There will be no posting on SLL from Tuesday, 9/17 through Friday, 9/20. If you’re looking for something to read, buy my latest book, Everything I Know About Business I Learned From The Godffather, available as a paperbock or Kindle Ebook.
Posted in Uncategorized
A good chronicle from a former Australian diplomat of the deterioration of US-Russian relations. From Tony Kevin at consortiumnews.com:
A retired Australian diplomat who served in Moscow dissects the emergence of the new Cold War and its dire consequences.
In 2014, we saw violent U.S.-supported regime change and civil war in Ukraine. In February, after months of increasing tension from the anti-Russian protest movement’s sitdown strike in Kiev’s Maidan Square, there was a murderous clash between protesters and Ukrainian police, sparked off by hidden shooters (we now know that were expert Georgian snipers) , aiming at police. The elected government collapsed and President Yanukevich fled to Russia, pursued by murder squads.
The new Poroshenko government pledged harsh anti-Russian language laws. Rebels in two Russophone regions in Eastern Ukraine took local control, and appealed for Russian military help. In March, a referendum took place in Russian-speaking Crimea on leaving Ukraine, under Russian military protection. Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, a request promptly granted by the Russian Parliament and President. Crimea’s border with Ukraine was secured against saboteurs. Crimea is prospering under its pro-Russian government, with the economy kick-started by Russian transport infrastructure investment.
In April, Poroshenko ordered full military attack on the separatist provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine. A brutal civil war ensued, with aerial and artillery bombardment bringing massive civilian death and destruction to the separatist region. There was major refugee outflow into Russia and other parts of Ukraine. The shootdown of MH17 took place in July 2014.
Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Imperialism, Intelligence, Media, Politics, Uncategorized
Tagged Mike Pompeo, President Trump, Russia, Skripal poisoning, Ukraine
Democrats are ideal firearms salespeople. From Mac Slavo at shtfplan.com:
August gun sales were up 15% thanks to Democrats’ totalitarian demands for mandatory buybacks. Those who bought guns were Americans seeking self-protection and with deep concerns that President Donald Trump is on board with gun control.
Trump Looks At A Social Credit Score For Gun Owners?
According to the Washington Examiner, the overall number of background checks recorded in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System surged 15.5%. Those numbers were courtesy of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). That figure includes background checks done for security, concealed carry permits, and gun sales and was the highest August number ever recorded.
Adjusted for sales, the NSSF industry group said that August FBI background checks for sales surged 15.2% over August 2018. The adjusted August number was second only to August 2016 during the heated presidential election. It’s become evident that gun control authoritarians are the best gun salespeople on the planet.
Trump’s rhetoric on guns and his apparent desire to curb the gun rights of innocent people is likely also playing a role in the increase in gun sales. The new surge came in the wake of heightened pressure for gun control, sales bans on “military-style rifles,” limits on ammo, and a slew of democrats saying they will take guns at the end of a gun, but force.
Communist Vows He IS Coming For Your Guns
Justin Anderson, the marketing director for Hyatt Guns in Charlotte, North Carolina, one of the nation’s largest sellers, said fears of a liberal gun grab and a drive for self-protection are pushing sales higher.
“As we’ve seen in the past, the recent publicizing of mass shootings has fueled people’s concerns about their personal safety. We are seeing many first-time gun buyers, and our concealed carry classes are booking up quickly,” said Anderson.
“Political figures talking about gun bans and confiscation is also starting to figure into sales. We’ve seen a slight uptick in the sale of tactical rifles as a result,” he added. –Washington Examiner
Democrats Made AR-15 Popular: Gun Sales “Driven By The Ban Concept”
Democrats continue to prove themselves to be the best people to drive up gun sales. They are literally making their goal of an enslaved populace harder by spewing propaganda seconds after a mass shooting. It looks like innocent people don’t like being told they aren’t allowed to protect themselves and considering the second amendment was written to protect Americans from tyrants, it makes sense that democrats want it gone, while free people stock up.
Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Politics, Uncategorized
Tagged Gun confiscation, Gun Control, Gun sales
There will be no posting on SLL from Thursday, 9/5, through Sunday, 9/8.
Posted in Uncategorized
An amazing mythology has already developed about Amazon fires. From Brendan O’Neill at spiked-online.com:
So now we know: the idea that the Amazon rainforest is burning on an unprecedented scale and that these fires will rob humanity of one of its key sources of oxygen is fake news. It is hard to think of any other global event this year that has been as awash with misinformation as the rainforest fires. We’ve been told these fires are a calamity, an act of ‘ecocide’; they’re proof of humanity’s contempt for the environment; they will blacken and possibly even destroy ‘the lungs of the world’, as the rainforests are referred to, given they produce 20 per cent of the world’s oxygen. It’s all untrue. We are being misled.
Everything – from the photos of fires being shared by heartbroken celebs to the wild claims about these fires harming the whole of humanity – is false. Some of the photos of the fires being tearfully shared on social media are 10 or 20 years old. Many are not pictures of the Amazon at all. Some are from south Brazil, others from India and Sweden. The idea that millions of glorious, oxygen-producing trees are been burnt to a cinder by evil humans is nonsense, too. To the extent that there has been an increase in fires in the Amazon – and this itself is a deceptive claim – many of this year’s new fires are of dry scrubland, where trees have already been felled.
It is untrue that the fires are historically huge or unprecedented. NASA says the Amazon fires are ‘slightly below average this year’. Many are pointing out that we are witnessing the highest number of fires in the Amazon for seven years. But as meteorologist Jesse Ferrell reports, prior to 2012 there were many years in which the Amazon had worse fires than this year’s: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2010. As Ferrell says, there are always fires on Earth: ‘Thousands of fires are continually burning across the Earth every day of every year, and they always have.’ The idea that what is currently happening in the Amazon is shockingly unusual or apocalyptic or proof of man’s fascistic disdain for his environment is an entirely politicised interpretation of a perfectly normal event.
Posted in Environment, Government, Media, Uncategorized
Tagged Amazon forests, Jair Bolsonaro
You don’t have to look too hard to uncover many similarities between the US and a typical banana republic. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
This is a chart of an informal kleptocracy which cloaks itself in the faux finery of democracy and a (rigged) “market” economy.
Back in the day, nations that didn’t qualify as either developed (First World) or developing (Second World) were by default Third World, impoverished, corrupt and what we now refer to as failed states–governments that were incapable of improving the lives of their people and the machinery of governance, generally as a result of corruption and self-serving elites, i.e. kleptocracies.
Is the U.S. slipping into Third World status? While many scoff at the very question, others citing the rise of homelessness, entrenched pockets of abject poverty and the decaying state of infrastructure might nod “yes.”
These are not uniquely Third World problems, they’re symptoms of a status quo that’s fast losing First World capabilities. What characterizes Third World/Failing States isn’t just poverty, crumbling infrastructure and endemic corruption; at a systems level these are the key dynamics in Third World/Failing States:
1. The status quo protects insiders at the expense of everyone else.
2. There is no real accountability; failure has no consequences, bureaucrats are never fired for incompetence, reforms are watered down or neutered by institutional sclerosis.
Posted in Collapse, Cronyism, Debt, Economy, Government, Media, Politics, Uncategorized
Tagged Corruption, Third World country
