This Blog is created to stress the importance of Peace as an environmental directive. “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” – Harry Truman
(I receive no compensation from any entry on this blog.)
At first, it wasn’t obvious that anything was amiss. (click here) Kids are naturally curious about the complicated world around them, so Joanna Schroeder wasn’t surprised when her 11- and 14-year-old boys recently started asking questions about timely topics such as cultural appropriation and transgender rights.
But she sensed something off about the way they framed their questions, she says — tinged with a bias that didn’t reflect their family’s progressive values. She heard one of her sons use the word “triggered” in a sarcastic, mocking tone. And there was the time Schroeder watched as her son scrolled through the “Explore” screen on his Instagram account and she caught a glimpse of a meme depicting Adolf Hitler.
Schroeder, a writer and editor in Southern California, started paying closer attention, talking to her boys about what they’d encountered online. Then, after her kids were in bed one night last month, she opened Twitter and began to type....
The Kentucian was wise enough to not be photographed with Butina regardless of the NRA contribution to Rand Paul of $104,446 to his political campaign (click here). The NRA was being clever to give the biggest contributions to the GOP candidate most likely to lean into gun laws.
Genocide doesn't need a reason except hate. Indeed, the Senator was well paid for by Russian Dark Money through the NRA. Even today, after January 6th, Rand Paul feels an obligation to blame Ukraine for the genocide of it's own people.
Sen. Rand Paul (click here) on Tuesday received fierce pushback from Secretary of State Antony Blinken after the Kentucky Republican said that Ukraine was "part of Russia" during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
Paul said there was "no justification" for Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, but added "it does not follow that there's no explanation for the invasion." The GOP senator cited Russia's qualms with Kyiv's NATO ambitions, which have not advanced in 14 years, and accused the Biden administration of "beating the drums to admit Ukraine" to the alliance.
Blinken rejected Paul's suggestion that the administration was "agitating" for Ukraine's NATO membership, stating that the US was "standing up" for the alliance's open door policy and "a basic principle that one country can't dictate to another the choices it makes about with whom it allies."...
This is interesting. And everyone thinks it is "just politics." The Republicans were circumventing sanctions and we wonder why they don't matter. Traitors. I can't help but wonder if Paul voted against the sanctions and why?
August 9, 2018 By Ron Elving
By now, (click here) practically everyone has seen that picture of the two guys at President Trump's weekend rally in Ohio wearing T-shirts that said: "I'd Rather be a Russian than a Democrat!"
Many have also seen the visuals of Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul hobnobbing in Moscow this week with members of the Russian Council, sometimes called his "counterparts." These included the chairman of the council's foreign policy panel, Konstantin Kosachev, who happens to be under official U.S. sanction for his government's actions against our government.
But that didn't seem to bother Paul, who invited Kosachev and others to visit the USA.
Indeed, this sanction and other tokens of disapproval imposed on Russian officials in the past year have not seemed to chill the enduring warmth between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump. Paul carried a handwritten note from Trump to Putin on his trip....
“I am pleased to announced that we will be continuing this contact,” Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said in Moscow. “We agreed and we invited members of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Russia to come to the US to meet with us in the US, in Washington.”
Paul is in Moscow meeting with Russian lawmakers in a trip he sees as a continuation of US President Donald Trump’s diplomatic outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and comes several weeks after Trump invited Putin to DC as well. Paul has been one of Trump’s most outspoken supporters following the criticism Trump faced – including from some within his own party – for the US President’s handling of his meeting with Putin in July. During a news conference in Helsinki at the time, Trump declined to back the conclusion of the US intelligence that Russia interfered with the US presidential election over Putin’s denials, though Trump later said when he was back in the US that he misspoke....
Most Western countries as well as communist Russia has right wing extremists. The Azov Battalion are the ones that took on the hardest fight for the people and land of Ukraine in Mariupol.
Such extremist groups are NO REASON FOR GENOCIDE!
April 11, 2022 By Marc Bennetts
In a plush Italian restaurant (click here) halfway between Red Square and Russia’s parliamentary building, Maria Butina, an MP with President Putin’s ruling party, sipped green tea and spoke of Nazis.
A former gun rights activist, Butina, 33, made headlines in 2018 when she was convicted by an American court of conspiring to infiltrate Republican circles. Her case became a cause célèbre for Moscow, which alleged the charges were politically motivated and aimed at undermining a summit between Putin and President Trump. She served 15 months in prison....
Hm. Scaly Mountain is where Mark Meadows pretended to live and register to run for the US House. Isn't that the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains?
This was not the first time a national spotlight shone on Kentucky in the wake of racially-motivated violence.
Hate groups have long called Kentucky and the region home — from the days when white supremacists influenced state and local government, to 11 years ago, when Ku Klux Klan members beat a young man nearly to death at a county fair, to today.
“For white supremacists, they view (Kentucky and) Appalachia, wrongly, as a place where there are white folks who are very independent, don’t like the government and who are sympathetic to their messages,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center....
On Sept. 1 and 2, 1859, (click here) telegraph systems around the world failed catastrophically. The operators of the telegraphs reported receiving electrical shocks, telegraph paper catching fire, and being able to operate equipment with batteries disconnected. During the evenings, the aurora borealis, more commonly known as the northern lights, could be seen as far south as Colombia. Typically, these lights are only visible at higher latitudes, in northern Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia.
What the world experienced that day, now known as the Carrington Event, was a massive geomagnetic storm. These storms occur when a large bubble of superheated gas called plasma is ejected from the surface of the sun and hits the Earth. This bubble is known as a coronal mass ejection....
The primary reason Putin is warring is because he is believed to be the savior of terrified Russians that believe the world hates them, hence, the continued assault on eastern Ukraine. Putin states the mass graves are due to the genocide by Ukraine. That is the furthest from the truth because no one is demanding the death of Russians. There is no counter hatred that exists with Ukrainians. They only long to go home.
Those around the globe seeking to protect Ukrainians and empower their sovereign right, are not reporting the deaths of civilians, but, only the Russian military deaths. There is that stake difference. There are no Russian civilians dying.
There is no fact that speaks to Vladimir Putin's hatred of Russian speaking Ukrainians.
It looks like Prince Charles is correct. I guess that is why he is to be King Charles. When Prince Harry and his family visit the UK, it might be a circus. It seems it has started already. I think Prince Harry will have to be more covert in his ambitions to visit the Queen as family rather than royals.
25 April 2022
Thomas Markle (click here) has blasted Prince Harry as an 'idiot' and agreed that he is 'whipped' by Meghan - while announcing his intention to visit the UK for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
In an interview with Dan Wootton on GB News, Mr Markle, 77, revealed he will be flying to London in June in an attempt to reunite with daughter Meghan and meet Harry and his grandchildren Archie and Lilibet for the first time.
Mr Markle, who did not attend the wedding of Harry and Meghan in 2018 as he was recovering from heart surgery and has had a strained relationship with the couple, said he also hoped to repair their relationship....
Just picture them with bald heads. The Skinheads never run their own candidate, they use Republicans as a proxy and Republicans love the votes.
Youngkin proved how covert they can be.
Republicans are always a proxy for White Supremacists/Nationalists. They like to call it "the silly season" when they pander to them for a vote. It isn't really silly at all. It translates into votes that bring about racism in our politics where it does not belong at all.
White Supremacy is not a religion, it is hate. It is not protected speech, it is hate speech.
Always consult a physician before starting any new medicine. Please. Be sure the oral form will perform as expected. There is a big difference in the way medication is absorbed if taken orally.
Montelukast, used to reduce inflammation caused by conditions like asthma, hay fever and hives, has been found effective against Covid-19.
It is being hailed as a preventative as well as a treatment. For children, if it is possible, it goes to the heart of the inflammation reaction they suffer.
The Indian Institute of Science, (click here) Bengaluru scientists have conducted a study that revealed that Montelukast- a drug used for the treatment of Asthama has the potential to stop Covid variants from replicating within the body of the infected.
For people with inadequate immune systems, this can be good news.
The study was published in the journal eLife. The study states that "montelukast sodium hydrate can be used as a lead molecule to design potent inhibitors to help combat SARS-CoV-2 infection." Montelukast, used to reduce inflammation caused by conditions like asthma, hay fever and hives, has been found effective against Covid-19.
Approximately 15,000 Russian soldiers dead on Ukraine soil and dearly few of Putin's goals have been realized. Vladimir Putin should abandon his wishes for genocide and leave Ukraine. The country has to heal after the worst rampage of all modern time.
The missing podium in the center was a vote for Le Pen.
April 21, 2022 By Virginie Malingre and Philippe Ricard
The French presidents, Emmanuel Macron, and Russian, Vladimir Putin, during a press conference at the Kremlin, in Moscow, Monday, February 7, 2022.
It is rare (click here) for international news to find such an echo in a French election. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which began on February 24, will have impacted the presidential campaign and placed the question of relations with Vladimir Putin at the heart of the debates in the second round. As war returns to Europe, the subject has become a fault line between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.
The conflict has delayed the start of the Head of State's campaign. Both before and after the outbreak of hostilities, Emmanuel Macron has sought, in vain so far, to mediate between Moscow and kyiv. His voluntarism was initially rather well perceived by public opinion, before showing its limits, as the fighting dragged on.
For Mr. Macron, the dialogue with the Kremlin remains justified by the concern to find a way out of the war and to restore, in the long term, the European security order, brought to the ground by the Ukrainian conflict. However, telephone conversations with Vladimir Putin were interrupted between the two towers, due, explains the Elysée, to the discovery of the atrocities committed against civilians in the localities once occupied by the Russian army in the kyiv region, such as Boucha. "Macron no longer has much interest in spending his time on the phone with Putin, while the French have the impression that it is useless" , observes Sébastien Maillard, the director of the Jacques Delors Institute....
Bill Murray (click here) once threw an ashtray at Richard Dreyfuss' head after a 'meltdown' on set of What About Bob, it has been claimed as more 'problematic behavior' emerges about the beloved actor whose actions have caused his latest movie project to get shut down.
Dreyfuss' son Ben, 35, revealed on Twitter on Thursday that Murray, 71, allegedly threw an ashtray at his father's head and threatened to 'throw' a female producer across a parking lot and 'ripped off her glasses' during the meltdown after being denied an extra day off on the What About Bob set in 1991.
Ben also revealed bodyguards had to be on set once filming resumed to separate the Murray and Dreyfuss, 74....
Will Smith has revealed an underbelly to Hollywood. Tempermental actors and actresses and the fall out of their behavior. The public mostly doesn't see that side of the movie set. Now, it is becoming important to remove violence from the Hollywood work place.
The way I see it the Putin investigations is an attempt to "pin something nefarious" on The West, hence the so called issue with British intelligence. Ukraine is a member of the European Union and has been building that relationship for a long time. The focus of the relationship was economic. Ukraine and it's business community wanted to open economic relationships with the European Union.
The point is regardless of how legitimate the relationship with the EU was and is, Putin will make it look oppressive and in hate of Russians. These investigations are not for the world to understand, but, a closed audience in Russia.
What should really occur is for Putin, his lawyers and his foreign ministers to take their case to The Hague and argue against the charges that were filed. He should do that in person to demonstrate he is not afraid of the truth.
No investigation by Russia will result in anything except a narrow focus for propaganda reflecting his politics.
He does want to escalate the war. If The West gives him no reason to act, then he will create a scenario in order to justify it to the Russian people.
Such talent should register somewhere and given certain guidelines to prevent such horrible accidents. I am sure there is a tourist bureau in New York City that can provide a structured idea of the trains that run in the subway and the dangers of being near them.
Basically, what to expect with schedules, the electric rail and requesting accommodation for such an event. It is an event. These are international travelers recognized globally for their talent. I have no doubt they would be welcome to paint in New York City. This is really terrible and it seems like a lack of understanding the subject they most wanted to paint.
April 22, 2022
By Stephen Nessen
A photo of Julien Blanc (front left) and Pierre Audebert (front right) who were found struck by a train.
Two men (click here) found fatally struck by a train in a subway tunnel in East New York Wednesday morning have been identified as two French graffiti artists.
Julien Blanc, 34, and Pierre Audebert, 28, shared two dreams, according to their boss, the artist Ceet Fouad.
The first was to visit New York City. Fouad, also a street artist, who’s known for his chicken character with bulging eyes, brought them to New York to film a short documentary. During the filming, they interviewed veterans of New York City’s graffiti heyday of the 1970s and 1980s.
Their second dream, Fouad said, was to paint a subway train. “It was like winning the World Cup, winning a trophy,” Fouad said.
Fouad said the last time he saw his friends was at dinner Tuesday night. He said they didn’t discuss going out to paint trains and he had no idea they were planning to do it....
The West has been selling all sorts of things, including military hardware, to Ukraine and it was all legitimate. May items The West comes with instructors so the purchaser knows how to properly use the item. The West isn't interested in jihad warfare so much as correct use of such merchandise. Why does Putin think he has anything and who in their right mind would trust his findings?
23 April 2022 By Will Stewart and Adam Soloman and Laurence Dollimore
The Kremlin's Investigative Committee (IC), often referred to as Putin's personal CIA, said Saturday it will look into 'the facts of the activities of British SAS saboteurs in Ukrainian regions,' in particular Lviv, according to state-controlled outlet RIA Novosti.
It comes as Kremlin-backed soldiers encircle the last remaining defenders of Mariupol to the east, with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky vowing to pull out of peace talks with Russia if any of his soldiers are killed in the last stand in the strategic port city....
Of all the indications that Trump put forward a coupe against the new president and the USA Consititon, of what that he capitulated as classified military information to Russia was to perfect it's nuclear capacity?
Because if there was significant information provided to Russia that assisted in higher military technology, the coupe wasn't just a coupe, it was a resignation of the USA's power and strength to the communists. Trump wanted to remove the USA government, I have absolutely no doubt it. The question is how successful was he to that goal?
Did Trump wait as he kept others waiting? (click here)
Putin announced an "unstoppable" nuclear-powered "global cruise missile" that has "practically unlimited" range, then showed an animation of the device bobbing and weaving around the globe. He also played a computer animation of a high-speed, nuke-armed submarine drone blowing up ships and coastal targets.
"Russia remained and remains the largest nuclear power. Do not forget, no one really wanted to talk to us. Nobody listened to us," Putin told a crowd in Moscow, according to a translation by Sputnik, a Russian-government-controlled news agency. "Listen now."...
The Soviet Union was once a power to contend with and this was the height of it's military power. Putin daydreams of this. He blames himself as a KGB in any failure of the Soviet Union. The more land a country holds, the more people it can claim as citizens to press into service of the military. The Soviet Union was a huge piece of land. It was primarly ungovernable. The size of the Soviet Union alone with it's long borders was an unstable aspect to the country.
There are several March 16, 1979 that can be called upon and now of them are good.
Washington D.C., March 16, 2020 - (click here)During the Cold War, false alarms of missile attacks were closely held matters although news of them inevitably leaked. Today the National Security Archive revisits the false alerts of the Jimmy Carter administration when on four occasions warning screens showed hundreds and hundreds of Soviet ballistic missiles heading toward North America....
The Old Communist Guard is finding new legs in a far different world.
India and the Soviet Union today (click here) demanded “an immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of Chinese troops from the territory of Vietnam.” A joint communique issued at the end of the Soviet Premier, Alexie Kosygin’s six-day official visit, also stressed that the “two sides considered it necessary to exert further efforts in the interest of strengthening peace in the Asian continent, of developing cooperation among all Asian countries on the principles of sovereign equality and independence, non-use of force, inviolability of frontiers, territorial integrity of states, no interference into internal affairs and on other generally recognised principles of inter-state relations”. The two sides also favoured a “comprehensive and just settlement of the West Asian problem on the basis of the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from all Arab territories occupied in 1967, the securing of the legitimate rights of the Arab people of Palestine, including their right to establish their own state as well as the ensuring for all states in the area the right of independent existence and development”....
A defending USA figure skating champion is replaced by a Russian.
Vienna - Vladimir Kovalev of the Soviet Union (click here) regained the world figure skating title tonight after Charles Tickner of Littleton, Colo., the defending champion, gave a brilliant exhibition of free skating but failed to make up ground on the leaders....
NATO is used to the culture of the Atlantic, most of which are victories and peace. The complete opposite of that is the Pacific with Asia and war. The Pacific is a far different theater than the Atlantic. The folks from NATO are used to the idea of peace being the pinnacle of a society's victories. To have a country like Russia under Putin, come into the peace and prosperity of the Atlantic is unconscionable. But, to the Pacific cultures there are long standing wars that have yet to meet with victory. Peace is not a culture in Asia.
I find it a bit laughable that China still considers Japan an aggressor country so much so that it has radar for missiles. Japan was disarmed for decades following WWII. It's society and culture are completely different under a democracy instilled there by the USA after the war. One of the industries during reparations by the USA Japan was given whaling. Whale meat is full of PCB and all sorts of ocean pollution because of the blubber, but, it is still considered a delicacy in Japan. That was a method of returning an economy to Japan. The country really needs to stop the silliness of hunting endangered species. But, as far as an aggressor country? Japan? It has developed a national defense, but, aggression is not in it's vocabulary anymore.
Democracy is a fairly new concept, but, war definitely is not. So, for countries far older than the USA settled by Europeans, war is a mainstay. Putin finds it helpful to reach back in Russian history to stake a claim for the future and his legacy. Rather than having a legacy of freedom and democratic principles in governing, Putin rather be remembered in the shadows of Lenin in bringing about war. But, Lenin wasn't about war, he was about revolution. That is a completely different paradigm.
The entire world has a problem and it is about the communists in the Pacific and their resistence to democracy, peace and prosperity. Peace and prosperity go together, but, war robs the people of a greater prosperity and quality of life to compensate the national defenses of any country. If North Korea were to give up it's nuclear prusuits it could feed and educate many more people. Nukes are expensive and completely irrelevant for life on Earth.
Nukes = Fear, Fear = Control, Communism = Control, hence, fear is good.
Putin is deploying nuclear missiles within months. He means it. The West needs to decide about Putin and Russia and their nukes. Just because the Russian military made a poor showing in Ukraine, doesn't mean the nukes are something to ignore.
What the USA sees in expansionism of democracy isn't about destroying land and killing people. It is about business and Wall Street. Since the time of Nixon it was about business and never about taking over China. I do not remember a race for president of China whereby an American was a candidate. As we honor the Ukrainians and their survival in the face of genocide, that same principle holds true for all countries. Ethnics are important and no one wants to kill Russians or Chinese. It would be genocide if that was the ideology of the democratic West. Maybe the leaders of Russia and China don't 'get it.' As a matter of face, they absolutely don't get it, otherwise there would have been no violence in Hong Kong or threats to Taiwan and border threats to Post-Soviet Countries.
Freedom and democracy are not about control. They are about happiness. They are about food, blankets and clothing that fits the season of the year.
Democracies invest in learning and education. They love new ideas and investigation for those new ideas. They like big ideas at a societal level. There is very little a democracy is interested in that is controlling except whatever malady brings about illness or suffering.
The current political right wing of the USA is about control and that means trouble for democracy. Their interest in control is based in greed and that is a princple that does not play well in democratic societies. I have no doubt Republicans like less taxes, until there are threats of war and God help our enemies. So, to justify the end of social programs and allowing hunger for the sake of a political experiment to expose laziness there is no space for that in a democracy concerned with every vote being as powerful as every other vote. Anything other than that is corruption.
Putin is an ideolog and his power is contained in hubris and ceremony. The Russian flag used by the soldiers belongs to the Russian Empire, not the country of Russia.
People carry red flags (click here) and banners as they take part in the Immortal Regiment march during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow on May 9, 2015. Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over a huge Victory Day parade celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Soviet win over Nazi Germany, amid a Western boycott of the festivities over the Ukraine crisis.
The flag to the left reflects the failed Soveit Union and the colors of the failed Russian Empire. The black, gold and white colors are from the Russian Empire. The flag raising is for propaganda of Victory Day.
China is probably on the same page as Russia and they are looking to a global conflict that involves nuclear weapons. There is no more being friendly with communist countries. They are toxic to the world order and will kill at will if they believe they can attain their goal. Putin has already declared war. The "talks" are stalemated with no compromise from Russia. Russia will not be hemmed in.
China holds a great deal of value in old wars, old enemies and old desired victories. The children of communists believe they can do better than their ancestors.
April 22, 2022
By Michael Wa Siura
Russian soldiers (click here) have begun raising Soviet-era flags in recently occupied areas of Ukraine. On April 19 in the southern city of Kherson, troops from a Rosgvardia police unit hoisted the red "banner of victory" up the main flagpole in the city's "Alley of Glory," a park dedicated to the memory of locals who fought in the Red Army during the Second World War.
In the runup to Vladimir Putin's February 24 invasion of Ukraine, Russian domestic media frequently made light of Western claims that the Russian president was seeking to reestablish the Soviet Union. However, when the "banner of victory" was raised in Kherson, Kremlin-controlled television channels were quick to praise the development.
During its noon news broadcast on April 20, Russia's First Channel featured a laudatory segment that began: "May 9th is fast approaching, and the red flag under which fascism was crushed in the 20th century again flutters above Kherson's Alley of Glory. It is a symbol of the great feat of the Soviet people, one which local residents again recall with a special feeling."...
