[Front Page] Tech plutocrat Elon Musk announces he is buying Twitter to liberate this "virtual town square" from one-sided political censorship - and he is met with hysterical charges that he is attacking free speech. A woman who reposts TikTok videos of "woke" teachers bragging about their sexualize of children in their classrooms, is attacked by a Washington Post reporter who harasses the woman’s family in order to silence an enemy of "free speech" and purveyor of "hate" - just days after the reporter appeared in a video and bursts into tears over getting the same treatment she later inflicts on the anonymous creator of Libs on TikTok.
We are clearly living in Orwellian times, when the ambitions of tyrannical power are camouflaged by debased language, incoherent thought, and patent double-standards. Like the Newspeak of 1984, our progressive media abuses words like "diversity" and "free speech" to make them mean their opposites: a uniform orthodoxy protected and enforced by censorship. As long ago as Thucydides, this abuse of language and thought was recognized as the enemy of freedom and the precursor of a tyranny that reduces the diversity of opinion and ideas into one monolithic, oppressive dogma.
Since its creation in the ancient Athenian democracy, free speech has been the sine qua non of a political order that includes a wide diversity of citizens, not just the rich and educated elites who monopolized power in oligarchic or autocratic regimes. Since political discussion and deliberation were conducted through public speeches, citizens had to be protected from reprisals for, or limitations on their diverse opinions and their particular ways of expressing them.
True diversity - the diversity of thought and opinion - is intimately connected to free speech, itself one of the most critical foundations of political freedom, and most important bulwarks against tyranny.
This freedom of speech given to social and economic inferiors was one of the major criticisms of democracy in arguments against politically enfranchising non-elites. Antidemocratic critics like Plato, an aristocrat and philosopher who favored rule by a technocratic elite, mocked the average Athenian who presumed to address his betters in the Assembly and the Council. Plato’s like-minded mentor Socrates mocked and slandered the masses as "dunces and weaklings," the "fullers and the cobblers or the builders or the smiths or the farmers or the merchants or the traffickers in the market-place who think of nothing but buying cheap and selling dear."
The common sense and traditional wisdom of these poor and middling citizens, which make them fit to participate in political deliberation, are disparaged. Hence, they should not have the right to speak out during such deliberations, but defer to their social betters. Their diversity is an impediment to good government, not, as Aristotle argued, a resource comprising a great diversity of talents and life-experiences.
[Guardian] The irony of visiting a 17th-century plague chapel in the midst of a 21st-century pandemic wasn’t lost on me when I donned my mask, sanitised my hands and stepped into the cool of a tiny church. It was built in 1628 so the afflicted could come and pray separately from the villagers of Saint-Haon-Le-Châtel, but if it served the same purpose for Covid-suffering villagers now, it was a relief to find it empty.
The same went for this area of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes: Le Roannais was peaceful and empty of tourists. And, as this summer will be the first foreign holiday for many after two years of limitations, it is the perfect place to get away from it all, especially of the lingering threat of Covid make crowds unpalatable.
Long lists of supporting links can be seen at the original article.
[MoonOfAlabama] Recently the New York Times, like many other 'western' outlets, has changed its language when reporting about the fascist Ukrainian Asov Battalion.
What was once "a Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization" which even the FBI said is notorious for its “association with neo-Nazi ideology” was first relabeled as merely "far right" before it became a normal "unit in the Ukrainian military".
It is not that Azov has de-radicalized over time. It has in fact grown more extreme.
Azov has infiltrated other organizations, especially some units of the Ukrainian regular military, the national guard, the police and the internal secret security organization SBU. Azov is by far not the only fascist (para-)military organization in Ukraine. There is the Aidar battalion, the Right Sector, the C-14 'youth' organization of the fascist Svoboda party as well as a dozen other such organization.
These groups are not only not prohibited as they should be but get encouraged and partially financed by the Ukrainian government.
The infiltration of the security services and government has dangerous consequences for the Ukrainian public.
Over the years many 'western' media have correctly reported about the Ukrainian fascists. Here is an incomplete collection (h/t Antispin):
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[ColonelCassad] Quite often we encounter a lack of understanding by ordinary people of what is happening at the front. In some ways, this is the fault of television experts, who for eight years have dispersed jingoistic patriotism about “worthless Ukrainians”. In some ways, this is a banal lack of understanding of the specifics of military operations in the region.
In the Kharkov and Lugansk regions, relatively slow rates of advance of the allied troops are maintained. In the south, in the Donetsk and Zaporozhye regions, progress is almost imperceptible at all.
Therefore, some may have an erroneous idea that the second phase of the NMD announced by the Russian military command has stalled.
However, it is not.
The main task of the second phase involves the establishment of complete control over the Donbass. And here it is necessary to take into account several factors:
▪️The Donbass grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine consists of the most trained and motivated units, including those deployed from Western Ukraine.
▪️The enemy had eight years to think over and implement a defense in depth along the entire line of contact with the forces of the LPR and DPR.
▪️The Ukrainian side deliberately does not evacuate the population from the combat zone, using civilians as human shields. Evacuation is carried out only when military personnel mix with civilians as part of the evacuation convoys.
All this, of course, complicates the main task of the second phase of the SVO, but does not make it impossible.
Currently, the allied forces are making active attempts to break into the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in several places at once:
▪️Slowly but surely there is progress in the Izyum direction.
▪️The allied forces have completed the operational encirclement of Liman: the entire area is under the fire control of the Russian side.
▪️The battles for Rubizhne continue, where the enemy's defense is gradually being crushed.
▪️The people's militia of the LPR liquidated a powerful fortified area in Novotoshkovsky and advanced towards Orekhovo.
▪️The assault on Popasna continues: for a month and a half regular troops, "Kadyrovtsy" and "Wagnerites" have been slowly taking the city.
Popasnaya is called almost the Stalingrad of the current special operation. The comparison, although overly pretentious, is still correct. Yes, there is a successful operation to liberate Mariupol.
But if we compare the scale of the forces and means involved, as well as the prospects for the operation, then Popasnaya is one of the critical points for the success of the second phase of the NWO.
What gives control over Popasna:
▪️the ability to continue the offensive simultaneously in several directions;
▪️exit to a large transport hub - the city of Bakhmut, the occupation of which will disrupt the supply of part of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine;
▪️the possibility of creating several boilers with cutting off the Slavic-Kramatorsk group from the rest of the forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbass.
Understanding these prospects, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine transferred part of the units from the Rubizhne-Severodonetsk-Lysichansk agglomeration to Popasnaya. This made it possible to partially compensate for the losses suffered by the 24th Lviv mechanized brigade.
And although the allied forces already control most of the city, the assault on Popasna is still one of the most difficult operations at once for several reasons.
Difficulties of Popasnaya
▪️The settlement is located on a hill, where there is a whole network of natural water obstacles. This significantly slowed down the pace of the offensive in the early days.
▪️For 8 years, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have made a powerful fortified area out of the city, surrounding it (especially along the southern outskirts) with a system of platoon and company strongholds, which are interconnected by communications. These communications make it possible to covertly transfer personnel and armored vehicles to firing positions with the possibility of prompt withdrawal to shelters.
▪️The allied forces will probably deal with the liquidation of strongholds, where units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are now trying to withdraw from the city, after the liberation of the territory of Popasna itself.
▪️Most of the city is a private sector, in which Ukrainian servicemen dug trenches, trenches and equipped dugouts in the basements. Cleaning every house takes a lot of time and effort.
▪️In rare multi-storey buildings, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine created positions for snipers and fire spotters.
▪️There are still civilians in Popasna, which does not allow the allied forces to fully use aviation and artillery.
And so it turns out that it will take more time to storm a town of twenty thousand than to liberate half a million Mariupol.
However, this operation is gradually coming to an end.
At the moment
▪️Under the control of the allied forces is the entire eastern part of the city, the railway station "Popasnaya-1", the building of the local administration.
▪️Several strongholds were liquidated around the city.
▪️There is an additional cleansing of the southwestern outskirts and preparations for an offensive towards the Popasnyansky car repair plant.
▪️The servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine gradually understand the futility of further resistance and surrender in small groups.
The result of Popasna's liberation will not be long in coming, and the second phase of the special military operation will proceed at a different speed.
1. Yampol is being cleared or has already been cleared.
2. Up to 1000 Vushnikov are pressed to the river near Oskol.
3. Fighting on the outskirts of the Red Estuary.
4. Between Krasny Liman and Slavyansk yesterday the Armed Forces of Ukraine blew up the railway bridge.
5. Fighting continues in the area of the village of Pashkovo south of Kurulka, a few kilometers from the Barvenkovo-Slavyansk highway.
6. Also ongoing fighting for Orekhovo west of Novotoshkovsky.
Both sides note heavy losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the fire impact of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
The stories about Putin not knowing how things are going in Ukraine because people are afraid to tell him the truth surely have an element of truth. But he still the one directing this war and its atrocities, 100%. pic.twitter.com/GUvX1YxjnC
#15
LOL IIRC correctly (/external entertainment influences applied) it was a civil comment about him needing to pay bills and both sides being too cheap O' bitches to make that happen for him to be a paid troll. I liked it
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/30/2022 17:36 Comments ||
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Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
[ColonelCassad] 1. Mariupol.
The grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine at Azovstal is completely blocked and is subjected to constant attacks. Unable to escape, stocks are running out. A significant part of the forces of the allied forces from near Mariupol were transferred to the Donetsk and Zaporozhye directions.
2. Zaporozhye.
On the line Vasilievka-Orekhov-Gulyaipole without any changes. Fighting continues on the near approaches to Gulyai-Pole and settlements to the east of it.
3. Nikolaev.
The enemy was pushed back in the direction of Nikolaev itself, having suffered heavy losses. Attempts to counterattack ended unsuccessfully. Attempts to activate the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kryvyi Rih and Nikopol directions have also been stopped.
4. Odessa.
The city is preparing for a possible start of hostilities in the event of a breakthrough of Russian troops near Nikolaev. There are also signs of an increase in the NATO grouping in Romania, which may enter the territory of Moldova and the Odessa region.
5. Ugledar.
The enemy is holding the Novomikhailovka-Ugledar-Velikaya Novoselovka front line.
6. Marinka.
Fighting continues in the slag heap area. There is no significant progress in the village yet. The DPR army controls about 35-40 percentof the territory of Maryinka.
7. Avdievka.
In Avdievka itself, there are no changes. To the north, fighting is going on near the Konstantinovka-Avdievka highway, in the area of Novoselka-2 and Novobakhmutovka. There are also battles in the Troitsky area.
8. LPR.
Fights in the industrial zone of Rubizhne, where the remnants of the Armed Forces of Ukraine defended themselves in the southern districts of the city. There are battles for Orekhovo, south of Lisichansk, as well as on the outskirts of Severodonetsk.
9. Izyum.
In the Oskol area, the remnants of a free combat group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with a total number of up to 1,000 people fell into the operational environment. Fighting continues in the Pashkov area, north of the Barvenkovo-Slavyansk highway. Fighting continues in the area of Yampol and Krasny Liman.
10. Kharkov.
Fighting continues for the village of Russkaya Lozovaya on the northern outskirts of Kharkov. The enemy is also trying to be active, relying on the Zolochevsky fortified area, as well as to the east of Chuguev.
PS. A fragment of a Natsik's notepad from Azov, where there is a note that it is necessary to get rid of "refuseniks" (those who refuse to fight). During the assault on Mariupol, soldiers shot by the Nazis were repeatedly found, who wanted to surrender or escape, mixing with the civilian population.
[Townhall] It's been a refrain from Republicans and some (honest) Democrats since President Joe Biden ...... 46th president of the U.S. Being a self-defined foreign policy whiz kid means never having to say you're sorry...... took office and U.S. gas prices rose to all-time highs earlier this spring: Biden's decision to kill and over-regulate domestic energy projects has made the U.S. dependent on oil from foreign foes. But instead of reversing his oil and gas-killing policies — all part of Biden's stated commitment to ending fossil fuels — in order to give Americans relief, the Biden administration, the same old faces in slightly different places, the same old ideas, the same old graft ...the gang of subgeniuses trying to pass themselves off as the adults in charge of the series of calamities characteristic of the administration of a mentally challenged geriatric case... has blamed everyone but the president, from Vladimir Putin
Continued on Page 49
[American Thinker] Governor Jay Pritzker and the Illinois Democrats want a state-mandated campaign sticker at all gas stations bragging that they aren't raising the price of gas by 2 cents a gallon on July 1 as planned.
It is not a cut. Consumers will not see a price decrease.
As the price of gas has doubled, the state has seen a windfall in sales tax from around 10 cents per gallon to 20 cents per gallon. (Illinois is one of few states that charge sales tax on gasoline.) Inflation has provided a great windfall to government agencies throughout the country.
Illinois doubled its Motor fuel tax from 19 cents per gallon to 38 cents per gallon, with more increases to come. (Why didn't we see that sticker, since Democrats are for keeping the public informed?)
Instead of putting up that campaign sticker, I suggest four more honest stickers to truly inform the public:
Federal excise taxes: 18.3 cents
Illinois motor fuel tax: 38 cents
Illinois sales tax: 20 cents (6.25%)
Total tax: 76.3 cents
Retail gas stations are very costly to put up and maintain. The average margin on gasoline is very low. They are lucky if it is 10 to 15 cents per gallon, whatever the price is.
So who are the gougers? The government that gets over 76 cents on gas in Illinois with zero investment and zero risk, or the gas station owners who make very little with all the risk? The answer is obvious.
Why would anyone brag about a delay in a tax increase by implying that it is a tax cut? The answer is that politicians gladly spread misinformation to the public when they are trolling for votes. Is a 2-cent delay more important to consumers than the 10-cent increase in sales tax?
#2
/\ Exactly, and that would obviously include governments fees, permits, and studies PRIOR to the first barrel of oil ever being pumped to the surface.
#3
Knowing how JB ('Jelly Belly') Pritzker works, the new stickers will cost the Illinois taxpayers $12.43/ea and produced at a facility owned and run by 'friends' of the family.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
04/30/2022 8:52 Comments ||
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[Rolling Stone] When I was a political reporter in Washington, I used to loathe the White House Correspondents Dinner. I hated how it portrayed Beltway journalism as a game. How it reduced the project of government accountability to performative antagonism practiced daily by reporters in White House press briefings — a performance exposed annually at a dinner where the most powerful people in the world would rub elbows and yuck it up about funny "inside jokes" like George W. Bush’s bungling of the Iraq War and the media’s culpability in helping him do it.
Maybe because I was a reporter at the time, I always considered the dinner’s rottenness from the perspective of the relationship between the media and politicians, lamenting that images from the Washington Hilton of the press mingling with administration officials in black tie undercut the public’s faith in an independent media.
But the further away I’ve gotten from the experience — and the faster our republic has tumbled toward oblivion — the more I’ve considered how the dinner contributed in other, significant ways to the brokenness of our current political moment: The dinner highlights the laughable disconnect between the people in Washington with the power to do something (the dinner attendees) and the rest of us mere mortals (people largely not watching the dinner at home on C-SPAN).
The presidency of Barack Obama transformed the Democratic Party in ways many pundits already have explored ad nauseum, from a revolution in data analytics to Obama’s creation of an entire political infrastructure outside of the Democratic National Committee. Yet, the White House Correspondents Dinner, now that it’s back from its hiatus in the two years we acknowledged the ongoing pandemic as real, is also a reminder of perhaps Obama’s worst contribution to modern politics: the marriage between actual Hollywood and the "Hollywood for ugly people" known as Washington.
When the A-List came to Washington and started treating formerly anonymous staffers as personalities on their level, it was an Icarus moment that transformed the possibility of what government service could do for any one individual staffer, as opposed to what service should do for the country.
Celebrities being interested in Obama brought Hollywood to Washington in a way Washington had never seen previously, at least not without the barrier of a glass screen and the opening bars of The West Wing credits. It allowed political operatives who always saw the natural outgrowth of the their careers as cashing out on K Street to think differently about what politics could do for them as sentient, individual brands with Twitter accounts and proximity to celebrity instead of just power.
In the Obama years, the White House Correspondents Dinner transformed and exploded, driven by an increased interest from culturally cool famous people in a president they considered to be cool, also. Celebrities flocked to Washington for the last weekend in April: Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Bradley Cooper, Ben Affleck, Tom Cruise, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Garner, Demi Moore, Eva Longoria, John Legend, Alicia Keys, Scarlett Johansson, Ashley Judd, most of the cast of Saturday Night Live, top fashion designers, and any number of other people who thought for a brief moment that being attached to politics gave them capital in their own celebrity circles. (The stream of stars jet-setting to the Beltway for dinner festivities only slowed at the end of Obama’s second term because the D.C. set could not stop literally and shamelessly pawing at them.)
But to truly understand what allowed one weekend of cocktail parties and brunches to change Washington, you also have to remember the dynamics of 2009: Twitter was exploding as a tool for individual staffers who once were largely anonymous to build their own voices and followings, a generation of young Democratic staffers drunk on Aaron Sorkin thought The West Wing could be real life and that they somehow could be Rob Lowe. With the energy and technocratic sleekness of the Obama machine, they saw themselves as glamorous characters on a TV show instead of cogs in a bureaucracy, and then the White House Correspondents Dinner came along, and they met their heroes.
If this seems cynical to you, consider that current White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki went on Rob Lowe’s podcast to tell the actor that bingeing the Emmy-winning political series, and his character specifically, was "inspiring" and "really brought me back to politics." And then ask yourself who any of that is for.
Without the Obama-era White House Correspondents dinner, there is no Psaki on Lowe’s podcast. There are no staged-at-the-White House Annie Leibovitz portraits of Psaki in Vogue Magazine, seven months after the attempted insurrection at the Capitol in which white nationalists tried to block her from stepping foot in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the first place. She’s not fighting with Fox News’s Peter Doocy for the Twitter likes. And there are no ongoing negotiations for her to reportedly host her own television show on MSNBC, all while she’s still representing the federal government on behalf of the president with the national media every day.
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.
[Front Page] Tech plutocrat Elon Musk announces he is buying Twitter to liberate this "virtual town square" from one-sided political censorship - and he is met with hysterical charges that he is attacking free speech. A woman who reposts TikTok videos of "woke" teachers bragging about their sexualize of children in their classrooms, is attacked by a Washington Post reporter who harasses the woman’s family in order to silence an enemy of "free speech" and purveyor of "hate" - just days after the reporter appeared in a video and bursts into tears over getting the same treatment she later inflicts on the anonymous creator of Libs on TikTok.
...the gang of subgeniuses trying to pass themselves off as the 
[American Thinker] Governor Jay Pritzker and the Illinois Democrats want a state-mandated campaign sticker at all gas stations bragging that they aren't raising the price of gas by 2 cents a gallon on July 1 as planned.
