[The American Mind] n Serbia and Belarus, the people demonstrated against fraudulent elections. In Brazil, the people swarmed into government buildings after a fraudulent election. In America, the people swarmed into Congress after a fraudulent election. In Sri Lanka, the people swarmed into Temple Trees—the Prime Minister’s residence—over a mismanaged economy. In Holland, farmers revolted over the government’s plan to destroy agriculture. In Germany, the farmers revolted when the government targeted them. In France, farmers sprayed manure onto government buildings. In France, the offices of Blackrock were breached and trashed. In Iceland, it was the Pots and Pans revolt.
It’s beginning to look like people are realizing that their government is their enemy, and starting to resemble 1848, when the peoples of Europe suddenly decided that they were tired of their oppressive, arrogant elites, and rose up in revolt.
The uprising began in January in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (neither Italy nor Germany were unified at this time) where the king pacified the revolutionaries with a constitution. France was next in February, where the monarchy was once again overthrown and a republic established, this time without the previous Terror. There was a feeling of déjà vu among the rest of the European aristocrats, but no Napoleon emerged. What did emerge were revolutions within their own domains.
In March, revolution broke out in Bavaria, Piedmont, Austria, Baden, Denmark, Prussia, Lombardy, Hungary, Venice, and Poland. In April, it spread to Saxony, Transylvania, and other states.
The uprisings in some cases were successful in that the king abdicated, a hated minister resigned (e.g., Guizot, Metternich), and/or the people obtained rights and constitutions while in other states they were crushed, either through the military or from foreign intervention, after loss of life. In most cases, reforms were agreed upon, whereupon the assurances (or the reforms) were withdrawn once the revolutionary fervor was spent, and the inevitable bickering divided the reformers.
Perhaps it is wishful thinking, but it feels like there is presently the making of another 1848. People are getting fed up with the arrogant multinational elites ramming an unpopular ideology down their throats, trying to erase their national and religious identity while expecting the people quietly to submit. Specifically, they aim to promote homosexuality and transgenderism among children, impose total censorship, persecute Christians and suppress the Christian religion, crush dissent, impose control of the population, promote racism against white people, erase national boundaries, eliminate national/cultural identities, aid and abet illegal immigration from rape cultures, falsify history, eliminate humor and comedy, raze monuments, indoctrinate children, the police, and the military, and promote anti-Semitism. In short, it is a multifaceted totalitarian movement by the elites, from the top down.
It’s not hard to identify the indicators of repression and hatred of the native European population. In Holland, an elected parliamentarian was prosecuted for pointing out facts unpalatable to the elites. In Finland, a group of Muslim "refugees" raped underage girls. One of the victims committed suicide. When this came to light, the Finnish police made sure to inform the population that "there is no phenomenon of sexual offenses in which foreigners go rape in the streets. These just happened at the same time," and stressed that "not all people with foreign backgrounds are dishonest or criminals." The rapists were sentenced to no more than four years of incarceration. The Finnish Supreme Court declared that having sex with a ten year old girl was not rape.
In Germany, a nine-person gang rape of a teenaged German girl resulted in the perpetrators receiving probation. In Portugal, the Senegal-born head of an anti-hate group spoke on the necessity of killing white people at a conference called, "Racism and the Advancement of Hate Speech in the World." In Sweden, state-run television produced a documentary where the original Swedes were shown to be black. Criticizing Islam on Facebook in Sweden will land one in jail.
In Scotland, a war memorial commemorating a regiment of men who rescued people being besieged in an Indian city was changed because of the taint of imperialism. In England, a man with the English flag was told that the flag was racist and to leave a rally where Palestinian flags were waving and the participators were calling for Jewish genocide. Meanwhile, Britain continues to import hundreds of thousands of people from South Asia and Africa.
In Germany, the newly formed AfD Party, a populist movement called fascist by the elites, has been under attack, physically and with propaganda.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leye, has urged the European countries to admit even more Afghan "refugees."
Throughout Western Europe, Christian churches are being vandalized and desecrated by illegal migrants from Muslim countries. In Britain, a man quietly standing with a sign stating, "The right to openly discuss ideas must be defended," was called "Nazi scum," and assaulted by Antifa members and the leader of Black Lives Matter UK. The European Union passed a law imposing internet censorship. In Italy, the island of Lampedusa was suddenly overwhelmed by thousands of African illegal invaders, vastly outnumbering the inhabitants.
In France, assaults of French people by migrants have become commonplace, as they have in Germany, Italy, and Scandinavia, from rapes to riots to murder, including one instance of a foiled attempt at cannibalism. The governments encourage more invaders to enter the country.
As with other European countries, the elites in Ireland have welcomed the invaders into their country, thereby diluting the citizens’ national and ethnic identity. In fact, Dublin’s City Council decided to fly the Palestinian flag. When a Muslim emigre stabbed a woman and three children, the citizens rioted. Irish elites were not outraged by the stabbings, saving their consternation for a Dublin graffiti that read "Irish Lives Matter," which was denounced as hate speech. In fact, this outrage was even voiced in Northern Ireland. The Irish prime minister was so outraged that he is pushing for even more censorship.
In Switzerland, a man was sent to jail for calling a fat lesbian a fat lesbian. In Scotland, parents who try to prevent their children from being sexually mutilated can be put in prison for seven years.
In America, the FBI is being used as a weapon of political persecution.
In Canada, Justin Trudeau, who has voiced his admiration for the Chinese Communist Party and is rumored to be the son of Fidel Castro, has ordered streaming online venues to register with the government so that they can be "regulated."
Free speech has become criminalized everywhere in Canada.
In America, Donald Trump was removed from the 2024 presidential race ballot in several states by local Democrats, who stated that in order to save democracy, they would not let the people vote for their candidate. The global elites have clearly stated that Trump’s election victory would be a threat to them.
Organized waves and waves of illegal immigrants, counted in the millions, are shipped to enter the southern border of the United States, aided and abetted by the very same government that is supposed to secure the border from invasion. When Texas finally started to prevent the invasion, the federal government blocked it.
There are numerous demands from liberals that the U.S. Constitution be trashed, because it is an obstacle to them achieving total power. In America, liberals are advocating concentration camps for MAGA supports. Others just want mass executions.
In British Columbia, a law has been proposed that would jail any doctor giving professional advice that contradicts the government. In North America and Britain, financial institutions debank people whose politics are contrary to the elites.
Democracy does exist in the West, though it is unclear that it matters much. There is little difference between the different established political parties, which just take turns at the trough. Occasionally something comes up that momentarily differentiates them, like Brexit, but they soon coalesce again into the Uniparty.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Kirill Strelnikov
[RIA] From the very beginning of the NWO, the collective West launched at full capacity a giant machine of disinformation and propaganda that had long been dormant, the main goal of which was to convince the world audience that Russia is the main source of evil that threatens the entire world.
To achieve this, not only were all restrictions on the scale of lies lifted, but the green light was also given to the invention of increasingly sophisticated forms, channels and tools for fabricating wild accusations against our country.
Even microscopic fractions of truth that slip through the Western media serve only to create in the audience a sense of their impartiality and professionalism, although in the end the main conclusion is always the same: Russia is always to blame for everything, and Russians are criminals and murderers who should be “caught up with international justice ".
Yesterday, The Guardian published a voluminous article that talks about “collaborators” - citizens of Ukraine whom the authorities threw in prison for not openly accepting the Nazi ideology of Kiev.
The article reluctantly acknowledges the fact of torture in Ukrainian prisons. For example, there is a photo of one of the arrested, who had an “Orc” tattoo forcibly gouged out on his forehead. One of the Chasov Yar prisoners was thrown into prison for 15 years along with her two-year-old daughter and is terrified that her daughter will be taken away when she reaches the age of three. A teacher from Slavyansk was thrown into prison simply because he tried to escape to his friends in Crimea. People arrested for participating in organizing a referendum in Kherson received huge sentences.
One of the prisoners, 57-year-old resident of Artemovsk Yuri Tsybulsky, bluntly told reporters: “My parents raised me to fight fascism, and here is fascism.” The article also notes that the SBU has opened more than 8,100 criminal proceedings related to “collaboration and aiding” in favor of Russia.
However, instead of opening the audience’s eyes to the atrocities of the Kiev regime, the authors of the article, fulfilling the order of yet another Western psychological operations center, are essentially turning to potential “collaborators”: any of your actions and even thoughts against the Ukrainian authorities will be severely punished, and Russia won't help.
This kind of cynical duplicity is characteristic of absolutely all Western media and supposedly international organizations, which, according to documents, must ensure compliance with the rule of law and human rights, but in fact have turned into additional offices of the intelligence services of NATO, the EU and Ukraine.
For example, in April 2022, the “humanitarian” international organization OSCE published a 110-page report, which could not be read, since every paragraph contained the conclusion that “Russia is committing horrific war crimes in Ukraine.” In small print at the end of the report, it was noted that “OSCE experts were not in Ukraine, but they examined a lot of evidence from open sources (read: Ukrainian media). But who cares if the conclusion is the same?
Proud of its endless impartiality, Human Rights Watch also published a report according to which "Russian troops committed 'unimaginable' war crimes, including rape and murder, against Ukrainian civilians in the Chernihiv, Kharkov and Kiev regions." But the number of white threads in the report was so overwhelming that international law expert David Schaeffer, after studying the report, wrote that “it will be almost impossible to prove all this in court.”
However, the Western propaganda machine is not going to stall because of such trifles. The main task: to make sure that horrifying news about the atrocities and crimes of Russia does not leave the front pages.
As one of the activists close to the Kyiv administration admitted on his social networks, “the fewer civilians in Ukraine die at the hands of the Russians, the less foreign media will write about us, the less citizens of other countries will know, the less help will be available.”
And Kiev’s Western patrons are bending over backwards to ensure that “Russian atrocities” are constantly heard: for example, in May 2022, the EU, USA and Great Britain created a special body, Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group (ACA), entirely dedicated to fabricating accusations against Russia in war crimes. His goal is not hidden: “to support the units of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine for Russian war crimes,” that is, the accused is immediately known.
In October 2023, at a UN Security Council meeting, the UK representative stated that “Russia has committed more than 100,000 war crimes in Ukraine,” after which Joe Biden announced that “Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine.” True, after this he muttered: “It’s still up to the lawyers to decide whether this is true or not, but it seems to me that this is genocide.”
As far as Russia and all reasonable people in the world are concerned, there can be no dispute about whose side is right and who is the criminal.
Russian President Vladimir Putin at the forum "Everything for Victory!" in Tula said: “It pains me to talk about this, but I’ll still say: when our units withdrew from the Kharkov region, we know what was going on there, what these scum were doing. <…> Only neo-Nazis can do this. Here who we're dealing with." According to the head of state, our fighters are waging a sacred and fair battle against the new edition of neo-Nazism: they are fighting for Russia, for truth, for freedom and for the future of our country.
However, perhaps most accurately, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said about the essence of the “hot” and information war of the West against Russia at the hands of Ukraine: “What Russia is doing today is a fateful, I would say, metaphysical struggle. We must remember "that our current struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the world rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spirits of wickedness in high places. I say this boldly, with full confidence that Russia is on the side of the light. <...> Russia has found the strength to resist evil, which means that our holy predecessors did not abandon the Russian land with their prayers."
Even the most convinced atheists now cannot deny that all the world’s evil, manifesting itself in a thousand guises and incarnations, has taken up arms against Russia, and the front line now passes not only across snow-covered fields, but also through our hearts.
This battle will be long, difficult and bloody, and we must be prepared for this, knowing one thing: the truth is with us, God is with us, which means we will win.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Vladimir Sosnitsky
[RedStar] Fedor Fedorovich Ushakov is a great Russian naval commander, admiral born on February 13 (24), 1744. One of the founders of the Black Sea Fleet, he developed and applied maneuver tactics, won a number of major victories over the Turkish fleet, and successfully carried out the Mediterranean campaign of the Russian fleet during the war against France.
The son of a sergeant of the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment, Fyodor Ushakov, a contemporary of Suvorov, went a long way to the pinnacle of glory from a Naval Corps cadet to an admiral. From V. Antsiferov’s book “Admiral Ushakov” (1940) you can find out how harsh and ascetic the future admiral’s youth was in the Naval Cadet Corps: “Ushakov, who grew up in a village near Yaroslavl and was taught to read and write by a village priest, had to live and study with arrogant sons high-ranking nobles." However, his ingenuity and success in science brought the diligent boy into the leadership.
After graduating from the Naval Corps in May 1766, midshipman Ushakov was sent to the Baltic Fleet. V. Antsiferov writes: “The voyages of that time were difficult. Corned beef and crackers - the only food - had a detrimental effect on health... You had to have an iron body to withstand all the hardships of sea life.” From the Baltic, the sailor was transferred to the south, where he took a direct part in the construction of the Black Sea Fleet, in the development of Sevastopol, which can be read about in the book by historian V. Golovachev “The History of Sevastopol as a Russian Port” (1872).
The military sailor Fyodor Ushakov, who served under three reigns, was destined to become an active participant in several wars: Russian-Turkish (1768–1774 and 1787–1791), and the capture of Ochakov. Throughout his entire military career, the admiral did not know a single defeat. “Victory at any cost, under any conditions” was his motto. Thus, in the book “Admiral Ushakov” it is written: “The Turks called the invincible admiral Ushak Pasha, his name inspired insurmountable fear.
Ushakov was a thunderstorm for the entire Turkish coast.” “Having received the right to act independently, F.F. Ushakov immediately rose to the ranks of famous Russian sailors, writes M. Lyalina, author of the book “The Exploits of Russian Admirals.” “Until now, Russian admirals were more defensive, but Ushakov was not like that.”
When Ochakov was captured, the initiative to conduct the battle was completely entrusted by the fleet commander, Marko Voinovich, to the junior flagship Ushakov. And in this battle, the flagship did not lose his head, but showed all his best qualities: courage, determination, bravery.
In 1799, the operation to capture the fortress of Corfu was carried out by Russia jointly with Turkey.
The Russian sailors came under fire from five French batteries. Our ships returned fire and took the French out of the battle. By 10 o'clock the artillerymen of two enemy batteries abandoned their positions. The way was open for the Russian landing. 1,500 Russian soldiers entered the battle. The French surrendered the fortress, although quite recently European newspapers wrote that it was impossible to take Corfu from the sea. Skilful leadership, correct tactical calculations, and skillful actions of our soldiers ensured victory for the Russian fleet.
For this superbly carried out operation, Ushakov was promoted to full admiral, and was also awarded the highest award of the Ottoman Empire - a diamond headdress. The Free State of the Seven Islands was created in the Ionian Islands under the temporary joint patronage of Russia and Turkey. Ushakov was instructed to organize the authorities of the new republic and give it a constitution.
Before returning to Sevastopol in September 1800, Russian ships managed to take part in supporting the troops of A.V. Suvorov, the blockade of Genoa and the liberation of Rome and Naples. Alexander I, who ascended the Russian throne, did not value Ushakov and appointed him to a minor post to command the rowing fleet in the Baltic.
Five years later, Fyodor Fedorovich resigned and settled in his estate in the village of Alekseevka, Temnikovsky district, Tambov province. Living modestly and secludedly, he donated large amounts of money to charity. During the Patriotic War of 1812, Fyodor Fedorovich was elected by the nobility of the Tambov province as the head of the people's militia, but refused this post due to illness. On October 2 (14), 1817, admiral Fyodor Ushakov, who had never known defeat, died on his estate and was buried in the Synaxarsky monastery founded by his grandfather near the city of Temnikov.
An island in the north of the Kara Sea, a bay in the Anadyr Bay of the Bering Sea and a cape on the northern coast of the Sea of Okhotsk are named after Ushakov. The coastal defense battleship Admiral Ushakov was named after him. During the Great Patriotic War, on March 3, 1944, the Ushakov Medal and the Order of Ushakov, I and II degrees, were established. In the modern fleet, the name of the famous admiral was assigned to a cruiser and a guided-missile destroyer. In 2001, the legendary naval commander was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church as the righteous warrior Theodore Ushakov.
[Reuters] When U.S. and Australian troops practiced amphibious landings, ground combat and air operations last summer, they drew headlines about the allies deepening defense cooperation to counter China's growing military ambitions.
But for U.S. war planners preparing for a potential conflict over Taiwan, the high-profile Talisman Sabre exercises had a far more discreet value: They helped create new stockpiles of military equipment that were left behind in Australia after the drills ended in August, U.S. officials told Reuters.
The United States and its allies are increasingly worried that in the coming years Chinese President Xi Jinping could order his military to seize Taiwan, the democratically governed island China considers its own territory. So, the U.S. military is taking a hard look at its own military readiness and trying to play catch-up in a critical area: its logistics network.
The equipment from Talisman Sabre included roughly 330 vehicles and trailers and 130 containers in warehouses in Bandiana, in southeastern Australia, the Army says.
The amount of equipment, which the United States military has not previously acknowledged, is enough to supply about three logistics companies, with as many as 500 or more soldiers, focused on ensuring supplies reach warfighters.
It's the kind of materiel that's needed for a future drill, a natural disaster, or in a war.
"We're looking to do this more and more," Army General Charles Flynn, the top Army commander in the Pacific, told Reuters in an interview.
"There's a number of other countries in the region where we already have agreements to do that," he added, without naming specific countries.
Reuters interviews with more than two dozen current and former U.S. officials found that American military logistics in the Pacific is one of the greatest U.S. vulnerabilities in any potential conflict over Taiwan.
U.S. war games have concluded that China would likely try to bomb jet fuel supplies or refueling ships, crippling U.S. air and sea power without having to battle heavily armed fighter jets or sink America's fleet of surface warships, according to current and former officials and experts.
In response, the United States is trying to spread its military logistics hubs across the region - including warehouses in Australia, officials told Reuters.
Asked about Reuters' conclusions, the Pentagon said that the Department of Defense is working with allies to make U.S. forces more mobile and distributed.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not directly address the Reuters report, but a spokesperson said the United States should "stop enhancing military contact with the Taiwan region" and "stop creating factors that could heighten tensions in the Taiwan Strait."
The Australian embassy in Washington referred questions to the Ministry of Defense, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Critics say Washington's network is still too concentrated and that the government hasn't put enough money or urgency toward the effort.
"When you really dig down a couple of layers, the intel community is blinking red as far as for the next five years. And yet some of these timelines (to address the risks) are 10, 15, 20 years long," said Congressman Mike Waltz, a Republican who leads the House subcommittee overseeing military logistics and readiness.
[WAPO] What if I said you could read real world history on the underside of your kids’ Hot Wheels?
In my Philippine childhood in the 1970s, my brother Hector and I played with die-cast toy cars. I remember the first time I looked at the underside of these cars, soon after I had learned to read, and realized they had been made in different countries in different years. Some were made in the United Kingdom and the United States; the newer ones were made in Japan. Decades later, as my work as an economist brought my family to the United States, my two children got toy cars nearly identical to mine — first made in China and, later, Vietnam.
We now have a small collection of these cars, and occasionally I use them as a teaching tool. I ask students in my economics classes to inspect the cars’ undersides, and together we trace the gradual movement of toy car manufacturing: from England and the United States in the 1960s to Japan in the mid-1970s, from South Korea in the mid-1980s to China in the late 1990s and Vietnam after.
#1
You would think by now the enviros would be trying to ban toy cars as being just as awful as toy guns in terms of what they teach children to accept as normal.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/05/2024 6:46 Comments ||
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#2
When I was a kid in the 1950s we had a neighbor who owned a small toy store. Every once in a while he'd give us a toy cars. They were stamped Made in Japan even then.
#4
The whole question of 'what is an import' has become a major problem over the past 30 years.
Many autos, SUVs and light trucks, have final assembly in Alabama, at plants owned by Mercedes Benz, Honda, Hundai and Toyota. Some of the engines come from the engine assembly plant in Huntsville, Al but others come from Mexico and Canada. Other parts come from East Asia and Germany for example.
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/05/2024 10:50 Comments ||
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#5
As a young lad in the 60's, Matchbox cars were UK-made, Hot Wheels were US, baby!
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/05/2024 11:24 Comments ||
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#6
I remember when Made in Japan was translated as Inferior Quality.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/05/2024 12:16 Comments ||
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#7
After WWII, Japanese used beer cans to make toys for export to the United States. Desperate for income, they used anything they could get their hands on to make anything they could imagine that might sell. In those days we thought if it was Made in Japan it was cheap and trashy. But after the Japanese recovered from the war they showed the world how real cars should be made. Ford, General Motors and Chrysler were never the same after that.
Posted by: Abu Laptop (same as Abu Uluque but on a different computer.) ||
02/05/2024 13:17 Comments ||
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#8
But then, American computer companies have never been the same since we started importing computers from China.
Posted by: Abu Laptop (same as Abu Uluque but on a different computer.) ||
02/05/2024 13:20 Comments ||
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[American Thinker] We are in a depression and do not even know it.
In a recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, "What Causes Inflation," Walter Frick describes some of the economic forces that often create sustained inflation.
It can happen when a critical supply becomes suddenly scarce, such as the Arab oil embargo of 1973. Prices advanced, limits were placed on the amount of gas you could purchase, and lines of cars formed around all gas stations. We were beset with inflation exceeding 18% at times, and it took a decade for inflation to subside.
It can happen when economic expectations do not meet reality or when economic shock occurs. The 2007—2010 Great Recession is a prime example. The trading of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) became extremely popular on Wall Street during the late 1990s and early 2000s. These securities were originally rated AAA by the bond rating agencies, and their popularity increased. Gradually, however, to earn higher yields, a portion of the MBS packages would contain a few subprime home loans. This practice grew until soon Wall Street had grievous amounts of MBS, not rated, on their books and with clients. A small and intelligent group of individuals spotted this financial weakness and "shorted" the MBS market. This immediately created the largest financial crisis ever on Wall Street. Because the investment banks were "too big to fail," it took monumental giveaways from Uncle Sam — some say $12 trillion over a decade — to put the banking system back on its feet.
It can happen when a sudden increase in the supply of money occurs. Did anyone give thought to what might happen when Uncle Sam printed and dumped $6 trillion into the economy during COVID? With a $15-trillion money stock before printing COVID checks, this $6 trillion represented a 40% increase in the total money supply. It peaked at $21.7 trillion during July 2022, the highest ever, before beginning a slight decline to $20.9 trillion at the end of this past December.
#3
...Respectfully, I disagree, and let me explain why.
One of our customers is a very well known (regionally) maker of boat trailers and pontoon boats. I have explained and shown to our leadership that these folks are our 'canary in the coal mine' - if people are still buying boat trailers (and by extension, boats) then the economy is still moving along. When the boat trailers slow down - or worse, stop - then you can know things are getting tough.
So far we're still knocking out boat trailers at a pretty good clip.
#6
The last paragraph of this piece is using the M2 figures for the money supply. The St L Federal Reserve is the source.
The M1 money supply has contracted a bit faster.
It certainly has a long way yet to go.
However, what the piece doesn't mention is that a yuuge increase in the money supply occurred in 2020 during the shut down of much of the economy due to the COVID restrictions. There was about 1 $12T increase in M2 between March and August 2020.
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/05/2024 11:02 Comments ||
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#7
I second Skid's opinion in #2.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/05/2024 14:05 Comments ||
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#8
MikeK, maybe the sales of boat trailers etc. is up because inflation is encouraging people to move their liquid assets into things with real underlying value
[EnergyBadBoys] Pretty technical substack article. Basically the law gave a bonus to encourage rooftop installations. This bonus lets homeowners with solar rooftops sell their excess electricity at premium prices even when California doesn't need the electricity. This raises prices for everyone and the poor, who rent apartments, pay for this bonus. Naturally, Calif. is thinking of charging for electricity by income but that has all kinds of problems.
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/05/2024 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11129 views]
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#1
We'll see how many rooftops are left after the storm.
[Ron Paul Institute] Israel is boxed-in, as is becoming very evident to many Israelis. One Israeli correspondent (formerly a Cabinet Secretary) illustrates its nature:
"The meaning of the 7th October default is not only the loss of lives ... but mainly the potential transformation of how Israel is perceived ... as no longer to be feared by Middle Eastern actors."
"The Israeli leadership must internalize that we can no longer be content with a "sense of victory" among the Israeli public ... It is doubtful whether victory in Gaza is enough to restore the fear of Israel to the levels we had vis-a-vis our enemies. A victory that boils down to just the release of the captives and confidence-building measures to establish a Palestinian state would not be enough in shoring up Israel’s image in that regard."
"If the quagmire of Gaza ... brings the [Israeli] leadership to the realization that there is no ability to present a clear victory on this front, one that will lead to a strategic change in the region, they must consider switching fronts and reasserting Israeli deterrence through the removal of the strategic threat in Lebanon ... victory against one of the richest and most powerful terrorist organizations in the world — Hezbollah — can restore deterrence in the region in general ... Israel must remove the threat from the north and dismantle the power structure Hezbollah has built in Lebanon, regardless of the situation in the south."
"But without victory in the south, a significant achievement in the north becomes that much more important."
The above quotation goes directly to the heart of the issue. That is: "How can Zionism be saved?." All the rest of the "blah-blah" coming from world leaders is largely bluff. Not only is Gaza NOT giving Israelis a sense of victory; on the contrary, it is widely proliferating a violent anger at a surprise, "shameful" defeat.
Some in the war cabinet (i.e., Eisenkot) suggest that Israel look truth in the eye: It should capitulate to Hamas; give a ceasefire a chance; release incarcerated Palestinians, and save the hostages held in Gaza:
"I think it is necessary to say boldly that it is impossible to bring the hostages back alive in the near future without a [ceasefire] deal, and anyone who is feeding lies to the public is feeding lies."
But this is not the predominant sentiment amongst Israelis: The latest Peace Index survey reflects the pervasive gloom: 94% percent of Jews think Israel has used the right amount of firepower in Gaza (or "not enough" (43%)). Three-quarters of all Israelis think the number of Palestinians harmed since October is justified to achieve its aims; a full two-thirds of Jewish respondents say numbers of casualties are definitely justified (only 21% say "somewhat" justified).
The true price Israel will be paying, however, is not merely the release of Palestinian prisoners (though that, in itself, would create a popular uproar); but rather, it is fear that acquiescence to Hamas demands would spell the end to the Israel-security paradigm:
#3
IIRC Ron Paul strongly criticized Terry Jones' trial of the Coran which was not connected to Jews or Israel.
Paul's position violated both the pro civil liberties and isolationist tenets of libertarianism since it favored the interference of alien despotic regimes in US internal affairs.
Antisemitism may play a role but there's also an irrational and self contradictory libertarian tendency to defer to alien tyranny.
#4
Ron Paul has not looked deeply into anyone/any group who would give him money or votes. But at some point not looking cannot prevent seeing and choosing to accept.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
