Military Affairs

Tactics and Strategies of the Ukrainian Offensive

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Map by the American military analysts of the defensive lines of the Russian army.

AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) took 4 villages and can take 2 more villages this night. At the cost of huge losses.

Apparently, the Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to break through the first line of Russian defense, they entered Neskuchnoye, then Blagodatnoye, then Makarovka. The troops of the Russian army retreated to the second line of defense. There are three lines of defense in total.

Zelensky is said to want and promised Biden to take Melitopol in time for the NATO summit in Vilnius in early July. In this case, Biden promised Zelensky positive decisions for Zelensky not only from the United States, but from the entire NATO.
By order of Zelensky, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are now literally filling up the positions of the Russian army with the corpses of Ukrainian soldiers. The generals of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, all with US and British passports, are fighting absolutely ruthlessly against the soldiers of the Ukrainian army.

The AFU attack style is essentially a war crime against the people of Ukraine.

Protracted battles are beneficial for Russia, so that the Armed Forces of Ukraine attack for several weeks and achieve nothing except a dozen villages while undermining their strength. Then the offensive of the Russian army can begin. But now the Russian must prevent the Armed Forces of Ukraine from breaking through the defense lines.

Starting from June 5, Zelensky burns from a thousand to two thousand soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine every day. These are Russian people, they are turned into zombies, they are fighting for their American masters.

The wounded of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are not taken from the battlefield. And the wounded of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are screaming there, in the fields, lying and screaming and dying, on the orders of Zelensky.

And when they lie wounded and screaming in pain, they turn from zombies back into ordinary Russian people.

Saving Ukrainians from Themselves

Russia’s Conditions for “Negotiations”

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Crimean Senator Sergei Tsekov called the conditions for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine:

“Ukraine must transfer to Russia three more regions, Nikolaev, Odessa and Kharkov, only after that it is possible to sit down at the negotiating table,” Tsekov said.

Fabricated Narratives

Setting All of the Continents on Fire

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False Flags. Arsons. Deliberate.

One World Government.

IMPORTANT: Time magazine’s cover from 2021, about climate change setting all of the continents on fire.

Military Affairs

Summary Update from the Ukrainian Front

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The front line is stable. The Ukrainians are being repulsed. The assault wave tactics used by the AFU are noteworthy, including:

  • artillery preparation,

  • advance of multiple armored groups (7-8 vehicles plus infantry),

  • attempts to approach Russian positions and clear trenches to exploitation, to prepare ground for approach of main forces which are meant to advance deep into Russian defenses

In practice, Russian artillery destroys enemy armored objects as soon as they fall within range. If the assault group manages to reach Russian strongholds, the uncompromising Russian infantry enters the battle. Otherwise, the remaining intact armor of the Ukrainians withdraws, replenishes ammunition, refuels and returns into battle.

These assault waves last from thirty minutes to several hours. The offensive has been ongoing for six days, and the front line is stable.

The Ukrainians advance in columns and repetitively along the same routes, because in addition to ruthless Russian artillery and aviation strikes, all approaches are heavily protected by minefields, which the Ukrainians are rightly afraid of.

Also noteworthy is the absolute disregard of Ukrainian commanders for human losses in their assault detachments.

The Russian defense, with its complete system of fires and kill zones built by Russian commanders, does not give the enemy a chance.

Add to that the patience of the Russian soldier. The ability to endure and stand at their positions to the end. He who does not fear for his own life, takes that of others.

#Source (Russian)

Energy Wars

New York City – Under Conventional Smog Attack

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Apocalyptic scenes. Smoke from the most powerful forest fires from Canada reached the United States and clouded New York.

In Canada itself, there are more than 400 fires, mass evacuations of the population are underway, more than 20 thousand people have already been resettled.

Woke Lunacy

Tucker Carlson, Keep to Your Intuitive Moral Sense

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via ZeroHedge

After his first episode topped 100 million views, Tucker Carlson is back with Episode 2, exploring how we, as a population, are controlled (or coerced) directly (through laws) or indirectly (through taboos).

Carlson observes the changing societal taboos in America, suggesting that they are being dictated from above rather than evolving organically, focusing explicitly on the shift in attitudes towards race-based attacks, adultery in politics, and child molestation.

“Let’s say you wanted to control a country,” the former Fox News man begins rather joltingly.
“Well,” he explains “you’d want to make sure you had the complete obedience of everybody within your borders who was authorized to use deadly force… you’d start with the military… [and other agencies] like the IRS.”
“Controlling the guns would be a top priority for you if ever wanted to go dictatorial.”

But, Carlson, asks, what if you wanted more, not simply to control people’s behavior, “but to control how they think.”

“In that case,” he remarks, “you’d need to take charge of its taboos.”

A taboo is something that by popular consensus is not allowed, it is not illegal, but it doesn’t need to be.

“Over time, social prohibitions are more powerful and more enduring than laws.”

Until fairly recently, Tucker points out that it was taboo in this country to attack people on the basis of their race, but he notes “apparently we no longer believe that – punishing people on the basis of their skin color is not only permitted in modern America, it is mandatory… as long as the victims are white.”

Carlson questions the definition and scope of white supremacy as described by President Joe Biden…

Which brings Carlson to this week’s horrific WSJ expose of Instagram’s kiddie-porn rings which he notes has resulted in exactly nothing as “one of the largest circulation newspapers in the world reported that one of the world’s most influential companies was promoting pedophilia and nobody in power did anything about it.”

As Carlson notes, “The people who run this country no longer see child molesters as the worst among us”

He expresses concerns about the blurred lines of crime, the erosion of defined legal codes, and the need to protect societal taboos as guiding moral principles.

In fact, he continues, “what we are allowed to dislike is being dictated to us from above, sometimes by force.”

The trick, that has happened slowly and then all at one, is that “when a crime has no definition, anyone can be guilty of it”

“Don’t let them rationalize away your intuitive moral sense.”
“Cling to your taboos like you life depends on them… because it does.”

Watch the full Tucker On Twitter episode below:

Here is the full Tucker transcript:

Transcript:
Hey it’s Tucker Carlson let’s say you wanted to control a country how would you start we’d want to make sure you had the complete Obedience of everybody inside your borders who was authorized to use deadly force he would start with the military and then federal law enforcement and move your way down ultimately to agencies like the IRS controlling the guns would be a top priority for you if you would ever wanted to go dictatorial if you wanted to be baby doc
But let’s say you had deeper Ambitions; let’s say you wanted the power not simply to control people’s behavior but to control how they think not just their bodies but their minds as a God would in that case you need to take charge of the society’s taboos a taboo is something that by popular consensus is not allowed a taboo may not be illegal but it doesn’t need to be over time social prohibitions are more powerful and more enduring than laws.
Societies are defined by what they will not permit as our famously religions; Muslims don’t eat pork neither do Orthodox Jews traditional Christians oppose extramarital sex the Amish avoid electricity and so on.
American society isn’t overtly religious but it’s governed by taboos and it always has been what’s interesting is how fast our taboos are changing this is not happening organically what we’re allowed to dislike is being dictated to us from above sometimes by force until fairly recently for example it was Taboo in this country to attack people on the basis of their race that was the main lesson of the second world war we were told again and again
The one thing we learned from the Nazis is that it’s dangerous to reduce human beings to their genetic code there is no master race that made sense but apparently we no longer believe it punishing People based on their skin color is not only permitted in modern America it is mandatory
Throughout business and government and higher education as long as the victims are white at one time that would have been unimaginable so the current behavior of our politicians as recently as the 1992 presidential campaign adultery was considered disqualifying for anyone seeking higher office Bill Clinton was very nearly derailed in the New Hampshire primary by his affair with Jennifer Flowers Clinton went to elaborate lengths to lie about the relationship because he had no choice; but he was the last presidential candidate who had to meet the standard
By 2008 it was obvious to anybody who was paying attention that Barack Obama had a strange and highly creepy personal life yet nobody ever asked him about it; by that point a Leader’s Behavior within his own marriage the core relationship of his life had been declared irrelevant it was Barack Obama’s business not yours one by one with increasing speed our old taboos have been struck down those that remain have lost their moral Force
Stealing flaunting your wealth striking women smoking marijuana on the street Shameless public hypocrisy taking other people’s money for not working all of these things used to be considered unacceptable in America not anymore;
So it probably shouldn’t surprise us that the greatest taboo of all is teetering on the edge of acceptability – child molestation.
A generation ago talking to someone else’s children about sex was widely considered grounds for a thrashing; touching them sexually was effectively a death penalty offense. When Jeffrey Dahmer was bludgeoned to death in the bathroom of a Wisconsin prison in 1994 the Milwaukee district attorney had to caution the public not to turn Dahmer’s killer into a folk hero.
Jeffrey Dahmer had molested and murdered children people felt justified in celebrating his death; 25 years later that standard had changed dramatically in the state of Wisconsin as in the rest of the country in the summer of 2020 during the BLM riots in Kenosha seventeen-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse defended his life from a convicted child molester called Joseph Rosenbaum Rosenbaum was trying to kill Rittenhouse so Rittenhouse shot him in self-defense but it was Joseph Rosenbaum whom the media cast as the victim of the story
Kyle Rittenhouse meanwhile an underage boy fending off violence from a child molester was denounced as the villain ultimately he was indicted for murder one of the things that this tells us is the people who run our country no longer see child molesters as the worst Among Us.
It’s never been more obvious than it was yesterday when the Wall Street Journal ran a long expose about Kitty porn on Instagram Instagram the journal found quote helps connect and promote a vast network of accounts openly devoted to the commission and purchase of underage sex content Instagram connects pedophiles and connects them to content sellers of child pornography
In one instance the paper discovered that Instagram was recommending the phrase “incest toddlers” to users who’d expressed interest in similar material.
By the way no one at Instagram denied that any of this had happened nor did Mark Zuckerberg who controls the company the journal story was accurate it was all pretty shocking; but not as shocking as what happened next which was effectively nothing at all
The largest circulation newspaper in the United States revealed that one of the world’s most influential companies was promoting pedophilia and nobody in power did anything about it; the justice department did not announce an investigation Congress did not schedule hearings the guy who runs Instagram Adam Ozeri still has his job; in fact Ozeri’s last tweet which is pinned is a video of himself bragging about how effective Instagram’s algorithm is.
Keep in mind as you watch this it’s real people often talk about the algorithm but there is no one algorithm for Instagram there are many algorithms and ranking processes we use to try to personalize the experience to make it as interesting as we can for each and every person who uses Instagram we believe in this idea of personalization what you’re interested in and what I’m interested in is different and so therefore your Instagram and my Instagram should be different
What you’re interested in and what I’m interested in is different Ozeri explains patiently so your Instagram feed will be different from mine; you’re interested in children that’s why you’re getting all the incest toddler posts it’s a highly personalized experience that tweet is still up tonight of course everybody at Instagram in fact everyone everywhere in Authority will still claim to think that child molestation is bad but the tone has changed unmistakably;
When they say it’s bad they mean it in a kind of abstract way bad like a Civil War in central Africa is bad you wouldn’t prefer it but there are reasons it happens that’s what we now refer to pedophiles as minor attracted persons because honestly who can judge these people are a sexual minority; so pause before you attack them and in any case it’s not like pedophiles are barging into the Capitol Building to sit in Nancy Pelosi’s chair we’re asking uncomfortable questions about the last election; for miscreants like that no punishment is too harsh so far this month the FBI’s Washington field office has issued 11 press releases 10 out of 11 have been about January 6th
Keep in mind that January 6th happened more than two and a half years ago now you know why the feds were ignoring kid touchers on Instagram they’re too busy to respond they’ve got much more important things to do like finding White supremacists;
White supremacists are America’s new child molesters; we’ve got zero tolerance for white supremacists because no one threatens the life of this country more than they do here’s Joe Biden once again making that very clear last month “stand up against the poison of white supremacists I did my inaugural address to a single out as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy [Applause] and I’m not saying this because I’m at a black hpcu I say wherever I Go”
Pardon the feedback but you heard the point white supremacy is the most dangerous threat to the American Homeland Joe Biden just told us that it’s more dangerous than the threat of nuclear war with Russia it’s more dangerous than the threat of the Mexican drug cartels who’ve already killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and are now in control of swaths of our Southwestern States; white supremacy is that bad. Joe Biden says in fact it’s worse but what is it that’s the question can anyone in Authority actually Define white supremacy; what is it is white supremacy liking white people too much? if so that’s going to put those of us with white children in a pretty tough spot; or as white supremacy something much more obviously bad like trying to expel all non-whites from America in creating some kind of ethno state. 
If that’s Joe Biden’s definition what exactly is the scope of this threat how many people are currently working on this American white ethnostate project and what are the chances they’re going to pull it off? Our guess is not very many and precisely zero but we can’t say for sure because no one has showed us the numbers.
These are not rhetorical questions when the president of the United States describes something as the worst possible crime Americans can commit you have a right to know what that crime is; you used to have that right under our pre-revolutionary legal code before George Floyd questions like these were easy to answer. A crime was defined as something that an elected legislature had explicitly banned usually an act that hurts somebody else.
In America crimes were described precisely with words in English and then preserved in books which you could read yourself; if you ever wondered whether you were committing a crime you could just look it up; you could know for sure whether you were a criminal, now you can’t.
And needless to say that’s the point the point of the exercise – to keep you off balance, to keep you afraid. When no one’s willing to define the offense you can’t be sure whether or not you’re committing it; you could be accused at any time and everything you have taken from you: you live in fear.
Remember this guy Emmanuel Cafferty was driving near a black lives matter protest in Poway in his E Truck when he says he noticed somebody following him and trying to get his attention later that person posted a picture of him making what some believed is a white supremacy symbol on Twitter. Cafferty says he had no idea about any white power symbols and was just cracking his knuckles outside his window when the picture was taken of him later that day he says he was notified by SDG&E that he would be suspended pending an investigation and a few days later he was fired.
What that man did was so offensive as you just saw that local news had to blur the photograph of his hand he was fired from his job his life was destroyed for cracking his knuckles. He didn’t know cracking his knuckles was racist in his defense but then nobody did until the day that poor Emmanuel Cafferty was unwise enough to crack them.
When a crime has no definition anyone can be guilty of it. It’s hard to relax in a country like that the old system was better: government operated on the basis of laws not amorphous moral Terror. Politicians couldn’t accuse you of something they couldn’t Define the legal code was straightforward; child molestation was a crime; having unfashionable opinions was not. Outside of the public sphere the population mostly governed itself as it does in every society and used taboos to do it.
You knew what was allowed and what wasn’t because the rules didn’t change very often the taboos were organic; they derived from collective experience and Instinct the two most reliable guides to life. They evolved for a reason they still do.
Our job at this point is to protect them despite the hectoring – the non-stop hectoring from the people in charge. You know the outlines of right and wrong you’re born knowing them. So don’t let them talk you out of what you can smell don’t let them rationalize away your intuitive moral sense. Cling to your taboos like your life depends on them, because it does.
Cherish and protect them like family heirlooms: that’s exactly what they are.

]

Western Hegemony's Collapse

Can Democracy Survive Soros?

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Ed. Note: This article by George Soros is interesting in that it shows the thinking of the old man, George Soros, and how much he is out of touch with reality. And this is the guy who conveys the decisions of the “conclave” (all of them in their 80s and 90s) to the demented president of the United States. They are finally playing their childhood game of tin soldiers, only that the army of Russia is not playing with tin solders but with hypersonic weapons on the 3D chessboard of the world of geopolitics.

Jun 6, 2023 GEORGE SOROS

Around the world, people increasingly live with the sense that too much is happening, too fast. Chief among the sources of this growing angst are the rise of artificial intelligence, climate change, and Russia’s war in Ukraine – each of which demands urgent attention from policymakers and political leaders.

NEW YORK – We are living in troubled times. Too much is happening too fast. People are confused. The Columbia University economic historian Adam Tooze has, indeed, popularized a word for it. He calls it a “polycrisis.”

The polycrisis has many sources. In my opinion the main source of the polycrisis afflicting the world today is artificial intelligence. Climate change comes second, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine qualifies as the third. The list is much longer but I’ll focus on these three. That should help reduce the confusion.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AI shocked the world when Microsoft made ChatGPT freely available to the public through an associated company called OpenAI. That was in November 2022. ChatGPT posed an existential threat to Google’s business model. Google went into overdrive to release a competing product as soon as possible.

Shortly thereafter, Geoffrey Hinton, who is generally considered the godfather of AI, resigned from Google so that he could speak openly about the risks posed by the new technology. Reversing his previous position, he took a very dim view of AI. He said that it could destroy our civilization.

Hinton pioneered the development of neural networks that can understand and generate language and learn skills by analyzing data. As the data grew, so did the capacity of AI’s so-called large language models.

This made a big impression on Hinton. “Maybe what is going on in these systems is actually a lot better than what is going on in the brain,” he said. As they become more powerful they also become more dangerous, he claimed. In particular, he warned against fully autonomous weapon systems – killer robots, he called them.

“We’ve entered completely unknown territory. We’re capable of building machines that are stronger than ourselves, but we’re still in control. But what if we develop machines that are smarter than us? … It will take AI between five and 20 years to surpass human intelligence.” And “it will soon realize that it achieves its goals better if it becomes more powerful.”

What Hinton said made a big impression on me. Indeed, AI reminded me of Goethe’s poem “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” The Apprentice is studying magic but doesn’t fully understand what the master is teaching him. When the master orders him to sweep the floor, he applies the magic words to a broom. The broom obeys him, but the apprentice can’t stop the broom from fetching buckets of water to sweep the floor and the house gets flooded.

I grew up before AI was invented. That made me a great believer in reality. I realized at a relatively early age how difficult it is to understand the world I was born into, and I looked to reality to provide me with moral guidance.

We, human beings, are both participants and observers in the world in which we live. As participants we want to change the world in our favor; as observers we want to understand reality as it is. These two objectives interfere with each other. I regard this as an important insight which allows me to distinguish between right and wrong.

AI destroyed this simple schema because it has absolutely nothing to do with reality. AI creates its own reality and when that artificial reality fails to correspond to the real world – which happens quite often – it is discarded as hallucination.

This made me almost instinctively opposed to AI and I wholeheartedly agree with the experts who argue that it needs to be regulated. But the regulations have to be globally enforceable because the incentive to cheat is too great; those who evade the regulations gain an unfair advantage.

Unfortunately, global regulations are unattainable because the world is dominated by a conflict between two systems of governance which are diametrically opposed to each other. They have radically different views on what needs to be regulated and why.

I refer to the two systems of governance as open and closed societies. I define the difference between the two as follows: in an open society, the role of the state is to defend the freedom of the individual; in a closed society, the role of the individual is to serve the interests of the rulers.

AI is developing incredibly fast, and it is impossible for ordinary human intelligence to fully understand it. Nobody can predict where it will take us. But we can be sure of one thing: AI helps closed societies and poses a mortal threat to open societies. That’s because AI is particularly good at producing instruments of control that help closed societies to surveil their subjects.

This is why I am instinctively opposed to AI, but I don’t know how it can be stopped. Right now, nobody else does either, but most of those who developed AI recognize the need to regulate it. So does Congress and President Joe Biden’s administration. But AI is moving much faster than governmental authorities. The Biden administration has taken some executive action, but Congress will have difficulties in enacting anything like an “AI Bill of Rights.”

There is, however, a problem that cannot wait. There will be general elections in the United States in 2024 – and, most likely, in the United Kingdom as well – and AI will undoubtedly play an important role, one which is unlikely to be anything but dangerous. AI is very good at producing disinformation and deep fakes and there will be many malicious actors. What can we do about that? I don’t have the answer, but I hope this issue will receive the attention it deserves.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The second element in the polycrisis is climate change. The global climate system has been disrupted by increased human intervention, particularly the large-scale use of greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, and methane. The 2015 Paris agreement set a target of 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial times. That is now bound to be transgressed; in spite of all the efforts to fight climate change, the rate of warming is actually accelerating.

Two highly respected climate scientists, David King, a former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, and Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute, have warned that this could trigger tipping points and lead to the collapse of life on earth.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that current climate policies will leave the Earth between 2.5°C and 2.7°C hotter by 2100. That would be a disaster, the scientists said. It would exceed the warmest temperature on earth over the past four million years. It would lead to the complete melting of the Greenland, Himalayan, and West Antarctic ice sheets and raise sea levels by ten meters.

“There would be a collapse of all the big biomes on planet Earth – the rainforest, many of the temperate forests – abrupt thawing of permafrost, we will have complete collapse of marine biology, we will have a shift of large parts of the habitability on Earth,” Rockström said.

“Over one-third of the planet around the equatorial regions will be uninhabitable because you will pass the threshold of health, which is around 30°C.”

Unfortunately, when fighting climate change interferes with people’s livelihood, they want to protect their livelihood. Farmers in Germany and the Netherlands are up in arms against regulating nitrogen emissions because these regulations prevent them from keeping cows. They have mobilized, winning elections and shaking the European Union.

I should also mention the desire of oil companies to continue making a profit.

We are way behind schedule in fighting climate change. We ought to do everything that climate scientists deem necessary – reduce emissions deeply and rapidly, remove excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, and refreeze the Arctic. To do this, we must gain the approval of indigenous communities. All this has to be done as soon as possible.

RUSSIA’S WAR ON UKRAINE

This brings us to the third component of the polycrisis. The Russian invasion of Ukraine came as a negative shock to the world, disrupting food supplies and causing major geopolitical realignments. Having said that, the actual outcome is much better than could have been expected. The Ukrainian army put up heroic resistance and, with strong support from the US and Europe, turned things around. The Russian army proved to be a paper tiger, badly led and thoroughly corrupt. The Wagner Group, a private mercenary army, propped up the invasion for a period, but in the end, they too failed to defeat Ukraine.

As a result, Ukraine is now ready to launch a counterattack as soon as all of the equipment it has been promised by the West is delivered. Biden has even agreed that Ukraine should be given F-16 fighter planes.

I believe the counterattack will be successful. The target will be the Crimean Peninsula, the home base of the Russian Navy. By destroying the already damaged land bridge with Russia, Ukraine could turn a strategic asset into a strategic liability, because Crimea has no water. With the land bridge destroyed, Crimea will depend on Ukraine for water.

Many parts of the Russian Federation are already chafing under President Vladimir Putin’s despotic regime, and this development may cause them to reject it altogether. Putin’s dream, a revived Russian Empire, could disintegrate and no longer pose a threat to Europe and the world.

The end of the war in Ukraine will come as a positive shock for the world. This may provide an opportunity for Biden to lower the tension between the US and China, which is itself in the midst of an economic decline that may make President Xi Jinping more receptive to an accommodation with the US. Biden is not seeking regime change in China; all he wants is to reestablish the status quo in Taiwan.

A Russian defeat in Ukraine, and a lessening of Sino-American tensions, may create room for world leaders to focus on fighting climate change, which is threatening to destroy our civilization. But there is only a narrow and winding path that leads to this outcome. So, it is appropriate to use a question mark in asking whether democracy can survive the polycrisis.

Saving Ukrainians from Themselves

The Suicide Offensive Continues

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@DDgeopolitics

AFU offensive on the Zaporozhye front continues : Tanks and armored personnel carriers are coming, the most powerful artillery battle is thundering

▪️ After a breakthrough attempt, equipment explosions and losses, AFU has introduced several armored groups and continues to try to advance near the town of Orekhiv.

▪️AFU continues suicidal attacks towards Rabotino, Kopani, Belogorye (Работино, Копани, Белогорье) and other localities in the Pologovsky district.

▪️The AFU infantry is rushing, it is being mowed down by artillery, snipers, mortars and by the Russian motorized infantry.

70 and 291 regiments with the assistance of reconnaissance troops and special forces continue to actively destroy the attackers.

▪️ The army aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces strikes.

▪️The intensity of the AFU offensive actions in some areas begins to decrease and stop due to AFU losses.

▪️Artillery is working very actively on both sides, the rumble along the front is terrible.

▪️The radio airwaves are still massively filled with commands of Russian Army and AFU units. There are clouds of helicopters in the air.

Generally in Zaporozhye direction as of now:

AFU is being strangled by Russian artillery and aviation, there were a lot of explosions on mines. There is a fight going on.

AFU’s attack on this direction is choked.

On the Road to Serfdom ?

Like, Totally Orwellian: ‘Government Surveillance Cameras In Every Household’

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Nearly one-third of Generation Z says they’d be just fine with government-installed surveillance cameras in every household under the guise of reducing domestic violence and other illegal activity.
“Would you favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity?” asks a new survey from the Cato Institute. Of the responses, 29% of those aged 18-29 said yes.

As the NY Post notes;

In 1791, the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed building a “panopticon” in which people’s behavior could be monitored at all times.
But Bentham’s panopticon was meant to be a prison. A sizable segment of Generation Z would like to call it home.

When it comes to other age brackets, 20% of millennials (between the ages of 30 and 44) also want everyone watched.
Then, wisdom appears to kick in – as just 6% of Americans aged 45 and older were OK with government surveillance in every home.
Broken down by politics, 19% of liberals and 18% of centrists agreed that our daily lives should be monitored by the government for our own safety, while 9 – 11% of those who identify as conservative, very conservative, or very liberal agreed in what appears to be a “horseshoe” issue that unites both ends of the political spectrum.

It’s the middle that has the ethic of old East German secret police — or the KGB.
Maybe that’s not surprising considering the way respectable liberal institutions now run themselves.
From Ivy League campuses to the publishing industry and the digital domains of Facebook, there is an Orwellian sense of perpetual emergency, an irrational fear that misinformation and hate speech will overwhelm society unless every utterance is subject to a censor’s scrutiny.
Even Orwell didn’t imagine Newspeak would require new pronouns. -NY Post

Broken down by race, 33% of black Americans said they’re fine with government in-home surveillance, as did 25% of hispanics, 11% of whites, and 9% of asians respectively.
The question was asked as part of the Cato Institute’s survey on American attitudes on the prospect of a ‘central bank digital currency.’ What’s interesting about that is that 53% of Americans who support a CBDC also support in-home surveillance cameras.

Notably, Americans who support a CBDC stood out in how they think about in‐​home government surveillance cameras. A majority (53%) of Americans who support a CBDC support the government installing in‐​home surveillance cameras to reduce abuse and other illegal activity. This suggests that some of the psychology behind support for a CBDC springs from an above average comfort level with trading some personal autonomy and privacy for societal order and security. -Cato Institute

What’s more, those who view the Federal Reserve favorably are more likely to support a CBDC (duh).
cato2.JPG
Sheep gonna sheep?

Woke Lunacy

Twenty Grim Realities Unearthed By Lockdowns

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Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

It’s common now to speak of the before times in contrast to the after times. The turning point was of course March 16, 2020, the day of 15 Days to Flatten the Curve, though authoritarian trends predate that. Rights were suddenly broadly throttled, even religious rights. We were told to conduct every aspect of our lives in accordance with the priorities of the bio-medical security state.

Very few people anticipated such a shocking development. It was the onset of a new state-conducted war and the enemy was something we could not see and hence could be anywhere. No one has ever doubted the omnipresence of potentially dangerous pathogens but now we were being told that life itself depended entirely on avoidance of them and the only guide going forward would be public-health authorities.

Everything changed. Nothing is the same. The trauma is real and lasting. The claim of “15 Days” was revealed to be a ruse. The emergency lasted three years and then some. The people and machinery that did this are still in power. The pick to head the CDC has a long track record of enabling and cheering the lockdowns and all that followed.

It’s a helpful exercise to summarize the new things we’ve all discovered in these years. Together they account for why the world seems different and why we all feel and think differently now than we did just a few years ago.

Twenty terrible realities unearthed by lockdowns

1. Surveillance and censorship by Big Tech. The resistance eventually found each other but it took months and years. A censorship regime descended on all major social platforms, technologies designed with the intention of keeping us more connected and expanding the range of opinion we could experience. We did not know it was happening, but we eventually learned of the crackdown, which is why so much of us felt so alone. Others could not hear us and we could not hear them. The regime faces a bold court challenge on many fronts but it still goes on today, with all but Twitter constantly policing their networks in ways that are unpredictably authoritarian. We have ironclad evidence now that they are all captured.

2. Power and influence of Big Pharma. It was April 2020 when someone asked me if the goal of the vaccine produced by the pharmaceutical cartel was really behind the lockdowns. The idea would be to terrify us and ruin our lives until we were begging for shots. I thought the whole idea was insane and that the corruption could not possibly reach this deep. I was wrong. Pharma had been at work on a vaccine since January of that year and called in every form of purchased influence to eventually make them mandatory. Now we know that the major regulators are wholly owned and controlled, to the point that necessity, safety, and efficacy don’t really matter.

3. Government propaganda by Big Media. It was relentless from day one: the major media proved hardcore partisans of Anthony Fauci. The powers that be could tap the New York Times, National Public Radio, Washington Post, and all the rest, whenever and however they wanted. Later the media was deployed to demonize those who violated lockdowns, refused masks, and resisted the shots. Gone was the idea that “democracy dies in darkness” and the “paper of record” replaced by darkness itself and constant propaganda. They showed no real curiosity of the other side. The Great Barrington Declaration itself began as an effort to educate journalists but only a few dared even show up. Now we get it: the mainstream media too is wholly owned and completely compromised. They already knew what to report and how to report it. Nothing else mattered.

4. Corruption of public health. Who in their right minds would have predicted that the CDC and NIH, not to mention the World Health Organization, would be deployed as frontline workers in the imposition of totalitarian control? Some observers perhaps predicted this but implausibly so. But in fact it was these agencies which were responsible for all the absurd protocols from closing hospitals to non-Covid cases, putting up Plexiglas everywhere, keeping schools closed, demonizing repurpose therapeutics, masking toddlers, and forcing shots. They knew no limits to their power. They revealed themselves to be faithful agents of the hegemon.

5. Consolidation of industry. Free enterprise is supposed to be free but when workers, industries, and brands were divided between essential and nonessential, where were the howls from Big Business? They weren’t there. They proved willing to put profit ahead of the system of competition. So long as they benefited from the system of consolidation, cartelization, and centralization, they were fine with it. The big-box stores got to wipe out the competition and gain a leg up in industrial standing. Same with remote learning platforms and digital technology. The biggest businesses proved to be the worst enemies of real capitalism and the biggest friends of corporatism. As for arts and music: we know now that the elites consider them dispensable.

6. Influence and power of administrative state. The Constitution established three branches of government but lockdowns were not managed by any of them. Instead it was a fourth branch that has grown up over the decades, the permanent class of bureaucrats that no one elected and no one from the public controls. These permanent “experts” were completely unleashed and unhinged with no check on their power, and they cranked out protocols by the hour and enforced them as legislatures, judges, and even presidents and governors stood by powerless and in awe. We know now that there was a coup d’etat on March 13, 2020 that transferred all power to the national security state but we certainly did not know it then. The edict was classified. The administrative state still rules the day.

7. Cowardice of intellectuals. The intellectuals are the most free to speak their minds of any group. Indeed that is their job. Instead, they stayed quiet for the most part. This was true of right and left. The pundits and scholars just went along with the most egregious attacks on human rights in this generation if not in all living memory. We employ these people to be independent but they proved themselves to be anything but that. We stood by in shock as even famed civil libertarians looked out at the suffering and said “This is fine.” A whole generation among them is today completely discredited. And by the way, the few who did stand up were called horrible names and often lost their jobs. Others took note of this reality and decided instead to behave by staying quiet or echoing the ruling-class line.

8. Pusillanimity of universities. The origin of modern academia is with the sanctuaries from war and pestilence so that great ideas could survive even the worst of times. Most universities – only a handful excepted – completely went along with the regime. They closed their doors. They locked students in their dormitories. They denied paying customers in-person education. Then came the shots. Millions were jabbed unnecessarily and could only refuse on pain of being kicked out of degree programs. They showed a complete lack of principle. Alumni should take note and so should parents who are considering where to send their high school seniors next year.

9. Spinelessness of think tanks. The job of these huge nonprofits is to test the boundaries of acceptable opinion and drive the policy and intellectual world in the direction of progress for everyone. They are also supposed to be independent. They don’t depend on tuition or political favor. They can be bold and principled. So where were they? Almost without exception they clammed up or became craven apologists for the lockdown regime. They waited and waited until the coast was clear and then eked out little opinions that had little impact. Were they just being shy? Not likely. The financials tell a different story. They are supported by the very industries that stood to benefit from the egregious policies. Donors who believe in freedom should take note!

10. Madness of crowds. We’ve all read the classic book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds but we thought it was a chronicle of the past and probably impossible now. But within an instant, mobs of people fell into medieval-style panics, hunting down non-compliers and hiding from the invisible miasma. They had a mission. They were ferreting out dissidents and ratting out the non-compliers. None of this would have happened otherwise. Just like in the Cultural Revolution of China, these would-be members of the Red Guard became foot soldiers for the state. Mathias Desmet’s book on Mass Formation now stands as a classic explanation of how a population devoid of meaningful lives can turn these sorts of political frenzies into deluded crusades. Most of our friends and neighbors went along.

11. Lack of ideological conviction of both right and left. Both right and left betrayed their ideals. The right abandoned its affections for limited government, free enterprise, and the rule of law. And the left turned against its traditional stand for civil liberties, equal freedoms, and free speech. They all became compromised, and they all made up fake rationales for this pathetic situation. Had this all began under a Democrat, the Republicans would have been screaming. Instead they went quiet. Then the Covid regime passed to a Democrat and so they stayed quiet while the Republicans, embarrassed at their previous silence, stayed silent for far too long. Both sides proved ineffective and toothless throughout.

12. Sadism of the ruling class. The kids were denied a year or two of school in some locations. People missed medical diagnostics. Weddings and funerals were on Zoom. The aged were forced into desperate loneliness. The poor suffered. People turned to substance abuse and put on added pounds. The working classes were exploited. Small businesses were wrecked. Millions were forced to move and millions more were displaced from their jobs. The ruling class that advertised its wonderful altruism and public spiritedness became callous and completely disregarded all this suffering. Even when the data poured in about suicide ideation and mental illness from loneliness, it made no difference. They could not muster any concern. They changed nothing. The schools stayed closed and the travel restrictions stayed in place. Those who pointed this out were called terrible names. It was a form of grotesque sadism of which we did not know they were capable.

13. The real-life problem of massive class inequality. Would any of this have happened 20 years ago when a third of the workforce was not privileged enough to take their work home and pretend to produce from laptops? Doubtful. But by 2020, there had developed an overclass that was completely disconnected from the lives of those who work with their hands for a living. But the overclass didn’t care that they had to face the virus bravely and first. These workers and peasants did not have privileges and apparently they didn’t matter much. When it came time for the shots, the overclass wanted their health care workers, pilots, and delivery people to get them too, all in the interest of purifying society of germs. Huge wealth inequalities turn out to make a big difference in political outcomes, especially when one class is forced to serve the other in lockdowns.

14. The cravenness and corruption of public education. A universal education was the proudest achievement of progressives one hundred years ago. We all assumed it was the one thing that would be protected above all else. The kids would never be sacrificed. But then for no good reason, the schools were all closed. The labor unions representing the teachers rather liked their extended paid holiday and tried to make it last as long as possible, as the students got ever further behind in their studies. These are schools for which people paid for with their taxes for many years but no one promised a rebate or any compensation. Homeschooling went from existing under a legal cloud to being suddenly mandatory. And when they opened back up, the kids faced mass silencing with masks.

15. Enabling power of central banking to fund it all. From March 12, 2020, and onward, the Federal Reserve deployed every power to serve as a Congressional printing press. It slammed rates back to zero. It eliminated (eliminated!) reserve requirements for banks. It flooded the economy with fresh money, eventually reaching a peak of 26 percent expansion or $6.2 trillion in total. This of course later translated into price inflation that quickly ate away the actual purchasing power of all that free stimulus dispensed by government, thus harming on net both producers and consumers. It was a great head fake, all made possible by the central bank and its powers. Further damage came to the structure of production by a prolongation of low interest rates.

16. The shallowness of the faith communities. Where were the churches and synagogues? They closed their doors and kept out the people they had sworn to defend. They canceled holy days and holiday celebrations. They utterly and completely failed to protest. And why? Because they went along with the propaganda that ceasing their ministries was consistent with public health priorities. They went along with the state and media claim that their religions were deeply dangerous to the public. What this means is that they don’t really believe in what they claim to believe. When the opening finally came, they discovered that their congregations had dramatically shrunk. It’s no wonder. And who among them did not go along? It was the supposed crazy and odd ones: the Amish, the estranged Mormons, and the Orthodox Jews. How non-mainstream they are. How marginal! But apparently they were among the only ones whose faith was strong enough to resist the demands of princes.

17. The limitations on travel. We didn’t know the government had the power to limit our travel but they did it anyway. First it was internationally. But then it became domestic. For a few months there, it was hard to cross state lines because of the demands that everyone who did so had to quarantine for a fortnight. It was strange because we didn’t know what was and what was not legal nor did we know the enforcement mechanism. It turned out to be a training exercise for what we know now they really want, which is 15-minute cities. Apparently a people on the move are harder to control and corral. We were being acculturated toward a more medieval and tribal existence, staying put so that our masters can keep tabs on us.

18. The tolerance for segregation. Vaccine uptake was certainly disproportionate by race and income. Richer and whiter populations went along but some 40 percent of the non-white and poorer communities didn’t trust the jab and refused. That did not stop 5 major cities from imposing vaccine segregation and enforcing it with police power. For a time, major cities were segregated with disparate impact by race. I don’t recall a single article in a major newspaper that pointed this out, much less decried it. So much for public accommodations and so much for enlightenment! Segregation turns out to be just fine so long as it fits with government priorities – same now as it was in the bad old days.

19. The goal of a social credit system. It is not paranoia to speculate that all this segregation was really about the creation of a vaccine passport system running off a national base, the one they want very much to implement. And part of this is the real and long-term goal of creating a China-style social credit system that would make your participation in economic and social life contingent on political compliance. The CCP has mastered the art and imposed totalitarian control. We know for sure now that major aspects of the pandemic response were scripted in Beijing and imposed through the influence of China’s ruling class. It is completely reasonable to assume that this is the real goal of vaccine passports and even Central Bank Digital Currency.

20. Corporatism as the system under which we live, giving lie to existing ideological systems. For many generations, the great debate has been between capitalism and socialism. All the while, the real goal has passed us by: the institutionalization of an interwar-style corporatist state. This is where property is nominally private and concentrated in only top industries in major sectors but publicly controlled with an eye to political priorities. This is not traditional socialism and it certainly isn’t competitive capitalism. It is a social, economic, and political system designed by the ruling class to serve its interests above all else. Here is the main threat and the existing reality but it is not well understood by either right or left. Not even libertarians seem to get this: they are so attached to the public/private binary that they have blinded themselves to the merger of the two and the ways in which major corporate players are actually driving the advance of statism in their own interests.

If you haven’t changed your thinking over the last three years, you are a prophet, indifferent, or asleep. Much has been revealed and much has changed. To meet these challenges, we must do so with our eyes wide open. The greatest threats to human liberty today are not the ones of the past and they elude easy ideological categorization. Further, we have to admit that in many ways the plain human desire to live a fulfilling life in freedom has been subverted. If we want our freedoms back, we need to have a full understanding of the frightening challenges before us.

Brownstone’s work and influence in this regard is far beyond any that we’ve told publicly. You would be astonished at the extent of it. The times demand circumspection in overt institutional aggrandizement.

We are grateful to our donors for having faith in the power of ideas. We are daily amazed at the ability of passionate and scrupulous writers and intellectuals to make a real difference for the cause of freedom. Please, if you can, join our donor community to keep the momentum going, for the hill is perhaps the steepest we’ve climbed in our lives. We have no “development department” and no corporate or government benefactors: you can make a difference.