World War Three?

[Ronson]

Little nailed it in his performance.

Brooks said they looked all over for Pryor and couldn't find him. Finally, Pryor called him from Chicago. Brooks said "What are you doing out there?" and Pryor said "I don't know."

He was a sad character.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Little nailed it in his performance.

He died tragically young as well, from colon cancer apparently. I still laugh at the close up "model" shot of him with his Gucci saddle-bag and Count Basie's orchestra playing. And his later remark to Lili about finding some Vitamin E.

[Mountain Man]

OTOH, can you point to any significant gains they have made in the past week or so?

I don't know exactly what would qualify as a significant gain, but it seems like whatever ground they want to take, they are eventually able to take. I'm sure Putin wanted things to go more quickly, but short of NATO getting involved in a ground war with Russia, they're going to win.

[Mountain Man]

Brooks said they looked all over for Pryor and couldn't find him. Finally, Pryor called him from Chicago. Brooks said "What are you doing out there?" and Pryor said "I don't know."

He was a sad character.

It's strange to me that so many people who make us laugh, are themselves crying inside.

[rogue06]

It's strange to me that so many people who make us laugh, are themselves crying inside.

Humor is often a defense mechanism. A way of coping.

[Mountain Man]

Humor is often a defense mechanism. A way of coping.

I was watching a clip from Stir Crazy starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, which I won't link here because it violates tWeb's profanity policy in just about every way imaginable, but it is laugh out hilarious. Even Pryor's co-stars, including Wilder, are visibly struggling to keep a straight face through some of his antics.

[rogue06]

I was watching a clip from Stir Crazy starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, which I won't link here because it violates tWeb's profanity policy in just about every way imaginable, but it is laugh out hilarious. Even Pryor's co-stars, including Wilder, are visibly struggling to keep a straight face through some of his antics.

Wilder and Pryor paired well, as can also be seen in the movie Silver Streak -- another movie that would require having large chunks removed before it could be aired today because of the woke scolds.

[Gondwanaland]

Burned and bombed apartment complexes in Mariupol
724327ce-1388-41e6-a988-3b0ad114a415.jpg

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

It's strange to me that so many people who make us laugh, are themselves crying inside.

As Leoncavallo so poignantly and beautifully showed in his aria vesti la guibba from Pagliacci.

[Mountain Man]

As Leoncavallo so poignantly and beautifully showed in his aria vesti la guibba from Pagliacci.

There's a story about a man who went to see a doctor about his depression. The doctor says, "There is a great comedian performing a show tonight. I suggest you go, and you will laugh so much that you will forget your troubles." The man looks at the doctor with tears in his eyes and says, "But I am that great comedian!"

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

There's a story about a man who went to see a doctor about his depression. The doctor says, "There is a great comedian performing a show tonight. I suggest you go, and you will laugh so much that you will forget your troubles." The man looks at the doctor with tears in his eyes and says, "But I am that great comedian!"

Quite. So many comedians have very tortured private lives.

[Mountain Man]

When we wrote about the media effort in 2018 {Go Deep}, specifically the collusion between the intelligence and national security agencies of the United States government, I asked the question, “Do we really think such a catastrophic level of corrupted journalism could reconstitute into genuine reporting of fact-based information?” [The] answer then, as now, is the same, NO. Indeed, it has only gotten worse in the past four years.

For the past several days I have been highlighting a simple question on social media about something missing in the Ukraine story.

Where are the social media posts from Ukraine citizens that would support the narrative as it is being told by Western media about events happening in Ukraine? Seemingly, Ukraine is the only conflict in modern human history, where a pop culture society of more than 30 million technologically connected people decided not to document every moment of it on social media.

Considering the scale and scope of the conflict; and considering the Ukraine population of more than 30 million is far larger than Canada; and consider that population is located in a country the size of Texas; and considering they are a western technologically connected society with tens of millions of cell phones; we should be seeing a great deal of footage, pictures and images from ordinary Ukranian citizens. However, we don’t. Why?

I’m not talking about the professional war social media accounts, and/or military-centric accounts, which, to be fair do have lots of images and footage of Russian and Ukrainian conflicts. I’m talking about the ordinary man/woman in the major population centers, who under normal circumstances would be generating tens-of-thousands of social media posts to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, YouTube, etc.

Western media are telling us that Russia is randomly shelling, bombing and targeting all of these civilian targets in urban areas. Yet there’s nothing visible. Almost everything you see is from Eastern Ukraine where a civil war has been ongoing for over a decade.

Whatever is happening in the rest of Ukraine is the least documented conflict in modern social media. It just seems odd. It’s as if there is a massive disconnect between the portrayal of western media, in comparison to the actual reality inside Ukraine.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com...about-ukraine/

[seanD]

Folks don't realize how integrated and interconnected global banks, markets, economies, supply chains are. Everyone 's talking about the economic damage the sanctions are doing to Russia, but being that the west economically was already in dire straits before all this happened, the sanctions are basically analogous to a suicide bomber tactic, especially in the long term.

It's almost as if the conflict is being used as a scapegoat to intentionally disrupt the western economic order...

The Last Straw

The U.S. and its allies in the EU and others around the world have imposed the harshest economic sanctions on Russia that have ever been used. In the past, even nations directly at war with each other would continue to pay the debts they owed each other.

Since this war is in Ukraine, let’s look at another war that took place in present Ukraine from 1854–56, during the Crimean War.

Britain (and France) was at war with Russia. Yet throughout the war, the Russian government kept paying interest to British holders of its debt. The British government also kept paying its debts to the Russian government.

One British minister said that civilized nations should pay their debts, even to an enemy during wartime.

But that was then and this is now. The U.S. and its European allies outside of Ukraine aren’t even directly at war with Russia (not yet anyway), but they’ve still imposed the most punitive economic sanctions in history.

To a great extent, the Russian economy has been cut out of the global economy.
The Effects Will Last for Decades


Russia has been kicked out of the SWIFT global financial telecommunications system. A long list of Russian banks, oligarchs and major companies have been listed among those who cannot transact with Western parties. These include Gazprom (the major Russian natural gas company), among others.

Biden has also prohibited exports of semiconductors, high-tech equipment and other technology to Russia. When you add it all up, we should expect a decline on the order of 25% in Russian GDP in the first half of 2022. That’s massive.

Even when the kinetic war is over, probably in a month or so, the economic war will continue and the effects on the global economy (not just Russia) will last for decades. Still, Russia is not a punching bag that takes hits without hitting back.

They’ll fight the sanctions both with retaliatory measures of their own and with inventive workarounds designed to defeat the sanctions.

For example, Russia will be teaming up with China to roll out the Chinese credit card system (UnionPay) for Russian consumers. This comes after Visa and Mastercard ended all business with Russia. Their efforts won’t end there.

Good Luck Sanctioning Russian Gold


Russia is working with banks in China and India to reestablish hard currency payment channels.

There’s now proposed legislation in the U.S. Senate to freeze gold reserves held by the Central Bank of Russia.

Well, here’s the problem: The gold is physical, about 2,300 metric tonnes worth about $150 billion, and is stored inside Russia. It can’t actually be frozen or seized at all.

The legislation would impose secondary boycott sanctions on any party that assists Russia in transporting or transacting in gold. But this presumed sanction would be easy to evade.

For example, if Russia puts 100 metric tonnes of gold on a plane and flies it to Beijing in exchange for manufactured goods, they’re not exactly going to issue a press release about it. That’s the kind of transaction that will go undetected by U.S. intelligence.

Gold is an element, atomic number 79, and is easily melted down and re-refined into new gold bars with Chinese markings that are untraceable. The Central Bank of Russia can buy more gold from Russian miners for rubles to make up for the shipment.

Again, that gold is untraceable (Russia and China both have numerous gold refineries). If this is the best the U.S. can do then Putin is not only on his way to winning the shooting war, but he may win the financial war as well.

Unintended Consequences


Russia has also implemented capital controls that will shift the pain of sanctions from Russian borrowers to Western lenders who will now suffer defaults on the Russian bonds they own. And Russia has announced that it will cut off exports of important chemicals, metals and processed gasses to any nation that has sanctioned Russia.

These exports are indispensable to manufacturing processes including semiconductors, automobiles and agriculture. In the end, most of the economic pain will fall on Western manufacturing and farming.

This is where the law of unintended consequences comes into play. Over 65% of the processed neon gas used to power lasers that make semiconductors comes from Ukraine. Between 35% and 50% of strategic metals, such as titanium and aluminum, used in aircraft manufacture by Boeing and Airbus come from Russia. Much of the grain that feeds the Middle East and Africa comes either from Ukraine or Russia.

Russia also exports metals used in battery production for EVs including lithium, cobalt and nickel. The list goes on topped by oil, natural gas and coal, where Russia is the leading supplier to Europe.

If Russia follows through, we could be looking at a shutdown of major industries around the world from semiconductors (essential for automobiles, appliances, electronics, etc.) to heavy equipment and transportation.

The Biden administration will find out the hard way that in a globalized, densely connected world, what happens in Russia doesn’t stay in Russia. Russia may be the first victim of U.S. sanctions. But the entire world will pay the final price.

So will the dollar…

(...)

The Last Straw for Russia and the World


It took the U.S. dollar 33 years (1914–1944) to achieve its status as the leading global reserve currency. The dollar lost its gold link in 1971 but remained the leading reserve currency due in part to the petrodollar deal that was worked out by Nixon and Kissinger in 1974.

The world was flooded with dollars through a combination of Fed money printing and U.S. trade deficits.

The difficulties began in the 1990s and early 2000s when the U.S. used financial sanctions to punish enemies such as Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and, to a limited extent, Russia. The U.S. kept going back to sanctions over and over.

Now that the U.S. has frozen the reserves of the Central Bank of Russia, this is the last straw for Russia and the world.

After all, if dollar reserves are no longer a safe haven, then who needs dollar reserves? The world will demand something more dependable that can’t be frozen on U.S. whims.

The U.S. is destroying the value of the dollar by abusing sanctions. In the future, the dollar will not be that important. It won’t happen overnight, but the unprecedented sanctions against Russia will only accelerate the process.

[seanD]

Oops. I'm surprised YT hasn't taken this down. But it is Times after all, the "acceptable" media.

[NorrinRadd]

I apologize that so far I've only found this on Facebook.

Dakota Meyer completely reverses course, goes from non-involvement to advocating direct "boots on the ground."

https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=800731574226205