By a writer living in Germany (which is likely why he is heavily censored)

Quote:Swimming with Sharks by CJ Hopkins.



So, Elon Musk’s new free-speech Twitter appears to be going extremely well. Critics of the official Covid narrative, and the official Ukraine narrative, and Elon Musk, are still being deplatformed, censored, and defamed, but, otherwise, you can tweet whatever you want!

If you want to tweet about how Elon is running Twitter almost single-handedly while personally caring for his nine hungry children and “being a journalist” without ever sleeping, or how he’s “driving down the cost of access to outer space,” or “improving life on Earth for humanity” while planning to exfiltrate himself and his family and friends in the military community (and anyone else who can afford a ticket) to Mars if something goes catastrophically wrong, or is otherwise heroically “doing God’s work,” go for it … you can tweet stuff like that all day!

OK, sure, if you don’t want to do that, and, instead, you want to tweet about the systematic destabilization and radical restructuring of global society that has been carried out by the global-capitalist ruling classes during the past three years, or the most insidious official propaganda and gaslighting campaign in human history, or if you want to tweet about neo-Nazis in the Ukraine, or anything else the Emperor Elonicus doesn’t want you to tweet about, well, not to put too fine a point on it, you’re fucked.

Fucked as in suspended, or censored, or “deboosted,” or “visibility filtered,” or maybe your account is just hidden from view behind one of these fake “sensitive content” warnings, exactly like it was on non-free-speech Twitter…

But whatever … that’s a small price to pay for the privilege of “shitposting” and “owning the libs,” which, that was the whole point of the Twitter takeover, wasn’t it (i.e., revenge, as opposed to actual free speech)?

Who cares if scientists, medical experts, and critics of the New Normal are still being censored? Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi editor of The Daily Stormer, is back! That will certainly stick it to those “shitlibs”!

And then there’s the release of the Twitter Files, which is turning into a le Carré thriller!

Yes, that’s right, Elonicus the Just is releasing in-house documentation of the rogue cabal of liberal “bad apples” that were arbitrarily censoring conservatives, not for any systematic ideological-narrative-enforcement reasons, but just because, well, you know, they’re liberals, or “leftists,” or “cultural Marxists,” or whatever!

Part Two, published by Bari Weiss on Thursday, focused on Twitter’s notorious blacklists, and included screenshots and other evidence of how Twitter executives censored, “deranked,” and otherwise intentionally disappeared and misrepresented information and political views they did not like and so decided that no one should be able to read. Part Three, published by Matt Taibbi last night, documented the censorship and eventual deplatforming of Donald J. Trump, who was The President of the United States at the time … so, yeah, another “nothingburger.”

Fortunately, it turns out, all this censorship, defamation, intentional deception of the public, interference in the political process, and so on, was the work of (you guessed it) a few “bad apples,” Yoel Roth, Parag Agrawal, Vijaya Gadde, and other “bad apples,” who have all been fired (or “exited”) by The Emperor Elonicus. So that’s all over now, and will never happen again, not as long as Elonicus reigns!

So, great, I’m glad that proof of the shenanigans that so many of us have been describing for years is finally definitively coming to light. However, eternal optimist that I am, I was hoping that the Twitter Files would at least broach the subject of how the global corporatocracy, and its government functionaries, and the state and corporate media, and global corporations like Twitter, have gone more or less full-blown totalitarian, and have been conducting a textbook Gleichschaltung campaign, imposing and enforcing ideological uniformity and systematically censoring those of us who have been questioning and challenging the official Covid narrative (and that destabilization and radical restructuring of global society that I mentioned above).

But let’s not get sidetracked by all that narrative stuff, or that global-capitalist totalitarianism stuff, or the countless people around the world that are dying “suddenly,” or “unexpectedly,” which, of course, has nothing to do with the multiple experimental “vaccinations” they were deceived and/or coerced into submitting to, which Twitter and the rest of the global-capitalist propaganda apparatus repeatedly assured us were “safe and effective,” and censored those of us who suggested that they might not be, or that we might not need to “vaccinate” every man, woman, and child on the planet.

All that stuff is water under the bridge. The important thing is American “red/blue” politics!

OK, before I get into the Twitter Files further, I need to do the “full-disclosure” thing. As I am sure you are aware, Elon Musk has chosen to release the selected Twitter Files to Matt Taibbi, and now also Bari Weiss, instead of, you know, just making them all public.

Well, I know Matt Taibbi. We communicate occasionally. He has blurbed a few of my books. I respect him. I like him. I am seriously biased toward Matt Taibbi. I would have Matt Taibbi’s babies if he let me. Basically, I am in in love with Matt Taibbi, and would probably be creepily stalking him right now if I lived in the USA instead of here in Germany. I don’t know Bari Weiss at all, but, from what I can tell, she seems like a nice lady.

All right, that’s my full disclosure. Let’s get back to those Twitter Files.

So, here’s the other thing that is bothering me (i.e., in addition to how this story is gradually devolving into a “red/blue” slugfest). You saw the news about how James Baker, the FBI guy who worked with the Clinton team on perpetrating the Russiagate hoax and had a hand in censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story, was “vetting” the Twitter Files before they were released.

Well, according to the story, Baker was doing this “vetting” unbeknownst to Elon Musk, who had apparently just accidentally forgotten to fire his Deputy General Counsel (who he had been aware of for at least eight months) when he fired all those other liberal “bad apples,” and so Elon, being totally “in the dark,” as it were, had absolutely no idea what Baker was doing to the Twitter Files until Bari Weiss caught it and brought it to his attention.

That bothers me…as in I do not believe it.



I want to be clear about what I’m saying. I’m not questioning Matt’s or Bari Weiss’ motives, or methods, and certainly not their characters. If I were in their positions, I’d be doing the same thing, getting my hands on as many “Twitter files” as possible and reporting the story that is there to report.

They are journalists. That is what journalists do. They have also been around the block a few times, so I assume they are aware that they are swimming with sharks. If they weren’t previously, they certainly are now, after this fishy Baker “vetting” business.

What I’m saying is, how can we trust what they are getting? How many files were “vetted” by Baker? Why was he still in a position to “vet” them? Who’s “vetting” the files now that Baker has been “exited”? Which files have been given to Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss and which files have not been given to them?

The reporting they are doing is like creating a collage; they can only work with the materials they are given, and the materials they are given will determine the story, or at least limit the nature and scope of the story.

Also, and notwithstanding my respect and disturbing affection for Matt Taibbi, neither Matt nor Bari Weiss have been particularly interested in covering the roll-out of the official Covid narrative, i.e., the most insidious propaganda and gaslighting campaign in human history, or the destabilization and radical restructuring of global society that I keep mentioning in this column and have been writing about, extensively, since March of 2020.

So, even if Musk has dumped the entire Twitter database on Matt and Bari Weiss, I doubt that either of them are going to be exactly chomping at the bit to report that story.

Seriously, just imagine if they did. If you think the corporate media’s reaction to Matt Taibbi’s initial Twitter Files release was brutal — and it certainly was — imagine what would happen if he and Bari told the story of Twitter’s role in the global New Normal Gleichschaltung campaign.

They would likely lose everything, publishers, book deals, literary agents, colleagues, friends. They would be excommunicated from the Hall of Seriousness, cast out into the outer darkness where the denylisted souls of “Covid-denying, conspiracy theorizing anti-vaxxers” moan into the void for all eternity.

Because telling that story would mean documenting everything…the fabricated “Covid cases” and “Covid deaths” statistics, the lies about the lockdowns, the masks, the “vaccines,” all of it, the whole New Normal megillah. Not how it’s “over now” because “the science changed,” but how the whole thing was one enormous PSYOP (regardless of whether or how much of it was intentional), how it was manufactured with lies and propaganda from the very beginning, in March of 2020.

Put yourself in Matt Taibbi’s and Bari Weiss’ position. If they tell that story, their lives will be destroyed. Go ahead, judge them if you want. I’m not interested in judgement, personally. I’m interested in seeing things as they are, and the way they are … well, we have a little quandary here, a quandary regarding the Twitter Files not turning out to be a limited hangout, or being perceived as a limited hangout.

And, so, in light of that little quandary, here is a proposal for Elon Musk. Maybe Matt, or Bari Weiss, or one of my “high-profile” right-wing readers can pass it on to him. You don’t have to tell him where it came from. It’s pretty simple. Here it is:

Share the Covid-narrative-censorship Twitter files with journalists who want to tell that story. Let Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss keep telling the story they are telling, which, make no mistake, is of historic importance (and is ultimately a part of the larger story that the Covid-narrative censorship is also part of), but share the files with other journalists who don’t have as much to lose, or who are willing to lose it to report the story, or who have already lost it and so don’t give a shit. If you actually meant “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” then how about a little Vox Populi, Elon?

If Elon Musk is serious about coming clean, and defending freedom of speech, and all that stuff, and not just whitewashing the company he just bought, and orchestrating an elaborate limited hangout, he can prove it by offering the Covid-narrative-censorship Twitter files to a few other journalists … journalists who want to report that story, who want to report that story right now, not two years from now, when no one cares anymore.

I have a hunch he might get a few takers.

Many of these we grew up watching in film and T.V. RIP.

The EU Today.

Quote:Brussels hit by Qatar corruption scandal

'A Belgian judge is expected on Sunday to announce formal charges for several people arrested in an alleged
corruption scandal involving World Cup host Qatar and the European parliament. Over the weekend, authorities
seized some €600,000 in cash and detained five people, in what appears to be one of the most significant
corruption cases ever seen in the European parliament.

While Belgian authorities have not named the suspects, European parliament vice-president Eva Kaili has been
stripped of her duties in the parliament and of party membership by the Greek socialist party, PASOK.


Eva Kaili, It's okay when we do it.

“In the light of the ongoing judicial investigations by Belgian authorities, President Metsola has decided to suspend
with immediate effect all powers, duties and tasks that were delegated to Eva Kaili in her capacity as vice-president
of the European parliament,” a spokesman for European parliament president Roberta Metsola said in a statement.

Belgian authorities last week said that they were pursuing an investigation into “organised crime, corruption and
money laundering”.

“For several months, investigators of the Federal Judicial Police have suspected a Gulf country of influencing economic
and political decisions of the European parliament,” the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Friday.
“This is done by paying large sums of money or offering large gifts to third parties with a significant political and/or
strategic position within the European parliament.” An official familiar with the investigation confirmed that the country
in question is Qatar.

The news was first broken by Le Soir, the Belgian newspaper, which said those arrested also included a former MEP and
a parliamentary assistant. Shortly after the news broke on Friday, Kaili was suspended both from her party Pasok and
the Socialist group in the European parliament. The FT was unable to reach Kaili on her mobile phone.

Kaili, a former TV news presenter, and member of the Greek parliament with the centre left party, Pasok, joined the EU
legislature in 2014 and in November she defended Qatar’s human rights record:
“Qatar is a frontrunner in labour rights, abolishing kafala [its migrant labour sponsorship system] and reducing
minimum wage ... Still, some here are calling to discriminate [against] them. They bully them and they accuse
everyone that talks to them or engages of corruption. But still, they take their gas.”

The parliament was due to vote next week on granting Qatari nationals visa free travel to the bloc. That has been suspended over the weekend in response to the detentions. The Greens/EFA group in parliament said on Saturday
it would have voted against the measure.

Terry Reintke, co-president of the group, said there should be “zero tolerance against corruption and bribery”, adding
that “if the suspicions are confirmed” Kaili should resign as an MEP.

Transparency International, the anti-corruption group, said the EU institutions needed an independent ethics regulator.
“Over many decades, the parliament has allowed a culture of impunity to develop, with a combination of lax financial
rules and controls and a complete lack of independent (or indeed any) ethics oversight,” said its director, former MEP
Michiel van Hulten...'

Firstly, not my story, but had to share as it blew my mind.

I stumbled across the story from:



This guy who calls himself "Ethical Skeptic" writes some ultra deep science articles on the Covid death cult science shenanigans, but also other deep thought articles, which the following is one... and he got a very interesting date here...

Quote:A Curious Astrological Confluence

Antiochus I had the temple site at Nemrut Dag constructed on the anniversary of his coronation as king. But what else did he have in mind besides a celebration of his greatness? Perhaps there is a deeper mystery here – one handed down through the ages, hidden in plain sight, and one to which most of mankind is not privy.

Commagene – A Confluence of Persian, Babylonian and Macedonian Traditions.




The Kingdom of Commagene was a Greco-Persian state which resided along the headwaters of the Euphrates River in modern-day Turkey, both during and before the times of the early Roman Empire. By 60 BCE Commagene had been a Greek vassal state since the collapse of The Neo-Assyrian Empire about 609 BCE and the rise of the Seleucid Empire around 312 BCE.

Although the Seleuicid Empire was regarded as a Hellenistic State, it ruled under its own authority and controlled much of the former lands spanning Anatolia, Persia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Indus River region.3 After the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE, Commagene transferred authority to reside under the Roman Empire.4 Nonetheless, the Kingdom maintained its autonomy as a culture descended from the Uartu (Ararat) peoples of the Old Assyrian Empire (2600 BCE – 609 BCE), which included Sumer, Persia (Parthian Empire in the lower right quadrant of the map above), the Akkadian Empire, and Babylon. Its most ancient roots formed from the city-state of Ur, circa 3800 BCE. Commagene was situated in a sub-region of modern Turkey called Anatolia, a name which is derived from the Greek term ἀνατολῇ (anatolē), meaning ‘the East’.

Nemrut Dağ

Located inside the eastern extent of the ancient state of Commagene is a tall mountain called by various names, including Nemrut Dag (which I will use herein). ‘Nemrut Dağ’ (Mount Nemrut/Nemrud), at 7000 ft is one of the highest peaks in the east of the Taurus Mountains (which range east through Cilicia on the map above). It maintains one of the best views of the eastern sky in the entire region. The mountain is located in modern day Turkey (see Exhibit 1 below), about 85 km directly north of another UNESCO World Heritage Site and site of the World’s first temple, Göbekli Tepe.

....

Who had this one on their bingo card?




Ho, ho, ho, another 'fictional' high-level pandemic exercise in 2022 - brought to you by the Gates Foundation...sound familiar?? Is this what is next? Doubtful. The contagion is those tyrannical parasites.

Quote:The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in partnership with WHO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, conducted Catastrophic Contagion, a pandemic tabletop exercise at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on October 23, 2022.

The extraordinary group of participants consisted of 10 current and former Health Ministers and senior public health officials from Senegal, Rwanda, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, Singapore, India, Germany, as well as Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The exercise simulated a series of WHO emergency health advisory board meetings addressing a fictional pandemic set in the near future. Participants grappled with how to respond to an epidemic located in one part of the world that then spread rapidly, becoming a pandemic with a higher fatality rate than COVID-19 and disproportionately affecting children and young people.

Participants were challenged to make urgent policy decisions with limited information in the face of uncertainty. Each problem and choice had serious health, economic, and social ramifications.

Catastrophic Contagion

Quote:In the Catastrophic Contagion simulation, even a group of some of the wisest and most experienced international public health leaders who lived through COVID-19 wrestled with opposing views on whether countries should impose travel restrictions or close schools to try to contain a serious new epidemic that was disproportionately affecting children. The exercise raised a pivotal question: If future pandemics have a much higher lethality than COVID-19, or for example, if they affect predominantly children, would or should countries take different, stronger, earlier measures to contain it, and what are those measures?
Lessons from the exercise

This is my Sister's yard in Maryland.

This is not usual.

Did Santa quit?

Attached Files

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I never heard of this story.

Quote:The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, an amazing 2011 documentary. "It began as a housing marvel. Two decades later, it ended in rubble. But what happened to those caught in between?

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth tells the story of the transformation of the American city in the decades after World War II, through the lens of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing development and the St. Louis residents who called it home.

This is why Pruitt-Igoe matters – why we made this documentary. So much of our collective understanding of cities and government and inequality are tied up in these 33 high-rise buildings, informed by the demolition image. Too much of the context has been overlooked, or willfully ignored, in discussions of public housing, public welfare, and the state of the American city.

Quote:Pruitt-Igoe: A Black Community Under the “Atomic Cloud”

The true story of the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex may never be fully declassified. But what we do know is this: it involves the unlucky architect of the World Trade Center, a lost stockpile of a hundred thousand baby teeth, and mountains of recently disclosed U.S. Army records that describe secret radiological experiments conducted on unsuspecting citizens in Minneapolis, Winnipeg, and St. Louis.

In 1952, construction began on a massive array of public housing high-rises in North St. Louis, Missouri. West of the Mississippi River and the city’s downtown, 33 tan apartment buildings were built to stand right next to one another like dominos, a “river of open space” between for playgrounds, parking, and parks.

Clearing 57 acres over three years of construction, Pruitt-Igoe was a herculean spending project in the name of urban renewal. Yet the towers wouldn’t last two decades. In 1972, three Pruitt-Igoe buildings were condemned and demolished, famously, on TV. The rest followed shortly after, televised on the nightly news, harkening the “end of modernism.”

The Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex became a powerful cliché for Reaganite psychopaths who pointed at St. Louis’s failure to maintain the development as reason to nix welfare initiatives across the nation. As the story goes, “those people” didn’t know how to take care of things. They were dirty, and criminal, so why throw more money at them?

There’s much more to the story. Pruitt-Igoe was not proof of a Cold War logic; it did not display the “inevitable” failures of planned housing. It was an organized sabotage—and a clandestine site for radiological weapons experimentation. These studies were conducted on innocent and unconsenting civilians, who were mostly poor, mostly Black, and mostly women and children.
....

For forty years, the truth about these “cloud” experiments would be entirely unknown to the public. Not until 1994 was their true nature—and the extent of the danger they posed—revealed. Even then, it came to light only after Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt acquired files disclosing some facts about the program’s true nature.

Quote:SpaceX chases government cash with Starshield satellites (6 Dec 2022)

If Starshield smells like Space-BACN, that's because it probably is.

The Musk-owned space company didn't so much announce Starshield as it simply added it to its website without many specifics, as is to be expected from a satellite program designed with the national security in mind.

According to SpaceX's Starshield page, the satellites will function as a "secured satellite network for government entities" that will use the same basic tech as Starlink, though with extra capabilities focused on three areas: Earth observation, communications, and hosted payloads.

The latter category refers to Starshield satellite buses, the main body of the satellite, being built "to support the most demanding customer payload missions." In other words, Starshield is modular enough to support lots of different types of hardware built by government customers.

The satellites will also have Starlink's self-proclaimed "unparalleled end-to-end user data encryption" onboard along with additional "high-assurance cryptographic capability to host classified payloads and process data securely." 
SpaceX also said Starshield takes advantage of the company's approach to developing space systems in a "full stack … end-to-end" fashion, which it said will allow government customers to deploy new hardware "with unprecedented speed."

Smells like Space-BACN

Much is known of SpaceX's work with the US government, representatives from which have even described SpaceX as relying on the government's own space operations for continued existence - a fact Musk has acknowledged.

The private space firm has been awarded plenty of government contracts over the years, from military satellite deals, to being arguably the top partner in NASA's public-private space launch program, to supplying Starlink terminals to the US government for the war in Ukraine.

The relationship between Musk and the US government hasn't been entirely smooth. Despite the FCC and SpaceX butting heads, the Biden administration has continued to call on SpaceX to do things like supply Starlink terminals to embattled regions like Iran, where internet connections have been cut due to ongoing protests.

And it seems Starshield may have been on the cards for some time, under a different name. DARPA announced a project called the Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node, or Space-BACN, in 2021 with an aim to get all the various privately-owned satellite constellations floating in Earth's orbits to talk to each other using optical terminals.

Fast-forward to August of this year, and DARPA was still going on about Space-BACN, but this time with a purpose: It tapped SpaceX and other companies to get Space-BACN nodes off the drawing board and into orbit.

Starshield's webpage doesn't mention Space-BACN by name, but it does mention the project's goal as one of the things Starlink, and thus Starshield, already has going for it: Interoperability.

According to the company, connections between satellite constellations can be achieved through Starlink's existing inter-satellite laser communications terminal, which SpaceX said is the only communications laser currently operating at scale in orbit.

Those lasers, which SpaceX uses to connect Starlink satellites to each other, "can be integrated onto partner satellites to enable incorporation into the Starshield network" - precisely what DARPA seems to be looking for, and delivered in a way guaranteed to make SpaceX more money.

There are still a lot of unknowns surrounding Starshield, and we've reached out to SpaceX to learn what we can. Among the things that are unknown is whether any Starshield satellites have already been launched or if any governments, US included, have expressed interest.

Quote:Mynaric, Redwire, BigBear.ai partner for DARPA’s laser communications program (Dec 6, 2022)



Mynaric selected a cybersecurity tool from Redwire and BigBear.ai for an inter-satellite laser communications terminal it is developing for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the companies announced Dec. 6.

Laser communications supplier Mynaric is designing an optical communications terminal for DARPA’s Space Based Adaptive Communications Node program known as Space-BACN. The agency is working with multiple vendors to develop a low-cost laser communications terminal that is compatible with government and private-sector optical intersatellite link standards.

DARPA’s goal is to enable seamless communications between government and commercial networks in low Earth orbit.

The Redwire-BigBear.ai cybersecurity technology, called Space Cyber Resiliency through Evaluation and Security Testing, or SpaceCREST, uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze data and predict threats.

“SpaceCREST will be a critical tool for the proactive maintenance and protection for government and commercial customers building the next generation of resilient space architectures,” said Dean Bellamy, Redwire’s executive vice president of national security space.

“SpaceCREST will be used to identify vulnerabilities that could affect the terminal or disrupt its operation and then find ways to protect against those vulnerabilities,” he said.

BigBear.ai and space infrastructure provider Redwire signed an agreement in October 2021 to collaborate on SpaceCREST.

The companies said they decided to partner due to the growing critical infrastructure in the U.S. that relies on space systems, and the need for advanced predictive analytics capabilities to identify and protect against potential cyber vulnerabilities.