are due to exactly what SIX said they were due to: easy money.

Low interest rates lead to housing boom and high demand for wood? That's easy money.

Loosening Covid-19 restrictions lead to ppl driving more and spending their stimulus checks on eating out? That's easy money.

Prices go up when there's "too much money chasing too few goods". When the money all went into the hands of the wealthy, inflation occurred in the stock market and luxury goods. If money is placed in the hands of the average consumer, the price of typical goods - gasoline, food, etc - will go up. I'm already seeing increases in grocery store items. Sales are impossible to find, and it's getting harder and harder to stick to a budget. Used car proces increased dramatically last year. Utility rate increases, too.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECONDRATE, if you actually read the article that you posted, you'll see that it says that price increases are due to exactly what SIX said they were due to: easy money.

Low interest rates lead to housing boom and high demand for wood? That's easy money.

Loosening Covid-19 restrictions lead to ppl driving more and spending their stimulus checks on eating out? That's easy money.

Prices go up when there's "too much money chasing too few goods". When the money all went into the hands of the wealthy, inflation occurred in the stock market and luxury goods. If money is placed in the hands of the average consumer, the price of typical goods - gasoline, food, etc - will go up. I'm already seeing increases in grocery store items. Sales are impossible to find, and it's getting harder and harder to stick to a budget. Used car proces increased dramatically last year. Utility rate increases, too.

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SIGNYM:
SECONDRATE, if you actually read the article that you posted, you'll see that it says that price increases are due to exactly what SIX said they were due to: easy money.

Low interest rates lead to housing boom and high demand for wood? That's easy money.

Loosening Covid-19 restrictions lead to ppl driving more and spending their stimulus checks on eating out? That's easy money.

Prices go up when there's "too much money chasing too few goods". When the money all went into the hands of the wealthy, inflation occurred in the stock market and luxury goods. If money is placed in the hands of the average consumer, the price of typical goods - gasoline, food, etc - will go up. I'm already seeing increases in grocery store items. Sales are impossible to find, and it's getting harder and harder to stick to a budget. Used car proces increased dramatically last year. Utility rate increases, too.

SECONDRATE: Signym, 6ix was complaining that Biden caused the price of lumber to increase. It was NOT Biden. The price increased because many more than normal houses have started being built and the sawmills, controlled by the top 1% richest Americans, not Biden, see that as the perfect opportunity to raise prices and gouge 6ix for all his money.

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Biden has no control over any of this because the Federal government does NOT control prices.

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China is a little harder to figure out. Unlike Russia, China is not self-sufficient in most raw resources, and has attained its development as the "factory to the world". It depends on trade, so its red lines extend well beyond China's borders to include BRI and international currency. Needs some thought on what, exactly, China would respond to as an existential threat, and what levers it might choose when retaliating against the west.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

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SIGNYM: China is a little harder to figure out. Unlike Russia, China is not self-sufficient in most raw resources, and has attained its development as the "factory to the world". It depends on trade, so its red lines extend well beyond China's borders to include BRI and international currency. Needs some thought on what, exactly, China would respond to as an existential threat, and what levers it might choose when retaliating against the west.

KIKI: Well, China's put a lot of productive capability into creating a navy and trying to expand into the South China Sea.

It looks to me like China is agitating against Australia, which exports its high grade iron ore significantly to China. Maybe Australia is where China will test its options in the global world.

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Beijing has axed a high-level channel for economic talks with Canberra, blasting Australian leaders for having a “Cold War mentality” after the country canceled two contracts linked to its Belt and Road project.

In a harshly worded statement on Thursday, China’s economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, said the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue would be paused indefinitely.“Recently, some Australian Commonwealth Government officials launched a series of measures to disrupt the normal exchanges and cooperation between China and Australia out of Cold War mindset and ideological discrimination,” the statement read.

Based on the current attitude of the Australian Commonwealth Government toward China-Australia cooperation, the National Development and Reform Commission of the People’s Republic of China decides to indefinitely suspend all activities under the framework of the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue.

Ties, and especially trade relations, between the two states have steadily frayed in recent months, seeing Beijing threaten economic retaliation after Canberra demanded an international probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. Before that, in 2018, Australia moved to ban the Shenzhen-based telecom giant Huawei and passed a number of foreign interference laws targeting Beijing, both prompting terse responses.

Also it’s extremely dangerous that PM believes he’s doing ‘God’s work’ (remember Blair & Iraq?)

The relationship has only deteriorated further in the meantime, with Australian officials scrapping two deals previously signed between Beijing and the state of Victoria for China’s Belt and Road Initiative in March.

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Foreign Minister Marise Payne said the contracts were “inconsistent with Australia’s foreign policy or adverse to our foreign relations,” invoking powers created by legislation passed last year that allows the FM to veto agreements with other nations.

In response, Beijing said the move was “bound to bring further damage to bilateral relations,” making good on that prediction with Thursday’s decision to scrap the economic dialogue.

While relations have been frosty for some time, halting the negotiation channel could spell further trouble for Canberra as it seeks to resolve trade disputes that affect $20 billion in Australian exports, including in key industries such as coal, timber, seafood, wine and barley. As of March, trade between the two countries had dropped by 40% overall, compared to the period before the commerce battle, with Beijing maintaining tariffs on a number of goods

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Speaking of Cheney...

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/05/04/liz-cheney-kevin-mcc
arthy-trump-liberals-485390

How Democrats Learned to Love the Cheneys

I'll spare you from reading whatever BS opinion Politico has on the issue.

It's because they're sellouts and hypocrites.

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Ha Ha

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/06/cheney-wyoming-2022-primary-4
85508

Maybe she should just go ahead and become a Democrat already. All the other NeoCons have.

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Give me liberty or just come shoot me in my house. I'm so over this ridiculous reality.

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I'm a proud progressive who thinks Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney and George W. Bush are true patriots

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This Biden Proposal Could Make the US a “Digital Dictatorship”

A “new” proposal by the Biden administration to create a health-focused federal agency

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modeled after DARPA is not what it appears to be. Promoted as a way to “end cancer,” this resuscitated “health DARPA” conceals a dangerous agenda.
byWhitney Webb
May 5, 2021


Last Wednesday, President Biden was widely praised in mainstream and health-care–focused media for his call to create a “new biomedical research agency” modeled after the US military’s “high-risk, high-reward” Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. As touted by the president, the agency would seek to develop “innovative” and “breakthrough” treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes, with a call to “end cancer as we know it.”

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Far from “ending cancer” in the way most Americans might envision it, the proposed agency would merge “national security” with “health security” in such as way as to use both physical and mental health “warning signs” to prevent outbreaks of disease or violence before they occur. Such a system is a recipe for a technocratic “pre-crime” organization with the potential to criminalize both mental and physical illness as well as “wrongthink.”

The Biden administration has asked Congress for $6.5 billion to fund the agency, which would be largely guided by Biden’s recently confirmed top science adviser, Eric Lander. Lander, formerly the head of the Silicon Valley–dominated Broad Institute, has been controversial for his ties to eugenicist and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his relatively recent praise for James Watson, an overtly racist eugenicist. Despite that, Lander is set to be confirmed by the Senate and Congress and is reportedly significantly enthusiastic about the proposed new “health DARPA.”

This new agency, set to be called ARPA-H or HARPA, would be housed within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and would raise the NIH budget to over $51 billion. Unlike other agencies at NIH, ARPA-H would differ in that the projects it funds would not be peer reviewed prior to approval; instead hand-picked program managers would make all funding decisions. Funding would also take the form of milestone-driven payments instead of the more traditional multiyear grants.

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ARPA-H will likely heavily fund and promote mRNA vaccines as one of the “breakthroughs” that will cure cancer. Some of the mRNA vaccine manufacturers that have produced some of the most widely used COVID-19 vaccines, such as the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, stated just last month that “cancer is the next problem to tackle with mRNA tech” post-COVID. BioNTech has been developing mRNA gene therapies for cancer for years and is collaborating with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create mRNA-based treatments for tuberculosis and HIV.

Other “innovative” technologies that will be a focus of this agency are less well known to the public and arguably more concerning.

ARPA-H is not a new and exclusive Biden administration idea; there was a previous attempt to create a “health DARPA” during the Trump administration in late 2019. Biden began to promote the idea during his presidential campaign as early as June 2019, albeit using a very different justification for the agency than what had been pitched by its advocates to Trump. In 2019, the same foundation and individuals currently backing Biden’s ARPA-H had urged then president Trump to create “HARPA,” not for the main purpose of researching treatments for cancer and Alzheimer’s, but to stop mass shootings before they happen through the monitoring of Americans for “neuropsychiatric” warning signs.

Still from HARPA’s video “The Patients Are Waiting: How HARPA Will Change Lives Now”, Source: http://harpa.org

For the last few years, one man has been the driving force behind HARPA—former vice chair of General Electric and former president of NBCUniversal, Robert Wright. Through the Suzanne Wright Foundation (named for his late wife), Wright has spent years lobbying for an agency that “would develop biomedical capabilities—detection tools, treatments, medical devices, cures, etc.—for the millions of Americans who are not benefitting from the current system.” While he, like Biden, has cloaked the agency’s actual purpose by claiming it will be mainly focused on treating cancer, Wright’s 2019 proposal to his personal friend Donald Trump revealed its underlying ambitions.

As first proposed by Wright in 2019, the flagship program of HARPA would be SAFE HOME, short for Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes. SAFE HOME would suck up masses of private data from “Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo, and Google Home” and other consumer electronic devices, as well as information from health-care providers to determine if an individual might be likely to commit a crime. The data would be analyzed by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms “for early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence.”

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The Department of Justice’s pre-crime approach known as DEEP was activated just months before Trump left office; it was also justified as a way to “stop mass shootings before they happen.” Soon after Biden’s inauguration, the new administration began using information from social media to make pre-crime arrests as part of its approach toward combatting “domestic terror.”

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Given the history of Silicon Valley companies collaborating with the government on matters of warrantless surveillance, it appears that aspects of SAFE HOME may already be covertly active under Biden, only waiting for the formalization of ARPA-H/HARPA to be legitimized as public policy.

The national-security applications of Robert Wright’s HARPA are also illustrated by the man who was its lead scientific adviser—former head of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office Geoffrey Ling. Not only is Ling the main scientific adviser of HARPA, but the original proposal by Wright would have Ling both personally design HARPA and lead it once it was established. Ling’s work at DARPA can be summarized by BTO’s stated mission, which is to work toward merging “biology, engineering, and computer science to harness the power of natural systems for national security.” BTO-favored technologies are also poised to be the mainstays of HARPA, which plans to specifically use “advancements in biotechnology, supercomputing, big data, and artificial intelligence” to accomplish its goals.

The direct DARPA connection to HARPA underscores that the agenda behind this coming agency dates back to the failed Bio-Surveillance project of DARPA’s Total Information Awareness program, which was launched after the events of September 11, 2001. TIA’s Bio-Surveillance project sought to develop the “necessary information technologies and resulting prototype capable of detecting the covert release of a biological pathogen automatically, and significantly earlier than traditional approaches,” accomplishing this “by monitoring non-traditional data sources” including “pre-diagnostic medical data” and “behavioral indicators.”

While nominally focused on “bioterrorist attacks,” TIA’s Bio-Surveillance project also sought to acquire early detection capabilities for “normal” disease outbreaks. Bio-Surveillance and related DARPA projects at the time, such as LifeLog, sought to harvest data through the mass use of some sort of wearable or handheld technology. These DARPA programs were ultimately shut down due to the controversy over claims they would be used to profile domestic dissidents and eliminate privacy for all Americans in the US.

That DARPA’s past total surveillance dragnet is coming back to life under a supposedly separate health-focused agency, and one that emulates its organizational model no less, confirms that many TIA-related programs were merely distanced from the Department of Defense when officially shut down. By separating the military from the public image of such technologies and programs, it made them more palatable to the masses, despite the military remaining heavily involved behind the scenes. As Unlimited Hangout has recently reported, major aspects of TIA were merely privatized, giving rise to companies such as Facebook and Palantir, which resulted in such DARPA projects being widely used and accepted. Now, under the guise of the proposed ARPA-H, DARPA’s original TIA would essentially be making a comeback for all intents and purposes as its own spin-off.

Silicon Valley, the Military and the Wearable “Revolution”

This most recent effort to create ARPA-H/HARPA combines well with the coordinated push of Silicon Valley companies into the field of health care, specifically Silicon Valley companies that double as contractors to US intelligence and/or the military (e.g., Microsoft, Google, and Amazon). During the COVID-19 crisis, this trend toward Silicon Valley dominance of the health-care sector has accelerated considerably due to a top-down push toward digitalization with telemedicine, remote monitoring, and the like.

One interesting example is Amazon, which launched a wearable last year that purports to not only use biometrics to monitor people’s physical health and fitness but to track their emotional state as well. The previous year, Amazon acquired the online pharmacy PillPack, and it is not hard to imagine a scenario in which data from Amazon’s Halo wellness band is used to offer treatment recommendations that are then supplied by Amazon-owned PillPack.

Companies such as Amazon, Palantir, and Google are set to be intimately involved in ARPA-H’s activities. In particular, Google, which launched numerous health-tech initiatives in 2020, is set to have a major role in this new agency due to its long-standing ties to the Obama administration when Biden was vice president and to President Biden’s top science adviser, Eric Lander.

As mentioned, Lander is poised to play a major role in ARPA-H/HARPA if and when it materializes. Before becoming the top scientist in the country, Lander was president and founding director of the Broad Institute. While advertised as a partnership between MIT and Harvard, the Broad Institute is heavily influenced by Silicon Valley, with two former Google executives on its board, a partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Greylock Partners, and the former CEO of IBM, as well as some of its top endowments coming from prominent tech executives.
The Broad Institute, Source: https://www.broadinstitute.org

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who was intimately involved with Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and who is close to the Democratic Party in general, chairs the Broad Institute as of this April. In March, Schmidt gave the institute $150 million to “connect biology and machine learning for understanding programs of life.” During his time on the Broad Institute board, Schmidt also chaired the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a group of mostly Silicon Valley, intelligence, and military operatives who have now charted the direction of the US government’s policies on emerging tech and AI. Schmidt was also pitched as potential head of a tech-industry task force by the Biden administration.

Earlier, in January, the Broad Institute announced that its health-research platform, Terra, which was built with Google subsidiary Verily, would partner with Microsoft. As a result, Terra now allows Google and Microsoft to access a vast trove of genomic data that is poured into the platform by academics and research institutions from around the world.

In addition, last September, Google teamed up with the Department of Defense as part of a new AI-driven “predictive health” program that also has links to the US intelligence community. While initially focused on predicting cancer cases, this initiative clearly plans to expand to predicting the onset of other diseases before symptoms appear, including COVID-19. As noted by Unlimited Hangout at the time, one of the ulterior motives for the program, from Google’s perspective, was for Google to gain access to “the largest repository of disease- and cancer-related medical data in the world,” which is held by the Defense Health Agency. Having exclusive access to this data is a huge boon for Google in its effort to develop and expand its growing suite of AI health-care products.

The military is currently being used to pilot COVID-19–related biometric wearables for “returning to work safely.” Last December, it was announced that Hill Air Force Base in Utah would make biometric wearables a mandatory part of the uniform for some squadrons. For example, the airmen of the Air Force’s 649th Munitions Squadron must now wear a smart watch made by Garmin and a smart ring made by Oura as part of their uniform.

According to the Air Force, these devices detect biometric indicators that are then analyzed for 165 different biomarkers by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency/Philips Healthcare AI algorithm that “attempts to recognize an infection or virus around 48 hours before the onset of symptoms.” The development of that algorithm began well before the COVID-19 crisis and is a recent iteration of a series of military research projects that appear to have begun under the 2007 DARPA Predicting Health and Disease (PHD) project.

While of interest to the military, these wearables are primarily intended for mass use—a big step toward the infrastructure needed for the resurrection of a bio-surveillance program to be run by the national-security state. Starting first with the military makes sense from the national-security apparatus’s perspective, as the ability to monitor biometric data, including emotions, has obvious appeal for those managing the recently expanded “insider threat” programs in the military and the Department of Homeland Security.

One indicator of the push for mass use is that the same Oura smart ring being used by the Air Force was also recently utilized by the NBA to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks among basketball players. Prior to COVID-19, it was promoted for consumer use by members of the British Royal family and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for improving sleep. As recently as last Monday, Oura’s CEO, Harpeet Rai, said that the entire future of wearable health tech will soon be “proactive rather than reactive” because it will focus on predicting disease based on biometric data obtained from wearables in real time.

Another wearable tied to the military that is creeping into mass use is the BioButton and its predecessor the BioSticker. Produced by the company BioIntelliSense, the sleek new BioButton is advertised as a wearable system that is “a scalable and cost-effective solution for COVID-19 symptom monitoring at school, home and work.” BioIntelliSense received $2.8 million from the Pentagon last December to develop the BioButton and BioSticker wearables for COVID-19.

BioIntelliSense CEO James Mault poses with the company’s BioSticker wearable. Source: https://biointellisense.com

BioIntelliSense, cofounded and led by former Microsoft HealthVault developer James Mault, now has its wearable sensors being rolled out for widespread use on some college campuses and at some US hospitals. In some of those instances, the company’s wearables are being used to specifically monitor the side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine as opposed to symptoms of COVID-19 itself. BioIntelliSense is currently running a study, partnered with Philips Healthcare and the University of Colorado, on the use of its wearables for early COVID-19 detection, which is entirely funded by the US military.

While the use of these wearables is currently “encouraged but optional” at these pilot locations, could there come a time when they are mandated in a workplace or by a government? It would not be unheard of, as several countries have already required foreign arrivals to be monitored through use of a wearable during a mandatory quarantine period. Saint Lucia is currently using BioButton for this purpose. Singapore, which seeks to be among the first “smart nations” in the world, has given every single one of its residents a wearable called a “TraceTogether token” for its contact-tracing program. Either the wearable token or the TraceTogether smartphone app is mandatory for all workplaces, shopping malls, hotels, schools, health-care facilities, grocery stores, and hair salons. Those without access to a smartphone are expected to use the “free” government-issued wearable token.
The Era of Digital Dictatorships Is Nearly Here

Making mandatory wearables the new normal not just for COVID-19 prevention but for monitoring health in general would institutionalize quarantining people who have no symptoms of an illness but only an opaque algorithm’s determination that vital signs indicate “abnormal” activity.

Given that no AI is 100 percent accurate and that AI is only as good as the data it is trained on, such a system would be guaranteed to make regular errors: the question is how many. One AI algorithm being used to “predict COVID-19 outbreaks” in Israel and some US states is marketed by Diagnostic Robotics; the (likely inflated) accuracy rate the company provides for its product is only 73 percent. That means, by the company’s own admission, their AI is wrong 27 percent of the time. Probably, it is even less accurate, as the 73 percent figure has never been independently verified.

Adoption of these technologies has benefitted from the COVID-19 crisis, as supporters are seizing the opportunity to accelerate their introduction. As a result, their use will soon become ubiquitous if this advancing agenda continues unimpeded.

Though this push for wearables is obvious now, signs of this agenda were visible several years ago. In 2018, for instance, insurer John Hancock announced that it would replace its life insurance offerings with “interactive policies” that involve individuals having their health monitored by commercial health wearables. Prior to that announcement, John Hancock and other insurers such as Aetna, Cigna, and UnitedHealthcare offered various rewards for policyholders who wore a fitness wearable and shared that data with their insurance company.

In another pre-COVID example, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article in August 2019 that claimed that wearables “encourage healthy behaviors and empower individuals to participate in their health.” The authors of the article, who are affiliated with Harvard, further claimed that “incentivizing use of these devices [wearables] by integrating them in insurance policies” may be an “attractive” policy approach. The use of wearables for policyholders has since been heavily promoted by the insurance industry, both prior to and after COVID-19, and some speculate that health insurers could soon mandate their use in certain cases or as a broader policy.

These biometric “fitness” devices—such as Amazon’s Halo—can monitor more than your physical vital signs, however, as they can also monitor your emotional state. ARPA-H/HARPA’s flagship SAFE HOME program reveals that the ability to monitor thoughts and feelings is an already existing goal of those seeking to establish this new agency.

According to World Economic Forum luminary and historian Yuval Noah Harari, the transition to “digital dictatorships” will have a “big watershed” moment once governments “start monitoring and surveying what is happening inside your body and inside your brain.” He says that the mass adoption of such technology would make human beings “hackable animals,” while those who abstain from having this technology on or in their bodies would become part of a new “useless” class. Harari has also asserted that biometric wearables will someday be used by governments to target individuals who have the “wrong” emotional reactions to government leaders.

Unsurprisingly, one of Harari’s biggest fans, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, has recently led his company into the development of a comprehensive biometric and “neural” wearable based on technology from a “neural interface” start-up that Facebook acquired in 2019. Per Facebook, the wearable “will integrate with AR [augmented reality], VR [virtual reality], and human neural signals” and is set to become commercially available soon. Facebook also notably owns the VR company Oculus Rift, whose founder, Palmer Luckey, now runs the US military AI contractor Anduril.

As recently reported, Facebook was shaped in its early days to be a private-sector replacement for DARPA’s controversial LifeLog program, which sought to both “humanize” AI and build profiles on domestic dissidents and terror suspects. LifeLog was also promoted by DARPA as “supporting medical research and the early detection of an emerging pandemic.”

It appears that current trends and events show that DARPA’s decades-long effort to merge “health security” and “national security” have now advanced further than ever before. This may partially be because Bill Gates, who has wielded significant influence over health policy globally in the last year, is a long-time advocate of fusing health security and national security to thwart both pandemics and “bioterrorists” before they can strike, as can be heard in his 2017 speech delivered at that year’s Munich Security Conference. That same year, Gates also publicly urged the US military to “focus more training on preparing to fight a global pandemic or bioterror attack.”

In the merging of “national security” and “health security,” any decision or mandate promulgated as a public health measure could be justified as necessary for “national security,” much in the same way that the mass abuses and war crimes that occurred during the post-9/11 “war on terror” were similarly justified by “national security” with little to no oversight. Yet, in this case, instead of only losing our civil liberties and control over our external lives, we stand to lose sovereignty over our individual bodies.

The NIH, which would house this new ARPA-H/HARPA, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars experimenting with the use of wearables since 2015, not only for detecting disease symptoms but also for monitoring individuals’ diets and illegal drug consumption. Biden played a key part in that project, known as the Precision Medicine initiative, and separately highlighted the use of wearables in cancer patients as part of the Obama administration’s related Cancer Moonshot program. The third Obama-era health-research project was the NIH’s BRAIN initiative, which was launched, among other things, to “develop tools to record, mark, and manipulate precisely defined neurons in the living brain” that are determined to be linked to an “abnormal” function or a neurological disease. These initiatives took place at a time when Eric Lander was the cochair of Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology while still leading the Broad Institute. It is hardly a coincidence that Eric Lander is now Biden’s top science adviser, elevated to a new cabinet-level position and set to guide the course of ARPA-H/HARPA.

Thus, Biden’s newly announced agency, if approved by Congress, would integrate those past Obama-era initiatives with Orwellian applications under one roof, but with even less oversight than before. It would also seek to expand and mainstream the uses of these technologies and potentially move toward developing policies that would mandate their use.

If ARPA-H/HARPA is approved by Congress and ultimately established, it will be used to resurrect dangerous and long-standing agendas of the national-security state and its Silicon Valley contractors, creating a “digital dictatorship” that threatens human freedom, human society, and potentially the very definition of what it means to be human.

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US Troops Accused Of Pillaging Syrian Grain Silos As Russia Warns Of Increased Occupation

..."US occupation forces brought out a new batch of Syrian wheat stolen from Tal Alou silos in Hasaka countryside to the north of Iraq," state-run SANA reported Wednesday.

"Local sources in al-Sweidia village in al-Ya’arubia area told SANA reporter that a convoy of 35 trucks laden with wheat stolen from Tal Alou silos left under a protection of an armed group affiliated to US occupation –backed QSD militia through al-Waleed illegitimate crossing heading for north Iraq," the report said.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

It's not enough that the USA imposes unilateral ("illegal", in international law) sanctions, it requires that OTHERS participate in its sanctions as well. One of those sanctions is against Syria, another is against Iran, and the USA thinks nothing of pirating Iranian oil tankers bound for Syria and -literally- stealing oil. We've become as bad as the Somali pirates operating around the Horn of Africa.

And now, we steal food ...

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US Troops Accused Of Pillaging Syrian Grain Silos As Russia Warns Of Increased Occupation

..."US occupation forces brought out a new batch of Syrian wheat stolen from Tal Alou silos in Hasaka countryside to the north of Iraq," state-run SANA reported Wednesday.

"Local sources in al-Sweidia village in al-Ya’arubia area told SANA reporter that a convoy of 35 trucks laden with wheat stolen from Tal Alou silos left under a protection of an armed group affiliated to US occupation –backed QSD militia through al-Waleed illegitimate crossing heading for north Iraq," the report said.

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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-troops-accused-pillaging-syr
ian-grain-silos-russia-warns-increased-occupation

We have truly sunk below the level of barbarians.

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Originally posted by THGRRI:
I think this needs its own thread. SIG pulls most of her information that she posts here from this blog and stupidly defends it as a reputable source. As she continues to do so I will regenerate this thread to remind all it is a corrupted blog designed to create havoc rather than informing.

Below are the names of those behind zero hedge. Don't miss what I've highlighted in red below. This folks is why comrade troll SIG loves to quote zero hedge.

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Pepe Escobar

Picture yourself about to meet a girl with kaleidoscope eyes… No. Sorry. Actually picture merry lines of code in the R programming language – wallowing in a happy valley of game theory models which would not preclude Goth or New Romantic Walkyrie dancin’ to the 12-inch version of Bauhaus’s Bela Lugosi is Dead.

Imagine this reverie coming about because of a “pin!” in your inbox. After all you have just been presented with an astonishing piece of intel. You scramble to the exit, actually the entrance of the Magic Theater, where you ask, Keats-style, Was it a dream? Do I wake or sleep?

So what was the dream about? Oh, something so prosaic, so down to the nitty gritty geopolitics: what really happened during the visit of US Secretary of State Tony Blinken to Ukraine.

The great Andrei Martyanov has remarked that Blinken “told Kiev behind the scenes to ‘dial it down’, amidst the fluffy tropes about US concern for Ukraine’s ‘sovereignty’ and ‘security’”.

Well, looks like there was way more than fluffy tropes.

Leaked info on the closed-door meeting between Blinken and Comedian-in-Charge Zelensky is no less than incandescent. Blinken seemed to have read a no holds barred riot act.

Here are the guidelines. All Ukrainian state corporations must be controlled by the proverbial “foreign interests”. So board majorities must be either foreign or 5th columnists. The entire anti-corruption vertical drive must also be foreign-controlled. Same for the judicial system.

Andriy Kobolyev – an American asset – must be reinstated as head of Naftogaz. Zelensky moved mountains to get rid of Kobolyev.

Blinken demanded a massive push against every Ukrainian oligarch, so that huge chunks of Ukrainian economy are transferred to – who else – foreigners. Same for land privatization.

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Somewhat hilariously, Blinken warned that Russian troops might invade Ukraine. In this case, Zelensky can count only on huge political assistance, not military. So Zelensky in fact was ordered to stop asking to join NATO and cease provoking Russia, as President Putin, who already drew red lines, could make a “drastic decision”.

Blinken demanded that American assets should be untouchable by Ukrainian law, and named honored figures of civil society. Maidan cookie distributor Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, also in the room, drew up a list of The Untouchables, and Blinken met with them separately.

Finally, the giant ghost hanging over the whole trip to Kiev had to make itself known. In practice, Zelensky was invited to turn in everyone in Ukraine who helped bring information about Hunter Biden to the media via Rudolph Giuliani.

According to the source who had access to the leak, Zelensky was left beyond speechless. That’s not exactly what he was expecting. Especially when it comes to transferring valuable assets controlled by Ukrainian oligarchs to “foreign interests”. Someone will inevitably whack him.

No one is touching this leak – as if it was radioactive poison. No one will confirm it. Its plausibility though cannot be denied.

Contradicting these powerful, left unnamed “foreign interests” is simply out of the question. They now seem to be guided by a "take the money and run” logic, as in taking over the looting of Ukraine lock, stock and barrel before the whole thing – actually a failed state – blows up.

Pity those oligarchs who thought they were going to loot the land through privatization. Instead the money is on a one way out journey. Follow the money. Follow the dream.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

THE LOOTING OF UKRAINE

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Pepe Escobar

Picture yourself about to meet a girl with kaleidoscope eyes… No. Sorry. Actually picture merry lines of code in the R programming language – wallowing in a happy valley of game theory models which would not preclude Goth or New Romantic Walkyrie dancin’ to the 12-inch version of Bauhaus’s Bela Lugosi is Dead.

Imagine this reverie coming about because of a “pin!” in your inbox. After all you have just been presented with an astonishing piece of intel. You scramble to the exit, actually the entrance of the Magic Theater, where you ask, Keats-style, Was it a dream? Do I wake or sleep?

So what was the dream about? Oh, something so prosaic, so down to the nitty gritty geopolitics: what really happened during the visit of US Secretary of State Tony Blinken to Ukraine.

The great Andrei Martyanov has remarked that Blinken “told Kiev behind the scenes to ‘dial it down’, amidst the fluffy tropes about US concern for Ukraine’s ‘sovereignty’ and ‘security’”.

Well, looks like there was way more than fluffy tropes.

Leaked info on the closed-door meeting between Blinken and Comedian-in-Charge Zelensky is no less than incandescent. Blinken seemed to have read a no holds barred riot act.

Here are the guidelines. All Ukrainian state corporations must be controlled by the proverbial “foreign interests”. So board majorities must be either foreign or 5th columnists. The entire anti-corruption vertical drive must also be foreign-controlled. Same for the judicial system.

Andriy Kobolyev – an American asset – must be reinstated as head of Naftogaz. Zelensky moved mountains to get rid of Kobolyev.

Blinken demanded a massive push against every Ukrainian oligarch, so that huge chunks of Ukrainian economy are transferred to – who else – foreigners. Same for land privatization.

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This is what we did to Russia 1990-2000, but to a much smaller country and on a much smaller scale. Well, when you're a starving parasite,I guess you can't be too choosy.

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Somewhat hilariously, Blinken warned that Russian troops might invade Ukraine. In this case, Zelensky can count only on huge political assistance, not military. So Zelensky in fact was ordered to stop asking to join NATO and cease provoking Russia, as President Putin, who already drew red lines, could make a “drastic decision”.

Blinken demanded that American assets should be untouchable by Ukrainian law, and named honored figures of civil society. Maidan cookie distributor Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, also in the room, drew up a list of The Untouchables, and Blinken met with them separately.

Finally, the giant ghost hanging over the whole trip to Kiev had to make itself known. In practice, Zelensky was invited to turn in everyone in Ukraine who helped bring information about Hunter Biden to the media via Rudolph Giuliani.

According to the source who had access to the leak, Zelensky was left beyond speechless. That’s not exactly what he was expecting. Especially when it comes to transferring valuable assets controlled by Ukrainian oligarchs to “foreign interests”. Someone will inevitably whack him.

No one is touching this leak – as if it was radioactive poison. No one will confirm it. Its plausibility though cannot be denied.

Contradicting these powerful, left unnamed “foreign interests” is simply out of the question. They now seem to be guided by a "take the money and run” logic, as in taking over the looting of Ukraine lock, stock and barrel before the whole thing – actually a failed state – blows up.

Pity those oligarchs who thought they were going to loot the land through privatization. Instead the money is on a one way out journey. Follow the money. Follow the dream.

---

http://thesaker.is/pictures-of-a-ukrainian-dream/

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

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Originally posted by reaverfan:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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THE LOOTING OF UKRAINE
Pepe Escobar

Picture yourself about to meet a girl with kaleidoscope eyes… No. Sorry. Actually picture merry lines of code in the R programming language – wallowing in a happy valley of game theory models which would not preclude Goth or New Romantic Walkyrie dancin’ to the 12-inch version of Bauhaus’s Bela Lugosi is Dead.

Imagine this reverie coming about because of a “pin!” in your inbox. After all you have just been presented with an astonishing piece of intel. You scramble to the exit, actually the entrance of the Magic Theater, where you ask, Keats-style, Was it a dream? Do I wake or sleep?

So what was the dream about? Oh, something so prosaic, so down to the nitty gritty geopolitics: what really happened during the visit of US Secretary of State Tony Blinken to Ukraine.

The great Andrei Martyanov has remarked that Blinken “told Kiev behind the scenes to ‘dial it down’, amidst the fluffy tropes about US concern for Ukraine’s ‘sovereignty’ and ‘security’”.

Well, looks like there was way more than fluffy tropes.

Leaked info on the closed-door meeting between Blinken and Comedian-in-Charge Zelensky is no less than incandescent. Blinken seemed to have read a no holds barred riot act.

Here are the guidelines. All Ukrainian state corporations must be controlled by the proverbial “foreign interests”. So board majorities must be either foreign or 5th columnists. The entire anti-corruption vertical drive must also be foreign-controlled. Same for the judicial system.

Andriy Kobolyev – an American asset – must be reinstated as head of Naftogaz. Zelensky moved mountains to get rid of Kobolyev.

Blinken demanded a massive push against every Ukrainian oligarch, so that huge chunks of Ukrainian economy are transferred to – who else – foreigners. Same for land privatization.

---

Quote:

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This is what we did to Russia 1990-2000, but to a much smaller country and on a much smaller scale. Well, when you're a starving parasite,I guess you can't be too choosy.

---

Quote:

---

Somewhat hilariously, Blinken warned that Russian troops might invade Ukraine. In this case, Zelensky can count only on huge political assistance, not military. So Zelensky in fact was ordered to stop asking to join NATO and cease provoking Russia, as President Putin, who already drew red lines, could make a “drastic decision”.

Blinken demanded that American assets should be untouchable by Ukrainian law, and named honored figures of civil society. Maidan cookie distributor Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, also in the room, drew up a list of The Untouchables, and Blinken met with them separately.

Finally, the giant ghost hanging over the whole trip to Kiev had to make itself known. In practice, Zelensky was invited to turn in everyone in Ukraine who helped bring information about Hunter Biden to the media via Rudolph Giuliani.

According to the source who had access to the leak, Zelensky was left beyond speechless. That’s not exactly what he was expecting. Especially when it comes to transferring valuable assets controlled by Ukrainian oligarchs to “foreign interests”. Someone will inevitably whack him.

No one is touching this leak – as if it was radioactive poison. No one will confirm it. Its plausibility though cannot be denied.

Contradicting these powerful, left unnamed “foreign interests” is simply out of the question. They now seem to be guided by a "take the money and run” logic, as in taking over the looting of Ukraine lock, stock and barrel before the whole thing – actually a failed state – blows up.

Pity those oligarchs who thought they were going to loot the land through privatization. Instead the money is on a one way out journey. Follow the money. Follow the dream. http://thesaker.is/pictures-of-a-ukrainian-dream/

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

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Butting Heads with China and Russia
American Diplomats Are Outclassed
Philip Giraldi • May 13, 2021 • 1,600 Words • 69 Comments • Reply

With the exception of the impending departure of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan, if it occurs, the White House seems to prefer to use aggression to deter adversaries rather than finesse. The recent exchanges between Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a meeting in Alaska demonstrate how Beijing has a clear view of its interests which Washington seems to lack. Blinken initiated the acrimonious exchange when he cited “deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, economic coercion toward our allies. Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability. That’s why they’re not merely internal matters, and why we feel an obligation to raise these issues here today.” He then threatened “I said that the United States relationship with China will be competitive where it should be, collaborative where it can be, adversarial where it must be” before adding “I’m hearing deep satisfaction that the United States is back, that we’re reengaged with our allies and partners. I’m also hearing deep concern about some of the actions your government is taking.”

The Chinese Foreign Minister responded sharply, rejecting U.S. suggestions that it has a right to interfere in another country’s domestic policies, “I think we thought too well of the United States, we thought that the U.S. side will follow the necessary diplomatic protocols. The United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength. We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image, and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world.” Yi had a point. Ironically, most of the world believes that the U.S. represents a greater threat to genuine democracy than does either China or Russia.

In another more recent interview Blinken has accused the Chinese of acting “more aggressively abroad” while President Biden has claimed that Beijing has a plan to replace America as the world’s leading economic and military power. U.S. United Nations envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield has also delivered the same message that Washington is preparing to take no prisoners, pledging to push back against what she called China’s “authoritarian agenda” through the various agencies that make up the UN bureaucracy. Indeed, the United States seems trapped in its own rhetoric, finding itself in the middle of a situation with China and Taiwan where warnings that Beijing is preparing to use force to recover its former province leave Washington with few options to support a de facto ally. Peter Beinart in a recent op-ed observes how the White House has been incrementally increasing its diplomatic ties with Taiwan even as it both declares itself “rock solid” on defending while also maintaining “strategic ambiguity.”

China understands its interests while the U.S. continues to be bewildered by Beijing’s successful building of trade alliances worldwide. Meanwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin, reputedly an excellent chess player, is able to think about genuine issues in three dimensions and is always at least four moves ahead of where Biden and his advisers are at any time. Biden public and video appearances frequently seem to be improvisations as he goes along guided by his teleprompter while Putin is able to explain issues clearly, apparently even in English.

A large part of Biden’s problem vis-à-vis both China and Russia is that he has inherited a U.S. Establishment view of foreign and national security policy options. It is based on three basic principles. First, that America is the only superpower and can either ignore or comfortably overcome the objections of other nations to what it is doing. Second, an all-powerful and fully resourced United States can apply “extreme pressure” to recalcitrant foreign governments and those regimes will eventually submit and comply with Washington’s wishes. And third, America has a widely accepted leadership role of the so-called “free world” which will mean that any decision made in Washington will immediately be endorsed by a large number of other nations, giving legitimacy to U.S. actions worldwide.

What Joe Biden actually thinks is, of course, unknown though he has a history of reflexively supporting an assertive and even belligerent foreign policy during his many years in Congress. Kamala Harris, who many believe will be succeeding Biden before too long, appears to have no definitive views at all beyond the usual Democratic Party cant of spreading “democracy” and being strong on Israel. That suggests that the real shaping of policy is coming from the apparatchik and donor levels in the party, to include the neocon-lite Zionist triumvirate at the State Department consisting of Tony Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Kagan as well as the upper-level bureaucracies at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, which all support an assertive and also interventionist foreign policy to keep Americans “safe” while also increasing their budgets annually. Such thinking leaves little room for genuine national interests to surface.

Biden’s Secretary of State Tony Blinken is, for example, the perfect conformist bureaucrat, shaping his own views around established thinking and creating caveats to provide the Democratic Party leadership with some, though limited, options. Witness for example the current White House attitude towards Iran, which is regarded, along with Russia, as a permanent enemy of the United States. President Biden has expressed his interest in renegotiating a non-nuclear proliferation treaty with the Iranians, now being discussed by diplomats without direct contact in Austria. But Blinken undercuts that intention by wrapping the talks in with other issues that are intended to satisfy the Israelis and their friends in Congress that will make progress unlikely if not impossible. They include eliminating Iran’s alleged role as a regional trouble maker and also ending the ballistic missile development programs currently engaged in by the regime. The downside to all of this is that having a multilateral agreement to limit Iranian enhancement of uranium up to a bomb-making level is very much in the U.S. interest, but it appears to be secondary to other politically motivated side discussions which will derail the process.

A foreign and national security policy based on political dogma rather than genuine interests can obviously generate some disconnects, unlike in Russia or China, where redlines and national interests are clearly understood and acted upon. To cite yet another dangerous example of playing with fire that one is witnessing in Eastern Europe, the simple understanding that for Russia Belarus and Ukraine are frontline states that could pose existential threats to Moscow if they were to move closer to the west and join NATO appears to be lacking. The U.S. prefers to stand the question on its head and claims that the real issue is “spreading democracy,” which it is not. Policy makers in Washington might consider what Washington would likely do if Mexico and Canada were to be threatened with foreign interference that might bring about their joining a military alliance hostile to the United States.

The American Establishment-driven foreign policy thinking clearly has trouble in accommodating the obvious understanding that the U.S. actually becomes more vulnerable every time it interferes in China’s trade practices or gives the green light for alliances like NATO to expand. Expansion of the national security policy components often brings in another client state that rarely has anything whatsoever to contribute and which, on the contrary, becomes a burden, relying for their own security on overstretched American military resources. In return, the expansion itself guarantees that a hostile and genuinely threatened Russia will take steps of its own to counter what it sees as a potential grave threat to its own security and national identity.

Quite simply, America’s national security should dictate that the United States treat China as a competitor rather than ane enemy while also disengaging from support and encouragement of Ukraine’s irredentist ambitions as quickly as possible. A recent shipment of offensive weapons to Kiev should become the last such initiative and speeches by American politicians pledging “unwavering support” for Ukraine should be considered unacceptable. Washington should meanwhile reject any clandestine attempts to overthrow Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus and make clear to Vladimir Putin that it will not support any NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, which admitted was a pledge already made when the Soviet Union collapsed that was subsequently ignored by President Bill Clinton. Thanks to Bill, America is now obligated to defend not only Western Europe but also Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, North Macedonia, the Baltic States and tiny little Montenegro.

In short, United State engagement in complicated overseas quarrels should be limited to areas where genuine vital interests are at stake. In fact, by that standard one should begin to emphasize the security impact of the crisis on America’s southern border, which has a completely different genesis and is being driven by politics. As British statesman Lord Palmerston said in 1848 “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” The United States government would be very wise to be guided by that advice.

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