The Proxy War in Ukraine

I could be completely wrong, but I don't think Russia is bent on world domination, they just want a secure place in the world. The war mongers in the White House seem to think that Russia must be destroyed and if we destroy Western Europe along the way, well, that's just too bad.

Deception, manipulation, sabotage: What the UK does to keep the Ukraine war going by Tarik Cyril Amar

Leaked papers expose a secret military operation that includes planning attacks, suppressing media and brainwashing the British public

A couple of excerpts:

[Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland] – boasting of his pirate ancestors and in charge of “UK-led joint and multinational overseas military operations” – and his motley crew have just been the object of an investigative exposé by Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg. In, for now, two articles, the Grayzone has detailed how, in 2022, Stickland set up a below-the-radar network of “an assortment of leading academics, authors, strategists, planners, pollsters, comms, data scientists and tech.” Under the name Project Alchemy and overlapping and liaising with another group of wannabe keyboard Ninjas calling themselves – I kid you not – “the Elders,” this conspiratorial group has worked on, in essence, keeping the Ukraine war going at any price and by means foul and fouler.

. . .  

Doing what exactly? All kinds of things, really, and all based on one stupid yet once immensely popular assumption: that the proxy war in Ukraine could be leveraged to defeat Russia, reduce it to geopolitical insignificance, impose regime change on it, and even break it up. Some, including the new de facto foreign minister of the EU, Estonia’s Kaja Kallas – imagine Annalena Baerbock, but without the brilliant intellect – still seem to be on that political equivalent of an LSD trip gone terribly wrong. What a hangover it will be one day, probably soon.

People mentioned here: 

• Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland - British Army
• Kit Klarenberg - Investigative reporter
• Kaja Kallas - Prime Minister of Estonia
• Annalena Baerbock - Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany
• Tarik Youssef Cyril Amar - Historian

Now it may be that the gangsters in the White House are right to be afraid of Russia. If Russia gets their act together and can get other 'enemies of the West' to cooperate with them, in five or ten years they might be able to bring serious pressure to bear on the USA. 

I don't think we should be wasting our resources on screwing over the rest of the world, we should be working to make the USA as strong and powerful as possible. Of course, when you are a gangster, you don't really know how to bring out the best in people, all you can do is frighten them into submission.

P. S. It seems like I am seeing more stories critical of Biden and his minions lately. Has Trump's victory caused the more people to stand in the light, or has it just improved my outlook?

Mick Jagger introduces The Beatles to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Mick Jagger introduces The Beatles to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Alejandro Suarez Basso

1988. Cool. Jagger would have been 45.

The Hand That Keeps the World Informed

The Hand That Keeps the World Informed

This image shows up in the Linotype video and I thought it was pretty cool. I want to hang a copy on my wall. It comes from the book The Manual of Linotype Typography, which is available online. There are a couple of copies for sale out there.

Nord Stream

Another take on the whole Nord Stream debacle:

Merkel blows a hole in Washington’s Nord Stream narrative by Rachel Marsden

I like this bit:

“The United States argued that its security interests were affected by the building of the pipeline because its ally Germany would make itself too dependent on Russia. In truth, I felt that the United States was mobilizing its formidable economic and financial resources to prevent the business ventures of other countries, even their allies,” Merkel writes.

“The United States was chiefly interested in its own economic interests, as it wanted to export to Europe LNG obtained through fracking.”

This pretty much establishes that it was by premeditated design that Washington leveraged the Russian military operation in Ukraine as a convenient pretext to turn economic competitor Germany – and the EU more generally – into a vassal. But Merkel’s successor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and the rest of the German and European establishment, acted like Joe Biden was just coming to their rescue out of benevolence when he offered to sell them LNG to replace Russian gas – which turned out to cost several times the price, to the ongoing detriment of German and European industry and citizenry.

While Trump and Biden are both promoting America, Biden is acting like a gangster and exploiting anyone he can get his claws in, while Trump promotes good business. 

Thanksgiving

Entertaining story about the origin of Thanksgiving. Socialists might not enjoy it.

The Great Thanksgiving Hoax by Richard J. Maybury

The early American colonies were just disasters - half the people died. I dunno, maybe that was par for the course. But reading this story makes me wonder just who were these people who signed up for this adventure to a brave, new world. I suspect malcontents from the lunatic fringe, malcontents with money, ships are expensive. It sounds like a movie trope - band of misfits thrown into a dangerous situation with people getting killed off right, left and center.

Linotype

Linotype
YouTube Movies & TV

Kind of long, but totally worthwhile. One of the projects I worked on at my first programming job was a data entry / data base system for a check printing company. They were using Linotype machines to set the personal information that was printed on each check (name, address, what-not). Someone had converted the linotype machines to get their keystrokes over a wire instead of from the mechanical keyboard. They had a room with several of these machines, but no operators. Instead they had a separate room full of girls sitting at computer keyboards typing away. You had to be careful out on the floor where the Linotype machines were because even though they were converted to work with electrical inputs, they still cast hot lead into lines of type, and every now and again there would be a hiccup, and a spurt of hot metal would squirt out of the machine. Those 'hiccups' were referred to as squirt codes on the premise that a bit of code sent down the wire from the computer would cause the machine to hiccup. Actually, it was just the nature of the Linotype machine. Hiccups happened before computers were even a concept. Molten lead is not that hot compared to some things, like molten steel, but it will still burn the hell out of you if you come into contact with it.

I look at the computer systems we use for text these days and while it looks clean and simple from the outside, they are several orders of magnitude more complicated. Construction of the Linotype was dependent on the whole industrial infrastructure that existed back in 1900. Construction of a modern computer needs all of that with a whole additional level of much more complicated machinery and organization.

Given a supply of metal and a machine shop, it ought to be possible to build a new Linotype machine. People have made simple integrated circuits in their garage, but what would it take it make a flat panel display? I have no idea.

European Power Grid

European Power Grid

The link goes to an interactive map.

Via Detroit Steve