Facebook Inc on Saturday blamed a technical error for Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s name appearing as “Mr Shithole” in posts on its platform when translated into English from Burmese, apologizing for any offense caused.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-facebook/facebook-says-technical-error-caused-vulgar-translation-of-chinese-leaders-name-idUSKBN1ZH0IB

Posted by: Mao | Jan 20 2020 10:04 utc | 101

@ karlof1 | Jan 19 2020 22:52 utc | 58 In re: Those closed-cycle links.

Thanks. I read and kept copies.

It's still problematic, of course, every reactor gets "sparking hot" from neutron flux, the chemistry department gets sparkley too, and then there's mining and all the rest - and the institutional problem I mentioned - boredom, idiots, emergency goes badly with idiots... And maintenance all runs on diesel... It's a multiplier.

But whatever we might dream about, fission seem to be the way a lot of water is going to get boiled, so to say.

If the heavens permit the necessary physics, it may be that LENRs will be less difficult - but nobody knows about that. I'd like to have one to heat my digs though... ;-), and LENR might be a way to make a kw or two in a box under the kitchen table. Maybe, Someday. Nobody knows.

The closed N cycle is closed technically, yes, but hardly ideal. It may be what we must live with.

I would not trust the renter class of "capitalists" (thugs and bandits) to have anything to do with atomics. Nor trust pols who are as ignorant as hammers... The management is a vastly difficult matter.

Obviously the closed N cycle presents badits with a juicy target, and represents, requires, transmission lines - thus centralized not just energy but also political power... which is something people tend to fight over.

That's not new, but it is undesirable. We live with it.

Thanks again for the links. W.

Posted by: Walter | Jan 20 2020 10:19 utc | 102

Posted by: james | Jan 19 2020 17:24 utc | 15

The Russian one.

Posted by: Per/Norway | Jan 20 2020 15:43 utc | 103

Posted by: evilempire | Jan 19 2020 17:21 utc | 14

If you paste this into youtube "COMBAT APPROVED S1 • E28
Tor: In Pursuit of the Uncatchables. Russia’s mobile anti-missile vehicles can knock out any barrage"
they show us the optical system when they shoot down a drone.
I did not know but after seeing that doc i was convinced there is A LOT MORE to this then we have been told by Iran.. Personally i suspect foul play by the empire but as the rest of us i cant prove a thing..

Posted by: Per/Norway | Jan 20 2020 15:48 utc | 104

Posted by: oglalla | Jan 19 2020 18:13 utc | 20
I can not see any problem with them, you told the truth imho.

Posted by: Per/Norway | Jan 20 2020 15:50 utc | 105

Posted by: A P | Jan 19 2020 18:56 utc | 31

I cant seem to find the link rn but i believe i read about a new Russian nuclear reactor that burn "garbage" from old reactors and is suposedly "the safest" new nuclear tech.
Have you any idea if that is doable or was i reading to much into a science i have no knowledge about?

Posted by: Per/Norway | Jan 20 2020 16:01 utc | 106

Perimtr @49, 83

Thanks for all those useful stats.

While I think that burning up unwanted actinides is an interesting concept, in the total picture, it just doesn't solve the problem. As many have pointed out, there is so much radiation in the non-actinide parts of the fuel cycle (Radon and other elements in mine tailings, elements like Cesium produced in the reactor) that the calculation can't be based on actinide cleanup alone. You must look at the total cradle-to-grave fuel cycle. And the "grave" end goes on for tens of thousands of years.

Furthermore, the whole language of "burning" plutonium is bogus, as the Scientific American article which contains the snip below explains:

Ultimately, however, the core problem may be that such new reactors don't eliminate the nuclear waste that has piled up so much as transmute it. Even with a fleet of such fast reactors, nations would nonetheless require an ultimate home for radioactive waste, one reason that a 2010 M.I.T. report on spent nuclear fuel dismissed such fast reactors. Or, as Cochran puts it: "If you want to get rid of milk, don't feed it to cows."

- Can Fast Reactors Speedily Solve Plutonium Problems?

Notice that, in addition to the many technical glitches covered in this article, it also references an MIT report on the problematic nature of fast breeders.

MIT, Scientific American - hardly wild eyed source material. IOW, even the corporate scientists know this idea won't fly. I find it hilarious that the same Establishment that finds all this Russian to be horrible is pointing to this Russian technology as a good thing. The propaganda from the nuke industry just makes one's head spin.

Posted by: john brewster | Jan 20 2020 16:02 utc | 107

Good to see we have many people here watching the nuclear power industry and technology.

to c1ue: Nearly all the existing nuc plants world-wide are at, approaching, or beyond their "design life", CANDUs particularly. The problem is that since no new nuc plants are being built, and renewables are not YET able to fully substitute for coal/gas/nuc, the old nuc plants are being refurbished instead of decommissioned.

The problem comes when the original spec Qualified nuc components are no longer available. This is not necessarily the big stuff, physically small stuff like motors, valves and various control components fulfill key operating and safety functions. Between expense, liability issues and former suppliers going out of business, finding direct replacements is becoming increasingly difficult. Companies that got out of the nuc business will not sell or otherwise release their designs for reproduction, as the liability for a major failure could be put back on that original company and personnel. I have first-hand knowledge of this process happening, and the lengths the nuc plants will try to push suppliers to sidestep the rules rather than face the reality that using a close-but-not-exact replacement often involves redesigning and replacing far more surrounding infrastructure than just the single item.

This is compounded when the original Qualification testing cherry-picked the best results from several tests rather than a set of individual components actually passing all the tests. As in some samples of item A passed tests 1 of 3 tests, some other samples passed test 2, others test 3. No single item passed all the required tests, which are intended to simulate the expected sequence of conditions in an event. The Qualified items are expected to last long enough to allow the plant to be able to be shut down under the full assault of heat, radiation and other system failures.

And when the subject turns to "dedicated commercial" (batch tested/qualified) components used in early plant and N-stamp projects, there are not even any current qualified products available for "nearly identical" direct substitution.

The ongoing costs to refurb Pickering units out to 2033 is expected to run into the tens of $billions. Too cheap to meter eh? Darlington is in less of a pickle because that plant is newer and it is less problematic to find "close enough" replacement Qualified components.

I agree that disposal/sequestration technologies should have been fully developed BEFORE the bulk of plants were built, but it wasn't, so spent fuel is too often either stored in pools or used for nasty things like DU bullets, shells and bombs. That needs to change before any new nuc plants are built.

All mining/refining is environmentally nasty business, uranium just a bit more so. I am more concerned with the Tar Sands "industry" leaving the northern parts of Alberta and Sask (an area about the size of Britain) contaminated with tailing pond residue and a deeply damaged ecology of poor drainage/soils.

The issues of nuc power can be dealt with if there is the will to do so, BUT, it will NOT be cheap.

Posted by: A P | Jan 20 2020 16:04 utc | 108

The nyts says;warren and klobuchar for potus.?.which one?biden?hahaha.Sanders and Gabbard must be quaking in boots.

Posted by: dahoit | Jan 20 2020 17:10 utc | 109

@ Posted by: dahoit | Jan 20 2020 17:10 utc | 107

Unfortunately I suspect there are people who read the NYT and (worse yet) some who take it seriously.

They could kick people in the face and they would scurry back with their shekels to buy the next issue to read about it.

We do it to ourselves.

Posted by: jared | Jan 20 2020 17:27 utc | 110

According to this article Trump is going down...the swamp is striking back...

https://tomluongo.me/2020/01/14/impeachment-soleimani-pull-swamp/

Posted by: notlurking | Jan 20 2020 17:32 utc | 111

Regarding Trumps poodles -

It is hard to believe that European nations are so low in self esteem that they respond slavishly to U.S. president - particularly one who is such an idiot. Far more likely is that they are both responding to shared master/motivations. More like a pack of rabid poodles.

Honestly, I think Trump does not merit serious discussion - he is a petulant, immature, nit-wit responding in instinctive and self-promoting fashion to input from manipulative psychopaths. He can affect outcomes, but he has no control.

It is interesting and distressing to observe that the president has no means of receiving information except through the corrupt bureaucracy and no means to implement policy except through the same corrupt bureaucracy. It would be difficult (or impossible) even for a stable genius.

All that mocking aside. They are clowns, but they are deadly serious clowns.

Posted by: jared | Jan 20 2020 17:46 utc | 112

@ vk

Please post a link to an article that debunks Western kings’ explanations for the USSR dissolving.

The picture painted is one of “nothing on the shelves” and “long lines for basic goods”. But, I’ve seen the way Western kings make up news and history in recent contexts. How much of that was really going on and different from, for example, people waiting in line for a new iPhone (a commodity product) or Black Friday sale? What was really going on?

Thank you in advance for my incremental continuing education.

@ Per/Norway

Thanks for the feedback. “Social proof” makes me feel better!

Posted by: oglalla | Jan 20 2020 18:27 utc | 113

notlurking@109:

The analysis at your link is correct, I think, but I disagree with the claim that Trump has kept the violence at a minimum. It cannot be overstated that the murder of Soleimani and his companions was a violation of international law and ordinary morality. Made egregiously apparent by the outspoken selfsupport thereafter. The combination is what I consider insanity, and Pompeo simply underlined it. Underlined and undermined!

If indeed the next step is Pence, he had better not show similar 'attributes' - recent statements are not in his favor once the spotlight is on him. It may be Nancy after all, as caretaker president for the year. And much as I dislike her, it may be that is the only way we'll escape pandemonium.

Posted by: juliania | Jan 20 2020 18:37 utc | 114

Re: CANDU nuclear reactors

The CANDU reactors are expensive and very dangerous from the point of view of inherent risks and also for the nuclear proliferation.

a) The design has, like the soviets RMBK types (Chernobyl), a positive void coefficient, so it can sustain a runaway reactions in the case of severe cooling problems.

b) The design of the reactor is very intrincated and it is prone to SCC (Stress Corrosion Cracking) in the bundle, and very difficult to detect due the geometry of the system, and depending of the form of the failure (if it is "guillotine" type) the LOCA (Loss of Coolant Accident) could be well "Beyond Design Basis" (so meltdowns). This failure mode was not anticipated in the design (as usual) and this kind of failure is behind serious problem for example in Pont Lepreau and Pickering reactors.

c) The CANDU reactors allow to use natural uranium as fuel without previous costly and complex enrichment, and exactly this was the reason India, Pakistan, South Korea, Romania, etc... almost ALL the states that had nuclear weapons programs in the past wanted to have one of them. In fact the plutonium for the first Indian nuclear bomb was extracted from the CIRUS-CANDU reactor, and Pakistan, of course use the KANUPP also as a source. Many countries like this reactors because you CANDU a lot of nuclear weapons easily.

d) CANDU can use fuel from others reactors, theoretically it can produce less volume of waste, but it is very risky and expensive process and I do not know of any reactor using spent fuel from others; as far as I know all of them use natural uranium which become more contaminated waste. People are studying to use the CANDU waste in fast reactors still today.

e) The temperatures in the reactors are lower compared with other designs so the thermal efficiency is lower

Outside Canada only a few countries have installed CANDU and almost all of them for some kind of nuclear weapons program or "safeguard" for the future, which is the main advantage of CANDU, Ok well and also there are in Canada because is Canadian.

Posted by: DFC | Jan 20 2020 18:43 utc | 115

@ Posted by: oglalla | Jan 20 2020 18:27 utc | 111

You have the official version for the dissolution of the USSR and the scientific version (done by researchers and historians).

The official version, which you can deduce from Gorbachev's speeches during 1985-1991, is that the USSR wasn't being able to keep up with the West in terms of quality of consumer goods and economic growth. If you analyze the USSR's collapse through this point of view, you can clearly see Gorbachev seemed to be almost fascinated by the Scandinavian social-democracy.

However, it seems Gorbachev was actually very pragmatic with his reform attempts. There was recently an interview he gave to Sputnik News (he's still alive) and he doubled down on his decisions. He bluntly stated the USSR's situation was "unsustainable", and put all the blame on the conservatives who did the August coup on him for the Union's dissolution. He probably chose the social-democratic rhetoric because he didn't want to suffer the humiliation of completely capitulating to pure-blooded capitalism, so he chose a "middle term" which could be more easily swallowed by the Russian people. He completely lost reason when the moment came it was clear the Perestroika wasn't and wouldn't work and he begun to blame an alleged docility and passivity of the Russian people for his own failures.

The problems of his reform are clear enough: Perestroika effectively destroyed the authority of the CPSU, which destroyed the central government, which destroyed the Soviet planned economy.

But the interesting question is why the USSR went to the point of electing a Gorbachev.

And here we have the many scientific hypotheses of why the USSR really dissolved.

There are inumerous authors who wrote about this subject. The only consensus was that it was a combination of a myriad of factors - and not one single factor - that brought the end to the USSR. What changes is the weight each author gives to each factor.

So far, my favorite book about this subject is Angelo Segrillo's "Decline of the Soviet Union", which is going to be published in an English version this month if I'm not mistaken. He's a Brazilian historian (a real historian, a scientist) who visted the USSR every year since the mid-1980s until its collapse, and who continues to go there. He is fluent in Russian and had access to the Soviet archives.

His hypothesis is that the main factor that brought down the USSR was its incapacity to completely convert its economy to Toyotism (3rd Industrial Revolution). When it became clear they wouldn't make it, pressure from competition of the Cold War induced its leaders to distort the Soviet system to the point its elite realized it would be better for the USSR to end than to see it become a second-rate or even a third-rate power.

Posted by: vk | Jan 20 2020 18:48 utc | 116

@vk, re: #75

Helmer: 'Skripal Scoop'

https://twitter.com/bears_with/status/1219152328449830913

"BBC reporter Mark Urban reveals he has been conduit to Bellingcat for MI6 lies on the Skripal case. John Le Carre recruited to promote the deception..."

Posted by: John Gilberts | Jan 20 2020 18:56 utc | 117

World stock of depleted uranium is over 1,600,000 metric tonnes, with 50,000 tonnes added each year. It's mostly a useless by-product and sits in (supposed) long-term storage. DU used for ammunition was only a fraction of that. Some DU is used for MoX fuel, but that still only amounts to a fraction of the DU continuously produced.

For perspective, all the Gulf War I DU ammunition used amounted to 300 metric tonnes, and 11 tonnes in Kosovo. Not that that was a good thing - just pointing out that little of the DU we produce went into ammo.

It's not just DU density (1.6x lead) that made it attractive to weapons makers. Uranium oxide ammunition is pyrophoric - it burns when it strikes metal, burning/melting its way through. Ideal for defeating thick armor. The 30% of a depleted uranium round consumed in this way reverts back to highly toxic uranium oxide dust. Ammunition makers have since found non-radioactive pyrophoric substitutes for armor-piercing ammo, but they're even more toxic than uranium oxide (cobalt-nickel-chromium-tungsten alloys, etc.).

World Nuclear Association (nuke industry shill) is predictably dismissive of any potential health threats from DU, but they do provide a lot of otherwise good, factual detail on production in this article: Uranium and Depleted Uranium

Posted by: PavewayIV | Jan 20 2020 19:15 utc | 118

Sabine, at 36, about Trump cutting food stamps, some noises were made (I saw the one by AOC) but that amounts to what? Stuff that is mildly objected to and on we go! To whatever is the next bullet point on the agenda from the Corp. Dems, e.g. about impeachment, defense of some weird sex orientation, other.

Poor ppl are in the US are between starving and malnourished and obese, yes all are poss. at once. Not flash news, it is an old story.

Are the Dems attempting to reverse the Trump SNAP, food stamp, cuts? They control the lower house, they could do a lot. I have seen no signs of that, maybe I’m missing something, I’m not in the US? Sabine, nobody cares about the US poor, they are not useful as labor any longer for the PTB, they are just a drag, aka useless eaters, though some efforts are made to get them to the voting booth (as vote manipulation is limited to about 5% or so, more would be too blatant … the poor are still worth solliciting for that one reason.) AOC mouthing off is buzz to her colleagues who are all pretty well fed, btw. It is worse than just ‘meaningless’, it is fakey posturing, because, as you know: Nothing will be done. You know that, as I do.

Note the deplorables, the poor, marginally surviving on sub-standard food with no / or usurious and always inefficient health care automatically augments the domination + profits of the Security State, the Police - Defense - Surveillance Industry, as well as the Prison Industry (disguised slavery.)

Posted by: Noirette | Jan 20 2020 20:11 utc | 119

to perimetr: thank you for taking the time to provide such complete and clear information.

Posted by: Miss Lacy | Jan 20 2020 20:41 utc | 120

Without doubt my fav. MLK Jr. quote:

Don’t let anybody make you think
That God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be
A sort of policeman of the whole world.
God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment
And it seems that I can hear God saying to America
“You are too arrogant…
If you don’t change your ways
I will rise up and
Break the backbone of your power.
And I’ll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name.
Be still and know that I’m God…”

Dr. MLK, Jr.

Posted by: thecelticwithinme | Jan 20 2020 20:58 utc | 121

@ 117 john gilberts... thanks.. john helmers article is good...

SKRIPAL SCOOP — BBC PASSED MI6 LIES TO BELLINGCAT AND THEN REPORTED BELLINGCAT CLAIMS AS TRUTH

i like the last few lines in particular...
“We don’t want to be played by intelligence agencies,” Bellingcat front-man Eliot Higgins told the BBC on December 19.

that is rich coming from someone who gets funding from the uk gov't and is fed regularly by m 16...

Posted by: james | Jan 20 2020 21:23 utc | 122

Gente salada, in front of rewritting of history...sing to Europe...people is wonderful...

Post-Soviet visual. Russian men singing Soviet World War II song 'Katyusha' at the Finnish border

https://twitter.com/sovietvisuals/status/1219031682151583746

They seem from the Alexandrov Ensemble...such a voice and harmony...a pelo...

Posted by: Sasha | Jan 20 2020 21:26 utc | 123

Boeing 737 MAX - just can get it together....the software fix worked in simulation but not so in real planes

737 Max "Fix" Causes Entire Computer System to Crash

The software problem occurred as engineers were loading updated software—including an array of changes painstakingly developed over roughly a year—into the flight-control computers of a test aircraft, according to one person briefed on the details.

A software function intended to monitor the power-up process didn’t operate correctly, according to this person, resulting in the entire computer system crashing. Previously, proposed software fixes had been tested primarily in ground-based simulators, where no power-up problems arose, this person said.

Posted by: Likklemore | Jan 20 2020 22:01 utc | 124

After the emotive demonstrations of Iranian mourners, which put our hair on ends, the sardine movement demonstrations are probably the next most moving mass event in the world....Both antifascist movements... both come to give hope to the masses on that another world is possible in a convoluting changing world, which is not less in the convoluted Mediterranean, a world without bullies, without fear, withour hatred, ...

This seems to be a new movement of center-left claimming for peace and an end to confrontation, a come back of responsability, honesty and effort in politics and to pay attention to the claims of the people...

Is this not a world wide clamor?

Sardines and the country that needs a policy that goes beyond anger and fear

There is an Italy afraid and trembling: and its transformation into a free fish in the sea is a poetic image but also a political project. Because the government also depends on the January 26 elections.

The transformation of Italy that has fear and anger, seen in recent years, into a free and happy sardine is Makkox's poetic and brilliant intuition, but it is also a political project for now only in embryo. That speaks of the limits seen in these years. And that tries to answer some questions.

First: it is not true that the right is not politics. It has done a lot of it in these years. It talked about the "what", security, poverty, the feeling of frustration that arises from feeling alone and marginalized, while the left spoke of the "how", the open or closed primaries, the new containers, the electoral or constitutional reforms, stuff from satisfied and fulfilled people. Will Sardines also talk about the "what", after conducting an election campaign on language and communication to be snatched from hate entrepreneurs? It is to be hoped for.

Second: the right wins by exasperating the public debate, creating a state of exception, while the goal of a new force must be to go back to talking to the normal everyday life of people in flesh and blood. There are many respectable and capable local administrators of the Democratic Party who do it night and day, while the executives in Rome move the soldiers of the small power that remains to them, they have grown up in this way, they have fun like this. Sardines represented an extraordinary response to a crucial problem, the inability of the leaders of left-wing parties to speak the language of ordinary people. Will they know how to cross the normality of people, who cannot mobilize on every weekend but would like places of participation, as they used to say, weekdays, that is, compatible with the times of life and work?

Third: the merit of the Sardines is to have brought back words such as responsibility and effort, tearing the rhetoric that always points to good people against the corrupt Palace, to the people against Casta, slogans on which have prospered during the last year the various anti-political leaders. Once you have taken this step it should not be difficult to make the next jumps.

Consider that politics is conflict, not just loving yourself. Admitting that politics is a job, to be done well even if not for a lifetime as in the past And therefore rebelling against the idea of ​​being used, rejecting the compliments of certain ancient marionons of left-wing partyism, the gray eminences that pontificate in the newspapers after directing anything (and having failed even more), or even by the Prime Minister in search of his own party. Avoid being exploited as a splash of novelty, to avoid a real renewal.

The square and the conclave. The opposition and the government. Extraordinary nature and normality. The old and the new. In the ER, Emilia Romagna which is our Emergency Room, all these dimensions are touched: the transformation and enthusiasm, the fear of losing and the desire to win, the bubble to be broken and the horizon and the scent of the sea . In a navigation that does not stop on January 26, however it goes, in fact, it has just begun.

Sardini d´Italia! Avanti popolo!

There is only one week left for crucial elections in Emilia-Romagna that could have consequences nationwide. Liga and PD are practically tied in the polls. Yesterday Salvini warned in Maranello, and today sardines have filled Bologna.

https://twitter.com/annabujcusso/status/1218996744861757441

Come si fa a non emozionarsi?

https://twitter.com/lauraboldrini/status/1218969869569404929

Posted by: Sasha | Jan 20 2020 23:11 utc | 125

Thanks for all the interest in the nuclear industry. Regardless of how we feel individually, the reality is ROSATOM and their Chinese allies are well advanced compared to their contemporaries within the Outlaw US Empire. ROSATOM has made a functional portable nuclear power station which is now at work with more being constructed. A look at ROSATOM's foreign operations show it's very involved in Africa and Asia. The massive advantage Russia and China have over most other nations is their energy system's state-owned, not private. Plus as I hope many noted in the "Front Running 2020" programs I suggested and linked both Russia and China have a comprehensive Industrial Policy, which the Empire has really never had and could never fit into Neoliberalism dogma. Khrushchev famously said We will bury you, but he never said when. That time is fast approaching thanks to the workings of a Command Economy that learned from its predecessor's mistakes.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 21 2020 1:46 utc | 126

Anyone wanting to know why the Soviet Elite chose to give up communism and embrace neoliberalism would fo well to read Russia's Path from Gorbachev to Putin by David Kotz and Fred Weir. Basically the elites in both FSU and PRC saw how much better western elites lived and wanted to do the same. Wealth inequality was much greater in the West. Now the Eastern elites can live the same. China kept the illusion of socialism which was the peoples religion to maintain authoritarian control while Russia went went whole hog neoliberalism and counted on the orthodox church and judaism to be the glue to hold people together along with the new religion of neoliberalism

As to the myth of the Bolshevik Revolution that vk brought up earlier. There was a February revolution followed by an October coup detat that was financed by Wall Street through the American Red Cross and Germany via Wall Street Loans. The latter motivated by a failed attempt to loot Russia of its resources, not unlike what transpired 84 years later under Yeltsin

The February revolution occurred in a time of War. Military reports, rediscovered since the Soviet Union party elite chose to pursue neoliberalism with the help of the US and Harvard school , show that morale was trending up. Russian peasant soldiers were much better fed than their German opponents. Economic data points to an inflationary wartime boom. In 1916 war-industrial production indices shot ahead—and the Russian armies advanced on every front. The bread shortages of Petrograd in winter 1917 were mostly mythical. The assassination of Rasputin , the tsar’s influential peasant faith healer and efforts of Mikhail Rodzianko, the president of the State Duma who engaged Russian high society and liberal politicians contributed to bringing down the tsar, perhaps assisted by foreign intelligence agents employed by AIC (notice the acronym in reverse is CIA) which was a private intelligence agency created by Wall Street and leading industrialists looking for foreign markets. Its not clear though since their seems to be a historic black out on they activities beyond Suttons work.

In any event the exiled founder of the Bolshevik Party, Lenin, had nothing to do with the February Revolution.
In April 1917, after an absence of nearly two decades. Lenin would have had little impact on the political scene had he not been furnished with German and Wall Street funds to propagandize the Russian army at a time when Russia was at war, with more than 7 million men under arms.

What was the motivation of Germany and Wall Street to finance Lenin (and Trotsky) ? Germanys motivation was simple. Lenin agreed to end Russias role in the War. Like WWII, Russia was the biggest obstacle to winning the War against the allies. Wall Street is a bit more complicated to explain. There were of course the great Banks owned by those of German descent who may have been motivated in helping those in the motherland. But how to explain JP Morgans banks (who made big loans to the British) and the head of the Fed Reserve of NY financing? And also how to explain Wall Streets roll in financing Hitler 20 years later?. It seems contradictory

Bolsheviks are at the left end of the political spectrum and Wall Street financiers are at the right end; therefore, people think that the two groups have nothing in common and any alliance between the two is absurd.

The national socialist (the fascist) on the right and the international socialist (the Communist) on the left both recommend totalitarian politico-economic systems based on total political power and coercion. Both systems require monopoly control of society. Neoliberalism today is a synthesis between economic fascism and socialism, and fake (controlled with corporate financing and a corporate propaganda media) democracy today is a synthesis between true democracy and totalitarian rule.

So while monopoly control of industries was the objective of J. P. Morgan and J. D. Rockefeller early on , by the early 20th century they understood that the most efficient way to gain an unchallenged monopoly was to "go political" and make government work for the monopolists.This was detailed in 1906 by Frederick C. Howe in his Confessions of a Monopolist.

So monopoly control of government whether from inside the government as in Communism (state ownership of capital), or China today (party elites assuming ownership of previous state owned capital) or in Russia and the West (external control of government by private owners of capital-oligarchs and their corporations) is the common goal. As Deng Xiao Ping said who cares if its a black cat or a white cat so long as its a good cat (good for the elite monopolists) .

The idea that capitalists are the enemies of all Marxists and socialists is wrong. This idea originated with Karl Marx and sustained by capitalists and was useful to their purposes but the fact is that there has been a concealed alliance between international capitalists and international socialists to their mutual benefit.

Two facts support this. Monopoly capitalists are the enemies of laissez-faire and competitive capitalism, and, the totalitarian socialist state is a perfect captive market for monopoly capitalists-if an alliance can be made with the socialist powerbrokers. Today monopoly is interpreted more broadly than just 1 company controlling the market as Standard Oil once did, as a handful of companies can control an industry in a monopolist manner through collusion (illegal but unenforced) or conscious parallelism (legal collusion, wink wink).

This is not the only example where 2 seemingly opposite ideas resulted in a common objective. Zionism and anti-semitism is a perfect example. Zionists wished to prevent assimilation within other nations borders and create a jewish state, while antisemitism led Jews and the antisemites (Hitler enabled many German Jews to go to Palestine) to support Zionists, and the holocaust created the necessary political conditions. The Zionist goal was not achievable without antisemitism and perhaps some zealous Zionists supported both movements.

Anyways, back to Lenin and the Bolsheviks . They were the ultimate beneficiaries of the Revolution caused in part by WWI. Lenin’s “Zimmerwald Left” program “turned the army red” by infiltrating it with agitators, changed the “imperialist war” into civil war by promoting mutinies and mass desertions of soldiers with their arms. They gave the Bolshevik Party the muscle it needed to win the October Revolution and imposed Communist rule. Estimates on how many were killed as a result of the revolution and civil war and subsequent famines and brutal suppression of religion and dissent vary. Apparently FDR did not care as he established diplomatic and economic relations and made Uncle Joe a main ally and recipient of lend lease materials.

The Soviet Union then served its most important role after WWII, going from friend to enemy and allowing the capitalists MIC in the west to keep to dollars glowing into their coffers to keep us all safe. More fake wrestling? Who knows.

Once they joined forces with the neoliberal west a new enemy needed to be found, and those guys we trained up in Afghanistan in 1979 obliged to give us the GWOT and more dollars for the monopoly capitalists of the MIC and security state and knock off or weaken Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iran and secure all that Black Gold.

With the GWOT losing steam a new cold war is started with China and Russia. More fake wrestling IMO.

Posted by: Pft | Jan 21 2020 1:57 utc | 127

To recap.....

1997
murkkan SOO William Cohen accused other countries engaging in nefarious projects on...
Ethno specific bioweapons
Haarp, which could trigger earthquakes
other pathogen such as the Ebola virus..

Applying the empire watch rule no 1
fukus always accuse others of doing something which it's been doing long ago at a much larger scale
or ...
ROBBER CRYING ROBBERY.

YOu can bet FUKUS was already up to its eyeballs in these Dr Strangeglove skullduggery.

NO need to speculate,
Barely two months later,
uncle sham officially confirm this in its PNAC manifesto....
' advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';

[political useful tool !!
Such as SARS, which put a major crinkle in China's economies. ?]

Then from 2001 to 2003, dozens of microbiologists who specialised in virus research , genetics manipulation and DNA sequencing were mysteriously murdered or apparently committed suicide.

The most famous being Dr David Kelly and his friend Tucker.

A PATTERN?

The DNA sequencing work by several of the microbiologists discussed earlier is aimed at developing drugs that will fight pathogens based on the pathogen's genetic profile. The work is also aimed at eventually developing drugs that will work in cooperation with a person's genetic makeup. Theoretically, a drug could be developed for one specific person. That being the case, it's obvious that one could go down the ladder, and a drug could be developed to effectively treat a much broader class of people sharing a genetic marker.The entire process can also be turned around to develop a pathogen that will affect a broad class of people sharing a genetic marker. A broad class of people sharing a genetic marker could be a group such as a race, or people with brown eyes.

Posted by: denk | Jan 21 2020 4:52 utc | 128

Source of thE SARS map.

https://www.cuttingedge.org/news/n1812.cfm

Posted by: denk | Jan 21 2020 5:16 utc | 129

Bernie Sanders continues his geek routine, now voluntarily serving as an amplifier of the latest NYT installment of the Big Lie.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/01/20/bernie-sanders-walks-straight-into-the-russiagate-trap/

The author of the piece thinks Sanders is sincere but weak and stupid, much like Corbyn. I've long considered him a sheep-dogging con artist.

Either way, he continues to shill for Russiagate and continues to behave like a supporter of Biden and the Democratic Party establishment. The same is true in direct proportion to his willingness to be part of the impeachment geekshow.

Posted by: Russ | Jan 21 2020 6:39 utc | 130

“Orders to Kill” Dr. Martin Luther King: The Government that Honors MLK with a National Holiday Killed Him
A Review of The Plot to Kill King by William Pepper
https://www.globalresearch.ca/orders-to-kill-martin-luther-king-the-government-that-honors-mlk-with-a-national-holiday-killed-him/5559300

Posted by: Mao | Jan 21 2020 7:50 utc | 131

Iranian preliminary report on plane crash confirms two missiles hit the plane

Bloomberg"

Plane took off from Tehran at 6:12 a.m. local time and lost all contact with air traffic control at 8,100 feet

Aircraft disappeared from secondary surveillance radar screens at 6:15 a.m. and from primary surveillance radars at 6:18 a.m.

Aircraft moved past a residential area and its first physical contact with the ground was at a public park. Plane was torn apart as it moved through a football pitch, nearby farmland and gardens

The retrieved flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder are “some of the most advanced equipment of their kind in the world” and Iran lacks the facilities to decode them

French and U.S. accident investigation agencies have refused to send necessary equipment to decode

So the transponder worked till 6:15.

Posted by: somebody | Jan 21 2020 10:39 utc | 132

More translation on the blackboxes via Times of Israel

But it suggests Iran wants to keep them for the time being.

“If devices are provided, the information (on the black boxes) can be restored and retrieved in a short period of time,” it said.

The Civil Aviation Organisation said it had asked its French and US counterparts, the BEA and NTSB respectively, to provide a list of the equipment required to read the black boxes.

It said it had also sought the transfer of the required equipment, but added that neither the BEA nor NTSB had “so far responded positively” to such a transfer.

It said it had acquired the list nonetheless, without saying how, and hinted that it would use it to buy the equipment itself.

Posted by: somebody | Jan 21 2020 10:47 utc | 133

CBSnews reading the Iranian report

But the new preliminary report by Iran's Civil Aviation Organization stopped short of blaming the missiles for the crash of the Boeing 737-800, flown by Ukraine International Airways.

...

However, the report said, "The impact of these missiles on the accident and the analysis of this action under is under investigation."

Posted by: somebody | Jan 21 2020 12:30 utc | 134

This only reinforces my suspicion Israel's political imbroglio doesn't arise from the theocracy's foreign policy, but from its own domestic contradictions:

Gantz Calls for Jordan Valley Annexation, 'Hopes Trump Releases Peace Plan Soon'

"We see this piece of land as an inseparable part of the State of Israel and after the elections, we’ll work toward applying sovereignty over the Jordan Valley. We’ll do this in a move agreed on nationally and in coordination with the international community,” Gantz said during his tour of the area, as quoted by The Times of Israel.

As I stated previously, Israel has many structural problems: economic stagnation, skyrocketing inequality levels, the conflict between its status as a Jewish theocracy and the fact 25% of its population is Arab and a demographic bomb (balooning population growth mainly from the high birth rates among the useless orthodox Jews).

In this scenario, the aggressive foreign policy presents as a scape valve, as a solution, to Israel's problems, not the origin of its problems.

In other words, my hypothesis is people get Israel upside down: that, in reality, Israel has an inner problem that manifests in its imperialistic foreign policy, and not the inverse (i.e. that its imperialistic foreign policy results in its inner problems).

Posted by: vk | Jan 21 2020 13:09 utc | 135

@ denk | Jan 21 2020 5:16 utc | 129 (CBW)

Your idea(s) about this seem entirely congruent with factual history over decades, or perhaps centuries.

New wrinkles on old theme...smallpox to the Red Indians resonates through the ages...

". Journalist and retired psychologist Jeffrey Kaye found a copy of a report by the International Scientific Commission on the issue, originally released in 1952. Its investigation concluded that the US used a number of biological weapons, including anthrax, plague, and cholera, and that the confessions of many captured American airmen provided confirmation. "

searchterm> "Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China" (It's a Giant pdf file, 764 pages...)

Ought to required reading for the entire globe...

"They" will say it's fake...

Posted by: Walter | Jan 21 2020 13:25 utc | 136

USAID admits to have given USD 467 million to the Venezuelan rightist opposition since 2017:

USAID admite ter dado US$ 467 milhões à oposição venezuelana desde 2017

From those, USD 128 million went to Guaidó. All the money was sent under the "humanitarian aid" rubric.

The expenses on Guaidó were spent, according to USAID itself, on "cost compensation, travel costs, other expenses on employees from the National Assembly and from Guaidó's personal administration".

USAID also stated it never transferred any of this money directly to Guaidó, but through "private companies, which then transfer to Guaidó through contracts, donations and/or aid funds".

In September 2019 alone, USAID admitted having transferred USD 52 million to support Guaidó, with the aim to "restore the democratic government" in Venezuela.

There's circumstancial evidence, however, that Guaidó et caterva didn't use the money wisely.

In November 2019, Humberto Calderón Berti - Guaidó's designated ambassador in Bogotá, Colombia - betrayed him and denounced many irregularities on the fund's uses by many of Guaidó's gangsters.

He said "Colombian authorities alerted me and presented documental evidence showing spending on prostitutes, booze, irregular transfers of accounts and doubled or fictitious spenditures".

Later, claims arose that eleven Guaidó-allied congressists used the money to "build a corruption scheme of indulgence concessions" to local capitalists from the food importing sector.

Besides this USAID imbroglio, president Nicolás Maduro denounced Guaidó is also (or is it the same money, laundered through USAID?) using money from the Venezuelan government's accounts blocked by the USA.

Posted by: vk | Jan 21 2020 13:59 utc | 137

Posted by: vk | Jan 21 2020 13:09 utc | 135

That is obvious. It will take some time for people to move on from an ethnic identity to a human identity but the process is irreversible.

Posted by: somebody | Jan 21 2020 14:10 utc | 138

Omg, this is big news!:

There's a real Zionist bitch attack happening against Bernie. IF EVER THERE WAS A TIME TO SUPPORT BERNIE AND CONTRIBUTE TO HIS CAMPAIGN; IT'S NOW, BEFORE ZIONISTS AND THE ESTABLISHMENT COMPLETELY DESTROY HIS CAMPAIGN.

They couldn't get him on the A-s angle like they did with Corbyn; that strategy was doa and hasn't worked with Bernie, so now they're using another angle and HELLARY now appears to be leading the smear campaign!

Hillary attacks Bernie

Hillary is also thinking of not backing him as the Nominee! This is proof positive she's always been for Trump and that's why she let him have the swing states! She helped put the Zionist chosen Trump in power.

If ever there was a reason to throw all support behind Bernie THIS IS IT. Hillary doesn't want Bernie to become President!

Hello! Why aren't you reporting here on this organized campaign to derail Sanders???

Posted by: Circe | Jan 21 2020 14:26 utc | 139

SOMETHING'S UP WITH THE CNN LINK. I'LL TRY IT AGAIN OR LINK ANOTHER CAUSE HILLARY'S ATTACK ON SANDERS IS EVERYWHERE TODAY.

hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-documentary

Just in case here's another:

Hillary blasts Sanders

Posted by: Circe | Jan 21 2020 14:36 utc | 140

@135 I guess Gantz is talking about the 'international community' that Israel wants to be part of and separate from.

Posted by: dh | Jan 21 2020 14:53 utc | 141

Hillary is at it AGAIN. She derailed Bernie's campaign in 2016 and the Zionist shrew has come out of the woodwork trying to do it again!!! She just won't STFU and crawl back under her rock!

Many Dem women still literally hold their breath when their Medusa oracle speaks.

She actually implied she'd support Trump over Bernie if Bernie wins the nomination.

Oh fcuk...

She's bat-shet crazy vicious!

Posted by: Circe | Jan 21 2020 14:53 utc | 142

Notice how the establishment released Hillary's attack on Sanders TODAY THAT HE'S STUCK IN WASHINGTON FOR THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL FOR DAYS and is not on the campaign trail to fight this back.

Of course this was strategically timed! It's soooo transparent!

First they tried the A-s angle, then they did a hit job on him at last week's debate and now THIS. It's clear this is an organized campaign to take Sanders down and help Biden and Buttgig who will be campaigning while Bernie's stuck in Washington.

Posted by: Circe | Jan 21 2020 15:17 utc | 143

One more from The Sputnik:

Pompeo Compares US Policy Against Venezuela’s Maduro to Fruitful 'Strategy' Against Soviet Union

“You know, what I hear is that the strategy is working. I remember how [James] Baker, the former secretary of state [during the George H.W. Bush era], recalled to me that before the fall of the Soviet Union, nobody believed that our strategy was working. But it worked,” Pompeo said, speaking to Colombian TV channel Caracol.

You know what? Good for you, Pompeo, very, very good strategy! Keep up with the good work - for you and for the brilliant and blessed people of the United States of America.

Posted by: vk | Jan 21 2020 15:38 utc | 144

American culture: it's not that special

‘Asian-American actors are ugly & your films make us look backward’: Hollywood sets movies in China, locals don’t want to watch

The only reason American culture is dominant is because most countries in the world are Third World, where there's no other options. If you eliminate the abyss in resources and infrastructure, it's not extraordinary or superior at all.

Posted by: vk | Jan 21 2020 15:56 utc | 145

Millions of people are donating to Bernie's campaign and Zionist Hillary and the Hillarybots on DailyKos supporting her attack on Sanders are literally screeching FU back! at them and the timing of this organized sabotage couldn't be worse now that Sanders must be present in Washington for the trial!

This is organized, this is sabotage, Hellbat Hillary deliberately sowed division and TRUMP IS THE FCKING BENEFACTOR ergo SILENCE HERE! Pathetic. If she did this to your precious Trump, you'd be all over her here like white on rice!

Posted by: Circe | Jan 21 2020 16:06 utc | 146

Walter 136

Yes fukus used bio/chemical warfare in China, Korea,
Nam, Laos, Iraq, Ex YUgo...all well documented.

Re SARS...

Connecting the final dot.

2004
Chinese lawyer Tong Zeng claimed SARS was a US
bioweapon targeting Chinese,

'in the 1990s, many American research groups collected thousands of blood and DNA samples and specimens of mainland Chinese (including 5,000 DNA samples from twins) through numerous joint research projects carried out in China. These samples were then sent back to the United States for further research, and could be used in developing biological weapons targeting Chinese. These samples came from 22 provinces in China, all of which were hit by SARS in 2003. Only provinces like Yunnan, Guizhou, Hainan, Tibet, and Xinjiang were left out, and all these provinces suffered less severely during the SARS outbreak. The author suspects that Japan is also involved, as many Japanese factories in Guangdong in the 1990s made it compulsory for all workers to have blood tests in the factory annually, rather than asking workers to go to local hospitals for blood tests and a proper physical examination'

Hmmm...
Looks like [[[somebody]]] were more interested in
Han DNA, i WONDER why ??

IN [[[wiki]]] SAR entry, this story used to be filed under 'conspiracy theory', but now its gone. !!

Posted by: denk | Jan 21 2020 17:26 utc | 147

@Perimetr #95
Yes. A nuclear detonation can be seen as an acceleration of the removal of U238 on Earth.
Since radiation is bad (although it is omnipresent), and nuclear materials are bad, then faster removal is good, no?
And gigatons of waste: are they waste or are they materials cleansed of nuclear contamination? Is cleaned dirt from a Superfund site, toxic waste?
Please do continue to educate me on the differences.

Posted by: c1ue | Jan 21 2020 17:42 utc | 148

On top of the shet Hillary is pulling to railroad the Sanders campaign AGAIN, Sanders was forced to cancel a campaign event he scheduled for tomorrow evening in Iowa because of the crazy impeachment schedule that will run on past 1 a.m. in the morning.

THIS IS ALL PLANNED BY THE DEMS AND THE REPUBLICANTS, AND TRUMP IS MILKING IT ALL AND LIKE HILLARY TRYING TO DIVIDE THE LEFT.

However AOC will be holding Sanders campaign events this Friday and Saturday in Iowa and Sanders will join her in a rally scheduled for Saturday.

So FU! back to Zionist Hillary, her bestie Trump who she's helping again, the Repu lsives and the Zionist Dimwits trying to hurt Sanders' campaign!

Posted by: Circe | Jan 21 2020 17:46 utc | 149

@A P #108
Thank you for the clarification. It does seem to me, from your explanation, that lawfare has contributed to the continuing use of old nuclear reactors and the greater risks inherent in this old tech.
The supply parts issue is the same: why would a company continue to manufacture parts for industrial installations that are no longer being built and for which non-nuclear usage counterparts have long since been end of lifed?
And from a cynical perspective, I would note that even if the above were widely known - it wouldn't matter to the pragmatic/cynical/calculating anti-nuclear types: every accident that occurs is more grist for their mill.
And to be clear, I'm not for or against nuclear.
This issue isn't science or even economics - it is what the host society considers acceptable/not acceptable.
The problem is that the bullshit being slung around isn't leading to any type of solution - it is mostly about personal profit whether monetary or ideological.

Posted by: c1ue | Jan 21 2020 17:47 utc | 150

Posted by: Circe | Jan 21 2020 17:46 utc | 149

"Sanders was forced to cancel a campaign event he scheduled for tomorrow evening in Iowa because of the crazy impeachment schedule that will run on past 1 a.m. in the morning."

If Sanders was on the level and a real insurgent rather than a sheep-dogging fraud, why would he do that? I sure wouldn't in his place if I were for real. Why would he be having anything to do with this geekshow?

The fact that Sanders fans all seem to have such a morbidly conformist mindset about things like what a senator "has" to do when some stupid political circus is going on, is good evidence that they too, like their sheepdogging leader, don't really want to change anything, just run a circus spectacle of their own.

Posted by: Russ | Jan 21 2020 21:45 utc | 151

if sanders were a sheepdog, he would have been one of the alternate "change" candidates endorsed by the establishment paper of record. obama wouldn't be trying to torpedo him behind the scenes. a still bitter clinton wouldn't still be attacking him. he's got a job, being a senator. in fact, some speculate that the impeachment circus, which won't do anything but generate a lot of press and donor dollars, was partially motivated by a dnc desire to take sanders off the campaign trail.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Jan 21 2020 23:05 utc | 152

clinton isn't for trump, she's just more against sanders than she is trump because he represents more of a threat to her values and elite entitlement than trump, who when all is said and done is still a member of the elites, just slightly different factions. but if she can dispose of sanders and win the nomination by a brokered convention, she would be happy to aim her bile at him. clinton is 100% out for clinton.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Jan 21 2020 23:11 utc | 153

For those interested in the Fiat of all Fiat, try the first half of this Keiser Report, which discusses a concept called reflexivity. It's not quite 13 minutes long, so It won't take too much of your time, but it will make you think!

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 22 2020 0:46 utc | 154

When I first moved to a town in Northern Australia, a big scandal that had been brewing for months reached a crescendo in the courts. The town dog catcher a city council employee had been charged with assaulting a drug squad detective.
The population was split on the issue of guilt mainly due to feelings about which of the two parties had the lowest job. Many people had reason to despise the dog catcher because they believe he used questionable tactics to lure a bloke's dog off his property onto public property I.E. the street, so the dog could then be impounded.

Dog lovers hated the dog catcher - one bloke who drove a ute the same brand as the dog catcher's ute with a cage on the back for his hunting dogs had to put a sign on the vehicle saying "This is not the dogcatcher's truck", to prevent further vandalism.

On the other side of the argument were the human lovers who took exception to the drug squad's penchant for impounding humans on flimsy, frequently falsified evidence.

I was reminded of this today when I read Amazon boss Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince' two lower than a snake's belly scumbags always doin evil, caught doing evil to each other.
According to the story

"The encrypted message from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman is believed to have included a malicious file that infiltrated the phone of the world’s richest man, according to the results of a digital forensic analysis.

This analysis found it “highly probable” that the intrusion into the phone was triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of the Saudi heir to Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post.

The two men had been having a seemingly friendly WhatsApp exchange when, on 1 May of that year, the unsolicited file was sent. . ."

So some cathartic diversion for normal humans.

p.s. The dogcatcher's trial was the gossip de jour for weeks. Many witnesses were called and it transpired that the dogcatchers parents owned a boarding house in the CBD it was popular among working girls - not as a place of business but as somewhere to go when 'off duty'. The drug squad detective had a thing about one of the sex workers and followed her home and assaulted her (This guy was a creepy wife basher of the worst type). The dog catcher intervened to stop the woman from being beaten then the cop turned on him.

There was a fight out on the street which the cop lost and in typical arsehole cop fashion, called up his cop mates and had the dog catcher arrested for assault. At trial the dog catcher was acquitted, but typically the detective got promoted to sergeant shortly afterwards - where he continued to bash many women. It shouldn't need to be said as it is irrelevant, but many of the women were not sex workers and some were friends or acquaintances. AFAIK he was never prosecuted and that was his last promotion as many townsfolk took exception to the last one.

The current contretemps will be entertaining but only a naif would expect a pleasing resolution. It will be same as always - not even a minor blockage in either scumbag's road to our destruction.

Posted by: A User | Jan 22 2020 1:04 utc | 155

I've been mostly silent on Putin's Federal Assembly Speech from the 15th, six days ago. At its outset, this observation I deem critical:

"Our society is clearly calling for change. People want development, and they strive to move forward in their careers and knowledge, in achieving prosperity, and they are ready to assume responsibility for specific work. Quite often, they have better knowledge of what, how and when should be changed where they live and work, that is, in cities, districts, villages and all across the nation." [My Emphasis]

The bolded text is an excellent example of what's known as Democratic Centralism--a situation where individual performance and feedback travels up the decision making chain to the main planners. What was learned from Soviet experience was this communication required honesty. China's political-economy could never be as efficient as it is now without this being highly functional. The USSR's fundamental problem was the lack of honesty in communications because of the Fear Factor instilled from the Top. Putin has worked very hard to change this part of Russia's culture, which he emphasizes in almost every speech directed primarily to a domestic audience. The change in government while customary to some degree is also based on the need to motivate to government to perform in concert with its citizens. (This of course will never be heard within the Outlaw US Empire except perhaps at the county level.) Putin finishes his thought thusly:

"The pace of change must be expedited every year and produce tangible results in attaining worthy living standards that would be clearly perceived by the people. And, I repeat, they must be actively involved in this process. [My Emphasis]

What was thought by the millions of Russians as they heard Putin's exhortations as they too were being called upon to get busy? And not just busy raising the population, which was his next topic. I won't review the very strong, energizing words Putin put to use in describing this unacceptable situation, but again how were his words perceived by Russians, particularly those he was talking to directly? (I can't ever recall any national leader being this frank about national demographics and their condition.) It might have been a campaign speech except that it was very much a fundamental Russian interest that's languished too long and now must be rectified.

When I first read this part of the transcript, this all sounded very Bismarckian. Afterall, a nations human capital ought to be seen as its #1 asset (which is why the Outlaw US Empire is failing) and made to be as strong and resilient as possible. IMO, Putin's very impressed by China's performance and feels there's nothing to impede Russia from performing similarly. I really can't avoid citing his summation of this topic I full:

"So colleagues, here is the point I want to make, in short. I would like to emphasise – all the steps we are taking are aimed at creating a streamlined, large-scale and, most importantly, an effectively working family support programme, so that people’s incomes, especially for those raising children, are high enough for a decent life.

"Secondly, what I said at the beginning of the Address: the steps that we took in previous years in the field of demographic development have already brought results. They have yielded results back then: a large generation is growing up in Russia. I am referring to children who are in preschool and primary school now. It is very important that they adopt the true values ​​of a large family – that family is love, happiness, the joy of motherhood and fatherhood, that family is a strong bond of several generations, united by respect for the elderly and care for children, giving everyone a sense of confidence, security, and reliability. If the younger generations accept this situation as natural, as a moral and an integral part and reliable background support for their adult life, then we will be able to meet the historical challenge of guaranteeing Russia’s development as a large and successful country." [My Emphasis]

It ought to be clear from the bolded text as to the reasons why Putin sees Liberalism as a failure, indeed as an enemy of the state. Now, I'm open-minded and tolerant in my views, but I must applaud Putin here as the Cult of the Individual and Atomization of the Family have wrecked havoc in the West and especially within the Outlaw US Empire to the point where much of society and its culture are dysfunctional, which is why we have a Carnival Barker POTUS.

And onward Putin goes explaining current and future plans to continue strengthening Russians and thus Russia. It's almost as if Sanders is talking while an slowly rising murmur from the audience is now audible--Socialism! Yes, with Russian Characteristics. The programs and direction he outlines cannot be left to private companies that must profit from these goals. They're too vital to Russians and Russia. Too bad that mindset is missing from the Western Ideal. The rest of the speech dealing with the Constitution I'll parse tomorrow.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 22 2020 2:21 utc | 156

PUtin
'Why are [[[they]]] collecting our DNA info minus
the Ukraines ??'

Do you know that the biological material is collected all over the country for different ethnic groups and peoples living in different geographical area’s of the Russian Federation? The question is why they are doing it, and they are doing it purposefully and professionally. We are an object of great interest. Of course, we do not need to have any fear about it. Let them do whatever they want, and we must do what we have to do.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov

the DNA samples are being collected by agents of foreign non-government organizations and they are exporting the data overseas for scientific analysis.

https://www.trunews.com/article/why-is-russian-dna-being-collected

Posted by: denk | Jan 22 2020 2:24 utc | 157

This is interesting. Consortium News is suing CSE and Global News Canada for smearing CN as part of a Russian-directed propaganda campaign targeting Canada's then foreign minister Chrystia Freeland, 'the Nazi's grand-daughter'.

Consortium News Sends Libel Notices To Canadian Signals Intelligence Agency and Major Television Network

https://twitter.com/Consortiumnews/status/1219725725026127873

"Consortium News has sent libel notices to a Canadian spy agency and major TV network after their reports said CN is part of a Russian-directed propaganda campaign targeting Canadian leaders."

Posted by: John Gilberts | Jan 22 2020 3:43 utc | 158

Thanks for returning to President Putin's speech, karlof1. I think it's a great speech, and I love that he begins with the subject you address. Indeed he takes much from the broad encompassing view of China's leadership. And to my mind it is also a riff on "We the People".

I had done a search on Mother Agnes Meriam of Syria that Jen put up in answer to my question and not finding anything current did come upon this long interview from 2016:

https://thewallwillfall.org/2016/01/26/
a-conversation-with-mother-agnes-mariam-uk-column-news-special/

(I have to use this format, sorry, as b's one doesn't pinpoint the interview on my machine.)

I just wanted to comment that the interviewer asks early in the piece what was the makeup of Syrian society before the chaos began. She replies that it was extremely diverse, and she, a nun, gives the explanation that the society was secular. Religion was not part of the construct of state functionality or given superior status in any way. I find that very significant; she felt it very important that this aspect of Syrian daily living had been a wonderful freedom for people.

It reminds me very much of the larger emphasis on multipolarity that is the key to peace in the world.

Posted by: juliania | Jan 22 2020 4:19 utc | 159

😆 I love Bernie's response to Hellary's mean dig that nobody likes him:

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday did not seem fazed by the latest round of criticism directed at him by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"On a good day, my wife likes me, so let's clear the air on that one," Sanders told the NBC reporter Geoff Bennett when asked about Clinton's assertion that "nobody likes him."

bernie sanders response

Posted by: Circe | Jan 22 2020 4:31 utc | 160

I guess I should be screeching like Circe about the travesty currently underway in the US Senate. The Democrats are impeaching dear leader because he held up funds for weapons for Ukraine (which to my besotted mind is a very good thing to have done and I wish they were still being held up) while the Republicans are happy that his murderous action is being protected by his claims to not have to furnish any sort of defense at all.

Wasn't it written on a wall some place that two wrongs don't make a right? Oh no, that was "mene mene tekel..." something or other.

I'll join her in saying TILL 1 AM ????

Posted by: juliania | Jan 22 2020 4:40 utc | 161

@ Posted by: juliania | Jan 22 2020 4:40 utc | 160 with the impeachment rant.....

I am just back from a couple of hours of ecstatic dance and happily am not following the media circus of the latest OJ Simpson highway chase.....real time.

Try it. The world will keep turning and you can think of better things and perspectives during that sort of time.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 22 2020 4:55 utc | 162

Great advice, psychohistorian -- thank you!

Posted by: juliania | Jan 22 2020 5:40 utc | 163

Posted by: pretzelattack | Jan 21 2020 23:05 utc | 152

"in fact, some speculate that the impeachment circus, which won't do anything but generate a lot of press and donor dollars, was partially motivated by a dnc desire to take sanders off the campaign trail."

That's what I've long said - that can't work unless he willingly plays along.

That's also strong evidence of the falseness of Sanders fans who also have been fanatical impeachment devotees. But any Sanders fan who really believes Sanders is an insurgent would never have wanted him to have anything to do with the geekshow, nor would they be so indelibly mired in the mentality that he "has to".

"he's got a job, being a senator."

No, on the contrary if he's sincere then his job is to fight for the people. Therefore, to paraphrase Lincoln, if he could fight best by punctiliously carrying out his "senatorial duties" he would do so, and if he could fight best by flouting all such duties he would do so, and if he could fight best by fulfilling some duties and flouting others he would do that too.

Impeachment always was worthless from the point of view of anyone who wants to change anything. If one believes in Sanders, and if he himself is not a con man, then the election is all. Any insurgent would be hitting the streets deliberately playing up the proud assertion "Here is my post, not with the fraudulent establishment political game."

That would appeal not just to sincere "progressives" (if there are any, which I doubt; their run-home-to-establishment-mama position on Sanders and impeachment is evidence of that) but to all sorts of independents and maybe some previous non-voters. That would really be DOING something different, not just mouthing empty words while doing nothing even when there's a real opportunity like this moment (the Sanders specialty).

Especially when Hillary is handing him such a gift, such a target-rich opportunity to really counterattack Biden, Buttigeg and the whole Dem establishment. Anyone who says Sanders should throw away this time in order to time-serve a preordained geek role at the impeachment farce is simply admitting that they recognize the scam character of the Sanders phenomenon and like it that way.

Anyone who thinks Sanders should be at the "trial" is at least objectively pro-Hillary, pro-Biden.

Sanders followers with their technicality-fetishes seem very confused about what exactly they think Sanders's job in life is. Which, to say it again, is evidence they're false themselves.

Posted by: Russ | Jan 22 2020 7:38 utc | 164

denk #156

DNA data collection is the same as copy write theft. Until people assert their absolute copywrite over their dna then these pirates will continue to collect and store. In these days of mighty advanced gene targeting for all manner of products, virus etc, I would not trust any data collection or collector with anything.

They are most likely to do a 'facebook' with the data and sell it to the mates for a small bid.

The DNA of an entire citizen group or race or race derivative is a major security risk. How many credit card ID's have been stolen and abused in the past year?

No state with its citizens interests foremost at heart should ever permit piracy of this order. Personal DNA is the absolute copy write of the person in my opinion.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jan 22 2020 10:37 utc | 165

About the bizarre affair they call impeachment, ongoing - about that matter @ FRN a troubling article "Der Fuhrer Mike Pence"...and the Ides of March...and naturally the ideological nature of rapturous psycos & nutty cristers. (old Bob Heinlein wrote a story about a nuttychrister dictatorship in good'ol usa)

In FRN today there are sever also interesting essays...but the one about pence is, well, I smell a con-job, the Old Army Game, a rigged game. And however clowning T man may be, Mr P is flat out weird.

Posted by: Walter | Jan 22 2020 13:24 utc | 166

Walter @166 - Re: big war soon

Most of what I see of that sort comes from the Israelis, Trump-believers, and hangers-on, and comes from the dawning realization that they are losing the argument with Russia, China, Iran (whichever they are obsessed with). Being defeated by the wogs, the undermen, intellectually and militarily, is hard to swallow.

But being cowards, in the end I think they will. It is one thing to retaliate under attack, another to start the war that will destroy you and all you care for. That takes stupid, like WWI for example. I am well acquainted with the native american blowhard (Trump or Eddie Gallagher for example, or George Armstrong Custer. We got lots of them) and they are all cowards in a real fight, but love to posture and beat-up when they think it is safe, like Trump.

Posted by: Bemildred | Jan 22 2020 14:24 utc | 167

@164 Russ

That's some disingenuous diatribe you wasted space on! I'm supposed to believe the die-hard supporter of the biggest scammer fascist President to ever disgrace the White House. Next to Trump, Bernie is MR. ROGERS!

What you wrote about Bernie there is psuedo-intellectual gibberish.

All Senators must be present for the trial--or should Bernie add dereliction of duty to his campaign platform??? Bernie would be the most hated man on the planet next to Trump if he ran as an Independent flouting Congressional responsibility both of which help Trump in this critical election!

But of course he's gonna vote against the con, the scammer, the pathological liar! So rightly, he's gonna vote against Trump. Too bad for you!

Hillary did not give Bernie any effing gift!!! Hillary unfortunately has a huge following of women and is trying to turn them against Bernie. Would you rather Biden be President??? ACTUALLY HILLARY KNOWS SHE'S HELPING TRUMP BY TRASHING BERNIE. SHE HELPED TRUMP LAST TIME BY ABANDONING THE SWING STATES TO TRUMP AND SHE'S DOING IT AGAIN BY ATTACKING BERNIE, AND WHAT REALLY GALLS YOU IS THAT HILLARY IS TEAM TRUMP!

Fester on that truth.

Posted by: Circe | Jan 22 2020 14:24 utc | 168

Posted by: Circe | Jan 22 2020 14:24 utc | 168

"All Senators must be present for the trial--or should Bernie add dereliction of duty to his campaign platform???"

Yes he most definitely should. I've explicitly said so three times now. How many repetitions does one of your reading comprehension level need?

"Bernie would be the most hated man on the planet next to Trump if he ran as an Independent flouting Congressional responsibility"

I've also stated repeatedly that a real insurgent would welcome this hatred and make a virtue of it, while only a fraud would attempt the kind of fence-sitting and bet-hedging a coward like you calls for.

In case you didn't notice, more and more people hate the system. In their eyes to earn the hatred of that system would be a great credential.

"ACTUALLY HILLARY KNOWS SHE'S HELPING TRUMP BY TRASHING BERNIE. SHE HELPED TRUMP LAST TIME BY ABANDONING THE SWING STATES TO TRUMP AND SHE'S DOING IT AGAIN BY ATTACKING BERNIE, AND WHAT REALLY GALLS YOU IS THAT HILLARY IS TEAM TRUMP!"

And finally, as I've also said repeatedly, the kind of Berniebots who through some bizarre convolution want Bernie simultaneously to be an insurgent and yet act in the most domesticated, housebroken, tame, lame, Corbynesque way are merely demonstrating how tame and lame and utterly incapable even of wanting change, let alone fighting for it, they are. Frauds like you.

To repeat: Still to repose religious faith in this electoral system at all, let alone to be so congenitally enslaved in mind to it that one even believes in the impeachment geekshow, is to be objectively pro-Hillary, pro-Trump, pro- all the worst. No wonder Sanders is having such an easy time performing his pro-Hillary/pro-Trump sheepdog routine - look at the intellectual and moral quality of his fanbots.

Sanders would be in "dereliction of duty", oh heavens! Oh my! My pearls!

The likes of you never would've been able to agree in the first place on the constitution's getting rid of titles of nobility, you're so beholden to worthless formality. There's our "revolutionaries"!

Posted by: Russ | Jan 22 2020 15:03 utc | 169

Circe 168: HILLARY KNOWS SHE'S HELPING TRUMP

You can see this, but you can't see how Sanders helps the Democratic establishment?

"Enough with your damn emails!" LOL.

=
Russ @169: ... a real insurgent would welcome this hatred and make a virtue of it ...

Yup.

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 22 2020 15:22 utc | 170

Circe @160: "On a good day, my wife likes me, so let's clear the air on that one"

LOL.

Sanders is married to the Democratic Party.

We don't get to see what happens under the covers.

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 22 2020 15:26 utc | 171

Ralph Nader did exactly what you guys want Sanders to do and then he was relegated to the dustbin of history and his insurgency ushered in Darth Cheney, Bush, Neoconism, Zionists in charge of the Pentagon and 20 still counting years of WAR AND UTTER DESTRUCTION.

Bernie is rising in the polls and has a shot at kicking Biden to the curb and Trump straight back into the gutter where he crawled out from.

Posted by: Circe | Jan 22 2020 17:00 utc | 172

uncle tungsten 165

The DNA of an entire citizen group or race or race derivative is a major security risk.

IN the wrong hands, it could mean the
death of a nation or the entire race.

Apparently the current Wuhan virus is
SARS ver2, an 'upgrade', more potent
variety ???

It is almost certain that SARS was indeed made in a lab – a bioweapon designed to target only Chinese people and the new outbreak a second test using a new, improved version.

Such a bioweapon would give the US and whoever else helped it’s development, such as Japan, total control over China – do as we tell you or we release a bioweapon that will kill all the Chinese people in days.

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/01/21/new-improved-sars-bioweapon-tested-in-china/

Posted by: denk | Jan 22 2020 17:10 utc | 173

nader didn't usher in bush, the dems caving (or playing kabuki with the vote rigging in florida, and the supreme court ratifying it) ushered in bush.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Jan 22 2020 17:16 utc | 174

juliania @159--

Thanks for your reply! Imagine what BigLie Media would write in response if a speech like Putin's on demographics and helping parents were given by a US politico (the last remotely similar speech was LBJ's announcing his War on Poverty). And here's an observation that ought to rock a few chairs, "India is not a ‘theocratic’ state like Pakistan & America, defense minister claims:"

"Even America is a theocratic country. India is not a theocratic country. Why? Because our saints and seers did not just consider the people living within our borders as part of the family, but called everyone living in the world as one family."

"He accused neighboring Pakistan of being a 'theocracy' because it 'declared that their state has a religion,' noting that India has always remained secular."

If the Minister's definition of theocracy is a state's having declared it has a religion as the above quote implies, and he sees America as a theocracy, then I must wonder what he sees as the Outlaw US Empire's declared religion given the stricture present in the 1st Amendment. Given past and present behavior, it could be the worship of Conquest/Imperialism or the pursuit of ill-gotten wealth--God of Mammon.

At least the Minister gave me something different to write about!

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 22 2020 17:23 utc | 175

Posted by: Circe | Jan 22 2020 17:00 utc | 172

Ralph Nader did exactly what you guys want Sanders to do and then he was relegated to the dustbin of history and his insurgency ushered in Bush

1. Nader had nothing to do with Bush becoming president. Gore won the election and then he and his supporters, 100% of their own free will, handed over the presidency because a gang of hoods wanted to steal it.

Come to think of it, Gore and his cadres and voters acted exactly like you would - stand on worthless ceremony rather than actually fight for what you think is right in spite of ceremony.

But again, part of why it was so easy for the Gore side to unilaterally surrender after winning the match was that they all knew deep down it made no real difference whether Gore or Bush became president.

Just like the kind of Bernie fan who can say so blithely, "He needs to stay at the senate geekshow instead of hitting the road to smash Hillary": They know deep down that from their system-conformist POV it makes no real difference whether Sanders or Trump or Biden or Hillary herself becomes president.

2. Nader was no more of a bona fide insurgent than Sanders or Trump himself. Nader's campaigns were just ego trips. He never was willing to put in the hard work, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, including and especially in the off years for elections, to build a real movement and party from outside the system.

History proves this to be an infallible litmus test for identifying an astroturf. If Nader, and now Sanders, had actually put in that hard work over time, by now there would be a real alternative party. In the same way, Trump always could be pegged as a fake populist because he also never did such work.

Compare: In 2008 there was much talk about the import of Obama's grassroots organization, which although never outside and against the system was only loosely coordinated with it. Some observers asked what Obama was going to do with that organization once he became president. Would he keep it outside and continue to build it up, to use it as a pressure group loyal only to him and what he stood for?

How silly to ask. But for those who still as late as the election had any doubt or delusion about Obama, the answer came quickly: Within a few days of the election he announced he was going to assimilate his grassroots organization into the regular Democratic party structure. In other words dissolve it. It had served its purpose of sheep-dogging, manipulating and exploiting and now could only be a liability to a president-elect who never had intended anything but to continue the status quo.

On that note, perhaps a Sanders believer can answer this: If he's for real, he must have a full cadre ready to go, a government-in-waiting, fully loyal to Sanders, in full agreement with his agenda, ready to become executive appointees and hit the ground running from day one aggressively pushing this Sanders program, at least in the executive branch.

After all, it's impossible to assemble such a cadre as an afterthought. If you're a real insurgent who would have to overawe and where necessary break the existing executive bureaucratic cadres and structures, you need to be ready to go on the offensive from day one. Most of all you can't expect to find allies or good intentions or conscientious advice waiting for you there.

We've seen what happened with Trump, if he ever did have even the slightest desire to drain any swamps: He brought almost no one with him, and the few he did bring he quickly purged, at the insistence of the establishment. Of course the most likely explanation is that he never had any swamp-draining intentions in the first place.

So: Who are the people comprising the Sanders insurgent-government-in-waiting?

But I know the Sanders bots will have no answer to this. They think only in hallucinatory terms of Sanders "working with" the pre-existing executive cadres and even congress. Which is why they're so ardent to see him being the good little Geek Scout sitting quietly and obediently in his Senate seat for impeachment naptime, with milk and cookies afterward.

Posted by: Russ | Jan 22 2020 18:01 utc | 176

2. Nader was no more of a bona fide insurgent than Sanders or Trump himself. Nader's campaigns were just ego trips. He never was willing to put in the hard work, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, including and especially in the off years for elections, to build a real movement and party from outside the system.

horseshit, you assume that it was even possible in the present system to do that. it isn't, the 2 parties have a legal stranglehold. hint it's never been done. not easy for a 79 year old recent heart attack victim to do, either. there's only 2 quasi legit candidates, neither are ideal--tulsi gabbard on foreign policy and bernie on domestic policy. if you look at the efforts to undermine sanders by the dnc and see only kabuki, you don't know what you're looking at.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Jan 22 2020 18:12 utc | 177

Russ | Jan 22 2020 18:01 utc | 176 "Own free will" may be not precisely true... There was that phone call... Some say there was blackmail, intimidation. Bush the younger called gore the elected...

Maybe they spoke about their children...

It's systemic old man, not a matter of individuals, but of wealth, greed, class. There are no pretty answers in the dog and pony show theater. Once Rome entered the Imperial Period, all the rest became true.

Posted by: Walter | Jan 22 2020 18:12 utc | 178

Posted by: pretzelattack | Jan 22 2020 18:12 utc | 177

horseshit, you assume that it was even possible in the present system to do that.

Of course it's possible the moment anyone actually wants to do it. The fact that no one wants to do the work which history proves is necessary and effective, is proof that no one wants to change anything at all.

Don't worry, I wasn't mistaking you for anyone serious. I'm already familiar with your fake green-capitalist We-can-torch-the-Earth-and-still-have-it ideology vis the climate crisis. But thank you for dropping the charade where it comes to "alternative" politicians, by your admission that "[it's not] possible in the present system to do that. it isn't, the 2 parties have a legal stranglehold."

Of course people with reading comprehension would have noted that this is why I keep repeating the need to build a movement from completely outside the system.

You know, for example the closing words of the snippet you yourself just quoted?

I'll add, you almost certainly can't begin such a movement with people who ever significantly have been part of the system, let alone who remain careerists of it.

But then bots of any strain - Berniebots, Tulsibots, Naderbots, Trumpbots as well - are really the same authoritarian-follower types as the bots of Hillary, Obama, Biden, George Bush etc. It's all nothing but celebrity-worshipping fandom. None of these are political people at all (which is why they hate both knowledge and work in equal proportion), just the equivalent of sports fans, except their entertainment focuses on fake-"political" teams instead of sports teams. Indeed Fantasy Politics works even more elegantly than the Fantasy Football with which it has so much in common. The only drawback is that it's not as easy to bet money on it, but I know they're working on that.

Posted by: Russ | Jan 22 2020 19:26 utc | 179

None of these are political people at all (which is why they hate both knowledge and work in equal proportion), just the equivalent of sports fans..

That might not be fully correct. Sports fans often are very knowledgeable about player stats, offensive and defensive strategies and such. But try finding, say, an Obamabot or Hillarybot or Trumpbot or Berniebot who has even minimal knowledge about what these office-holders actually have done, as opposed to empty words and the personal fantasies the bot projects on the celebrity he worships.

Posted by: Russ | Jan 22 2020 19:34 utc | 180

More US troops evacuated to Germany for "possible" injuries in the Iranian missiles attacks on Al Assad

https://time.com/5769306/us-troops-injuries-iran-missiles/

Probably will never know the exact number of wounded, and may be dead, in the Iranian retaliation

Posted by: DFC | Jan 22 2020 20:00 utc | 181

Can the new Lebanese government survive?

informative article some might be interested in..

Posted by: james | Jan 22 2020 20:07 utc | 182

james @182--

It has a good chance since 3 of its most corrupt former members are just that--former. But they do need to act swiftly to gain the public's confidence. I'd watch the Angry Arab, whose Lebanese and follows events there very closely, to see how it progresses. Sharmine Narwani should also, and she shows us the six(!) new female ministers, one of which is Defense and Vice Prime Minister. IMO, things will be fine by Easter.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 22 2020 20:34 utc | 183

---BREAKING NEWS----

"Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi informed all countries with military forces in Iraq — the USA, and its coalition partners the UK, Canada, France, Belgium, Denmark, etc. – of the urgency that they initiate withdrawal as soon as possible." Here

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 22 2020 20:42 utc | 184

184 Cont'd--

More from the link:

"The Iraqi Shia, 66% of the 40 million Iraqi population, are expressing their hatred towards US forces in particular and all foreign forces in general. Iraq would like to see these forces depart for good, putting an end to US influence in Mesopotamia and West Asia. A massive protest has been organised for this Friday 24th January, led by Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr, who is warning the US of the consequences of ignoring this Parliamentary decision. It is expected to be the most massive protest in the history of Iraq. But this protest is only the beginning. [My Emphasis]

"US forces have committed serious crimes in Iraq: according to Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, the US Ambassador in Baghdad informed him of Israel’s responsibility for the five attacks against Iraqi security forces in mid-2019 and the drone assassination of a security force commander on the Syrian-Iraqi borders. These Israeli attacks were carried out with the knowledge and permission of US forces in Iraq, who allowed Israel to violate Iraqi air space and kill its security members. That attack made the US – who maintain control over Iraqi air space – an accomplice of Israel in attacking the US host country, Iraq."

The recent emplacement of S-400 system in NE Syria has the range to command Iraq's skies. For the second day running, Outlaw US Empire forces illegally in Syria have blocked a Russian patrol. IMO, events are about to get out-of-hand as the Imperial Stormtroopers will target and kill Iraqi demonstrators this Friday, which will begin a chain of events likely to be fatal for many that will be more blood on Trump and Pompeo's bodies.

Meanwhile, the SAA is close to advancing out of West Aleppo on the heels of the several hundred airstrikes made on and behind the front lines there over the past two days. IMO, the last straw has been laid on the camel's back.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 22 2020 21:03 utc | 185

News keeps happening, and important news at that:

"'Hobnobbing With Billionaires in Davos,' Trump Admits—If Reelected—He Will Seek to Cut Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare:

"'It'll be toward the end of the year,' Trump said from Davos, Switzerland. 'And at the right time, we will take a look at that. You know, that's actually the easiest of all things, if you look, cause it's such a big percentage.'"

That ought to destroy his re-electability and Biden's too since he's been busted for wanting to cut them too. Biden's biggest support demographic was adults 45+. It's doubtful Trump will find many that voted for him out of spite for Clinton will find those same voters choosing him again, that is if he's eligible. Bloomberg's no different from them. IMO, if voters want to retain any part of the social contract, their only hope lies in Sanders or Gabbard as Warren and Buttigieg are both DNC favs. And that means Sanders must win the nomination via the Primaries prior to the convention.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 22 2020 22:15 utc | 186

@ karlof1... thanks for the updates! i used to read angry arabs blog before he went over to twitter.. i don't follow twitter, other then posts from others like yourself.. here is the thing with regard to lebannon...

hezbollah...

i read the usa daily press briefings as there is probably no better way to immediately know how the usa foreign policy is selling itself.. for the past couple of weeks they have been on a tare regarding hezbollah... hezbollah has been labelled a terrorist group by some of the usa's loyal south american stooges - columbia and can't remember who else.. meanwhile apparently the reason venezuala isn't going smoothly is hezbollah are involved in venezuala.. meanwhile pomparse insisted on getting juan guiado to the davos get together... the usa did this in the past 2 years with the revolutionary guards - defining them as a terrorist org... we all know who the real terrorist organization is - usa-israel - cia-mossad, but the press briefings are supposed to help you to live in alice in wonderland better... so, as i see it lebannon will be another spoke to throw into the mess that defines usa foreign policy... lebannon = hezbollah = terrorist state, according to pomparse in wonderland.. sorry for the rant..

as for the withdrawal of usa forces from iraq - not before all hell breaks loose as i see it.. the usa will find a way to say up is down and down is up..

from today- more of same -

"QUESTION: In Colombia, President Duque at the conference cautioned against the threat of Hizballah in the region, and you yourself, sir, said that Hizballah has, quote, “found a home in Venezuela.” How significant of a role does Hizballah play in the region?" Secretary Michael R. Pompeo With Kevin Cirilli of Bloomberg see the link for lies straight from the horses arse... in fact horse manure would be a lot more useful...

Posted by: james | Jan 22 2020 22:59 utc | 187

It is almost certain that SARS was indeed made in a lab – a bioweapon designed to target only Chinese people and the new outbreak a second test using a new, improved version.

Such a bioweapon would give the US and whoever else helped it’s development, such as Japan, total control over China – do as we tell you or we release a bioweapon that will kill all the Chinese people in days.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that [[[they]]] wouldnt do such horrific things and murder people by the millions – they have done it before. HIV and Ebola were both developed as bioweapons to depopulate Africa.

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/01/21/new-improved-sars-bioweapon-tested-in-china/

It so 'happened' that in William Cohen's 1997 speech, Ebola was also highlighted, amongst others like HAARP,
race specific bioweapon etc, that he insinuated OTHER [sic] countries were working on .

Then in the PNAC 'road map',
[[[They]]] opined that bioweapons, including the race specific variety,
can be used as a wonderful geopolitical tool

During the 2014 Ebola scare,
While China sent medical supplies and personnel to Africa,
What did uncle sham provide ?
What else, gunman ...the 'elite' 82 airborne no less, prolly to blast those
Ebola virus to smithereens !!

http://osnetdaily.com/2014/10/militarys-ebola-mission-in-africa-meant-to-edge-out-china-boost-africom/

hehehhehe

Posted by: denk | Jan 23 2020 3:06 utc | 188

interestingly enough, later today pomparse released a statement on the lebanese gov't...

Government Formation in Lebanon

let me simplify it for you... pomparse simplified : "when we do a colour revolution, if there are any troubles, thanks the work of our cia paid mercenaries in lebannon - it is all on you...

"

The test of Lebanon’s new government will be its actions and its responsiveness to the demands of the Lebanese people to implement reforms and to fight corruption. Only a government that is capable of and committed to undertaking real and tangible reforms will restore investor confidence and unlock international assistance for Lebanon.

The unified, non-sectarian, and largely peaceful protests over the last three months reflect the Lebanese people’s aspirations for their political leaders to put aside partisan interests and to act in the national interest. We urge the government, army, and security services to guarantee the safety of citizens as they engage in peaceful demonstrations. Violence and provocative actions have no place in civil discourse."

Posted by: james | Jan 23 2020 3:25 utc | 189

I think this newsworthy:

The fires are picking up again. Six at Emergency Warning Level, three at Watch-and-Act level (at time of posting)

Emergency-level bushfire - Canberra

It appears that the Rural Fire Service (New South Wales) have just lost a Lockheed C130 Hercules Fire-tanker, crews in helicopters currently searching for the aircraft.

RFS investigating reports of Large Air Tanker crash in Southern NSW

Posted by: Jon_in_AU | Jan 23 2020 3:58 utc | 190

james @189

Thanks for the update.

USA no longer seeks to spread freedumb and democracy, instead USA "stands with the people of" every country where USA wants to change the leadership. This phrasing appears to complement the Empire's dismissal of sovereignty via it's self-proclaimed "international rules-based order" (which I see as yet another term for "New World Order").

"Stands with" appears to mean, essentially: "support the Empire-friendly faction", overtly and covertly, up to and including color revolution.

!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jan 23 2020 4:50 utc | 191

@ jon_in_au... it looks frightening... i hope it can end and life can return to normal... i hope everyone can be safe.. it looks truly scary what i am seeing in photos and from reports..

Posted by: james | Jan 23 2020 5:02 utc | 192

@ jr - it is very disconcerting reading a regular dispatch from this moron pompeo... the guy is off his rocker, which might explain why he wants others like iran to be ''normal''.. the guy is a complete liar and fraud.. where do these born again christians learn how to think in such a twisted manner? i find it very disturbing in a different way then the fires in australia..

Posted by: james | Jan 23 2020 5:05 utc | 193

Below is a ZH link to a follow up article about Russia/US confrontations in Syria.

US Troops Seen Blocking Russians From Syrian Oilfields In Series Of Dangerous Standoffs

The take away quote
"
President Trump said while addressing reporters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Wednesday: “But very importantly, as you know, we have the oil. And we left soldiers for the oil, because we take the oil and we’re working on that, and we have it very nicely secured.”
"

If the US gets kicked out of Iraq as karlof1 linked to the update about above then maybe Trump will have to eat his words or its a SHTF moment.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 23 2020 5:32 utc | 194

CIA Motto: “Proudly overthrowing the Cuban government since 1959.”

Attempted assasinations on Castro,
Extreme economic embargo,
Numerous attempts at regime change,
OUtright invasion
Biowarfare, [Swine flu, Dengue etc etc]

https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/03/17/cia-motto-proudly-overthrowing-the-cuban-government-since-1959/

-----------------------------------------------
Outrageous ?

But you aint nuthin yet !

CIA Motto: “
Proudly overthrowing the Chinese government since 1949.
[Think Cuba x 10000]

Extreme ecnomic/technology embargo/sanction from 1949 to this day, except for a brief 'honeymoon' during the Nixon years.

Terrorism in Tibet, Xinjiang, Africa, Afpak, Stans, SEA....

Attempted color rev in TAM, HK...

Terrorism in the air,
[Attempted assasination on Zhou Enlai, mH370, AF447,...]

picking fights at China's front yard for 70 years,
SCS, ECS, TW STRAITS, ......

Incessant demonisation 24/7/365

biOwarfare [SARS, bird flu, swine flu, current virus in Wuhan]

I heard WuhAN is being quarantined.

Well done guys,
[[[you]]] win....again.

Posted by: denk | Jan 23 2020 7:25 utc | 195

Here's the real reason the Western nations don't want Huawei:

Backdoored backup? Apple nixed iCloud encryption after FBI complained your data is a valuable resource

Apple was barred from offering customers encrypted iCloud storage because US intelligence agencies insisted on maintaining open access to users’ files, their primary means of evidence-gathering, sources claim.

The FBI quashed a planned feature that would have allowed Apple users to encrypt their iCloud storage, claiming that it would cut the agency off from its best source of evidence against iPhone-using suspects, according to sources who spoke to Reuters on Wednesday. Apple reportedly went along with the agency, hoping to avoid being made an example of in the media or used as the test case for a draconian new anti-encryption law, and the program was put to bed two years ago – yet the crusading surveillance state has returned in the wake of the Pensacola naval air base shooting to demand still greater incursions on user privacy.

5G technology allegedly enables quantum encryption - which is theoretically unbreakable.

You see, kids: when it is the USA doing it, it isn't called totalitarianism, it's called "national security".

Posted by: vk | Jan 23 2020 13:00 utc | 196

There are 2 dum-dum factions in the U.S. that brought the scourge of the Chosen Zionist Trump upon the rest of us all.

A. The first is obvious and direct: bible thumpers, the KKK and Zionists, OH, and all the oligarchy on Wall Street, in Israel and mamma Russia and let's not forget the media that gave Trump massive free publicity.

B. The second is not so obvious and indirect: HILLARY CLINTON and all her rabid neoliberal Zionist followers on neoliberal sites like Daily kos and neoliberal think tanks, neoliberal fake left Obama and all his blind supporters. Oh and I'll include Neoliberal influencers like Bill Maher in that group, but I'll forgive Michael Moore for his ginormous laspse in judgment in the previous election.

Unfortunately, Moore is one of the millions of victims held hostage in a country that only provides a choice between the lesser of two evils which is in truth a choice between TWO EVILS.

Michael Moore's penance is to work day and night without rest to ensure Bernie wins the primary and then the general, and to create a documentary on how people like Bernie, Nader, Gabbard, Stein, Kucinich, Ron Paul and others are RAILROADED out of the political system by the cabal that runs groups A and B.

Together the first and second group brought on the shetload of karma that is the ego hot air inflated orange babyman menace, Trump, and regretably both groups make up the reason why America is nothing more than a mass of stoopid herd mentality with all the sane people mocked and forced to the fringes.

Let me warn you: Bernie is the ONLY AND LAST chance the hostage side has to break out of this NO CHOICE sham democracy, and he has a good chance now, so enter cynical spin BOTS😈 like Russ and Jackrabbit here to pull you back in to the obscured margins.

Don't give them the fcking time of day!

It's BERNIE OR BUST! Bernie is the last texaco you'll find in the desert. You may be long departed from this world before the opportunity to break loose of this stranglehold on democracy rises again. I'm not kidding here!

Do you really think a man of Bernie's age would go through the arduous ordeal of campaigning for the Presidency a second time in four years if he truly didn't believe we are in BIG TROUBLE if we don't give him a chance to break us free from the CHOSEN NO CHOICE???

Bernie is rightly using the Democratic Party that has been abusing the efforts of the neverneo left to crack the ceiling of political suppression! HE IS AS PURE AS YOU'RE GONNA GET IN THIS ZIONIST CHOSEN REALITY. THE ESTABLISHMENT ARE GUNNING FOR HIM FOR A REASON! GIVE HIM A FCKING CHANCE YOU CYNICAL MORONS!

Posted by: Circe | Jan 23 2020 13:14 utc | 197

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 22 2020 20:42 utc | 184

Abd al-Mahdi does seem to have gone over the top with this categorical demand for US withdrawal from Iraq. He must be being pushed from behind, as he did start off more or less as a US stooge, at least US-selected candidate. And he's made a complete volte-face. That is in itself an interesting point, as it suggests very strong feeling behind him. Of course the US won't withdraw, at least not for now. But don't forget, every man in Iraq has an AK47, and is ready to use it. And the militias all have Katyushas and other artillery, and no-one to control them. Daily random sprays of US bases with rocket fire is the most likely prospect, as I've suggested before. The American personnel at Ayn al-Asad interviewed by CNN after the attack didn't look too bright; I shouldn't think Iraq is a popular posting these days. Reminded me rather of the US contractor dog-handler who checked me out entering the Green Zone when I went in 2017. Definitely bottom of the heap Americans. Who else would go?

Posted by: Laguerre | Jan 23 2020 13:54 utc | 198

Thanks, karlof1 @186.

The exchange with CNBC reporter is worth repeating in full:

K: Do I dare --one last question.

T: Go ahead.

K: Entitlements ever be on your plate?

T: At some point they will be. We have tremendous growth. We're going to have tremendous growth. This next year I—it'll be toward the end of the year. The growth is going to be incredible. And at the right time, we will take a look at that. You know, that's actually the easiest of all things, if you look, cause it's such a—

K: If you're willing—

T: —big percentage.

K: —to do some of the things that you said you wouldn't do in the past, though, in terms of Medicare—

T: Well, we're going—we're going to look....

Sorry, left of the last few words, but no need to go back and retrieve those.

_________________

The enormity of such a man being able to travel abroad!

Never mind Davos - I'm glad Zarif backed out.

In our lady friend's recent diatribe she has a few things wrong. But then, those she chooses to name there I take it are her friends, since I give her credit for some smarts and naming folk gives them legitimacy here. She doth protest too much by including Russia and the press in those supporting T initially. And is far, far too kind to Michael Moore.

The one thing I did see in my brief encounter with the Senate impeachment chat is how very small the chamber and group sitting there are. How very small. Especially right now.

Posted by: juliania | Jan 23 2020 14:13 utc | 199

Hysterical Trump Derangement Syndrome victims are now blaming Michael Moore for causing their dementia? All Michael Moore did in 2016 was take a hard look at circumstances as they existed in the real world and tried to warn the American population that they were going off the rails.

This is more exposure of the exceptional delusions that Americans are laboring under:

If we all believe hard enough then a man can actually have a gender of mountain panda, but only if we all believe in concert. This is why we must outlaw people disbelieving that a man can acquire the gender of mountain panda. Even one person clinging to disbelief ruins the magic that allows his transformation.

We need to suspend disbelief that people who failed Algebra I six times in a row during their six year effort to graduate high school can become aerospace engineers. We must legally enforce the belief that their inability to succeed in STEM careers is due strictly to racism and/or misogyny. We must adjust the engineering curriculum and put in place quotas so that they can become engineers and design such wonderfully anti-racist and anti-misogynist aircraft as the Boeing 737 MAX.

People who insist upon looking past our delusions and trying to see the world for what it really is; that is, people who are working counter to our delusions and deliberately trying to undermine them, such people must be shunned, vilified, publicly shamed! They must be outcast and silenced, and with extreme prejudice if necessary!

Michael Moore, who by acknowledging reality sabotaged our attempt to alter that reality through concerted and unified synchronized self-deception, is the enemy!

The above lunacy is what afflicts the "good" Americans. Can you imagine what the bad ones are like?

Posted by: William Gruff | Jan 23 2020 14:28 utc | 200