@QMS

It is Russia's fault that US citizens want peace. Like Duh.

How stupid do they think we are?

fun to vicariously share your trip

this is a rip-off on the rally today
posted by the blob no doubt

https://www.rageagainstwar.org/speakers-on-putin-payroll

cheers!

@on the cusp

...unpacked and finally got the wash done. As I've traveled I've become more of a minimalist. I use 2.5 gal sealing plastic bags. One or shirts, one for pants, and one for swim stuff. I sit on them as I seal them and they pack tight. I also have a bathroom bag...you used to have to get it out to run through security, but it was streamlined and easy peasy in and out of the country. When flying, we carry on all our stuff.

Glad you found your well traveled bags. Enjoy the concert!

Glad you had a break from the news.
On the other hand, two huge news events, the rally and the incredible Hersh expose' aren't even in the news! You have to be a snoop to find them.
I traveled Tuesday for an overnight in Bryan to attend a Lyle Lovett concert. The apt. we rented only had 2 rules: leave dirty dishes in the sink and put trash in the bin. Well, I was trash hauler. Ok, not the heavy stuff. Upon arriving home, I looked through my luggage, couldn't find 2 make up bags I take with me on every trip. Those bags have been around the world. I couldn't find them, determined I had somehow gotten them into a bag that went into the trash bin.
"I am a dumbass" was the subject line of an email to a friend. All replies, all back and forth since Tuesday reminded me, "I am a dumbass."
I am packing the bag now, ready to head toward Beaumont for a Cajun music concert, and lo and behold! I found the make up bags. Thus, I am not a dumbass, just a careless unpacker.
I hope you and your wife packed and unpacked without carelessness or dumbassedness!

@snoopydawg

But it is nice to be home.

They just can't let go of Russiagate. Amazing.

Hope you and Sam are doing well!

and directly working for Putin and Russia. . Lmao… most of them have worked for or appeared on RT which is Russian state media. Ron Paul because he raised money for his movie in Russia once. Tara, Hinkle, Nixon and others had shows on RT. Hey I’d rather watch their shows and get a glimmer of truth than get state dictated propaganda from the mainstream media like AP, Reuters and MSDNC. Oh wait, every mainstream media gets their talking points from the AP… but there you have it. No need to listen to the rally.

Welcome back lookout. You’ve been missed. Hopefully you had a wonderful time.

@NYCVG

Found a rally livestream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6EEp01qNrY

But talk about paranoid, if this doesn't ring bells what can?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK5V89fU61Y&t=3m
CBDC control... https://home.solari.com/i-want-to-stop-cbdcs-what-can-i-do/

We're headed to the 80's this week...weather weirding I guess.

I could not agree more concerning your picks as most important news stories now.

Seymour Hersh's expose of what many of us believed all along is,nevertheless, stunning when read.

Blowing up a pipeline which provided plentiful inexpensive fuel to Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, etc. is a Humanitarian Crime, A War Crime, an Environmental Crime and a Terrorist Act. So much deprivation caused in order for the US to sever Russia's ties to Germany and NOT incidentally to implement American Natural Gas sales.

I am ashamed of my country. Not for the first time. The NY Times and other NY Newspapers have not carried a word about this matter. Twitter has nitwit John Kirby in full denial mode.

My hope is that Sy Hersh keeps on talking to whomever will listen and that the full sorry debacle will become clear to all of the world.

In unrelated but in some way similar news, the East Palestine train crash is another horrific display of American decrepitude decay and indifference. Various outlets have been showing the condition of train tracks throughout our land and it is flat out amazing that any trains stay on the tracks.

Blown up trains. Blown up Nord Stream. Blown up poultry farms. Explosions everywhere. Hard not to think paranoic thoughts.

@Cassiodorus
..on Sy's reveal. I enjoyed it.

https://caucus99percent.com/content/it-makes-one-wonder

I've added an interview Hersh did with Russell Brand. At any rate, it's good to collect more information about all this. I'm listening to the narrator in the Jimmy Dore video posted above. "Cultural issues"? Of course, nobody's going to end a war with a rally. A rally is a start.

@snoopydawg

...hence the horseshoe analogy. Reminds me of MLK and his war on poverty uniting the white and black working class..about the time he was assassinated.

Hundreds of Putin supporters have descended on Washington D.C. to rally in Russia’s support. Speakers like Jimmy Dore and Cynthia McKinney prove, once again, the horseshoe theory of politics—that the ideological spectrum isn’t a line, it’s a horseshoe, with the far right and far left meeting at the bottom.

Seymour Hersh has been declared a tankie by the ex anti war guru who got rich off of pretending that he’s anti war. Now anyone who wants our government to stop killing people around the world is a Putin lover and a tankie. What a maroon!

What’s that line about someone protesting too much?

"It's a completely false story. There is no truth to it, Shannon. Not a shred of it. It is not true." -- NSC spokesperson John Kirby unequivocally denies a Seymour Hersh story alleging US involvement in blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline pic.twitter.com/fgD2vSyZKd

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 19, 2023

Sure John we believe you as much as we do your statement that NATO is just a defensive organization.

@randtntx

Thanks for reading about it.

Scott posted the speech he would have made today...(18 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_dMAQ2viCg
This is the speech Scott Ritter would have delivered at the Lincoln Memorial on February 19, 2023.

Thanks for posting even while you were on vacation! Your trip sounds as if it was great.

You are right. There were some very interesting news stories published while you were gone. The Sy Hersh piece in substack was the big one. Even though he himself said it was an easy story to uncover and everybody who thought about it already knew who did it.
Scott Ritter said;

In short, Sy Hersh, through his reporting, has exposed truths which have the potential of bringing down a presidency, destroying NATO, and proving Russia right in the eyes of the world.

Edited to add the link for the above quote https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/seymour-hershs-trinity-of-truth
So, it may have been an obvious story, but no prominent journalist would touch it. One can wish though, for the sort of outcome Ritter mentions.

@QMS

...and watched the whole rally. Not that I think it will affect anything, but it is nice to hear my views confirmed by people I respect.

Kucinich added that the US government’s “greatest talent is to craft misinformation and disinformation to subvert the media and misuse it as an instrument to incite fear and hatred among our people, exciting partisan divisions at home through cross-politics, and stirring ancient hatreds abroad through lies, deceit, false flag operations and provocations which profane the very essence of democracy.”

@QMS

..and so am I too.
Well, we can still enjoy young folks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDtX62GaPg
Hotel California - The Eagles | Reina del Cid Cover feat. Josh Turner, Toni Lindgren, Carson McKee
Despite being relentlessly overplayed on every classic rock station across the world, I have always believed Hotel California to be one of the greatest songs ever written. An indictment of the excesses of late stage capitalism and the American entertainment industry, it’s rich with metaphor and deft rhymes, lush guitar lines, and a simple but elegant chord progression. The song remains as fresh and timeless as when Don Henley, Don Felder, and Glen Frey, and Joe Walsh penned it 45 years ago, and I suspect many generations after mine will continue to appreciate it as a masterwork.

While the original Eagles version will always be definitive, the crew and I wanted to do our own take on this song while we were in Bern, Switzerland on our European tour. Off camera, a small crowd gathered around us as we performed, and it was truly a magical moment in a beautiful city, so far from the place Don Henley is singing about in this song

this is just a test, trying to navigate the bugs
thanks for the WW LO!

@snoopydawg

...and arrogance, and then wonders why they aren't successful.

Thanks for the links.

Just met with the PRC’s top diplomat, Wang Yi. I condemned the incursion of the PRC surveillance balloon and stressed it must never happen again. I warned China against providing materiel support to Russia. I also emphasized the importance of keeping open lines of communication.

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) February 18, 2023

Good grief he’s just as arrogant as he was during the first meeting with China. He also said that China would cross the U.S red line if they sent weapons to Russia. Why is it okay for all NATO members to arm Ukrainia with lethal weapons, but not any of Russias friends? And for us to arm Taiwan with them too? Arrogant hypocrites!

Also too…

German Foreign Minister Annalena Burbock: "If Putin decides that tomorrow he changes his course by 360 degrees, the whole world will be happy." pic.twitter.com/KUXZv7GOH8

— skadefron (@skadefron) February 18, 2023

Another maroon.

@snoopydawg
..instead of warmongering idiots like Blinky, Nulan, etc.

Thanks for the speech.

Biden not only pushed Russia and China together which many didn’t want to happen, but he also pushed Iran and China together. and Russia has been making deals with Iran too. Oh yeah and the Saudis and Israel have been talking with China too. Heh…Obama said that Biden sure has a way of fcking things up and now we’re seeing how true that is.

Lavrov's speech to the Duma. Here’s a taste:

Esteemed Mr Volodin,

Esteemed colleagues,

I am grateful for yet another opportunity to speak to the deputies of the State Duma during these traditional government hours.

The interaction between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation is indeed of a friendly nature. Our regular meetings in different formats allow us to provide legislators with information on the work of the foreign policy service, as well as hear your plans, advice and thoughts. This is particularly important for us at this current historical stage when the efforts to create favourable external conditions for resolving our domestic socio-economic goals and improving the living standards of the Russian people, encounter fierce resistance of those who imagine themselves the masters of the destinies of people. They are trying to interfere with our efforts by pushing us back decades and even to ruin our national development under the slogans of “decolonisation” and “preparations for Russia’s collapse.” In the process, the Anglo-Saxons and the rest of the collective West that have obeyed them without a murmur, are doing all they can to impose their dictate in world affairs. They are doing this to continue controlling the external conditions for the development of all humanity for the sake of their own global domination. They resort to illegal methods including threats, blackmail and outright robbery to punish those that are pursuing independent national-oriented foreign policy.

Therefore, our updated Foreign Policy Concept will stress the need to end the Western monopoly on creating a framework of international life. From now on, this framework will be determined not by the self-centred interests of the West but by the fair universal balance of interests in line with the UN Charter that has fixed the principle of sovereign equality of all states.

Crudely violating this fundamental principle of civilised international communication, the United States and its allies are obsessed with a maniacal striving to restore a neocolonialist unipolar world order and impede the objective process of the formation and rise of new global centres. As President of Russia Vladimir Putin noted in his speech at the Kremlin on September 30, 2022, they are doing all this to continue “to collect an actual tribute from humanity, to extract rent to be paid to the hegemon.” Russia’s deterrence over many years has been a component part of this course, including through NATO’s expansion to our borders and the turning of fraternal Ukraine into an “anti-Russia,” a Russophobic military bridgehead. In the past few years, this policy of Washington and its European satellites has reached a point of no return.

We gave up illusions about the true goals of the Westerners long ago. We remembered how they failed to fulfil their specific political commitments, given to the Soviet leaders, not to expand the North Atlantic Alliance. We remembered how Germany, France and Poland renounced their signatures under the agreement between President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych and the opposition. By doing this, they actually sanctioned the bloody state coup in Kiev in February 2014 under openly Nazi, racist slogans.

During all these years, the Western curators were directly pushing the criminal Kiev regime to the power solution of the Donbass problem, shutting their eyes to inevitable ethnic cleansing and the physical destruction of Russians and Russian-speaking people. It is enough to mention the recent cynical confessions by former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel and ex-President of France Francois Hollande. They admitted that they needed the Minsk Package of Measures approved by the UN Security Council, merely to gain time to allow Kiev to build up its military potential. Petr Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky also admitted this. The public statements by these figures are basically a confession; they actually admitted that they disrupted the Minsk agreements that the Western leaders proclaimed a non-alternative foundation for settlement in Donbass. Simply put, all of them lied to us. They are also lying to us now, concealing the truth about the acts of terrorism at the Nord Stream pipelines.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg joined the chorus of self-incriminating statements. He said in Brussels that the war started in 2014. NATO was preparing for it from the moment of the state coup and the advent of Nazis to power in Kiev with promises to destroy everything Russian in Ukraine and to expel Russians from Crimea. In other words, the goal was to resolve the Russian issue, and the alliance supported it, no matter how hard the successors to those who made previous attempts to do this, tried to reject it.

Until the very last moment, we were doing all we could to reduce tensions and find an equitable and mutually respectful agreement. With this in view, in November 2021, President of Russia Vladimir Putin suggested drafting reciprocal legally binding security guarantees with the West. Washington and the North Atlantic bloc arrogantly rejected this initiative. They did not even feel like discussing our lawful concerns.

All this left us no other choice. A year ago, on the orders of Vladimir Zelensky’s regime, the armed forces of Ukraine, led by the nationalist battalions, began the forceful suppression of Donbass, stepping up the bombing of local towns exponentially. In response to an official appeal from the DPR and LPR, we recognised their independence and provided military assistance under Article 51 of the UN Charter, launching the special military operation.

Today, the United States and its satellites are waging a comprehensive hybrid war against us that they have been preparing for many years, using Ukrainian radical nationalists as a battering ram. They are not hiding their goals – not only to defeat our country on the battlefield and destroy the Russian economy, but also to surround us with a cordon sanitaire, making Russia a kind of a “rogue state.” For that, they are using their entire toolkit, from direct military support for the neo-Nazis (US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin directly called for this yesterday, citing the need to provide the Armed Forces of Ukraine with high-precision weapons and to train Ukrainian personnel to ensure the success of the regime’s new counteroffensives, which are allegedly being prepared) to unprecedented illegal sanctions and outright lies in an attempt to demonise Russia.
…..
Fighting the falsification of history, primarily the history of the Great Patriotic War, and the spread of Nazi ideology in all its forms and manifestations remain in our focus. The Global Majority, which regularly supports the resolution on the inadmissibility of glorifying Nazism that we introduce annually at UN General Assembly sessions, stands in solidarity with us. However, this year we became deeply concerned with the fact that Germany, Italy and Japan voted against this document for the first time ever. This casts doubt on the sincerity of their repentance for the mass crimes against humanity committed during World War II.

Unbelievable that they did that after all these years after they committed crimes against humanity. And they did it on our orders. Shame on them.