Month: January 2023

Under The Dome

How many movies have you seen where this city or that is protected by some magic dome from outside disasters?

How many people have predicted and seem to pray for World War 3?

Now to tie the two thoughts together.

Donald the Orange has offered up a defense for all those in-coming nuclear missile that will be launched at the US…

Former President Donald Trump recently announced that he would build an “impenetrable dome” over the U.S. if re-elected — to “protect our people” from the purported threat of nuclear attacks and World War III.

“World War III would be a catastrophe unlike any other,” he said in the video published on his Truth Social platform Friday. “This would make World War I and World War II like very small battles. The best way to ensure that such a conflict never happens is to be prepared with unmatched technology and unrivaled strength.”

“When I am commander in chief… I will work with Congress and our great military leaders — not the ones you see on television, I don’t consider them leaders,” he continued.” We’re gonna work with them to build a state-of-the-art, next-generation missile-defense shield.”

Trump then claimed “the world has become vastly more dangerous” under President Joe Biden and that any discussion of the “deadly menace” of nuclear war, as a purported result of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, has been tabled by the current administration.

“The ‘nuclear’ word is being mentioned all the time,” said Trump. “This is a word you’re not allowed to use. It was never used during the Trump administration, but now other countries are using that word against us because they have no respect for our leadership.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-warns-of-wwiii-announces-impenetrable-dome_n_63d533c7e4b07c0c7e03d83f

There is an interesting video within the link….worth a look.

I always love to hear what the ex-president has to say these days…..some of his verbal crap is just too much….and this is one of those regurgitation.

Another is his idea about windmills and airplanes……

Donald Trump picked this weekend, while the country’s eyes were focused entirely elsewhere, to finally waddle out the gates of Mar-a-Lago and do something resembling campaigning for president. Had you forgotten he had, with much fanfare, announced he was running for president? Yeah, it seemed like he had too.

He had dinner with the deranged LibsOfTikTok woman last week, which could be considered a campaign event, we guess. Or is it more like when those Nazis came to dinner?

Oh well, anyway, Trump gave a campaign speech this weekend, his first of the 2024 campaign. It sounds like it was a real snoozer. It was in a high school auditorium, for the state GOP convention. Only Newsmax, OAN, and Real America’s Voice played it live. And bless his heart, but it sounds like he thinks windmills are making all the airplanes crash now.

That’s right, they don’t just create bird graveyards now. They “kill all the birds, destroy all the planes, and our beautiful oceans and seas and everything else.” The wind turbines are apparently escalating their murderous behavior.

https://www.wonkette.com/trump-windmills-new-hampshire

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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NATO In Asia?

I read this and immediately asked….”WTF?”

My question is why?

Stoltenberg will meet South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol during the four-day trip that begins in Seoul on Sunday, Yonhap News Agency reported, citing a presidential official. He will also meet Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo.

As well as Yoon, the Nato secretary general is expected to meet South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin and other senior officials while in Seoul. The Yonhap report said US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin would also visit South Korea next week.

Stoltenberg’s trip comes after the unprecedented attendance of the South Korean and Japanese leaders at a Nato summit in Madrid in June, when the military alliance labelled China as a “systemic challenge to Euro-Atlantic security” in a key strategy document.

Yoon and Kishida also met US President Joe Biden for a trilateral summit on the sidelines of the Madrid talks, the first time leaders of the three nations had met since 2017.

Both South Korea and Japan have sought to step up ties with Nato amid nuclear and missile threats from North Korea and growing tensions with China.

Choo Jae-woo, a professor of Chinese studies at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, said that during the trip Stoltenberg would likely discuss the countries’ goals in their Indo-Pacific strategy, with the conversation focusing largely on China.

He expected the talks to be “an icebreaker” that could see Stoltenberg planning for future dialogue on security and building communication channels with the two countries.

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/as-nato-chief-visits-south-korea-and-japan-china-will-be-high-on-agenda/ar-AA16S38S

If NATO is going to be the main international engine for war should it not be re-named something more appropriate?

Does the expansion into Asia violate something in the chart?

Let me see….the US pours billions into Asia to guard against North Korea and China should not these countries ban together and work on a strategy other than “let the US do it’?

When at what point does the American public realize just how stretched our forces and resources have become….after all most of our energy is going to Ukraine and our desire to confront Russia.

The words in Article 5 of the Charter reads thusly…..

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

An attack on a European or North America…..now what part of Asia falls in either of those categories?

Or is this just talk to hedge the vote to keep the cash rolling in for the defense industry and the Pentagon?

When will we ever learn?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–30Jan23

A few weeks back one of the big stories was that the birth rate in the US is declining for yet another year.

And right on cue all the speculation for this was put into action.

But really what is the reason for this decline.

Personally I think it is nothing but fear on the part of potential parents.

There has been a lot of buzz in the media over the last few years around declining population growth — people aren’t having as many babies as they used to, especially in the United States. The birth rate in the U.S. has indeed been in steady decline since around 2007. Spurred by the Great Recession of 2008-2010, the birth dropped to 1.71 in 2019, the lowest since the 1970s. And although it’s gone up since then, the birth rate has remained relatively low.

Alongside the decline in birth rate has come widespread speculation that a population collapse is looming on the horizon, which could result in economic upheaval — and, if you’re prone to flights of whimsy, a Mad Max meets the Wild West-style dystopian future.

According to a new study, however, the plummeting U.S. birth rate is not because people want to have fewer children than their parents and grandparents did; it’s likely that they’re scared to have any kids at all. In case you haven’t been paying attention, things aren’t great for parents in the U.S., and many people of child-bearing age are playing it safe and waiting to see if conditions improve before having a baby.

“It’s hard to have children in the United States right now,” said study co-author Sarah Hayford, director of Ohio State University’s Institute for Population Research. “People feel more worried about the future than they might have been several decades ago. They worry about the economy, child care, and whether they can afford to have children.”

Hayford’s team asked 13 cohorts of women and ten cohorts of men born between the 1960s and 2000s about the number of children they would like to have. The average number they reported was not dramatically different compared to the number of children people in previous generations wanted. Hayford’s study groups reported wanting 2.1 children, compared to 2.2 children in the early 1960s.

https://www.fatherly.com/news/birth-rate-us-study-social-safety-net

Good points but I feel it is deeper than that….how about you?

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is Ukraine Heating Up?

New tanks will be heading to Ukraine….will this change the equation?

With this new addition to the Ukrainian military will the war get hotter than it is now?

In the clear sky over the winter-yellowed marsh grasses on the outskirts of the town of Huliaipole, the bang and crump of artillery picked up pace like the thunderclaps of a distant but approaching storm.

The Russian armed forces declared on Sunday that they had launched a new offensive in Zaporizhzhia region, but the Ukrainian soldiers seemed unperturbed. The frontline here has not moved for 10 months, and the Russians are hunkered in their trenches, which run across the rolling hills of black-soil farmland. They are not going anywhere soon, the soldiers said.

“There is more activity in these past couple of weeks with shelling from artillery and even from tanks, but they don’t send infantry over the line because they’re scared,” said Vitaly, a senior sergeant in the 56th Mariupol motorised infantry brigade, which is holding the line around this town 60 miles (100km) east of Zaporizhzhia city.

However, Vitaly acknowledged that the frozen line was beginning to heat up. The number of incoming shells and rockets on this segment of the southern front has more than doubled this month to 4,000 a day. Two weeks earlier, the Russians had twice sent a handful of tanks forward to probe the Ukrainian lines only to pull back under fire.

Sooner or later, most likely in the next few months, one side would make its move and try to break the deadlock. The question is: who will strike first and where.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/27/the-big-battle-is-coming-ukrainian-forces-prepare-for-the-wars-most-intense-phase

I fear that any escalation could involve the US…and apparently some in our military are hoping and planning for this event.

“I hope I am wrong,” an Air Force general told commanders under him as he warned in a new memo that he expects the US and China to be at war in two years. “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.” Gen. Mike Minihan, who has nearly 50,000 service members as head of the Air Mobility Command, which handles transport and refueling, told his commanders to prepare for battle, NBC News reports, partly by shooting at a target. “Aim for the head,” he said. No other senior Defense official has said such a war is imminent, per the Washington Post. Minihan ordered his commanders to report back on their preparations by the end of February.

The four-star general points out that Chinese President Xi Jinping has won a third term in office and “set his war council.” Part of Miniham’s reasoning is that Taiwan and the US will be preoccupied with presidential elections in 2024, giving China an opportunity to move against Taiwan. The next stage of preparations for everyone in his command, Minihan said, is to get their personal affairs in order in March. And they should commence rigorous training, he wrote. A spokesperson confirmed the authenticity of his memo, dated Feb. 1, though a Defense Department official said, “These comments are not representative of the department’s view on China.”

What is the likelihood that the US is inching closer to that so-called ‘red line’?

Seems NATO thinks they should be more involved…..

Adm. Rob Bauer, the head of NATO’s Military Committee, said that NATO is “ready” for a direct confrontation with Russia, citing the alliance’s recent efforts to boost its presence in Eastern Europe.

Last year, NATO placed new battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia on top of the ones that have been deployed in Poland and the Baltic states for years. The US also deployed troops on its own, sending tens of thousands more to Europe, including many that are stationed near the Ukrainian border in Poland and Romania.

Bauer, a Dutch naval officer, also said NATO countries should discuss shifting to a “war economy,” where civilian factories started producing military goods, similar to what the United States did during World War II.

“We have to increase defense industry production, and there are already more and more talks on the subject at the national level,” Bauer said in an interview with Portuguese TV.

“This could mean prioritizing certain raw materials, certain production capacities needed for the defense industry rather than the civilian one. Those priorities should be discussed about, partially, a war economy in peacetime,” he added.

The US is taking measures to ramp up arms production to keep arming, including a Pentagon plan to increase artillery ammunition production by 500% over the next two years. The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act granted the Pentagon wartime purchasing powers to speed up arms deals, but the US has yet to take any measures as drastic as Bauer suggested.

(antiwar.com)

I am guessing that few will find this unacceptable….after all the events happening in Ukraine is far more important than anything occurring here and now.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Space News Sunday

I am always on the look out for some weird news about space stuff…….most readers are not interested but what the Hell….it beats the major news of the day.

I like to read the stories about all those aliens that have been coming here for a long long time (we know those ancient alien sickos).

It is a Sunday and I thought I would share some of the news I found.

I read a couple of doozy about ‘time travelers’….

A person claiming to have travelled back in time from more than 800 years in the future says this year will see humans at war with extra-terrestrials.

The TikTok user took to the platform to warn people of natural disasters and alien encounters on the horizon in 2023, claiming of an “inter-dimensional” which will break out before the year is up.

Named only as “beyondtimetraveller” and purporting to be from the year 2869, the mystery user gave a list of dates to be aware of this year with the first just two months away, Daily Star reports.

Predicting a major disaster for the US, the user prophesised: “Remember these dates, humans may reconsider the existence of us, time travelers [sic]. March 18th, 2023: A 8.1 earthquake on the Richter scale hit in Wisiller in Alaska.

“June 26, 2023: A new creature bigger than the blue whale is discovered in the Pacific Ocean, it measure 350 feet.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/time-traveller-claims-2023-see-28999314

Then there is the one about 2 ‘time travelers’ that are stuck in 2027…..

Two ‘time travellers’ who claim to come from 2027 have been sharing videos which they say prove they are alone in the future.

Javier and Maria have been posting on social media claiming to be stuck alone in 2027 with only each other for company and “no sign of human life”.

Neither of the self-proclaimed time travellers ever show their face in the apparent clips from four years’ time which are clearly deserted.

Maria, who claims to be a scientist and goes by the TikTok username of @socmia, says in her bio: “Time is an illusion. Alone in the world with unicosobreviviente.”

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/time-travellers-2027-share-footage-29023776

Then there is the paper about messages sent by alien space probes….

If we ever detect an Extraterrestrial Civilization (ETC) and start communicating with them, the messages could take years, decades, or even centuries to travel back and forth.

We face a challenging 49-minute long delay just communicating with the Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter, and that’s well within our Solar System. Communicating with an ETC that’s hundreds of light-years away or even further is a daunting task.

It’s even worse if we’re sending probes.

Imagine if a robotic probe arrived in our Solar System, sent by an ETC. They detected us and sent their probe to introduce themselves and learn more about us. We would be shocked, and the event would change civilization’s trajectory forever.

Imagine we waited for another one, and imagine that we had to wait centuries. Generations of humans would live and die, we would’ve learned all we could from the probe, and it would sit in a museum somewhere.

As humanity waited for the next probe, the scientific community would publish a flood of papers on the probe and what might happen next. A whole new field of study would be born. Politicians would stake entire careers on the issue, and opinion-piece writers, artists, and musicians would have a field day. Scams would appear, and cults might spring up.

https://www.sciencealert.com/space-probes-sent-by-aliens-could-arrive-in-reverse-heres-why

Watch SciFi movies and shows and all aliens seem to have two legs and two arms…..but will that be accurate?

Sarah Stewart Johnson was a college sophomore when she first stood atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano. Its dried lava surface was so different from the eroded, tree-draped mountains of her home state of Kentucky. Johnson wandered away from the other young researchers she was with and toward a distant ridge of the 13,800-foot summit. Looking down, she turned over a rock with the toe of her boot. To her surprise, a tiny fern lived underneath it, having sprouted from ash and cinder cones. “It felt like it stood for all of us, huddled under that rock, existing against the odds,” Johnson says.

Her true epiphany, though, wasn’t about the hardiness of life on Earth or the hardships of being human: It was about aliens. Even if a landscape seemed strange and harsh from a human perspective, other kinds of life might find it quite comfortable. The thought opened up the cosmic real estate, and the variety of life, she imagined might be beyond Earth’s atmosphere. “It was on that trip that the idea of looking for life in the universe began to make sense to me,” Johnson says.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-search-for-extraterrestrial-life-as-we-dont-know-it/

As long as we are talking about ET….

My friend Kevin Kelly, a co-founder of Wired and my partner at Recomendo, says, “I have some strongly-stated, loosely-held hunches about the probability of life elsewhere in the universe. My certainty about these beliefs is quite low, but it is much higher than my belief in the alternatives.”

You can read all 12 assumptions here, but here are the 10) and 11):

10) The only reason for an advanced civilization to visit another planet is to see if there is another civilization which has invented things it has not, and perhaps could not invent. Invented resources are thus unlimited in scale and scope, and can be discovered only in unique places in the cosmos. Interstellar travel is essentially not travel through cosmic space but travel through possibility space. You visit another planet to visit other possible minds to see if they have thought of fabulous technologies your collective minds cannot reach.

11) Every day a few probes of these billions of interstellar civilizations visit our planet scoping out our technological state. These technological probes appear briefly in order to see us, and disappear once they have inspected our inventory. So far we have little to offer; nothing that can’t be found on millions of other planets.

Author Kevin Kelly’s “12 assumptions for extraterrestrial life”

That was fun…..absolutely worthless news that will entertain or it will be ignored.

I try to give my readers a diversion from the crappy news that we deal with everyday.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend….be well and be safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Usual Saturday News

Another Saturday and and all the news that was not important enough to print….and it falls to me to bring these stories to light….

LA has told residents that they need to compost….         

Before you throw out that leftover plate of pasta, the city of Los Angeles wants you to be aware you are now required to compost it.

“It’s sort of like the same type of material that we’re currently handling,” said environmental engineer Bernadette Halverson. “It’s just a matter of moving the food waste from the black bin to the green bin. And by doing that we’re actually doing our part, helping the environment.”

L.A. Sanitation rolled out its new composting program as part of the new state mandate aimed at getting organic waste out of landfills. All of its 750,000 customers must now toss their food and food-soiled paper, such as a pizza box, into their green bin, along with their yard waste.

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/la-now-requiring-residents-compost-food-scraps/

Can human waste be used as a fertilizer?

Some say yes it can.

Using fertilisers derived from human faeces and urine can be as productive as conventional organic ones, with no risk of transmitting disease, according to new research.

It may seem unappetising, but humans have been using human waste as a fertiliser for thousands of years because it contains the key nutrients that plants need to grow, including nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Ploughing human excrement – conventionally flushed down our toilets and into the sewage system – back into the soil creates a more sustainable farming system without significant drops in yield, the researchers found.

The team studied a crop of white cabbages grown 12 miles (20km) south of Berlin between June and October 2019. They tested three waste-based products: two fertilisers derived from human urine and one from human faeces called “faecal compost”. The effects were compared with those of using a commercial organic fertiliser, vinasse, which is made from sugar-beet and is a byproduct of bioethanol production.

The lead co-author Franziska Häfner, a PhD student at University of Hohenheim in Germany, said: “The fertilisers from nitrified human urine gave similar yields as a conventional fertiliser product, and did not show any risk regarding transmission of pathogens or pharmaceuticals.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/cabbage-experiment-human-waste-faeces-fertiliser-aoe

We all know the ‘flat earthers’ are stone crazy and now their big deal is that Australia is a fake….

I’ve never been to Australia. I hear it’s lovely. I know some lovely people there, too. Still, I recognize that it’s sort of a crazy natural death trap that also represents the worst instincts of British colonialism made manifest. This is a continent full of flaming fields of spiderwebs where indigenous populations were wiped out to make room for prisons before someone realized they were sitting on an oil goldmine, thus inspiring even more brutal human rights violations in the name of wealth creation, which in turn contributed to climate change which made the crazy fire animals even crazier.

You don’t need to make shit up about Australia because Australia is absurd enough on its own. But apparently, even that was not enough for these Flat Earthers on Facebook:

Flat Earthers: “Australia is fake and all Australians are actors paid by NASA”

It always amazes me how far people will go to inflict harm on their neighbors….the newest way is in North Carolina…..

Authorities in North Carolina have issued a scary warning: Watch out for razor blades when you reach for the pump at a gas station. The Forest City Police Department says in a press release that razor blades were found attached to the undersides of the handles of pumps in that town as well as surrounding areas. It’s not clear how long the blades had been there or who is responsible. “We are actively investigating these instances now in cooperation with the state Department of Agriculture and will follow up with more information when available,” the department says.

The Department of Ag was conducting inspections when the first razor blades were found at three area businesses, WSOC-TV reports. Other stations were then searched as a result. WLOS has a picture of one of the rusty blades that was found. Authorities say they were glued or taped to the pump, and they believe the perpetrator or perpetrators wanted to hurt someone. A local points out that some parents let their children pump gas, making the situation particularly scary. “Why would someone want to do this sort of thing?” a police lieutenant asks. Adds a detective, “It’s a very evil thing to do, for lack of a better word. It’s just mean-spirited.”

There you are my Saturday news dump….I hope you enjoyed the diversion.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing thought–27Jan23

Yep more climate information for us to consider…..

Last year shattered all kinds of climatic records, and not in a good way. In parts of western Europe, the Middle East, central Asia, China, and northwest Africa, it was the warmest year on record. Per Axios, that’s a sampling from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which found 2022 to be the fifth warmest year overall; furthermore, taken together, the past eight years were the eight warmest on record. Copernicus researchers called 2022 “a year of climate extremes” and warned that the world is perilously close to reaching temperatures 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, a key limit flagged in the 2015 Paris Agreement, per CNN, and a threshold beyond which many climate scientists warn of dire and irreversible consequences.

n its report, Copernicus notes a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane concentrations, which are now at the highest levels in the satellite record, not to mention the highest in 2 million years for CO2 and 800,000 years for methane. The list goes on: both polar regions saw record high temps, and Antarctic ice conditions hit record lows; Pakistan and northern India endured an extreme heatwave followed by a highly destructive, deadly monsoon; likewise, much of China saw extreme heat and drought. It seems La Nina was one saving grace that might have kept surface temps down a little, but that phenomenon appears to be waning, and El Nino may soon return, bringing the opposite effect.

North and South America are not mentioned in the Copernicus report, but as Time reports, climate-related disasters cost the US $165 billion last year once one adds up the wildfires, floods, mudslides, droughts, and Hurricane Ian, the third costliest storm in US history. The trend may continue in 2023, as Jan. 1 was the single warmest January day since 1940. The New York Times reports what Ukraine and its allies certainly see as one silver lining in the fact that a warm winter may dull one of Vladimir Putin’s most potent weapons: access to Russia’s natural gas supply.

As always it is nothing to worry about…just ignore the info and just shrug it off and be stupid.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Irrationality Of The Debate

Yes I have written many posts on the Ukraine situation…..let me say here before some troll gets a hard on…..I oppose the invasion and the subsequent conflict that stared earlier this year when Russia invaded Ukraine.

With my posts have come many comments in support for Ukraine/NATO and the massive involvement in the conflict…..to me many of those are irrational because we Americans have given so much treasure in our many many wars and yet there is still some chest thumping……

When asked I usually get some snarky comments that have nothing to do with the issue at hand.

And the conversation continues with  o actually talking….

A Harvard professor has made some interesting observations on this very subject……

Because war is uncertain and reliable information is sparse, no one knows how the war in Ukraine will play out. Nor can any of us be completely certain what the optimal course of action is. We all have our own theories, hunches, beliefs, and hopes, but nobody’s crystal ball is 100 percent reliable in the middle of a war.
You might think that this situation would encourage observers to approach the whole issue with a certain humility and give alternative perspectives a fair hearing even when they disagree with one’s own. Instead, debates about responsibility for the war and the proper course of action to follow have been unusually nasty and intolerant, even by modern standards of social media vituperation. I’ve been trying to figure out why this is the case.
 
What I find especially striking is how liberal interventionists, unrepentant neoconservatives, and a handful of progressives who are all-in for Ukraine seem to have no doubts whatsoever about the origins of the conflict or the proper course of action to follow today. For them, Russian President Vladimir Putin is solely and totally responsible for the war, and the only mistakes others may have made in the past was to be too nice to Russia and too willing to buy its oil and gas. The only outcome they are willing to entertain is a complete Ukrainian victory, ideally accompanied by regime change in Moscow, the imposition of reparations to finance Ukrainian reconstruction, and war crimes trials for Putin and his associates. Convinced that anything less than this happy result will reward aggression, undermine deterrence, and place the current world order in jeopardy, their mantra is: “Whatever it takes for as long as it takes.”
 
This same group has also been extraordinarily critical of those who believe responsibility for the war is not confined to Russia’s president and who think these war aims might be desirable in the abstract but are unlikely to be achieved at an acceptable cost and risk. If you have the temerity to suggest that NATO enlargement (and the policies related to it) helped pave the road to war, if you believe the most likely outcome is a negotiated settlement and that getting there sooner rather than later would be desirable, and if you favor supporting Ukraine but think this goal should be weighed against other interests, you’re almost certain to be denounced as a pro-Putin stooge, an appeaser, an isolationist, or worse. Case in point: When a handful of progressive congressional representatives released a rather tepid statement calling for greater reliance on diplomacy a few weeks ago, it was buried under a hailstorm of criticism and quickly disavowed by its own sponsors.
 
Prof. Walt sums up my thoughts expertly….
 
What will it take for the tide to turn on this debate?
 
Just wondering.
 
On an unrelated topic…..US is considering  cluster bombs for Ukraine…..
 

According to a report from CNN, the Biden administration is considering a request from Ukraine to provide cluster bombs, munitions that are banned by over 100 countries under an international treaty due to the harm they cause to civilians.

Cluster munitions scatter small bombs over large areas, making them more indiscriminate than other munitions. The small bombs often don’t explode on impact, making them a huge danger to civilians who comes across them, similar to land mines.

The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions that bans the weapons has 108 signatories, but the US, Russia, and Ukraine are not parties to the treaty. Since Russia launched its invasion in February, both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used cluster munitions, and Kyiv was accused of using the bombs in populated areas of Donestk back in 2014.

The last known time the US used cluster bombs was in Yemen in 2009. Before that, US forces used them in the early days of the Afghanistan war and in Iraq in 2003. The US has supplied cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, which has used them in its war on Yemen.

The CNN report said that the Biden administration has been fielding a request from Ukraine for cluster munitions for months and has not rejected it outright. The administration hasn’t taken the option off the table if US stockpiles of other munitions become dangerously low.

(antiwar.com)

What happened to all that concern for civilians?

Personally I am sick of the pathetic excuses some Americans for this country pouring much needed cash into this war.

I Read, I Write, You Know
 
“lego ergo scribo”

Is It Price Gouging?

By now we all have been to the grocery store and have been flabbergasted at the high price of eggs….my experience has been a wide range of prices for a dozen from $4.32 to $7.52….

Would there be some form of price gouging going on with these prices….

A US senator has joined farmers in calling for an investigation to crack the problem of soaring egg prices. Government data shows the national average retail price for a dozen eggs reached $4.25 in December, for a 138% increase from the $1.79 average a year earlier, though the average price nears $10 in some parts of the country, per Vice. All this has led to more shouts of price gouging, per the AP. Farm Action, a farmer-led advocacy group, has called for the FTC to investigate Cal-Maine Foods, the largest US egg producer, after it reported a 110% increase in quarterly sales and 600% increase in gross profits, per the Hill. Cal-Maine logged profits of $198.6 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2023, compared to $1.1 million a year earlier.

Cal-Maine says its eggs cost $2.71 a dozen on average in the most recent quarter, which is almost double the price of a year ago but well shy of the prices consumers are paying. In explaining the prices, set in negotiations with distributors and stores, the company cites increased demand, higher costs, and fewer chickens as a result of the avian flu outbreak. The slaughter of 43 million egg-laying chickens within the last year reduced the supply by 5% to 6%, per the AP. However, chickens have been laying more eggs on average, per Vice. Though some experts disagree, Farm Action’s Joe Van Wye says supply concerns accompanied by a 22% increase in production and input costs since 2021 fails to explain the price spike.

There “appears to be a collusive scheme among industry leaders to turn inflationary conditions and an avian flu outbreak into an opportunity to extract egregious profits,” said Farm Action, which has long warned about major firms driving up consumer prices, per the Hill. Sen. Jack Reed of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies added to the pile on Tuesday, asking the FTC to investigate “the industry’s role in perpetuating high prices and hold those responsible accountable for their actions.” The Rhode Island Democrat noted “small producers, which have faced many of the same market challenges as the biggest producers, have managed to keep prices under control.”

I believe it is price gouging and the big retailers are the worse.

Are there any thoughts on this turn in our food supply?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is Ukraine Winning?

A great question as this war approaches its year anniversary…..if you read the headlines in the news (corporate media)all the weapons and cash sent to Ukraine is paying dividends as the Russian keep losing territory.

We never hear any negativity on this side of the pond from our major news sources……so no news is good news, right?

Not necessarily so according to German sources…..

The German foreign intelligence service assesses that Kiev is losing a “three-digit number” of soldiers daily, according to a report in Der Spiegel. Berlin informed politicians of the assessment during a secret meeting this week.

Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) is “alarmed” by the high number of losses Ukraine is suffering. The report says Berlin believes Ukraine was losing a three-digit number of soldiers every day during the battle of Bakhmut with Russian forces. The BND informed German politicians of the high number of injured and killed Ukrainian forces during a covert Bundestag meeting last week.

The BND believes the Ukrainian casualties will have severe consequences during future battles. The German intelligence service also believes that Russia is suffering high casualties and using its soldiers as “cannon fodder.”

Reuters reported officials in Washington believe Kiev spent significant resources attempting to defend Bakhmut. The White House is currently advising Ukraine not to launch any major counteroffensives to recapture the city. The Joe Biden administration is additionally advising Kiev that continuing to pour soldiers into defending Bakhmut is preventing Ukrainian forces from attacking Russians defending other cities.

Ukraine is seeking tanks from its NATO partners. However, many countries, including the US and Germany have resisted sending their modern tanks to Ukraine.

Bakhmut is located in the Donetsk region. The BND believes if Russia takes the city, it will open the door for additional gains. Bakhmut has seen fierce fighting for several months, but the intensity picked up last week. Russian forces have made some gains in the city.

(antiwar.com)

The War Department will pull all punches and lie to keep the cash following and the ill-advised popular support for a war that shows no signs of ending.

Why is that?

It is called mission creep.

When the United States involves itself militarily in a conflict, it often finds it hard to get itself out, let alone avoid deep entanglements that blow well past lines it had drawn at the start of the intervention. 

It happened in Vietnam, when U.S. military advisers helping the South Vietnamese fight Viet Cong eventually became U.S. soldiers fighting an American war. It happened in Afghanistan, when an initial invasion to capture al-Qaida and overthrow the Taliban morphed into a nearly two-decade-long nation-building project. And it could be happening right now in Ukraine. 

Little by little, NATO and the United States are creeping closer to the catastrophic scenario President Joe Biden said “we must strive to prevent” — direct conflict between the United States and Russia. Despite stressing at the start of the war that “our forces are not and will not be engaged in the conflict,” current and former intelligence officials told the Intercept back in October that “there is a much larger presence of both CIA and US special operations personnel” in Ukraine than there was when Russia invaded, conducting “clandestine American operations” in the country that “are now far more extensive.” 

Mission Creep? How the US role in Ukraine has slowly escalated

I ask once again…..what does the US expect to be the return on their investment in Ukraine?

Out newest investment is Abrams tanks…..31 total…

As expected, President Biden on Wednesday announced that the US is following Germany’s lead and will supply Ukraine with tanks. Some 31 Abrams tanks, which the president described as equivalent to one Ukrainian battalion, will be sent. Standout points:

  • BBC Washington correspondent Gary O’Donoghue writes that the US has previously indicated that the complexity of the high-tech Abrams tanks in terms of operating and maintaining them was holding it back from making the commitment. It had pushed for the delivery of Leopard tanks, which are used by more allies and require less training.
  • But Germany, which on Wednesday announced will send 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks, had said it would only do so if the US “put its Abrams on the table, not wanting to incur Russia’s wrath without the US similarly committing its own tanks,” per the AP.
  • The New York Timesreports the tanks contributed by Germany and other allies would equal two additional battalions. Ukraine has said it would take 300 Western tanks to make a meaningful difference; it has thus far relied on Soviet-era tanks.
  • While training on the Abrams will likely begin right away, the BBC reports “the funding process for the tanks themselves means they will not be deployed for months” and “not in time for Russia’s anticipated spring offensive,” per the AP.
  • They’re part of a $400 million package that also includes eight M88 recovery vehicles, which can tow the Abrams if it gets stuck.
  • A logistical detail from the AP: The 70-ton tanks rely on a turbine jet engine that burns a minimum of two gallons a mile regardless of whether they are on the move or idling; as such, a bevy of fuel trucks is required to keep the tanks mobile.
  • Last week, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl described Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s thinking as such: “that we should not be providing the Ukrainians systems they can’t repair, they can’t sustain, and that they, over the long term, can’t afford, because it’s not helpful.”

Another waste but that is what we do….waste money on worthless endeavors while children starve…..good plan.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”