Quote:U.S. to Send Cluster Munitions to Bolster Ukraine’s Fight Against Dug-In Russians

Biden administration aims to strengthen Kyiv’s hand despite concerns over risk to civilians

The Biden administration plans to send cluster munitions, which strew small bomblets over a wide area, to Ukraine to strengthen its hand in a high-stakes offensive against Russian forces, senior U.S. officials said.

The White House has agreed to grant a waiver under the U.S. arms export laws to send the weapons, formally known as dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, or DPICM.

The administration is expected to announce the decision Friday as part of a broader package of military assistance, U.S. officials said.

Ukraine has long appealed for the weapons, and the Pentagon has said they could be effective when employed against Russian troop and armored formations and Russian trench lines.

The munitions “would be useful, especially against dug-in Russian positions on the battlefield,” Laura Cooper, a senior Defense Department official, told Congress last month.

Human-rights groups say unexploded submunitions could maim or kill civilians long after a conflict ends, which initially made the White House’s National Security Council reluctant to approve the transfer.

But the possibility the cluster munitions could help Ukraine’s efforts at a critical stage in the conflict has swayed opinion within the administration and among some lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Proponents of the decision also say that the provision of cluster munitions would reduce Ukraine’s dependence on 155mm artillery shells, of which the U.S. has a limited supply.

More than 110 countries have signed an international Convention on Cluster Munitions that prohibits all use, transfer, production and stockpiling of cluster bombs. But the list of signatories contains notable absences.

The U.S., Ukraine, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and South Korea haven’t signed the convention. Neither has Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Turkey nor most countries in the Middle East.

Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, who didn’t confirm the decision, said that the Pentagon has several variants of the munitions. To mitigate the risk to civilians, the munitions that the U.S. has considered providing have a low dud rate, he said.

Older cluster munitions with dud rates higher than 2.35% wouldn’t be provided, added Ryder.

Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee said in May that the provision of cluster munitions should be considered, particularly since the Russians were already using them.

“Our cluster munitions have a much lower dud rate than the Russian cluster munitions,” Smith told a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in May. “I’m not in favor of spreading cluster munitions around the world, but in this particular case the Russians are already doing that in Ukraine.”

According to the Human Rights Watch’s global Cluster Munition Monitor 2022 report, cluster munitions fired by Russian forces have caused at least 689 civilian casualties in Ukraine. Russian forces have attacked 10 Ukrainian regions with hundreds of cluster munitions, while Ukrainian forces have used cluster munitions rockets on at least two occasions, the group said.

While the provision of cluster munitions could give a boost to Kyiv, they are not a panacea since Ukrainian forces have also been slowed by dense Russian minefields.

The U.S. military currently reserves the right to use cluster munitions against U.S. adversaries, including in a conflict with North Korea.

In 2008, the Pentagon said that U.S. forces would only use cluster munitions after 2018 if their dud rate was less than 1%. But the Trump administration amended that policy in 2017, saying that cluster munitions could be effective against enemy forces operating across a broad area.

Quote:While the US hasn’t banned cluster bombs, its forces haven’t used them since one known incident in Yemen in 2009. The US had been producing and selling cluster bombs to its allies until a few years ago. In 2016, Textron Systems Corporation stopped producing MK-20s when the US stopped selling them to Saudi Arabia. But a congressional aide told Reuters that there are about one million of the bombs in US military stockpiles.
Link

Quote:A person familiar with the discussions further noted that the tranche, totaling around $800 million, will also feature “dozens” of Bradley and Stryker fighting vehicles, air defense missiles and anti-mine equipment.

Some of the older variants of the weapons have higher dud rates, with more than 2 percent failing to explode on deployment, Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters on Thursday. While he would not confirm a final decision, he said that if the Biden administration were to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, they would only send the explosives with low dud rates. Congressional restrictions prohibit the U.S. from selling or transferring cluster munitions with dud rates above 1 percent. Critics suggest the Pentagon’s estimates are too rosy and that battlefield conditions dramatically increase the likelihood of a dud’s explosion following an initial attack.

The decision to send cluster munitions, often referred to by their acronym DPICMS, would open the door for “new systems that have a DPICM variant,” including 155mm artillery rounds and longer-ranged missiles, they said in a March letter to Biden.
Politico

From an Email

Quote:MILITARY SERVICE REQUIREMENT!

 
 
Trey Gowdy, a former South Carolina Congressman, responded to a question from a CNN reporter about the ban of transgenders from joining the U.S. armed forces. As Trey typically does so very well, he nailed it rather succinctly.
 
Question:
How can President Trump claim to represent all U.S citizens, regardless of sexual orientation, when he banned transgenders from joining the military? Isn't that discrimination?
 
Trey Gowdy's Response:
Nobody has a right to serve in the Military.  Nobody! What makes you people think the Military is an equal opportunity employer? It is very far from it - and for good reasons - let me cite a few" The Military uses prejudice regularly and consistently to deny citizens from joining for being too old or too young, too fat or too skinny, too tall or too short. Citizens are denied for having flat feet, or for missing or additional fingers." he went on to explain:  "By the way, poor eyesight will disqualify you, as well as bad teeth. Malnourished? Drug addiction? Bad back? Criminal history? Low IQ? Anxiety? Phobias? Hearing damage? Six arms? Hear voices in your head?  Self-identification as a Unicorn? Need a special access ramp for your wheelchair?"  "Can't run the required course in the required time? Can't do the required number of push-ups? Not really a morning person? and refuse to get out of bed before noon? All can be legitimate reasons for denial"
 
"The Military has one job: Winning War. Anything else is a distraction and a liability. Did someone just scream? That isn't Fair?  War is VERY unfair, there are no exceptions made for being special or challenged or socially wonderful."  "YOU must change yourself to meet Military standards and not the other way around."  "I say again: You don't change the Military - you must change yourself. The Military is not about being fair, it is about taking advantage of others and about winning.  The Military doesn't need to accommodate anyone with special issues. The Military needs to Win Wars and keep our Country safe -PERIOD!"
 
"If any of your personal issues are a liability that detracts from readiness or lethality... Thank you for applying and good luck in future endeavors."  "Any other questions?"
 
AMEN!

The full title is : Artificial Intelligence Out of Control: The Apocalypse is Here | How AI and ChatGPT End Humanity...Yep probably a bit of click baiting on the title however some of the conversations and content between a CatBot and human is actually rather amazing IMO and worth consideration. Skip to 4:23 to skip the sponsor Ad and enjoy the video.

Quote:The story of humans began a long time ago. Three and a half billion years ago protein molecules floated around the ooze called the primordial soup. Then something happened and a molecule made a copy of itself. And then another copy and another. Soon these molecules arranged themselves into something called a cell. Then cells clumped together and multiplied. Organisms were created. Over the next three billion years, the organisms became more complicated and more diverse. 375 million years ago one of those organisms crawled out of the sea. 4 million years ago hominids emerged. Hominids had large brains and advanced cognitive abilities. They could reason, communicate and cooperate. 200,000 years ago, homo sapiens, modern humans appeared. They developed agriculture, organized into civilizations and became masters of the planet. The story of humans began a long time ago. But all stories end. And according to many leaders in business, science and technology: we're in the final chapter. The part of our story where we finally go extinct. And there's nothing we can do to stop it. #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Apocalypse

https://lists.youmaker.com/links/O69PsUb...l8U4maYbbA

Quote:[/url]
Ben & Jerry’s Faces Growing Boycott Calls Over July 4 Message

Ben & Jerry's, a brand of Unilever, is seen on display in a store in Manhattan, New York City on March 24, 2022. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

By Jack Phillips
July 5, 2023Updated: July 6, 2023
biggersmaller
Print

0:005:14






Ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s received significant backlash on social media after it denigrated the United States during the Fourth of July weekend and claimed it only exists “on stolen land,” with some calling for a Bud Light-style boycott.
“This 4th of July, it’s high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it,” Ben & Jerry’s said on its Twitter account before linking to an article on the topic.
“Ah, the Fourth of July. Who doesn’t love a good parade, some tasty barbecue, and a stirring fireworks display?” the company continued to say. “The only problem with all that, though, is that it can distract from an essential truth about this nation’s birth: The US was founded on stolen Indigenous land.”
The post continued to say: “This year, let’s commit to returning it. Here’s why we need to start with Mount Rushmore.”  It then claimed that the land on which Mount Rushmore sits was seen as sacred to the Native American tribes before alleging that the U.S. government broke its treaties with the Lakota and other tribes in the mid-19th century.
The series of posts drew an immediate and sharp backlash from prominent users.
“Make @benndjerrys Bud Light again,” country singer-songwriter John Rich wrote in response, responding to the monthslong boycott targeting Bud Light that has seen the beer company’s year-over-year sales plummet. While Bud Light didn’t attack the founding of the United States, the company was panned for producing a can of beer with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s face on it.
“Long overdue for the Bud Light treatment. You hate the country, fine. We won’t buy your product. All good,” another user wrote in response. “When is Ben & Jerry’s giving up their land?” Jenna Ellis, a former attorney to Donald Trump, wrote on Twitter.
The controversial Twitter posts also drew an opinion article from the New York Post’s editorial board on Wednesday, with the paper calling on the brand to “give back the land your US factories and stores sit on and the millions upon millions you’ve made from exploiting the indigenous.”
“The brand backed bad-joke Occupy Wall Street, for crying out loud; it aligns with the anti-Israel BDS movement. Co-founder Ben Cohen funds groups opposed to US military aid to Ukraine,” the editorial wrote before calling for a boycott of the Unilever-owned ice cream company.
“Remember, America, you don’t have to accept woke preening from corporate elites. Speak up—with your wallets,” it said.
The Washington Examiner, too, released an opinion article that suggested consumers boycott Ben & Jerry’s.
Cans of Bud Light sit in a cooler in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 30, 2023. (Rob Carr/Getty Images)
“It may be fun to imagine, but, of course, Ben & Jerry’s will never actually give back the land its corporate office sits on. It will simply exert pressure on others to give up their land,” it said, adding that it’s now Americans’ “job to try and turn the tide” against the company.
However, unlike Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch, Ben & Jerry’s has posted nakedly political messages for decades. The company, based in Vermont, has often supported left-wing causes—especially [url=https://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/bernie-sanders-ben-and-jerrys-bernies-yearning-218185]those championed by self-proclaimed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
In June, Ben & Jerry’s announced it wouldn’t pay to advertise on Twitter and claimed that “hate speech” is on the rise across the platform since Elon Musk purchased the company last year. In a blog post weeks ago, the company wrote that changes at Twitter are causing it “great concern” and that “hate speech is up dramatically while content moderation has become all but non-existent.”
The firm also faced boycotts from consumers after saying it would not sell ice cream in Israel’s Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which it described as “occupied Palestinian territory.”
The decision was denounced by Israel supporters as well as state governments. Eventually, Ben & Jerry’s filed a lawsuit against Unilever after the firm sold its Israeli division to a local franchisee before the issue was settled in December.
And in March, company co-founder Ben Cohen spoke out about the U.S. government providing military assistance to Ukraine, saying that the United States should instead try to negotiate and end to the war.
“I think the U.S. should use its power to negotiate an end to the war, not prolong the death and destruction by supplying more weapons,” Mr. Cohen told the Daily Beast in March.
Mr. Cohen and Jerry Greenfield co-founded Ben & Jerry’s in 1978 before they sold the firm in 2000. As part of an agreement, the company has maintained its voice on social issues and has long supported Democrat or left-wing causes.
The Epoch Times sought comment from Unilever on Wednesday. Neither Unilever nor Ben & Jerry’s has released public statements about the boycott calls.

Not sure if we have one here but I just wanted to notate some funny (to me) videos. I do have that 1980's Sam Kinison / Eddie Murphy style of comedy.



https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyrealestateh...4882095402

https://www.tiktok.com/@tommywvcacher2.0...2191535406

Smack, slap, nudge, nudge, get back inside sheeple. We're not going to fall for it again are we? Nutty professor says yes you will. Apparently, he believes the programming is now complete.

Quote:Behavioral Engineering: Britain drilled to accept lockdowns in future, says 'nudge unit' chief

Major disasters leave an 'enduring trace on society', Prof Halpern said. Exclusive: Professor David Halpern predicts the population would comply with another lockdown because they 'know what the drill is'.

Professor David Halpern told The Telegraph that the country had "practised the drill" of wearing face masks and working from home and "could redo it" in a future crisis.

Last Tuesday, Matt Hancock told the public inquiry that Britain must be ready to combat future disease outbreaks with wider, earlier and more stringent lockdowns.

Speaking on the Lockdown Files podcast, the government adviser Prof Halpern predicted that the country would comply with another 'stay at home' order because they "kind of know what the drill is".

In an interview given before Mr Hancock's testimony, the leading behavioural scientist even suggested that the nation's prior experience made it "much easier to now imagine" the population would accept future local restrictions.

Comment: Maybe, at least a significant number might, for a while; although it's notable that the attempt at imposing dystopian '15-minute-cities' hasn't gone down well with people: UK's 15-minute cities under fire for causing 'dangerous' delays to emergency services, roadblocks vandalised as revolt grows

Prof Halpern said that while fear-based messaging in general is not effective, he defended its use in extreme circumstances.

"There are times when you do need to cut through... particularly if you think people are wrongly calibrated," he said.

Comment: 'Wrongly calibrated' people need reeducating, apparently.

The suggestion that Britain might be primed to accept further social-distancing restrictions is likely to alarm lockdown-sceptics concerned by the collateral damage such measures cause.

When the pandemic hit, Mr Hancock's department enlisted the professor's Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) - better known as the 'nudge unit' - to provide them with "frictionless access to behavioural expertise", according to a £1 million contract.

BIT used earworm slogans such as 'hands, face, space' to maximise compliance with Covid rules.

In his most wide-ranging interview since March 2020, Prof Halpern explained that his unit's campaigns were devised to help reinforce new behaviours.

He said their posters acted as visual prompts so that "when you go into a shop or somewhere else, it re-reminds you, it cues, it acts as a trigger for the behaviour".

The professor said that this messaging encouraged mask-wearing, meaning people felt "naked" when they forgot to put one on.

"Put it this way," he said. "You would feel like, 'Oh my God, I haven't got my mask'. You feel naked, right?"

Once the public has learnt a new behaviour, Prof Halpern said: "In principle, you can switch it back on."

Comment: People are apparently like robots.

"You've got the beginning, particularly, of what is called a habit loop: if this has happened, then you should do that," he said.

Major disasters "leav[e] this enduring trace on society", he explained. As well as knowing the drill, this "quasi-evolutionary" impact is a strong indicator of future behaviour, he claimed.


Comment: It was a traumatic period, and a worrying number of people do still believe the contrived coronavirus crisis was a 'disaster', however a significant number of people are realising that it wasn't what they were led to believe, and that their society is now worse of for following the rules: Excess deaths DOUBLED in 2021, NOT from Covid, lockdown partly to blame, WHO research reveals


Faced with another contagious disease, the professor predicted that the British public would start wearing masks again "relatively rapidly if they were persuaded".

"They might protest, 'do we really have to do it?' [Showing] good healthy scepticism. But once you've exercised those muscles, they're more likely to be reused again," he said.

As a result, the British public - having learnt to work from home - would be more likely, he believed, to accept stay-at-home measures being used to clamp down on local outbreaks.

"We figured out a lot more than we did before, so we've practised the drill and we could redo it," he said.

"Imagine if it happens, not across the whole population, but it happened in an area, a city, and you said, 'it is really important to do the following thing'.

"It is much easier to now imagine that that city would then say, 'OK, we better do this, stay at home and wear masks when we're out or whatever."

The nudge unit chief acknowledged that not everyone complied with Covid restrictions. In early 2021 his team identified that 8 per cent of the population were "super spreaders".

"They're the ones you really worry about," he said.

Comment: People immune to the brainwashing and coercion? They were also called 'refuseniks by the propaganda press.

While BIT was not behind the government's controversial 'can you look them in the eyes?' posters, Prof Halpern said: "I can perfectly understand why they were put together in the way they were."

These frightening images could have been aimed at non-compliant individuals for whom the message was "not emotionally cutting through", he suggested.

The Covid behavioural science advice that ministers received from multiple sources has drawn scrutiny. Last year the pandemic response and recovery APPG called for an inquiry into its use.

Co-chair Esther McVey MP said: "We must ask the question: was it ethical to deploy covert psychological strategies on the British people?"

Responding to criticism that some nudge unit adverts were "unnecessarily scary", Prof Halpern said there is precedent for tougher messaging. The frightening 1986 AIDS tombstone campaign is "thought genuinely to have saved a lot of lives", he pointed out.


He added that behavioural interventions should be debated openly, saying: "It's entirely appropriate for a democratic engagement to be had."

New research on the aging and cognitive decline fronts as it appears a hormone made in the kidneys seems to have an impact on the aging process.

FYI


https://www.newscientist.com/article/238...y-decline/

Quote:A hormone that is claimed to regulate the ageing process enhances memory in monkeys, raising the prospect it could be used to prevent cognitive decline in people.


One injection of the compound, called klotho, improved results in memory tests for at least two weeks in older macaques. If the treatments give similar benefits in people, it would be a major breakthrough, says Dena Dubal at the University of California, San Francisco. “Cognitive dysfunction is one of our greatest biomedical challenges.”

Klotho was discovered when the gene for the hormone was disrupted accidentally in genetically altered mice. The mice then seemed to age faster.

Made by the kidneys, this hormone seems to have multiple roles in the body, including helping to control cell replication and development. Levels of klotho in the blood gradually fall in people as they get older, so the protein was named after Clotho, one of the Fates in Greek mythology, who was said to spin the thread of life.

Klotho has also been shown to improve memory in mice – perhaps by improving the brain’s ability to form new synapses, the connections between brain cells. To investigate whether it would have the same effect in primates, Dubal’s team tested three different doses in macaques that were an average of 22 years old, which is equivalent to about 65 years in people.

Looks like I am going to the movies this weekend. After 5 years of Hollywood blocking the film, Netflix, Amazon, nobody would allow it to be seen (think Epstein). Now, released in a fraction of theatres it is now beating Indiana Jones.

'Sound of Freedom' Beats 'Indiana Jones' in Incredible Box-Office Coup

https://www.newsweek.com/sound-freedom-b...up-1811206

Quote:Sound of Freedom has defied expectations at the Box Office and beaten Harrison Ford's swansong, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.


The movie centers around the real-life story of the founder of the anti-sex trafficking charity Operation Underground Railroad, Tim Ballard. It's seen as a surprise that this relatively small-scale movie outperformed what is seen as the summer blockbuster Indiana Jones on the Fourth of July, a date that in the past has been dominated by the likes of Jaws, Forrest Gump and Top Gun: Maverick.

The feat of Sound of Freedom beating Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is even more impressive when you consider the numbers behind each movie's release.

"On the windy morning of September 10th, 1967, Harry King set out from his ranch house in the San Luis Valley to look for his sister's missing horse. She hadn’t shown up for food and water in days, a strange occurrence that clearly worried him enough to mount a one-person search party. What he found an hour after scouring the property made headlines the world over, and single-handedly catapulted the concept of cattle mutilations into the public consciousness, forever linking them with sci-fi flavored tales of UFOs. 

This is the story of an Apaloosa named Lady, who became forever known as Snippy the Horse. What happened to her? Let's find out!"



CHAPTERS
00:00 INTRODUCTION
00:54 PART ONE: Lady and the Modern UFO Myth
14:00 PART TWO: Snippy and the Saucers
23:15 PART THREE: Beating a Dead Horse
35:08 PART FOUR: Lady's Legacy

Snippy sources

One of her many sources is this ATS thread

What could possibly go wrong?




I found Nick Jones' take on this interesting.




I wrote somewhere, it has to be here or at TOS, since I don't post anywhere else, not that long ago, that I believe I have eaten this or some other fake meat, because I got some chicken from a large local grocery store, and the meat was off. The texture was off, the taste was off, and it looked funny.

It was not spoiled or anything like that. I couldn't eat it, and just found out last night from my Brother that he too has bought both chicken and beef from the same store, that he questions the authenticity of the meat. He now only buys from a local farm co-op.

Be vigilant and pray that things never get so bad that we will only have a choice between Franken meat and Soylent Green.