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xyhhx :bunny_sunglasses: @[email protected] · 2025-11-23 · 15:19 UTC

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A National Day of Atonement
Robert Jensen
One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.
In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.
Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most Americans into apoplectic fits — which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United States.
That the world’s great powers achieved ‘greatness’ through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.
But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin — the genocide of indigenous people — is of special importance today. It’s now routine — even among conservative commentators — to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.
One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter.
Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it’s also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.
Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.
The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians’ land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving ‘wild beasts’ from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, ‘both being beasts of prey, tho’ they differ in shape.’ Thomas Jefferson — president #3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the ‘merciless Indian Savages’ — was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn’t stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, ‘[W]e shall destroy all of them.’
As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president #26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process ‘due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway.’ Roosevelt also once said, ‘I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.’
How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? Here’s how ‘respectable’ politicians, pundits, and professors play the game:
But when one brings into historical discussions any facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable — such as the genocide of indigenous people as the foundational act in the creation of the United States — suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, ‘Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?’
https://www.counterpunch.org/2005/11/21/a-national-day-of-atonement/
#thanksgiving #UShistory #UShist

#thanksgiving #ushistory #ushist
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts @[email protected] · 2026-03-22 · 21:20 UTC

Oh You, European Simpletons! Prevent Death Cult From Getting Nuclear Bombs!

Abstract: A world war between oligarchic democracy and futuristic tyrannies is in process. If oligarchic democracy does not win, tyranny will, or whatever is left after copious nuclear exchanges.
The 2026 conflict with Iran has vindicated the technological prowess of the Iranian military while highlighting a civilizational threat: the “Death Cult” of Shia fundamentalism. Rooted in 13 centuries of remorse and self-flagellation over the Battle of Karbala, this ideology is characterized as inherently suicidal and martyrological.
Providing such a regime with nuclear weapons is an existential threat to Europe, as the cult’s ultimate desire is to be “nuclear bombed” to achieve martyrdom.
Drawing parallels to Japan’s 1930s Bushido-driven expansion and the eventual “surprise” of Pearl Harbor, the text critiques European “simpletons” and “headless chickens” for their passivity and colonial guilt.
We conclude that a “Just War”—aimed at flipping the regime and defanging the Revolutionary Guard—is necessary to preserve planetary civilization, asserting that Europe’s survival is incompatible with a nuclear-armed theocracy in Tehran.
No mercy should be shown because the ultimate enemy is in the Kremlin, bristling with nukes, and deserves the same treatment. Not because we want to punish, but because we want to survive.
Europe pretended to have learned well the main lessons from Nazism. However, Europe still has to pass the final exam, and cannot ask Washington to pass in its stead.
***
***
In the 2026 Iran War, Iranian military technology has performed remarkably well. Already in 2025, one could see Iranian missiles coming down in Haifa extremely close to Israeli anti-missile batteries, a remarkable feat. In 2026, high precision strikes, including on US military installations, showed that this was no fluke.
Iran was a centerpiece to civilization for at least 7,000 years… But unfortunately, like much of Middle Earth, with its hydraulic problems, all too often ended with regimes which were more dictatorial than in Europe. The dichotomy has become more obvious since Muslim Arabs conquered Persia… Which counter-attacked with its own variant of Islam, the Shia (initially that simply meant the “Party” of Ali and his sons).
All over the world, simpletons who do not know enough have not enough imagination to realize that a Death Cult like the Shia sh*t on humanity because the Shia’s dream is to kill as many as possible while dying as martyrs (yes, I lived in Iran!)

That’s why they beat themselves bloody with chains, or cut their heads with razors or knives as in the accompanying picture in Lebanon. Shia faithful tend to hate (much of early) Islam because it conquered Persia, killed Ali, Hussein… And yet they are Muslims, so they hate themselves and beat themselves bloody.
So why would we want the Death Cult to have nuclear bombs? Granted, there are lots of Nazis around who want to annihilate Israel, and half a dozen nuclear bombs over Israel would do it. So, understandably the Nazis and those obsessed with Judaism, would be happy for Iran to have nuclear bombs.

HOWEVER, the first bombings done by the Shia Death Cult were in France… Rather curious, as France harbored the Ayatollah Khomeni (probably as an anti-US maneuver)… But here we see the beating bloody with chain behavior re-merge…
So the Shia Death Cult will kill anyone, especially themselves. With nuclear bombs of course they will try to destroy Paris…
Last, not least: this is a World war, in its early stages. Fighting Iran is fighting Putin, while pretending not to. Fortunately, this time France and Britain are not fighting alone while the USA pretends to have better things to do (as in WW1 and WW2).
Yes, don’t believe the propaganda of Shia and Putinists: not only is most of the French Navy in the area, but France is actually running out of missiles because it fired so many of them in this war against Iran… A special government meeting was convened to solve the missile crisis. They are specifically running out of MICA air to air missiles…

Europeans have been going around like headless chickens looking for their brains, claiming disingenuously that having a nuclear death cult in Iran is none of their business. However an Iranian missile reached Diego Garcia, in the middle of the Indian Ocean… where the missile was destroyed by a US ship.

It does not take much imagination, even for mental retards, to substitute London for Diego Garcia, and a nuclear warhead to replace the conventional warhead. Differently from the USA, which has thousands of ballistic missile interceptors at any moment. Wait until the Shia have maneuvering hypersonic high precision nuclear warheads targeting Paris and London… We will use MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Europeans chuckle because, in their racist blindness, they know nearly nothing about Fundamentalist Shia…

In particular they do not know at all that what the Shia wants to do is to be nuclear bombed!

The USA is the world’s greatest producer of hydrocarbons. Europeans decided to stop production (explicit laws forbidding it were passed in France and Britain. Meanwhile the lunatic Germans stopped their perfect nuclear industry and are building 50 (fifty) gas power plants… In the name of ecology (it turned out wind and sun don’t work during those icy foggy winter nights, a great discovery of modern German science… So now Germany is going to buy gas overseas, in the hope of a future deal with the Kremlin…) The USA gets no oil from the Middle East, but profits hugely from high hydrocarbon prices.

Europeans should be most concerned about Middle East hydrocarbon flow…But… Right now the Red Sea traffic has been reestablished, because Trump made the Houthis an offer which they could not refuse. However, that’s delicate and depends upon US carriers looming in the distance. After suffering a fire for 30 hours, the super carrier Gerlad Ford, largest in the world, had to retreat to Crete… Meanwhile Ethiopia has been wondering aloud why, with a population of 140 millions, it can’t get access to the Red Sea anymore after a war, and for just 50 kilometers. Tanks are gathering…

All Europeans can say is that colonial rule was bad, and, like the Shia lunatics who accuse themselves of having caused the death of Husayn 1346 years ago, the Europeans accuse themselves, and colonialism, of having caused the post-colonial chaos, not realizing that they were supposedly gone and colonialism dead, when the chaos grew.

If the Shia Death Cult gets nukes, so will its natural enemies: all non Shia Arab countries, plus Turkey and thus Azerbaijan, their natural enemies Armenia and Georgia, plus all Central Asian more or less Muslim and certainly militarily prestigious Central Asian republics… Etc.

Europe has a brain problem.

Iran treacherously killed hundreds of US and French soldiers and citizens, inflicting in particular attacks in Paris some of them on the ground of religion, attacking the oldest French religion still practiced today (Judaism). The French president at the time did not want to go to war, thus the author of the bombings, the Iranian theocracy, was obscuri zed. So France and the USA had plenty of reasons to evoke casus belli. So, of course does Israel.
So, although a war to preempt way way way worse, a nuclear holocaust, it is also a JUST WAR.
We not only have to eliminate terrorist regimes, especially with nuclear capability, real or potential, but we may as well TRAIN with the Mollahs.
No doubt millions of Iranians share my opinions, hence the excellent work of the Mossad…
***
Meanwhile, congratulations to Donald Trump for finding the appropriate answer to a young Politically Correct Japanese journalist, who accused Trump of having made a surprise attack, without having consulted… Japan… Resulting in Japan being “confused”. Trump replied with Pearl Harbor:
Trump: “We went in very hard, and we didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. If I go and tell everybody about it, there’s no longer a surprise… Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Okay, why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor? Right? You believe in surprise, I think, much more so than us”.
Europe should believe in European civilization, much more than the USA or even China. But it doesn’t. When Trump was confronted with the notion of surprise by the impudent, idiotic and historically unaware Japanese journalist, Prime Minister Takaichi, sitting next to Trump could not believe what her compatriot had dared to utter so idiotically.
She felt that Trump was probably going to retaliate with Pearl Harbor, a surprise attack while Japan and the USA were negotiating to find out under which circumstances California oil would start to flow to Japan again. Pearl Harbor was a real treachery, and inconceivably stupid. Immediately after the surprise attack on Hawai’i, Admiral Yamamoto, who led the Japanese Navy, observed “I am afraid that all we have achieved is to wake up a sleeping giant.”
Yamamoto, who had studied at Harvard, was against making war on the USA, because he knew victory was impossible. However many of his colleagues in the military junta in power were culturally imbued with Bushido, a form of death cult. :
Bushido (武士道, “the way of the warrior”) is the ethical code characteristic of Japan’s samurai class. It emphasized virtues like loyalty (忠義 chūgi), honor (名誉 meiyo), courage (勇 yū), benevolence (仁 jin), respect (礼 rei), honesty (誠 makoto), and self-discipline. These drew from influences like Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto. And also from the Feudal structure of Japan, where warlords became everything around 800 CE. Thus “loyalty” was often simply groveling submission to a Lord erected into the ultimate cosmic principle.
Texts like the Hagakure (early 18th century), which is found two feet away in a nice red book, as I write these lines, famously state: “The way of the samurai is found in death.” This meant meditating daily on mortality to achieve mental freedom, transcend fear, and act decisively without any attachment to life.
Seppuku, self disembowelment, was viewed by Bushido Fundamentalists as preferable to a life of shame. An example of shame was supposedly retreating in battle (although that happened plenty).
In 1931, a rogue Japanese army manipulated by two colonels who had set up a false flag incident, launched the conquest of China. In the next decade the Japanese high command took ever more criminal power in Japan, in complete violation of the Constitution, culminating with the idiotic and self-defeating decision to attack everybody around (the Chinese, the French, the US, the UK, Philippines, Indonesia, South East Asia… In this order…). The rogue junta reengineered Bushido as a death cult to be applied to foreigners…. Killing at least 50 millions of them (most of them Chinese).
What could be the ultimate rationale for this raging Bushido imperial expansion? There was the hope that the Americans would reveal themselves not quite Bushido material… Enabling the Japanese conquest of the entire so-called co-prosperity sphere”.
However, the Americans were natural Bushido material (no surprise: after all, the Americans had conquered (the better part of) North America).
But then the fanatical generals reasoned, even if we fail completely and miserably, we will destroy European power in the area, and pose as liberators (something sorely needed after what had happened in Korea).
That approach, of camping Japan as a liberation machine, indeed did work… Meager consolation… However the fanatical Japanese generals had not anticipated that the USA would grab European power, and use it on their own account.
Thus, in the end, the Bushido fanatics ensured the success of their ultimate enemy, the one identified when the US “Black Ships” had shown up in Tokyo Bay. US Commodore Matthew Perry’s squadron on July 8, 1853 arrived, a terrifying sight, belching black smoke and sailing without sails or wind, with explosive shells. They delivered a “letter” (truly an ultimatum) to end Japan’s isolation (a 220 years Shogun policy). The US got what they wanted, and the US ultimatum was the catalyst for Japan’s forced modernization: it contributed to the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Meiji Restoration (1868), and Japan’s rapid industrialization to avoid colonization… And save its civilizational variant..
The situation with Iran is very similar. However, nowadays, it’s the fate of the planetary civilization which is at stake. But do Europeans still know what their civilization was all about, and that it must be defended? Apparently no. And no, European civilization was not just Islamo-Judeo-Christian…none of those three instituted the social reforms of the Greco-Romans: they hitched a ride on them.
European civilization had much in common with India (well, civilization was Indo-European and the bridge was… Iran…), but also European civilization had much in common with the greatest civilization of Asia: it was like them, only much more so… For the good and simple reason that the Great European Steppe provided a freeway from Hungary to Korea…
In the past the most idealistic of our predecessors wanted a world government. The European colonial empires provided a sort of partial world government… Until German and Italian craziness blew it all up. Now a world government is a must, not a choice, as I argued with DAD.
The DAD approach has to proceed from the worst regimes to the less bad. As is done in Venezuela apparently, so far, successfully. In Russia, the best approach, obviously that of Trump, is to flip the government: doing as in Venezuela, but with a nuclear superpower.
In Iran, a flip is also imaginable: after all, there is an army, and the Revolutionary Guard is the equivalent of the SS in Nazi Germany. But there the SS had just 12 years, whereas in Iran the Revolutionary Guard had 47 years… In any case, the Death Cult itself has to be completely defanged and domesticated: our home, domus, is Earth and there is no space for Death Cults. By the way, the Romans hunted the Druids for centuries: the Druids hid in the forests and mountain redoubts, they had sympathizers… But they, and their death cult, were, ultimately, hunted down and eradicated by the Roman army. The same Roman army could eradicate the Christians: although also to some extent a death cult, Christianism was also many other things, not just keen to see martyrs die, and this is why it could not be eliminated..
Europe’s medium term survival is not compatible with the rule of a Death Cult bristling with nukes in Teheran. If Europe cannot figure that, what can it figure? Is Europe itself becoming a Death Cult, unwilling to ensure its own survival, presiding over its own death, thus explaining that sympathy incited France to harbor Ayatollah Khomeini?
Patrice Ayme

: .

Covered with their own guilty blood, accusing themselves to have caused the death of Husayn, more than 13 centuries ago. Can we trust those maniacs to accuse us of crimes we never committed to? Most probably! If confronted that way, Shia will often pretend that “guilty” aspect is collective/regretful sorrow for the broader community’s historical failure to aid Imam Husayn ibn Ali, his family and a tiny group of followers—not individual culpability today. But the line is thin and a sub-ideology in the Qur’an recommends lying to defend the Faith…
(Matam, latmiya for chest-beating, zanjir-zani for chain-beating on the back, or tatbir for striking the head with blades/swords: it’s a whole semantics out there for the name of the bloody rose, Shia style…)
Self-flagellation is an expression of remorse and guilt for not having saved Imam Hussein more than 1345 years ago. Yes, more than 13 centuries ago, Husayn, grandson of the Prophet was killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE..The Umayyad caliph Mu’awiya I (r. 661–680) had nominated his son Yazid as his successor. Yazid’s nomination was contested by the sons of a few prominent companions of Muhammad, including Husayn, son of the fourth caliph Ali. Umayyad caliph Yazid I’s army of at least 4,000 and perhaps as much as 30,000 (from those joining certain victory) confronted at most a few hundred Husayn’s followers. Husayn refused to submit to Yazid. He was submitted to a long and gory death, including many members of his family, down to a son in his lap.
#DAD #DeathCult #Europe #history #Iran #Israel #MAD #Martirdom #MiddleEast #nuclearWeapons #PearlHarbor #politics #Shiah #Trump #war

#dad #deathcult #europe #history #iran #israel
bok @[email protected] · 2025-11-18 · 02:23 UTC

#Reading in Week Forty-Six of 2025 | Nov 10–16 | ~1600 words | ~9100 characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks |
━━━━━━━━━━
●●○○○ Birthright - Margaret St. Clair (ss) 1958
A doctor argues for letting a newborn with a heart condition, partial blindness, and diabetes die, arguing that the poor family with six already-ill kids can't afford another burden. The head nurse argues that he's practically normal, and social responsibility means they must do what's required to make him live.
The doctor notes that humans have been getting sicker for his whole career. The nurse goes over his head, and is turned down. She tries another doctor in the chain of command, taking extreme measures to get his consent. Then her own condition is revealed. On the one hand, she's apparently happy and is a contributing member of society despite a major disability; on the other hand, is there no limit to the burdens a person must endure?
●●●○○ The Encore Lives of Effie Edenson {Middle Falls 15} - Shawn Inmon (nov) 2022
Effie's boyfriend was shot during a bank robbery. She went on to become a successful author, but remained messed up emotionally, marrying a con man. She developed an eating disorder and years later died from it. Then she came back, as one does in Middle Falls.
Over the course of several lives, each resetting to an earlier point, Effie managed not to marry the con man, but still eventually died from her disorder. Eventually she reset early enough that she was able to save Bobby, learn how to deal with her domineering mother, and achieve a decent life.
●●●◐○ A Twelvemonth and a Day - Poul Anderson (nva) 1960
Human-settled worlds are beginning to recontact each other after the fall of the Terran Empire. Miguel Tolteca was a diplomat from Nuevamerica, Raven of Lochlann was the leader of the expedition's security force, and Gwydion was the world they were contacting.
The natives there had experienced genetic drift, and built a myth-heavy culture as a way of coping with a result of that. The two men both fall for local woman, Elfavy, daughter of a local leader. Raven and Tolteca had difficulty understanding each others' cultures, but they find out that cultures can drift so far that that people can seem a different species.
●●●○○ Academic Displacement - Michael Shotter (ss) 2020
Roy Carter, dean of a Pittsburgh college, was walking from the coffee shop to his office when an alien vessel appeared overhead, from which black discs began to float down towards the frozen people below. When one engulfed him, Roy felt a flash go through him, then the ship was gone.
Being a creature of habit, Roy continued on to his office. Stepping out of the elevator, Roy saw himself having a conversation with his secretary. He stepped back into the elevator. Roy soon figured that he'd entered an alternate timeline. And no way was he going to be a fugitive, throwing himself on the mercy of his alternate. Too bad for him that his new timeline itself eventually rejected him.
●●●○○ Flare - Roger Zelazny, Thomas T. Thomas (nov) 1992
A sunspot cycle ended in 1998. A new one failed to start in 1999 or 2000. In fact, for 83 years the sun was spotless in another Maunder minimum. A century in which numerous space stations were launched, and colonies founded on Luna, Mars, the asteroids, and the outer moons. A century in which humans forgot all about solar flares¹. Until one day the sun reawakened and a massive flare erupted.
This is a classic disaster novel, with scores of characters in dozens of places, all affected by the initial radiation blast, then the following particle wave. Thousands of people in VR who go into catatonia when their network overloads. Lunar tourists who get irradiated while on a moonwalk. A cargo ship bringing methane from Titan that ends up crashing on Luna. Stock markets across the globe crashing when their trading networks are borked. Power lines all over Earth overloading. More.
The bit about the Court of Popular Appeal was interesting. Civil cases were decided by referendum in the form of lottery tickets. Each day ten cases went up for decision, and people bought lottery tickets bearing the mark of the plaintiff or defendant, for the usual chance at winning money, while also expressing an opinion.
●●●○○ Follow the Weeds - Margaret St. Clair (ss) 1951
A group of biologists are sent to Mars to recover from radiation disease in a village of widely-separated huts², though the narrator thinks the main reason they were sent away was because the scientists objected to the government stealing their work synthetic life in order to make android soldiers.
The unnamed main character³ interacts with two Martian children³ who come by to beg food after the monthly food supplies are dropped off. She comes to learn a bit about Martian history, and finds that Earth may be duplicating the greatest error Martian civilization ever made.
●●◐○○ Murder in a Nudist Colony - Ted Bun (ss) 2020
A man is found hanging by his tied hands in a nudist resort's main office. He drowned in vomit and would have died of laxative poisoning if he'd lived longer. Someone really wanted the locker key he had swallowed.
Inspector Merton, the detective in charge, was a nudist, but he'd never gone to The Lawn and Pool Club. Sunning nude on a beach in Spain was one thing. Being a naturist locally would have led to his neighbors in rural Shropshire finding out he was a nudist, hurting his career. Which was everything to him, and had led to his divorce.
It turned out his ex-wife was a member of the Club. Some reconciliation there, in a tale that was a so-so mystery and not much on the naturist scale, either.
●●●◐○ Bettyann - Kris Neville (ss) 1951
An alien couple and their infant, all currently in human form, were driving in a snowstorm, rushing to reach the location where their spaceship would take them and the other observers away from Earth. The couple died in a car crash – and apparently melted away as in The Invaders TV show – and the injured baby girl was found alone. She was adopted, and grew up to have a withered arm.
Bettyann was given to deep thoughts about the world, and was a top-marks student with artistic talent that got her a scholarship to an Eastern college. While there she was contacted by a stranger, who eventually told her they were both shape-shifting aliens, and asked if she wished to be rescued. Abilities were revealed, and decisions were made.
●●●●○ Special Delivery - Kris Neville (nva) 1952
Earth was a minor world unfortunately set between the growing star empires of the Knoug and the Oholo. Parr was a Knoug agent in human form sent to prepare the Western United States way for the coming invasion. But on his first day on the planet, he psychically sensed the presence of an Oholo agent in the area, which made his job harder.
Tracking the Oholo down to a building, Parr then tracks it to a couple leaving the building. He kills the man with a subtle weapon, only to be psi-blasted an instant later: the woman was also an Oholo.
Parr manages to flee to his hotel, but the next day he senses the Oholo woman closing in on him, and has to change residences. Thence begins a duel where Knoug and Oholo thrust and parry and move around the city all their waking hours, before falling asleep exhausted.
This greatly impedes Parr's invasion preparations, but ends up exercising and increasing his psychic power, which proves helpful when it becomes clearer that the Knougs are the bad guys, and Parr might have to switch to the Oholo side…
●●●○○ The Case of the Erotic Equestrian {Miles Grant 14} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2020
Miles Grant takes a personal case, that of his youngest niece. Joe and Cassie (Miles's wife Shirley's brother and his wife) have three kids, and the youngest is eleven, but looks seventeen: precocious puberty. Beth would like to have a horse, and has been helping out at a stable on weekends, in exchange for riding time and a salary. Cassie and Joe suspect the woman running the stable has been sexually exploiting Beth.
Miles surveils the place, and investigates the background of the proprietress and finds out it's more than sketchy. Then there's all the usual family nudity of Miles, his wife and kids, Shirley's brother and his wife and kids, and Shirley and Joe's widowed mother MJ, who moves into the second floor apartment of the new house Miles and Shirley are building with part of the big reward he made in his last case.
━━━━━━━━━━
Cumulative 2025 totals as of Week Forty-Six:
271 ss | 27 nvt | 09 nva | 113 nov | #books ●●●●●
[1] I don't actually believe this bit.
[2] How they got the disease, and why there's a village of such huts available for use is never mentioned.
[3] Again, authors, a single line into a mirror like "Oh, Andrea Watkins, how did things get so bad?" would do wonders to avoid me having to talk about unnamed characters.
[4] In 1951 you really shouldn't have been able to get away with the planet being like the Andean steppe: cold and with thin air, but survivable for humans, with Martians being human-like people.

#reading #bokbooks #books
We Have Issues @[email protected] · 2026-05-16 · 07:55 UTC

The Mandalorian – Season 3, Chapter 23: The Spies (2023) – Review

The Spies positions itself as the dramatic turning point before the finale of The Mandalorian’s third season, bringing together many of the season’s scattered threads into a larger confrontation on Mandalore. After the more eccentric detour of Chapter 22, this episode attempts to restore urgency and scale, pushing the narrative toward open conflict while deepening the mythology surrounding the Mandalorians themselves. The result is an episode filled with strong visual moments and intriguing ideas, even if it occasionally feels rushed in its attempt to set up the endgame.
By this point in the season, expectations were mixed but hopeful. The season had delivered compelling world-building and strong individual moments, particularly surrounding Bo-Katan Kryze, portrayed by Katee Sackhoff, but it had also struggled with consistency in pacing and focus. The Spies clearly aims to course-correct by pushing the central conflict back into focus, re-establishing stakes that dangerous.
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Directed by Rick Famuyiwa, from a script by series creator Jon Favreau, the episode wastes little time in setting events into motion. The various Mandalorian factions, long divided by ideology and history, unite in an effort to reclaim Mandalore. This premise alone carries significant weight, as the season has consistently emphasised the idea that Mandalorian survival depends on cooperation rather than isolation.
The opening sequences are effective in establishing this fragile alliance. Din Djarin, voiced by Pedro Pascal, remains a steady central presence, though this episode places greater emphasis on Bo-Katan’s leadership. Her ability to navigate tensions between the disparate groups gives the story a stronger emotional centre than some earlier chapters. Sackhoff continues to bring authority and vulnerability to the role, making Bo-Katan’s journey toward reluctant leadership one of the season’s more compelling arcs.
The return to Mandalore itself is one of the episode’s strongest elements. The ruined planet is presented with an eerie grandeur, combining devastation with lingering traces of civilization. The atmosphere is appropriately ominous, reinforcing the sense that the Mandalorians are walking into both their history and a trap. The episode does a strong job of making Mandalore feel haunted, not just physically, but culturally.
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One of the more interesting additions is the introduction of surviving Mandalorians living on the planet’s surface. These scattered survivors add texture to the world-building and reinforce the idea that Mandalore, despite years of destruction and abandonment, still holds life and memory. Their presence helps ground the larger conflict in personal stakes, reminding you that reclaiming the planet is about more than symbolism.
One of the episode’s most effective narrative choices is its pacing. Unlike some earlier chapters that paused for side adventures, The Spies , moves with relentless purpose. The Mandalorians’ expedition across the surface of the planet gradually transforms from hopeful exploration into something increasingly ominous. Tension builds steadily as the group encounters survivors, internal conflict, and hidden dangers, creating a feeling that disaster is never far away.
That tension pays off dramatically with the re-emergence of Moff Gideon, once again portrayed with cold authority by Giancarlo Esposito. Gideon’s return instantly elevates the episode. Unlike many Star Wars villains who rely purely on intimidation or spectacle, Gideon feels calculated and strategic. His hidden Imperial base beneath Mandalore reframes the entire season’s conflict, revealing that the struggle for the planet has been manipulated from the shadows all along.
The reveal of Gideon’s armored troops is particularly striking. By combining Imperial design with Mandalorian-inspired armor, the episode creates imagery that feels both familiar and unsettling. It’s a powerful symbol of cultural corruption, an Empire literally appropriating Mandalorian identity for its own purposes.
The action sequences throughout the episode are exceptional. Battles are staged with clarity and intensity, balancing aerial combat, close-quarters fighting, and large-scale movement without becoming visually chaotic. The Mandalorians finally fighting together as a unified force gives the action emotional weight beyond simple spectacle.
Perhaps the episode’s strongest quality, however, is its emotional undercurrent. The season’s themes of belief and tradition come to the forefront in meaningful ways. Bo-Katan’s leadership no longer feels uncertain or symbolic, it feels earned. The different Mandalorian factions, once fractured by ideology, begin to understand that survival requires compromise and trust.
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The episode’s climax delivers one of the season’s most shocking moments with the death of Paz Vizsla (Tait Fletcher). His final stand is handled with genuine weight, transforming a character who had often functioned as muscle or comic friction into a tragic symbol of Mandalorian honour, sacrificing himself so everyone else can escape. The sequence is brutal, tense, and emotionally effective, ending the episode on a devastating note.
At the same time, the cliffhanger ending feels somewhat familiar structurally—heroes divided, enemy revealed, stakes raised for the finale. It’s effective in maintaining anticipation, but it doesn’t entirely escape the feeling of being a setup chapter first and a fully satisfying episode second.
The Spies succeeds because it finally brings all the season’s disparate elements together. The mythology of Mandalore, the threat of the Empire, the evolution of Din and Bo-Katan, and the question of what it truly means to be Mandalorian all converge here with clarity and purpose. The performances, especially from Katee Sackhoff and Giancarlo Esposito, help anchor the larger spectacle in character-driven stakes.
Advertisements
This is the strongest episode of the season and one of the series’ most gripping chapters overall. It combines world-building, character development, tension, and action with remarkable confidence, delivering an episode that feels cinematic in scope while remaining emotionally grounded.
Most importantly, it restores a sense of momentum and consequence at exactly the right moment. The stakes feel epic, the characters feel united by shared purpose, and the stage is perfectly set for a finale that promises both triumph and loss. It’s the kind of episode that reminds you why The Mandalorian became such a phenomenon in the first place.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
RETURN TO THE MANDALORIAN REVIEWS #2020s #2023 #JonFavreau #KateeSackhoff #PedroPascal #RickFamuyiwa #StarWars #TheMandalorian #TVReview

#2020s #jonfavreau #kateesackhoff #pedropascal #rickfamuyiwa #starwars
We Have Issues @[email protected] · 2026-05-16 · 07:55 UTC

The Mandalorian – Season 3, Chapter 23: The Spies (2023) – Review

The Spies positions itself as the dramatic turning point before the finale of The Mandalorian’s third season, bringing together many of the season’s scattered threads into a larger confrontation on Mandalore. After the more eccentric detour of Chapter 22, this episode attempts to restore urgency and scale, pushing the narrative toward open conflict while deepening the mythology surrounding the Mandalorians themselves. The result is an episode filled with strong visual moments and intriguing ideas, even if it occasionally feels rushed in its attempt to set up the endgame.
By this point in the season, expectations were mixed but hopeful. The season had delivered compelling world-building and strong individual moments, particularly surrounding Bo-Katan Kryze, portrayed by Katee Sackhoff, but it had also struggled with consistency in pacing and focus. The Spies clearly aims to course-correct by pushing the central conflict back into focus, re-establishing stakes that dangerous.
Advertisements
Directed by Rick Famuyiwa, from a script by series creator Jon Favreau, the episode wastes little time in setting events into motion. The various Mandalorian factions, long divided by ideology and history, unite in an effort to reclaim Mandalore. This premise alone carries significant weight, as the season has consistently emphasised the idea that Mandalorian survival depends on cooperation rather than isolation.
The opening sequences are effective in establishing this fragile alliance. Din Djarin, voiced by Pedro Pascal, remains a steady central presence, though this episode places greater emphasis on Bo-Katan’s leadership. Her ability to navigate tensions between the disparate groups gives the story a stronger emotional centre than some earlier chapters. Sackhoff continues to bring authority and vulnerability to the role, making Bo-Katan’s journey toward reluctant leadership one of the season’s more compelling arcs.
The return to Mandalore itself is one of the episode’s strongest elements. The ruined planet is presented with an eerie grandeur, combining devastation with lingering traces of civilization. The atmosphere is appropriately ominous, reinforcing the sense that the Mandalorians are walking into both their history and a trap. The episode does a strong job of making Mandalore feel haunted, not just physically, but culturally.
Advertisements
One of the more interesting additions is the introduction of surviving Mandalorians living on the planet’s surface. These scattered survivors add texture to the world-building and reinforce the idea that Mandalore, despite years of destruction and abandonment, still holds life and memory. Their presence helps ground the larger conflict in personal stakes, reminding you that reclaiming the planet is about more than symbolism.
One of the episode’s most effective narrative choices is its pacing. Unlike some earlier chapters that paused for side adventures, The Spies , moves with relentless purpose. The Mandalorians’ expedition across the surface of the planet gradually transforms from hopeful exploration into something increasingly ominous. Tension builds steadily as the group encounters survivors, internal conflict, and hidden dangers, creating a feeling that disaster is never far away.
That tension pays off dramatically with the re-emergence of Moff Gideon, once again portrayed with cold authority by Giancarlo Esposito. Gideon’s return instantly elevates the episode. Unlike many Star Wars villains who rely purely on intimidation or spectacle, Gideon feels calculated and strategic. His hidden Imperial base beneath Mandalore reframes the entire season’s conflict, revealing that the struggle for the planet has been manipulated from the shadows all along.
The reveal of Gideon’s armored troops is particularly striking. By combining Imperial design with Mandalorian-inspired armor, the episode creates imagery that feels both familiar and unsettling. It’s a powerful symbol of cultural corruption, an Empire literally appropriating Mandalorian identity for its own purposes.
The action sequences throughout the episode are exceptional. Battles are staged with clarity and intensity, balancing aerial combat, close-quarters fighting, and large-scale movement without becoming visually chaotic. The Mandalorians finally fighting together as a unified force gives the action emotional weight beyond simple spectacle.
Perhaps the episode’s strongest quality, however, is its emotional undercurrent. The season’s themes of belief and tradition come to the forefront in meaningful ways. Bo-Katan’s leadership no longer feels uncertain or symbolic, it feels earned. The different Mandalorian factions, once fractured by ideology, begin to understand that survival requires compromise and trust.
Advertisements
The episode’s climax delivers one of the season’s most shocking moments with the death of Paz Vizsla (Tait Fletcher). His final stand is handled with genuine weight, transforming a character who had often functioned as muscle or comic friction into a tragic symbol of Mandalorian honour, sacrificing himself so everyone else can escape. The sequence is brutal, tense, and emotionally effective, ending the episode on a devastating note.
At the same time, the cliffhanger ending feels somewhat familiar structurally—heroes divided, enemy revealed, stakes raised for the finale. It’s effective in maintaining anticipation, but it doesn’t entirely escape the feeling of being a setup chapter first and a fully satisfying episode second.
The Spies succeeds because it finally brings all the season’s disparate elements together. The mythology of Mandalore, the threat of the Empire, the evolution of Din and Bo-Katan, and the question of what it truly means to be Mandalorian all converge here with clarity and purpose. The performances, especially from Katee Sackhoff and Giancarlo Esposito, help anchor the larger spectacle in character-driven stakes.
Advertisements
This is the strongest episode of the season and one of the series’ most gripping chapters overall. It combines world-building, character development, tension, and action with remarkable confidence, delivering an episode that feels cinematic in scope while remaining emotionally grounded.
Most importantly, it restores a sense of momentum and consequence at exactly the right moment. The stakes feel epic, the characters feel united by shared purpose, and the stage is perfectly set for a finale that promises both triumph and loss. It’s the kind of episode that reminds you why The Mandalorian became such a phenomenon in the first place.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
RETURN TO THE MANDALORIAN REVIEWS #2020s #2023 #JonFavreau #KateeSackhoff #PedroPascal #RickFamuyiwa #StarWars #TheMandalorian #TVReview

#2020s #jonfavreau #kateesackhoff #pedropascal #rickfamuyiwa #starwars
We Have Issues @[email protected] · 2026-05-16 · 07:55 UTC

The Mandalorian – Season 3, Chapter 23: The Spies (2023) – Review

The Spies positions itself as the dramatic turning point before the finale of The Mandalorian’s third season, bringing together many of the season’s scattered threads into a larger confrontation on Mandalore. After the more eccentric detour of Chapter 22, this episode attempts to restore urgency and scale, pushing the narrative toward open conflict while deepening the mythology surrounding the Mandalorians themselves. The result is an episode filled with strong visual moments and intriguing ideas, even if it occasionally feels rushed in its attempt to set up the endgame.
By this point in the season, expectations were mixed but hopeful. The season had delivered compelling world-building and strong individual moments, particularly surrounding Bo-Katan Kryze, portrayed by Katee Sackhoff, but it had also struggled with consistency in pacing and focus. The Spies clearly aims to course-correct by pushing the central conflict back into focus, re-establishing stakes that dangerous.
Advertisements
Directed by Rick Famuyiwa, from a script by series creator Jon Favreau, the episode wastes little time in setting events into motion. The various Mandalorian factions, long divided by ideology and history, unite in an effort to reclaim Mandalore. This premise alone carries significant weight, as the season has consistently emphasised the idea that Mandalorian survival depends on cooperation rather than isolation.
The opening sequences are effective in establishing this fragile alliance. Din Djarin, voiced by Pedro Pascal, remains a steady central presence, though this episode places greater emphasis on Bo-Katan’s leadership. Her ability to navigate tensions between the disparate groups gives the story a stronger emotional centre than some earlier chapters. Sackhoff continues to bring authority and vulnerability to the role, making Bo-Katan’s journey toward reluctant leadership one of the season’s more compelling arcs.
The return to Mandalore itself is one of the episode’s strongest elements. The ruined planet is presented with an eerie grandeur, combining devastation with lingering traces of civilization. The atmosphere is appropriately ominous, reinforcing the sense that the Mandalorians are walking into both their history and a trap. The episode does a strong job of making Mandalore feel haunted, not just physically, but culturally.
Advertisements
One of the more interesting additions is the introduction of surviving Mandalorians living on the planet’s surface. These scattered survivors add texture to the world-building and reinforce the idea that Mandalore, despite years of destruction and abandonment, still holds life and memory. Their presence helps ground the larger conflict in personal stakes, reminding you that reclaiming the planet is about more than symbolism.
One of the episode’s most effective narrative choices is its pacing. Unlike some earlier chapters that paused for side adventures, The Spies , moves with relentless purpose. The Mandalorians’ expedition across the surface of the planet gradually transforms from hopeful exploration into something increasingly ominous. Tension builds steadily as the group encounters survivors, internal conflict, and hidden dangers, creating a feeling that disaster is never far away.
That tension pays off dramatically with the re-emergence of Moff Gideon, once again portrayed with cold authority by Giancarlo Esposito. Gideon’s return instantly elevates the episode. Unlike many Star Wars villains who rely purely on intimidation or spectacle, Gideon feels calculated and strategic. His hidden Imperial base beneath Mandalore reframes the entire season’s conflict, revealing that the struggle for the planet has been manipulated from the shadows all along.
The reveal of Gideon’s armored troops is particularly striking. By combining Imperial design with Mandalorian-inspired armor, the episode creates imagery that feels both familiar and unsettling. It’s a powerful symbol of cultural corruption, an Empire literally appropriating Mandalorian identity for its own purposes.
The action sequences throughout the episode are exceptional. Battles are staged with clarity and intensity, balancing aerial combat, close-quarters fighting, and large-scale movement without becoming visually chaotic. The Mandalorians finally fighting together as a unified force gives the action emotional weight beyond simple spectacle.
Perhaps the episode’s strongest quality, however, is its emotional undercurrent. The season’s themes of belief and tradition come to the forefront in meaningful ways. Bo-Katan’s leadership no longer feels uncertain or symbolic, it feels earned. The different Mandalorian factions, once fractured by ideology, begin to understand that survival requires compromise and trust.
Advertisements
The episode’s climax delivers one of the season’s most shocking moments with the death of Paz Vizsla (Tait Fletcher). His final stand is handled with genuine weight, transforming a character who had often functioned as muscle or comic friction into a tragic symbol of Mandalorian honour, sacrificing himself so everyone else can escape. The sequence is brutal, tense, and emotionally effective, ending the episode on a devastating note.
At the same time, the cliffhanger ending feels somewhat familiar structurally—heroes divided, enemy revealed, stakes raised for the finale. It’s effective in maintaining anticipation, but it doesn’t entirely escape the feeling of being a setup chapter first and a fully satisfying episode second.
The Spies succeeds because it finally brings all the season’s disparate elements together. The mythology of Mandalore, the threat of the Empire, the evolution of Din and Bo-Katan, and the question of what it truly means to be Mandalorian all converge here with clarity and purpose. The performances, especially from Katee Sackhoff and Giancarlo Esposito, help anchor the larger spectacle in character-driven stakes.
Advertisements
This is the strongest episode of the season and one of the series’ most gripping chapters overall. It combines world-building, character development, tension, and action with remarkable confidence, delivering an episode that feels cinematic in scope while remaining emotionally grounded.
Most importantly, it restores a sense of momentum and consequence at exactly the right moment. The stakes feel epic, the characters feel united by shared purpose, and the stage is perfectly set for a finale that promises both triumph and loss. It’s the kind of episode that reminds you why The Mandalorian became such a phenomenon in the first place.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
RETURN TO THE MANDALORIAN REVIEWS #2020s #2023 #JonFavreau #KateeSackhoff #PedroPascal #RickFamuyiwa #StarWars #TheMandalorian #TVReview

#2020s #jonfavreau #kateesackhoff #pedropascal #rickfamuyiwa #starwars
We Have Issues @[email protected] · 2026-05-16 · 07:55 UTC

The Mandalorian – Season 3, Chapter 23: The Spies (2023) – Review

The Spies positions itself as the dramatic turning point before the finale of The Mandalorian’s third season, bringing together many of the season’s scattered threads into a larger confrontation on Mandalore. After the more eccentric detour of Chapter 22, this episode attempts to restore urgency and scale, pushing the narrative toward open conflict while deepening the mythology surrounding the Mandalorians themselves. The result is an episode filled with strong visual moments and intriguing ideas, even if it occasionally feels rushed in its attempt to set up the endgame.
By this point in the season, expectations were mixed but hopeful. The season had delivered compelling world-building and strong individual moments, particularly surrounding Bo-Katan Kryze, portrayed by Katee Sackhoff, but it had also struggled with consistency in pacing and focus. The Spies clearly aims to course-correct by pushing the central conflict back into focus, re-establishing stakes that dangerous.
Advertisements
Directed by Rick Famuyiwa, from a script by series creator Jon Favreau, the episode wastes little time in setting events into motion. The various Mandalorian factions, long divided by ideology and history, unite in an effort to reclaim Mandalore. This premise alone carries significant weight, as the season has consistently emphasised the idea that Mandalorian survival depends on cooperation rather than isolation.
The opening sequences are effective in establishing this fragile alliance. Din Djarin, voiced by Pedro Pascal, remains a steady central presence, though this episode places greater emphasis on Bo-Katan’s leadership. Her ability to navigate tensions between the disparate groups gives the story a stronger emotional centre than some earlier chapters. Sackhoff continues to bring authority and vulnerability to the role, making Bo-Katan’s journey toward reluctant leadership one of the season’s more compelling arcs.
The return to Mandalore itself is one of the episode’s strongest elements. The ruined planet is presented with an eerie grandeur, combining devastation with lingering traces of civilization. The atmosphere is appropriately ominous, reinforcing the sense that the Mandalorians are walking into both their history and a trap. The episode does a strong job of making Mandalore feel haunted, not just physically, but culturally.
Advertisements
One of the more interesting additions is the introduction of surviving Mandalorians living on the planet’s surface. These scattered survivors add texture to the world-building and reinforce the idea that Mandalore, despite years of destruction and abandonment, still holds life and memory. Their presence helps ground the larger conflict in personal stakes, reminding you that reclaiming the planet is about more than symbolism.
One of the episode’s most effective narrative choices is its pacing. Unlike some earlier chapters that paused for side adventures, The Spies , moves with relentless purpose. The Mandalorians’ expedition across the surface of the planet gradually transforms from hopeful exploration into something increasingly ominous. Tension builds steadily as the group encounters survivors, internal conflict, and hidden dangers, creating a feeling that disaster is never far away.
That tension pays off dramatically with the re-emergence of Moff Gideon, once again portrayed with cold authority by Giancarlo Esposito. Gideon’s return instantly elevates the episode. Unlike many Star Wars villains who rely purely on intimidation or spectacle, Gideon feels calculated and strategic. His hidden Imperial base beneath Mandalore reframes the entire season’s conflict, revealing that the struggle for the planet has been manipulated from the shadows all along.
The reveal of Gideon’s armored troops is particularly striking. By combining Imperial design with Mandalorian-inspired armor, the episode creates imagery that feels both familiar and unsettling. It’s a powerful symbol of cultural corruption, an Empire literally appropriating Mandalorian identity for its own purposes.
The action sequences throughout the episode are exceptional. Battles are staged with clarity and intensity, balancing aerial combat, close-quarters fighting, and large-scale movement without becoming visually chaotic. The Mandalorians finally fighting together as a unified force gives the action emotional weight beyond simple spectacle.
Perhaps the episode’s strongest quality, however, is its emotional undercurrent. The season’s themes of belief and tradition come to the forefront in meaningful ways. Bo-Katan’s leadership no longer feels uncertain or symbolic, it feels earned. The different Mandalorian factions, once fractured by ideology, begin to understand that survival requires compromise and trust.
Advertisements
The episode’s climax delivers one of the season’s most shocking moments with the death of Paz Vizsla (Tait Fletcher). His final stand is handled with genuine weight, transforming a character who had often functioned as muscle or comic friction into a tragic symbol of Mandalorian honour, sacrificing himself so everyone else can escape. The sequence is brutal, tense, and emotionally effective, ending the episode on a devastating note.
At the same time, the cliffhanger ending feels somewhat familiar structurally—heroes divided, enemy revealed, stakes raised for the finale. It’s effective in maintaining anticipation, but it doesn’t entirely escape the feeling of being a setup chapter first and a fully satisfying episode second.
The Spies succeeds because it finally brings all the season’s disparate elements together. The mythology of Mandalore, the threat of the Empire, the evolution of Din and Bo-Katan, and the question of what it truly means to be Mandalorian all converge here with clarity and purpose. The performances, especially from Katee Sackhoff and Giancarlo Esposito, help anchor the larger spectacle in character-driven stakes.
Advertisements
This is the strongest episode of the season and one of the series’ most gripping chapters overall. It combines world-building, character development, tension, and action with remarkable confidence, delivering an episode that feels cinematic in scope while remaining emotionally grounded.
Most importantly, it restores a sense of momentum and consequence at exactly the right moment. The stakes feel epic, the characters feel united by shared purpose, and the stage is perfectly set for a finale that promises both triumph and loss. It’s the kind of episode that reminds you why The Mandalorian became such a phenomenon in the first place.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
RETURN TO THE MANDALORIAN REVIEWS #2020s #2023 #JonFavreau #KateeSackhoff #PedroPascal #RickFamuyiwa #StarWars #TheMandalorian #TVReview

#tvreview #themandalorian #starwars #rickfamuyiwa #pedropascal #kateesackhoff
We Have Issues @[email protected] · 2026-05-16 · 07:55 UTC

The Mandalorian – Season 3, Chapter 23: The Spies (2023) – Review

The Spies positions itself as the dramatic turning point before the finale of The Mandalorian’s third season, bringing together many of the season’s scattered threads into a larger confrontation on Mandalore. After the more eccentric detour of Chapter 22, this episode attempts to restore urgency and scale, pushing the narrative toward open conflict while deepening the mythology surrounding the Mandalorians themselves. The result is an episode filled with strong visual moments and intriguing ideas, even if it occasionally feels rushed in its attempt to set up the endgame.
By this point in the season, expectations were mixed but hopeful. The season had delivered compelling world-building and strong individual moments, particularly surrounding Bo-Katan Kryze, portrayed by Katee Sackhoff, but it had also struggled with consistency in pacing and focus. The Spies clearly aims to course-correct by pushing the central conflict back into focus, re-establishing stakes that dangerous.
Advertisements
Directed by Rick Famuyiwa, from a script by series creator Jon Favreau, the episode wastes little time in setting events into motion. The various Mandalorian factions, long divided by ideology and history, unite in an effort to reclaim Mandalore. This premise alone carries significant weight, as the season has consistently emphasised the idea that Mandalorian survival depends on cooperation rather than isolation.
The opening sequences are effective in establishing this fragile alliance. Din Djarin, voiced by Pedro Pascal, remains a steady central presence, though this episode places greater emphasis on Bo-Katan’s leadership. Her ability to navigate tensions between the disparate groups gives the story a stronger emotional centre than some earlier chapters. Sackhoff continues to bring authority and vulnerability to the role, making Bo-Katan’s journey toward reluctant leadership one of the season’s more compelling arcs.
The return to Mandalore itself is one of the episode’s strongest elements. The ruined planet is presented with an eerie grandeur, combining devastation with lingering traces of civilization. The atmosphere is appropriately ominous, reinforcing the sense that the Mandalorians are walking into both their history and a trap. The episode does a strong job of making Mandalore feel haunted, not just physically, but culturally.
Advertisements
One of the more interesting additions is the introduction of surviving Mandalorians living on the planet’s surface. These scattered survivors add texture to the world-building and reinforce the idea that Mandalore, despite years of destruction and abandonment, still holds life and memory. Their presence helps ground the larger conflict in personal stakes, reminding you that reclaiming the planet is about more than symbolism.
One of the episode’s most effective narrative choices is its pacing. Unlike some earlier chapters that paused for side adventures, The Spies , moves with relentless purpose. The Mandalorians’ expedition across the surface of the planet gradually transforms from hopeful exploration into something increasingly ominous. Tension builds steadily as the group encounters survivors, internal conflict, and hidden dangers, creating a feeling that disaster is never far away.
That tension pays off dramatically with the re-emergence of Moff Gideon, once again portrayed with cold authority by Giancarlo Esposito. Gideon’s return instantly elevates the episode. Unlike many Star Wars villains who rely purely on intimidation or spectacle, Gideon feels calculated and strategic. His hidden Imperial base beneath Mandalore reframes the entire season’s conflict, revealing that the struggle for the planet has been manipulated from the shadows all along.
The reveal of Gideon’s armored troops is particularly striking. By combining Imperial design with Mandalorian-inspired armor, the episode creates imagery that feels both familiar and unsettling. It’s a powerful symbol of cultural corruption, an Empire literally appropriating Mandalorian identity for its own purposes.
The action sequences throughout the episode are exceptional. Battles are staged with clarity and intensity, balancing aerial combat, close-quarters fighting, and large-scale movement without becoming visually chaotic. The Mandalorians finally fighting together as a unified force gives the action emotional weight beyond simple spectacle.
Perhaps the episode’s strongest quality, however, is its emotional undercurrent. The season’s themes of belief and tradition come to the forefront in meaningful ways. Bo-Katan’s leadership no longer feels uncertain or symbolic, it feels earned. The different Mandalorian factions, once fractured by ideology, begin to understand that survival requires compromise and trust.
Advertisements
The episode’s climax delivers one of the season’s most shocking moments with the death of Paz Vizsla (Tait Fletcher). His final stand is handled with genuine weight, transforming a character who had often functioned as muscle or comic friction into a tragic symbol of Mandalorian honour, sacrificing himself so everyone else can escape. The sequence is brutal, tense, and emotionally effective, ending the episode on a devastating note.
At the same time, the cliffhanger ending feels somewhat familiar structurally—heroes divided, enemy revealed, stakes raised for the finale. It’s effective in maintaining anticipation, but it doesn’t entirely escape the feeling of being a setup chapter first and a fully satisfying episode second.
The Spies succeeds because it finally brings all the season’s disparate elements together. The mythology of Mandalore, the threat of the Empire, the evolution of Din and Bo-Katan, and the question of what it truly means to be Mandalorian all converge here with clarity and purpose. The performances, especially from Katee Sackhoff and Giancarlo Esposito, help anchor the larger spectacle in character-driven stakes.
Advertisements
This is the strongest episode of the season and one of the series’ most gripping chapters overall. It combines world-building, character development, tension, and action with remarkable confidence, delivering an episode that feels cinematic in scope while remaining emotionally grounded.
Most importantly, it restores a sense of momentum and consequence at exactly the right moment. The stakes feel epic, the characters feel united by shared purpose, and the stage is perfectly set for a finale that promises both triumph and loss. It’s the kind of episode that reminds you why The Mandalorian became such a phenomenon in the first place.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
RETURN TO THE MANDALORIAN REVIEWS #2020s #2023 #JonFavreau #KateeSackhoff #PedroPascal #RickFamuyiwa #StarWars #TheMandalorian #TVReview

#2020s #jonfavreau #kateesackhoff #pedropascal #rickfamuyiwa #starwars
swtyndall.notwhatwethink @[email protected] · 2023-01-07 · 02:27 UTC

CW: Part 3 While the battle for House Speaker appears to be about personality, it’s really about ideology. It’s about the future of “big government” and the American middle class The Real Reason the Freedom Caucus Hates Kevin McCarthy Is Larger Than You Think

Part 3
While the battle for House Speaker appears to be about personality, it’s really about ideology. It’s about the future of “big government” and the American middle class
The Real Reason the Freedom Caucus Hates Kevin McCarthy Is Larger Than You Think https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-real-reason-the-freedom-caucus?
#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPInBedWithRich
"The world is made up of “makers” and “takers,” they’ll tell you. The billionaire “job creators” shouldn’t be taxed to support the “moochers” who demand everything from union rights to a living wage to free college.
Why, these Freedom Caucus members ask, should their billionaire patrons be forced — at the barrel of an IRS agent’s gun! — to pay taxes to support the ungrateful masses through “big government” programs? Isn’t it up to each of us to make our own fortunes? Wasn’t Darwin right?
These Republicans believe our government should really only have a few simple mandates: maintain a strong military, tough cops, and a court system to protect their economic empires.
That’s why they’ll support massive prison expansions and nosebleed levels of pentagon spending but (metaphorically) fight to the death to prevent an expansion of Social Security or food stamps.
And that’s why they hate Kevin McCarthy.
In the past, McCarthy has shown a willingness to compromise and negotiate with Democrats. Most recently, as Congressman Chip Roy pointed out on the House floor yesterday when nominating Byron Donalds to replace McCarthy, he failed to block the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill through Congress that was loaded with what rightwing billionaires consider “freebies” for “taker” and “moocher” Americans.
It appears all or nearly all of the Freedom Caucus members, dancing to the tune first played by David Koch, don’t believe in our current form of American government. They want us to go back to the pre-1930s America, before FDR’s New Deal.
Those were the halcyon days when workers cowered before their employers, women and minorities knew their places, and government didn’t interfere with the business of dynasty-building even when it meant poisoning entire communities and crushing small businesses.
They appear to agree with the majority of the Supreme Court Republicans who recently began dismantling the “big government” administrative state by ending the EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gasses.
They’ve already succeeded, over the past 40 years of the Reagan Revolution, at whittling the middle class down from 65 percent of us to around 45 percent of us: NPR commemorated it in 2015 with the headline: “The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class.”
Now they want even more poverty for workers and more riches for their morbidly rich funders, and don’t believe that “moderate” Republicans will get them there. As Ginni Thomas and a pantheon of “conservative” luminaries wrote yesterday in an open letter opposing McCarthy’s speakership:
“[H]e has failed to answer for, or commit to halting, his coordinated efforts in the 2022 elections to promote moderate Republican candidates over conservatives.”
The “conservative” Republicans have already announced that once they get their act together in Congress with a new speaker, their first order of business is going to be to cut more taxes on billionaires.
While the battle for House Speaker appears to be about personality, it’s really about ideology and policy. It’s about the future of “big government” and whether or not we will continue to have an American middle class.
And as long as Libertarian-leaning billionaires continue pouring cash into the campaigns and lifestyles of Republican members of Congress, this battle that’s been going on for over 40 years to tear apart the American middle-class is not going to end or go away any day soon."

#wanttheirserfsback #gophatesdemocracy #gopinbedwithrich
swtyndall.notwhatwethink @[email protected] · 2022-12-25 · 00:07 UTC

CW: They convinced us to trade our time/lives for things, so that they could have even more things/greed! Merry Christmas! We’re All Being Murdered by Capitalism

They convinced us to trade our time/lives for things, so that they could have even more things/greed!
Merry Christmas! We’re All Being Murdered by Capitalism. https://theintercept.com/2022/12/24/christmas-capitalism-covid-climate-change/
#CapitalismKills
#GreedKills
#WantTheirSerfsBack
"...The writer William Greider takes the same perspective in “Secrets of the Temple,” his gigantic tome about the Federal Reserve. Capitalism, he contends, was “a Faustian bargain. People surrendered control over their own lives and accepted a smaller role for themselves as cogs in the vast and complicated economic machinery, in exchange for mere material goods.” Nevertheless, you have to admit that “the devil certainly kept his half of the bargain.”
...
OK, those are the good parts of capitalism. Now let’s move on to the ones that risk the obliteration of Homo sapiens.
Covid-19 and Its Sequels
Sure, we could have decided to vaccinate everyone. Last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimated this would cost $50 billion, or 0.05 percent of the world’s annual gross domestic product. But we didn’t do it for very good reason: This would have hurt the “intellectual” “property” — and hence the profits — of Moderna and Pfizer.
So the downside here is our unending Covid nightmare. The upside is we now have 10 vaccine billionaires!
...
Death Is Profitable
Capitalism also means the proliferation of weapons with no purpose — not that they ever, really, have a purpose. One key reason the U.S. advocated the expansion of NATO was that it would open up new markets for American arms dealers. A little-known but significant figure named Bruce Jackson cofounded an NGO called the Committee to Expand NATO in 1996 — all the while serving as vice president for strategy and planning at Lockheed Martin. He was also co-chair of the finance committee for Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. Jackson was still at Lockheed in 2002, the year he became chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
...
And it’s not just conventional arms that are profitable. Building nuclear weapons systems is also quite lucrative. With these kinds of financial incentives in place, it’s incredible that human civilization still exists.
...
Global Warming, Plus Bigger Problems
...The Earth, as we know it, is fucked. We’re currently at 417 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, up from 280 ppm pre-capitalism. And that’s still not enough to satiate the shrieking, sucking mouth of the market.
...
While making false promises in the fight against the climate crisis, America took the lead in crude oil production last year. Right behind us are the world’s other oil producers, from the despots of Saudi Arabia to the bland democracy of Canada. It’s like a “Murder on the Orient Express”-style mystery, where humanity is killed by every passenger.
...
If you find this distressing, consider the more distressing fact that even if we develop massive amounts of green energy and stop global warming, capitalism will still probably destroy a livable biosphere.
The Terrifying Politics of Wanting, Wanting, Wanting
...
Capitalism has truly perfected the creation of wants.
How, then, could capitalists get people to work hard at extremely unpleasant jobs? For a long time, the answer was simple: slavery. But then, in the 19th century, slavery was driven to extinction in the Western hemisphere. During this time, there was surprisingly frank planning among capitalists about this aspect of human nature. Given this problem, how could they motivate people to do the same awful work enriching others without the threat of force? They decided one important tactic should be to “create wants.”
As a member of the British Parliament put it in 1833:
They [people formerly enslaved by the British Empire] must be gradually taught to desire those objects which could be attained by human labour. There was a regular progress from the possession of necessaries to the desire of luxuries; and what once were luxuries, gradually came, among all classes and conditions of men, to be necessaries. … This was the sort of education to which they ought to be subject.
A United Fruit staffer made the same point in the 1920s about Central Americans:
The mozos or working people have laboured only when forced to and that was not often, for the land would give them what little they needed. … The desire for goods, it may be remarked, is something that has to be cultivated. … Our advertising is slowly having the same effect as in the United States … All of this is having its effect in awakening desires.
...
Progressive politics necessarily makes the case that there’s more to life than the money in your individual bank account. It’s inevitable that many people will experience this as psychological violence and respond in kind, or with real violence...."

#capitalismkills #greedkills #wanttheirserfsback
AnarchoNinaAnalyzes @[email protected] · 2025-05-11 · 21:19 UTC

Throughout my writing about fascism, capitalism, and climate catastrophe, I've worked pretty hard to focus attention on what I consider the most fundamentally important and horrifying reality of our time. That being that no matter how hard it may be for us to accept, the billionaire ruling class in the Pig Empire, and the governments they own, fully intend to kill billions of people to keep extracting capital on a boiling planet in the face of a climate apocalypse. Furthermore, given that democratic societies full of people who probably don't want to die so billionaires can keep doing capitalism as the planet turns to ash are highly unlikely to continue facilitating that behavior, this same ruling class is busy transforming our nations into fascist police states to facilitate that outcome.
Naturally, that sounds like a conspiracy theory to people who wouldn't want to believe it anyway even if they knew it was true, so until folks watched Elon Musk literally buy Trump's way to the White House this past fall, this idea was pretty hard to communicate to my readers; although I certainly kept trying. In my opinion, the evidence has been all around us for years now; from the funding behind fascist movements and political parties in the Pig empire, to the capitalist control of supposedly "liberal democratic" governments across the "West" that continue to facilitate the mass extraction of fossil fuels we cannot burn without murdering potentially billions of people, while professing to care about climate crisis. As far as I'm concerned the only plausible explanation for the ruling class and political actors to do absolutely nothing about climate crisis and fossil fuel dependency while simultaneously hardening borders, curtailing civil rights, and building out massive police states hell bent on squashing protestors, is because they intend to take humanity and a biosphere that supports 8B+ human lives right off the ecological cliff, and they know the folks doing the dying are probably going to try and oppose that.
As we crash through climate objectives and rocket towards an environmental apocalypses in the middle of a mass extinction event however, it turns out that banks and government bodies are more or less starting to admit this genocidal bullshit is the actual plan, out loud. As this April 8th article from Kate Aronoff writing for The New Republic demonstrates, portions of the banking sector and highly-respected bipartisan think tanks are now openly arguing climate targets are a joke and it's time for a new phase of aggressive climate imperialism as the planet descends into a warming-induced apocalypse because nothing, not even the end of the world, can get in the way of churning profits to enrich a ruling class that already owns everything around us.
https://archive.ph/0dvEn
The Bleak, Defeatist Rise of “Climate Realism”
"The brand of climate cynicism being voiced by the Council on Foreign Relations is more novel. In an essay outlining the founding principles of the Climate Realism Initiative, Varun Sivarum—the program’s director and a former top aide to Biden-era U.S. climate envoy John Kerry—describes a zero-sum, catastrophically climate-changed world where “other countries will single-mindedly prioritize their own interests” and the United States should do the same. Facing climate-fueled mass migration “of at least hundreds of millions of climate refugees [that] could upend the international order, and increasingly grisly natural disasters,” the U.S. “should provide the support it can, cooperate with countries on building resilience capabilities, and protect its borders,” as well as “prepare for global competition for resources and military positioning that is intensifying in the melting Arctic.”
Look folks, this isn't a partisan political question of which party is better, or worse, on the issue of climate crisis; this is about a billionaire donor class that controls policy and politicians in both parties, and why that reality means we were always speeding towards a hydra-headed crisis of capitalism, climate catastrophe, and fascist authoritarianism as the awful reality that nobody "in charge" is going to stop a crisis that will kill billions from happening, set in. The Trump regime certainly represents an acceleration of the process towards climate apocalypse, but it is also the product of that very same process; we are here because rich people mean to kill us all to keep getting richer, and fascism is how you create societies where that is possible. Not just because fascist ideology allows the construction of vast police states, but because the very same "us and them" hate-fueled logic that drives fascist movements to power, is also an absolute necessity for a climate imperialism political paradigm on a boiling planet with diminishing resources.
#Fascism #EndTimesFascism #Trump #USPol #Capitalism #ClimateCrisis #Genocide #CFR #Banks #JPMorgan #Murder #Billionaires #Anticapitalism #FossilFuels

#fascism #endtimesfascism #trump #uspol #capitalism #climatecrisis
AnarchoNinaAnalyzes @[email protected] · 2025-05-11 · 21:19 UTC

Throughout my writing about fascism, capitalism, and climate catastrophe, I've worked pretty hard to focus attention on what I consider the most fundamentally important and horrifying reality of our time. That being that no matter how hard it may be for us to accept, the billionaire ruling class in the Pig Empire, and the governments they own, fully intend to kill billions of people to keep extracting capital on a boiling planet in the face of a climate apocalypse. Furthermore, given that democratic societies full of people who probably don't want to die so billionaires can keep doing capitalism as the planet turns to ash are highly unlikely to continue facilitating that behavior, this same ruling class is busy transforming our nations into fascist police states to facilitate that outcome.
Naturally, that sounds like a conspiracy theory to people who wouldn't want to believe it anyway even if they knew it was true, so until folks watched Elon Musk literally buy Trump's way to the White House this past fall, this idea was pretty hard to communicate to my readers; although I certainly kept trying. In my opinion, the evidence has been all around us for years now; from the funding behind fascist movements and political parties in the Pig empire, to the capitalist control of supposedly "liberal democratic" governments across the "West" that continue to facilitate the mass extraction of fossil fuels we cannot burn without murdering potentially billions of people, while professing to care about climate crisis. As far as I'm concerned the only plausible explanation for the ruling class and political actors to do absolutely nothing about climate crisis and fossil fuel dependency while simultaneously hardening borders, curtailing civil rights, and building out massive police states hell bent on squashing protestors, is because they intend to take humanity and a biosphere that supports 8B+ human lives right off the ecological cliff, and they know the folks doing the dying are probably going to try and oppose that.
As we crash through climate objectives and rocket towards an environmental apocalypses in the middle of a mass extinction event however, it turns out that banks and government bodies are more or less starting to admit this genocidal bullshit is the actual plan, out loud. As this April 8th article from Kate Aronoff writing for The New Republic demonstrates, portions of the banking sector and highly-respected bipartisan think tanks are now openly arguing climate targets are a joke and it's time for a new phase of aggressive climate imperialism as the planet descends into a warming-induced apocalypse because nothing, not even the end of the world, can get in the way of churning profits to enrich a ruling class that already owns everything around us.
https://archive.ph/0dvEn
The Bleak, Defeatist Rise of “Climate Realism”
"The brand of climate cynicism being voiced by the Council on Foreign Relations is more novel. In an essay outlining the founding principles of the Climate Realism Initiative, Varun Sivarum—the program’s director and a former top aide to Biden-era U.S. climate envoy John Kerry—describes a zero-sum, catastrophically climate-changed world where “other countries will single-mindedly prioritize their own interests” and the United States should do the same. Facing climate-fueled mass migration “of at least hundreds of millions of climate refugees [that] could upend the international order, and increasingly grisly natural disasters,” the U.S. “should provide the support it can, cooperate with countries on building resilience capabilities, and protect its borders,” as well as “prepare for global competition for resources and military positioning that is intensifying in the melting Arctic.”
Look folks, this isn't a partisan political question of which party is better, or worse, on the issue of climate crisis; this is about a billionaire donor class that controls policy and politicians in both parties, and why that reality means we were always speeding towards a hydra-headed crisis of capitalism, climate catastrophe, and fascist authoritarianism as the awful reality that nobody "in charge" is going to stop a crisis that will kill billions from happening, set in. The Trump regime certainly represents an acceleration of the process towards climate apocalypse, but it is also the product of that very same process; we are here because rich people mean to kill us all to keep getting richer, and fascism is how you create societies where that is possible. Not just because fascist ideology allows the construction of vast police states, but because the very same "us and them" hate-fueled logic that drives fascist movements to power, is also an absolute necessity for a climate imperialism political paradigm on a boiling planet with diminishing resources.
#Fascism #EndTimesFascism #Trump #USPol #Capitalism #ClimateCrisis #Genocide #CFR #Banks #JPMorgan #Murder #Billionaires #Anticapitalism #FossilFuels

#fascism #endtimesfascism #trump #uspol #capitalism #climatecrisis
AnarchoNinaAnalyzes @[email protected] · 2025-05-11 · 21:19 UTC

Throughout my writing about fascism, capitalism, and climate catastrophe, I've worked pretty hard to focus attention on what I consider the most fundamentally important and horrifying reality of our time. That being that no matter how hard it may be for us to accept, the billionaire ruling class in the Pig Empire, and the governments they own, fully intend to kill billions of people to keep extracting capital on a boiling planet in the face of a climate apocalypse. Furthermore, given that democratic societies full of people who probably don't want to die so billionaires can keep doing capitalism as the planet turns to ash are highly unlikely to continue facilitating that behavior, this same ruling class is busy transforming our nations into fascist police states to facilitate that outcome.
Naturally, that sounds like a conspiracy theory to people who wouldn't want to believe it anyway even if they knew it was true, so until folks watched Elon Musk literally buy Trump's way to the White House this past fall, this idea was pretty hard to communicate to my readers; although I certainly kept trying. In my opinion, the evidence has been all around us for years now; from the funding behind fascist movements and political parties in the Pig empire, to the capitalist control of supposedly "liberal democratic" governments across the "West" that continue to facilitate the mass extraction of fossil fuels we cannot burn without murdering potentially billions of people, while professing to care about climate crisis. As far as I'm concerned the only plausible explanation for the ruling class and political actors to do absolutely nothing about climate crisis and fossil fuel dependency while simultaneously hardening borders, curtailing civil rights, and building out massive police states hell bent on squashing protestors, is because they intend to take humanity and a biosphere that supports 8B+ human lives right off the ecological cliff, and they know the folks doing the dying are probably going to try and oppose that.
As we crash through climate objectives and rocket towards an environmental apocalypses in the middle of a mass extinction event however, it turns out that banks and government bodies are more or less starting to admit this genocidal bullshit is the actual plan, out loud. As this April 8th article from Kate Aronoff writing for The New Republic demonstrates, portions of the banking sector and highly-respected bipartisan think tanks are now openly arguing climate targets are a joke and it's time for a new phase of aggressive climate imperialism as the planet descends into a warming-induced apocalypse because nothing, not even the end of the world, can get in the way of churning profits to enrich a ruling class that already owns everything around us.
https://archive.ph/0dvEn
The Bleak, Defeatist Rise of “Climate Realism”
"The brand of climate cynicism being voiced by the Council on Foreign Relations is more novel. In an essay outlining the founding principles of the Climate Realism Initiative, Varun Sivarum—the program’s director and a former top aide to Biden-era U.S. climate envoy John Kerry—describes a zero-sum, catastrophically climate-changed world where “other countries will single-mindedly prioritize their own interests” and the United States should do the same. Facing climate-fueled mass migration “of at least hundreds of millions of climate refugees [that] could upend the international order, and increasingly grisly natural disasters,” the U.S. “should provide the support it can, cooperate with countries on building resilience capabilities, and protect its borders,” as well as “prepare for global competition for resources and military positioning that is intensifying in the melting Arctic.”
Look folks, this isn't a partisan political question of which party is better, or worse, on the issue of climate crisis; this is about a billionaire donor class that controls policy and politicians in both parties, and why that reality means we were always speeding towards a hydra-headed crisis of capitalism, climate catastrophe, and fascist authoritarianism as the awful reality that nobody "in charge" is going to stop a crisis that will kill billions from happening, set in. The Trump regime certainly represents an acceleration of the process towards climate apocalypse, but it is also the product of that very same process; we are here because rich people mean to kill us all to keep getting richer, and fascism is how you create societies where that is possible. Not just because fascist ideology allows the construction of vast police states, but because the very same "us and them" hate-fueled logic that drives fascist movements to power, is also an absolute necessity for a climate imperialism political paradigm on a boiling planet with diminishing resources.
#Fascism #EndTimesFascism #Trump #USPol #Capitalism #ClimateCrisis #Genocide #CFR #Banks #JPMorgan #Murder #Billionaires #Anticapitalism #FossilFuels

#fossilfuels #anticapitalism #billionaires #murder #jpmorgan #banks
AnarchoNinaAnalyzes @[email protected] · 2025-05-11 · 21:19 UTC

Throughout my writing about fascism, capitalism, and climate catastrophe, I've worked pretty hard to focus attention on what I consider the most fundamentally important and horrifying reality of our time. That being that no matter how hard it may be for us to accept, the billionaire ruling class in the Pig Empire, and the governments they own, fully intend to kill billions of people to keep extracting capital on a boiling planet in the face of a climate apocalypse. Furthermore, given that democratic societies full of people who probably don't want to die so billionaires can keep doing capitalism as the planet turns to ash are highly unlikely to continue facilitating that behavior, this same ruling class is busy transforming our nations into fascist police states to facilitate that outcome.
Naturally, that sounds like a conspiracy theory to people who wouldn't want to believe it anyway even if they knew it was true, so until folks watched Elon Musk literally buy Trump's way to the White House this past fall, this idea was pretty hard to communicate to my readers; although I certainly kept trying. In my opinion, the evidence has been all around us for years now; from the funding behind fascist movements and political parties in the Pig empire, to the capitalist control of supposedly "liberal democratic" governments across the "West" that continue to facilitate the mass extraction of fossil fuels we cannot burn without murdering potentially billions of people, while professing to care about climate crisis. As far as I'm concerned the only plausible explanation for the ruling class and political actors to do absolutely nothing about climate crisis and fossil fuel dependency while simultaneously hardening borders, curtailing civil rights, and building out massive police states hell bent on squashing protestors, is because they intend to take humanity and a biosphere that supports 8B+ human lives right off the ecological cliff, and they know the folks doing the dying are probably going to try and oppose that.
As we crash through climate objectives and rocket towards an environmental apocalypses in the middle of a mass extinction event however, it turns out that banks and government bodies are more or less starting to admit this genocidal bullshit is the actual plan, out loud. As this April 8th article from Kate Aronoff writing for The New Republic demonstrates, portions of the banking sector and highly-respected bipartisan think tanks are now openly arguing climate targets are a joke and it's time for a new phase of aggressive climate imperialism as the planet descends into a warming-induced apocalypse because nothing, not even the end of the world, can get in the way of churning profits to enrich a ruling class that already owns everything around us.
https://archive.ph/0dvEn
The Bleak, Defeatist Rise of “Climate Realism”
"The brand of climate cynicism being voiced by the Council on Foreign Relations is more novel. In an essay outlining the founding principles of the Climate Realism Initiative, Varun Sivarum—the program’s director and a former top aide to Biden-era U.S. climate envoy John Kerry—describes a zero-sum, catastrophically climate-changed world where “other countries will single-mindedly prioritize their own interests” and the United States should do the same. Facing climate-fueled mass migration “of at least hundreds of millions of climate refugees [that] could upend the international order, and increasingly grisly natural disasters,” the U.S. “should provide the support it can, cooperate with countries on building resilience capabilities, and protect its borders,” as well as “prepare for global competition for resources and military positioning that is intensifying in the melting Arctic.”
Look folks, this isn't a partisan political question of which party is better, or worse, on the issue of climate crisis; this is about a billionaire donor class that controls policy and politicians in both parties, and why that reality means we were always speeding towards a hydra-headed crisis of capitalism, climate catastrophe, and fascist authoritarianism as the awful reality that nobody "in charge" is going to stop a crisis that will kill billions from happening, set in. The Trump regime certainly represents an acceleration of the process towards climate apocalypse, but it is also the product of that very same process; we are here because rich people mean to kill us all to keep getting richer, and fascism is how you create societies where that is possible. Not just because fascist ideology allows the construction of vast police states, but because the very same "us and them" hate-fueled logic that drives fascist movements to power, is also an absolute necessity for a climate imperialism political paradigm on a boiling planet with diminishing resources.
#Fascism #EndTimesFascism #Trump #USPol #Capitalism #ClimateCrisis #Genocide #CFR #Banks #JPMorgan #Murder #Billionaires #Anticapitalism #FossilFuels

#fascism #endtimesfascism #trump #uspol #capitalism #climatecrisis
Regina Kammer @[email protected] · 2026-04-16 · 20:38 UTC

Happening today: The Commission of Fine Arts will consider a proposal to paint bright white the historic granite exterior of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a National Historic Landmark and one of the most significant examples of French Second Empire architecture in the United States, a move which threatens to permanently alter the building’s historic character and damage the stone itself.
https://www.culturalheritagepartners.com/eeob/
#CulturalHeritage #Architecture #USHistory #ArchitecturalHeritage

#culturalheritage #architecture #ushistory #architecturalheritage
Regina Kammer @[email protected] · 2026-04-16 · 20:38 UTC

Happening today: The Commission of Fine Arts will consider a proposal to paint bright white the historic granite exterior of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a National Historic Landmark and one of the most significant examples of French Second Empire architecture in the United States, a move which threatens to permanently alter the building’s historic character and damage the stone itself.
https://www.culturalheritagepartners.com/eeob/
#CulturalHeritage #Architecture #USHistory #ArchitecturalHeritage

#culturalheritage #architecture #ushistory #architecturalheritage
Regina Kammer @[email protected] · 2026-04-16 · 20:38 UTC

Happening today: The Commission of Fine Arts will consider a proposal to paint bright white the historic granite exterior of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a National Historic Landmark and one of the most significant examples of French Second Empire architecture in the United States, a move which threatens to permanently alter the building’s historic character and damage the stone itself.
https://www.culturalheritagepartners.com/eeob/
#CulturalHeritage #Architecture #USHistory #ArchitecturalHeritage

#architecturalheritage #ushistory #architecture #culturalheritage
Regina Kammer @[email protected] · 2026-04-16 · 20:38 UTC

Happening today: The Commission of Fine Arts will consider a proposal to paint bright white the historic granite exterior of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a National Historic Landmark and one of the most significant examples of French Second Empire architecture in the United States, a move which threatens to permanently alter the building’s historic character and damage the stone itself.
https://www.culturalheritagepartners.com/eeob/
#CulturalHeritage #Architecture #USHistory #ArchitecturalHeritage

#culturalheritage #architecture #ushistory #architecturalheritage
United States News Beep @[email protected] · 2026-03-14 · 07:20 UTC

Adobe’s Architect Is Leaving the Building
Adobe’s Architect Is Leaving the Building – Moby Shantanu Narayen built Adobe into a $150 billion software empire…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Artsanddesign #adobe #AdobeStock #Arts #ArtsAndDesign #Design #Entertainment #resignationletter #ShantanuNarayen
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/522708/

#newsbeep #news #us #usa #unitedstates #unitedstatesofamerica
United States News Beep @[email protected] · 2026-03-14 · 07:20 UTC

Adobe’s Architect Is Leaving the Building
Adobe’s Architect Is Leaving the Building – Moby Shantanu Narayen built Adobe into a $150 billion software empire…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Artsanddesign #adobe #AdobeStock #Arts #ArtsAndDesign #Design #Entertainment #resignationletter #ShantanuNarayen
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/522708/

#shantanunarayen #resignationletter #entertainment #design #arts #adobestock
Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2025-01-01 · 17:47 UTC

The thread about the dawn of BBC radio in Edinburgh and the centenary of the first Scottish Hogmanay programming
A fact that passed me by until this morning (January 1st, 2025); yesterday marked the 100th anniversary (in Edinburgh at least) of the tradition of special Hogmanay programming from BBC Scotland. I think the fact possibly also passed the Beeb by too, even though they were very aware of celebrating the centenary of the general launch in 2023… So follow me now on a brief thread that explores the early history of BBC Radio in Edinburgh and the city’s claim to being the home of its ubiquitous annual Hogmanay broadcasting extravaganza.
Jackie Bird, presenting yet another BBC Scotland Hogmanay special.
The BBC’s first and principal Scottish transmitter was 5SC in Glasgow which started transmission in March 1923. It had a power of 1.5kw and a notional range of 75 miles; but only if you had the right sort of valve home wireless set and most didn’t, they had cheaper crystal sets. This fact, coupled with the wavelengths used and Edinburgh’s topography, meant it was largely unreceivable across the capital.
Herbert Carruthers, director of the BBC’s first radio station in Scotland.
To make up for 5SC‘s lack of national coverage, the BBC planned small repeater stations for the main cities. Aberdeen got 2BD in October 1923 and the following year Edinburgh would get 2EH in May and Dundee got 2DE in November. However even when broadcasting from within the city, it posed the early radio engineers a pair of unique geographical problems. Firstly, at the wavelengths the station operated at (328m), the city’s hills were a challenge to get the signal to go either around or over, leaving a shadow behind them. Secondly it proved very difficult to properly earth the transmitter owing to the geology beneath the city centre. As a result, even at just 2 miles distance from 2EH, it required a 100ft outdoor aerial to pick up the signal on a crystal radio set, and the City Corporation were reluctant to permit antennae to be strung across the streets between tenements.
After searching for the best possible broadcast spot, the men from the BBC installed the technological marvel of 2EH‘s transmitter in a wooden shed behind the University’s medical school at Teviot Place, the 150 foot (46m) aerial strung from the chimney stack. The studio and control room was at 79 George Street initially.
The Edinburgh University “New Buildings” medical school on Teviot Place
2EH was commissioned on May Day 1924, with a special live broadcast and concert from the Usher Hall. It opened at 730PM with the callsign “2EH Calling. 2EH Calling“. Music was provided by the band of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and an organ recital by Dr W. B. Ross. Speeches began at 9PM when the Lord Provost, Sir William Lowrie Sleigh, officially announced the opening, followed by a speech by J. C. W. (later Lord) Reith. After 10 more minutes of military piping at 930 the relay from London was plugged in and “2LO Calling” (London’s callsign) was announced to the listening public in Edinburgh. 2EH then took over again and Mr G. K. Marshall, station director, read the local news from George St., bringing the small audience of lucky listeners an update on a fire in South Bridge and “other interesting intelligence” such as the escape of the Zoo’s sealions. The evening then settled down to the London broadcast of the opera Faust.
Edinburgh Evening News, headline, May 2nd 1924
2EH‘s main job was as a broadcast relay for 2LO in London and Scottish content from 5SC in Glasgow, but it did put out a small volume of local programming and outside broadcasts from its tiny 20sq ft studio on George Street. These premises were rented from Townsend & Thomson’s music shop and proved totally inadequate (the “offices” were merely a through corridor, the studio the proprietor’s living room) so they were soon moved to more commodious and efficient space along the road at 87 George Street. The transmitter also proved rather hopeless and complaints were numerous in the Evening News and so it too was soon replaced. In October 1924, the BBC sent up the now surplus transmitter it had installed to broadcast live from that summer’s British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium.
2EH Control Room, 79 George Street, Edinburgh”. From “The BBC in Scotland : the first 50 years : a personal memoir” by David Pat Walker, 2011
A heavy rivalry existed between 2EH and its nominal parent at 5SC in Glasgow and as a result listeners in Edinburgh were treated to more than their fair share of relayed content from 2LO in London instead.
The BBC 2LO transmitter on Marconi House on the Strand. Credit, BBC100 website.
This brings us to Hogmanay broadcasting. Listeners in the reception range of 5SC in Glasgow were treated to some of Scotland’s first BBC Hogmanay programming in 1923, but it was a basic schedule from 5PM onwards, with a mixed content (although interestingly it included some Gaelic language singing) and handed over to London at 10PM for the rest of the night.
Daily Record, 31st December 1923, “Wireless Programmes, Glasgow 5SC”.
Most listeners in Edinburgh would have to wait a whole other year for the privilege of allowing Auntie into their living rooms and 2EH pulled out the stops to put on its own, special Hogmanay show for them. There were something like ten to twenty thousand wireless licenses issued by the Post Office in Edinburgh at this time, giving you an idea of the potential audience. Highlighting the rivalry with 5SC in the west, the Evening News reported that station’s schedule as a passive aggressive footnote under 2EH subtitled “Glasgow Fare“.
Edinburgh Evening News, 31st December 1924, “Radio To-Day – Local Hogmanay Programme” – Station 2EH (Edin.); 328 metrers”, and an itemised listing of the broadcast schedule below.”
So if you’d strung your 100ft wireless antennae, got the crystals warmed up, pulled up your armchair and tuned in on Hogmanay 1924, what would you have heard?
Grampa Simpsons enjoying his wireless
The show began at 3PM with an hour of piano music live from George Street, followed by an hour’s intermission and then an hour of children’s programmes. The stories, half of which were specifically Scottish, told by “Uncle Leslie” and “Auntie Mollie” (an early example of the anthropomorphising of the BBC into a benevolent relative in the wooden box in the corner of the room?) After another intermission, at 7PM the bells of Big Ben were broadcast from London (I believe SB in the schedules stands for syndicated broadcast), followed by a weather forecast and news bulletin. Mr C. H. B. Quennell then gave a lecture from London to fill up the rest of the half hour slot on “Every Day Life in Stuart and Georgian Times“. With everyone warmed up by that, at 730PM the Hogmanay “Scottish Night” special started proper, with the pipers of the 4/5th Battalion, The Royal Scots, introduced by announcer Miss Rosaline Masson, a well known local novelist. The pipers, a vocal octet and varous other musicians then took turns playing and singing a programme of largely traditional Scots music until the 930PM news and weather from London. The heavy part that a variety of Trad music has to play in the BBC’s Hogmanay scheduling is something that continues to this day.
Auntie in London then got folk really in the mood for the biggest night of the year with a 30 minute lecture on Horticulture by Mr J. S. Chisolm before everyone must have breathed a collective sigh of relief and woken up from their snoozes as the switch was once again thrown back to Edinburgh. More popular music now followed when a live outside broadcast was switched on from the Palais de Dance at Fountainbridge and The Romany Revellers band, “Scotland’s Finest Dance Band” and a regular at the establishment which could lay claim to being Scotland’s premier night spot at this time. This must have been quite a revolutionary event at the time. Music, live from a dance hall! Again, the incorporation of popular contemporary music and artists remains in the BBC’s Hogmanay template to this day, as does the “lounge” studio atmosphere with guests drawn from members of the public arrayed at table and chairs. One key difference was however that the Palais was a dry venue at this time and the strongest drink served by its cocktail bar was fruit juice!
Interior of the Palais de Danse dance-hall at Fountainbridge. A basket of balloons can be seen suspended from the ceiling, ready to drop. The curved edge of the stage is visible on the left. Credit, The City of Edinburgh Council Museums & Galleries
With just 15 minutes until the bells, the party in full swing and fever pitch building to a crescendo, the broadcast switch was thrown once again. This time it took the home listeners to St. Columba’s Church of Scotland in London for a blessing from the Rev. Archibald Fleming followed by the hymn “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow“. Just before midnight, that great tradition of Auld Lang Syne being sung was broadcast from St. Columba’s followed by the bells of Big Ben one final time and the message “A Happy New Year to All” crackled over the airwaves from London. Finally the plugboard was rewired one last time in George Street and the “Romany Revellers” returned to the wireless sets of Edinburgh live from the Palais for a final hour of the latest hits.
St Columba’s Church of Scotland, Pont St, London. Photograph, PD, credit Matthew Ross via Wikipedia.
That is except, to paraphrase the old Scottish joke about BBC programming, except for listeners in Glasgow. Listeners of 5SC got no such local treat that year, from 930PM they only got the London broadcast, with music from the Savoy Hotel Orpheans and Havana bands, and come midnight the plug was pulled and it closed down just after midnight after the Rev. Fleming’s and Big Ben’s chimes. I’m sure readers from the west will be quick to point out that Glaswegians did not need the BBC on the wireless to keep the music and the party going after midnight! But on this basis, Edinburgh has a pretty strong claim for producing the first full BBC Scotland Hogmanay show 100 years ago, and in a format we would largely recognise today. And the rest, as they say, is, history and various artists have been butchering Auld Lang Syne just before the bells, every year hither!
“No Marty, No Party”, according to the announcer; Marty Pellow sings “With A Little Help From My Friends” on the BBC Scotland Hogmanay Show 2024/25. For the record, he did not turn his talents to “Auld Lang Syne” this year.
For a fuller history of the 2EH Edinburgh station of the BBC, please head on over to the excellent page on the subject at Scotland on Air.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2025, Andy Arthur
#BBC #DanceHalls #December31 #Entertainment #GeorgeStreet #Hogmanay #January1 #Radio #Written2025

#bbc #dancehalls #december31 #entertainment #georgestreet #hogmanay
Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2025-01-01 · 17:47 UTC

The thread about the dawn of BBC radio in Edinburgh and the centenary of the first Scottish Hogmanay programming
A fact that passed me by until this morning (January 1st, 2025); yesterday marked the 100th anniversary (in Edinburgh at least) of the tradition of special Hogmanay programming from BBC Scotland. I think the fact possibly also passed the Beeb by too, even though they were very aware of celebrating the centenary of the general launch in 2023… So follow me now on a brief thread that explores the early history of BBC Radio in Edinburgh and the city’s claim to being the home of its ubiquitous annual Hogmanay broadcasting extravaganza.
Jackie Bird, presenting yet another BBC Scotland Hogmanay special.
The BBC’s first and principal Scottish transmitter was 5SC in Glasgow which started transmission in March 1923. It had a power of 1.5kw and a notional range of 75 miles; but only if you had the right sort of valve home wireless set and most didn’t, they had cheaper crystal sets. This fact, coupled with the wavelengths used and Edinburgh’s topography, meant it was largely unreceivable across the capital.
Herbert Carruthers, director of the BBC’s first radio station in Scotland.
To make up for 5SC‘s lack of national coverage, the BBC planned small repeater stations for the main cities. Aberdeen got 2BD in October 1923 and the following year Edinburgh would get 2EH in May and Dundee got 2DE in November. However even when broadcasting from within the city, it posed the early radio engineers a pair of unique geographical problems. Firstly, at the wavelengths the station operated at (328m), the city’s hills were a challenge to get the signal to go either around or over, leaving a shadow behind them. Secondly it proved very difficult to properly earth the transmitter owing to the geology beneath the city centre. As a result, even at just 2 miles distance from 2EH, it required a 100ft outdoor aerial to pick up the signal on a crystal radio set, and the City Corporation were reluctant to permit antennae to be strung across the streets between tenements.
After searching for the best possible broadcast spot, the men from the BBC installed the technological marvel of 2EH‘s transmitter in a wooden shed behind the University’s medical school at Teviot Place, the 150 foot (46m) aerial strung from the chimney stack. The studio and control room was at 79 George Street initially.
The Edinburgh University “New Buildings” medical school on Teviot Place
2EH was commissioned on May Day 1924, with a special live broadcast and concert from the Usher Hall. It opened at 730PM with the callsign “2EH Calling. 2EH Calling“. Music was provided by the band of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and an organ recital by Dr W. B. Ross. Speeches began at 9PM when the Lord Provost, Sir William Lowrie Sleigh, officially announced the opening, followed by a speech by J. C. W. (later Lord) Reith. After 10 more minutes of military piping at 930 the relay from London was plugged in and “2LO Calling” (London’s callsign) was announced to the listening public in Edinburgh. 2EH then took over again and Mr G. K. Marshall, station director, read the local news from George St., bringing the small audience of lucky listeners an update on a fire in South Bridge and “other interesting intelligence” such as the escape of the Zoo’s sealions. The evening then settled down to the London broadcast of the opera Faust.
Edinburgh Evening News, headline, May 2nd 1924
2EH‘s main job was as a broadcast relay for 2LO in London and Scottish content from 5SC in Glasgow, but it did put out a small volume of local programming and outside broadcasts from its tiny 20sq ft studio on George Street. These premises were rented from Townsend & Thomson’s music shop and proved totally inadequate (the “offices” were merely a through corridor, the studio the proprietor’s living room) so they were soon moved to more commodious and efficient space along the road at 87 George Street. The transmitter also proved rather hopeless and complaints were numerous in the Evening News and so it too was soon replaced. In October 1924, the BBC sent up the now surplus transmitter it had installed to broadcast live from that summer’s British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium.
2EH Control Room, 79 George Street, Edinburgh”. From “The BBC in Scotland : the first 50 years : a personal memoir” by David Pat Walker, 2011
A heavy rivalry existed between 2EH and its nominal parent at 5SC in Glasgow and as a result listeners in Edinburgh were treated to more than their fair share of relayed content from 2LO in London instead.
The BBC 2LO transmitter on Marconi House on the Strand. Credit, BBC100 website.
This brings us to Hogmanay broadcasting. Listeners in the reception range of 5SC in Glasgow were treated to some of Scotland’s first BBC Hogmanay programming in 1923, but it was a basic schedule from 5PM onwards, with a mixed content (although interestingly it included some Gaelic language singing) and handed over to London at 10PM for the rest of the night.
Daily Record, 31st December 1923, “Wireless Programmes, Glasgow 5SC”.
Most listeners in Edinburgh would have to wait a whole other year for the privilege of allowing Auntie into their living rooms and 2EH pulled out the stops to put on its own, special Hogmanay show for them. There were something like ten to twenty thousand wireless licenses issued by the Post Office in Edinburgh at this time, giving you an idea of the potential audience. Highlighting the rivalry with 5SC in the west, the Evening News reported that station’s schedule as a passive aggressive footnote under 2EH subtitled “Glasgow Fare“.
Edinburgh Evening News, 31st December 1924, “Radio To-Day – Local Hogmanay Programme” – Station 2EH (Edin.); 328 metrers”, and an itemised listing of the broadcast schedule below.”
So if you’d strung your 100ft wireless antennae, got the crystals warmed up, pulled up your armchair and tuned in on Hogmanay 1924, what would you have heard?
Grampa Simpsons enjoying his wireless
The show began at 3PM with an hour of piano music live from George Street, followed by an hour’s intermission and then an hour of children’s programmes. The stories, half of which were specifically Scottish, told by “Uncle Leslie” and “Auntie Mollie” (an early example of the anthropomorphising of the BBC into a benevolent relative in the wooden box in the corner of the room?) After another intermission, at 7PM the bells of Big Ben were broadcast from London (I believe SB in the schedules stands for syndicated broadcast), followed by a weather forecast and news bulletin. Mr C. H. B. Quennell then gave a lecture from London to fill up the rest of the half hour slot on “Every Day Life in Stuart and Georgian Times“. With everyone warmed up by that, at 730PM the Hogmanay “Scottish Night” special started proper, with the pipers of the 4/5th Battalion, The Royal Scots, introduced by announcer Miss Rosaline Masson, a well known local novelist. The pipers, a vocal octet and varous other musicians then took turns playing and singing a programme of largely traditional Scots music until the 930PM news and weather from London. The heavy part that a variety of Trad music has to play in the BBC’s Hogmanay scheduling is something that continues to this day.
Auntie in London then got folk really in the mood for the biggest night of the year with a 30 minute lecture on Horticulture by Mr J. S. Chisolm before everyone must have breathed a collective sigh of relief and woken up from their snoozes as the switch was once again thrown back to Edinburgh. More popular music now followed when a live outside broadcast was switched on from the Palais de Dance at Fountainbridge and The Romany Revellers band, “Scotland’s Finest Dance Band” and a regular at the establishment which could lay claim to being Scotland’s premier night spot at this time. This must have been quite a revolutionary event at the time. Music, live from a dance hall! Again, the incorporation of popular contemporary music and artists remains in the BBC’s Hogmanay template to this day, as does the “lounge” studio atmosphere with guests drawn from members of the public arrayed at table and chairs. One key difference was however that the Palais was a dry venue at this time and the strongest drink served by its cocktail bar was fruit juice!
Interior of the Palais de Danse dance-hall at Fountainbridge. A basket of balloons can be seen suspended from the ceiling, ready to drop. The curved edge of the stage is visible on the left. Credit, The City of Edinburgh Council Museums & Galleries
With just 15 minutes until the bells, the party in full swing and fever pitch building to a crescendo, the broadcast switch was thrown once again. This time it took the home listeners to St. Columba’s Church of Scotland in London for a blessing from the Rev. Archibald Fleming followed by the hymn “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow“. Just before midnight, that great tradition of Auld Lang Syne being sung was broadcast from St. Columba’s followed by the bells of Big Ben one final time and the message “A Happy New Year to All” crackled over the airwaves from London. Finally the plugboard was rewired one last time in George Street and the “Romany Revellers” returned to the wireless sets of Edinburgh live from the Palais for a final hour of the latest hits.
St Columba’s Church of Scotland, Pont St, London. Photograph, PD, credit Matthew Ross via Wikipedia.
That is except, to paraphrase the old Scottish joke about BBC programming, except for listeners in Glasgow. Listeners of 5SC got no such local treat that year, from 930PM they only got the London broadcast, with music from the Savoy Hotel Orpheans and Havana bands, and come midnight the plug was pulled and it closed down just after midnight after the Rev. Fleming’s and Big Ben’s chimes. I’m sure readers from the west will be quick to point out that Glaswegians did not need the BBC on the wireless to keep the music and the party going after midnight! But on this basis, Edinburgh has a pretty strong claim for producing the first full BBC Scotland Hogmanay show 100 years ago, and in a format we would largely recognise today. And the rest, as they say, is, history and various artists have been butchering Auld Lang Syne just before the bells, every year hither!
“No Marty, No Party”, according to the announcer; Marty Pellow sings “With A Little Help From My Friends” on the BBC Scotland Hogmanay Show 2024/25. For the record, he did not turn his talents to “Auld Lang Syne” this year.
For a fuller history of the 2EH Edinburgh station of the BBC, please head on over to the excellent page on the subject at Scotland on Air.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2025, Andy Arthur
#BBC #DanceHalls #December31 #Entertainment #GeorgeStreet #Hogmanay #January1 #Radio #Written2025

#written2025 #radio #january1 #hogmanay #georgestreet #entertainment
Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2025-01-01 · 17:47 UTC

The thread about the dawn of BBC radio in Edinburgh and the centenary of the first Scottish Hogmanay programming
A fact that passed me by until this morning (January 1st, 2025); yesterday marked the 100th anniversary (in Edinburgh at least) of the tradition of special Hogmanay programming from BBC Scotland. I think the fact possibly also passed the Beeb by too, even though they were very aware of celebrating the centenary of the general launch in 2023… So follow me now on a brief thread that explores the early history of BBC Radio in Edinburgh and the city’s claim to being the home of its ubiquitous annual Hogmanay broadcasting extravaganza.
Jackie Bird, presenting yet another BBC Scotland Hogmanay special.
The BBC’s first and principal Scottish transmitter was 5SC in Glasgow which started transmission in March 1923. It had a power of 1.5kw and a notional range of 75 miles; but only if you had the right sort of valve home wireless set and most didn’t, they had cheaper crystal sets. This fact, coupled with the wavelengths used and Edinburgh’s topography, meant it was largely unreceivable across the capital.
Herbert Carruthers, director of the BBC’s first radio station in Scotland.
To make up for 5SC‘s lack of national coverage, the BBC planned small repeater stations for the main cities. Aberdeen got 2BD in October 1923 and the following year Edinburgh would get 2EH in May and Dundee got 2DE in November. However even when broadcasting from within the city, it posed the early radio engineers a pair of unique geographical problems. Firstly, at the wavelengths the station operated at (328m), the city’s hills were a challenge to get the signal to go either around or over, leaving a shadow behind them. Secondly it proved very difficult to properly earth the transmitter owing to the geology beneath the city centre. As a result, even at just 2 miles distance from 2EH, it required a 100ft outdoor aerial to pick up the signal on a crystal radio set, and the City Corporation were reluctant to permit antennae to be strung across the streets between tenements.
After searching for the best possible broadcast spot, the men from the BBC installed the technological marvel of 2EH‘s transmitter in a wooden shed behind the University’s medical school at Teviot Place, the 150 foot (46m) aerial strung from the chimney stack. The studio and control room was at 79 George Street initially.
The Edinburgh University “New Buildings” medical school on Teviot Place
2EH was commissioned on May Day 1924, with a special live broadcast and concert from the Usher Hall. It opened at 730PM with the callsign “2EH Calling. 2EH Calling“. Music was provided by the band of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and an organ recital by Dr W. B. Ross. Speeches began at 9PM when the Lord Provost, Sir William Lowrie Sleigh, officially announced the opening, followed by a speech by J. C. W. (later Lord) Reith. After 10 more minutes of military piping at 930 the relay from London was plugged in and “2LO Calling” (London’s callsign) was announced to the listening public in Edinburgh. 2EH then took over again and Mr G. K. Marshall, station director, read the local news from George St., bringing the small audience of lucky listeners an update on a fire in South Bridge and “other interesting intelligence” such as the escape of the Zoo’s sealions. The evening then settled down to the London broadcast of the opera Faust.
Edinburgh Evening News, headline, May 2nd 1924
2EH‘s main job was as a broadcast relay for 2LO in London and Scottish content from 5SC in Glasgow, but it did put out a small volume of local programming and outside broadcasts from its tiny 20sq ft studio on George Street. These premises were rented from Townsend & Thomson’s music shop and proved totally inadequate (the “offices” were merely a through corridor, the studio the proprietor’s living room) so they were soon moved to more commodious and efficient space along the road at 87 George Street. The transmitter also proved rather hopeless and complaints were numerous in the Evening News and so it too was soon replaced. In October 1924, the BBC sent up the now surplus transmitter it had installed to broadcast live from that summer’s British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium.
2EH Control Room, 79 George Street, Edinburgh”. From “The BBC in Scotland : the first 50 years : a personal memoir” by David Pat Walker, 2011
A heavy rivalry existed between 2EH and its nominal parent at 5SC in Glasgow and as a result listeners in Edinburgh were treated to more than their fair share of relayed content from 2LO in London instead.
The BBC 2LO transmitter on Marconi House on the Strand. Credit, BBC100 website.
This brings us to Hogmanay broadcasting. Listeners in the reception range of 5SC in Glasgow were treated to some of Scotland’s first BBC Hogmanay programming in 1923, but it was a basic schedule from 5PM onwards, with a mixed content (although interestingly it included some Gaelic language singing) and handed over to London at 10PM for the rest of the night.
Daily Record, 31st December 1923, “Wireless Programmes, Glasgow 5SC”.
Most listeners in Edinburgh would have to wait a whole other year for the privilege of allowing Auntie into their living rooms and 2EH pulled out the stops to put on its own, special Hogmanay show for them. There were something like ten to twenty thousand wireless licenses issued by the Post Office in Edinburgh at this time, giving you an idea of the potential audience. Highlighting the rivalry with 5SC in the west, the Evening News reported that station’s schedule as a passive aggressive footnote under 2EH subtitled “Glasgow Fare“.
Edinburgh Evening News, 31st December 1924, “Radio To-Day – Local Hogmanay Programme” – Station 2EH (Edin.); 328 metrers”, and an itemised listing of the broadcast schedule below.”
So if you’d strung your 100ft wireless antennae, got the crystals warmed up, pulled up your armchair and tuned in on Hogmanay 1924, what would you have heard?
Grampa Simpsons enjoying his wireless
The show began at 3PM with an hour of piano music live from George Street, followed by an hour’s intermission and then an hour of children’s programmes. The stories, half of which were specifically Scottish, told by “Uncle Leslie” and “Auntie Mollie” (an early example of the anthropomorphising of the BBC into a benevolent relative in the wooden box in the corner of the room?) After another intermission, at 7PM the bells of Big Ben were broadcast from London (I believe SB in the schedules stands for syndicated broadcast), followed by a weather forecast and news bulletin. Mr C. H. B. Quennell then gave a lecture from London to fill up the rest of the half hour slot on “Every Day Life in Stuart and Georgian Times“. With everyone warmed up by that, at 730PM the Hogmanay “Scottish Night” special started proper, with the pipers of the 4/5th Battalion, The Royal Scots, introduced by announcer Miss Rosaline Masson, a well known local novelist. The pipers, a vocal octet and varous other musicians then took turns playing and singing a programme of largely traditional Scots music until the 930PM news and weather from London. The heavy part that a variety of Trad music has to play in the BBC’s Hogmanay scheduling is something that continues to this day.
Auntie in London then got folk really in the mood for the biggest night of the year with a 30 minute lecture on Horticulture by Mr J. S. Chisolm before everyone must have breathed a collective sigh of relief and woken up from their snoozes as the switch was once again thrown back to Edinburgh. More popular music now followed when a live outside broadcast was switched on from the Palais de Dance at Fountainbridge and The Romany Revellers band, “Scotland’s Finest Dance Band” and a regular at the establishment which could lay claim to being Scotland’s premier night spot at this time. This must have been quite a revolutionary event at the time. Music, live from a dance hall! Again, the incorporation of popular contemporary music and artists remains in the BBC’s Hogmanay template to this day, as does the “lounge” studio atmosphere with guests drawn from members of the public arrayed at table and chairs. One key difference was however that the Palais was a dry venue at this time and the strongest drink served by its cocktail bar was fruit juice!
Interior of the Palais de Danse dance-hall at Fountainbridge. A basket of balloons can be seen suspended from the ceiling, ready to drop. The curved edge of the stage is visible on the left. Credit, The City of Edinburgh Council Museums & Galleries
With just 15 minutes until the bells, the party in full swing and fever pitch building to a crescendo, the broadcast switch was thrown once again. This time it took the home listeners to St. Columba’s Church of Scotland in London for a blessing from the Rev. Archibald Fleming followed by the hymn “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow“. Just before midnight, that great tradition of Auld Lang Syne being sung was broadcast from St. Columba’s followed by the bells of Big Ben one final time and the message “A Happy New Year to All” crackled over the airwaves from London. Finally the plugboard was rewired one last time in George Street and the “Romany Revellers” returned to the wireless sets of Edinburgh live from the Palais for a final hour of the latest hits.
St Columba’s Church of Scotland, Pont St, London. Photograph, PD, credit Matthew Ross via Wikipedia.
That is except, to paraphrase the old Scottish joke about BBC programming, except for listeners in Glasgow. Listeners of 5SC got no such local treat that year, from 930PM they only got the London broadcast, with music from the Savoy Hotel Orpheans and Havana bands, and come midnight the plug was pulled and it closed down just after midnight after the Rev. Fleming’s and Big Ben’s chimes. I’m sure readers from the west will be quick to point out that Glaswegians did not need the BBC on the wireless to keep the music and the party going after midnight! But on this basis, Edinburgh has a pretty strong claim for producing the first full BBC Scotland Hogmanay show 100 years ago, and in a format we would largely recognise today. And the rest, as they say, is, history and various artists have been butchering Auld Lang Syne just before the bells, every year hither!
“No Marty, No Party”, according to the announcer; Marty Pellow sings “With A Little Help From My Friends” on the BBC Scotland Hogmanay Show 2024/25. For the record, he did not turn his talents to “Auld Lang Syne” this year.
For a fuller history of the 2EH Edinburgh station of the BBC, please head on over to the excellent page on the subject at Scotland on Air.

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site (including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget) by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2025, Andy Arthur
#BBC #DanceHalls #December31 #Entertainment #GeorgeStreet #Hogmanay #January1 #Radio #Written2025

#bbc #dancehalls #december31 #entertainment #georgestreet #hogmanay
abolitionmedia @[email protected] · 2024-11-03 · 03:56 UTC

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine:
—
On the 107th Anniversary of the Ill-Fated Balfour Declaration
The Balfour Declaration is a major crime that will not expire and reaffirms Britain’s responsibility for our people’s tragedy and catastrophe and its involvement in the ongoing genocide.
On this day, November 2nd, our people and humanity as a whole remember with sorrow, pain, and anger the 107th anniversary of the ill-fated Balfour Declaration, announced by British Foreign Minister and war criminal Arthur Balfour in 1917, granting the right to the land of Palestine to those who do not deserve it.
This declaration constituted a major historical crime that legitimized the usurpation of the land of Palestine and its rights and the displacement of our Palestinian people, emphasizing Britain’s direct responsibility for the ongoing Nakba our people face to this day. Our people’s tragedy continues under the zionist occupation, which continues to commit the most heinous massacres, organized terrorism, and genocide, as is happening in Gaza.
The continuous British support for this criminal entity is one of the prominent reasons that have reinforced the reality of the occupation and the continuation of its crimes. Colonial Britain, which sought to impose its hegemony in the region, bears moral and historical responsibility for everything that has happened and continues to happen to our people. This support is not mere collusion but full partnership in the genocide.
On the 107th anniversary of the ill-fated Balfour Declaration, we in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine reaffirm the following:

1. We will not forget or forgive Britain for committing this major crime and causing the Nakba of our people, holding it directly responsible for our people’s continuous suffering.
2. We demand that the British government recognize the rights of the Palestinian people and compensate for the damages caused by this ill-fated declaration as a necessary step towards achieving justice and atoning for its major crime.
3. We stress the importance of raising global awareness about the catastrophic impacts of the Balfour Declaration, and we call on the free people of Britain who filled the squares by the hundreds of thousands denouncing the zionist aggression on Gaza to continue pressing the British government to assume its historical responsibilities and contribute immediately to stopping the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.
4. We emphasize the role of institutions and groups supportive of and in solidarity with our people in activating the international arena through international institutions and the International Criminal Court to hold the occupation accountable for its crimes, support the rights of the Palestinian people, and hold Britain accountable for its historical role in the catastrophe of our people and the tragedy they continue to live through, as well as for its involvement in the genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.
5. We reaffirm our commitment to continue the struggle and resistance in all forms, foremost among them armed resistance, until the aggression is repelled and the repercussions of this ill-fated declaration are undone, regardless of the sacrifices and the extent of Western, especially British, collusion.
In conclusion, we in the Popular Front affirm that the Balfour Declaration will remain an open wound in the memory of our people, an unforgivable crime that will not expire, and we will remain loyal to the blood of our heroic martyrs, continuing our relentless struggle until liberation and return.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Central Media Department
November 2, 2024
— Palestinian Islamic Jihad
—
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
On this day in 1917, the infamous promise known as the Balfour Declaration was issued, falsely granting a right to those who had no claim over a land that was not theirs. This unjust declaration marked the initial step in a prolonged journey of oppression and aggression, paving the way for colonialism based on seizing land and eradicating the Palestinian people. Through this promise, Britain opened the gates to an enduring historical injustice and became one of the primary contributors to the suffering of the Palestinian people by supporting the establishment of the zionist entity and providing political cover for it to commit decades of oppression and ethnic cleansing. To this day, Britain bears moral, political, and legal responsibility for the oppression and displacement experienced by the Palestinian people. The impact of the Balfour Declaration remains deeply embedded in our memory, only growing stronger with every crime committed by the occupation.
Today, over a century after this crime, our people face an even harsher reality. The occupation is waging a war of genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip, aiming to crush the will of the Palestinian people, seize their land, deny them their freedom, and uproot them from their homeland.
The continuous massacres committed by the occupation against children, women, and the elderly in Gaza, the demolition of homes over their inhabitants, and the siege of over two million Palestinians are evident to the entire world. Yet, despite the clarity of these crimes, the disgraceful international silence persists, effectively giving the occupation a green light to further its aggressive plans. What is happening in Gaza and Lebanon is not just a military operation but a systematic war of genocide and the sowing of chaos aimed at depopulating the land and perpetuating a plan of displacement and uprooting that has been ongoing since the Nakba.
This tragedy is compounded by the continuous support provided by some Western powers, foremost among them the United States, which supplies the zionist entity with weapons and ensures its political protection in international forums, even guaranteeing its perpetual impunity. This limitless support enables the occupation to continue its aggression and atrocities against Palestinians and sends a clear message that the lives and rights of the Palestinian people, and the people of the entire region, hold no value in the political calculations of these states. This disgraceful alliance between the occupation and its supporters is the primary source of the suffering of our people and exacts a price paid in the blood of our sons and the future of our nation.
This comes amid the occupation’s blatant challenge to international institutions, as it wages an open war against all international bodies, especially UNRWA, which it has decided to ban from our land in an attempt to erase the right of Palestinian refugees. The occupation’s attacks on international institutions, including the UN Secretary-General and firing at UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon, confirm that any talk of confronting this entity without the language of resistance is detached from reality.
We affirm, on this occasion, that the Palestinian people are deeply rooted in their land, holding firmly to every grain of their homeland, Palestine, from its river to its sea, regardless of the intensity of the oppression and brutality. Every attempt at displacement and land seizure only increases our determination to resist and defeat this occupation.

In this context, we emphasize that the Palestinian resistance remains firm in its conditions to cease the aggression on Gaza, foremost of which is a comprehensive ceasefire, the complete withdrawal of occupation forces from Gaza, particularly from the “Netzarim,” Salah al-Din axis, and the Rafah crossing, the return of northern Gaza residents to their homes and farms, and the entry of humanitarian aid and essential supplies to meet the needs of our people in Gaza, culminating in a prisoner exchange deal and the reconstruction of what the criminal entity has destroyed.
On the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, we call upon the world to recognize the extent of the historical injustice inflicted on our people and to assume its responsibilities in stopping this brutal occupation. The Palestinian people, with their inalienable right to their land and history, will remain steadfast and resistant until liberation and the rightful return of their land. We call on all the free people of the world to take a decisive stand against this ongoing injustice and stand in solidarity with our defenseless Palestinian people. The Palestinian resistance has proven throughout every phase of the struggle that it will not concede or retreat in the face of any attempt to erase its rights, and that the Palestinian people will remain resilient and steadfast in their land until justice prevails and the land returns to its rightful owners.
Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine
Saturday, 30 Rabi’ al-Thani 1446 AH, November 2, 2024.
— Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine:
—
On the Anniversary of the Ill-Fated Balfour Declaration
The Democratic Front: “Had Britain Not Planted the zionist Project in Our Land, It Would Have Remained Lost, Searching for a Refuge Elsewhere”
On the anniversary of the ill-fated Balfour Declaration, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine issued a statement holding British colonialism historically responsible for planting the zionist project in our land. The statement noted, “Had colonial Britain not worked to plant the zionist project in our land, to build the foundations of a settler state and to seize land, the zionist project would have remained lost in the world, searching for refuge far from us.”
The Democratic Front added, “British colonialism provided the zionist settler-colonial project with all the elements necessary for its realization: political pledges, land, water, weapons, and open doors for the migration of hundreds of thousands of Jewish migrants, while the United States and Western Europe closed their doors to Jewish refugees, pushing them forcibly toward Palestine to contribute to building a Jewish state on our land.”
The Democratic Front stated, “British colonialism did not stop at providing every element for establishing the colonial Jewish state on our land; it also actively suppressed the Palestinian national movement, pursuing its leaders, especially those of the armed resistance, starting with the esteemed Sheikh Izz El-Din Al-Qassam and passing through all the heroes of the resistance. It persisted in tilting the scales in favor of the zionist project, paralyzing the foundation of the Palestinian national project.”
The Democratic Front continued, “British colonialism still exhibits hostility towards our Palestinian people, openly participating in the genocidal war waged by the aggressor state against our people in Gaza, covering Gaza’s skies 24/7 with an aerial surveillance network feeding reports to the occupation army for its mass-killing operations. It also shows hostility towards the people of Yemen, who have taken on the responsibility of supporting our people in Palestine, by joining naval and air fleets alongside the United States.”
The Democratic Front stressed, “It is not enough for Britain to offer an apology for its historical and ongoing crimes against our people. At the very least, alongside an apology, Britain is obligated to cease supplying the occupation state with arms, boycott the economy of its settlements, stop providing cover for the aggressor state in the Security Council or the General Assembly, recognize the State of Palestine, cease obstructing its full membership in the United Nations, continue supporting UNRWA, and clearly and unequivocally affirm Palestinian refugees’ right of return to their homes and properties from which they were displaced in 1948, in addition to refraining from participating in wars against our Arab peoples.”
The Democratic Front concluded, “Despite everything Western colonialism has offered to the zionist project, our people’s resistance has not ceased over the past 100 years and will continue, presenting legendary stories of heroism by our people and their resistance throughout all occupied Palestinian territories.”
Central Media
02/11/2024
— Popular Resistance Committees:
—
On the 107th Anniversary of the Ill-Fated Balfour Declaration:
The massacres, genocide, and ethnic cleansing we witness today are a natural consequence of the ill-fated Balfour Declaration and the alliance of criminal Western states against our people and our nation.
The steadfastness of our people, their attachment to their land, their legendary steadfastness, and their courageous resistance are the response to all the conspiracies and plans of the West and the zionist-American enemy, aimed at uprooting our people from their land and ending their cause.
The criminal Western states, led by Britain, Germany, and the United States, are the ones waging war on us, demolishing our homes, killing our families, severing our women and children with their missiles and weapons, and continuing their unlimited support for the zionist enemy to annihilate our people.
No amount of hatred, destruction, or brutal zionist-American massacres will dim the light of our freedom. Our people, our resistance, and the men of the resistance axis will triumph, and their Balfour Declaration will vanish in the face of the epics of heroism being written by the resistance fighters in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran.
It is time for the nations, free people, parties, elites, scholars, and sheikhs of the [Arab and Islamic] Ummah to rise, revolt, and raise their voices in support of Palestine and Lebanon, rejecting zionist-American domination and genocide. Supporting the resistance and the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples is a duty that cannot be abandoned.
Media Office of the Popular Resistance Committees in Palestine
Saturday, November 2, 2024
— Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command:
—
On the 107th anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration
The anniversary of the Balfour Declaration passes us today, which was announced by Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, granting the land of Palestine to the Jews without any right or entitlement. We are at the peak of confrontation with the Nazi zionist entity and its allies, America and Britain, and those who have colluded with them to carry out conspiracies aimed at undermining the steadfastness of our people and their rich history, and their attachment to their land and constants that they have grown up with from childhood through their youth to their old age, until another generation took up the banner, to thwart the dreams of the sons of Zion with the death of our elders and the forgetting of our youth, who have today become soldiers in the battle of the Al-Aqsa Flood, writing the most magnificent epics of heroism and sacrifice to protect their homeland, uphold the dignity of their people, and liberate their captives.
On this painful anniversary for our people, we hold Britain historically responsible for the consequences of this unjust promise against our people and the ongoing calamities and massacres that have resulted from it, supported by America and its agents. We demand that the free people of the world and international human rights organizations support our Palestinian people in their demand for rights in international forums, until the occupier pays the price for its crimes and violations of international humanitarian law, along with all the conspirators supporting its terrorism and Nazi occupation. We renew our pledge and oath to continue the path of jihad and resistance until we thwart all projects targeting our land, our free people, and our valiant captives, and that attempt to desecrate and Judaize the land and holy sites.
Indeed, it is a revolution until the liberation of the land and the human being.
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command
Media Office – Palestine
3-11-2024

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/11/03/palestinian-resistance-factions-comment-on-the-107th-anniversary-of-the-ill-fated-balfour-declaration/
#balfourDeclaration #dflp #palestine #pflp #pflpGc #pij

#balfourdeclaration #dflp #palestine #pflp #pflpgc #pij
abolitionmedia @[email protected] · 2024-11-03 · 03:56 UTC

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine:
—
On the 107th Anniversary of the Ill-Fated Balfour Declaration
The Balfour Declaration is a major crime that will not expire and reaffirms Britain’s responsibility for our people’s tragedy and catastrophe and its involvement in the ongoing genocide.
On this day, November 2nd, our people and humanity as a whole remember with sorrow, pain, and anger the 107th anniversary of the ill-fated Balfour Declaration, announced by British Foreign Minister and war criminal Arthur Balfour in 1917, granting the right to the land of Palestine to those who do not deserve it.
This declaration constituted a major historical crime that legitimized the usurpation of the land of Palestine and its rights and the displacement of our Palestinian people, emphasizing Britain’s direct responsibility for the ongoing Nakba our people face to this day. Our people’s tragedy continues under the zionist occupation, which continues to commit the most heinous massacres, organized terrorism, and genocide, as is happening in Gaza.
The continuous British support for this criminal entity is one of the prominent reasons that have reinforced the reality of the occupation and the continuation of its crimes. Colonial Britain, which sought to impose its hegemony in the region, bears moral and historical responsibility for everything that has happened and continues to happen to our people. This support is not mere collusion but full partnership in the genocide.
On the 107th anniversary of the ill-fated Balfour Declaration, we in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine reaffirm the following:

1. We will not forget or forgive Britain for committing this major crime and causing the Nakba of our people, holding it directly responsible for our people’s continuous suffering.
2. We demand that the British government recognize the rights of the Palestinian people and compensate for the damages caused by this ill-fated declaration as a necessary step towards achieving justice and atoning for its major crime.
3. We stress the importance of raising global awareness about the catastrophic impacts of the Balfour Declaration, and we call on the free people of Britain who filled the squares by the hundreds of thousands denouncing the zionist aggression on Gaza to continue pressing the British government to assume its historical responsibilities and contribute immediately to stopping the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.
4. We emphasize the role of institutions and groups supportive of and in solidarity with our people in activating the international arena through international institutions and the International Criminal Court to hold the occupation accountable for its crimes, support the rights of the Palestinian people, and hold Britain accountable for its historical role in the catastrophe of our people and the tragedy they continue to live through, as well as for its involvement in the genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.
5. We reaffirm our commitment to continue the struggle and resistance in all forms, foremost among them armed resistance, until the aggression is repelled and the repercussions of this ill-fated declaration are undone, regardless of the sacrifices and the extent of Western, especially British, collusion.
In conclusion, we in the Popular Front affirm that the Balfour Declaration will remain an open wound in the memory of our people, an unforgivable crime that will not expire, and we will remain loyal to the blood of our heroic martyrs, continuing our relentless struggle until liberation and return.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Central Media Department
November 2, 2024
— Palestinian Islamic Jihad
—
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
On this day in 1917, the infamous promise known as the Balfour Declaration was issued, falsely granting a right to those who had no claim over a land that was not theirs. This unjust declaration marked the initial step in a prolonged journey of oppression and aggression, paving the way for colonialism based on seizing land and eradicating the Palestinian people. Through this promise, Britain opened the gates to an enduring historical injustice and became one of the primary contributors to the suffering of the Palestinian people by supporting the establishment of the zionist entity and providing political cover for it to commit decades of oppression and ethnic cleansing. To this day, Britain bears moral, political, and legal responsibility for the oppression and displacement experienced by the Palestinian people. The impact of the Balfour Declaration remains deeply embedded in our memory, only growing stronger with every crime committed by the occupation.
Today, over a century after this crime, our people face an even harsher reality. The occupation is waging a war of genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip, aiming to crush the will of the Palestinian people, seize their land, deny them their freedom, and uproot them from their homeland.
The continuous massacres committed by the occupation against children, women, and the elderly in Gaza, the demolition of homes over their inhabitants, and the siege of over two million Palestinians are evident to the entire world. Yet, despite the clarity of these crimes, the disgraceful international silence persists, effectively giving the occupation a green light to further its aggressive plans. What is happening in Gaza and Lebanon is not just a military operation but a systematic war of genocide and the sowing of chaos aimed at depopulating the land and perpetuating a plan of displacement and uprooting that has been ongoing since the Nakba.
This tragedy is compounded by the continuous support provided by some Western powers, foremost among them the United States, which supplies the zionist entity with weapons and ensures its political protection in international forums, even guaranteeing its perpetual impunity. This limitless support enables the occupation to continue its aggression and atrocities against Palestinians and sends a clear message that the lives and rights of the Palestinian people, and the people of the entire region, hold no value in the political calculations of these states. This disgraceful alliance between the occupation and its supporters is the primary source of the suffering of our people and exacts a price paid in the blood of our sons and the future of our nation.
This comes amid the occupation’s blatant challenge to international institutions, as it wages an open war against all international bodies, especially UNRWA, which it has decided to ban from our land in an attempt to erase the right of Palestinian refugees. The occupation’s attacks on international institutions, including the UN Secretary-General and firing at UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon, confirm that any talk of confronting this entity without the language of resistance is detached from reality.
We affirm, on this occasion, that the Palestinian people are deeply rooted in their land, holding firmly to every grain of their homeland, Palestine, from its river to its sea, regardless of the intensity of the oppression and brutality. Every attempt at displacement and land seizure only increases our determination to resist and defeat this occupation.

In this context, we emphasize that the Palestinian resistance remains firm in its conditions to cease the aggression on Gaza, foremost of which is a comprehensive ceasefire, the complete withdrawal of occupation forces from Gaza, particularly from the “Netzarim,” Salah al-Din axis, and the Rafah crossing, the return of northern Gaza residents to their homes and farms, and the entry of humanitarian aid and essential supplies to meet the needs of our people in Gaza, culminating in a prisoner exchange deal and the reconstruction of what the criminal entity has destroyed.
On the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, we call upon the world to recognize the extent of the historical injustice inflicted on our people and to assume its responsibilities in stopping this brutal occupation. The Palestinian people, with their inalienable right to their land and history, will remain steadfast and resistant until liberation and the rightful return of their land. We call on all the free people of the world to take a decisive stand against this ongoing injustice and stand in solidarity with our defenseless Palestinian people. The Palestinian resistance has proven throughout every phase of the struggle that it will not concede or retreat in the face of any attempt to erase its rights, and that the Palestinian people will remain resilient and steadfast in their land until justice prevails and the land returns to its rightful owners.
Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine
Saturday, 30 Rabi’ al-Thani 1446 AH, November 2, 2024.
— Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine:
—
On the Anniversary of the Ill-Fated Balfour Declaration
The Democratic Front: “Had Britain Not Planted the zionist Project in Our Land, It Would Have Remained Lost, Searching for a Refuge Elsewhere”
On the anniversary of the ill-fated Balfour Declaration, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine issued a statement holding British colonialism historically responsible for planting the zionist project in our land. The statement noted, “Had colonial Britain not worked to plant the zionist project in our land, to build the foundations of a settler state and to seize land, the zionist project would have remained lost in the world, searching for refuge far from us.”
The Democratic Front added, “British colonialism provided the zionist settler-colonial project with all the elements necessary for its realization: political pledges, land, water, weapons, and open doors for the migration of hundreds of thousands of Jewish migrants, while the United States and Western Europe closed their doors to Jewish refugees, pushing them forcibly toward Palestine to contribute to building a Jewish state on our land.”
The Democratic Front stated, “British colonialism did not stop at providing every element for establishing the colonial Jewish state on our land; it also actively suppressed the Palestinian national movement, pursuing its leaders, especially those of the armed resistance, starting with the esteemed Sheikh Izz El-Din Al-Qassam and passing through all the heroes of the resistance. It persisted in tilting the scales in favor of the zionist project, paralyzing the foundation of the Palestinian national project.”
The Democratic Front continued, “British colonialism still exhibits hostility towards our Palestinian people, openly participating in the genocidal war waged by the aggressor state against our people in Gaza, covering Gaza’s skies 24/7 with an aerial surveillance network feeding reports to the occupation army for its mass-killing operations. It also shows hostility towards the people of Yemen, who have taken on the responsibility of supporting our people in Palestine, by joining naval and air fleets alongside the United States.”
The Democratic Front stressed, “It is not enough for Britain to offer an apology for its historical and ongoing crimes against our people. At the very least, alongside an apology, Britain is obligated to cease supplying the occupation state with arms, boycott the economy of its settlements, stop providing cover for the aggressor state in the Security Council or the General Assembly, recognize the State of Palestine, cease obstructing its full membership in the United Nations, continue supporting UNRWA, and clearly and unequivocally affirm Palestinian refugees’ right of return to their homes and properties from which they were displaced in 1948, in addition to refraining from participating in wars against our Arab peoples.”
The Democratic Front concluded, “Despite everything Western colonialism has offered to the zionist project, our people’s resistance has not ceased over the past 100 years and will continue, presenting legendary stories of heroism by our people and their resistance throughout all occupied Palestinian territories.”
Central Media
02/11/2024
— Popular Resistance Committees:
—
On the 107th Anniversary of the Ill-Fated Balfour Declaration:
The massacres, genocide, and ethnic cleansing we witness today are a natural consequence of the ill-fated Balfour Declaration and the alliance of criminal Western states against our people and our nation.
The steadfastness of our people, their attachment to their land, their legendary steadfastness, and their courageous resistance are the response to all the conspiracies and plans of the West and the zionist-American enemy, aimed at uprooting our people from their land and ending their cause.
The criminal Western states, led by Britain, Germany, and the United States, are the ones waging war on us, demolishing our homes, killing our families, severing our women and children with their missiles and weapons, and continuing their unlimited support for the zionist enemy to annihilate our people.
No amount of hatred, destruction, or brutal zionist-American massacres will dim the light of our freedom. Our people, our resistance, and the men of the resistance axis will triumph, and their Balfour Declaration will vanish in the face of the epics of heroism being written by the resistance fighters in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran.
It is time for the nations, free people, parties, elites, scholars, and sheikhs of the [Arab and Islamic] Ummah to rise, revolt, and raise their voices in support of Palestine and Lebanon, rejecting zionist-American domination and genocide. Supporting the resistance and the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples is a duty that cannot be abandoned.
Media Office of the Popular Resistance Committees in Palestine
Saturday, November 2, 2024
— Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command:
—
On the 107th anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration
The anniversary of the Balfour Declaration passes us today, which was announced by Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, granting the land of Palestine to the Jews without any right or entitlement. We are at the peak of confrontation with the Nazi zionist entity and its allies, America and Britain, and those who have colluded with them to carry out conspiracies aimed at undermining the steadfastness of our people and their rich history, and their attachment to their land and constants that they have grown up with from childhood through their youth to their old age, until another generation took up the banner, to thwart the dreams of the sons of Zion with the death of our elders and the forgetting of our youth, who have today become soldiers in the battle of the Al-Aqsa Flood, writing the most magnificent epics of heroism and sacrifice to protect their homeland, uphold the dignity of their people, and liberate their captives.
On this painful anniversary for our people, we hold Britain historically responsible for the consequences of this unjust promise against our people and the ongoing calamities and massacres that have resulted from it, supported by America and its agents. We demand that the free people of the world and international human rights organizations support our Palestinian people in their demand for rights in international forums, until the occupier pays the price for its crimes and violations of international humanitarian law, along with all the conspirators supporting its terrorism and Nazi occupation. We renew our pledge and oath to continue the path of jihad and resistance until we thwart all projects targeting our land, our free people, and our valiant captives, and that attempt to desecrate and Judaize the land and holy sites.
Indeed, it is a revolution until the liberation of the land and the human being.
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command
Media Office – Palestine
3-11-2024

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/11/03/palestinian-resistance-factions-comment-on-the-107th-anniversary-of-the-ill-fated-balfour-declaration/
#balfourDeclaration #dflp #palestine #pflp #pflpGc #pij

#balfourdeclaration #dflp #palestine #pflp #pflpgc #pij
jansegers @[email protected] · 2020-07-21 · 13:33 UTC

BASIC1500
a • abdomen • able • about • absorption • acceleration • acceptance • accessory • accident • account • acid • across • act • active • addition • address • adjacent • adjustment • adsorption • advertisement • after • again • against • age • agency • agreement • air • alcohol • algebra • all • allowance • almost • altar • alternative • aluminum • am • ammonia • among • amount • amplitude • amusement • an • and • angel • angle • angry • animal • answer • ant • any • apparatus • appendage • apple • application • approval • approximation • april • arbitrary • arbitration • arc • arch • are • area • argument • arithmetic • ark • arm • army • arrangement • arrow • art • as • asbestos • ash • ass • asset • assets • assistant • at • attack • attempt • attention • attraction • august • authority • autobus • automatic • automobile • average • awake • away • ax • axis • baby • back • bad • bag • balance • bale • ball • ballet • band • bank • bankrupt • baptism • bar • bark • barrel • base • basic • basin • basket • bath • be • beak • beaker • beast • beautiful • because • bed • bee • beef • been • beer • before • behavior • being • belief • bell • bent • berry • best • better • between • bible • bill • biology • bird • birefringence • birth • bit • bite • bitter • black • blade • blessing • blind • blood • blow • blue • board • boat • body • boiling • bone • book • boot • bottle • bow • box • boy • brain • brake • branch • brass • bread • break • breast • breath • brick • bride • bridge • bright • broken • broker • brother • brow • brown • brush • bubble • bucket • bud • budget • building • bulb • buoyancy • burn • burst • business • but • butter • button • by • cafe • cake • calendar • calm • came • camera • canvas • capacity • captain • card • care • carriage • cart • cartilage • case • cast • cat • catarrh • cattle • cause • cave • cavity • cell • cent • centi • certain • certificate • chain • chalk • champagne • chance • change • charge • chauffeur • cheap • check • cheese • chemical • chemist • chemistry • chest • chief • child • chin • chocolate • chorus • church • cigarette • circle • circuit • circulation • circumcision • circumference • circus • citron • claim • claw • clay • clean • clear • cleavage • client • climber • clip • clock • cloth • cloud • club • coal • coat • cock • cocktail • code • coffee • cognac • coil • cold • collar • college • collision • colony • color • column • comb • combination • combine • come • comfort • coming • committee • common • company • comparison • competition • complaint • complete • complex • component • compound • condition • conductor • congruent • connection • conscious • conservation • consignment • constant • consumer • continuous • contour • control • conversion • cook • copper • copy • cord • cork • correlation • corrosion • cost • cotton • cough • country • court • cover • cow • crack • credit • creeper • crime • cross • crown • cruel • crush • cry • cubic • cup • current • curse • curtain • curve • cushion • cusp • customs • cut • damage • damping • dance • danger • dark • daughter • dawn • day • dead • dear • death • debit • debt • deca • deceit • december • deci • decision • deck • decrease • deep • defect • deficiency • deflation • degenerate • degree • delicate • delight • delivery • demand • denominator • density • dependent • deposit • desert • design • desire • destruction • detail • determining • development • dew • diameter • did • difference • different • difficulty • digestion • dike • dilution • dip • diplomacy • direct • direction • dirty • disappearance • discharge • disciple • discount • discovery • discussion • disease • disgust • dissipation • distance • distribution • disturbance • division • divisor • do • does • dog • doing • dollar • domesticating • dominion • done • door • doubt • dove • down • drain • drawer • dream • dress • drift • drink • driving • drop • dry • duct • dust • dynamite • eagle • ear • early • earth • east • economics • edge • education • effect • efficiency • effort • egg • eight • elastic • electric • eleven • elimination • embassy • empire • employer • encyclopedia • end • engine • engineer • enough • environment • envy • equal • equation • erosion • error • eruption • etc • eternal • euro • evaporation • even • evening • event • ever • every • evil • exact • example • exchange • existence • expansion • experience • experiment • expert • explanation • explosion • export • extinction • eye • face • fact • factor • fair • faith • fall • false • family • fan • far • farm • farther • farthest • fat • fate • father • fatigue • fault • fear • feast • feather • february • feeble • feeling • female • ferment • fertile • fertilizing • fiber • fiction • field • fifteen • fifth • fifty • fight • fin • finger • fire • first • fish • five • fixed • flag • flame • flask • flat • flesh • flight • flint • flock • flood • floor • flow • flower • fly • focus • fold • foliation • food • foolish • foot • for • force • forgiveness • fork • form • forty • forward • fountain • four • fourteen • fourth • fowl • fox • fraction • fracture • frame • free • frequent • fresh • friction • friday • friend • from • front • fruit • full • fume • funnel • furnace • further • furthest • fusion • future • gallon • garden • gas • gat • gave • general • generation • gentle • geography • geology • geometry • germinating • get • getting • gill • girl • give • given • giving • glacier • glad • gland • glass • glory • glove • glycerin • go • goat • god • goes • going • gold • gone • good • got • gotten • government • grace • grain • gram • grape • grass • grating • gravel • great • green • grey • grief • grip • groove • gross • ground • group • growth • guarantee • guard • guest • guide • gun • habit • had • hair • half • hammer • hand • hanging • happy • harbor • hard • harmony • has • hat • hate • hath • have • having • hawk • he • head • healthy • hearing • heart • heat • heaven • hecto • hell • help • her • herd • here • heritage • hers • high • hill • him • hinge • hire • his • history • hold • hole • hollow • holy • honey • honor • hoof • hook • hope • horn • horse • hospital • host • hotel • hour • house • how • humor • hundred • husband • hyena • hygiene • hysteria • i • ice • idea • if • igneous • ill • image • imperial • import • important • impulse • impurity • in • inclusion • increase • index • individual • industry • inferno • infinity • inflation • influenza • inheritance • ink • inner • insect • instrument • insulator • insurance • integer • intercept • interest • international • interpenetration • interpretation • intersection • intrusion • invention • inverse • investigation • investment • iron • is • island • it • its • ivory • january • jaw • jazz • jelly • jewel • join • joint • journey • joy • judge • juice • july • jump • june • keep • keeping • kept • kettle • key • kick • kidney • kilo • kind • king • kingdom • kiss • knee • knife • knot • knowledge • lag • lake • lamb • land • language • lark • last • late • latitude • laugh • lava • law • layer • lead • leaf • learning • least • leather • leaven • left • leg • length • lens • leper • less • let • letter • level • lever • liability • library • license • life • lift • light • like • limestone • limit • line • linen • link • lion • lip • liqueur • liquid • list • lists • liter • little • liver • living • load • loan • lock • locus • locust • long • longitude • look • loose • lord • loss • loud • love • low • lung • macaroni • machine • madam • made • magnitude • make • making • malaria • male • man • manager • mania • map • march • margin • mark • market • married • mass • master • match • material • mathematics • mature • may • me • meadow • meal • mean • measure • meat • mechanics • medical • medium • meeting • melody • melt • memory • mercy • metabolism • metal • meter • metric • micro • middle • might • mile • military • milk • milli • million • mind • mine • minute • mist • mixed • mixture • momentum • monday • money • monkey • monopoly • month • moon • more • morning • most • mother • motion • mountain • mouth • move • much • mud • multiple • multiplication • muscle • museum • music • my • nail • name • names • narrow • nation • natural • near • nearer • nearest • necessary • neck • need • needle • neighbor • nerve • net • never • new • news • nickel • nicotine • night • nine • no • noble • node • noise • normal • north • nose • not • note • nouns • november • now • nucleus • number • numbers • numerator • nut • oath • oblique • observation • october • of • off • offer • office • oil • old • olive • omelet • on • once • one • only • open • opera • operation • operations • opinion • opium • opposite • opposites • or • orange • orchestra • order • ore • organization • organizations • origin • ornament • other • our • ours • out • outcrop • outer • outlier • oven • over • overlap • owner • ox • oxidation • packing • page • pain • paint • pair • pajamas • paper • paradise • paraffin • parallel • parcel • parent • park • part • particle • partner • passion • passport • past • paste • patent • path • payment • peace • pen • pencil • pendulum • penguin • penny • pension • people • per • perfume • person • petal • phonograph • physical • physics • physiology • piano • picturable • picture • pig • pillar • pin • pipe • piston • pity • place • places • plain • plan • plane • plant • plate • platinum • play • please • pleasure • plough • plug • pocket • point • poison • police • polish • political • pollen • pool • poor • population • porcelain • porter • position • possible • post • pot • potash • potato • pound • powder • power • praise • prayer • preaching • present • president • pressure • price • pride • priest • prime • prince • princess • print • prison • private • probability • probable • process • produce • product • profit • program • projectile • projection • proof • propaganda • property • prophet • prose • protest • psychology • public • pull • pulley • pump • punishment • purchase • purple • purpose • push • put • pyramid • qualities • quality • quantity • quarter • queen • question • quick • quiet • quinine • quite • quotient • radiation • radio • radium • rail • rain • range • rapture • rat • rate • ratio • raven • ray • reaction • reading • ready • reagent • reason • receipt • receiver • reciprocal • record • rectangle • recurring • red • reference • referendum • reflux • regret • regular • reinforcement • relation • relative • religion • rent • representative • reproduction • repulsion • request • residue • resistance • resolution • respect • responsible • rest • restaurant • retail • revelation • reversible • reward • rheumatism • rhythm • rice • right • righteousness • rigidity • ring • river • road • robe • rock • rod • roll • roof • room • root • rose • rot • rotation • rough • round • royal • rub • rule • rum • run • rush • sac • sad • safe • said • sail • saint • salad • sale • salt • salvation • same • sample • sand • sardine • saturated • saturday • saving • savior • saw • say • saying • scale • scarp • schist • school • science • sciences • scissors • screen • screw • scribe • sea • seal • search • seat • second • secret • secretary • secretion • section • security • sedimentary • see • seed • seeing • seem • seen • selection • self • send • sending • sense • sensitivity • sent • sepal • separate • september • serious • servant • service • seven • sex • shade • shadow • shake • shale • shame • share • sharp • she • shear • sheep • shelf • shell • shining • ship • shirt • shock • shoe • shore • short • show • shower • shut • side • sight • sign • silk • sill • silver • similarity • simple • sin • sir • sister • six • sixteen • size • skin • skirt • skull • sky • slate • sleep • slide • slip • slope • slow • small • smash • smell • smile • smoke • smooth • snake • sneeze • snow • so • soap • society • sock • soft • soil • solid • solution • solvent • some • son • song • sorrow • sort • soul • sound • soup • south • space • spade • spark • spear • special • specialization • specimen • speculation • spice • spirit • sponge • spoon • sport • spring • square • stable • stage • stain • stalk • stamen • stamp • star • start • statement • station • statistics • steam • steel • stem • step • stick • sticky • stiff • still • stimulus • stitch • stocking • stomach • stone • stop • store • storm • story • straight • strain • strange • stream • street • strength • stress • stretch • strike • strong • structure • substance • substitution • subtraction • successive • such • sucker • sudden • sugar • suggestion • sum • summer • sun • sunday • supply • support • surface • surprise • suspension • sweet • swelling • swim • switch • sword • system • table • tail • take • taken • taking • talk • tall • tapioca • taste • tax • taxi • tea • teaching • telegram • telephone • ten • tendency • tent • term • terrace • test • testament • texture • than • that • the • theater • their • them • then • theory • there • these • they • thick • thickness • thief • thin • thing • things • third • thirteen • thirty • this • thorax • thorn • those • though • thought • thousand • thread • three • throat • through • thrust • thumb • thunder • thursday • ticket • tide • tight • till • time • tin • tired • tissue • titles • to • toast • tobacco • toe • together • tomorrow • tongs • tongue • took • tooth • top • torpedo • total • touch • tower • town • trade • train • transmission • transparent • transport • trap • travel • tray • tree • triangle • tribe • trick • trouble • trousers • true • tube • tuesday • turn • twelve • twenty • twice • twin • twist • two • umbrella • unconformity • under • unit • university • unknown • up • us • use • used • utility • valency • valley • value • valve • vanilla • vapor • variable • vascular • veil • velocity • verse • very • vessel • vestigial • view • vine • violent • violet • violin • virgin • virtue • visa • vision • vodka • voice • volt • volume • vortex • waiting • walk • wall • wandering • war • warm • was • wash • waste • watch • water • wave • wax • way • we • wealth • weariness • weather • wedge • wednesday • week • weeping • weight • well • went • were • west • wet • what • wheel • when • where • which • while • whip • whisky • whistle • white • who • wholesale • whom • whose • why • wide • widow • wife • wild • will • wind • window • wine • wing • winter • wire • wisdom • wise • with • witness • wolf • woman • wonder • wood • wool • word • wordlists • words • work • world • worm • worship • would • wound • wrath • writing • wrong • yard • year • yellow • yes • yesterday • yoke • you • young • your • yours • zebra • zinc • zoology • 's
http://storytellinginbasicenglish.net/html/wordlists.html?fbclid=IwAR1ky-bH-1vGtAlGS186sVNoAITaqhmEhYyTQcFQ2z58NC-QuTBHm_5pQ10
I've retained all the words except the 5 onomatopeic words, but with all the words for the word categories.
TOTAL: 1670 words
NOTA BENE :
I still have to capitalize the days of the weeks and the months of the year:
April August December Februari Friday January July June March May Monday November October Saturday September Sunday Thursday Tuesday Wednesday
PS: there is a confusion possible between may / May and march / March
#English #BASICEnglish #BASIC1500 #wordlist #talika_nimi #Inli_pasila

#inli_pasila #talika_nimi #wordlist #basic1500 #basicenglish #english
Sky Dancing @[email protected] · 2024-07-15 · 18:58 UTC
This drone photo of the vent area in Butler, Pennsylvania, shows the building in the upper left-hand corner where the shooter’s body was found.

Dear Sky Dancers, this is not a good day for our Republic.
Judge Cannon used this moment to distract the press from what I believe might be a staged coup attempt by Donald on Donald. He golfed right after the shooting and had no bandages or marks to be seen. I have reached this theory of the case after spending a day and a half asking questions and reviewing materials with JJ, BB, and a friend of my friend PB from the late Fire Dog Lake site. The press is characterizing people like us as BlueAnon conspiracy theorists. Frankly, I just have questions about things. I’m up to being proved wrong. I’m just someone who has watched decades of Law and Order and Criminal Minds, and I’m also smarter than your average bear.
The Cannon decision was based on the bone she was thrown by corrupt Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the shocking presidential immunity case. Human Rights Lawyer Qasim Rashid had this to say today on @Threads.
Understand what Judge Cannon did. She saw the non-stop media coverage of the shooting, used that distraction to overturn decades of legal precedent without citing a single case in her ruling’s favor, & dismissed Trump’s classified documents case. This is how republics collapse.
To be sure, Cannon’s absurd ruling is so extreme that only one of the MAGA justices supported it in his immunity decision (Thomas). Her decision will likely be reversed because it has absolutely zero basis in precedent whatsoever.But Cannon’s indefensible opinion still serves its purpose of delaying Trump’s trial long enough to prevent any form of accountability before the November election. That was the move all along. And the DOJ delayed & delayed & that helped Trump get away with this. Smh.

Judge Aileen Cannon and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images/USDC for the Southern District of Florida)

This is from Eric Tucker at the AP. “Federal judge dismisses Trump classified documents case over concerns with prosecutor’s appointment.”
The federal judge presiding over the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump in Florida dismissed the prosecution on Monday, siding with defense lawyers who said the special counsel who filed the charges was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, which can be appealed and may later be overturned by a higher court, brings at least, for now, a stunning and abrupt conclusion to a criminal case that at the time it was filed was widely regarded as the most perilous of all the legal threats the Republican former president confronted.
…
It’s the latest stroke of good fortune in the four criminal cases Trump has faced. Though he was convicted in May in his New York hush money trial, the sentencing there has been postponed following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents. That opinion will result in significant delays in a separate case brought by Smith charging Trump with plotting to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Another election subversion case filed by prosecutors in Atlanta has been delayed by revelations of a romantic relationship between the district attorney and a special prosecutor.
I’ve been doing a bit of digging and found this article from Salon on May 7. “Judge Cannon’s secret right-wing getaway: Why didn’t we know about this? Federal judge in Trump’s documents trial didn’t tell us about those right-wing conferences at a Montana resort.” It’s reported by columnist Lucian Truscott IV.
Let me ask you a question: How many all-expenses-paid vacations at luxury hunting and fishing lodges have you enjoyed over the last few years? I’m not talking about a motel in the boonies of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or a drafty log cabin on a lake in Maine or Minnesota. We’re talking about a luxury resort on 1,200 acres alongside the Yellowstone River just outside Yellowstone National Park. We’re talking about a lodge featuring rooms with stone fireplaces that go for upwards of $1,000 a night in high season, meals that include “house-cured meats from local ranches, garden-fresh produce from nearby farms, and, of course plenty of Northwest craft beers and spirits,” as the resort’s website describes the offerings.
It’s called the Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, and it’s where George Mason University sends gaggles of federal judges for a week-long “colloquium” every year or so. Paid for by the Law and Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School, the “colloquium” held at the Sage Lodge in 2021, for example, featured lectures on such subjects as “Woke Law!” – and yes, the exclamation point is part of the lecture topic — by one Todd J. Zywicki, who is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School and a senior fellow at the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives of the Cato Institute. Another juicy topic covered at the Sage Lodge in 2021 was “Unprofitable Education: Student Loans, Higher Education Costs, and the Regulatory State,” also featuring a lecture by Zywicki, a topic that rings what we might call a rather different bell after the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program last year.
The Antonin Scalia Law School, by the way, was established and largely funded by the efforts of Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who helped put together $30 million from conservative donors, including Leo himself, to rename the law school after the late legendary right-wing justice, who it will be remembered died of a heart attack in 2016 at another luxury hunting lodge, that one in Texas, while on a trip paid for by wealthy conservative “friends of the court,” I guess we could call them. The other major donor to the Scalia Law School was the Charles Koch Foundation, which threw in a handy $10 million.
Why are we talking about luxury hunting lodges and right-wing “colloquiums” for judges? Because one of our favorite federal judges, Aileen Cannon of Florida, currently presiding over the case against Donald Trump over the secret documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago, was a guest at that same 2021 “colloquium” at the Sage Lodge, and the one held in 2022 as well. The thing is, Cannon failed to file the form known as a Privately Funded Seminar Disclosure Report, which lists whoever paid for the judge to attend the seminar, who the speakers were and what topics were discussed. The form is supposed to be posted on the website of every federal court within 30 days of the time a judge attending such an all-expenses-paid seminar. Cannon, however, somehow forgot to do so, so anyone who might be interested in learning who was paying for Cannon’s vacations and the nature of her judicial education would have been out of luck.
So why do we suppose Judge Cannon was so shy about who’s paying for her luxury trips and what she might have learned there? Oh, I don’t know … might it be because she didn’t want anyone to know about her links to the Leonard Leo wing of legal theory? Could it have been that she didn’t want it known that she had taken money from an organization that was in large part funded by billionaires friendly to the man whose case she was presiding over?
All these corrupt Republican Judges seem to lead right back to Leonard Leo, don’t they? Something is very rotten here. Marcie of Empty Wheel reads the 93 pages, so we don’t need to.
Procedurally, this may actually not help Trump in the way he’d like (because DOJ has the option of appealing it or having a US Attorney charge Trump).
But it’s also hilarious, since Aileen Cannon has been treating herself like an Appellate Judge that she hasn’t been confirmed to be.
Update: One thing Cannon appears upset about is Merrick Garland’s invocation of Section 533, which appoints FBI-like figures.
Special Counsel Smith argues that Section 533(1) confers on the Attorney General the authority to appoint special counsels, specifically, constitutional officers wielding the “full power and independent authority . . . of any United States Attorney.” 28 C.F.R. § 600.6. After careful review, the Court is convinced that it does not. Congress “does not . . . hide elephants in mouseholes.” Whitman v. Am. Trucking Associations, 531 U.S. 457, 468 (2001). Special Counsel Smith’s interpretation would shoehorn appointment authority for United States Attorney-equivalents into a statute that permits the hiring of FBI law enforcement personnel. Such a reading is unsupported by Section 533’s plain language and statutory context; inconsistent with Congress’s usual legislative practice; and threatens to undermine the “basic separation-of-powers principles” that “give life and content” to the Appointments Clause. Morrison, 487 U.S. at 715 (Scalia, J., dissenting). The Court explains below.
33 Order No. 5730-2023 (appointing David C. Weiss); Order No. 5588-2023 (appointing Robert K. Hur).
That is her only mention of Robert Hur, whose appointment would be unconstitutional under her theory as well. (I’m still trying to figure out whether Cannon will help Hunter Biden go free, too.)
Update: Okay, I’ve read the thing.
It’s hilarious.
It’s hilarious, because it doesn’t create any delay that Cannon was not pursuing anyway. Indeed, Jack Smith could immediately appeal this and try to get her tossed, so it may hasten things (unless Trump wins!).
It’s hilarious because it is unbelievably hubristic. The only credible future for Judge Cannon now is Trump’s first SCOTUS appointment in a second term.
It’s hilarious because the way she did this, if it were upheld (not an impossibility given how nutty SCOTUS has gotten), it would be even more useful for Hunter Biden than Donald Trump (especially if Trump didn’t win reelection), because the statutes of limitation on Hunter’s alleged crimes have started to expire.
So, back to Donald and his surprising recovery from a shooting that killed one and critically injured two. So my Nancy Drew senses started tingling when I saw how composed Donald was after the shooting; he was more worried about getting his shoes than leaving the scene. Posing for pictures all along the way. PB first contacted me with this bit.
Talked to a friend who’s a Psych and body language expert. 100% staged. Look at their unified messaging.
All I could remember where all the times Trump on the last two campaign trails and seemed afraid of everything. This is from Chris Cizzilla and CNN from April 28, 2022. “Donald Trump lived in fear of being hit by, um, ‘dangerous’ fruit.”
Donald Trump feared being killed by thrown fruit.
Yes, you read that right.
In a recently released transcript of a deposition as part of a lawsuit filed by a group of protesters who alleged they were assaulted by Trump’s security guards at a 2015 campaign rally, the subject of fruit – and fruit being flung, in particular – came up.
Here’s the full – and fully epic – back-and-forth between Trump and Benjamin Dictor, an attorney representing the protestors.
Dictor: Okay. And you said that, ‘If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them would you.’ That was your statement?
Trump: Oh, yeah. It was very dangerous.
Dictor: What was very dangerous?
Trump: We were threatened.
Dictor: With what?
Trump: They were going to throw fruit. We were threatened. We had a threat.
Dictor: How did you become aware that there was a threat that people were going to throw fruit?
Trump: We were told. I thought Secret Service was involved in that, actually. And you get hit with fruit, it’s – no – it’s very violent stuff. We were on alert for that.
Trump attorney Jeffrey Goldman: A tomato is a fruit after all, I guess. … It has seeds.

Just enough time for a NAZI salute also, which is being used by the Press right now. They’re using the fist bumps. The campaign is now using for fundraising and political materials.

And where did Donald get the idea to lead an assassination attempt on himself? This is from Newsweek, May 3, 2023. “Russia Staged Putin ‘Assassination’ to Justify Mass Mobilization: ISW” I know now about self-coups and staged assassination attempts as political tools of fascists. What a world! Funny how Donald has disappeared from the campaign trail for a few weeks but suddenly was paling around with Viktor Orban last week, too.
The alleged attempt to “assassinate” Russian President Vladimir Putin was likely staged by the Kremlin to justify a future effort to mobilize troops for the war in Ukraine, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
The Russian government on Wednesday issued a statement alleging that two Ukrainian drones had been destroyed near Putin’s official residence in Moscow. The Kremlin said that the drones were attempting to carry out “a planned terrorist attack” by assassinating Putin just before “Victory Day” celebrations on May 9. Ukraine has denied any involvement.
While video of the drones dramatically exploding over Kremlin grounds appeared online soon after the purported attack occurred, the incident immediately raised eyebrows, with a number of experts and commentators suggesting that it may have been a staged “propaganda” event intended to drum up Russian support for the war.
ISW, the U.S.-based think tank, said in a report published on Wednesday night that the Russian government “likely staged” the purported assassination attempt “to bring the war home to a Russian domestic audience and set conditions for a wider societal mobilization.”
And then there’s good old Alex Jones, the father of seeing everything as staged with crisis actors. Listen to this. It’s from Patriot Takes. This is a conversation with Ivan Raiklin, who calls himself Trump’s Secretary of Retribution. Check him out on TNR: “Trump Ally Exposed for Horrific Hit List of Political Enemies. Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed “secretary of retribution” is even more bloodthirsty than the former president.” He’s an absolute skinhead. Both BB and I have posted on him before. Please follow the link to Patriot Takes and watch him talk. It’s bone-chilling. BB found this one.
5 months ago, Alex Jones and InfoWars guest Ivan Raiklin discussed how assassinating Trump would be beneficial, according to them, because it would lead to retaliatory “in kind” assassinations of a “deep state” list which includes President Joe Biden.
Ivan Raiklin: “If they [assassinate Trump], option 2, behind Trump, is going to be so much better for us and so much worse them.”
Alex Jones: “I was about as to say, If they kill him, that’s best case scenario from a sick level. From a sick level medium, ‘Oh, please kill him.’ I mean, it’s so good after that.”
Raiklin: “Oh, it’s going to be the best cleansing and the fastest cleansing that we’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I guaran—, I access, with almost certainty, with the highest level of confidence, that if they assassinate Trump, it is so game over for them.”
There’s no way to blame Biden for the shooter, given his personal history as a gun-toting right-wing Republican, either. “FBI probing motives, the background of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Western Pa. gunman behind Donald Trump assassination attempt. Former classmates described Crooks as politically conservative and a “loner.” Authorities believe the AR-15-style rifle he used belonged to his father.” This is from the Philadelphia Inquirer,
Authorities released few updates Sunday on the progress of their investigation into Trump’s would-be assassin, but a portrait of Crooks — a 2022 graduate of Bethel Park High School who worked as a dietary aide at a local nursing and rehabilitation center — began to emerge.
He had no criminal history, almost no presence on social media, and lived in a middle-class suburb about an hour away from the site of the shooting.
His political leanings were not immediately apparent. Though he was registered as a Republican, according to state voter rolls — and this year’s election would have been the first in which he was eligible to cast a ballot for president — campaign finance reports show a man with the same name gave $15 to a progressive political action committee in January 2021, on the day Biden was sworn into office.***
Crooks’ father, Matthew, reached by CNN late Saturday, said he was trying to figure out “what the hell [was] going on” and declined to comment further until he had spoken with authorities. Attempts to reach other family members were unsuccessful Sunday.
Kevin Rojek, head of the FBI’s field office in Pittsburgh, told reporters Sunday that agents recovered bomb-making material from inside Crooks’ car and his residence. The rifle he used in the attack, which was believed to have been purchased at least six months earlier by his father, as well as Crooks’ cell phone and other evidence had been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., “for processing and exploitation,” Rojek said.
Meanwhile, several former classmates offered conflicting characterizations of Crooks. Some described him as a loner who had been bullied during his high school years. Jason Kohler, who graduated alongside Crooks, told reporters that students had harassed him “almost every day” and that he often wore “hunting” outfits to class.
“He was just an outcast,” Kohler said.
*** Author note: There’s some evidence this was not the shooter but a 69-year-old man with the same name from Pittsburg.
Here are some additional things I have questions about. Most of these are based on photography at the scene. For example, Kim Wexler’s Ponytail shows this TikTok of a New Angle of Trump at Rally shooting. It basically shows either Donald’s bodyguards or the Secret Service moving photographers close to the stairs. Perhaps for a better shot of the exit act? The TikTok comes from
Why was there such lackluster Security at the Rally?
I had a lot of weird things from early on that I thought were just not right. One was the interview by an MSNBC reporter of a man who was supposed to be standing next to Donald at the podium from the onset. He told the reporter something to the effect that he got up there, introduced himself, and was then told by Donald to go ahead and come up to the podium, only to be quickly told, wait, let’s do that later, and shuffled him off to sit somewhere else. I cannot find that clip by my neighbor across the street, who I had been with earlier for cocktails, who told me that she had seen it, too.
I also heard Frank Figluzzi discuss the fact that it was odd that the roof wasn’t in the area where the check-for-weapons zone was. He also said that on the other side was where the protestors were allowed to gather and even march. My thought was, wow! Sounds like a setup to blame a protestor and let the guy onto the roof. The fact that he was a right-wing Republican gun nut just really puts that on display as planning.
One of the most questionable things is that photos of Trump show him looking in the direction of the building where the shooter was. This is precisely when he turned his head to point to his whiteboard. At that point, local police went to the roof, saw him, and went back down the stairs. There was also a hesitation by the Secret Service Sniper to shoot him. Acyn, the Senior Digital Editor for MeidasTouch.com, captured this on CSPN. He’s looking directly at the shooter and then angling towards the White Board. The shooter was only about 165ish feet away from Donald. That’s definitely a distance that a good sniper could handle.
So, several things I noticed from this bit. First, when you speak to a large audience, you look straight ahead. You do not fixate on a spot to your right. Nowadays, politicians use teleprompters, but the ones that are guarded by the Secret Service have bulletproof shields. Do you see one?
I had another conversation with a neighbor this morning who has friends who have been military snipers, and their hypothesis on this I would put under the conspiracy theory. They’re saying they think the Republican Party mainstream was working with the Secret Service to take him out. That’s pure speculation. It’s obvious, though, that there’s something wrong with the security there.
This is from NPR. “The Secret Service is investigating how the man who shot Trump got as close as he did.” House leaders have already ordered a full investigation and demanded the head of the Secret Service testify before them while they have already had a briefing. It is already a bit of the usual zoo since Jim Comer is likely to lead the investigation.
The U.S. Secret Service is investigating how a gunman armed with an AR-style rifle was able to get close enough to shoot and injure former President Donald Trump at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania, a monumental failure of one the agency’s core duties.
The gunman, who was killed by Secret Service personnel, fired multiple shots at the stage from an “elevated position outside of the rally venue,” the agency said.
An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos taken at the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the shooter was able to get astonishingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking. A video posted to social media and geolocated by the AP shows the body of a man wearing gray camouflage lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds, where Trump’s rally was held.
The roof was less than 150 meters (yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M16 assault rifle in basic training. The AR-15, like the shooter at the Trump rally had, is the semi-automatic civilian version of the military M16.
Some of the weirdest Republican attacks have been on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who is a 27-year-old veteran of the force. She is being called a DEI hire by really nasty Republican pols. She is the second woman to have the office. Of course, these black faces and the woman who heads the agency are suspected of being in a “deep state.” I won’t go deeper into any of these cringeworthy moments.
On Monday, Cheatle said in a statement: “Since the shooting, I have been in constant contact with Secret Service personnel in Pennsylvania who worked to maintain the integrity of the crime scene until the FBI assumed its role as the lead investigating agency into the assassination attempt.”
She added that the Secret Service is working with other law enforcement agencies to “understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again. … We will also work with the appropriate Congressional committees on any oversight action.”
Neither Cheatle or the Secret Service’s communications office have weighed in on criticism of women in the agency more broadly.
I have a few more weird angles from various drones and photogs that make me even more suspicious, but according to White Christian Nationalists, it’s all just a miracle. I’m sticking with a staged attempt ala Putin because that seems more in line with Trump’s lack of anything decent.
So, I’m open to comments and criticism, but this is my case so far. I’m likely not going to leave this rabbit hole for a while. Keep an eye on the things Republicans don’t want you to know. And please, don’t take in any of the stupidity of the Republican Convention. This one is going to be insane.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Preview of the Republican Convention
More Questions from Friends
I have an update from the FBI.
Update on the FBI Investigation of the Attempted Assassination of Former President Donald Trump
Update: July 15, 2024, 3:05 p.m. EDT:
The FBI continues to investigate the shooting incident at the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, as an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump and as potential domestic terrorism. The investigation is still in the early stages, and the FBI is providing the following updates:
- FBI technical specialists successfully gained access to Thomas Matthew Crooks’ phone, and they continue to analyze his electronic devices.
- The search of the subject’s residence and vehicle are complete.
- The FBI has conducted nearly 100 interviews of law enforcement personnel, event attendees, and other witnesses. That work continues.
- The FBI has received hundreds of digital media tips which include photos and videos taken at the scene, and we continue to review incoming tips. We encourage anyone with information that may assist with the ongoing investigation to continue to submit it online at tips.fbi.gov or call 1-800-CALL-FBI.
- While the investigative work continues, FBI victim services personnel have offered assistance to the victims of Saturday’s incident.
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/07/15/monday-reads-i-have-questions/
#AlexJones #CannonDropsStolenDocsCase #CorruptingJudges #IvanLaiklinOnTheBenefitsOfAssassinatingTrump #JudgeLooseCannon #PutinStagedAssassination #republicanPolitics #TrumpStagedAssassination_
#alexjones #cannondropsstolendocscase #corruptingjudges #ivanlaiklinonthebenefitsofassassinatingtrump #judgeloosecannon #putinstagedassassination
Sky Dancing @[email protected] · 2024-07-15 · 18:58 UTC

This drone photo of the vent area in Butler, Pennsylvania, shows the building in the upper left-hand corner where the shooter’s body was found.

Dear Sky Dancers, this is not a good day for our Republic.
Judge Cannon used this moment to distract the press from what I believe might be a staged coup attempt by Donald on Donald. He golfed right after the shooting and had no bandages or marks to be seen. I have reached this theory of the case after spending a day and a half asking questions and reviewing materials with JJ, BB, and a friend of my friend PB from the late Fire Dog Lake site. The press is characterizing people like us as BlueAnon conspiracy theorists. Frankly, I just have questions about things. I’m up to being proved wrong. I’m just someone who has watched decades of Law and Order and Criminal Minds, and I’m also smarter than your average bear.
The Cannon decision was based on the bone she was thrown by corrupt Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the shocking presidential immunity case. Human Rights Lawyer Qasim Rashid had this to say today on @Threads.
Understand what Judge Cannon did. She saw the non-stop media coverage of the shooting, used that distraction to overturn decades of legal precedent without citing a single case in her ruling’s favor, & dismissed Trump’s classified documents case. This is how republics collapse.
To be sure, Cannon’s absurd ruling is so extreme that only one of the MAGA justices supported it in his immunity decision (Thomas). Her decision will likely be reversed because it has absolutely zero basis in precedent whatsoever.But Cannon’s indefensible opinion still serves its purpose of delaying Trump’s trial long enough to prevent any form of accountability before the November election. That was the move all along. And the DOJ delayed & delayed & that helped Trump get away with this. Smh.

Judge Aileen Cannon and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images/USDC for the Southern District of Florida)

This is from Eric Tucker at the AP. “Federal judge dismisses Trump classified documents case over concerns with prosecutor’s appointment.”
The federal judge presiding over the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump in Florida dismissed the prosecution on Monday, siding with defense lawyers who said the special counsel who filed the charges was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, which can be appealed and may later be overturned by a higher court, brings at least, for now, a stunning and abrupt conclusion to a criminal case that at the time it was filed was widely regarded as the most perilous of all the legal threats the Republican former president confronted.
…
It’s the latest stroke of good fortune in the four criminal cases Trump has faced. Though he was convicted in May in his New York hush money trial, the sentencing there has been postponed following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents. That opinion will result in significant delays in a separate case brought by Smith charging Trump with plotting to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Another election subversion case filed by prosecutors in Atlanta has been delayed by revelations of a romantic relationship between the district attorney and a special prosecutor.
I’ve been doing a bit of digging and found this article from Salon on May 7. “Judge Cannon’s secret right-wing getaway: Why didn’t we know about this? Federal judge in Trump’s documents trial didn’t tell us about those right-wing conferences at a Montana resort.” It’s reported by columnist Lucian Truscott IV.
Let me ask you a question: How many all-expenses-paid vacations at luxury hunting and fishing lodges have you enjoyed over the last few years? I’m not talking about a motel in the boonies of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or a drafty log cabin on a lake in Maine or Minnesota. We’re talking about a luxury resort on 1,200 acres alongside the Yellowstone River just outside Yellowstone National Park. We’re talking about a lodge featuring rooms with stone fireplaces that go for upwards of $1,000 a night in high season, meals that include “house-cured meats from local ranches, garden-fresh produce from nearby farms, and, of course plenty of Northwest craft beers and spirits,” as the resort’s website describes the offerings.
It’s called the Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, and it’s where George Mason University sends gaggles of federal judges for a week-long “colloquium” every year or so. Paid for by the Law and Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School, the “colloquium” held at the Sage Lodge in 2021, for example, featured lectures on such subjects as “Woke Law!” – and yes, the exclamation point is part of the lecture topic — by one Todd J. Zywicki, who is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School and a senior fellow at the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives of the Cato Institute. Another juicy topic covered at the Sage Lodge in 2021 was “Unprofitable Education: Student Loans, Higher Education Costs, and the Regulatory State,” also featuring a lecture by Zywicki, a topic that rings what we might call a rather different bell after the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program last year.
The Antonin Scalia Law School, by the way, was established and largely funded by the efforts of Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who helped put together $30 million from conservative donors, including Leo himself, to rename the law school after the late legendary right-wing justice, who it will be remembered died of a heart attack in 2016 at another luxury hunting lodge, that one in Texas, while on a trip paid for by wealthy conservative “friends of the court,” I guess we could call them. The other major donor to the Scalia Law School was the Charles Koch Foundation, which threw in a handy $10 million.
Why are we talking about luxury hunting lodges and right-wing “colloquiums” for judges? Because one of our favorite federal judges, Aileen Cannon of Florida, currently presiding over the case against Donald Trump over the secret documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago, was a guest at that same 2021 “colloquium” at the Sage Lodge, and the one held in 2022 as well. The thing is, Cannon failed to file the form known as a Privately Funded Seminar Disclosure Report, which lists whoever paid for the judge to attend the seminar, who the speakers were and what topics were discussed. The form is supposed to be posted on the website of every federal court within 30 days of the time a judge attending such an all-expenses-paid seminar. Cannon, however, somehow forgot to do so, so anyone who might be interested in learning who was paying for Cannon’s vacations and the nature of her judicial education would have been out of luck.
So why do we suppose Judge Cannon was so shy about who’s paying for her luxury trips and what she might have learned there? Oh, I don’t know … might it be because she didn’t want anyone to know about her links to the Leonard Leo wing of legal theory? Could it have been that she didn’t want it known that she had taken money from an organization that was in large part funded by billionaires friendly to the man whose case she was presiding over?
All these corrupt Republican Judges seem to lead right back to Leonard Leo, don’t they? Something is very rotten here. Marcie of Empty Wheel reads the 93 pages, so we don’t need to.
Procedurally, this may actually not help Trump in the way he’d like (because DOJ has the option of appealing it or having a US Attorney charge Trump).
But it’s also hilarious, since Aileen Cannon has been treating herself like an Appellate Judge that she hasn’t been confirmed to be.
Update: One thing Cannon appears upset about is Merrick Garland’s invocation of Section 533, which appoints FBI-like figures.
Special Counsel Smith argues that Section 533(1) confers on the Attorney General the authority to appoint special counsels, specifically, constitutional officers wielding the “full power and independent authority . . . of any United States Attorney.” 28 C.F.R. § 600.6. After careful review, the Court is convinced that it does not. Congress “does not . . . hide elephants in mouseholes.” Whitman v. Am. Trucking Associations, 531 U.S. 457, 468 (2001). Special Counsel Smith’s interpretation would shoehorn appointment authority for United States Attorney-equivalents into a statute that permits the hiring of FBI law enforcement personnel. Such a reading is unsupported by Section 533’s plain language and statutory context; inconsistent with Congress’s usual legislative practice; and threatens to undermine the “basic separation-of-powers principles” that “give life and content” to the Appointments Clause. Morrison, 487 U.S. at 715 (Scalia, J., dissenting). The Court explains below.
33 Order No. 5730-2023 (appointing David C. Weiss); Order No. 5588-2023 (appointing Robert K. Hur).
That is her only mention of Robert Hur, whose appointment would be unconstitutional under her theory as well. (I’m still trying to figure out whether Cannon will help Hunter Biden go free, too.)
Update: Okay, I’ve read the thing.
It’s hilarious.
It’s hilarious, because it doesn’t create any delay that Cannon was not pursuing anyway. Indeed, Jack Smith could immediately appeal this and try to get her tossed, so it may hasten things (unless Trump wins!).
It’s hilarious because it is unbelievably hubristic. The only credible future for Judge Cannon now is Trump’s first SCOTUS appointment in a second term.
It’s hilarious because the way she did this, if it were upheld (not an impossibility given how nutty SCOTUS has gotten), it would be even more useful for Hunter Biden than Donald Trump (especially if Trump didn’t win reelection), because the statutes of limitation on Hunter’s alleged crimes have started to expire.
So, back to Donald and his surprising recovery from a shooting that killed one and critically injured two. So my Nancy Drew senses started tingling when I saw how composed Donald was after the shooting; he was more worried about getting his shoes than leaving the scene. Posing for pictures all along the way. PB first contacted me with this bit.
Talked to a friend who’s a Psych and body language expert. 100% staged. Look at their unified messaging.
All I could remember where all the times Trump on the last two campaign trails and seemed afraid of everything. This is from Chris Cizzilla and CNN from April 28, 2022. “Donald Trump lived in fear of being hit by, um, ‘dangerous’ fruit.”
Donald Trump feared being killed by thrown fruit.
Yes, you read that right.
In a recently released transcript of a deposition as part of a lawsuit filed by a group of protesters who alleged they were assaulted by Trump’s security guards at a 2015 campaign rally, the subject of fruit – and fruit being flung, in particular – came up.
Here’s the full – and fully epic – back-and-forth between Trump and Benjamin Dictor, an attorney representing the protestors.
Dictor: Okay. And you said that, ‘If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them would you.’ That was your statement?
Trump: Oh, yeah. It was very dangerous.
Dictor: What was very dangerous?
Trump: We were threatened.
Dictor: With what?
Trump: They were going to throw fruit. We were threatened. We had a threat.
Dictor: How did you become aware that there was a threat that people were going to throw fruit?
Trump: We were told. I thought Secret Service was involved in that, actually. And you get hit with fruit, it’s – no – it’s very violent stuff. We were on alert for that.
Trump attorney Jeffrey Goldman: A tomato is a fruit after all, I guess. … It has seeds.

Just enough time for a NAZI salute also, which is being used by the Press right now. They’re using the fist bumps. The campaign is now using for fundraising and political materials.

And where did Donald get the idea to lead an assassination attempt on himself? This is from Newsweek, May 3, 2023. “Russia Staged Putin ‘Assassination’ to Justify Mass Mobilization: ISW” I know now about self-coups and staged assassination attempts as political tools of fascists. What a world! Funny how Donald has disappeared from the campaign trail for a few weeks but suddenly was paling around with Viktor Orban last week, too.
The alleged attempt to “assassinate” Russian President Vladimir Putin was likely staged by the Kremlin to justify a future effort to mobilize troops for the war in Ukraine, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
The Russian government on Wednesday issued a statement alleging that two Ukrainian drones had been destroyed near Putin’s official residence in Moscow. The Kremlin said that the drones were attempting to carry out “a planned terrorist attack” by assassinating Putin just before “Victory Day” celebrations on May 9. Ukraine has denied any involvement.
While video of the drones dramatically exploding over Kremlin grounds appeared online soon after the purported attack occurred, the incident immediately raised eyebrows, with a number of experts and commentators suggesting that it may have been a staged “propaganda” event intended to drum up Russian support for the war.
ISW, the U.S.-based think tank, said in a report published on Wednesday night that the Russian government “likely staged” the purported assassination attempt “to bring the war home to a Russian domestic audience and set conditions for a wider societal mobilization.”
And then there’s good old Alex Jones, the father of seeing everything as staged with crisis actors. Listen to this. It’s from Patriot Takes. This is a conversation with Ivan Raiklin, who calls himself Trump’s Secretary of Retribution. Check him out on TNR: “Trump Ally Exposed for Horrific Hit List of Political Enemies. Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed “secretary of retribution” is even more bloodthirsty than the former president.” He’s an absolute skinhead. Both BB and I have posted on him before. Please follow the link to Patriot Takes and watch him talk. It’s bone-chilling. BB found this one.
5 months ago, Alex Jones and InfoWars guest Ivan Raiklin discussed how assassinating Trump would be beneficial, according to them, because it would lead to retaliatory “in kind” assassinations of a “deep state” list which includes President Joe Biden.
Ivan Raiklin: “If they [assassinate Trump], option 2, behind Trump, is going to be so much better for us and so much worse them.”
Alex Jones: “I was about as to say, If they kill him, that’s best case scenario from a sick level. From a sick level medium, ‘Oh, please kill him.’ I mean, it’s so good after that.”
Raiklin: “Oh, it’s going to be the best cleansing and the fastest cleansing that we’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I guaran—, I access, with almost certainty, with the highest level of confidence, that if they assassinate Trump, it is so game over for them.”
There’s no way to blame Biden for the shooter, given his personal history as a gun-toting right-wing Republican, either. “FBI probing motives, the background of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Western Pa. gunman behind Donald Trump assassination attempt. Former classmates described Crooks as politically conservative and a “loner.” Authorities believe the AR-15-style rifle he used belonged to his father.” This is from the Philadelphia Inquirer,
Authorities released few updates Sunday on the progress of their investigation into Trump’s would-be assassin, but a portrait of Crooks — a 2022 graduate of Bethel Park High School who worked as a dietary aide at a local nursing and rehabilitation center — began to emerge.
He had no criminal history, almost no presence on social media, and lived in a middle-class suburb about an hour away from the site of the shooting.
His political leanings were not immediately apparent. Though he was registered as a Republican, according to state voter rolls — and this year’s election would have been the first in which he was eligible to cast a ballot for president — campaign finance reports show a man with the same name gave $15 to a progressive political action committee in January 2021, on the day Biden was sworn into office.***
Crooks’ father, Matthew, reached by CNN late Saturday, said he was trying to figure out “what the hell [was] going on” and declined to comment further until he had spoken with authorities. Attempts to reach other family members were unsuccessful Sunday.
Kevin Rojek, head of the FBI’s field office in Pittsburgh, told reporters Sunday that agents recovered bomb-making material from inside Crooks’ car and his residence. The rifle he used in the attack, which was believed to have been purchased at least six months earlier by his father, as well as Crooks’ cell phone and other evidence had been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., “for processing and exploitation,” Rojek said.
Meanwhile, several former classmates offered conflicting characterizations of Crooks. Some described him as a loner who had been bullied during his high school years. Jason Kohler, who graduated alongside Crooks, told reporters that students had harassed him “almost every day” and that he often wore “hunting” outfits to class.
“He was just an outcast,” Kohler said.
*** Author note: There’s some evidence this was not the shooter but a 69-year-old man with the same name from Pittsburg.
Here are some additional things I have questions about. Most of these are based on photography at the scene. For example, Kim Wexler’s Ponytail shows this TikTok of a New Angle of Trump at Rally shooting. It basically shows either Donald’s bodyguards or the Secret Service moving photographers close to the stairs. Perhaps for a better shot of the exit act? The TikTok comes from
Why was there such lackluster Security at the Rally?
I had a lot of weird things from early on that I thought were just not right. One was the interview by an MSNBC reporter of a man who was supposed to be standing next to Donald at the podium from the onset. He told the reporter something to the effect that he got up there, introduced himself, and was then told by Donald to go ahead and come up to the podium, only to be quickly told, wait, let’s do that later, and shuffled him off to sit somewhere else. I cannot find that clip by my neighbor across the street, who I had been with earlier for cocktails, who told me that she had seen it, too.
I also heard Frank Figluzzi discuss the fact that it was odd that the roof wasn’t in the area where the check-for-weapons zone was. He also said that on the other side was where the protestors were allowed to gather and even march. My thought was, wow! Sounds like a setup to blame a protestor and let the guy onto the roof. The fact that he was a right-wing Republican gun nut just really puts that on display as planning.
One of the most questionable things is that photos of Trump show him looking in the direction of the building where the shooter was. This is precisely when he turned his head to point to his whiteboard. At that point, local police went to the roof, saw him, and went back down the stairs. There was also a hesitation by the Secret Service Sniper to shoot him. Acyn, the Senior Digital Editor for MeidasTouch.com, captured this on CSPN. He’s looking directly at the shooter and then angling towards the White Board. The shooter was only about 165ish feet away from Donald. That’s definitely a distance that a good sniper could handle.
So, several things I noticed from this bit. First, when you speak to a large audience, you look straight ahead. You do not fixate on a spot to your right. Nowadays, politicians use teleprompters, but the ones that are guarded by the Secret Service have bulletproof shields. Do you see one?
I had another conversation with a neighbor this morning who has friends who have been military snipers, and their hypothesis on this I would put under the conspiracy theory. They’re saying they think the Republican Party mainstream was working with the Secret Service to take him out. That’s pure speculation. It’s obvious, though, that there’s something wrong with the security there.
This is from NPR. “The Secret Service is investigating how the man who shot Trump got as close as he did.” House leaders have already ordered a full investigation and demanded the head of the Secret Service testify before them while they have already had a briefing. It is already a bit of the usual zoo since Jim Comer is likely to lead the investigation.
The U.S. Secret Service is investigating how a gunman armed with an AR-style rifle was able to get close enough to shoot and injure former President Donald Trump at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania, a monumental failure of one the agency’s core duties.
The gunman, who was killed by Secret Service personnel, fired multiple shots at the stage from an “elevated position outside of the rally venue,” the agency said.
An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos taken at the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the shooter was able to get astonishingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking. A video posted to social media and geolocated by the AP shows the body of a man wearing gray camouflage lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds, where Trump’s rally was held.
The roof was less than 150 meters (yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M16 assault rifle in basic training. The AR-15, like the shooter at the Trump rally had, is the semi-automatic civilian version of the military M16.
Some of the weirdest Republican attacks have been on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who is a 27-year-old veteran of the force. She is being called a DEI hire by really nasty Republican pols. She is the second woman to have the office. Of course, these black faces and the woman who heads the agency are suspected of being in a “deep state.” I won’t go deeper into any of these cringeworthy moments.
On Monday, Cheatle said in a statement: “Since the shooting, I have been in constant contact with Secret Service personnel in Pennsylvania who worked to maintain the integrity of the crime scene until the FBI assumed its role as the lead investigating agency into the assassination attempt.”
She added that the Secret Service is working with other law enforcement agencies to “understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again. … We will also work with the appropriate Congressional committees on any oversight action.”
Neither Cheatle or the Secret Service’s communications office have weighed in on criticism of women in the agency more broadly.
I have a few more weird angles from various drones and photogs that make me even more suspicious, but according to White Christian Nationalists, it’s all just a miracle. I’m sticking with a staged attempt ala Putin because that seems more in line with Trump’s lack of anything decent.
So, I’m open to comments and criticism, but this is my case so far. I’m likely not going to leave this rabbit hole for a while. Keep an eye on the things Republicans don’t want you to know. And please, don’t take in any of the stupidity of the Republican Convention. This one is going to be insane.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Preview of the Republican Convention
More Questions from Friends
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/07/15/monday-reads-i-have-questions/
#AlexJones #CannonDropsStolenDocsCase #CorruptingJudges #IvanLaiklinOnTheBenefitsOfAssassinatingTrump #JudgeLooseCannon #PutinStagedAssassination #republicanPolitics #TrumpStagedAssassination_

#alexjones #cannondropsstolendocscase #corruptingjudges #ivanlaiklinonthebenefitsofassassinatingtrump #judgeloosecannon #putinstagedassassination
Sky Dancing @[email protected] · 2024-07-15 · 18:58 UTC
This drone photo of the vent area in Butler, Pennsylvania, shows the building in the upper left-hand corner where the shooter’s body was found.

Dear Sky Dancers, this is not a good day for our Republic.
Judge Cannon used this moment to distract the press from what I believe might be a staged coup attempt by Donald on Donald. He golfed right after the shooting and had no bandages or marks to be seen. I have reached this theory of the case after spending a day and a half asking questions and reviewing materials with JJ, BB, and a friend of my friend PB from the late Fire Dog Lake site. The press is characterizing people like us as BlueAnon conspiracy theorists. Frankly, I just have questions about things. I’m up to being proved wrong. I’m just someone who has watched decades of Law and Order and Criminal Minds, and I’m also smarter than your average bear.
The Cannon decision was based on the bone she was thrown by corrupt Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the shocking presidential immunity case. Human Rights Lawyer Qasim Rashid had this to say today on @Threads.
Understand what Judge Cannon did. She saw the non-stop media coverage of the shooting, used that distraction to overturn decades of legal precedent without citing a single case in her ruling’s favor, & dismissed Trump’s classified documents case. This is how republics collapse.
To be sure, Cannon’s absurd ruling is so extreme that only one of the MAGA justices supported it in his immunity decision (Thomas). Her decision will likely be reversed because it has absolutely zero basis in precedent whatsoever.But Cannon’s indefensible opinion still serves its purpose of delaying Trump’s trial long enough to prevent any form of accountability before the November election. That was the move all along. And the DOJ delayed & delayed & that helped Trump get away with this. Smh.

Judge Aileen Cannon and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images/USDC for the Southern District of Florida)

This is from Eric Tucker at the AP. “Federal judge dismisses Trump classified documents case over concerns with prosecutor’s appointment.”
The federal judge presiding over the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump in Florida dismissed the prosecution on Monday, siding with defense lawyers who said the special counsel who filed the charges was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, which can be appealed and may later be overturned by a higher court, brings at least, for now, a stunning and abrupt conclusion to a criminal case that at the time it was filed was widely regarded as the most perilous of all the legal threats the Republican former president confronted.
…
It’s the latest stroke of good fortune in the four criminal cases Trump has faced. Though he was convicted in May in his New York hush money trial, the sentencing there has been postponed following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents. That opinion will result in significant delays in a separate case brought by Smith charging Trump with plotting to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Another election subversion case filed by prosecutors in Atlanta has been delayed by revelations of a romantic relationship between the district attorney and a special prosecutor.
I’ve been doing a bit of digging and found this article from Salon on May 7. “Judge Cannon’s secret right-wing getaway: Why didn’t we know about this? Federal judge in Trump’s documents trial didn’t tell us about those right-wing conferences at a Montana resort.” It’s reported by columnist Lucian Truscott IV.
Let me ask you a question: How many all-expenses-paid vacations at luxury hunting and fishing lodges have you enjoyed over the last few years? I’m not talking about a motel in the boonies of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or a drafty log cabin on a lake in Maine or Minnesota. We’re talking about a luxury resort on 1,200 acres alongside the Yellowstone River just outside Yellowstone National Park. We’re talking about a lodge featuring rooms with stone fireplaces that go for upwards of $1,000 a night in high season, meals that include “house-cured meats from local ranches, garden-fresh produce from nearby farms, and, of course plenty of Northwest craft beers and spirits,” as the resort’s website describes the offerings.
It’s called the Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, and it’s where George Mason University sends gaggles of federal judges for a week-long “colloquium” every year or so. Paid for by the Law and Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School, the “colloquium” held at the Sage Lodge in 2021, for example, featured lectures on such subjects as “Woke Law!” – and yes, the exclamation point is part of the lecture topic — by one Todd J. Zywicki, who is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School and a senior fellow at the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives of the Cato Institute. Another juicy topic covered at the Sage Lodge in 2021 was “Unprofitable Education: Student Loans, Higher Education Costs, and the Regulatory State,” also featuring a lecture by Zywicki, a topic that rings what we might call a rather different bell after the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program last year.
The Antonin Scalia Law School, by the way, was established and largely funded by the efforts of Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who helped put together $30 million from conservative donors, including Leo himself, to rename the law school after the late legendary right-wing justice, who it will be remembered died of a heart attack in 2016 at another luxury hunting lodge, that one in Texas, while on a trip paid for by wealthy conservative “friends of the court,” I guess we could call them. The other major donor to the Scalia Law School was the Charles Koch Foundation, which threw in a handy $10 million.
Why are we talking about luxury hunting lodges and right-wing “colloquiums” for judges? Because one of our favorite federal judges, Aileen Cannon of Florida, currently presiding over the case against Donald Trump over the secret documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago, was a guest at that same 2021 “colloquium” at the Sage Lodge, and the one held in 2022 as well. The thing is, Cannon failed to file the form known as a Privately Funded Seminar Disclosure Report, which lists whoever paid for the judge to attend the seminar, who the speakers were and what topics were discussed. The form is supposed to be posted on the website of every federal court within 30 days of the time a judge attending such an all-expenses-paid seminar. Cannon, however, somehow forgot to do so, so anyone who might be interested in learning who was paying for Cannon’s vacations and the nature of her judicial education would have been out of luck.
So why do we suppose Judge Cannon was so shy about who’s paying for her luxury trips and what she might have learned there? Oh, I don’t know … might it be because she didn’t want anyone to know about her links to the Leonard Leo wing of legal theory? Could it have been that she didn’t want it known that she had taken money from an organization that was in large part funded by billionaires friendly to the man whose case she was presiding over?
All these corrupt Republican Judges seem to lead right back to Leonard Leo, don’t they? Something is very rotten here. Marcie of Empty Wheel reads the 93 pages, so we don’t need to.
Procedurally, this may actually not help Trump in the way he’d like (because DOJ has the option of appealing it or having a US Attorney charge Trump).
But it’s also hilarious, since Aileen Cannon has been treating herself like an Appellate Judge that she hasn’t been confirmed to be.
Update: One thing Cannon appears upset about is Merrick Garland’s invocation of Section 533, which appoints FBI-like figures.
Special Counsel Smith argues that Section 533(1) confers on the Attorney General the authority to appoint special counsels, specifically, constitutional officers wielding the “full power and independent authority . . . of any United States Attorney.” 28 C.F.R. § 600.6. After careful review, the Court is convinced that it does not. Congress “does not . . . hide elephants in mouseholes.” Whitman v. Am. Trucking Associations, 531 U.S. 457, 468 (2001). Special Counsel Smith’s interpretation would shoehorn appointment authority for United States Attorney-equivalents into a statute that permits the hiring of FBI law enforcement personnel. Such a reading is unsupported by Section 533’s plain language and statutory context; inconsistent with Congress’s usual legislative practice; and threatens to undermine the “basic separation-of-powers principles” that “give life and content” to the Appointments Clause. Morrison, 487 U.S. at 715 (Scalia, J., dissenting). The Court explains below.
33 Order No. 5730-2023 (appointing David C. Weiss); Order No. 5588-2023 (appointing Robert K. Hur).
That is her only mention of Robert Hur, whose appointment would be unconstitutional under her theory as well. (I’m still trying to figure out whether Cannon will help Hunter Biden go free, too.)
Update: Okay, I’ve read the thing.
It’s hilarious.
It’s hilarious, because it doesn’t create any delay that Cannon was not pursuing anyway. Indeed, Jack Smith could immediately appeal this and try to get her tossed, so it may hasten things (unless Trump wins!).
It’s hilarious because it is unbelievably hubristic. The only credible future for Judge Cannon now is Trump’s first SCOTUS appointment in a second term.
It’s hilarious because the way she did this, if it were upheld (not an impossibility given how nutty SCOTUS has gotten), it would be even more useful for Hunter Biden than Donald Trump (especially if Trump didn’t win reelection), because the statutes of limitation on Hunter’s alleged crimes have started to expire.
So, back to Donald and his surprising recovery from a shooting that killed one and critically injured two. So my Nancy Drew senses started tingling when I saw how composed Donald was after the shooting; he was more worried about getting his shoes than leaving the scene. Posing for pictures all along the way. PB first contacted me with this bit.
Talked to a friend who’s a Psych and body language expert. 100% staged. Look at their unified messaging.
All I could remember where all the times Trump on the last two campaign trails and seemed afraid of everything. This is from Chris Cizzilla and CNN from April 28, 2022. “Donald Trump lived in fear of being hit by, um, ‘dangerous’ fruit.”
Donald Trump feared being killed by thrown fruit.
Yes, you read that right.
In a recently released transcript of a deposition as part of a lawsuit filed by a group of protesters who alleged they were assaulted by Trump’s security guards at a 2015 campaign rally, the subject of fruit – and fruit being flung, in particular – came up.
Here’s the full – and fully epic – back-and-forth between Trump and Benjamin Dictor, an attorney representing the protestors.
Dictor: Okay. And you said that, ‘If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them would you.’ That was your statement?
Trump: Oh, yeah. It was very dangerous.
Dictor: What was very dangerous?
Trump: We were threatened.
Dictor: With what?
Trump: They were going to throw fruit. We were threatened. We had a threat.
Dictor: How did you become aware that there was a threat that people were going to throw fruit?
Trump: We were told. I thought Secret Service was involved in that, actually. And you get hit with fruit, it’s – no – it’s very violent stuff. We were on alert for that.
Trump attorney Jeffrey Goldman: A tomato is a fruit after all, I guess. … It has seeds.

Just enough time for a NAZI salute also, which is being used by the Press right now. They’re using the fist bumps. The campaign is now using for fundraising and political materials.

And where did Donald get the idea to lead an assassination attempt on himself? This is from Newsweek, May 3, 2023. “Russia Staged Putin ‘Assassination’ to Justify Mass Mobilization: ISW” I know now about self-coups and staged assassination attempts as political tools of fascists. What a world! Funny how Donald has disappeared from the campaign trail for a few weeks but suddenly was paling around with Viktor Orban last week, too.
The alleged attempt to “assassinate” Russian President Vladimir Putin was likely staged by the Kremlin to justify a future effort to mobilize troops for the war in Ukraine, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
The Russian government on Wednesday issued a statement alleging that two Ukrainian drones had been destroyed near Putin’s official residence in Moscow. The Kremlin said that the drones were attempting to carry out “a planned terrorist attack” by assassinating Putin just before “Victory Day” celebrations on May 9. Ukraine has denied any involvement.
While video of the drones dramatically exploding over Kremlin grounds appeared online soon after the purported attack occurred, the incident immediately raised eyebrows, with a number of experts and commentators suggesting that it may have been a staged “propaganda” event intended to drum up Russian support for the war.
ISW, the U.S.-based think tank, said in a report published on Wednesday night that the Russian government “likely staged” the purported assassination attempt “to bring the war home to a Russian domestic audience and set conditions for a wider societal mobilization.”
And then there’s good old Alex Jones, the father of seeing everything as staged with crisis actors. Listen to this. It’s from Patriot Takes. This is a conversation with Ivan Raiklin, who calls himself Trump’s Secretary of Retribution. Check him out on TNR: “Trump Ally Exposed for Horrific Hit List of Political Enemies. Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed “secretary of retribution” is even more bloodthirsty than the former president.” He’s an absolute skinhead. Both BB and I have posted on him before. Please follow the link to Patriot Takes and watch him talk. It’s bone-chilling. BB found this one.
5 months ago, Alex Jones and InfoWars guest Ivan Raiklin discussed how assassinating Trump would be beneficial, according to them, because it would lead to retaliatory “in kind” assassinations of a “deep state” list which includes President Joe Biden.
Ivan Raiklin: “If they [assassinate Trump], option 2, behind Trump, is going to be so much better for us and so much worse them.”
Alex Jones: “I was about as to say, If they kill him, that’s best case scenario from a sick level. From a sick level medium, ‘Oh, please kill him.’ I mean, it’s so good after that.”
Raiklin: “Oh, it’s going to be the best cleansing and the fastest cleansing that we’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I guaran—, I access, with almost certainty, with the highest level of confidence, that if they assassinate Trump, it is so game over for them.”
There’s no way to blame Biden for the shooter, given his personal history as a gun-toting right-wing Republican, either. “FBI probing motives, the background of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Western Pa. gunman behind Donald Trump assassination attempt. Former classmates described Crooks as politically conservative and a “loner.” Authorities believe the AR-15-style rifle he used belonged to his father.” This is from the Philadelphia Inquirer,
Authorities released few updates Sunday on the progress of their investigation into Trump’s would-be assassin, but a portrait of Crooks — a 2022 graduate of Bethel Park High School who worked as a dietary aide at a local nursing and rehabilitation center — began to emerge.
He had no criminal history, almost no presence on social media, and lived in a middle-class suburb about an hour away from the site of the shooting.
His political leanings were not immediately apparent. Though he was registered as a Republican, according to state voter rolls — and this year’s election would have been the first in which he was eligible to cast a ballot for president — campaign finance reports show a man with the same name gave $15 to a progressive political action committee in January 2021, on the day Biden was sworn into office.***
Crooks’ father, Matthew, reached by CNN late Saturday, said he was trying to figure out “what the hell [was] going on” and declined to comment further until he had spoken with authorities. Attempts to reach other family members were unsuccessful Sunday.
Kevin Rojek, head of the FBI’s field office in Pittsburgh, told reporters Sunday that agents recovered bomb-making material from inside Crooks’ car and his residence. The rifle he used in the attack, which was believed to have been purchased at least six months earlier by his father, as well as Crooks’ cell phone and other evidence had been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., “for processing and exploitation,” Rojek said.
Meanwhile, several former classmates offered conflicting characterizations of Crooks. Some described him as a loner who had been bullied during his high school years. Jason Kohler, who graduated alongside Crooks, told reporters that students had harassed him “almost every day” and that he often wore “hunting” outfits to class.
“He was just an outcast,” Kohler said.
*** Author note: There’s some evidence this was not the shooter but a 69-year-old man with the same name from Pittsburg.
Here are some additional things I have questions about. Most of these are based on photography at the scene. For example, Kim Wexler’s Ponytail shows this TikTok of a New Angle of Trump at Rally shooting. It basically shows either Donald’s bodyguards or the Secret Service moving photographers close to the stairs. Perhaps for a better shot of the exit act? The TikTok comes from
Why was there such lackluster Security at the Rally?
I had a lot of weird things from early on that I thought were just not right. One was the interview by an MSNBC reporter of a man who was supposed to be standing next to Donald at the podium from the onset. He told the reporter something to the effect that he got up there, introduced himself, and was then told by Donald to go ahead and come up to the podium, only to be quickly told, wait, let’s do that later, and shuffled him off to sit somewhere else. I cannot find that clip by my neighbor across the street, who I had been with earlier for cocktails, who told me that she had seen it, too.
I also heard Frank Figluzzi discuss the fact that it was odd that the roof wasn’t in the area where the check-for-weapons zone was. He also said that on the other side was where the protestors were allowed to gather and even march. My thought was, wow! Sounds like a setup to blame a protestor and let the guy onto the roof. The fact that he was a right-wing Republican gun nut just really puts that on display as planning.
One of the most questionable things is that photos of Trump show him looking in the direction of the building where the shooter was. This is precisely when he turned his head to point to his whiteboard. At that point, local police went to the roof, saw him, and went back down the stairs. There was also a hesitation by the Secret Service Sniper to shoot him. Acyn, the Senior Digital Editor for MeidasTouch.com, captured this on CSPN. He’s looking directly at the shooter and then angling towards the White Board. The shooter was only about 165ish feet away from Donald. That’s definitely a distance that a good sniper could handle.
So, several things I noticed from this bit. First, when you speak to a large audience, you look straight ahead. You do not fixate on a spot to your right. Nowadays, politicians use teleprompters, but the ones that are guarded by the Secret Service have bulletproof shields. Do you see one?
I had another conversation with a neighbor this morning who has friends who have been military snipers, and their hypothesis on this I would put under the conspiracy theory. They’re saying they think the Republican Party mainstream was working with the Secret Service to take him out. That’s pure speculation. It’s obvious, though, that there’s something wrong with the security there.
This is from NPR. “The Secret Service is investigating how the man who shot Trump got as close as he did.” House leaders have already ordered a full investigation and demanded the head of the Secret Service testify before them while they have already had a briefing. It is already a bit of the usual zoo since Jim Comer is likely to lead the investigation.
The U.S. Secret Service is investigating how a gunman armed with an AR-style rifle was able to get close enough to shoot and injure former President Donald Trump at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania, a monumental failure of one the agency’s core duties.
The gunman, who was killed by Secret Service personnel, fired multiple shots at the stage from an “elevated position outside of the rally venue,” the agency said.
An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos taken at the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the shooter was able to get astonishingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking. A video posted to social media and geolocated by the AP shows the body of a man wearing gray camouflage lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds, where Trump’s rally was held.
The roof was less than 150 meters (yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M16 assault rifle in basic training. The AR-15, like the shooter at the Trump rally had, is the semi-automatic civilian version of the military M16.
Some of the weirdest Republican attacks have been on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who is a 27-year-old veteran of the force. She is being called a DEI hire by really nasty Republican pols. She is the second woman to have the office. Of course, these black faces and the woman who heads the agency are suspected of being in a “deep state.” I won’t go deeper into any of these cringeworthy moments.
On Monday, Cheatle said in a statement: “Since the shooting, I have been in constant contact with Secret Service personnel in Pennsylvania who worked to maintain the integrity of the crime scene until the FBI assumed its role as the lead investigating agency into the assassination attempt.”
She added that the Secret Service is working with other law enforcement agencies to “understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again. … We will also work with the appropriate Congressional committees on any oversight action.”
Neither Cheatle or the Secret Service’s communications office have weighed in on criticism of women in the agency more broadly.
I have a few more weird angles from various drones and photogs that make me even more suspicious, but according to White Christian Nationalists, it’s all just a miracle. I’m sticking with a staged attempt ala Putin because that seems more in line with Trump’s lack of anything decent.
So, I’m open to comments and criticism, but this is my case so far. I’m likely not going to leave this rabbit hole for a while. Keep an eye on the things Republicans don’t want you to know. And please, don’t take in any of the stupidity of the Republican Convention. This one is going to be insane.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Preview of the Republican Convention
More Questions from Friends
I have an update from the FBI.
Update on the FBI Investigation of the Attempted Assassination of Former President Donald Trump
Update: July 15, 2024, 3:05 p.m. EDT:
The FBI continues to investigate the shooting incident at the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, as an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump and as potential domestic terrorism. The investigation is still in the early stages, and the FBI is providing the following updates:
- FBI technical specialists successfully gained access to Thomas Matthew Crooks’ phone, and they continue to analyze his electronic devices.
- The search of the subject’s residence and vehicle are complete.
- The FBI has conducted nearly 100 interviews of law enforcement personnel, event attendees, and other witnesses. That work continues.
- The FBI has received hundreds of digital media tips which include photos and videos taken at the scene, and we continue to review incoming tips. We encourage anyone with information that may assist with the ongoing investigation to continue to submit it online at tips.fbi.gov or call 1-800-CALL-FBI.
- While the investigative work continues, FBI victim services personnel have offered assistance to the victims of Saturday’s incident.
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/07/15/monday-reads-i-have-questions/
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Sky Dancing @[email protected] · 2024-07-15 · 18:58 UTC

This drone photo of the vent area in Butler, Pennsylvania, shows the building in the upper left-hand corner where the shooter’s body was found.

Dear Sky Dancers, this is not a good day for our Republic.
Judge Cannon used this moment to distract the press from what I believe might be a staged coup attempt by Donald on Donald. He golfed right after the shooting and had no bandages or marks to be seen. I have reached this theory of the case after spending a day and a half asking questions and reviewing materials with JJ, BB, and a friend of my friend PB from the late Fire Dog Lake site. The press is characterizing people like us as BlueAnon conspiracy theorists. Frankly, I just have questions about things. I’m up to being proved wrong. I’m just someone who has watched decades of Law and Order and Criminal Minds, and I’m also smarter than your average bear.
The Cannon decision was based on the bone she was thrown by corrupt Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the shocking presidential immunity case. Human Rights Lawyer Qasim Rashid had this to say today on @Threads.
Understand what Judge Cannon did. She saw the non-stop media coverage of the shooting, used that distraction to overturn decades of legal precedent without citing a single case in her ruling’s favor, & dismissed Trump’s classified documents case. This is how republics collapse.
To be sure, Cannon’s absurd ruling is so extreme that only one of the MAGA justices supported it in his immunity decision (Thomas). Her decision will likely be reversed because it has absolutely zero basis in precedent whatsoever.But Cannon’s indefensible opinion still serves its purpose of delaying Trump’s trial long enough to prevent any form of accountability before the November election. That was the move all along. And the DOJ delayed & delayed & that helped Trump get away with this. Smh.

Judge Aileen Cannon and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images/USDC for the Southern District of Florida)

This is from Eric Tucker at the AP. “Federal judge dismisses Trump classified documents case over concerns with prosecutor’s appointment.”
The federal judge presiding over the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump in Florida dismissed the prosecution on Monday, siding with defense lawyers who said the special counsel who filed the charges was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, which can be appealed and may later be overturned by a higher court, brings at least, for now, a stunning and abrupt conclusion to a criminal case that at the time it was filed was widely regarded as the most perilous of all the legal threats the Republican former president confronted.
…
It’s the latest stroke of good fortune in the four criminal cases Trump has faced. Though he was convicted in May in his New York hush money trial, the sentencing there has been postponed following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents. That opinion will result in significant delays in a separate case brought by Smith charging Trump with plotting to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Another election subversion case filed by prosecutors in Atlanta has been delayed by revelations of a romantic relationship between the district attorney and a special prosecutor.
I’ve been doing a bit of digging and found this article from Salon on May 7. “Judge Cannon’s secret right-wing getaway: Why didn’t we know about this? Federal judge in Trump’s documents trial didn’t tell us about those right-wing conferences at a Montana resort.” It’s reported by columnist Lucian Truscott IV.
Let me ask you a question: How many all-expenses-paid vacations at luxury hunting and fishing lodges have you enjoyed over the last few years? I’m not talking about a motel in the boonies of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or a drafty log cabin on a lake in Maine or Minnesota. We’re talking about a luxury resort on 1,200 acres alongside the Yellowstone River just outside Yellowstone National Park. We’re talking about a lodge featuring rooms with stone fireplaces that go for upwards of $1,000 a night in high season, meals that include “house-cured meats from local ranches, garden-fresh produce from nearby farms, and, of course plenty of Northwest craft beers and spirits,” as the resort’s website describes the offerings.
It’s called the Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, and it’s where George Mason University sends gaggles of federal judges for a week-long “colloquium” every year or so. Paid for by the Law and Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School, the “colloquium” held at the Sage Lodge in 2021, for example, featured lectures on such subjects as “Woke Law!” – and yes, the exclamation point is part of the lecture topic — by one Todd J. Zywicki, who is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School and a senior fellow at the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives of the Cato Institute. Another juicy topic covered at the Sage Lodge in 2021 was “Unprofitable Education: Student Loans, Higher Education Costs, and the Regulatory State,” also featuring a lecture by Zywicki, a topic that rings what we might call a rather different bell after the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program last year.
The Antonin Scalia Law School, by the way, was established and largely funded by the efforts of Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who helped put together $30 million from conservative donors, including Leo himself, to rename the law school after the late legendary right-wing justice, who it will be remembered died of a heart attack in 2016 at another luxury hunting lodge, that one in Texas, while on a trip paid for by wealthy conservative “friends of the court,” I guess we could call them. The other major donor to the Scalia Law School was the Charles Koch Foundation, which threw in a handy $10 million.
Why are we talking about luxury hunting lodges and right-wing “colloquiums” for judges? Because one of our favorite federal judges, Aileen Cannon of Florida, currently presiding over the case against Donald Trump over the secret documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago, was a guest at that same 2021 “colloquium” at the Sage Lodge, and the one held in 2022 as well. The thing is, Cannon failed to file the form known as a Privately Funded Seminar Disclosure Report, which lists whoever paid for the judge to attend the seminar, who the speakers were and what topics were discussed. The form is supposed to be posted on the website of every federal court within 30 days of the time a judge attending such an all-expenses-paid seminar. Cannon, however, somehow forgot to do so, so anyone who might be interested in learning who was paying for Cannon’s vacations and the nature of her judicial education would have been out of luck.
So why do we suppose Judge Cannon was so shy about who’s paying for her luxury trips and what she might have learned there? Oh, I don’t know … might it be because she didn’t want anyone to know about her links to the Leonard Leo wing of legal theory? Could it have been that she didn’t want it known that she had taken money from an organization that was in large part funded by billionaires friendly to the man whose case she was presiding over?
All these corrupt Republican Judges seem to lead right back to Leonard Leo, don’t they? Something is very rotten here. Marcie of Empty Wheel reads the 93 pages, so we don’t need to.
Procedurally, this may actually not help Trump in the way he’d like (because DOJ has the option of appealing it or having a US Attorney charge Trump).
But it’s also hilarious, since Aileen Cannon has been treating herself like an Appellate Judge that she hasn’t been confirmed to be.
Update: One thing Cannon appears upset about is Merrick Garland’s invocation of Section 533, which appoints FBI-like figures.
Special Counsel Smith argues that Section 533(1) confers on the Attorney General the authority to appoint special counsels, specifically, constitutional officers wielding the “full power and independent authority . . . of any United States Attorney.” 28 C.F.R. § 600.6. After careful review, the Court is convinced that it does not. Congress “does not . . . hide elephants in mouseholes.” Whitman v. Am. Trucking Associations, 531 U.S. 457, 468 (2001). Special Counsel Smith’s interpretation would shoehorn appointment authority for United States Attorney-equivalents into a statute that permits the hiring of FBI law enforcement personnel. Such a reading is unsupported by Section 533’s plain language and statutory context; inconsistent with Congress’s usual legislative practice; and threatens to undermine the “basic separation-of-powers principles” that “give life and content” to the Appointments Clause. Morrison, 487 U.S. at 715 (Scalia, J., dissenting). The Court explains below.
33 Order No. 5730-2023 (appointing David C. Weiss); Order No. 5588-2023 (appointing Robert K. Hur).
That is her only mention of Robert Hur, whose appointment would be unconstitutional under her theory as well. (I’m still trying to figure out whether Cannon will help Hunter Biden go free, too.)
Update: Okay, I’ve read the thing.
It’s hilarious.
It’s hilarious, because it doesn’t create any delay that Cannon was not pursuing anyway. Indeed, Jack Smith could immediately appeal this and try to get her tossed, so it may hasten things (unless Trump wins!).
It’s hilarious because it is unbelievably hubristic. The only credible future for Judge Cannon now is Trump’s first SCOTUS appointment in a second term.
It’s hilarious because the way she did this, if it were upheld (not an impossibility given how nutty SCOTUS has gotten), it would be even more useful for Hunter Biden than Donald Trump (especially if Trump didn’t win reelection), because the statutes of limitation on Hunter’s alleged crimes have started to expire.
So, back to Donald and his surprising recovery from a shooting that killed one and critically injured two. So my Nancy Drew senses started tingling when I saw how composed Donald was after the shooting; he was more worried about getting his shoes than leaving the scene. Posing for pictures all along the way. PB first contacted me with this bit.
Talked to a friend who’s a Psych and body language expert. 100% staged. Look at their unified messaging.
All I could remember where all the times Trump on the last two campaign trails and seemed afraid of everything. This is from Chris Cizzilla and CNN from April 28, 2022. “Donald Trump lived in fear of being hit by, um, ‘dangerous’ fruit.”
Donald Trump feared being killed by thrown fruit.
Yes, you read that right.
In a recently released transcript of a deposition as part of a lawsuit filed by a group of protesters who alleged they were assaulted by Trump’s security guards at a 2015 campaign rally, the subject of fruit – and fruit being flung, in particular – came up.
Here’s the full – and fully epic – back-and-forth between Trump and Benjamin Dictor, an attorney representing the protestors.
Dictor: Okay. And you said that, ‘If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them would you.’ That was your statement?
Trump: Oh, yeah. It was very dangerous.
Dictor: What was very dangerous?
Trump: We were threatened.
Dictor: With what?
Trump: They were going to throw fruit. We were threatened. We had a threat.
Dictor: How did you become aware that there was a threat that people were going to throw fruit?
Trump: We were told. I thought Secret Service was involved in that, actually. And you get hit with fruit, it’s – no – it’s very violent stuff. We were on alert for that.
Trump attorney Jeffrey Goldman: A tomato is a fruit after all, I guess. … It has seeds.

Just enough time for a NAZI salute also, which is being used by the Press right now. They’re using the fist bumps. The campaign is now using for fundraising and political materials.

And where did Donald get the idea to lead an assassination attempt on himself? This is from Newsweek, May 3, 2023. “Russia Staged Putin ‘Assassination’ to Justify Mass Mobilization: ISW” I know now about self-coups and staged assassination attempts as political tools of fascists. What a world! Funny how Donald has disappeared from the campaign trail for a few weeks but suddenly was paling around with Viktor Orban last week, too.
The alleged attempt to “assassinate” Russian President Vladimir Putin was likely staged by the Kremlin to justify a future effort to mobilize troops for the war in Ukraine, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
The Russian government on Wednesday issued a statement alleging that two Ukrainian drones had been destroyed near Putin’s official residence in Moscow. The Kremlin said that the drones were attempting to carry out “a planned terrorist attack” by assassinating Putin just before “Victory Day” celebrations on May 9. Ukraine has denied any involvement.
While video of the drones dramatically exploding over Kremlin grounds appeared online soon after the purported attack occurred, the incident immediately raised eyebrows, with a number of experts and commentators suggesting that it may have been a staged “propaganda” event intended to drum up Russian support for the war.
ISW, the U.S.-based think tank, said in a report published on Wednesday night that the Russian government “likely staged” the purported assassination attempt “to bring the war home to a Russian domestic audience and set conditions for a wider societal mobilization.”
And then there’s good old Alex Jones, the father of seeing everything as staged with crisis actors. Listen to this. It’s from Patriot Takes. This is a conversation with Ivan Raiklin, who calls himself Trump’s Secretary of Retribution. Check him out on TNR: “Trump Ally Exposed for Horrific Hit List of Political Enemies. Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed “secretary of retribution” is even more bloodthirsty than the former president.” He’s an absolute skinhead. Both BB and I have posted on him before. Please follow the link to Patriot Takes and watch him talk. It’s bone-chilling. BB found this one.
5 months ago, Alex Jones and InfoWars guest Ivan Raiklin discussed how assassinating Trump would be beneficial, according to them, because it would lead to retaliatory “in kind” assassinations of a “deep state” list which includes President Joe Biden.
Ivan Raiklin: “If they [assassinate Trump], option 2, behind Trump, is going to be so much better for us and so much worse them.”
Alex Jones: “I was about as to say, If they kill him, that’s best case scenario from a sick level. From a sick level medium, ‘Oh, please kill him.’ I mean, it’s so good after that.”
Raiklin: “Oh, it’s going to be the best cleansing and the fastest cleansing that we’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I guaran—, I access, with almost certainty, with the highest level of confidence, that if they assassinate Trump, it is so game over for them.”
There’s no way to blame Biden for the shooter, given his personal history as a gun-toting right-wing Republican, either. “FBI probing motives, the background of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Western Pa. gunman behind Donald Trump assassination attempt. Former classmates described Crooks as politically conservative and a “loner.” Authorities believe the AR-15-style rifle he used belonged to his father.” This is from the Philadelphia Inquirer,
Authorities released few updates Sunday on the progress of their investigation into Trump’s would-be assassin, but a portrait of Crooks — a 2022 graduate of Bethel Park High School who worked as a dietary aide at a local nursing and rehabilitation center — began to emerge.
He had no criminal history, almost no presence on social media, and lived in a middle-class suburb about an hour away from the site of the shooting.
His political leanings were not immediately apparent. Though he was registered as a Republican, according to state voter rolls — and this year’s election would have been the first in which he was eligible to cast a ballot for president — campaign finance reports show a man with the same name gave $15 to a progressive political action committee in January 2021, on the day Biden was sworn into office.***
Crooks’ father, Matthew, reached by CNN late Saturday, said he was trying to figure out “what the hell [was] going on” and declined to comment further until he had spoken with authorities. Attempts to reach other family members were unsuccessful Sunday.
Kevin Rojek, head of the FBI’s field office in Pittsburgh, told reporters Sunday that agents recovered bomb-making material from inside Crooks’ car and his residence. The rifle he used in the attack, which was believed to have been purchased at least six months earlier by his father, as well as Crooks’ cell phone and other evidence had been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., “for processing and exploitation,” Rojek said.
Meanwhile, several former classmates offered conflicting characterizations of Crooks. Some described him as a loner who had been bullied during his high school years. Jason Kohler, who graduated alongside Crooks, told reporters that students had harassed him “almost every day” and that he often wore “hunting” outfits to class.
“He was just an outcast,” Kohler said.
*** Author note: There’s some evidence this was not the shooter but a 69-year-old man with the same name from Pittsburg.
Here are some additional things I have questions about. Most of these are based on photography at the scene. For example, Kim Wexler’s Ponytail shows this TikTok of a New Angle of Trump at Rally shooting. It basically shows either Donald’s bodyguards or the Secret Service moving photographers close to the stairs. Perhaps for a better shot of the exit act? The TikTok comes from
Why was there such lackluster Security at the Rally?
I had a lot of weird things from early on that I thought were just not right. One was the interview by an MSNBC reporter of a man who was supposed to be standing next to Donald at the podium from the onset. He told the reporter something to the effect that he got up there, introduced himself, and was then told by Donald to go ahead and come up to the podium, only to be quickly told, wait, let’s do that later, and shuffled him off to sit somewhere else. I cannot find that clip by my neighbor across the street, who I had been with earlier for cocktails, who told me that she had seen it, too.
I also heard Frank Figluzzi discuss the fact that it was odd that the roof wasn’t in the area where the check-for-weapons zone was. He also said that on the other side was where the protestors were allowed to gather and even march. My thought was, wow! Sounds like a setup to blame a protestor and let the guy onto the roof. The fact that he was a right-wing Republican gun nut just really puts that on display as planning.
One of the most questionable things is that photos of Trump show him looking in the direction of the building where the shooter was. This is precisely when he turned his head to point to his whiteboard. At that point, local police went to the roof, saw him, and went back down the stairs. There was also a hesitation by the Secret Service Sniper to shoot him. Acyn, the Senior Digital Editor for MeidasTouch.com, captured this on CSPN. He’s looking directly at the shooter and then angling towards the White Board. The shooter was only about 165ish feet away from Donald. That’s definitely a distance that a good sniper could handle.
So, several things I noticed from this bit. First, when you speak to a large audience, you look straight ahead. You do not fixate on a spot to your right. Nowadays, politicians use teleprompters, but the ones that are guarded by the Secret Service have bulletproof shields. Do you see one?
I had another conversation with a neighbor this morning who has friends who have been military snipers, and their hypothesis on this I would put under the conspiracy theory. They’re saying they think the Republican Party mainstream was working with the Secret Service to take him out. That’s pure speculation. It’s obvious, though, that there’s something wrong with the security there.
This is from NPR. “The Secret Service is investigating how the man who shot Trump got as close as he did.” House leaders have already ordered a full investigation and demanded the head of the Secret Service testify before them while they have already had a briefing. It is already a bit of the usual zoo since Jim Comer is likely to lead the investigation.
The U.S. Secret Service is investigating how a gunman armed with an AR-style rifle was able to get close enough to shoot and injure former President Donald Trump at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania, a monumental failure of one the agency’s core duties.
The gunman, who was killed by Secret Service personnel, fired multiple shots at the stage from an “elevated position outside of the rally venue,” the agency said.
An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos taken at the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the shooter was able to get astonishingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking. A video posted to social media and geolocated by the AP shows the body of a man wearing gray camouflage lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds, where Trump’s rally was held.
The roof was less than 150 meters (yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M16 assault rifle in basic training. The AR-15, like the shooter at the Trump rally had, is the semi-automatic civilian version of the military M16.
Some of the weirdest Republican attacks have been on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who is a 27-year-old veteran of the force. She is being called a DEI hire by really nasty Republican pols. She is the second woman to have the office. Of course, these black faces and the woman who heads the agency are suspected of being in a “deep state.” I won’t go deeper into any of these cringeworthy moments.
On Monday, Cheatle said in a statement: “Since the shooting, I have been in constant contact with Secret Service personnel in Pennsylvania who worked to maintain the integrity of the crime scene until the FBI assumed its role as the lead investigating agency into the assassination attempt.”
She added that the Secret Service is working with other law enforcement agencies to “understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again. … We will also work with the appropriate Congressional committees on any oversight action.”
Neither Cheatle or the Secret Service’s communications office have weighed in on criticism of women in the agency more broadly.
I have a few more weird angles from various drones and photogs that make me even more suspicious, but according to White Christian Nationalists, it’s all just a miracle. I’m sticking with a staged attempt ala Putin because that seems more in line with Trump’s lack of anything decent.
So, I’m open to comments and criticism, but this is my case so far. I’m likely not going to leave this rabbit hole for a while. Keep an eye on the things Republicans don’t want you to know. And please, don’t take in any of the stupidity of the Republican Convention. This one is going to be insane.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Preview of the Republican Convention
More Questions from Friends
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/07/15/monday-reads-i-have-questions/
#AlexJones #CannonDropsStolenDocsCase #CorruptingJudges #IvanLaiklinOnTheBenefitsOfAssassinatingTrump #JudgeLooseCannon #PutinStagedAssassination #republicanPolitics #TrumpStagedAssassination_

#alexjones #cannondropsstolendocscase #corruptingjudges #ivanlaiklinonthebenefitsofassassinatingtrump #judgeloosecannon #putinstagedassassination