The United States(!) of A

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factotum started the topic in Thursday, 27 Aug 2020 at 11:12am

Septic Tanks are going to Septic Tank

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Jelly Flater Sunday, 12 Mar 2023 at 9:40am

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Jelly Flater Sunday, 12 Mar 2023 at 9:58am

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Supafreak Sunday, 12 Mar 2023 at 12:39pm

Albo hooks up with sleepy joe today, be nice if he mentioned Australia wants Assange back on home soil, he’s suffered enough . https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/transcends-politics-the-unlikely-gro...

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Jelly Flater Sunday, 12 Mar 2023 at 1:30pm

Wonder if they’ll explore shared interests ;)

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/7N5Xe4xIqls

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Jelly Flater Sunday, 12 Mar 2023 at 3:19pm

Facts.

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bonza Sunday, 12 Mar 2023 at 8:12pm

Not sure if this has been posted before. Thought it was a good read.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream...

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frog Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 9:00am

Bonza, the New York Times who are never wrong said it was 3 guys on a yacht with a snorkel and a mask, two blow up flamingo floaties, duct tape and 1000 pounds of explosive or something like that so that must be the truth.

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Jelly Flater Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 9:23am

Upon further investigation it was also revealed the 3 guys were in fact teenage mutant ninja turtles…
The guy with the nun chukkas had to stay on the boat coz nun chukkas don’t work underwater ;)

It’s unverified who gave the orders or if they went rogue…
And, by the way, they were the russian version of teenage mutant ninja turtles ;)
- That bit they know for sure.

Master Splinter ended up defecting to the US - coz dirty rats in sewers get privileges there…

- He now sits on the board of pfizer and is an executive for a renewable energy company…. also advising the military industrial complex on how to continue covert operations in foreign countries and coordinate terrorist acts in the name of freedom and democracy ;)

He’s now referred to as an ‘expert’.

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etarip Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 10:28am

To be fair, the ninja turtle story makes as much sense, has better sourcing, and has less holes in it than Hersh’s version.

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frog Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 11:01am

The NYT story has the odd hole:

"At the site of the blasts, the Baltic Sea is about 80 metres deep, requiring specialist diving skills and special air tanks, one with a helium-oxygen mixture and one with pure oxygen, the Spiegel report said.

Each dive would have required the boat to be over the pipeline for about three hours. To have laid explosives on two pipelines 4km apart would probably have required four dives over a few days.

Diving experts say such extended deep dives would have required a decompression chamber for the divers, which would not fit on a yacht. There are also question on whether there would be room for the required explosives."

Surely the spooks could have come up with a better counter story - but I guess it doesn't matter if a wave of headlines sweep across the world like:

"Boat used for Nord Stream attacks connected to Ukraine"

Spook boss lights up cigar and thinks "not our best misdirection effort but it did the job"

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gragagan Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 11:33am

Giddy-up

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etarip Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 11:46am

That detail is lifted almost directly from the substack that systematically unpicks the Hersh fantasy story.

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bonza Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 11:56am
etarip wrote:

To be fair, the ninja turtle story makes as much sense, has better sourcing, and has less holes in it than Hersh’s version.

fair enough. yet the author does have form. So, is the alternative explanation unexploded WW2 bombs?

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Supafreak Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 12:01pm
frog wrote:

The NYT story has the odd hole:

"At the site of the blasts, the Baltic Sea is about 80 metres deep, requiring specialist diving skills and special air tanks, one with a helium-oxygen mixture and one with pure oxygen, the Spiegel report said.

Each dive would have required the boat to be over the pipeline for about three hours. To have laid explosives on two pipelines 4km apart would probably have required four dives over a few days.

Diving experts say such extended deep dives would have required a decompression chamber for the divers, which would not fit on a yacht. There are also question on whether there would be room for the required explosives."

Surely the spooks could have come up with a better counter story - but I guess it doesn't matter if a wave of headlines sweep across the world like:

"Boat used for Nord Stream attacks connected to Ukraine"

Spook boss lights up cigar and thinks "not our best misdirection effort but it did the job"

When I was on barrow island I met a bloke that was a deep sea diver and had worked on Russian pipelines before . Him and 3 others would live in a container 100 meters down for 1 month at a time. They would do short work stints of 2 hours, welding and maintenance. When it was time to come up their decompression took 3 days . The money was extremely good but they don’t have a long life expectancy.

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etarip Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 12:53pm

@bonza, Hersh has an amazing legacy, but his recent catalogue is pretty dubious.

I don’t think WW2 bombs are plausible.

This is the substack article:
https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe

As for other explanations - there’s a few out there, and plenty of people scouring publicly available information to explore what might have happened. Shipping AIS data, commercially available satellite imagery, webcam footage from local ports, ownership records etc etc. Bellingcat have an open discord chat on it.

The way the attack was carried out, targeting the legacy Nordstream 1 pipelines (which were due to be retired once NS2 was operational) with shaped charges and only one of the two NS2 pipes - but with a different, less damaging, method defies logic.

Anyway. Happy reading.

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bonza Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 1:23pm

Holy crap that's a good rebuttal. thanks etarip.

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frog Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 2:17pm

So we are stuck with the yacht and the pink flamingo floaties plot - crazy that they used pink coloured floaties and risked detection against the blue ocean but it must be true.

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bonza Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 2:32pm

lol.
im out of my depth here. im switzerland on this. enjoying the commentary! as you were

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etarip Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 6:13pm

No pun intended!

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frog Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 10:10pm

100% certainty that the US did the planning for some form of nord stream pipeline disruption / destruction in recent years to have the option up their sleeve.

It would be an essential part of the war gaming scenarios to look at such options.

All those tens of thousands of analysts in the pentagon and CIA (and war oriented think twankers) have to do something all day to keep busy and please the bosses with reports and white papers.

Such a scenario would be high up the list of things to plan even if it stayed in the bottom drawer.

Fortunately, the clever Uke yatchie, snorkler and floatie team seem to have beat them to it and so the US got the result they wanted without the awkward egg fart moment with the Germans.

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etarip Monday, 13 Mar 2023 at 10:41pm

Hahahahahaha. That’s some funny shit.

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flollo Tuesday, 14 Mar 2023 at 8:23am

China brokers the reestablishment of diplomatic ties between Saudi and Iran.

This is actually a big deal that didn't break the news across most western sources.

https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/03/china-triumphs-saudi-iran-d...

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etarip Tuesday, 14 Mar 2023 at 8:34am

Xi is travelling to Moscow this week too I think. Reports that he’s seeking to head to Kyiv after that.

Flexing diplomatic muscle.

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frog Tuesday, 14 Mar 2023 at 9:09am

China's Belt and Road initiative was to go through the Ukraine - endless war is not good for their revived silk road trade pathway concept. B & R underpinned a major component of their goals for greater influence over, and trade with, Europe.

Peace in the Ukraine is very much in China's global power ambitions and stronger trade interests with Europe which in turn means that peace with long term stability there is not so much in another big player's interests.

Does the US want Xi to be successful in his diplomatic efforts to bring peace to the Ukraine to China's long term benefit (or Russia's) by shifting Europe's trade links and economic integration towards the east?

As always Cui Bono give many clues as to why certain geopolitical events pan out as they do.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/01/belt-road-initiative-new-eurasian-l...

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Jelly Flater Tuesday, 14 Mar 2023 at 10:31am

There is a reason this kind of commentary doesn’t get exposure…

It’s free of propaganda ;)
Truth requires no narrative nor does it require a selling point…

- Hard to ignore and impossible to dispute.

Unfortunately our kids and grandkids are the ones who may pay the price of the west’s current outright arrogance.

It’s never too late to admit to failings. It’s never to late to alter the course… seems as though our obsession with fighting for ‘freedom’ is something we create ;)

We have nobody to blame but ourselves, but, in the meantime…

Let’s try play the blame game ;)

‘You can bomb the world to pieces…
But you can’t bomb the world to peace’

https://m.

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gragagan Tuesday, 14 Mar 2023 at 11:26am

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etarip Tuesday, 14 Mar 2023 at 1:42pm

Bono may be an idiot but he’s not a twice convicted child sex offender like Scott Ritter!

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Jelly Flater Tuesday, 14 Mar 2023 at 8:28pm

https://m.

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indo-dreaming Wednesday, 15 Mar 2023 at 8:18am

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frog Wednesday, 15 Mar 2023 at 8:36am

Bono bravely cheering on from the sidelines in his comfy UK mansions as the reality on the ground is:

Washington Post:
Kupol said of his battalion of 500 troops, 100 were killed, and about 400 were wounded, leading to a complete turnover. He’s now being sent soldiers with no combat experience and very little training. “I get 100 new soldiers,” Kupol said. “They don’t give me any time to prepare them. They say, ‘Take them into the battle.’ They just drop everything and run. That’s it.”

“Do you understand why? Because the soldier doesn’t shoot. I ask him why, and he says, ‘I’m afraid of the sound of the shot,’” he added. The Post report said that Ukraine has sent in an influx of draftees to replace more experienced soldiers who have been killed or wounded. It said that as more Ukrainian men who didn’t volunteer fear they will get called to battle, Ukraine’s security services shut down Telegram accounts that were helping Ukrainians avoid locations where authorities were handing out draft slips.

Kupol said Ukrainian forces are also fighting with very little ammunition. “You’re on the front line,” he said. “They’re coming toward you, and there’s nothing to shoot with.”

Time for Bono to volunteer and grab a rifle.

Boris Johnson could join him - he is a brave leader who seems keen on continuing some jolly good biffo with the ruskies.

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gragagan Wednesday, 15 Mar 2023 at 11:09am

This is a good listen. Excellent informed analysis.

It's a good watch on mute too; Nazare flybys from a drone on a medium clean offshore day.

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flollo Wednesday, 15 Mar 2023 at 11:11am

@frog Of course, he is. So are the hundreds of online experts telling people what needs to be done on daily basis. I especially like the ones who discovered a new love for mother Russia. Poor Russia now needs to conduct the denazification of Ukraine. They are so busy locking up LQBTQ people and poisoning the opposition voices that they really didn't need this distraction.

One would assume that overthrowing the government and installing their own regime would be sufficient to denazify. But no, to end the war Ukraine also needs to give up its claims to Crimea + 4 newly annexed regions (there could be more in the pipeline, who knows). Now we need a youtube expert to explain the strong correlation between overthrowing the government because you don't agree with their policy and annexing the territory of the neighboring country. One clearly can't be done without the other! Russell Brand comes to mind, he's really good on this topic. He just talks nonstop so he must be right.

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Jelly Flater Wednesday, 15 Mar 2023 at 11:45am

;)

Russell - oh, what a horrible bloke…
Trying to raise awareness about drug addiction, poverty and the need for education.

- Whilst trying to expose the corruption and vested interests of a warmongering government bureaucracy ;)

Cancel him ! ;);)

https://m.

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etarip Wednesday, 15 Mar 2023 at 6:14pm

y’all love Doug don’t you JF / gragagan?

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Jelly Flater Thursday, 16 Mar 2023 at 7:42am

$$$

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etarip Thursday, 16 Mar 2023 at 11:12am

You’re right! Doug loves $$$.
He’ll say anything for $$$

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adam12 Saturday, 18 Mar 2023 at 7:08am

MSNBC reporting FBI, NYPD and Secret Service in discussions on preparations for Trump indictment next week.
ICC issue arrest warrant for Putin.

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Supafreak Sunday, 19 Mar 2023 at 6:43pm

They’re gaining on him . D864-DE29-9-D2-E-46-EA-AAF9-E6-E076026-DA2

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etarip Sunday, 19 Mar 2023 at 7:32pm

Travelling to the US the week after next.
Could be interesting.

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truebluebasher Monday, 20 Mar 2023 at 3:30pm

God speed etarip...

Feb 2023 ~ 2 Women launched Presidential Campaigns.
Kinda slipped under the radar...so tbb thought to give them a fair run.
Bullies are already freeze framing their news edits to tell them they got it wrong! Right!
Pretty sure these are their 2024 Campaign Vids...

Rep: Nikki Haley (Former UN Ambasador)

Dem: Marianne Vishnevetsky (Describes as a Jewish Women) Changed name to Rail Logo {Williamson}
2nd bid for MW : "1st Jewish Woman President" M. Williamson (More electable Name?)

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mcbain Monday, 20 Mar 2023 at 4:01pm

Don't forget Selina:

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Jelly Flater Saturday, 25 Mar 2023 at 11:11pm

Wonder if sleepy joe has the cognitive ability to understand…

- Could he comprehend the facts ? ;);)

… ‘a country founded on genocide’ …

Is there a distinction between then and now ? Can the US change its ways ? ;);)

If you do the fighting in another land (and train and arm others in other lands), is it any different ?

https://m.

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andy-mac Sunday, 26 Mar 2023 at 1:49pm

Not much talk if this in Australian media.,.
Implications??
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/us/politics/saud...

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Wilhelm Scream Tuesday, 28 Mar 2023 at 1:44pm
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flollo Tuesday, 28 Mar 2023 at 4:48pm

The recent shooting in Nashville is the 129th mass shooting in the US this year. I will repeat that - the 129th mass shooting in 2023 alone. We're not even out of the first calendar quarter.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65092102

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frog Tuesday, 28 Mar 2023 at 8:25pm

Once upon a time there were Americans in positions of power and influence in geopolitics who had integrity and worked to create treaties, not tear them up, set up buffer zones between competing powers and to base decisions on truth and trust.

Now they are mostly old, grey and swept into the dustbin of history by a new more dangerous breed.

But one somehow recently had the floor at the UN and highlighted by his measured words and tone the contrast with today's US political rants and rhetoric. He showed how much the US has squandered its former moral highground in recent decades to its own cost by making the ongoing battle for hearts and minds across the globe fall on cynical ears.

Own goal after own goal after own goal seems to be the pattern internationally and never ending mass shootings show a serious degree of sickness in the homeland that further makes the world increasingly wary of the American way.

The video and supportive comments show there is some hope.

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flollo Tuesday, 28 Mar 2023 at 9:02pm

I wonder who those new young ones are @frog. Biden, Pelosi, Bernie or their adversary Mitch (and many more) should be in an aged care facility rather than running the country like the US. What needs to happen for this people to finally retire?

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frog Tuesday, 28 Mar 2023 at 10:02pm

Power for some of the old fossils like Biden and Pelosi seems to have accumulated over time through decades of connections, funding conduits, lobbyist supporters, wealthy patrons, campaign infrastructure, favours and secrets known and held.

It builds up like a massive supporting and protecting spiderweb holding them in place well past their use by date if the hunger for power remains.

New younger ones will emerge but of the same ilk most likely - captured and indoctrinated.

It takes a massive climb and funding base to get near the top. Endless favours are owed.

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Optimist Wednesday, 29 Mar 2023 at 11:08am

While Joe is cashing in filling the world with fresh new weapons, guns have officially become the number one killer of children in the U.S.
It seems americas number one enemy right now is ….itself….
with over 6000 children and teens killed or injured in 2022 alone.( USA Today) and over 128 mass shootings so far this year alone.
It seems you do reap what you sow.

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Westofthelake Wednesday, 29 Mar 2023 at 2:13pm

Amerika - home of the free...

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