#who is also a very shady oligarch

[duchessofostergotlands]

August 2023 // Prince Albert, Princess Charlene and their twins Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella on holiday in Corsica. The family have regularly holidayed there over the years.

#i know people will say this is staged #but if you aren't aware albert is currently stuck in the middle of a massive corruption scandal with two sides #one side were his allies and now they're suing him #the other side were his enemies #and the boat they're on was owned by one of the enemy camp #who is also a very shady oligarch #there is literally nothing that could be worse for Albert right now than being seen on this yacht lol #prince albert #princess charlene #monegasque princely family #2023 #my upload #prince jacques #princess gabriella

[sassyfrassboss]

Hi Sassy so I read over the Cut interview

They had toured only the grounds when they told the real-estate agent, "We have to get this house," Meghan says. It didn't matter that they hadn't seen the inside. Meghan gestures to the sweep of the property, from chicken coop to pool house to main house. Eventually, they purchased it for $14.65 million. "We did everything we could to get this house'

The mansion was owned by a Kremlin linked Russian oligarch, there is no way they would have a real estate agent showing them the property, and they would be very controlling over the property selling and so on. It would be the oligarch themselves and a team of lawyers.

Also the fact that they had to get the property? Russians are cutthroat in these situations and especially oligarchs, they wouldn’t just give it to them unless underlying conditions and something to benefit them, such as inside connections to the RF etc.

Also nobody buys or lets a home be sold without viewing inside.

Then saying they did everything they could to get the property, and at a discounted price? That is just shouting that there were very very shady deals going down.

The fact that they are suing for RAVEC details and who is covered by RAVEC and also to British intelligence, that shows they are trying to get information for the Kremlin linked oligarchs and therefore the FSB (the new KGB) who they’ve also had connections with. No wonder no royals are taking calls from Montecito, the FSB will have bugged the phones with H & M’s full cooperation.

Thanks...

[mchiti]

a few things:

thank you for the reassurance and perspective on the support hakim gets in morocco 😭 it made me happy and also it makes me happy to see him having a great time there right now

did you notice how the bulk of the players saudi have gone after are muslim...i don't know if i'm reading too much into this but i suspect that they are targeting these players and trying to shill the "we're a muslim country don't you want to play in a muslim country and help develop it blah blah" thing. Which, if true, makes me very annoyed because a lot of the things they do are very unislamic lol. like spending the first ten days of dhul-hijjah (literally the most sacred days in the entire year) doing shady deals with the shadiest club in the premier league

that racist white girl in footyblr who made the sabiri/ghazali post a while ago made another post basically saying that hell isn't hot enough for the players going to play in saudi because they are funding the yemeni war and famine 💀💀 i wish white people would stick to talking about what they understand

hii anon!! Ohh really, no need to thank me. ♡♡ You can't imagine after world cup 2018, I was in Fez/Tanja (Tangier) and then we went down to our usual trips as usual (Marrakech, Casa etc) and all I could see was his shirt everywhere. And my cousins were telling me all the time of the amount of craziness around him growing even more and more (also 2018 was our first world cup in 20 years can you imagine loool. And he played a big part in that qualification. Now we're here but look what we were even 5 years ago...and what we were when he joined back then...yeah anyway). Like, look at him now when Morocco train, he's always subjected to a lot of media attention etc. Moroccans love him, don't worry about a few of them on twitter. YEAH I love to see him there. I always think how he didn't get to go until he was in his teen years which is so so so sad, a lot of maghrebis can't afford trips to visit more often and it's heartbreaking.) ... to see him in Morocco is. Special. ♡♡ To see so many of them home!!!! Either Marrakech or around in their places of origin, I was watching Sabiri's latest ig stories and mashallah. It makes me so emotional. As if they kinda decided to be there at the same time. 😭I miss it so much i can't wait to be back inchallah.

I'll put the rest under shortcut

yeah the narrative of muslim players x a muslim country it does seem to me like being part of a developing plan. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if Saudi will truly be competitive in a few years time, now we're joking about it but - it seems way different than MLS now or what China tried to do years ago. You know, I do have conflicting thoughts about it- bc on one hand I agree with you, it is upsetting given the high percentage of poverty in Saudi. A country with so much money and so much power in the hands of a few oligarchs... of course leaning on those players' religion seems like a big fallacy. But then again, you have the same oligarchs in the US, in England, in China, in Russia (and nobody gave a shit about it before the war) in the very heart of Europe... also billionaires, rich, powerful, investors in every major top league. And so you do wonder if somehow we're also being affected by the same double standards. When Arab people tell you: after everything Europe has done, it's our turn, why are we the only ones subjected to your moral standards? - When you put it that way, can you blame them? As a Muslim you get upset because again, I totally understand your feelings and they are also mine. But I also wonder about these stuff, you know

WHICH WELL I guess it also applies to this white girl on tumblr (not kidding I tried to find their blog bc I was so curious fodjsha) are we have to blame players for going Saudi? What about players who are paid by Saudis in Europe? Bohely's bought part of Strasbourg - what about players payed by americans in Europe? Arsenal is owned by an american who both financed trump and israel - are we have to blame arsenal players too? These double standards are just....unreal to me really. It's so easy to blame one part of the world and dismiss what happens in the heart of your own continent or your own part of the world. White privilege as its finest.

Players ain't to blame. You can question their decisions and whatever but they are just players in this system - lots of them grew up poor and weren't born into the massive privilege these multi billionaires were born into. And i'm sure they are gonna love putting all the blame to Muslim players for going Saudi - what can you do, shit white people do.

thank u for writing to me anon! sorry for the long reply ghgh

#asks

[nothingunrealistic]

From the first scene that Asia Kate Dillon's Taylor Mason was introduced in Season 2 at a charity poker game between "the billies" (as Paul Giamatti's Chuck Rhoades now classifies them), Billions transformed from a cheeky finance bro faceoff between District Attorney Rhoades and billionaire hedge-fund visionary Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis) to a richly layered show about the cost of insidious greed. And no one has been fucked over more, especially by Axe's self-centered plays, than his own genius protegé, the young financial advisor Taylor. Even though he hardly batted an eye destroying Taylor's relationship with Mike Birbiglia's Oscar Landstraat in Season 3, and even relished squashing their independence in starting the environmentally focused Taylor Mason Carbon, Axe drew battle lines against anyone who would misgender Taylor, who uses they/them pronouns, as does Dillon, who called for the end of gendering acting categories in award shows years ago.

As the first ever non-binary lead character in a TV show, Taylor's enemies and allies can be often be identified by how a person genders them. They come in blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments, but if you're sensitive to it, those quick lines shoot like barbs. And while Billions writes in those infractions, it's used sparingly, never becoming a punchline or defining Taylor as One Thing.

[…]

And, of course, Taylor is so much more complex than merely their gender identity, clawing out of those instances of being fucked over, doing business with shady Russian oligarchs (John Malkovich), and pinpointing the opportunities in the financial playing field that others have missed, just as their former mentor Axe taught them. In the Season 5 finale, Axe and Taylor have a heart-to-heart before he jets off to Switzerland to avoid arrest, in a trap to finally catch Axe that Taylor helped set along with Chuck and their now-boss, Corey Stoll's Michael Thomas Aquinas Prince. ("What a name," I say. "I know!" Dillon agrees.) As a viewer, their conversation is bittersweet, both because Axe finally acknowledges Taylor as a peer and because we might not ever see the two together again. […] It's the first time Taylor has ever seen Axe with his knees taken out—and at their own hand, no less—and, even in defeat, recognizes that he's learned nothing.

"There's something very sad about Axe in that moment for Taylor," Dillion continues. "Taylor's like, 'I really am sorry it went this way. I wish you'd made better choices, man.' It is a moment of them being like, 'Wow, we're actually peers. I'm not your mentee anymore. You're not my mentor. That relationship is done, and I think that means that we're done'—at least for now."

Though Taylor is officially without a mentor, they've taken on a mentee in their newer hire Rian (Eva Victor). Their scenes together are episode highlights; their rapport is hilarious, with Taylor's advice often falling into "the wrong side of a generation," as they describe in a Season 5 episode, and Rian's Millenial-Gen Z cusper attitude challenging how Taylor's been reared to make money in the cutthroat financial industry.

"One of the things that Taylor sees in Rian, as Taylor says, is that Rian is also struggling with how to be a good person, a respectable capitalist, if that's possible," Dillon says. "Taylor is trying to be the mentor that Axe wasn't to them, meaning tell Rian the truth about what this job is. The only thing that Axe ever told Taylor was, 'Turn your [hate] into fuel and you'll make millions of dollars.' Taylor's been able to paint a much broader picture for Rian. That is also an interesting part of the dynamic: Rian's got the whole picture and is still wanting to be in this world. What does that say about Rian?"

For one, it says that Rian is the type of person who would like to buy $5k worth of brand-new camping equipment whenever she feels like it, as exposed in Sunday's "Burn Rate." The Season 6 episode plastered the line-item expenses of its core characters on the screen in another move of showing exactly how wealthy the people of this world are are while revealing fun insight into their taste. Like, who knew Wendy Rhoades (Maggie Siff) would be so fond of Mejuri jewelry?

[…]

Taylor is one of the first casualties of financial transparency, whose nondescript fit clocks in at a cool $182,615, including an $180k Patek Philippe watch you'd otherwise never notice. Compared to that time keeping sticker shock, their $1,850 custom blazer seems downright reasonable.

"You just look like you're wearing a turtleneck sweater and a blazer, but that character knows that actually cost 10 grand," says Dillion. "What does that do to that character's attitude? Can you imagine walking into your first day at a new job, knowing you're wearing $34,000 worth of whatever?" Dillion is referencing the moment Kate Sacker (Condola Rashad), poached from the State's Attorney's office, confidently marches into her first day working at the newly minted Mike Prince Capital as legal council for Prince's lofty plans to bring the 2028 Olympics to New York City. "The onion continues to be peeled over the course of Season 6."

With Axe out of the picture, Season 6 clears the way for Mike Prince to fill in as the new billionaire figurehead of Billions moving forward, buying up every asset once under Axe Cap. By the middle of Episode 4, Prince seems to have won over the office's most important stakeholders, including Wendy and Wags (David Costible), after a contentious first three episodes, but not Taylor, at least just yet. "Burn Rate," like the character's expenses, exposes Taylor's "number"—that is, how much money they need to make before leaving the firm for greater pastures—first set at $100 million, with the intention of using the wealth they've accumulated to make real social change for good, harking back to the starry-eyed Taylor of Season 2.

"I've always known that Taylor was trying to figure out if they could stay a morally centered person in this world, but I didn't know that their ultimate goal was actually to be a philanthropist," says Dillion. "There's now a deeper why, which is, is Taylor doing that because they're trying to make up for all of the shit that they did to get to where they currently are? Or are they doing it because it's something they've always wanted to do?"

In singlehandedly killing Taylor's first philanthropic idea under Prince—to build the infrastructure for free Wi-Fi in both New York City, to be a more attractive destination for the Olympics Committee, and, broadly, Africa—he recalibrates their (mis)conception of how much their Number can truly achieve. The $10 billion boy Prince calls Taylor "kind of rich," even when they're in striking distance of $100 million, and reality-checks their dreams. "If you want to change the world, nine digits ain't gonna do it," he says at the end of the episode.

"What Taylor is going through is a great illustration of a person who is complicated, and is at all times trying to do what is in both their best interest and in the highest interest of all," Dillon says. "It is at the times when those things come into conflict that create the most internal conflict for Taylor."

With a newfound hunger to show up Prince and change the world—their best interest and the highest interest of all aligned—Taylor instantly conjures a new number for their exit strategy. I bet you can guess exactly what it is.

#asia kate dillon #billions #taylor mason #2022 will be the year of the akd renaissance and i am so ready #i do take issue with 1) the opening paragraph suggesting the poker tournament is taylor's first appearance in the show #2) the claim that no one would notice taylor's watch if not for the price tag. i noticed! i've been noticing!! it's a relevant watch!!! #also 3) the multiple misspellings of actors' names in this. cmon #bobby axelrod #mike prince #rian billions #6x04

[themonkeycabal]

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Episode 1 SPOILERS

If you need to blacklist, I will be tagging all things as #tfatws and/or #tfatws spoilers

My roommate keeps calling this The Falcon and the Snowman. I'm not entirely sure it's accidental.

I was going to watch at midnight and then fell asleep. Betrayal. I will not forgive this, brain.

Bucky Barnes character development. Sam Wilson character development. Six full episodes of Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson. When we watched Civil War, did we think we'd actually be lucky enough to get a buddy idiot cop movie? Let alone six hours of it? #blessed

What are we expecting here? I have no idea, honestly. I think all the clips we've been seeing are from the first couple episodes, so they've hidden any sort of plot from us. We know Baron Zemo's around with his stupid purple ski mask and burning hatred for superheroes and probably specifically for Bucky who he tried (and honestly kind of succeeded, before then ultimately failing dramatically) to set up. And Sharon Carter will turn up at some point. OMG guys, Sharon Carter character development!

I'm just here for the buddy bickering and badassery.

SPOILERS BELOW

New World Order: Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes realize that their futures are anything but normal. *Realize*? lol

Also, it's tagged as "science fiction, action-adventure, buddy" Awww.

Aww, Sam looks sad as he gazes at The Shield.

"How's it feel?" "Like it's someone else's." "It isn't."

That's right, Sam! Listen to that voice. That's yours now, baby.

We're just going to roll right into a mission. Rescuing a Captain Vassant, whose plane fell out of contact shortly after take off, from the ridiculously named group LAF, somewhere over Tunisia. Sam's got to keep LAF from doing bad things and the US Military can't be seen doing anything blah blah blah, violation of treaties, yada yada. And Sam's all "blah blah got it". We're on the same page, Sam and me. Nobody wants to hear it, Briefing Exposition Guy.

We will have a Lt. Torres on the ground following along and offering helpful commentary as they go.

Sam is warned to be subtle as he falls backwards out of the cargo plane in very dramatic fashion and then swoops off on his brightly colored wings. lol

Sam gets to the captain's plane but the pilot is dead and a shady LAF guy is piloting. Oh no. Hey, it's Batroc. Last seen getting his ass kicked by Captain America in "CA: The Winter Soldier". He makes some jokes about their prisoner - presumably Captain Vassant. Awful cocky for a guy with a history of getting stomped on, you know.

Anyway, he's about to get his ass kicked by a Captain America again as Sam breaks into the plane. You might just be using wing shields now, Sam, but you're Captain America in my heart. Also, hey, dumb bad guys, don't open fire with an automatic weapon inside a plane or the ricochets might kill your pilot. And his body will slump forward and put the plane into a steep dive.

Batroc distracts Sam while the bad guys gather up Vassant and jump out of the plane with him. They have wingsuits, but Sam has, you know, wings. And like a jet pack. Don't hit the canyon walls, Sam!

Somehow the bad guys have waiting gunships. Did they expect to jump out of the plane over this canyon? I can only assume. Red Wing takes care of one of the helicopters. Man these guys are a pain in the ass. They wing suit into one of the many many helicopters that just happen to be right in the right spot. They're racing for the Libyan border. Then Sam shows up, they throw Vassant out the copter again — this guy is having the worst day — and glide into another chopper.

Man ANOTHER gunship? The hell? They're causing serious ecological damage to this canyon, what with all the zillionty missiles they're firing at Sam. How strapped is this thing?

LT Torres is trying to keep up, and you know, trying to get Sam to not fly into Libyan territory and cause an international incident or some such. Sam is struck by inspiration and not by a missile. But, the missiles are following Sam and Sam is following Batroc's chopper. Sam zooms through the open doors of the chopper, knocks poor Vassant out of the chopper AGAIN (but then catches him), and LAF blows up their own helicopter. Alas, Batroc escaped.

Sam saves the day and LT Torres is like super excited. Don't break your humvee, Torres.

Torres and Sam stop by a tea shop in Tunis, or somewhere. Sam's trying to fix his tech that got a little shot up and Torres buys the tea. A man comes up and thanks Sam for saving his wife. It's sweet. And then Torres gets up and wanders about a bit with his phone as he exposits about LAF. Is Torres about to become a pin cushion? Only instead of pins it'll be bullets? I'm not feeling good about his continued health. He's too cute and earnest.

Oh, he's looking for some sort of hidden, augmented reality tag on the walls. A red handprint, id'ing some group that calls themselves the Flag Smashers. Bad guys are really scraping the bottom of the evil name barrel. Anyway, they think the world was better during the blip. Nothing says better like mass failure of infrastructure and probably world wide famine. They want a unified world without borders. I have big doubts the world would be a borderless utopia during a blip-like event. Power vacuums invite trouble, seldom unity.

Anyhoo. Sam kind of agrees with me, "every time something gets better for one group, it gets worse for another".

Torres will track the 'online chatter'. But he's also heard some wacky things about Steve Rogers, conspiracy theory stuff, "they think that he's in a secret base on the moon, looking down over us". LOL. What? Is Steve a moon angel now? or Santa Claus? "You didn't like fly him to the moon?" Sam assures him that's all very much silly foolishness. Steve's in Boca working on his tan.

Sam's back in D.C. giving a talk about Steve at the Smithsonian's National Air & Space museum. "And he mastered posing stoically". Hey, I have that picture. Also, RHODEY! Hi Rhodey!

"A few months ago, billions of people reappeared after 5 years away. Sending the world into turmoil." Again. I know this was meant to come out before WandaVision, but timeline-wise this works better.

"We need new heroes. Ones suited for the times we're in. Symbols are nothing without the women and men that give them meaning." Sam holds up The Shield. "I don't know if there's been a greater symbol." Aww, he's retiring the shield. He hands it off to museum people and they put it in a display case. I think Rhodey has some thoughts about this. I suspect Rhodey maybe doesn't agree.

Sam and Rhodey wander through the Cap exhibit and Sam's talking about how when he left (or got snapped, it's not like you had a choice about that, Sam), his nephews were babies and now they're little men. Awww. Rhodey says Sam should bring them to D.C., he'll teach them how to fly, "the right way". lol.

Rhodey says it's crazy to think nobody will be carrying the shield. Sam points out they went 70 years without, so like …

Rhodey wants to know why Sam didn't take up the mantle. BTW, this is a cool exhibit, marvel peeps. Sam says it feels like it belongs to someone else … Steve. Rhodey says everything's broken. Allies are enemies, things are torn apart. People are looking for somebody to make it better. Having made his pitch, Rhodey leaves Sam to stare mournfully at the shield. I think you're afraid to pick up the shield, Sam. Afraid you won't measure up. But, you can do it. I have faith. Also, Steve was kind of a disaster in his own way. He wasn't perfect, which was the point of Steve as a hero. Pick up the shield, Sam.

A fancy hotel, chatting people in the lobby, up to a mezzanine, a group of very Russian oligarch looking dudes and their security. And lo! A metal arm punches through a wall and the Winter Soldier, looking very Winter Soldiery appears and stabs some dudes in the neck. This has a sepia, dream/nightmareness to it. Oh yeah, it's his old shiny silver arm. Totally a nightmare/very bad memory. "Hail Hydra" and he kills the head Russian guy. The poor dude who was just chatting in the lobby is caught trying to get into his door. He swears he didn't see anything, begs for his life and the Winter Soldier shoots him. Bucky wakes up, breathing heavily. Poor Bucky.

Glad he's in therapy. I'm sure goat herding in Wakanda was good and peaceful and all, but, goats will only get you so far. Also glad we've skipped the "wanted terrorist" part and gone on to traumatized hero.

I get the feeling he's not the best patient. He lies to his therapist straight off. Twice. lol. "You're a civilian now. With your history the government needs to know, you're not gonna … [therapist makes stabby motion]." lol (I love this actress by the way. She's been in everything for ages. She's great). "It's a condition of your pardon. So tell me about your most recent nightmare." "I didn't have a nightmare." She starts writing, Bucky objects and tells her she's being passive-aggressive, but he gives in.  

He has a list of amends to make and three rules to follow. He crossed a name off. There's a Hydra pawn who's a senator, he helped her get into office. "After Hydra disbanded, she continued to use the power I gave her." Hmm. He tracks her car and listens in on her plotting to have a congressman killed.

* Rule number one: Can't do anything illegal.

He's hijacked the Senator's car and is remote controlling it, making it drive all out of control and freaking her out. He says he was collecting intel to give to an aide to convict her. Absolutely only did that. Not one illegal thing about that at all, no ma'am.

"Rule number two?" "Hmm. What was rule number two?" "Nobody gets hurt. It's a big one." "Then why isn't it rule number one?" Oh, Bucky, you're a jackass.

* Rule number two: Nobody gets hurt.

"I didn't hurt anybody. Promise." He totally broke a dude's hand and then punched him in the face, knocking him out. I mean, there's levels of 'hurt' I suppose.

"The whole point of making amends is to fulfill rule number three." "Of course I completed rule number three."

* Rule number three: "I am no longer the Winter Soldier. I am James 'Bucky' Barnes. And you're part of my efforts to make amends." He says to the corrupt senator he's just been terrifying. And then he walks away as a tac team pulls up. lol.

What I'm getting from this therapy session is that Bucky is a big fat fibber.

Also he's got a little black book full of names. Including, I see, H. Zemo. That's not going to go as smoothly as taking down a shady government fatcat, I think.

"So you did it all right, but it didn't help with the nightmares?" "Well, like I said, I didn't have any." Fibber.

People wanna help you Bucky and you can trust them. "I trust people," he mutters grumpily. She asks for his phone and he hands it over. Look, lady! Trust! Probably government mandated trust, but still!

"You don't have ten phone numbers on this thing." … I don't have ten phone numbers on my phone. :( "Oh, and you've been ignoring texts from Sam." Well …

"I am the only person you have called all week. That is so sad." lol. Tough love from the therapist. I'm feeling a little judged myself, though. "You're alone." ALRIGHT DON'T RUB IT IN!

"You're a hundred years old. You have no history. No family—" "Are you lashing out at me, doc? Because that's really unprofessional." I love you Bucky, but you are a disaster patient.

Bucky relents. "I'm trying. This is new for me. I didn't have a moment to deal with anything. I had a little calm in Wakanda. And other than that, I just went from one fight to another for 90 years." Get this man a goat farm!

"So now that you've stopped fighting, what do you want?" "Peace." A goat farm. "That is utter bullshit." lol "You're a terrible shrink." "I was an excellent soldier, so I saw a lot of dead bodies and I know how that can shut you down. And if you are alone, that is the quietest, most personal hell." Get some friends, Bucky. "I know you've been through a lot. But, you've got your mind back. You're being pardoned. These are good things. You're free." "To do what?"

On the streets of Brooklyn. Bucky breaks up an argument between neighbors about trashcans. Hey, Bucky has a friend! Yori Nakajima who's probably like 80+. Did you babysit him back in the day, Buck? har har. They were going to meet for lunch, but some punk named Unique was putting his trash into Mr. Nakajima's trash can and just derailed the whole day. The horror. No joke, though, people get so nutted up about that. It's weird to me. Of course, I did also have a neighbor who never put out his trash for pickup and just snuck out at night before trash day and distributed his garbage into in other people's bins. Cheapass.

"Hey man, I'm Unique. Like Monique but it's got a 'u' in there for uniqueness." Yeah, you should have let Yori smack him, Buck.

Well now Yori is just not in the mood for lunch. Bucky tries to persuade him, but one grumpy old man out grumps the other. "But Izzy. We always go to Izzy on Wednesday. What if I buy?" "Fine. But no talking." lol. BFFs!

Yori is looking at the obituaries. "Look, nobody made it past 90 this week." Bucky tsks "So young, such a shame."

Bucky kind of smiles at the girl behind the counter at the sushi joint, Yori tells him he should ask her out. Bucky makes a "are you nuts, shut up" face. That doesn't stop Yori. "He would like to take you out on a date. Maybe to bingo or a night of pinochle." You're a wild man, Yori!

She's down by it, though, and she and Yori hammer out the details while Bucky's like uh, okay, so wow, that's happening. "There's a dance to these things. You can't … you gotta warm up and I haven't danced since 1943."

Yori sees something and suddenly gets sad. His son loves red bean mochi. His son was a consultant, working abroad and he was killed. Oh. Oh Bucky, why you gotta … Yori's son was the innocent witness he killed at the hotel in his nightmare/memory. "I will never know what really happened to him." Brutal.

Delacroix, Louisana

Sam's on his way home. Wilson Family Seafood. Aww. His nephews are helping mom with the catch. "Blue for the snapper, orange for the white fish," Sam calls out. The boys run over to him. They do look like fine gentlemen. It's weird, Sam, I get it. I recently realized my oldest nephew will be 13 in May and it's like "no, he's only in kindergarten, what are you talking about?"

His sister greets him then tells him he's looking all sneaky. Sam deflects. Their boat has seen better days. The Paul & Darlene. Aww. Is that his parents names? "Baby being held together by duct tape and prayers." Just needs to float long enough for his sister to sell it. But Sam's all, uh I thought we were going to *discuss* that. Uh oh, family drama. "We did, and then you were off fighting Dr Space Cape or whatever (lol), while I was holding it together for five long years." Ouch.

Sam is not down by this selling the boat thing. His sister doesn't seem to think they're in a position to hold on to it. Also, she'd really like to not hash this out on the pier with like twenty other people around, Sam.

They get into more of an argument on the boat. The family biz is not doing well financially. Sarah won't let Sam help for some reason, and he makes some comment about the house and loans and she punches him in the chest. lol "I forgot how hard you hit."

Sam insists they can turn it around, consolidate loans. And she's all, been there done that, I've come to terms with this. He's a persistent little jerk. This is such a perfectly sibling argument. Notably he has moved himself out of punching range.

Aww, she wants to believe he can save the boat, but she has DOUBTS.

Back in Brooklyn. Bucky attempts his date. He turns up at the end of the sushi girl's shift and gives her flowers. "Well, if that's not the most adorably old-fashioned thing anyone's ever done."

They chat while she tidies. He tried online dating oh lol. It didn't take. She tells him "You sound like my dad. Wait how old are you?" "Hundred and six." Oh yeah, what a funny joke. Next she wants to know why he's wearing gloves. "I have … um … poor circulation." He grimaces at himself and glances out the window. Smooth as silk, Bucky. Smoooooth.

"Let's play a game." Now, I'm thinking like some weird dating word/get-to-know-each-other game or something. I don't know. But, nope, she means Battleship. lol. I like her.

The drinking game version of battleship. Bucky sucks at it. "You sure can drink." "Yeah, well." Super assassin, unfair advantage.

We're just going to rub in this whole The Winter Soldier killed Yori's son thing, as she says it's nice that he's spending time with the old man. Since he was all messed up after his son was murdered and how it was extra hard because he didn't know what happened. I'm not sure this is healthy, Bucky.

"There's no word for someone whose kids die." Okay, ouch, lady, jeez. Bucky looks like he wants to puke. Or crawl into a deep dark hole. Or something. "Because it's the worst thing that can happen." Bucky nopes right out the front door. So, maybe they should have played pinochle instead.

Bucky goes to Yori. Are you really going to tell this man you murdered his son when you were a brain-washed Hydra assassin? Yori asks how the date was, and Bucky sees a shrine to the man's son in the apartment. Poor Bucky. He makes some excuse about owing Yori for lunch and leaves. Yori's name is in his book of amends. :(

Back in Louisiana. Sam and the kids are packing up meals. His sister maybe wants to sell meals in addition to fish. Sam says they've got to get going to their appointment at the bank. She's says it's in an hour. Sam must be just the worst brother to live with "There's no such thing as on time. You're either early or late. Pick one." Man, no wonder he gets punched.

Switzerland

Lt Torres is walking down a street with an unusually large number of people just sort of milling around in the middle of the street looking at their phones. He's got his kind of hidden, recording. He stops a guy and asks if he knows what they're supposed to be doing. Oh it's the flag munchers, or whatever. There's a weird phony bird whistle and then people gather around a person handing out masks with red handprints on them. His decoy bad guy phone chirps and gives the order to run. A guy jumps out of a nearby building with two huge duffle bags (of money it seems) and walks off while the previously milling people become a seemingly panicked mob, distracting police and whatnot.

Torres tries to arrest the jumper guy, who appears to have some super strength as he kicks a policeman halfway across the street. Torres, you're cute, but not super bright. Torres gets body slammed and then stomped. He survives again, however, defying the odds.

At the bank. The account manager keeps giving Sam the side-eye as he goes through their paperwork. "Do I know you from somewhere." Sam's all modest, "I don't know. Do you?" And then he makes a little wing flappy move with his hands. lol. What a nerd. "Falcon!" Then he takes a selfie with Sam. Sarah is very done with all this. She tries to get them back on track. Account guy wants to know how Avengers make a living. Probably not looking good for your loan, Sam.

"Is there some kind of fund for heroes? Or did Stark pay you when he was around? My condolences, by the way."

Yeah, financially this is looking bad, my dude. "You have no income over the last five years." Well, but, he was blipped. I mean …

Alas, shot down for the loan.

Sam and Sarah argue on the street. Ah, Sam ran off to the Air Force and didn't deal with what was going on at home. Oh my, this is getting ugly. Speaking as someone who got disowned on account of a family business, let me just say, they're not easy. Nuh-uh.

"Half the boat's mine and so is the house. We're not selling our family's legacy." "You gonna do me like what when you know I'm right?"

I get it might be awkward to ask, but I bet you could have asked Pepper for a loan, Sam, and she would have given it to you gladly. Come on, man.

Later. Sam's working on the boat's engine, and it's not cooperating. In the cabin he looks at the family pictures on all the walls. He's having a rough day. About as rough as Torres who texts him to find a secure line and call him along with a selfie of his bruised and battered face. #important (lol, really?)

Sam watches the footage Torres caught and they chat about how Torres was supposed to be doing that stuff online and not getting his face kicked in in Switzerland.

Sarah interrupts and turns on the TV. Some guy is giving a speech about how everybody needs a hero. "We need someone who can inspire us again. Someone who can be a symbol for all of us. So on behalf of the Department of Defense and our Commander-in-Chief, it is with great honor that we announce here today that the United States of America has a new hero." hmm, no comment. Except, you should have taken up the shield, Sam. Now it's Sam's turn to look like he's going to puke. What did I say about power vacuums? Somebody will fill them, whether you want them to or not. 

This new guy looks like a goober. There, I said it.

credits

So … lots of setup. And very clear on the two guys trying to figure out where they fit in this world post blip and big wars. Both of them trying to fix broken families.

Plus a goober in a Cap suit.

So far so good. 

#tfatws #tfatws spoilers #the falcon and the winter soldier #the falcon and the winter soldier spoilers

[theculturedmarxist]

The New York Times is literally a propaganda outlet and Timothy Egan is a deceitful chode. His every word drips with the anxious desperation of the Democrats who know their goose is cooked.

Watching “Succession,” the HBO show about the most despicable plutocrats to seize the public imagination since the Trumps were forced on us, made me want to tax the ultrarich into a homeless shelter. And it almost made a Bernie Bro of me.

That’s the thing about class loathing: It feels good, a moral high with its own endorphins, but is ultimately self-defeating. A Bernie Sanders rally is a hit from the same pipe: Screw those greedy billionaire bastards!

Sanders has passion going for him. He has authenticity. He certainly has consistency: His bumper-sticker sloganeering hasn’t changed for half a century. He was, “even as a young man, an old man,” as Time magazine said.

But he cannot beat Donald Trump, for the same reason people do not translate their hatred of the odious rich into pitchfork brigades against walled estates.

Because powerful oligarchs that own their government murder them with impunity when they do.

>March 7 was a bitterly cold day in Detroit, and a crowd estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000 gathered near the Dearborn city limits, about a mile from the Ford plant. The Detroit Times called it "one of the coldest days of the winter, with a frigid gale whooping out of the northwest". Marchers carried banners reading "Give Us Work, "We Want Bread Not Crumbs", and "Tax the Rich and Feed the Poor". Albert Goetz gave a speech, asking that the marchers avoid violence. The march proceeded peacefully along the streets of Detroit until it reached the Dearborn city limits.

>There, the Dearborn police attempted to stop the march by firing tear gas into the crowd and began hitting marchers with clubs. One officer fired a gun at the marchers. The unarmed crowd scattered into a field covered with stones, picked them up, and began throwing stones at the police. The angry marchers regrouped and advanced nearly a mile toward the plant. There, two fire engines began spraying cold water onto the marchers from an overpass. The police were joined by Ford security guards and began shooting into the crowd. Marchers Joe York, Coleman Leny and Joe DeBlasio were killed, and at least 22 others were wounded by gunfire.

>The leaders decided to call off the march at that point and began an orderly retreat. Harry Bennett, head of Ford security, drove up in a car, opened a window, and fired a pistol into the crowd. Immediately, the car was pelted with rocks, and Bennett was injured. He got out of the car and continued firing at the retreating marchers. Dearborn police and Ford security men opened fire with machine guns on the retreating marchers. Joe Bussell, 16 years old, was killed, and dozens more men were wounded. Bennett was hospitalized for his injury.

> All of the seriously wounded marchers were arrested, and the police chained many to their hospital beds after they were admitted for treatment. A nationwide search was conducted for William Z. Foster, but he was not arrested. No law enforcement or Ford security officer was arrested, although all reliable reports showed that they had engaged in all the gunfire, resulting in deaths, injuries and property damage. The New York Times reported that "Dearborn streets were stained with blood, streets were littered with broken glass and the wreckage of bullet-riddled automobiles, and nearly every window in the Ford plant's employment building had been broken".

The United States has never been a socialist country, even when it most likely should have been one, during the robber baron tyranny of the Gilded Age or the desperation of the Great Depression, and it never will be. Which isn’t to say that American capitalism is working; it needs Teddy Roosevelt-style trustbusting and restructuring. We’re coming for you, Facebook.

Yeah, just look how well that’s worked out, you fucking idiot.

The next month presents the last chance for serious scrutiny of Sanders, who is leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire. After that, Republicans will rip the bark off him. When they’re done, you will not recognize the aging, mouth-frothing, business-destroying commie from Ben and Jerry’s dystopian dairy. Demagogy is what Republicans do best. And Sanders is ripe for caricature. 

The same Republicans that got their breakfast ate by the dottering windbag cheetoman? The same Republicans that are unpopular with over half the fucking country? The same Republicans which have shown majority support for Sanders’s policies in the past? Those are the Republicans you’re talking about, right, Timothy, you fucking asshole?

I’m not worried about the Russian stuff — Bernie’s self-described “very strange honeymoon” to the totalitarian hell of the Soviet Union in 1988, and his kind words for similar regimes. Compared with a president who is a willing stooge for the Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, a little vodka-induced dancing with the red bear is peanuts.

Nor am I worried about the legitimate questions concerning the candidate’s wife, Jane Sanders, who ran a Vermont college into the ground. Again, Trump’s family of grifters — from Ivanka securing her patents from China while Daddy made other promises to Beijing, to Don Jr.’s using the White House to leverage the family brand — give Democrats more than enough ammunition to return the fire.

This is fun. Due to a complete lack of incriminating conduct, little Timmy has to invent wrongdoing to libel Jane Sanders. I suppose he’s relying on his readers being too stupid to read the article that he himself links, another NYT hitpiece that desperately tries to paint Ms Sanders as a shady character without anything in the way of tangible proof.

>Federal prosecutors have not spoken publicly about their investigation, though late last year, Ms. Sanders’s lead lawyer said he had been told it had been closed. And while doubts remain about the contribution pledges claimed by the college, the lawyer has said that neither Ms. Sanders nor her husband was even questioned by investigators, indicating a lack of significant evidence of a crime.

>After Ms. Sanders’s ouster, the college’s troubles worsened. It abandoned a promising effort she had undertaken to sell some of its new land to improve its finances, interviews show. A few years later, when it did begin selling, it was to a consortium that secretly included at least one member of its board, raising conflict-of-interest questions.

>There is little question that the college’s 2016 demise can be traced to Ms. Sanders’s decision to champion an aggressive — critics say reckless — plan to buy the land. But with potential students put off by the lack of a campus, and with many such colleges struggling at the time, her move was the academic equivalent of a Hail Mary. Her allies said she never had a chance to fulfill her vision.

>“Jane made an audacious gambit to save the college,” said Genevieve Jacobs, a former faculty member. “It seemed to be a moment of ‘change or die.’”

>In interviews and emails, Ms. Sanders expressed frustration at her dismissal and the college’s failure to continue her rescue plan.

>“They went a completely different direction in every way than what we had proposed and decided upon as a board — with the bank, with the diocese, the bonding agency,” she said. “They didn’t carry out any of the plan. It was very confusing and upsetting at the time.”

The TL;DR seems to be: Jane Sanders tried to save a struggling school with an audacious but risky plan that ended up being aborted when she was let go by by a board, some of the members of which may have had a stake in seeing it fail. At the very least, a much more complex situation than the aspersion of “running it into the ground.”

Trump bragged about sexual assault, paid off a porn star and ran a fraudulent university. He sucks up to dictators and tells a half-dozen lies before he puts his socks on in the morning. A weird column about a rape fantasy from 1972 is not going to sink Bernie when Trump has debased all public discourse.

No, what will get the Trump demagogue factory working at full throttle is the central message of the Sanders campaign: that the United States needs a political revolution. It may very well need one. But most people don’t think so, as Barack Obama has argued. And getting two million new progressive votes in the usual area codes is not going to change that.

“Ah jeez, ah fuck, he has no sexual indiscretions that I can dredge up and his Feminist polemic against pornography and the rape culture that it engenders is old news, and if I actually reported on it honestly people might actually read it and support his ideas. Oh, well, you see, despite the incredible groundswell of support for just such a thing, Barack Obama, the man that gave the banks trillions of dollars and then allowed the state apparatus to function as their gestapo-cum-storm troopers, says we don’t need one!”

Timothy Egan wants to dismiss “two million new progressive votes” after doing a little gaslighting. His Democrat masters don’t want people to remember that it was Obama’s promises of Hope and Change after 8 years of Republican tyranny that generated a record breaking voter turnout. They would also like you to forget that 2016 was a 20-year low in voter turnout. Do you think those things are related, Mr Egan? Do you think that there might be some connection between Obama taking advantage of the desperation of millions of people, betraying them, and then those people not fucking showing up next time, causing your party to lose to the dimwit that they themselves boosted to the position?

Give Sanders credit for moving public opinion along on a living wage, higher taxes on the rich and the need for immediate action to stem the immolation of the planet. Most great ideas start on the fringe and move to the middle.

But some of his other ideas are stillborn, or never get beyond the fringe. Socialism, despite its flavor-of-the-month appeal to young people, is not popular with the general public. Just 39 percent of Americans view socialism positively, a bare uptick from 2010, compared with 87 percent who have a positive view of free enterprise, Gallup found last fall.

“Just” 39 percent of Americans, up 4% from 2016. This is ignoring for the moment that due to Americans’ piss-poor education system they have no idea what “Socialism” means aside from “more government.” Looking at the breakdown of results, it seems as though they just asked people off the top of their head what they thought about X, no definition or elaboration given. Unsurprisingly, when you look at the actual numbers on specific issues, you can see exactly why Egan has to play this deceptive bullshit: of respondents 18-34, 52% have a favorable view of “Socialism,” as opposed to 47% supporting “Capitalism.” This is in sharp contrast to the 35-54 and 55+ cohorts. 65% of Democrats have a favorable view of “Socialism.” Those with a “Liberal” ideology are even more in favor at 74%, Timothy Egan, you massive shithead.

What’s more, American confidence in the economy is now at the highest level in nearly two decades. That’s hardly the best condition for overthrowing the system.

"The highest level in nearly two decades.” That’s faint fucking praise right there.

You can see the tremendous fucking crater caused by the crash in 2007/8, a reversal of a whopping -81 points from the previous year. With many economists forecasting recession beginning either this year or the next, we’ll see how long the confidence lasts. 

So-called Medicare for all, once people understand that it involves eliminating all private insurance, polls at barely above 40 percent in some surveys, versus the 70 percent who favor the option of Medicare for all who want it. Other polls show majority support. But cost is a huge concern. And even Sanders cannot give a price tag for nationalizing more than one-sixth of the economy.

A ban on fracking is a poison pill in a must-win state like Pennsylvania, which Democrats lost by just over 44,000 votes in 2016. Eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another Sanders plan, is hugely unpopular with the general public.

“Medicare for all is really unpopular, except when it isn’t.”

Hmm, you know? Hmmm.

As for fracking, from his own link:

>A November poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Cook Political Report found that only 39 percent of Pennsylvania swing voters saw a fracking ban as a good idea, even as nearly 7 in 10 of those same voters said they supported the idea of a “Green New Deal” for the environment.

Democrats are whinging on the jobs “lost” to a fracking ban as though it exists in isolation. 39% might support a fracking ban, but 70% support the GND, which could potentially offset the “job loss” with industry that has the potential not to leave their state as a fucking environmentally ruined horror show. I haven’t run the numbers on this, but not living in a cesspool of polluted air and water tends to be pretty popular, Timbo.

More shellgames from Mr Egan regarding abolishing ICE.

> Only 1 in 4 voters in the poll, 25 percent, believe the federal government should get rid of ICE. The majority, 54 percent, think the government should keep ICE. Twenty-one percent of voters are undecided. 

That sounds bad. Maybe it’s not such a good ide

>But a plurality of Democratic voters do support abolishing ICE, the poll shows. Among Democrats, 43 percent say the government should get rid of ICE, while only 34 percent say it should keep ICE.

Oh.

Sanders is a rigid man, and he projects grumpy-old-man rigidity, with his policy prescriptions frozen in failed Marxist pipe dreams. He’s unlikely to change. I sort of like that about his character, in the same way I like that he didn’t cave to the politically correct bullies who went after him for accepting the support of the influential podcaster Joe Rogan.

Democrats win with broad-vision optimists who still shake up the system — Franklin Roosevelt, of course, but also Obama. The D’s flipped 40 House seats in 2018 without using any of Sanders’s stringent medicine. If they stick to that elixir they’ll oust Trump, the goal of a majority of Americans.

Democrats lose with fire-and-brimstone fundamentalists. Three times, the party nominated William Jennings Bryan, the quirky progressive with great oratorical pipes, and three times they were trounced. Look him up, kids. Your grandchildren will do a similar search for Bernie Sanders when they wonder how Donald Trump won a second term.

“Failed Marxist pipe dreams.” Aaaaay lmao. You should also have an inkling something is wrong when you have to go all the way back to FDR to find someone that supports your point. Talk about “poison pills,” Obama proved himself to be as much of a snake as the rest, and the effects of that resonated in 2016 when the Dems ran on a platform of “that’s a nice country you have there, you wouldn’t want Trump to get elected, would you?” How did that work out? You ran one of the most unpopular politicians in the country—after very blatantly rigging the primaries against Sanders to do so—against one of the most unpopular capitalists in the country, and lost, dipshit!

Ironically, I think Timbob’s closing statement will prove true, though not in the way his clown ass intends. Shills like Egan are doing everything they can to try and poison public perception against Sanders and his policies, who only proves increasingly popular as time goes on, so much so in fact that the DNC is already biting its nails and muttering to itself about ways it can try and cheat his supporters again.

In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.

They deny it in the article, claim that changing the rules would be “bad sportsmanship,” but one would be a fool to believe them. If anything, their ambivalence towards relying on Superdelegates would make me even more nervous at this stage. Politico wants it to seem like the DNC is bent on playing fair, but more likely than not they have no intention of changing the convention rules because they believe there’s no need. With Warren’s flagging support and the luke-warm response to Biden, I doubt they’re overcome with optimism of beating Sanders in an honest primary. With all the shenanigans from last time’s primaries in mind, it’s likely that the machinery to rig the results their way is already in place—the primary could already be over before it even begins.

#iowa #2020 election #us presidential election #bernie sanders #bernie sander for president #DNC #timothy egan #new york times #propaganda #propagandists #universal healthcare #medicare for all #fracking #marxism #socialism #capitalism #donald trump #millennials #generation z #zoomers #economy #economics #recession

[quakerjoe]

For anyone who doesn’t have the time or inclination to read the “Mueller report”...

I noted some highlights from Volume I that you can read in 5 minutes. I couldn’t help myself. 😆

*”The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”

*The counter-intelligence investigation was opened because Papadopolous told a foreign diplomat that the Russian government could assist Trump by releasing damaging info on Clinton.

*The Trump campaign “welcomed the potential damage” resulting from Russia’s “information warfare” and “active measures.”

*The IRA (Internet Research Agency), based in Russia and funded by “Putin’s Chef” Yevgeniy Prigozhin, launched an information warfare campaign to undermine the US electoral system.

*Trump, his sons, and many of his minions like Flynn and Kellyanne Conway promoted Russian generated content alleging voter fraud and other Russian propaganda lies.

*An estimated 126 million people saw posts made by the Russians to influence the election.

*The Russians “organized and promoted” dozens of “political rallies inside the US while posing as US grassroots activists,” going so far as to communicate with Trump campaign members to help coordinate the rallies.

*The Russian military hacked the computers and email accounts of hundreds of Clinton campaign employees, advisors, and volunteers, the DNC and the DCCC, releasing documents timed to interfere with the election. They implanted malware on their networks. GRU officers captured their passwords, banking information, sensitive personal information, internal communications, etc.

*GRU military units targeted military, political, governmental, and non-governmental entities in the US.

*Russian military GRU officers targeted and hacked computers belonging to US state and local entities, Secretaries of State, state boards of elections, county governments, and private technology firms that manufacture and administer “election-related hardware and software, such as voter registration software and electronic polling stations. The GRU continued to target these victims through the elections in November 2016.”

*In just one example, the GRU gained access to info on “millions of registered Illinois voters.”

*Russian government officials and prominent businessmen made a concerted effort during the campaign and post-election transition period to make inroads into the Trump camp.

<Kushner just blew that all off as a few FaceBook posts.>

*Trump fired Comey and freaked when the Special Counsel was appointed, saying it was the end of his presidency. He tried repeatedly to get Sessions to “unrecuse” and to curtail the investigation.

*Trump’s cohorts lied to Congress and the SCO, destroyed evidence, and in some cases refused to be interviewed to avoid accountability.

*Amidst many redacted paragraphs, a few words indicate that while Trump and Gates were driving to La Guardia, Trump told Gates that more releases of Clinton emails were forthcoming.

*Trump continued to express frustration that the Clinton emails had not been found. The Trump Campaign planned an entire strategy around their release by WikiLeaks.

*Harm to Ongoing Matter* Looks like Corsi is in very hot “ongoing matter” water, which is redacted. Unless Barr can still save him.

*Podesta e-mails stolen by the GRU are released by WikiLeaks less than an hour after we all watch the video of Trump say disgusting things about women - “I moved on her like a bitch” and if you’re a star you can do anything you want like “grab them by the p*ssy.”

*Trump Jr “colluded” with WikiLeaks by messaging with them and tweeting links they requested he share. However, they did not conclude it was a “coordinated effort” with Russia to disseminate the e-mails.

*Trump repeatedly asked people affiliated with his campaign to find the “deleted Clinton emails.” Flynn took it to heart and sent people looking, like Peter Smith, the man whose suicide note read “NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER.” Smith claimed he was in contact with Russian hackers and was coordinating his efforts with Trump campaign members Flynn, Sam Clovis, Bannon, and Kellyanne Conway. The SCO could only verify he communicated with Flynn and Clovis for certain.

*Again, because it’s so much worse than Watergate because it involves a hostile foreign adversary directing a concerted attack on our country, TRUMP DIRECTED his campaign people to find the emails he assumed to have been hacked by the Russian military so he could use them to harm his political rival.

*There are a gazillion (by my count, only 101 per Business Insider) “links” between the Trump campaign and those with ties to the Russian government, but the Office could not prove with the info available to them that it rose to the level of a chargeable criminal conspiracy. Again - none of the players “remember” or “recall” anything damning, or they refused to be interviewed or destroyed evidence. This is an incredibly high bar of proof for a narrowly defined crime, so carry on being traitors.

*Trump Jr. seeks documents and info to incriminate Clinton via Goldstone, who says the Crown Prosecutor of Russia is offering them, prompting the “Trump Tower Meeting.”

*On page 187 there’s a paragraph that I find pretty gross. They are letting the Trump Tower meeting participants like Jr. (who refused to be interviewed) and Kushner off in part because they may have been ignorant of campaign finance law. Also, they can’t prove how much the damaging info the Russians claimed to have was worth monetarily, so they get another pass. President Trump and Jr. went to great lengths to cover up this meeting, which any reasonable observer knows is because they KNEW it was ethically wrong, and that it might also be illegal.

*Trump’s written answers to Mueller’s questions state he doesn’t remember if he was involved with changing the RNC’s platform stance on armed support for Ukraine.

*Manafort had Gates give Kilimnik (ties to Russian Intelligence) Trump Campaign updates and polling data, which per Manafort’s own attorney’s admission in Manafort’s trial was “very detailed” and “focused.” Many of Manafort’s shady dealings were covered up by using encrypted applications.

*Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs fully intended to use Manafort to get Trump to support their plan to control eastern Ukraine.

*Pages and pages of shady stuff about Russians, Erik Prince, Nader, the UAE, a chess tournament, the Seychelles, Libya, etc.

*Bannon and Prince’s phones had no text messages on them prior to March 2017, and neither one of them knows why. What a mystery. Provider records show they exchanged dozens of messages.

*Kushner asks Kislyak if they can communicate “using secure facilities at the Russian Embassy” so that, per Kislyak’s suggestion, Russian generals can talk to the Trump transition team to brief them on Syria. Kislyak says no to the Russian Embassy idea.

*Kushner meets with Gorkov, the head of the Russian-government-owned and US sanctioned VEB bank. Kushner says the meeting was “diplomatic.” VEB bank’s public statement says they met to discuss “business.” Mueller here reminds us that Kushner was about to owe a ton of money on 666 5th Ave.

*The Trump Transition team attempted to undermine the Obama administration regarding a United Nations resolution calling for Israel to “cease settlement activities in Palestinian territory.” There was media speculation that the US would not oppose it. Multiple Trump team members, including Michael Flynn and President-elect Trump, communicated with foreign governments such as Russia and Egypt to undermine or delay the resolution, and thereby the current US administration. It passed 14-0 with the US abstaining.

*In sum, despite all the many contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians, the Trump campaign was receptive to their offers of help only sometimes and it did not rise to the level of conspiring with the Russian government’s election interference campaign. It would be difficult to prove they “willfully violated the law.” Their actions may not be sufficient to sustain criminal charges under FARA or criminal conspiracy law, but several of them blatantly lied and obstructed justice anyway and were charged accordingly, like Papadopolous and Flynn.

*Insufficient evidence to charge Jeff Sessions with perjury because his cagey answers and faulty memories (colloquially known as “lies”) were plausible in the context of the questions.

*Some other characters not charged with perjury/making false statements because of evidentiary hurdles to prove falsity, others because the witnesses were ultimately truthful, and others because of “considerations of culpability, deterrence, and resource-preservation.”

- Elizabeth Renfrow Madison

[atimefordragons]

[ T S E S A R E V N A  ... ]

My incomplete audition for Gem Quest, didn’t have the time to participate properly, let alone finish my audition from all the other groups (yeah, I don’t know what time management is and have no idea how to pace myself). 

“В небе далеком горит звезда, | In distant heaven star shines Не одинока и не одна | It's not alone and not the one Каждый себе выбирает путь | Everyone choose their own way И она не даст свернуть | And star won't allow them to turn Не закрывай глаза | Don't close your eyes Смотри она ведет тебя.. | Look, it leads you...”

-  Звезда (Dima Bilan ft Anna Belan)

Real Name: Yekatrina “Katya/Rina” Anatolyevna Raevskaya

Age: 26

FC: Alia Bhatt

Species & Class: Dragonborn & Mage-Knight

Guild: Moonstone

Description of In-Game Powers: (what their fantasy species lets them do, basically, and all the associated drawbacks)

A dragonborn is a cross-bred species, born from the bloodline of either a human or an elf, and a Great Dragon (highly evolved, ancient dragons that can cast spells, and shit, and even speak the human tongue). Because great dragons are rare, most dragonborn are second generation or later. In the case of Tsesarevna, an ice dragon and a human (not a first gen).

Dragonborns have a natural affinity for magic, particularly elemental, even more specifically for the element of the dragon type whose blood they inherited, in the case of Tsesarevna, frozen water related magic, ice, frost, snow.

Place of Birth: Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation

Appearance: (optional textual description/notes of wardrobe, features not represented by fc, etc)

Places Most Likely to be Found In-Game: Level 20 - A Midwinter Night’s Dream (I see what you did there Ayz) and Level 38 - Murias Pass (the snow reminds her of home, ya know. The cold never bothered me anyway), also sometimes Level 39 - The Dragon, but she’s technically stuck on that level because she refuses to kill the Dragon, issa zaldrīzo ānogar.

Current Inventory:

History Book: The Dragon King Festival

Strongest character trait: eurovision knowledge Confidence (in herself and some others)

Strengths: Katya is almost surprisingly determined, it contradicts with the rest of her “I’ve never had to work hard to get what I want in my life” type personality, but she is persevering and stubborn, when she wants something, she won’t stop until she gets it. Which in her real life was never very difficult getting.  

Weaknesses: Where to even start? Spoiled Princess Brat (she has never not gotten what she wants in her life, and it shows), impatient, impulsive, not exactly a team player (I mean, she is now, but that shady shit she pulled back when she first started playing kinda got her a rep), arrogant, prideful, kind of a bitch (doesn’t really think of it as a weakness, but ya know, it’s hard to make friends), dragon obsession (refuses to kill dragons, even in order to advance the game, got herself and party members killed early on in the game ‘cause of it), kind of an adrenaline junkie, and reckless af. She doesn’t really consider the consequences of the game, wholeheartedly believes her dad, fam and connections in the real world will get her out soon enough, so has no problem running head first into fire (”I’m too hot to die in a video game”).

Player Stats: (on a scale of 1-10, 1 being the weakest, 10 being the strongest. try to balance it out!)

STRENGTH: 9

DEFENSE: 7

CHARISMA: 3

PSYCHE: 5

WILLPOWER: 9

CAUTIOUSNESS: 2

AGILITY: 5

ENDURANCE: 7

INTELLIGENCE: 8

LUCK: 4

Personality:  “Haven’t you ever seen a princess be a bad bitch before?”

Haha, yeah, but mostly, she’s just a massive nerd. She’s such a fucking nerd. Bitch learned Quenya and Sindarin just for kicks, and her own amusement. Literally no one else in her irl circle even fucking knows what those two things are (Elvish tongues in Tolkien).

As the baby of a two large families, and the only daughter of a Russian oligarch, Katya is incredibly spoiled, and very much self-centered. Something of a downplayed celebutante, she is not quite as present at every single high society, high fashion event in Russia, or elsewhere in Europe, she only goes to a handful. And really only for the free stuff, she loves stuff. Katya maintains a somewhat disinterested high social status, as she is the daughter of a major industrialist, and friends with other, higher profile wealthy Russian heirs and heiresses, and there are benefits (so many), but she isn't quite interested in attaining spotlight or attention. However, she also perceives it as something that is just naturally part of her life. She uses a lot of hand gestures when speaking, and tends to give off a naive-princessy vibe who seems to think the world revolves around her. Which, to be fair, it does in her house -she does know that it doesn’t actually, but ya know, can’t quite turn off that bitch, I’m a princess mindset.

“I don’t skate through life... I walk through life. In really nice shoes.” - Alexis Rose (Schitts’ Creek 3.04)

Notably, she speaks with a vocal fry when speaking English. She says “like” a lot, has a bit of a condescending tone, but, she like, does care. About a lot of stuff, but also humanity in general. Spoiled baby she may be, she does have a moral compass, and was amongst the public figures who signed an open letter against the Saint Petersburg Anti-”Gay Propaganda” bill (it’s some bullshit about “protecting” minors from “non-traditional sexual relationships”). She believes in doing the right thing, that the goal of any organization or even person should just be to decrease the net suffering of humanity, but also, she is a super proud Russian. Very anti-american, thinks they’re all stupid, always says shady shit in Russian whenever she runs into americans online. However, it’s not like she’s a fan of United Russia (Putin’s party), they’re right-wing nutjobs, she does not like them. Her main political party is A Just Russia, who are much less then left than her (officially, they be centre-left), but they’re the only ones (of her favoured parties) who have seats in the State Duma (the lower house of the Federal Assembly, Russia’s legislative body - the Duma is like parliament, or congress, I think, I don’t really know what congress is tbh, house of representatives maybe? Idk, the place where Nancy Pelosi is charge, equivalent to that). Katya also supports Patriots of Russia, a socialist, left-wing party, but they only have seats in regional parliaments, and only one seat in the Federation Council (similar to the senate, the upper house of Russia’s legislative body). There’s also Russia of the Future, but it’s not been formally registered yet. In the 2018 election she voted for the communist party’s candidate just for kicks (it’s different in Russia, there’s was zero possibility of Putin losing, come on, grow up).

As a side note, if this helps with the explainary-stuff, I basically envision her as a slavic-desi cross of Alexis Rose from Schitts’ Creek, and Gina Linetti from Brooklyn-99, also this hindi song; Sheila ki Jawani. The song is basically about owning the fact that you’re super sexy.

Biography: Katya is half-Russian, half-Indian, born to a Russian father, industrialist (and oligarch) Anatoli Ivanovich Raevsky, and an Indian mother, activist and journalist Mishti Syeda Khan. Her parents eventually separated, though technically are still married, when she was about 14, and her mother moved to Manchester in the UK, while Katya remained in Russia with her father. Katya is from a large family, on both sides, and at the time of her birth, was the first baby to be born in quite a few years (the elder cousins were like tween-teen, too old be constantly coddled and cuddled, and too young to make babies), so she was hella spoiled by everyone. The problems her maternal family had with her mother marrying a non-Muslim white boy? Well, we still hate him, but look how cute Rina is.

Despite the... complications between her family members - the whole religion/marrying a shada (white) boy thing, not to mention that Mishti herself is like agnostic at “best”, in general, as the baby, Katya (or Rina as her mother and maternal family call her), get along - well, okay, there’s always the shady auntieji’s, and bullshit drama, but like, that’s just brown families yo. We like that. We’re all 100% those bitches (see ya at Eid Nanu [grandma], ya messy bitch). While there is some distance between Katya and her mother, metaphorically and literally, she really does look up to her mother and her work, and followed in her footsteps, studying journalism at Moscow State University, and moving on to work at Известия (Izvestia), the “national” paper of Russia, formerly the state newspaper of the Soviet Union. Currently, she’s a glorified fact checker, and maintains the website with a handful of other colleagues. She’s also authored small “puff pieces” for Nedelya (a weekly Friday section about leisure actives, culture, that kinda stuff).

Katya is not exactly an avid gamer. She likes games, but it’s not like a 24/7 thing, whereas she is 24/7 thinking about like ASOIAF or Stars Wars (fuck you JJ, you were supposed to destroy the Sith R*ylo, not join them), not to mention Eurovision. Anyone who thinks Eurovision only lasts for a week is a fake fan, and anyone who thinks it’s a one day thing is an american. Ziben ziben ilulu motherfucker. Anyway.... she prefers immersive, high fantasy worlds, she likes the story and plot, so her types of games are The Witcher and Dragon Age Series, Elder Scrolls, that sort of thing. She doesn’t put in daily hours, ‘cause she got other stuff to do, but will dedicate weekends to leveling up her characters in order to accomplish quests and missions quickly and not waste time to get to the story cut scenes. She hates, hates, hatessss microtransactions and those stupid fucking mmorpg phone games which are literally just farmville repackaged with a dragon or an orc; FUCK YOU. What a fucking waste of time, quit advertising as having a plot and story, or cool character customization, ‘cause you don’t have any of that you basic ass bitch!

Gem Quest was regifted to Katya by a coworker, who had gotten it as a present, but didn’t have a VR set (of course she had one, she’s rich, and also she needed it to play Batman: Arkham VR - she’s still waiting on a game that’ll let her make out with Nightwing while playing as a custom character). She got a bit of a bad rep (understatement) in the beginning of the game. Katya hates being stuck because she doesn’t have enough exp or whatever, so she always levels up in the beginning of a game before taking the time to fuck around and do whatever, which, in the case of Gem Quest, means teaming up is the easiest way to do that. So, whenever a party member was holding them back from leveling up, she would straight up kill them in order to move on. She killed her own irl friends, to be fair, she doesn’t do that anymore, that was just in the beginning, but ya know, the rep of being that bitch kinda hard to get of.

G.’s announcement didn’t particularly freak out Katya. Whatever kind of evil Kaiba Corp execs bullshit he was pulling didn’t matter, he still had a body out there in the real world, and there’s no fucking way her dad would let die in a fucking game. There’s perks to being Oligarchs in Russia, and even if she did die in-game and was unable to return to reality, wherever G. and his real body were, motherfucker will die in excruciating pain. Polonium-210 ain’t pleasant, and the Novichok series is so much worse.

Relationships: (OPTIONAL, fill out whenever you want to)

Silverwing - rn. Anastasia “Anya” Gagarina (fc: Anna Belan), a fellow moonstone, and real life friend - well, the younger sister of an ex-boyfriend whom she still gets along with (the sister, not necessarily the ex).

Inferna - I don’t really have any plotting ideas, but Inferna’s whole; “It’s very important that I am both cute and powerful” is so relatable (to me and Katya xp)

Enthroned -

Morningstar -

Extras/Trivia (aka unnecessary information):  

Her mother, and thus maternal family, are from Kolkata, in the state of West Bengal in India, thus making Katya fluent (relatively) in Bengali as well (well, a dialect of it - West Central, you’d think as an actual Bengali person, I’d know the proper name of it, but nope. Idk, shudobasha maybe, but I think that’s for people from Dakha, which is in Bangladesh, not India. Whatever. Not like my dad will check this and be disappointed in me.)

Apart from her native Russian, Hindi, and Bengali, she speaks English, and Japanese (100% learned it because she’s a weeb), as well as the fictional languages; Quenya, Sindarin (and can use the Tengwar script to write them), High Valyrian, Mando’a, Dovazhul, and Klingon. As a teenager she also created a dictionary for ancient “Black Speech”, an in-universe constructed language in Tolkien’s legendarium, but her version is not canon, so it doesn’t count - she’s also forgotten a lot of it. She was a baby, she still has the hard copy she made somewhere in the Raevsky Manor in Saint Petersburg.  

After graduating from MSU, her father bought her, her own apartment in the Kudrinskaya Square Building in Moscow, adjacent to the ones he owned already, which she had lived in when she moved to Moscow for school. 

Katya’s family is religiously mixed (well, she’s the one who’s mixed), her maternal family are largely Muslim, some Hindu (very few though, like, you can count them on one hand), and her paternal family are either Orthodox Christian or atheist (usually depending on how long they were alive and how into the Soviet Regime they were). Katya’s parents are agnostic (Mishti), and atheist (Anatoli), Katya herself is also atheist, but sometimes she’ll say she prays to the Seven or R’hllar, or Lord Jashin, or some other made up nerd ass religion (’cause she that bitch).

But for real, she can be a real bitch about religion. The Soviets got a lot wrong, but banning religion was not one of them <- so she says. She gets super pissed when someone brings up religion during a politics chat, that fake shit should have nothing to do with running a country. 

hates starbucks with every fibre of her being, it’s such an american staple and the first time she saw one in Russia, she nearly had a heart attack.

Will die mad about:

The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker; the fuck was that bullshit? We trusted you JJ! 

the garbage show’s gaslighting and murder of Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, Rightful Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. Queen of Meereen, The Prince who was Promised, The Unburnt, Slayer of Lies, Breaker of Shackles, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, and Mother of Dragons.

Hrithik Roshan still being so fucking hot (he’s 45, please like chill a little, holy fuck)

Catarina de Lurton dying 

Former american politician John McCain constantly saying “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country” - bitch, we’re a thousand years old, how’s your 250 year old failed experiment of a garbage nation going? 

Freud.

Links:

Playlist

Pinterest

Urstyle Collection (aesthetics, and other shit)

Social Media

#gem quest #katya raevskaya #audition #my edits #clara's edits #mine #incomplete #writing #graphics

[alexsmitposts]

The “Corruption” Narrative: Who’s Afraid of Isabel Dos Santos? And Why? The words they use to describe her are nasty, cliché, but all too familiar. They call her “Princess,” “Oligarch,” and accuse her of “embezzlement” “peddling influence” etc. The truth is that Isabel Dos Santos, the richest woman in Africa, has for decades been on the hit list of the most powerful people in the world.  In the first month of 2020, the international media has doubled down, taken aim, and decided to go for the kill. And who are the hitmen? The same folks who brought you the Panama Papers, the shady International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The outlet with ties to the Democracy Fund of the United Nations, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation is repeating their same old mantra. They accuse independent leaders around the world, from Russia, China, Latin America, and Africa of being “corrupt.” They display in rather convenient “leaks,” as if it is somehow shocking, that the leaders of countries with massive populations and resources in-fact possess lots of wealth. The international audience is led to the conclusion that the targeted leader should be removed. Misuse of government funds and other malpractice is certainly a plague rampant in many developing countries. When nations are working to raise themselves out of poverty, shady practices often become a kind of way of life as the population learns to “take care of each other.” The result is often widespread inefficiency. But what is the obvious goal of these Soros, USAID backed ICIJ operations? To keep intact the corrupt, monopolistic global financial order that exists by selectively targeting those who challenge it. The deeply corrupt global order where Wall Street and London bankers rule the world, keeping it poor so they can stay rich, pushing policies of “de-regulation” and “free markets” that have failed over and over, never gets called into question. “Corruption” charges were used to oust Dilma Roussef, to imprison Lula Di Silva who would have won the 2018 election according to every poll, and install autocratic free market demagogue Jiar Bolsanaro in Brazil. “Corruption” allegations are constantly used to stir up opposition to the Putin government by forces who were quite satisfied with the free market looting during the Yeltsin-era, and dislike that Russia has been restored as an economic power and energy exporter. Leftist Vice President Christina Kirchner in Argentina was also hit with a series of “corruption” charges by supporters of the IMF and the free market policies, who attempted to undo her progressive reforms during the Mauricio Macri. Meanwhile, many politicians in the “free” western capitalist countries have offshore bank accounts, take care of their relatives and business associates, and otherwise engage in notably corrupt behavior. The President of the United States is pretty obviously tied to a chain of “Trump Hotels” around the world, and many questions have been raised about that since the 2016 elections. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s son conveniently got a well paying job at a Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian Natural Gas corporation, at the very moment when the USA was backing the “EuroMaiden” events that toppled President Yanukovych. An Oil Rich Country, Kept Poor by Western Capitalism Angola is not a poor country. It has lots of oil. Its natural gas potential is just being realized. It has minerals and a vast population. However, poverty is widespread in this southern African nation. Until 1975, Angola was a colony of Portugal. The population lived as colonial slaves, worked to death, kept in poverty, as their resources were utilized to line the pockets of Portuguese businessmen. The People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was formed in 1956 to throw off the colonial chains. The MPLA was a Marxist-Leninist political organization backed and armed by the Soviet Union. It waged a guerilla insurgency, fighting Portuguese troops, right up until the Carnation Revolution.  When the fascist government of Portugal fell in 1975, colonial territories were granted independence. The MPLA took power as the elected government of a newly free Angola. Immediately following independence, the apartheid government of South Africa invaded Angola. Over 65,000 Cuban soldiers were sent to support the MPLA in fighting off this and subsequent invasions by the apartheid regime. Cuba continued to maintain a military presence in Angola to support the MPLA. At the time of independence, the United States government had already been arming and training a group of terrorists and extremists called the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) that conducted assassinations and other acts of violence against the MPLA.  UNITA at first claimed to be Maoist Communists and had relations with China, but by the late 1970s they were Evangelical Christians and advocates of western capitalism. The United States was their primary supporter, and anti-communism was their rallying cry. The leader of the CIA trained and armed UNITA terrorists like  Jonas Savimbi. Savimbi murdered civilians, bombed schools and hospitals and committed horrendous atrocities. Savimbi was a practitioner of witchcraft and a literal cannibal, who ate the corpses of MPLA soldiers. The horrendous atrocities of Jonas Savimbi has been well documented, but this did not stop the Reagan White House and other US administrations from embracing them as freedom fighters. The goal of the MPLA was to peacefully develop Angola into a prosperous socialist country. This was not possible in a state of total civil war, as US-backed terrorists ravaged the country for 27 years. Even when peace was finally declared in 2002, the United Nations noted that Angola was littered with landmines, and most of its bridges and essential infrastructure had been destroyed. “Angola Starts Now!” In 2002, with peace declared, the MPLA declared “Angola Starts Now!” and began to eradicate poverty and economically develop the country. Their efforts were aided significantly by the highest oil prices in world history. The GDP increased at a staggeringly high average of 11.1% from 2001 to 2010. China worked with Angola to build new railways connecting previously isolated parts of the country. The capital city of Luanda became a prosperous business center. Millions of Angolans were lifted from poverty. Who was key in making all of this happen? Isabel Dos Santos. Isabel is the daughter of the country’s first elected President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos. It is largely because of her efforts that Angola now has a state controlled mobile telecommunications corporation, Unitel. She also helped to set up Banco de Fomento Angola and Banco BIC, two private banks based in Angola. These are banks subsidized with state oil profits, that have provided loans allowing the domestic economy of Angola to flourish. Isabel Dos Santos has traveled around the world working to bring foreign investment into her homeland. In 2016 Isabel Dos Santos moved out of the private sector and was named as the director of Sonangol, the state-run oil company that remains at the center of the Angolan economy. Much like Putin did in Russia with Gazprom and Rosneft, Sonagol is a “national champion.” It is a state-controlled energy corporation utilized to create economic growth and stabilize the market. It was with Sonangol’s proceeds that the mining and agricultural sectors were stimulated. Nigeria is now the top oil exporting country in Africa. It has been a playground for Chevron, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and Exxon-Mobile for years. Nigeria has a few billionaires, but the population is overwhelmingly poor and illiterate. While lots of oil is extracted and lots of profits made by western corporations, nothing like Angola’s economic boom of 2002-2014 has ever happened in Nigeria, despite decades and decades in the oil business. The successes of Angola cannot be blamed on high oil prices alone, but rather on state central planning, utilizing oil proceeds to eradicate poverty and construct. Isabel Dos Santos has spent very little time working in government. She prides herself on her success as a businesswoman in the private sector. Her dynamic leadership and strategic management of private companies, in coordination with state central planners, created all kinds of spectacular results. “There are thousands of people whom we gave their first job,” she told BBC. When a new President took office in 2017, the Wall Street Journal celebrated Isabel Dos Santos’ departure. It accused her of running “turgid bureaucracy.” American oil companies were angry that she “required that they buy supplies from select domestic firms.” Dos Santos enforced environmental laws, and would not privatize the newly discovered natural gas resources that “by law belongs to the government.” Immediately before  the ouster of Isabel Dos Santos from Sonangol, Total, BP, Haliburton, and Exxon-Mobile had terminated their relationship with the state-run firm. It appears that the big oil bankers almost demanded her ouster from the new administration of President Juan Lourenço and their wish was granted. A Failed Administration Scapegoating Its Predecessors Lourenço promised to usher in an “economic miracle” with his free market reforms once elected. The opposite has occurred. Unemployment has risen. Strikes and social unrest are also increasing. 28% of Angola’s population lives on less than $1.90 per day. Lourenço has signed on with the International Monetary Fund, known for pushing deregulation and Milton Friedman style economic reforms in exchange for “development loans.” Since he cannot fix the economy, Lourenço seems to be focused scapegoating his predecessors, who presided over huge economic achievements. President João Lourenço calls himself “the terminator,” and he has worked hard to single out members of the Dos Santos family and their allies for prosecution. 45 cases are currently in court, and Isabel Dos Santos is now among those facing charges, as is her younger brother. However, a BBC article published on January 16th seems to have revealed that the campaign against Santos isn’t simply about retaliation against the Dos Santos family. During  an interview, Isabel Dos Santos “declined four times to rule out” running for the Presidency. Later she told a Portuguese network “it’s possible” that she may intend run for head of state in 2022. And what else, she could very well win, despite massive huge efforts to besmirch her reputation with the convenient “Luanda Leaks” presented by the Soros, USAID tied outlet. To Angolans who have endured decades of civil war followed by miraculous amounts of growth, the name “Dos Santos” is associated with the legacy of the anti-colonial struggle, as well as a decade of exciting hope. The “Iron Lady” Southern Africa Needs? Indicating why she might consider a Presidential run, she told BBC “President Lourenço is fighting for absolute power. There’s a strong wish to neutralize any influence that [former] President Dos Santos might still have in the MPLA…. If a different candidate would appear [ahead of the 2022 presidential election] supported by former President Dos Santos or allies linked to him, that would really challenge [Mr Lourenço’s] position because his current track record is very, very poor.” In fact, Isabel Dos Santos could be the kind of leader that Southern Africa desperately needs. Her father was a guerilla fighter who fought the Portuguese and went into exile. Her mother was a Russian Communist. While the MPLA backed away from Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism in 1991, it remains a Democratic Socialist Party, and its members are dedicated to building a society where all Angolans have what they need. Already, from both the private sector and as the head of Sonangol, Dos Santos has put into practice a successful implementation of policies that could be called “petro-socialism” i.e. using state-run oil profits to centralize and build up an economy. On the northern end of the continent, Libya flourished under such policies. The Islamic Socialist government of Moammar Gaddafi built the world’s largest irrigation system, “the man-made river.” Libya had the highest life expectancy on the African continent until 2011 and had achieved universal housing and literacy. Libya worked hard to suppress Al-Qaida and terrorist groups and provided financial support to the Irish Republican Army, the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, and many other socialist and anti-imperialist forces around the world. In his final year, Gaddaffi openly spoke of establishing an African currency and an African bank, laying the basis for independence from western financial power. All of this culminated in the USA funding an uprising against him, and NATO bombing campaign that destroyed the country. During Gaddaffi’s leadership, Africans from across the continent piled into the Libya where the state provided them with employment. Now, in a war-torn, newly impoverished and destroyed post-Gaddafi, pro-western Libya, Africans are trying to get out on rafts, and drowning in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. Russia and China were both deeply impoverished countries at the beginning of the 20th Century, but it was with state central planning, mobilizing the population and rationally organizing the economy that they became superpowers. Both countries have learned the lessons of the Soviet Union’s demise, and recognize the need for foreign investment and a private sector, which will  allow more entrepreneurialism. However, Russia and China continue to get stronger because they have not fallen into the trap of “profits in command” and the chaos of the market. All across the developing world, the absolute failure of Milton Friedman-style economics can be seen. Even the Bretton Woods institutions now admit that they have been “too Neoliberal.” All out “free trade” Adam Smith-style capitalism is not the answer, for Angola or any other country. If Isabel Dos Santos, a savvy businesswoman was elected, carrying with her a family name that is associated with better times, and resilient leadership, she could very well turn things around. As Russia becomes more involved in helping strengthen African countries, and  as China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank works to build infrastructure to help the development of independent economies, Isabel Dos Santos has great potential as a leader. With her strength and boldness, she could bring economic growth, financial independence, and hope to millions of people, not just in her own country, but throughout the region.

[canadianabroadvery]

Alex Finley is the pen name of a former news reporter and former U.S. intelligence officer, writing occasional analyses of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s efforts to skew the 2016 presidential election. This analysis was published in partnership with Vox.

INTRODUCTION A powerful man holds decades of compromising material on a businessman who has long considered running for president of the United States. He strikes a deal with the future politician, in which he will bottle up any negative information about him and, even better, circulate and amplify negative stories and conspiracy theories about the candidate’s political opponents.

To help foster the deal, the candidate’s lawyer sets up creative workarounds to hide payments related to that help. When asked about it, all sides deny any arrangement. All of this is done with the aim of influencing the U.S. presidential election.

That’s the exact situation we now know occurred during the 2016 election between President Donald Trump and the publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid magazine.

And we know all of this because Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer who acted as the go-between making the whole shady deal happen —admitted it in his recent plea agreement and because the publisher’s company filled in details in a public non-prosecution agreement. Cohen pleaded guilty to financial crimes, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress, and on December 12 was sentenced to three years in prison.

The scheme was simple: American Media Inc. (AMI) — the parent company of the National Enquirer, headed by Trump’s longtime friend David Pecker — made hush payments to a woman who claimed she had had an affair with Trump, and tipped off Cohen that another woman was shopping a similar story.

Pecker’s intention was not to publish the information, but rather to keep it hidden from the American public, which was already seeing screamingly negative headlines in the Enquirer about Trump’s opponents—from Ted Cruz to Hillary Clinton.

Cohen, at the direction of Trump, made arrangements for AMI’s payment to the woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, to be reimbursed. When asked about the arrangement, time and again, Pecker, Cohen, and Trump all denied it. The statement of the participating parties nonetheless now make clear that the Trump campaign colluded with AMI to influence the election.

BUT HANG ON — HAVEN’T WE HEARD A SIMILAR STORY BEFORE? Russian President Vladimir Putin held compromising information on Trump — namely, that Trump and his advisers had routinely lied about their contacts and business dealings with Russia — throughout Trump’s campaign, the election, and after taking office.

Putin knew, for example, that Trump and his team had publicly denied having meetings with Russians, while in fact Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had met with a team of Russians — including a lawyer connected to Russia’s top government prosecutor — in Trump Tower in June of 2016.

Trump’s team also lied about the timeline involving discussions about Trump Tower Moscow (Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about this; that is, he lied to Congress, while Putin knew the truth).

And while we don’t know exactly what Trump did during his trip to Moscow in 2013, little that goes on there involving wealthy American businessmen would escape the Kremlin’s attention. So it’s safe to assume that Putin knew details of the trip. He also surely had details of Trump’s financial dealings with pro-Putin oligarchs.

Like Pecker, Putin has denied he has any compromising information about Trump. Also like Pecker, Putin helped direct the release of disinformation meant to promote Trump and hurt Clinton, according to a report by the Director of National Intelligence. We learned from two Senate reports this week that this effort utilized nearly every social media platform and reached more than 100 million potential voters.

In dealings with Putin, Cohen also played a fixer role, wheeling and dealing with the office of Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, about a potential Trump Tower Moscow.

When asked later about any business arrangement, all parties denied it, then said it had been discussed but went nowhere and had ended before Trump was the Republican candidate, when in fact, discussions for the project carried on past the Republican primaries (even though the plans did not come to fruition).

It’s an interesting parallel, particularly given how the AMI story is now unraveling. Might the dynamics of the Trump-Pecker relationship provide insight into the perils of the continuing give and take between Trump and Putin?

COLLECTING DIRT AND GRANTING FAVORS According to the Associated Press, Pecker kept a safe full of negative stories on Trump. As multiple sources told the AP, “the safe was a great source of power for Pecker. … By keeping celebrities’ embarrassing secrets, the company was able to ingratiate itself with them and ask for favors in return.” A former National Enquirer reporter described the so-called “catch-and-kill” technique to the AP as: “‘I did this for you,’ now what can you do for me.” The Enquirer, he said “always got something in return.”

And Pecker did get something out of the relationship. In addition to flights on Trump’s private plane, Pecker got access to the gossip about the circles Trump inhabited. Trump is reported to have supplied Pecker with information the National Enquirer could turn into juicy stories. Pecker also received public praise from Trump that may have helped him professionally and financially.

Trump’s election also opened up new avenues for more gossip exchanges and more business opportunities for Pecker. Trump hosted a dinner for Pecker and a French businessman with ties to the Saudi royal family, for example, at a time when, according to The New York Times, Pecker was looking to expand AMI’s business with the Kingdom. Word of Pecker’s access to the White House opened doors in Saudi Arabia for him. And shortly before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s tour of the United States last spring, AMI just so happened to publish a glossy magazine that appeared in supermarket checkout aisles that introduced the Crown Prince as “the most influential Arab leader, transforming the world at 32.”

The transactional nature of this relationship between Pecker and Trump tells us a lot about Trump’s approach to business: You do something for me, and I’ll do something for you.

This kind of give-and-take, however, can also leave people exposed. Trump and Cohen seemed to have realized this.

At one point during the campaign, they evidently began to fear Pecker had too much leverage and that they were too reliant on blessings from the tabloid, which has an average weekly circulation of around 265,000. So they decided to try to buy back the rights for the negative stories, according to reports by The New York Times and ABC News. (A lawyer for AMI denied the company would “seek to ‘extort’ the President of the United States,” according to a letter obtained by the AP.)

But in a way, that, too, is a normal state of affairs for Trump and his associates. Everyone in his circle seemed to have embarrassing information about others. Omarosa Manigault Newman underscored this point last summer when she — a favorite but losing Apprentice contestant who later won herself an office in the West Wing—revealed audio recordings she had made to make sure her reputation and position were safeguarded from backstabbing.

The Trump business ethos has long been: Do whatever is necessary to beat your competitors. So if Putin came offering a deal to help Trump win, who was Trump to say no?

FOLLOWING A SIMILAR COLLUSION MODEL Interestingly, the Steele Dossier — a series of raw intelligence reports compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele — outlines a deal between Trump and Putin that is very similar to what we now know existed between Trump and Pecker.

In a July 30, 2016, memo to the research firm employing him, Fusion GPS, Steele noted that the Kremlin had plenty of compromising material, or kompromat as it’s known in Russia, on Trump. Steele added that, according to his source for this information, “the Kremlin had given its word that [the compromising material] would not be deployed against the Republican presidential candidate given how helpful and cooperative his team had been over several years, and particularly of late.”

That same memo claimed that Trump was providing information to the Kremlin, mostly on Russian oligarchs and their families. Just as Trump was able to supply gossip to Pecker, Trump might have been able to provide interesting tidbits on Russian oligarchs outside of Russia, particularly given their affinity for investing in Trump properties. As Donald Trump Jr. himself has said, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”

Some of Steele’s information has been borne out in court proceedings initiated by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. Steele’s claims that Trump or his team provided information to the Kremlin has not been proven, along with several additional claims in the dossier. But it would fit into Trump’s pattern of behavior, as evidenced by the arrangement Trump had with Pecker.

We know that Cohen played the fixer in Trump’s dealings with Pecker and that he played a similar role in Trump’s dealings with Putin. Cohen has already confirmed that he was a go-between in Trump’s efforts to secure a deal to build Trump Tower Moscow. Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, even lied on Cohen’s behalf, in order to back up Cohen’s story (until Cohen’s public confession).

We also know that Cohen worked with Pecker to cover up embarrassing information about Trump. Did he do the same thing in a collaboration or parallel effort with Putin, as Steele’s document suggests? “According to [a] Kremlin insider,” Steele wrote in a memo dated October 19, 2016, “Cohen now was heavily engaged in a cover up and damage limitation operation in the attempt to prevent the full details of Trump’s relationship with Russia being exposed.”

And if so, what favors might Trump have been willing to offer Putin in return for his help? Because like Pecker, you can be sure that Putin, too, keeps a favor bank, including a record of all loans and other disbursements.

What happens when he comes to collect?

#donald trump #Vladimir Putin #election interference

[feministdragon]

The conclusion to 'Inauthentic Selves'

“I was inspired to investigate the election funding behind the Anchorage ‘bathroom bill’ municipal ordinance, not by anything relating to transgenderism, but researching how philanthropy empowers other causes into the stratosphere. I wondered — how much of this is also happening with identity politics? I wanted to follow the money. And thus, that set off months of investigating funding, causes and lobby groups. The totality of my research was impossible to fit into a single article. But the evidence is clear: transgenderism isn’t a real civil rights movement.

Let us think about it: what every group in the transgender lobby is demanding is essentially guaranteed access to medication for off-label purposes. None of these drugs are approved for transgender uses. Given the data we do have and the state of the science behind that data, accompanied by the side effects up to and including death, it is unlikely to ever be approved by the FDA in a clinical trial. Unless, of course, the side effects were better than the outcome. Hence, the creation of a perception that transgender people are murdered a at higher rates than the general population, even though that isn’t true. Saying that the side effects are better than the suicide of the patient probably wouldn’t pass muster either, given that medical intervention did not change the fact that transgender people have elevated suicide rates compared to the general population.

Hence our endless bad statistics and fake news. A survey with methodological flaws and some good messaging can cover for the actual reality, at least to the general public. Because the one way these ‘treatments’ could get approved is if the problem is worse than the side effects and the solution — this poor, gender dysphoric wilting flower of a person will kill themselves or be murdered unless they can access ‘gender-affirming healthcare’. Dangerous drugs that have failed clinical trials before could be issued on-label for this process, and protected by civil rights legislation. That the ideology that is built around these demands is incoherent, serves only to foist drugs on to vulnerable people, and is fundamentally homophobic is of little consequence to those who see the dollar signs. Transition could be a big business, which over a 50-year period of ‘transition’ could create a market worth trillions of dollars, if not more. Think of the potential markets! Surgeries that run into the six-figures. Body modifications that have not yet been invented outside of science fiction. And some of the 90’s best-selling-drugs, drugs that could be best-sellers again if only they had blanket approval to be used on a class of people once again.

Almost every philanthropist I investigated had financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry — George Soros and his connections to Pfizer and chemical company Monsanto, Jon Stryker, who is an heir to the Stryker Corporation, which makes medical and surgical supplies. The lone exception was Jennifer Pritzker, who appears to be ideologically motivated, particularly given their transition. Pritzker is extremely-right wing. Perhaps homophobia is their reason, or perhaps they truly believe. Maybe it really is about being ‘validated’ as a ‘woman’. If so, Pritzker is being taken for as much a ride as any other activist, they simply have more fiscal ability to promulgate the ideology. The ideology is a byproduct of the main goal — which is guaranteeing access to expensive, off-label drugs for a group of people, with civil protections. That the ideology has morphed into one that demands lesbians make themselves sexually available to male bodies, where ‘sexual fluidity’ is considered the ideal, and had its language appropriated and used by Christian conversion therapy groups promising a ‘cure’ to homosexuality seems to matter little.

To do this, they have hijacked the once powerful and grassroots gay lobby with large amounts of philanthropic and corporate funding, to the point these organizations have changed their names in order to be ‘inclusive’. Ordinary gays and lesbians, especially the lesbians and their concerns, have been pushed out of their organizations, even as almost every lesbian bar in the US has closed and gay loneliness is on the rise, and as both groups have no federal civil rights protections.

While transgenderism will fall over — because it must, because it cannot be sold to the general public without threats, and because ultimately, it is a corporate initiative using shady if not outright-illegal methods, it won’t happen very fast without people speaking up about it. Ultimately, my concern is for the homosexuals who have lost control of their movement and now face a group of people that believes that their gender non-conformity requires surgery, even if they are children. And if transgenderism does not fall over because of these things, it will fall over because of the lawsuits those children will make. And things like ‘Limited outcome data’ and sterilizing a child for little demonstrated medical benefit look like dollar signs to personal injury and medical malpractice lawyers.

But what this demonstrates the most is that a rich man with an ideology should have no greater voice than the ordinary citizen. We all live in nation-states: we should all contribute equally and proportionally to the pool of funds that run that state and have an equal voice on how those funds are distributed. The ability of the very rich to divert their funds into services and organizations they believe is optimal without any democratic consent is fundamentally anti-democratic, no matter how much you may agree with their aims. Had the billions poured into philanthropy gone to the state, many of these problems could have been solved. Had our nation’s political discourse been one where each voice is equal, would we have the disaffection that creates populist monsters?

As it stands, politics is a battle of oligarchs that wield their ideologies in a great war of money. Their soldiers are professional activists invested in the permanent war between either end of the political spectrum. Their cheerleaders are media outlets that report on these wars, treat them like football games, and take the claims of these organizations to be unassailable fact, it is easy for the average person to disengage and become disaffected. Ultimately, their voice and vote does not matter. This creates a situation where ideologies such as transgenderism, an ideology that is fundamentally incoherent and experimenting on children can be accepted on the left. A situation where the punishment for not going along with the party line is a violently enforced exile.

The influence these large foundations and their funders have on our politics cannot be underestimated, and it needs to be questioned. The transgender civil rights movement consists of (i) large numbers of astroturf organizations funded by billionaires with financial interest in its success, (ii) medical professionals who stand to gain from ‘selling’ transgenderism to the public (and who are happy to lie to the public about their treatments) and (iii) pharmaceutical companies that appear to be engaging in illegal off-label marketing with said medical professionals. The question of what came first-the foundations, the pharmaceutical companies, or the medical professionals -is like asking whether the chicken or the egg came first. But the fact of the matter is, all three groups stand to benefit from the transgender civil rights movement. No transgender person does. With no unbiased research, they cannot get the answers they need to treat their condition effectively. They are left stranded and marooned, with an entire movement dedicated to foisting drugs upon them, instead of finding an actual cure or treatment for gender dysphoria. When ‘transition’ is complete and they are left a castrated eunuch, with no more steps up the Bridge To Total Freedom, their suicidality does not decrease. With an incomplete path to salvation, they are told they can chase after something they can never realize. They are obliterated as a distinct legal class of people by self-identification legislation — the legal ramifications of which could set trans rights back years, which has been raised by gender critical trans activists such as Miranda Yardley.

The modern transgender movement is an astroturf tiger. It is not grassroots, it is not organic, and it serves the purposes of no one beyond homophobes and pharmaceutical companies. It is a menace, it has hollowed out the LGBT community, it threatens women’s legal gains for the past hundred years, and it is going to destroy people’s lives. An entire generation of gender non-conforming children that may have otherwise grown up gay are going to grow up to be brain damaged, weakened eunuchs with a medical malpractice lawyer on retainer. This ‘movement’ needs to end before that happens. The LGBT community needs to wake up and start talking back to the fox in the hen house.”

https://medium.com/@sue.donym1984/inauthentic-selves-the-modern-lgbtq-movement-is-run-by-philanthropic-astroturf-and-based-on-junk-d08eb6aa1a4b

#wow #much words so information #only took me three days to read #complete and perfect

[xtruss]

Where’s the Money, Zelensky? Dutch Party Asks Ukraine’s Prez to Account for $850 Mln Personal Wealth

— Ilya Tsukanov | Sputnik

Last year, a Pandora Papers leak revealed that Mr Zelensky, who campaigned on promises to “break the system” of oligarchic control and corruption in Ukraine, set up a spider web of offshore companies in 2012. Zelensky’s office justified the move by saying they were a form of “protection” against former President Viktor Yanukovych.

A Dutch political party has taken an interest in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s personal finances.

“Zelensky has a fortune: various estimates put his wealth at around $850 million. He amassed most of it after taking office as president. Where does the money come from? And more importantly, where is it going?” the Forum for Democracy asked in posts on its Twitter and Telegram accounts on Monday.

The Dutch national conservative and hardline Eurosceptic party boycotted Zelensky’s speech to the Dutch parliament last month, denouncing it as a violation of nearly two centuries of democratic tradition, which forbid foreign heads of state from speaking before the House of Representatives.

The party also expressed concerns about Zelensky’s ban of political parties, including the main opposition party, and the shuttering of TV channels critical of his regime.

The Forum for Democracy did not specify where it got its $850 million estimate.

Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine in 2019.

Officially, the president receives a salary of just 28,000 hryvnias per month (about $925 at the current exchange rate). Zelensky reported a total income of only 365,000 hryvnias ($12,075) in 2021. Adding insult to injury, over 65,000 hryvnias (about $2,150) of that figure was subtracted in taxes.

Unofficially, the story is very different, with Zelensky’s income and wealth varying wildly in media reporting. Forbes Ukraine estimated the president’s total net worth to be about $20 million in 2021. In 2020, Ukrainian media reported that his family’s income amounted to about $8.2 million that year alone. His tax declaration in 2020 recorded $815,000 in earnings, while a declaration from the register of Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention is currently unavailable.

Ilya Kiva, a Ukrainian opposition lawmaker who was stripped of his mandate last month, tells a different story, alleging that “hundreds of millions of dollars” are being wired to accounts controlled by the president’s office, where they are being plundered, not just by Zelensky and his staff, but by “Western politicians who get kickbacks for their [countries'] assistance”. Kiva has suggested that Zelensky’s earnings have recently jumped to about “$100 million a month”.

Before becoming president in 2019, Zelensky co-owned the Kvartal 95 television entertainment company, which he co-founded in 2003. Last week, Volodymyr Landa, deputy editor-in-chief of Forbes Ukraine, said that the company earns about $20-$30 million per year, with Zelensky owning a 25 percent stake.

Before the 2019 election, Zelensky’s family also earned a 25 percent stake in the Maltex Multicapital Corp, a tax shelter in the British Virgin Islands, through a separate Belize-registered shell company, Film Heritage, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Zelensky insisted after the election that he had dropped his share in the company, and has not mentioned the company in any of his tax declarations since 2018.

However, in October 2021, the OCCRP reported that the president, his family, and members of his inner circle have held on to Maltex, and operate an entire network of shady offshore companies, at least two of them used to buy property in London near the famous 221B Baker Street and the Houses of Parliament.

Ihor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian oligarch who heavily sponsored Zelensky’s campaign in 2019, has himself been accused of stealing $5.5 billion from PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest commercial lender, and funnelling it offshore.

Pressed by media over the offshore-related revelations late last year, Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to Zelensky’s chief of staff, assured that the president had been forced to create the offshores to “protect” income from the “aggressive actions” of the “corrupt” government of President Viktor Yanukovych. “Journalists have de facto confirmed the president’s absolute respect for the standards of anti-corruption legislation”, Podoliak said.

Yanukovych was ousted in a Western-backed coup in 2014, giving rise to the Ukraine crisis which continues to this day.

— April 26, 2022

[profoundpaul]

Biden Laptop Content Will Be Soon Released in Full to the Public, Whistleblower Says

For better or worse, you likely will be able to see everything on Hunter Biden’s infamous, begrimed laptop.

According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, the whistleblower who provided the British publication and other outlets with a copy of Hunter’s laptop data will be putting it all online — meaning you can see it all, depending on what your stomach can handle.

(Of course, the establishment media pretended that the laptop was “Russian disinformation” when they were originally provided with the data — and they only recently acknowledged it was legit. Here at The Western Journal, we’ve chronicled the liberal media’s obsession with staying away from the biggest story of the 2020 election — and how it’s coming back to bite them now. You can help us by subscribing.)

Jack Maxey is a conservative activist who initially provided copies of the data to the Daily Mail in the spring of 2021, as well as The New York Times, The Washington Post and D.C. politicians. The Daily Mail was the only publication to take information from the hard drive — which was part of a computer President Joe Biden’s son abandoned in a Wilmington, Delaware, repair shop — and publish it.

Now, Maxey has decamped to Switzerland, where he’s putting together a searchable database of the so-called laptop from hell.

“For the past two weeks, Maxey has been in hiding in Zurich, working with IT experts,” the Daily Mail reported last week.

“Maxey, a former co-host of ex-Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s podcast the War Room, claims he and his colleagues have found ‘450 gigabytes of deleted material’ including 80,000 images and videos and more than 120,000 archived emails.

“He said he intends to post them all online in a searchable database in the coming weeks.”

Whistleblower who handed over Hunter Biden’s laptop reveals he has 450 gigabytes of DELETED material https://t.co/IUjQni5qKW pic.twitter.com/YtFtPcQoYW

— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) April 6, 2022

“I came here so that we could do a forensic examination of Hunter’s laptop safely in a country that still respects human liberty and the ideals of liberal democratic principles,” Maxey said regarding his choice of Switzerland. He told the Daily Mail that after he contacted the outlet about the laptop last year, black SUVs appeared outside his house.

“I do not believe this would have been possible inside the United States. We had numerous attempts on us from trying to do things like this there,” he said of the database.

The effect of releasing the unexpurgated contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, without media gatekeepers serving as an intermediary, could be a game-changer — although not in the manner you might expect.

The critical contents of the pestilential laptop have been pored over by the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and federal prosecutors, all of which are more skilled than you at sussing out influence-peddling, shady business transactions, unreported income and ties to foreign actors.

To the extent that these organizations have missed some of the crucial emails and messages in this regard, major media organizations — including those that didn’t try to pawn Hunter Biden’s laptop off as Russian disinformation in order to get his daddy elected — have also looked at the data.

Investigative journalists aren’t bad at their job, either, at least when they try — and you’d better believe the Daily Mail and the New York Post have been trying since 2020.

As of late, they’ve been joined by The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and a whole host of other organizations that realize they’re going to get scooped and exposed on the depth and breadth of Hunter Biden’s ties with China, Ukraine, Mexican billionaires, Russian oligarchs and other sundry individuals who very obviously paid Hunter Biden for access to his father.

Moreover, they risk being the last to discover that, despite his protestations to the contrary, Joe Biden had plenty of knowledge about his son’s business dealings. He might even have been “the big guy” who was going to get a significant chunk of a proposed deal with a Chinese energy company.

Should Hunter Biden face criminal charges?

Yes No

Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Yes: 100% (9 Votes)

No: 0% (0 Votes)

function ffp_getCookie(cname) { var name = cname + "="; var decodedCookie = decodeURIComponent(document.cookie); var ca = decodedCookie.split(';'); for(var i = 0; i <ca.length; i++) { var c = ca[i]; while (c.charAt(0) == ' ') { c = c.substring(1); } if (c.indexOf(name) == 0) { return c.substring(name.length, c.length); } } return ""; } function ffp_setCookie(cname, cvalue, exdays) { var d = new Date(); d.setTime(d.getTime() + (exdays*24*60*60*1000)); var expires = "expires="+ d.toUTCString(); document.cookie = cname + "=" + cvalue + ";" + expires + ";path=/"; } window.ff_poll_voted = false; var voted_cookie_name = 'firefly_voted_2960561'; function ff_poll_submit( event ) { event.preventDefault(); var fireflyPoll = jQuery( '#firefly-poll' ); var fireflyPollContainer = jQuery('#firefly-poll-container'); var pollFormBox = jQuery('#pollFormBox'); if( window.ff_poll_voted || ffp_getCookie( voted_cookie_name ) ){ return; } window.ff_poll_voted = true; fireflyPollContainer.addClass('loading'); var posting = jQuery.post( firefly_ajax_url, jQuery( event.target ).serialize() ); if ( dataLayer ) dataLayer.push( { 'event': 'in-article poll vote', 'pollAnswer': jQuery( 'input:radio[name=answer]:checked' ).val(), 'pollName': jQuery( '.firefly-poll-question').text(), 'pollSubmitMethod': 'email', } ); ffp_setCookie( voted_cookie_name, 1, 7 ); posting.done( function( response ) { if( response.success ){ yes_el = document.getElementById( 'firefly-poll-results-yes' ); no_el = document.getElementById( 'firefly-poll-results-no' ); yes_el.style.width = response.data.percents.yes + '%'; yes_el.innerHTML = 'Yes: ' + response.data.percents.yes + '% (' + response.data.votes.yes + ' Votes)'; no_el.style.width = response.data.percents.no + '%'; no_el.innerHTML = 'No: ' + response.data.percents.no + '% (' + response.data.votes.no + ' Votes)'; fireflyPoll.remove(); pollFormBox.hide(); document.getElementById( 'firefly-poll-results' ).style.display = 'block'; } fireflyPollContainer.removeClass('loading'); }); }; if ( ffp_getCookie( voted_cookie_name ) ) { document.getElementById( 'pollFormBox' ).style.display = 'none'; document.getElementById( 'firefly-poll-results' ).style.display = 'block'; } else { if( ffp_getCookie( 'ff_source' ) == 'email' ) { var emailField = document.querySelector( '#firefly-poll input[name="email"]' ); emailField.required = false; emailField.style.display = 'none'; } document.getElementById( 'pollFormBox' ).style.display = 'block'; document.getElementById( 'firefly-poll-results' ).style.display = 'none'; } #firefly-poll-container { border: 2px solid #d6d6d6; padding: 15px; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; width: 50%; float: left; background: #ddd; border-radius: 3px; } #firefly-poll-container input[type=email] { margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px; padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 10px; background-color: #F5F5F5; border-radius: 3px; border-color: #d6d6d6; border: 1px solid #d6d6d6; } #firefly-poll-container input[type=submit] { padding: 10px; border: 1px solid #d6d6d6; cursor: pointer; } #firefly-poll-results-yes { background-color: lightgrey; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 5px; border-radius: 4px; padding-left: 5px; } #firefly-poll-results-no { background-color: lightgrey; white-space: nowrap; border-radius: 4px; padding-left: 5px; } .firefly-poll-question { font-weight: bold; font-size: var( --big-font-size ); } .firefly-poll-disclaimer { font-size: var(--smallest-font-size); } @media ( max-width: 768px ) { #firefly-poll-container { width: 90%; margin-left: 20px; } }

In short, before you fire up your iPad and head on over to Maxey’s soon-to-be-released database, be aware that you probably aren’t going to be the Charlie Bucket of the “laptop from hell” sweepstakes, magically pulling the Golden Ticket out of the Wonka Bar if you comb through a few gigs of Hunter’s emails long enough. Don’t waste your time.

What will become apparent, however, is what the establishment media hid from us — and how it should have confirmed, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that this wasn’t Russian disinformation.

Here’s some of what we’ve already seen from Hunter’s laptop — and there is much, much worse out there:

Isn’t it something that Hunter Biden couldn’t hold onto his laptop as tightly as his Biden/Harris crack pipe? pic.twitter.com/qbHRDoU9SM

— MagaMom72

(@MAGAMOM72) February 9, 2022

We all remember when Hunter Biden worked for a Ukrainian energy company. His father was VP at the time. Hunters drinking, drugs and cavorting with Prostitutes compromised Americas security in the region. The leak of material from Hunter Biden’s laptop is devastating for Joe. pic.twitter.com/wAwvG7CrHy

— Need2MAGA (@RonaldNeedlema1) March 26, 2022

#ArrestHunter A photo from Hunter Biden’s laptop showing 2.9 grams of crack cocaine. pic.twitter.com/Ur3HXC3p5I

— 2020 is FOR SHIT (@FITgirlonFIRE) March 18, 2022

Pic from Hunter Biden’s laptop at dentist getting his new teeth. #Hunterbidenlaptop pic.twitter.com/j3xvKwhJbD

— Christina

(@mamacubs1) January 8, 2021

Hunter was not only living in a state of abject dissolution, he was documenting it all, almost as if it were a matter of pride. And this is the stuff that wouldn’t get an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. If you want the unrated cut, Maxey appears ready to give it to you.

Whether you want it or not is another issue entirely. For instance, the Daily Mail reported last August on a January 2019 video from the laptop in which Hunter recorded himself having sex with a prostitute in a Las Vegas hotel room as they both used drugs.

After the coital portion of the encounter was completed, Biden told the woman that the Russians stole another one of his laptops for blackmail purposes during a previous episode in which he spent “18 days going round from penthouse suite to penthouse suite.”

“I spent f***ing crazy amounts of money,” he told the prostitute. “I was with these guys. The one guy was, not like you anyway … each night he’d be like ‘there’s going to be so many people here, crazy f***ing party’ and each night it’s nobody.”

Biden told the prostitute — and now here’s a shocker — the laptop contained compromising videos of him having sex.

“They have videos of me doing this,” he said, referring to the session Hunter and his companion had just completed. “They have videos of me doing crazy f***ing sex f***ing, you know.

“My computer, I had taken tons of like, just left like that cam on. And he would always put in a passcode and all that, you know what I mean? It was f***ing crazy s***. And somebody stole it during that period of time. He did all this kind of like pretend search and s***.”

Yes, the Russians stole all of this digital bilge. Which is why, of course, Hunter Biden kept on filming himself having sex with prostitutes while using drugs.

Let’s leave aside the fact that the contents of the laptop reveal Hunter Biden as a soul far more depraved than a man merely struggling with a chemical addiction, which is how the Biden family has painted him.

At this point, Hunter Biden was still on the board of Ukrainian energy concern Burisma, making $50,000 a month. It wasn’t until May that he would leave, according to The Washington Post.

Furthermore, when we see the full contents of the laptop, it’s likely this sordid behavior wasn’t just limited to his final days at Burisma. Hunter’s autobiography has already revealed he was in no shape to be making the kinds of major international deals he was involved in during and after his father’s tenure as vice president.

Yet, the liberal media didn’t need Hunter’s book to prove this. They likely had the pictorial and video evidence that the only reason Hunter Biden was a bankable commodity was that he was a conduit to his father. Not only did they have the emails, but they also had documentation from Hunter himself that showed he was in no condition to provide any service other than access to his dad.

And what did the establishment media do?

They hid it.

If and when all the laptop material goes public, I hesitate to recommend that you prove this to yourself. We have a good idea what’s on the laptop, and it isn’t pretty.

On the other hand, however, it’ll demonstrate to the world exactly what the media knew about Hunter Biden before the 2020 election — and the lengths they were willing to go in order to hide it.

The post Biden Laptop Content Will Be Soon Released in Full to the Public, Whistleblower Says appeared first on The Western Journal.

source https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-laptop-content-will-soon-released-full-public-whistleblower-says/

[nothingunrealistic]

👀 okay I'm starting to get into billions (bc of will). Can you recommend some essential episodes or something to get an understanding for what's happening? (And also I really like Asia Kate Dillon so like important episodes with them too)

the tricky thing about billions is that those of us who are into it aren’t, for the most part, actually watching the episodes in full or trying to understand all the plotlines. so if you want to know what’s happening with Everyone on the show (which is a dizzying number of characters), i can’t really pare it down to what’s important because i refuse to care about like half of them. but if, as it seems, you’re primarily here for winston and taylor (will’s and asia’s characters respectively), then good news - that’s almost all we care about too

the essential episodes for understanding winston are easy enough because he’s only shown up in five so far (3x03, 3x09, 3x11, 4x03, 4x08, and 4x11) for a couple minutes each, and all footage of him has been lovingly collated and posted on here. his first several appearances, and the context for them, are collected here; his moments from the most recent episode, which we were yelling about all day on sunday, are here. (he’ll be in this coming sunday’s episode too, which is also the season finale, so expect even more yelling about that.)

narrowing down the Essential Taylor is a little trickier because they’ve been in nearly every episode of seasons 2 3 and 4, of which i have watched exactly one episode. if billions had a decent fan wiki or anything similar, i would direct you to that, but they don’t, because they suck. the main way i keep up with the episodes/figure out what happened in previous seasons is via fan-run sites (which are superior to the recaps on Professional Media Websites usually), as follows:

fanfunwithdamianlewis has multiple recaps of every episode (including some from people who actually understand and can explain the financial stuff going on), as well as lists of all the locations shown, transcripts of cast interviews, and other fun stuff, all thoroughly tagged with actor and character names

gingesbecray has a recap of every episode as well (including gifs), always very detailed and entertainingly opinionated in ways we generally agree with

the billions companion collects and explains all the references that characters make (which is half the dialogue), sorted by episode, character, and keyword, as well as listing a wide array of other helpful sites

from these sites, the decent number of clips floating around youtube, and a collection of all taylor’s dialogue in seasons 2 & 3, we’ve pieced together the basic arc taylor’s had in the show so far. here’s my best approach at a season-by-season highlights reel (with links to relevant clips in bold) under the cut  because it’s ridiculously long

season 2: taylor arrives at axe capital as an intern. axe recognizes their talent and convinces them to stay, and they gain experience, status, and respect at axe cap over the course of the season, becoming the chief investment officer by season’s end.

2x01: taylor is an intern working for mafee (an executing trader at axe cap), and mafee wants them to stay once their internship is over.

2x02: taylor meets axe and impresses him with their insight. though taylor knows they don’t fit in at axe cap and plans to leave for grad school, axe later convinces them to stay, with a salary of a million dollars for a year.

2x03: taylor gets invited to play at a charity poker tournament (a real thing!), to the chagrin of others at axe cap. taylor has reservations but ultimately agrees to play; they win the tournament by outthinking their opponent, but are reminded of how out of place they are in hedge fund culture.

2x07: taylor is involved in figuring out what to do about a struggling small town that axe cap is heavily invested in.

2x08: taylor notices that mafee has been struggling at his job ever since he introduced them to axe, and asks wendy (who’s married to chuck [one of the main Legal Side characters], the performance coach at axe cap, and one of axe’s closest friends) if they should do anything about it. (ultimately taylor decides to assuage the guilt by giving mafee a signed wrestling poster. that’s the world of finance for you!)

2x09: axe’s birthday party, which everyone is expected to attend, is in conflict with taylor’s personal life, so they talk to him about what they should do and why they’re conflicted.

2x10: taylor is questioned by connerty (another of the characters on the legal side of things, who we don’t care about otherwise) about what happens at axe cap.

2x11: taylor is warned by connerty that this line of work might endanger their soul. they’re also given the responsibility of assessing all the analysts at axe cap and firing one - and told that it can’t be based solely on the numbers - and decide not to fire rudy, who is the worst performing analyst but is dedicated to succeeding.

2x12: axe is arrested/indicted/somehow penalized for insider trading and other hedge fund shenanigans, and he puts taylor in charge of axe cap’s investments.

season 3: taylor keeps axe capital running and thriving in axe’s absence, but once he returns, he overrules their decisions and undercuts their trust, leading them to start their own hedge fund (taylor mason capital, or tmc) by season’s end.

3x01: taylor calls a meeting at axe cap and tasks everyone with preparing for an Idea Dinner where they’ll impress other hedge funds with a new and exciting plan for making money. ultimately taylor comes up with a plan that involves reverse engineering microchips, and it goes over well.

3x02: taylor struggles with making the right choices of investments after a tsunami hits brazil, confronts axe when he shows up at the office despite being banned from trading, and talks with him later about how the day has gone and how to move forward.

3x03: taylor interviews quantitative analysts (”quants”) for axe cap, much to the chagrin of analysts who are worried about losing their jobs and traders who don’t trust computers. ultimately none are hired because wags (the COO of axe cap and the epitome of everything absolutely wild about billions), who conducted the interview with taylor, doesn’t trust quants either and sabotaged the process. (this is also where winston first appears! hi winston!)

3x04: taylor expects a space mission led by weird off brand elon musk to fail and invests accordingly. they’re rooting for him anyway and are horrified when he dies in an explosion after launch. they also deal with attempts to get them to invest in a charitable organization brought to axe’s attention by oscar langstraat, a venture philanthropist, and wind up with significant distaste for oscar.

3x05: taylor encounters oscar again in silicon valley where they’re hearing pitches, and though they’re hostile to him at first, a conversation about star wars makes taylor regret that they made other plans for dinner, and playing an obscure board game is enough for them to sleep with him. (like i said: enemies to lovers speedrun!)

3x06: taylor is “rattled” (their word) by something related to axe’s legal troubles in this episode. oscar flies in from silicon valley unannounced to keep taylor company while they’re working on their quant project because he’s That invested. no clips of any of this online though

3x07: axe and wendy are planning to convince mafee to take the blame for some shady investing they did at the end of last season, and taylor inadvertently enables them to do it by giving them information about how mafee thinks and what he believes in.

3x08: axe returns to axe cap free to trade again, and immediately undoes all of taylor’s work (including the quant project), though he also invites them to join the team that will raise money for axe cap. taylor wants a fund of their own to manage (still affiliated with axe cap but separate), but axe won’t give them as much money for it as he’s promising.

3x09: axe needs money and tries to take some from grigor andolov, a russian oil oligarch, which taylor thinks is a terrible idea. they also restart the quant project again, in secret, which means winston’s back! winston & taylor’s meeting in a room with a chalkboard and taylor’s introduction of the quants to the quant headquarters are both from this episode.

3x10: taylor and oscar are celebrating a deal that oscar’s about to make, but when taylor mentions it to axe in asking for his help with getting a dinner reservation, axe, who’s searching for more sources of money, makes the deal before oscar can, which crushes taylor and ends their relationship. 

3x11: taylor discovers that winston has driven off the other quants, but asks him to work on The Algorithm instead of firing him. it’s also comp time - axe won’t give taylor as much of a bonus as they want and also removes them from the capital raise team; this decision is later reversed when taylor talks to wendy and wendy talks to axe. winston completes The Algorithm, and taylor emerges from the quant basement into the offices of taylor mason capital to talk to grigor.

3x12: taylor meets with grigor and convinces him to invest in tmc, arrives (late) to the capital raise event and impresses the investors there, swipes a good portion of that capital for tmc, and leaves axe cap for good, having successfully convinced mafee (and failing to convince ben kim) to join them. axe and taylor argue about taylor’s betrayal and what comes next. taylor also tries and fails to bring wendy to tmc.

season 4: taylor strives to keep tmc successful while fending off axe’s repeated attacks and dealing with their own interpersonal relationships interfering with business. how will it end? we don’t yet know [UPDATE: it ends with taylor making deals with both axe and chuck, but truly being on no one’s side except their own.]

4x01: taylor, mafee, and sara (taylor’s COO) struggle to hire employees due to axe paying off tmc’s headhunter (though they don’t initially know that’s the case). taylor disguises themself as a cis woman to get money from a sovereign wealth fund that axe cap is also seeking money from. (the full episode is available on youtube.)

4x02: taylor can’t get funding because axe has persuaded all the banks to cut them off. grigor brings in a pair of shady brothers to invest in tmc; taylor would really rather not depend on the brothers’ money, so they trick the banker the brothers are using into cutting off their credit lines and ask grigor to use his influence to get independent funding for tmc.

4x03: axe cap has managed to get a hold of tmc’s trading patterns, and they start front running tmc (making trades based on what they expect tmc to do) to throw taylor off. (this is where winston comes in again! and declares himself cassandra!) taylor’s dad, douglas, shows up and spends nearly all of his screentime either persistently misgendering taylor or helping them create a mathematical equation, which includes a mistake added by taylor as a message to axe (who of course is watching) for a meeting. when they meet, taylor asks axe for a truce, and he declines.

4x04: grigor brings down axe cap’s whole computer system, allowing tmc to profit off a natural gas crisis that axe cap was hoping to benefit from. taylor also agrees to support douglas’s aerospace project, a “lattice grid fin,” now that he’s actually respecting them as a person. but the climax of this episode is chuck talking about his and wendy’s sex life in front of the press, and taylor calls wendy afterward to offer sympathy. (and chuck, who subsequently wins his election, gets grigor deported and his money frozen.)

4x05: taylor is #Stressed about the loss of grigor’s money, which endangers tmc overall and douglas’s project especially. sara brings in lauren, an investor relations expert, to help out; lauren gets taylor a meeting with the new york firefighters’ fund, who used to invest only with axe but are looking elsewhere, and taylor gains their support.

4x06: taylor is working with douglas and a couple other companies on getting his lattice fin project off the ground, while trying to avoid axe cap’s spying (not that successfully), and douglas is mad that he isn’t being treated like the smartest person in the room. taylor and wendy also meet up repeatedly, in a seemingly friendly way, but wendy mines their conversations and her patient files on taylor to figure out how to force taylor to destroy douglas’s project. 

4x07: rebecca, axe’s girlfriend (though tmc doesn’t know that) and a business mogul herself, offers to buy douglas’s project (as a way for axe to access and destroy it), which taylor turns down. taylor has also enlisted wendy’s help to furnish a new apartment for their parents. then taylor gets the news that douglas’s project has been found to be a threat to national security (thanks to axe) - and though they initially choose to hold onto his project despite the ensuing loss of funds, wendy comes over to commiserate and inadvertently gives away that she’s been playing taylor this whole time. taylor sells the project to the government to save tmc, at the cost of their relationship with douglas.

4x08: taylor wants financial revenge for being manipulated, and first taunts, then argues with axe on live television. at mafee and dollar bill’s charity boxing match, taylor first is confronted by wendy about reporting her for malpractice (which sara did without taylor’s knowledge), then reveals that they tricked axe into getting fracking legalized so they could profit from buying water rights where fracking happens.

4x09: taylor is going to great lengths to destroy rebecca’s new position as ceo of a department store (saler’s), including buying out three of the largest shareholders and planning to meet up with a fourth who already hates axe. the plan doesn’t work in the end, but taylor finds out that axe will make huge sacrifices for rebecca - and starts a relationship with lauren, who helped them get a meeting with the fourth shareholder’s son.

4x10: taylor is preparing for wendy’s malpractice hearing, buying an appliance manufacturer closely tied to saler’s in order to have power over rebecca, and doing a terrible job of hiding their relationship with lauren. wendy comes to see them at tmc, and taylor claims they won’t go to the hearing, for wendy’s benefit.

4x11: taylor indeed doesn’t go to the hearing, and wendy fesses up to her wrongdoing. it’s comp time at tmc (winston’s most recent appearance! we’ve only just recently stopped shouting about it!), and everyone defers their bonus except lauren, who says she’d be too heartbroken to stick around if she and taylor broke up. rebecca, who’s tired of taylor making her life difficult, offers taylor a business deal related to saler’s, and taylor, who’s tired of being at war, accepts.

4x12: here is imdb’s summary of this episode: “Axe makes a big decision. Connerty gets closer to the truth. Tensions rise, and dynamics shift.” real specific. [UPDATE: taylor apologizes to their employees and promises to focus on running tmc The Right Way. and then axe sinks tmc by effectively killing saler’s, and sends a former axe cap employee who tried to get a job at tmc to try and bait taylor into engaging in insider trading; he hopes that chuck will then arrest them and blackmail them to work for axe again. taylor doesn’t take the bait, but chuck arrests them anyway, and makes a deal with them to work together to take axe down. secretly taylor plans to set up chuck and axe to destroy each other, and then get out of the way. the episode ends with taylor and their tmc team walking into axe cap and being “welcomed home.”]

#inbox #cockbiteproductions #billions #taylor mason #winston billions #if you have more questions feel free to ask! i unexpectedly love talking about this lmao

[snbc]

What is a Russian oligarch?

What is a Russian oligarch?

An oligarch is a very rich business leader who also has a lot of political influence. In Russia, oligarchs are almost always men and specifically now connected to President Putin. Many of them are uber-rich with billions in assets, massive yachts, exotic cars and sometimes shady business histories. The deal? As long as they remain loyal to Putin, the president leaves them alone. If they run…

View On WordPress

[anthonybialy]

From A to A

Sanctimony comes right to your door. A year of relying on Amazon has shown how dreadful the ether bookseller has become. Distrust goes beyond natural contempt brought by marriage-style familiarity. A heartless amalgamation is unnerving for how invasive it strives to be. Your sole source of sustaining goods treats Rollerball as a documentary. You shouldn't buy DVDs of dystopian warning for their site only in part because you'd be contributing toward making dull paranoid fantasies true.

Wishing it could be avoided is a sure sign a company pleases customers. Virtue signaling is what they sell best. Take commercials which may as well be funded by the Human Rights Campaign. My personal favorite Amazon sales pitch for something other than products is the one featuring the interracial lesbian couple impressed by the site's low prices, as it convinced me such pairs of bathroom-sharers not only exist but are to be celebrated. It turns out tolerance is good. Focusing on purchasing is hard while trying to figure out how the two ended up with mixed-race children. Amazon apparently refuses to sell titles teaching actual biology.

Social media shows how Amazon hates the power they use as much as they love every kind of wedding. Every smarmy tweet churned out by their smug underlings putting their sociology degrees to fine use pimps social justice lunacy that stands in opposition to their outfit's existence.  AOC generates less stridency.

How much value is created? Workers might disagree with their bosses. Calling to pay their people more as they try to pay them as little as possible is Amazon at its best, which is its worst. Just make sure the sum is more than any intended competitor. Salaries smaller outfits can’t absorb are the ideal legal minimum the warehouse aficionado endorses by sheer coincidence.

Amazon's creepy drive toward galaxy domination embodies how being pro-business differs entirely from being, well, pro-business. People can think that one employer features crummy working conditions without wanting the Berlin Wall to be rebuilt by union workers. Amazon should churn out another set of ads with utterly happy workers totally not smiling preposterously only because their family is being held at gunpoint, as that'll convince the public that their detergent delivery monstrosity is kind.

Humanity is controlled by the lamest single entity imaginable. Censoring speech that runs counter to the open principles of a purported bookseller is a nice tough. The government don't need to violate the First Amendment when a quasi-oligarch can decline to sell any title it deems hateful. You're not permitted to acquire literature featuring accurate biology endorsed by think tanks to Hoxha's right.

Insecurity is common among those who control others to compensate. Anyone confident should want their awful hateful foes to keep publishing and thus embarrassing themselves. It's sure sign of open debate when they deem tomes so harmful that they cannot be sold.

Those looking for options wait for Amazon's eternal hold on retail to end in a few weeks. Aspiring monopolies inevitably grow fat and lazy idling while parking free. Those who've struggled to obtain everything that can be sold forget to innovate like they did on their way up. Life becomes static for everyone who tries to corner a market. Woolworth’s thought it’d be selling everything for a couple cents forever, too.

Wanting companies to make as much as possible is frustrating when they call to be taxed for the privilege. Preening isn't convincing when paired with utter hypocrisy. Evading endorsed policies isn't quite honorable. We're trying to advocate for them to sell everything, and they reply by demanding laws intended to ruin foes. When they're this manipulative, the market certainly isn't free.

Amazon displays a principled commitment to any issue that is good for peddling. Take how the retail Godzilla will stop drug testing because they believe deeply in human liberty. Oh, and they'd also happen to be able to deliver your jazz cigarettes. One would also think an online seller would find online taxes objectionable. But anything to discourage shopping at smaller outlets serves their public good.

There's no requirement to buy what's being sold. One can just dislike a company even if it's engaged in robust trade. Subway attempts to call whatever it manufactured in bunker labs meat, and it doesn't mean you must suffer through lunch there. Conservatives who loathe diving to humanity's depths during Walmart outings get the principle.

Warping public policy to advance their own interests doesn't sound very fair. It's fine to advocate with ulterior motives. One should just make sure to be aware of them and don't give into them. Raising taxes because Amazon pretends to be selfless advocates of communal good is the opposite of capitalism in case anyone thought having a seller involved automatically meant we were in a libertarian situation.

Business dominance just happened to coincide with a semi-eternal lockdown if you spent a year in solitary confinement pondering conspiracies. It's uncanny how wrapping homes in plastic helped the smiley arrow logo outfit. Framing themselves as saviors delivering critical goods is part of their messianic narrative. You can buy the old Bible from their site if for nostalgia. Keeping patients sick so they can keep saving with medicinal deliveries is particularly appalling when the cure is jigsaw puzzles.

Just bring my slippers by tomorrow. Contemporary peddlers show how important they are by telling their lunkheaded customers how they're not progressive enough. You thought you could get away with only buying goods?

A lecture from a heartlessly calculating conglomerate is sure to improve morality. Amazon has everything, if you can find it. But sifting through pages of shady affiliates and imprecise results. It's too bad the purported retailer is so focused on presenting self-righteousness, as they might really have something if they could put it on shelves.

Poring through crummy searches might even inspire consumers to pay the dang shipping elsewhere. It's officially a weird world when patronizing the mall is the best way to support small mom and pop shops. The monolith blocking out other options makes the spending decision easier.