The Weekly Watch

Spooks and Scary Stories

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We often talk about the "deep state" which I call the mafia branch of our government, but perhaps the "dark state" is a more appropriate descriptor. I've speculated before that Wallace was removed and Truman inserted as FDR's veep in order to insure the creation of the CIA. Of course the FBI has existed longer, starting in 1908 with J. Edgar Hoover joining in 1917. Theoretically the FBI is domestic and the CIA international, but the lines have blurred. I find both organizations rogue agencies ignoring law and promoting their own power and control. I think they are both scary.

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This Halloween it seems appropriate to examine the nature and actions of the western "dark state" which sadly is global in nature...

The Five Eyes alliance is a group of five English-speaking countries that have agreed to share enemy signals intelligence with each other – signals intelligence being information learned from intercepting digital or otherwise electronic communications. The countries that make up the Five Eyes are the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and the information gathered by any one is shared with the other members.

My thought is the information is shared when it is convenient and useful.

Larry Johnson former CIA officer explains how the CIA has gone off the rails. He suggests the CIA needs to be destroyed...burnt to the ground.

He describes the merging of operations and analysis, and the loss of the agency's effectiveness.
10-15 min gets to the main point, but the entire conversation is interesting.

Chris Hedges and John Kiriakou discuss the CIA, how it has evolved, how it sees its mission, what it does, how it works, and the effects of its clandestine operations around the globe.

John Kiriakou worked for the CIA from 1990 to 2004, first as an analyst, and later as a counterterrorism operations officer overseas in Bahrain, Athens, and Pakistan, where he was the CIA’s Chief of Counterterrorist Operations.He became the sixth whistleblower indicted under the Espionage Act by the Obama administration and was sent to prison for two and a half years.

Shadow Government Exposed: CIA Domestic Network (33 min)

CIA Agent Whistleblower Kevin Shipp exposes the Shadow Government. Peeling back more layers of the CIA's unconstitutional control over American citizens.

This channel "the memory hole" reveals many CIA coups and dirty tricks including the following...
John R. Stockwell (born 1937) is a former CIA officer who became a critic of United States government policies after serving seven tours of duty over thirteen years. Having managed American involvement in the Angolan Civil War as Chief of the Angola Task Force during its 1975 covert operations, he resigned and wrote In Search of Enemies (59 min)

CIA activities in Vietnam were operations conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in Vietnam from the 1950s to the late 1960s, before and during the Vietnam War. After the 1954 Geneva Conference, North Vietnam was controlled by communist forces under Ho Chi Minh's leadership. South Vietnam, with the assistance of the U.S., was anti-communist. The economic and military aid supplied by the U.S. to South Vietnam continued until the 1970s. The CIA participated in both the political and military aspect of the wars in Indochina. The CIA provided suggestions for political platforms, supported candidates, used agency resources to refute electoral fraud charges, manipulated the certification of election results by the South Vietnamese National Assembly, and instituted the Phoenix Program. It worked particularly closely with the ethnic minority Montagnards, Hmong, and Khmer. There are 174 National Intelligence Estimates dealing with Vietnam, issued by the CIA after coordination with the US intelligence community.

A series of accusations in the early 1970s that the CIA was complicit in drug trafficking in Laos was a contributing factor in the public's opposition to U.S. activities in Southeast Asia. Neither the CIA nor any of its officers were accused of direct activity in the narcotics operations. It is likely that the agency did not focus much energy on the trafficking by indigenous allies until a heroin epidemic broke out among U.S. troops in South Vietnam. There was nothing preventing the hill tribes in northern Laos from producing and selling opium until 1971, as the trade was an economic benefactor to the tribes, but under U.S. pressure, the Laotian government made it illegal. These activities predate the war on drugs in the United States and there was not even a reporting requirement in place until after Nixon's war on drugs had been declared.

Selling arms, drugs, and sex is standard operating procedure to raise dark money and be able to blackmail the powerful. It amazes me how well they control the media. The Epstein story was disappeared as quick as Jeffery and Ghislaine.
Joe Rogan: SHOCKS Roger Waters about EPSTEIN ISLAND (5 min)
When Epstein was prosecuted in Florida, he got a light cushy sentence because the CIA claimed him as an asset.

Operation Mockingbird, CIA Media Control Program (3 min)

notes under the clip...

The Control of media has become stronger over the years with past spooks now being hosted as regular commentators. They don't even try to hide it from the public.

After the Watergate scandal in 1972–1974, Congress became concerned over possible presidential abuse of the CIA. This concern reached its height when reporter Seymour Hersh published an expose of CIA domestic surveillance in 1975.Congress authorized a series of Congressional investigations into Agency activities from 1975 to 1976. A wide range of CIA operations were examined in these investigations, including CIA ties with journalists and numerous private voluntary organizations. None of the resulting reports, however, refer to an Operation Mockingbird.

The most extensive discussion of CIA relations with news media from these investigations is in the Church Committee’s final report, published in April 1976. The report covered CIA ties with both foreign and domestic news media.

https://jameslate.medium.com/what-was-operation-mockingbird-9fe3fbfe1720

So how about the domestic wing of the US mafia, The FBI.

There have been books written about their probable involvement in the murders of JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X. Of course that falls into the conspiracy theory distraction. However, there is no denial about COINTELPRO

Although COINTELPRO began officially in 1956, at that point, it was just a formalization of preexisting FBI activities. After World War II, the FBI had worked on perfecting the techniques that were later used in COINTELPRO. The FBI played a large role in McCarthyism, and in addition to amassing "friendly media contacts" that would disseminate the information that the FBI wanted, "agents would contact the employers or landlords of party members in efforts to get them fired or evicted."
...
At least 29 Black Panther members are known to have been murdered by COINTELPRO between 1968 and 1971, including Bobby Hutton, George Jackson, Arthur Morris, and Babatunde X Omarwali. Out of roughly 295 COINTELPRO operations that were aimed at "the Black liberation movement," 233 were aimed at the Black Panther Party between 1967 and 1971. Unfortunately, the total number of fatalities may never be known.

COINTELPRO is also notoriously behind the assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. According to "COINTELPRO: Psychological Warfare and Magnum Justice" by Tim Butz, COINTELPRO often used the "local authorities to do the dirty work the FBI was unable to do itself," as they did in the assassination of Hampton and Clark.
...
One COINTELPRO memo explicitly stated that, "The Negro youths and moderates must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teaching, they will be dead revolutionaries."
...
According to "COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story," while countless people were "neutralized" through murder or imprisonment, many others were neutralized by "intimidation, harassment, discrediting, snitch jacketing, a whole assortment of authoritarian and illegal tactics." For the FBI, "neutralization" simply meant making sure that someone was "incapable of engaging in political activity by whatever means necessary."
...
Although COINTELPRO was technically disbanded after 1971, it was mostly just reorganized. As of 2020, the FBI continues to engage in counterintelligence and surveillance that targets those whom it considers to be political dissidents, especially Black activists.

Read More

Secret COINTELPRO Is Alive Today – A Brief History (1 min)

To my mind the FBI has been weaponized as political enforcers. Russiagate being an excellent example.
https://nypost.com/2020/10/10/latest-revelations-show-team-obama-invente...

In mid-2016, the FBI got word that Russian intelligence believed Hillary Clinton’s campaign was planning to frame Donald Trump as colluding with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to hack her computers. Yet somehow, the crack agents never connected the dots when handed the Steele “dossier” commissioned and paid for by the Clinton campaign that claimed Trump was colluding with Putin.

Instead, the Justice Department used that dossier as a pretext to spy on at least Trump aide Carter Page as it investigated the clearly spurious charges. Justice also distorted the facts about Page’s past relations with the CIA to suggest he had a history of working with Russian agents when his actual record involved turning them in. Meanwhile, it buried the fact that Steele’s main source was himself a suspected Russian agent.
...
From Justice to the CIA, the Obama administration politicized a host of nonpartisan institutions to stain the Trump campaign and then sabotage the Trump administration. And, with selective leaks to major media, the plotters managed to convince much of the country.
...
Brennan, as Andrew C. McCarthy details in his book “Ball of Collusion,” was the main driver of the early Russiagate investigation. Soon after the start of Crossfire Hurricane (as the investigation was code-named), Brennan briefed Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on alleged Russian election interference. Reid then wrote to then-FBI Director James Comey, warning him not to ignore “the evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.” Reid pointed to reporting that said Page had met Kremlin agents in Moscow — information that came from the Steele dossier, which was nothing but gossip fed to Steele by a man America deemed a security risk.

Court Filing Shows FBI Knew ‘Russiagate’ Was a Fraud in Early 2017
And isn't it interesting these same colluders conducted the raid on Trump?
https://www.newswars.com/report-fbi-unit-leading-mar-a-lago-investigatio...

So much for the spooks, how about some scary stories?

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Perhaps we are on the brink of nuclear war. That sounds scary!
Biden quietly moves world closer towards armageddon. Finland ready to host nukes (25 min)

Advocating World War Three Is Just Mainstream Punditry Now

One of the great ironies of the NATO Russian war is that the US is supporting the bad guys. It is a common CIA technique to promote right wing extremist to do their dirty work...like oust the duly elected President of Ukraine and install pro-western puppets.

How The U.S. Learned To Love Neo-N@zis In Ukraine

It used to be received wisdom in Western media that Ukraine’s Azov Battalion wasn’t merely a “nationalist” or “right-wing” group, but rather a full-blown neo-Nazi outfit. But then the Ukraine War happened, and suddenly Azov was “celebrated” (according to the New York Times) or merely “accused” of committing human rights abuses. So how did this happen? How did a group of neo-Nazis become the West’s primary bulwark against Russian imperialism?
Guest host Aaron Maté (https://mate.substack.com) and his panel of Ukrainian-born journalist Lev Golinkin and America’s Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss the curious interaction of the Azov Battalion, Ukraine’s World War II hero/Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, ,Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian populace.

Caity lays out the western narrative...
"The official narrative is that while Russia is in Ukraine solely because its leader is an evil monster like Hitler, the US is in Ukraine solely because its leaders are righteous. The United States is providing arms, military intelligence, and assistance on the ground from special ops forces and CIA officers to Ukraine, as well as implementing an unprecedented regime of economic warfare against Russia, solely because the US loves its good friends the Ukrainians and wants to protect their freedom and democracy."
...
"Per the official narrative, if you confront powerful lawmakers on their support for US interventionism in Ukraine, you are “parroting pro-Putin talking points” and spreading “Russian disinformation“. Questioning officials of the most powerful government in the world about the most consequential decisions being made in the world is violence, and is not allowed."
...
"The official narrative on Ukraine is that the US empire and its media never lie or circulate propaganda about wars that the US is involved in. If you dispute this, you are lying and circulating propaganda. That’s why it’s necessary to have so much censorship and organized trolling and mass media reports reminding you how good and righteous this war is: it’s to protect you from lies and propaganda.'

More from Aaron sitting in for Jimmy interviewing Scott Ritter...
The Days Of U.S. Hegemony Are OVER Says Putin (6.5 min)
Is Russia Poised To Win The Ukraine War? (9.5 min)
Ukraine WON’T Negotiate Says U.S. Advisor To Zelensky (7 min)
Dirty Bomb Accusations Fly Between Russia & Ukraine (8.5 min)

As if this war with Russia wasn't enough, don't forget western aggression against China. Brian recently argued that Taiwan is not like Ukraine. For one thing it isn't a country, and it would be near impossible to re-equip the island.

As the US wages proxy war against Russia through Ukraine, it is attempting the same process through Taiwan against China.

However, there are some major differences that make America’s hostility and encroachment on China even more dangerous including the fact that even Washington, officially, recognizes Taiwan as part of China while openly arming Taipei’s administration, encouraging separatism, and even placing US troops on what is internationally recognized as Chinese territory.

Besides military tensions, economic tensions continue to grow as China is positioned to surpass the collective West economically. The US has responded with growing lists of sanctions and coercive policies targeting not only China but Washington’s own supposed “allies.”

The Chip 4 Alliance seeks to assert US hegemony over the global semiconductor industry but is instead producing a similar backfiring effect as US and EU sanctions on Russian energy exports.

The west has lost it's collective mind...

Alex and Alexander had a couple of short discussions about China this week too
Xi Jinping's mandate to prepare for smash with collective west (15 min)
China moves up the sanctions escalator (14 min)
Albert Einstein: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

The global suppression of farmers is scary as well. (5.5 min)

Farming in crisis? Farmer speaks to Neil Oliver over rising costs

The Great Reset is pretty scary too. Neil Oliver explains... (23 min)

‘…it's just another road leading to slavery….’

Well, we've made it to the middle of autumn. We've been having lovely vibrant colors this year. Something to celebrate on this ancient holiday, Samhain which most call Halloween.

Ancient Celts marked Samhain as the most significant of the four quarterly fire festivals, taking place at the midpoint between the fall equinox and the winter solstice. During this time of year, hearth fires in family homes were left to burn out while the harvest was gathered.

After the harvest work was complete, celebrants joined with Druid priests to light a community fire using a wheel that would cause friction and spark flames. The wheel was considered a representation of the sun and used along with prayers. Cattle were sacrificed, and participants took a flame from the communal bonfire back to their home to relight the hearth.

Here's hoping your holiday is most excellent. I look forward to your thoughts, insights, and scary stories below.

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Lookout's picture

A young Cliff Durr was riding a horse about three miles from town back to the family farm after nightfall. Along the way he passed the old hanging tree, and he saw a ghost swing from the branches. The horse sensing his fear galloped the rest of the way home. Cliff's father met him in the yard and asked him what had happened. Cliff explained he saw a ghost hanging in the old oak tree. His father said, "Take this horse and you both go look at what you saw. This horse will be spooked at that spot if you don't."

With great trepidation, Cliff and the horse returned to the tree where they both saw a large broken limb swinging in the breeze and casing a human shaped shadow.

Cliff never did write his autobiography, but he intended to title it "Another Look at the Ghost". He faced many fears throughout his life, but this early experience taught him to look at the fearful challenges with clear eyes.

Happy Halloween!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

soryang's picture

Misery wrought by Hurricane Ian focuses attention on gubernatorial candidates' climate records
WUSF Public Media - WUSF 89.7 | By Amy Green

For Janét Buford-Johnson, it was as if all the homes on her street in Orlo Vista on Orlando's west side had been turned inside out by Hurricane Ian.

“The neighborhood looks like a disaster area,” she said somberly some four weeks after the hurricane. “Like someone had a war out here, and things are just blown up. … They put a bomb underneath everything, and everything from inside have to come out. So everything is everywhere.”

Her own sand- and cream-colored stucco house, which she inherited in 2003 after her mother died, was no different. Inside, it was now mostly empty, cleared of the sodden contents that were strewed across her front lawn: DVDs, a Christmas tree and decorations, jugs of laundry detergent, furniture and bedding, a suitcase, bicycle, vacuum cleaner.

Amid the detritus were photos from her son’s high school graduation. “No one can fathom the pain that you have when you go to pick up something, and it just falls apart in your hands,” Buford-Johnson said. “I can’t even put it in words. I think at this point, I’m kind of all cried out.”

During the hurricane, the dwelling was flooded with some three feet of water. It rose so rapidly that Buford-Johnson and her 15-year-old daughter had to be rescued by firefighters before dawn. In the weeks since, she has stayed with family members and friends.

As the broken furniture and mildewy bedding left at the curb in front of the house awaited a trash pickup, a dirty line three feet high along the wall of what used to be her living room showed where the water had risen. The tile floor was smeared with mud. The air smelled damp and stagnant.

In better times, Burford-Johnson lived here with her four children; when the hurricane hit, she was sharing her home with her daughter, son, his girlfriend and their 18-month-old baby. Now she finds it hard to imagine ever returning to the house, but her path forward is fraught. Housing costs across the region have skyrocketed, and Burford-Johnson has not worked since a robbery at the convenience store she once managed.

“It has nothing but memories of who we were, you know?” she said of her home. “I guess we are resilient. We’re still here. But everything we had is gone. Everything is completely gone. It’s been wiped off the planet, basically. It’s just like we were here, but were we really here?”

https://wusf.org/

This is very similar to our experience. We were evacuated by the county sheriff's emergency truck in the middle of the night as well. We've lost virtually everything while the insurer pretends our home which is stained with sewage water not mud and smells like a brew of feces, urine and mold still after the so called drying and remediation work. Words fail as I try to describe what a nightmare this is to try to start our lives over again at our age. I deliberately left out the political angle in this article about DeSantis v. Charlie Crist and the role of fascist Rick Scott. This is first story I've seen that even mentions the victims. A disaster like this brings out the worst in some people who can't wait to victimize the victims again, and the best in neighbors and family who try to help. It also highlights the worst in our capitalist system of grift and exploitation of the weak.

As Ms. Buford says I'm not thinking of voting. On the political presentation in the article, I'll defer commentary. It would just be a stream of invective.

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語必忠信 行必正直

Lookout's picture

@soryang

Please accept my utmost sympathy. Are y'all making ends meet? Let us know if the C99 community can be of any help.

We're all subject to natural disaster. I live in a tornado prone area, and have fought fires across our place in years past. The Mississippi is dry, as is the Rhine, Yangtze and more.

Rivers around the world have been drying up recently. The Loire in France broke records in mid-August for its low water levels, while photos circulating online show the mighty Danube, Rhine, Yangtze and Colorado rivers all but reduced to trickles.

It is not just rivers that are running low but the reservoirs they replenish, leading to water shortages in many parts of the world including the UK. Yet floods have wreaked havoc in many of these rivers in the last decade, in some cases only a few months before the recent drought.

As to voting...
I've given up on voting myself. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Wishing you and yours the best. Are you planning on remaining there or will you consider relocating?

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

soryang's picture

@Lookout Thanks. What happens after the disaster is worse than the disaster itself. I'd run away to another country if I could. No help from friends and family can fix what is wrong with this country.

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語必忠信 行必正直

@soryang Not trying to add to your misery, but try to get whatever money you can get from your insurance, the state, FEMA, or anyone else. There are places here in the Panhandle where it looks like the hurricane hit 6 months ago. I can't believe how bad these places still look. I assume the people on the beach got their money, but I never drive down there. But towns like Chipley, Bonifay, and Graceville did not. Not even for cleanup.

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Lookout's picture

@Enchantress

the St Joe State park on San Blas...

Effective May 21, 2021: The campground and the cabins are closed due to damage from Hurricane Michael in 2018.

And it remains closed.

In October 2018, Hurricane Michael severed the peninsula just 1 mile north of the park entrance, rendering 90% of the park inaccessible (2,470 of 2,790 acres). The majority of the park’s vital infrastructure was wholly destroyed, including the popular Gulf Breeze and Shady Pines campground loops and cabins.

Hope you and yours have recovered!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

soryang's picture

@Enchantress thanks for your advice. I'm trying my best, everyone seems so disorganized and unprofessional. I know I am as well, but I have an excuse. Some guy called me from FEMA today saying he was doing a quality control check on the last inspector I met. He calls sunday morning disturbing our first day of rest in a month, if you can call it that and then fails to fulfill the arrangements he made to meet us at our wrecked home. He had a bunch of excuses, like all the other agents, adjusters, insurers, etc. They're time is more important than mine. They know more than I do, they know what they are doing etc. In fact, my wife and I believe we've been either neglected or treated like shit with virtually every agent or employee we've been forced to deal with since this happened.

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語必忠信 行必正直

QMS's picture

the spooky black ops perpetuated by the alphabet agencies in their endless protection of some
idea of muricas' financial benefit is bewildering. I can picture a group of trench coated shady
disguised characters doing secret hand shakes in some basement, while brewing up a steaming cauldron of evil death. Doesn't make me feel any safer. National security? HA!
~

~

evil-witch-stirring-her-magic-potion-cauldron-forest-125243428.jpg.png

Have fun with the ghoulies and gohsties. The news is way scarier!

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question everything

Lookout's picture

@QMS

Here's the video you posted...oops I see you fixed it.
[video:https://youtu.be/_tKIPuLfeKg]
You better change those evil ways!

'Double double toil and trouble/Fire burn and cauldron bubble‘ is a rhyming couplet from Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, chanted by the supernatural three witches. It is among the most quoted lines from Shakespeare, mainly because of its sing-song rhythm and its rhyming.

I bet you been having a pretty fall..hope so anyway.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

QMS's picture

@Lookout

Yes, the maples are ablaze now.
Some of the lesser species are raining leaves.
A good Samhain to you all!

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question everything

Lookout's picture

To my mind this is an excellent analysis...33 min
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP8hQErZ6MM&t=90s]

Gonzalo suggests the drone attack on Russian ships is aimed at keeping Russia out of the G20 meeting. However, I heard the Indonesian president say he was going to include Russia, so if that was the US strategy it is as failed as most of our actions.
2022.10.30 Why NATO Attacked Crimea (hint, the G20 Summit)

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

QMS's picture

@Lookout

The evil dark state makes a press release on global plans ..

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

O well done! I commend your pains;
And every one shall share i' the gains;
And now about the cauldron sing,
Live elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.

H/T Macbeth

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/witcheschants.html

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question everything

Lookout's picture

@QMS

from this site:
The witches represent pure evil. They are not real characters, and, indeed, they can be seen simply as the voice of temptation in the mind of Macbeth. Shakespeare distinguishes them from the other characters by making them speak in a distinctive way, different from the way that human beings in the play, and in all his other plays, speak. It is almost as though they are talking a different language.

The way Shakespeare does that is to abandon his usual blank verse iambic pentameter and make the witches speak in rhyming couplets, which produces a weird, mesmeric effect, hence the unreal quality of the lines, ‘double double, toil and trouble/Fire burn and cauldron bubble’. Whereas the iambic pentameter is flexible and imitates everyday speech, rhyming couplets are artificial, and nothing like everyday speech. Add to that things like the alliteration of, in this instance, the ‘d’ and ‘t’ sounds, and you get the message Shakespeare is sending.
...
The witches in Macbeth are brilliant examples of a playwright offering audiences what they most wanted to see – theatrical scenes raised above their daily humdrum lives. In Macbeth Shakespeare offers everything – extreme violence, sex, war, death – and brings the idea of evil on to the stage in the form of the three witches.

All the best my friend!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

snoopydawg's picture

@Lookout

did the Catholic Church not understand? How many women did they accuse of being witches just because they were strong thinking women and they burned at the stake? I recently read a book about that time period and Catholic priests sure seemed to enjoy burning women.

Heh…recently the pope told nuns that watching pornography was wrong. I can’t imagine the sweet Catholic nuns I knew sitting around watching it. Why did the pope think that was necessary?

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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt

Lookout's picture

@snoopydawg

It is projection?

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@snoopydawg about aggravated sexual assault of a child, as an example, alter boys.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Lookout's picture

@on the cusp

I've never understood why Priest couldn't marry, nor women allowed to be priest as well as men.

Maybe Betty C. could provide insight.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout marrying, not so much a woman being in positions of church authority, is the cause of the split away by the Russian Orthodox. Their priests must be married.
Not too educated on Catholic Church history. That was from lectures my tour group heard when touring Russia.
Btw, fantastic WW. I will weigh in here and there as I read and listen to all the info you have presented to us.
Glad you got rain! We did last week, expect more this week. Maybe my neighbors planted a winter garden and will benefit.
Take care, friend!

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Lookout's picture

@on the cusp

I'm not well educated about religion...especially Catholic religion.

Thanks for the info!

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@snoopydawg

The various Protestant churches were much, much worse. (What the Catholic Church was really down on was heretics - including Protestants.)

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Lookout's picture

@TheOtherMaven

By a local preacher on the radio for teaching my students that the Earth was older than 6000 years. Luckily I wasn't burnt at the stake.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

lotlizard's picture

https://nitter.eu/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491107902062592

Most fascinating thing about the Ukraine war is the sheer number of top strategic thinkers who warned for years that it was coming if we continued down the same path.

No-one listened to them and here we are.

Small compilation of these warnings, from Kissinger to Mearsheimer.

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Lookout's picture

@lotlizard

Thanks for the link. Yes we were warned, including by Putin in his 2007 speech.

But what is happening at the same time? Simultaneously the so-called flexible frontline American bases with up to five thousand men in each. It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders, and we continue to strictly fulfil the treaty obligations and do not react to these actions at all.

I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?

As usual we fail to listen. Hope you're doing well across the pond in these times of such stupidity.
Wishing you the best!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

snoopydawg's picture

Read the replies

Good lord I doubt that they will ever get their critical thinking skills back. Lol.. I should post the video in the same thread of Obama yapping about how important it is to people to vote for democrats just to play with their minds. The ‘best president ever' just became a Russian asset. Boy that’d Fck with their minds.

Yeah she’d do it.

508A5DA7-95FA-4AE3-A6D9-9575F4A83BA6.jpeg
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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt

Lookout's picture

@snoopydawg

Scott and Aaron address Obummer's comments. (15 min)
Is Obama Spreading Putin Talking Points?
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNhkbUrovY0]

Before the 30 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus revoked their letter calling on President Joe Biden to pursue diplomacy with Russia (admittedly, while continuing to ship weapons to Ukraine), another prominent Democrat announced his support for open communication between the White House and the Kremlin. That Democrat? Barack Obama, who lamented that contact between Washington and Moscow is at an even lower level than during the depths of the Cold War.

I heard him say it wasn't because of the Biden administration refusing to talk....yeah, right you liar.

Someone posted a piece about the Michigan crowd drowning him out with chants of "Fuck Joe Biden"
https://www.independentsentinel.com/crowd-chants-fjb-at-an-obama-rally-f...
NY Slimes says no...
https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2022/10/fact-check-obama-not-interrup...
Hard to know who to believe...but there is a longer video showing just one heckler.

Biden didn't fare as well.
https://meaww.com/michigan-trump-joe-biden-motorcade-embarrassed

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

Turley calls out Obama for attacking the 1st amendment. Gawd what a shit Obama is.

Last week, former President Barack Obama made this shift clear in his much covered speech at Stanford University. Just days after Musk re-enforced his bid for Twitter with the support of many in the free speech community, Obama warned that social media was “tilting us in the wrong direction.” He called for more censorship of disinformation while calling himself “pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist.”

Obama has never been viewed as an ally on free speech by those of us who have been attacked for our “absolutist” views. Moreover, calling for censorship as a free speech absolutist is like claiming to be a vegetarian while calling for mandatory meat consumption.

Obama favors free speech only if it does not include disinformation, including what he considers to be “lies, conspiracy theories, junk science, quackery, racist tracts and misogynist screeds.”

However, it was notable that Obama called himself “pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist,” not a free speech absolutist. The point became clear later in the speech when Obama noted that the First Amendment does not restrict private businesses from censoring speech. The First Amendment is not the full measure or definition of free speech, which many consider a human right.

Never forget that Obama decided that it’s okay for the government to lie to us when he rescinded the Smith-Mundt act. Just in time for Russia Russia and the great Covid scamdemic. How so many people can be so blind to his awfulness is mind boggling. I answered a tweet saying that Obama is a great campaigner with he sure is, but it’s too bad that is all I can say about him because although he likes to yada yada nothing comes from his words. Obama can never forget that Trump followed his tenure because it was a rejection of it and of him. Trump is Obama’s true legacy.

Hellabitch is also a fcking hypocrite and unfortunately it looks like she will get away with her lies, her dragging the country into the false Russia Russia crap and an attempted coup on Trump. Durham fulfilled his role to protect the swamp just as well as Mueller did.

Clinton’s call for censoring disinformation was breathtakingly hypocritical. President Obama was briefed by his CIA Director John Brennan on “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” The intelligence suggested it was “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”

Moreover, her call for censorship came just weeks after special counsel John Durham offered more details about the accusation that her campaign manufactured a false Russian collusion theory. One of Clinton’s former lawyers is under indictment for the effort. Clinton personally tweeted out the disinformation that is the subject of the federal prosecution. And the Federal Election Commission recently fined her campaign for hiding the funding of the Steele dossier.

Never thought it would be democrats who killed the 1st amendment. Just didn’t see that coming.
Remember that in Biden’s America just questioning the results of the election means that you are a domestic terrorist.

For democrats only some rights are inalienable.

The public letter entitled “We Dissent” makes the usual absurd protestation that, just because we are seeking to ban books of those with opposing views, we still “care deeply about freedom of speech.” They simply justify their anti-free speech position by insisting that any harm “in the form of censorship” is less than “the form of assault on inalienable human rights” in opposing abortion or other constitutional rights.

My body, my choice sure seems selective for shitlibs. It’s okay to use against banning abortion, but not for mandatory jabs for an experimental mRNA shot.

Democrats want Justice Barrett's book banned from being sold.

Yet, the letter is not simply dangerous. It is perfectly delusional. While calling for the book to be blocked, the writers bizarrely insist “we are not calling for censorship.”

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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt

snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

Board certification revoked and he’s no longer editor of the cardiology journals. All because he kept people alive instead of seeing them get killed in hospitals. Imagine targeting people for that whilst paying ungawdly amounts of money if people died. If we survive this time period the historians are going to be brutal.

Steve Kirch writes about it

Peter McCullough is an author of 677 articles published in the scientific peer-reviewed journals. He’s one of the most respected cardiologists in the world. He’s been right about everything throughout the pandemic. He has an encyclopedic memory of every paper he’s ever read. And he’s just a wonderful, nice person to boot. You really never met a nicer guy.

He’s sacrificed everything so he can speak the truth about the COVID policies. If there was one COVID advisor that the government should be listening to, Dr. Peter McCullough would be at the top of every list.

So how is he being rewarded for having the courage to speak the truth?

I got this message from him this morning:

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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt

Lookout's picture

@snoopydawg

Silenced... shows the power of big pharma and corporate medicine.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Lookout's picture

@snoopydawg

All I can muster to say is, What a disappointment they are. As to those who suggest they are the evil of two lessers (h/t js) I say they are still evil.

I feel/hear your righteous indignation.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

lotlizard's picture

@snoopydawg  
quietly and overnight, just snuck through a ground-breaking change to the law on Volksverhetzung (roughly, hate speech) that makes questioning official narratives — e.g., re Ukie allegations of Russian war crimes — punishable on the same basis, and with the same draconian penalties, as for “trivializing” or raising questions re the Holocaust.

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snoopydawg's picture

@lotlizard

Turley talks about how she pushed them to pass that bill. But of course she will blame Russia for meddling. Right?

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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt

@snoopydawg her and the other 8 justices banned from hearing a whole range of cases, roughly all those not specifically cited in the constitution on original jurisdiction. I'd also like to see all of the 9 banned from cashing in on their positions while holding office. Currently the Scotus justices are the only judges in the land who are not governed by any Code of Ethics. Btw, each of the 8 associate justices earns an annual base salary of $274,200.

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lotlizard's picture

@snoopydawg

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enhydra lutris's picture

The Feebs and the CIA are criminal conspiracies and have been almost since inception, if not then. It is hard to think of a form of criminality in which they have not indulged, including "crimes against humanity". They operate outside the law and beyond the pale and are frauds to boot.

Samhain is a multi-day event because the ancient celts and gaels had a ceremonial day that ran from sunset to sunset, which doesn't jive with DST, Tulsa time, or any other modern time system and a calendar that was most definitely not Gregorian. I somewhat discuss Samhain mañana in my Samhain/Beltane/Halloween OT. I used the modernistic reference which applies Beltane (and other ancient celtic) ceremonial names to the global south on the dates of ancient celtic holidays in the global north but using the holiday in opposition to the actual, which is a silly modernism since the originators of said holidays were largely unaware of the existence of the global south. Halloween, of course, is a bastardized Catholic holiday jumble related to nothing whatsoever.

So, uh, here's to "All Hallows Eve"
Aleister_Crowley

Bread making day here and not much else, though there is one short section of gutter that still needs cleaning and gutter guard. It's isolated and very awkward (and tricky) to get to and to work on and we have a heavy mist today, so ...

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Lookout's picture

@enhydra lutris
Already a half inch in the gauge. Cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, and so on are happy.

My crew scheduled for Friday to fix a soffit canceled on me. Now I'm back to finding someone to help. Life is full of such little things.

Best of luck with your gutter. Looking forward to your piece tomorrow.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

mimi's picture

lookout, who are you to have all this knowledge?

It is scary. And fascinating.

Thank you to write this up. For old Ms. Simpleton it just knocks me out.

I just wonder. What was and is your life-long biographie??

Thank you again, and again and again.

Be well and have a good one.

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Lookout's picture

@mimi

I've been a good student, but as is appropriate on this holiday, I've got plenty of skeletons hanging in my closet.

Check out the link to Cliff Durr in my first comment above to understand who I learned from as young person. The people we know and the experiences we've had form the people we are.

Hope you're hanging in there given the unstable situation in the EU! Nice to "see" you today.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

mimi's picture

@Lookout
I think i will tell mey son one day that story about having a second look at the ghosts who follow him throughout his life-. May be it helps. Wink

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it the most powerful gov't in the world, elected or unelected.

If I'm not mistaken, the last serious congressional oversight of the Agency occurred some 47 yrs ago during the Church senate hearings.

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Lookout's picture

@wokkamile

the last serious congressional oversight of the Agency occurred some 47 yrs ago during the Church senate hearings.

As Larry Johnson says it needs to be burnt to the ground.

JFK is credited with saying his desire was to “splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds”.

I can't even imagine how that would happen.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

check out the actual details!

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Lookout's picture

@humphrey

Russia to donate 500,000 tons of grain to poorest countries in next 4 months - minister
The Russian Federation is absolutely ready to replace Ukrainian grain and carry out exports at affordable prices to all countries concerned, Dmitry Patrushev said

I had read most of the Ukraine shipments went to EU countries. Thanks for the data!

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snoopydawg's picture

You have to see it on Twitter to see what Hillary wrote.

I sure hope that we get the truth about what really happened.

But there’s the Hellabitch trying to stir up trouble and pretend that she is relevant.

Just wow!

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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt

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Lookout's picture

@humphrey @humphrey @snoopydawg

We had craft in the area of the explosion too. Just as there was a US drone hovering in the area where the Russian ship was attacked.

Thanks for the info sources.

Paul is a distraction. Poor elites and all their woes.
Howard Hughes Blues
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCy5oW1XRg8]

I got to see several Humpbacks on a Boston aquarium trip out to the continental shelf. They are impressive.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

What will Jair Bolsonaro do next????

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Lookout's picture

@humphrey

Hope he isn't blindsided. Thanks for the update!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout @Lookout

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/brazils-polarizing-bolson...

SAO PAULO -- Brazil’s electoral authority said Sunday that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the leftist Worker’s Party defeated incumbent Jair Bolsonaro to become the country’s next president.

With 98.8% of the votes tallied in the runoff vote, da Silva had 50.8% and Bolsonaro 49.2%, and the election authority said da Silva’s victory was a mathematical certainty.

Da Silva — the country’s former president from 2003-2010 — has promised to restore the country’s more prosperous past, yet faces faces headwinds in a polarized society.

It is a stunning return to power for da Silva, 77, whose 2018 imprisonment over a corruption scandal sidelined him from that year’s election, paving the way for then-candidate Bolsonaro’s win and four years of far-right politics.

His victory marks the first time since Brazil’s 1985 return to democracy that the sitting president has failed to win reelection. His inauguration is scheduled to take place on Jan. 1.

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Lookout's picture

@humphrey

he better watch his back. The first place Bolsonaro visited in the US was CIA headquarters...before he had even visited Brazil's spooks.

Thanks again for the good news!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@humphrey @humphrey From the NY Times,

"His victory also pushes Brazil back to the left, extending a string of leftist victories across Latin America, fueled by a wave of anti-incumbent backlash. Six of the region’s seven largest countries have now elected leftist leaders since 2018."

BRICS. Global South. Change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5TqIdff_DQ

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NYCVG

Lookout's picture

@NYCVG

There is change in the air.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

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Lookout's picture

@humphrey

Thanks for the good news.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Lookout's picture

Signing out tonight with this one released today...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJs9x0gMh4k]
I wrote Hallows Eve around this time last year, and my favorite version will always be the full band arrangement with the strings, drums, electric guitar, piano, etc., but I figured it would be fun to do a more stripped down performance of this tune as well--that was the way I originally wrote it. Just voice and acoustic guitar. So here's a solo acoustic version of "Hallows Eve"!

Enjoy the turning of the wheel of the year...

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

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Doing something other than listening to Putin's speech the other day at the Valdai conference...

"And in this world order, we must listen to everyone, take into account every point of view, every people, society, culture, every system of world views, ideas and religious beliefs, without imposing a single truth on anyone, and only on this basis, understnding our responsibility for fate - the fate of peoples, the planet, to build a symphony of human civilization."

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