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There’s Nothing You Can Say To Make Me Accept The Murder Of Thousands Of Children

Posted by M. C. on December 6, 2023

Israel is like, “We’re not killing children in Gaza, those are dolls. Okay maybe they’re not dolls, but Hamas is lying about death tolls. Okay maybe they’re not lying about death tolls, but they’re using human shields and they did 10/7, so every child we’re killing was actually killed by Hamas.”

Caitlin Johnstone

https://substack.com/inbox/post/139484520

I promise there is nothing you can say to me that will cause me to cease opposing the murder of thousands of children in Gaza. There is no name you can call me, no accusation you can scream at me, no talking point you can regurgitate at me that will ever make me shut up and accept this.

The unexamined premise behind the frenetic push to reignite outrage over October 7 using rape allegations is that if Hamas fighters did sexually assault any Israeli women during the attack, then everyone has to shut up and let Israel keep murdering children by the thousands. This is self-evidently stupid.

Western and Israeli propagandists are going to keep trying to find new reasons for you to reignite your outrage over October 7, because October 7 is their side’s only justification for a months-long mass atrocity that is far, far worse than anything that happened on October 7.

The US House of Representatives just passed a resolution saying that Judaism is synonymous with a colonialist ideology which routinely murders children.

I personally do not believe it’s anti-semitic to criticize Israel’s murderous actions in Gaza. See I have this wild idea that murdering children is not an aspect of the Jewish faith, and that saying otherwise actually has a very ugly history in our society.

The only way to have more sympathy for the 1200 Israelis killed on October 7 than the 16,000+ Palestinians who’ve been killed in Gaza since is to believe Palestinians are subhumans whose lives are worth a tiny fraction of what Israeli lives are worth. That’s the one and only way.

A recent poll found that 57.5 percent of Israelis believe the IDF is using too little firepower in Gaza, while 36.6 percent said it’s using just the right amount, with 4.2 percent saying they’re unsure and just 1.8 percent saying the IDF is using too much firepower.

One reason Israeli officials keep saying shockingly genocidal and fascistic things is because the kind of talk you have to use to win the support of Israelis is completely different from the talk you have to use to win the support of western liberals.

Israel is like, “We’re not killing children in Gaza, those are dolls. Okay maybe they’re not dolls, but Hamas is lying about death tolls. Okay maybe they’re not lying about death tolls, but they’re using human shields and they did 10/7, so every child we’re killing was actually killed by Hamas.”

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Zero Public EV Chargers Built Since Congress Approved $7.5 Billion To Expand Network

Posted by M. C. on December 6, 2023

I am surprised the obvious, usual solution isn’t mentioned. Allocate more printed money.

Tyler Durden's Photo

by Tyler Durden

Wednesday, Dec 06, 2023 – 07:20 AM

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/zero-public-ev-chargers-built-congress-approved-75-billion-expand-network

President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure bill boasts a $7.5 billion investment in electric vehicle (EV) chargers, and his administration insists the country is “on track” to install over a million public chargers by the end of the decade—but reports indicate that so far not a single one has actually been built.

Electrical vehicle chargers in Irvine, Calif., on July 12, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

A key part of the Biden administration’s push to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 is to sharply expand the nation’s charging infrastructure for plug-in EVs in order to align with President Biden’s goal of having half of all new vehicles sold in the United States to be electric by 2030.

At the forefront of this effort is the federal government’s commitment to pour in $7.5 billion as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) to build 1.2 million public chargers to keep up with what the White House said over the summer was rapidly growing demand for EVs.

The $7.5 billion federal funding plan for EV chargers consists of the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program and the $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program, both of which are being administered through agencies affiliated with the Department of Transportation (DOT).

However, despite more than $2 billion of the $7.5 billion in federal EV charger funding already authorized under the programs, not even half of states have started to take bids from contractors for construction—and not a single new public charger has been built.

“Already, seven states have issued conditional awards for new NEVI stations amounting to $101.5 million, two states have agreements in place, and 17 states are soliciting proposals for new stations,” the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which is leading the Biden administration’s EV charger efforts, said in an update at the end of October.

An initial wave of 26 states are leading the effort to build out the public EV charger network, with Ohio being the first to break a public EV charger construction project funded by the NEVI program.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), which is administering the $5 billion NEVI program, with a request for more up-to-date information about the status of the various federally-funded EV charger projects.

Many Republicans have been lukewarm on the idea of federal funding for EV infrastructure, with former President Donald Trump voicing staunch opposition to EV subsidies, arguing that the government should step aside and let market forces decide what vehicles people drive.

‘On Track’?

While EV sales in the United Sates hit a record 313,086 in the third quarter of 2023, many carmakers are sounding the alarm, saying that demand isn’t keeping up with expectations, forcing them to scale back some EV expansion plans.

Studies show that a key factor hampering widespread EV adoption is so-called “range anxiety,” which is the fear among drivers that their EV will run out of power and grind to a halt on the side of the road with no charger in sight.

In order to alleviate drivers’ range anxiety and support growing EV demand, a recent study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimated that the size of the national charging network needs to grow from roughly 3.1 million ports in 2022 to 28 million by 2030, with the vast majority being private chargers.

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Those Who Fall for the ‘Right Wing/Libertarian-Leaning’ Election Madness Are Acting as Absolute Fools!

Posted by M. C. on December 5, 2023

By Gary D. Barnett

There are several labeled ‘right-wing’ candidates being touted as saviors by the maniacal herd, especially those blind ‘pro-freedom’ pretenders, who continue to trust the State and the heinous and fraudulent political process, while leaping on the band wagon with both feet of every single candidate promising them to do it right this time. It would be difficult to find a more pathetic exercise than this, but at least it is eternally predictable.

“I have never voted in my life… I have always known and understood that the idiots are in a majority so it’s certain they will win.”

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Here we go again. Each side of the coin being flipped is the same; both sides indicating parties of evil. It is the same game as always, and the same stupid people jump on board because this time, things will be different, and your guy will fix everything. This story is as old as time, but gets even more idiotic each and every election, as even more historical evidence and fact exposing the voting scam are easily obvious, showing the pure idiocy of voting for a master. For the thousandth time, doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different outcome, but finally, the good guy is here to save you. What a crock of crap is this, and how can any sane, thinking individual, fall into that same trap every election, without once understanding that he is in a circular game of hysterical lunacy?

There are several labeled ‘right-wing’ candidates being touted as saviors by the maniacal herd, especially those blind ‘pro-freedom’ pretenders, who continue to trust the State and the heinous and fraudulent political process, while leaping on the band wagon with both feet of every single candidate promising them to do it right this time. It would be difficult to find a more pathetic exercise than this, but at least it is eternally predictable. If human nature is nothing else, it is a showcase for hypocrisy and gullibility, and in light of this current trend, those falsely calling themselves ‘libertarians,’ anarcho-capitalists,’ staunch ‘conservatives,’ and fighters for freedom, are all showing their bare asses in broad daylight. It is a sad sight to be sure.

There have been several of these claimed freedom ‘pretenders,’ immigration ‘warriors,’ monetary fixers, and free-trade imposters, who have been recently elected around the world, and the faux alternative media sites have bought the hype hook, line, and sinker, without once standing in any light of reality. For purposes here, let us concentrate on just one of these trimmers; the most flamboyant in fact, although they all can be lumped together concerning much of their ridiculous rhetoric.

Javier Milei has captured the hearts and minds of most all those who loudly pretend to oppose the State, while believing that the answer to freedom lies with the State. No, I did not make that up, it is the common attitude accepted every time a new face says the ‘right’ things when attempting to gain great power as a ruler in a State system, while at the same time, promising to tear down that same system. This time is no different, and this is so simple to point out and see, but it belies imagination that most people who vote for their next ruler, never learn anything at all from thousands of years of mistakes. All these candidates are Statists, whether they claim that status or not, so are their supporters really fooled, or are they exposing their real character and lack of intellectual reasoning, by embracing complete contradiction?

Milei has said that he will “blow up the central bank” in Argentina, but how is he supposedly going to achieve that goal? He states that he will eliminate central banking, but he has no plans whatsoever to use any free market in money. He also said he would name a new central bank head, and would appoint a new economic team, which is a total contradiction of his statements, leaving government in charge of all monetary policy. While saying he will tear down the central banking system, he is mandating the use of the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar is a failing currency, but is also dependent on the most evil central bank in the world, so in essence, Milei is planning on partnering with the most powerful and criminal central bank to affect ‘his new system.’ He has not mentioned any free market alternative that the people could freely choose themselves, as he wants to force ‘his’ choice as the only choice. This is an extremely complicated process, and the problems that will arise would likely be monumental. These consequences could easily cause more major economic problems. While Argentina is in the midst of economic hell, a common problem that has plagued that country for decades, all due to government control and corruption, will this change simply due to a different government controlling everything? I think not.

Milei has also said he will cut ties with Russia, China, and Brazil, but does that not eliminate markets for all Argentinians, all at the whim of Milei? He claims to be ‘libertarian,’ but also an ‘anarcho-capitalist.’ This must be a big lie. An anarcho-capitalist would necessarily have to rely on being an anarchist, which means no rule, but did he not just seek rule, and win rule, and now plans to put ‘his’ policies in place by fiat?

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Progressive Interventionism Is Ruining American Healthcare

Posted by M. C. on December 5, 2023

by Connor O’Keeffe

In other words, the very interventions we were told would make healthcare more affordable have only allowed pharmacies, insurance providers, and drug companies to extract even more money from American consumers. And what’s the solution Democrats like Warren and Republicans like Braun seem to agree on? Even more interventions. This time, we’re told, the interventions will really make healthcare more affordable.

That is Washington at work.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/progressive-interventionism-is-ruining-american-healthcare/

massachusetts senator and democratic presidential candidate eliz

August 10, 2019: United States Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren greets supporters and speaks to fair-goers at the Iowa State Fair political soapbox in Des Moines, Iowa.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the problems with Joe Manchin’s argument that Congress needs to reject the “extremism” in its ranks if it’s ever going to solve the many problems facing Americans.

I argued that the opposite is true. That Congress is almost entirely unified behind a specific pace of progressive interventionism where the predictable consequences of previous interventions are perpetually used to justify more intervention. In this cycle, the government grows, the economy sputters, and the politically connected grow rich.

Then last week, as if to prove my point, Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Republican senator Mike Braun (R-IN) sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) imploring the agency to address one of the consequences of Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

The letter was a response to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal’s Joseph Walker, who found that some insurance companies were paying significantly marked-up prices for certain generic drugs. Some, such as the generic version of the cancer drug Gleevec, were a hundred times more expensive when paid for through insurance plans.

The reason the insurance companies are willing and able to pay these absurd prices is because they are the owners of the pharmacies on the other end of the transaction. And in many cases, they also own the so-called pharmacy-benefit managers—the entities that negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.

That revelation supposedly drove Senators Warren and Braun to pen their letter to the HHS. Yet, as the Wall Street Journal editorial board explained on Saturday, all of this is a predictable consequence of a provision in the Affordable Care Act called the medical loss ratio (MLR), which was championed by Senator Warren.

The MLR tries to impose a cap on insurance company profits. It requires them to spend at least 80 percent or 85 percent of the revenue from premiums on medical claims. Democrats like Warren claimed the MLR would reign in insurance company profits and “make health spending more transparent.”

Instead, insurance companies began merging with and acquiring pharmacies and pharmacy-benefit managers, which they have used to indirectly raise their own profits by forcing higher drug prices on their customers—all while remaining MLR compliant.

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Ukraine Another Historic U.S. War Failure a la Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and More

Posted by M. C. on December 5, 2023

Editorial

The war-indebted U.S. empire is faltering towards its historic and final demise. Every empire has its day in the sun.

In 1945 and subsequent years, Nazi war criminals in Ukraine were recruited to serve Uncle Sam. It was typical treachery. Despite all the Hollywood glamour about defeating Nazi Germany, the U.S. redeployed the Third Reich war machine for its postwar imperial designs. Fittingly, eight decades on, the same territory now spells the end of the American empire.

The U.S.-led NATO alliance held its first NATO-Ukraine Council meeting this week in Brussels. As usual, the cliched promises of supporting the Kiev regime to the end were trotted out by all and sundry.

In truth, these NATO events for Ukraine, and more generally, are becoming yawn fests.

The whole sordid charade is only postponing the reality that the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is a debacle for the Western powers. This is not something to gloat over. It is a tragedy and an abomination.

Up to 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, as well as tens of thousands of Russian military personnel. Total casualty figures are no doubt in the millions. In addition, millions of civilians have been displaced as refugees in Russia and throughout Europe. Hundreds of billions of dollars and euros have been raided from Western taxpayers to fund this bloody fiasco. Not only that but international tensions have been heightened between nuclear powers at a perilous pitch not seen since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 at the depth of the Cold War.

Washington needs to come to its senses and negotiate a peaceful settlement on Moscow’s terms. It’s as simple and as blunt as that. This is what could have been achieved before the conflict erupted in February 2022 when Moscow was offering a negotiable security treaty. The West rejected those terms out of hand back then. Now it will have to accept. Primarily, the conditions are that there will be no further NATO enlargement around Russia’s borders and in particular there will be no inclusion of Ukraine in the American-led bellicose military bloc.

Attending the NATO summit this week was U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken along with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and the foreign ministers of the other 30 NATO member states. Kuleba declared with delusional disconnect: “We are pretty much becoming a de facto NATO army.” He may be somewhat correct that Ukraine has been used as a proxy force for NATO, but it is a spent and decimated one.

Blinken seemed to be concerned with papering over cracks appearing in various media reports indicating that the U.S. is surreptitiously telling the Kiev regime to cut its losses and make a sort of peace deal with Russia. Blinken’s bravado rhetoric is akin to empty U.S. promises previously made to Afghanistan and countless other proxy regimes over the decades before Washington ignominiously pulls the plug and does a runner.

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The Dublin riots and BLM – a Comparison of Reactions

Posted by M. C. on December 5, 2023

by Gavin O’Reilly

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/the-dublin-riots-and-blm-a-comparison-of-reactions/

Last Thursday afternoon, news would spread throughout Ireland of a horrific knife attack on three young schoolchildren and their teacher outside a Gaelscoil (Irish-language school) in Dublin city centre. At the time of writing, the youngest of the victims, a five year old girl, remains gravely ill in hospital.

With it soon emerging that the suspect was an immigrant who had previously been served a deportation order in 2003, tensions that had been building across the country over the past year in response to the immigration policy of Leinster House, which has seen large amounts of male migrants placed into wildly unsuitable locations such as an inner city office block and a children’s school, would come to a head. Calls for a protest in Dublin later that night would rapidly spread throughout social media.

Such protests have become a mainstay across Ireland over the past year, with the government of WEF ‘Young Global Leader’ Leo Varadkar labelling protesters as ‘’far-right’’ and carrying out surveillance of organisers in response, a strategy that has served only to exacerbate tensions even further.

Last year in Canada, under the rule of fellow WEF ‘Young Global Leader’ Justin Trudeau, a similar response would take place to the Freedom Convoy, a protest movement launched by Canadian truckers following the decision to mandate jab passports for drivers returning from the US, the largest land-border in the world and a key component of the Canadian economy.

Just as open borders policies serve the interests of the global elites that the WEF represents, via the undermining of national sovereignty and the devaluing of labour, jab passports served their interests by acting as conditioning for the introduction of an eventual mandatory digital ID, which in line with the Great Reset initiative would allow the government-corporate alliance to have an unprecedented level of control over its citizens’ finances in a cashless society.

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The Real Problem With Our Foreign Policy…

Posted by M. C. on December 5, 2023

by Ron Paul

According to Secretary Austin, non-interventionists who advocate “an American retreat from responsibility” are the ones destabilizing the world, not endless neocon wars.

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/the-real-problem-with-our-foreign-policy/

Over the weekend Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explained to the American people what’s really wrong with US foreign policy. Some might find his conclusions surprising.

The US standing in the world is damaged not because we spent 20 years fighting an Afghan government that had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11. The problem has nothing to do with neocon lies about Iraq’s WMDs that led untold civilian deaths in another failed “democratization” mission. It’s not because over the past nearly two years Washington has taken more than $150 billion from the American people to fight a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine.

It’s not the military-industrial complex or its massive lobbying power that extends throughout Congress, the think tanks, and the media.

Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California’s Simi Valley, Austin finally explained the real danger to the US global military empire.

It’s us.

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Masters

Posted by M. C. on December 5, 2023

“Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.”

Herbert Marcuse

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The U.S. Government Buys and Sells Its Citizens for Profit and Power

Posted by M. C. on December 4, 2023

by John W. Whitehead

Biographical information. Biometric information. Criminal backgrounds. Travel records.

There is not a single person in the U.S. who is not in some government database or another, and these databases are increasingly being shared between agencies, fusion centers, and the police.

Americans have become easy prey for hackers, scammers, snitches, spies, and con artists.

But don’t be fooled into thinking the government is protecting you.

To the contrary, the U.S. government is selling us (or rather, our data) to the highest bidders.

By the way, those highest bidders also include America’s political class and the politicians aspiring to get elected or re-elected. As the Los Angeles Times reports, “If you have been to a political rally, a town hall, or just fit a demographic a campaign is after, chances are good your movements are being tracked with unnerving accuracy by data vendors on the payroll of campaigns.”

Your phones, televisions and digital devices are selling you out to politicians who want your vote.

“Welcome to the new frontier of campaign tech — a loosely regulated world in which simply downloading a weather app or game, connecting to Wi-Fi at a coffee shop or powering up a home router can allow a data broker to monitor your movements with ease, then compile the location information and sell it to a political candidate who can use it to surround you with messages,” writes journalist Evan Halper.

In this way, “we the people” have been reduced to economic units to be bought, bartered and sold by all and sundry.

On a daily basis, Americans have been made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

Those intimate details, in turn, have become the building blocks of massive databases accessed by the government and its corporate partners in crime, vulnerable to data breaches by hackers, cyberattacks and espionage.

For years now, and with little real oversight or restrictions, the government has been compiling massive databases comprised of all manner of sensitive information on the citizenry.

Biographical information. Biometric information. Criminal backgrounds. Travel records.

There is not a single person in the U.S. who is not in some government database or another, and these databases are increasingly being shared between agencies, fusion centers, and the police.

The government has also, with little oversight and few guidelines, been adding to its massive trove of data on Americans by buying commercially available information (CAI) from third-party sources. As a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed:

“[Commercially purchased data] can reveal sensitive and intimate information about the personal attributes, private behavior, social connections, and speech of U.S. persons and non-U.S. persons. It can be misused to pry into private lives, ruin reputations, and cause emotional distress and threaten the safety of individuals. Even subject to appropriate controls, CAI can increase the power of the government’s ability to peer into private lives to levels that may exceed our constitutional traditions or other social expectations.”

In other words, this is the diabolically sneaky way in which the government is attempting to sidestep the Fourth Amendment, which requires that government agents have probable cause and a warrant before spying on Americans or searching and seizing their private property.

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Coming Soon: The Dethroning of Human Intelligence

Posted by M. C. on December 4, 2023

By George F. Smith

The question arises: Will Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) initially be a trait of a machine or an augmented human? I think a machine will get super-smart first, if only because most humans develop much-needed common sense while they grow up, which in the area of brain amplification would dictate caution.

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make . . . — “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine,” Irving John Good, British cryptologist, 1965 (my emphasis)

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.  Shortly after, the human era will be ended.  — What is the Singularity?, Vernor Vinge Department of Mathematical Sciences San Diego State University, 1995

First, some relevant history.

The idea of creating something man-like or even greater than man dates back to the beginning of recorded history, but many in the AI world credit a 19-year-old girl as their spiritual mentor, English author Mary Shelley.  In 1818 she published Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, the story of a young scientist named Frankenstein who creates an intelligent creature from laboratory experiments.  Frankenstein today is a metaphor for the monster, but in the novel the creature is presented sympathetically, in other words, misunderstood.

In 1950 Alan Turing posited that a machine could get so good at conversing with a human that it could pass for human, based only on its responses.  Critics jumped on his assertion but he addressed them all in his seminal paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, wherein he described his Imitation Game.

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