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Attention

Best of the Web: Death toll climbs above 50,000 after Turkey, Syria earthquakes


Al Jazeera
Sat, 25 Feb 2023 13:39 UTC
mmmmmm
The number of people killed by the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria earlier this month has now passed 50,000, according to the latest figures from both countries.

In Turkey alone, 44,218 people died as a result of the earthquakes, the country's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said on Friday, while the latest announced death toll in Syria was 5,914.

The first earthquake on February 6 that hit southeastern Turkey and northern Syria measured a magnitude of 7.7 and a second, a little later, measured 7.6. The region has been rocked by more than 9,000 aftershocks since, according to the AFAD.

Nearly 240,000 rescue workers, including volunteers, continue to work in the 11 quake-hit provinces in Turkey. Some of the areas affected by the quakes were initially difficult to access but recovery efforts continue and casualty numbers are rising as they progress.

There have been no reports of survivors being rescued in recent days.
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Pistol

Best of the Web: Clinton body count: NYC billionaire financier Thomas H. Lee, friend of the Clintons and Epstein, found dead of 'self-inflicted gunshot wound'

Cristina Laila
The Gateway Pundit
Thu, 23 Feb 2023 20:00 UTC
thomas h lee
Billionaire investor Thomas H. Lee, 78, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his swanky NYC office on Thursday morning, according to the New York Post.

"The family is extremely saddened by Tom's death. While the world knew him as one of the pioneers in the private equity business and a successful businessman, we knew him as a devoted husband, father, grandfather, sibling, friend and philanthropist who always put others' needs before his own," Lee family friend and spokesperson Michael Sitrick said in a statement.

"Our hearts are broken. We ask that our privacy be respected and that we be allowed to grieve."

Comment: More from Ryan Dawson:
James R. Burritt who worked for Thomas H Lee also assisted Jeffery Epstein's Liquid Funding which took commercial mortgages and investment-grade residential mortgages bundled into complex securities.

A lender would give a borrower cash in exchange for securities that the borrower will buy back at an agreed upon date for a fixed price, usually at the 1st of the next month. It was a way to shift debts off the ledger temporarily to get a high rating but then buy them back again.
...

All while the body is barely cold on this one:

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Mr. Potato

Best of the Web: World's most ridiculous fact-checker mistakes a verb for a noun, pens nonsense paragraphs explaining why Hersh's Nord Stream reporting must be wrong because explosive seaweed is impossible

eugyppius
The Plague Chronicle
Fri, 24 Feb 2023 20:31 UTC
Pascal Siggelkow
Last summer, the plague chronicle got debunked by man-bun sporting "fact-finder" Pascal Siggelkow. This bizarre mediocrity for the clown car license-fee funded state media operation known as Tagesschau, and his latest foray into debunkery (knowledge of which I owe to Florian Warweg on Twitter) really sets a new bar for media ineptitude. As you read, remember that Tagesschau is not some stupid blog or a regional television show, but rather a leading German television news service produced by ARD with an associated print operation, which altogether reaches millions of Germans everyday.

Lately, Siggelkow directed both digits of his IQ to the problem of debunking Seymour Hersh's Nord Stream story. His objections are mostly the usual stuff that everyone is complaining about, but at some point his beleaguered brain stumbled across what he thought was new and heretofore undeboonked detail. Specifically, he found Hersh's report that divers would "plant shaped C4 charges" on the pipelines wildly improbable, because C4 charges do not generally come in the form of plants.

Pascal Siggelkow article
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Arrow Up

Best of the Web: This time it's different: Wisdom of crowds vs. Western propaganda

Alex Krainer
Alex Krainer's TrendCompass
Thu, 23 Feb 2023 20:00 UTC
The powers-that-be failed spectacularly on two mission-critical fronts.
Train Crash
© Substack
The Wisdom of Crowds, a hypothesis popularized by James Surowiecki in his 2005 book of the same title, is among the most fascinating discoveries about the collective human psychology. It's an antithesis to Charles Mackay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds." In a nutshell, Surowiecky suggests that under certain conditions, the crowds can converge on the truth about some matter or zero in on most effective solutions to a problem more accurately and more reliably than even the best qualified experts in that problem matter. I will skip the discussion of concrete cases of this mysterious phenomenon, but for all who are interested, I summarized two of Surowiecki's most fascinating examples in my book Mastering Uncertainty in Commodities Trading (free download at link, you'll find the relevant discussion on pages 58 and 59).

Social media are making us remarkably smart

But in order for the crowds to manifest such wisdom, a number of conditions must be satisfied: (1) the flow of information must be decentralized; (2) truthful information must be present within the information universe; (3) there has to be a wide diversity of participants in the discussion, and (4) the participants must not be dependent upon each other in making their judgments.

Modern social media may have created an environment where these conditions have satisfied in a robust way, which radically changed the way we respond to information as a collective. Until not so long ago, information flowed from centralized sources which filtered the information that reached the public. For as long as the society depended on the printed word, radio or TV for information, controlling the flow of information and shaping the narratives was relatively straightforward.
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Snowflake Cold

Best of the Web: Storm dumps 4 FEET of snow in parts of Wyoming - Cheyenne sets record low of -19

Jimmy Orr
Cowboy State Daily
Thu, 23 Feb 2023 12:40 UTC
MMMMMM
The latest Arctic front to blast Wyoming put to rest any thoughts of an early spring as multiple feet of snow fell in at least three counties and sub-zero temperatures broke at least one record in the state on Wednesday and Thursday morning.

Carbon County was the gold medal winner for snowfall on Wednesday as 48 inches of snow was recorded at Battle Lake while campgrounds along Jack Creek and Sugar Loaf each received 42 inches.

Locations in Yellowstone National Park and Teton and Lincoln counties all received snow in excess of two feet.

The most snow in Cheyenne was in the northern areas with only 5 inches, but a 129-year record was broken when the temperature hit 19 degrees below zero early Thursday. The old record was set in 1894 at minus 13.

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Putin

Best of the Web: The West bet on neo-Nazis in Ukraine, failed sanctions and key nuke deal suspension: Highlights from Putin's major speech


RT
Tue, 21 Feb 2023 18:39 UTC
Putin speech Duma february 2023
© Sputnik / Maksim BlinovRussian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual address to the Federal Assembly, including lawmakers of the State Duma, members of the Federation Council, regional governors and other officials, in Moscow, Russia.
The Russian leader did not mince his words as he outlined tensions with the West during a major address to parliament

Russia attempted to peacefully resolve the issues involving Ukraine after 2014, but Western leaders were secretly preparing a completely different scenario, President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday during his address to the Federal Assembly, the country's main legislative body.

Speaking to both chambers of parliament as well as senior officials and public figures, the Russian leader touched on a variety of key topics during a speech lasting almost two hours.

From the military operation in Ukraine to economic and social issues, here is a recap of what the president said.

Comment: The last point is the corker, being the final barrier to a new no-holds-barred arms race. Russia wishes to avoid this, but will always put its national interest first. Still, she is keeping the door open. We will have to wait and see how the defeat of NATO in Ukraine is accomplished and the subsequent fallout from that event.

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Cult

Best of the Web: Biden's power grab: Executive Order installs "equity" commissars to rule the bureaucracy and centralize power

Mike Whitney
The Unz Review
Sun, 19 Feb 2023 00:00 UTC
Biden
On February 16, President Joe Biden issued an executive order titled "Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government". The order is supposed to level the racial playing field by "addressing systemic racism in our Nation's policies and programs", but it does nothing of the kind. In truth, the order represents a massive and disturbing restructuring of the federal government in a way that fundamentally changes the manner in which the agencies operate. The new system will feature "equity" commissars who will have nothing to do with "systemic racism", but will be appointees designated to enforce the edicts of the state.

The senior agency official (in these agency equity teams) will then coordinate with the "Gender Policy Council" which is directly linked to the executive branch of government. In short, the administration is methodically building the basic scaffolding for a centrally-controlled police state masquerading as social justice operation. For all intents and purposes, the equity agenda is a cleverly-phrased moniker that conceals a plan to exert absolute control over the entire sprawling bureaucracy. Here is an excerpt from the White House print-out:
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Snowflake

Best of the Web: Unprecedented snowstorm in Morocco leaves 87 villages isolated and 24,000 people in need of assistance - snow 2.2 meters (7.2 feet) deep


Atalayar.com
Mon, 20 Feb 2023 13:41 UTC
nnnnnnnnn
The southeast of Morocco has been experiencing an unprecedented snowstorm since this weekend that has left 24,000 families in need of assistance and 87 isolated villages in the region of Ouarzazate and Zagora, which the authorities hope to access by Monday after having already unblocked most of them.

The Mohamed V Foundation for Solidarity has in recent days provided humanitarian assistance (food and blankets) to 9,000 families affected by the storm in the region of Ouarzazate, where snowfall reached 2.2 metres, 10,000 families in Taroudant and 5,000 in Zagora.

"The authorities' interventions in this area are progressing at a good pace despite the bad weather conditions," Sanae Berdikh, the Foundation's communications director, told EFE on Monday. Berdikh explained that during the intervention of the Moroccan troops they managed to evacuate by helicopter on Sunday morning a woman about to give birth who was trapped in a village in the area where the road was cut off. Both are in good condition in the provincial hospital. "An airlift has been set up between the airports of Casablanca, Ouarzazate, Zagora and Agadir with 20 rotations this weekend to bring humanitarian aid teams to the people affected," she said.

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Megaphone

Best of the Web: Ireland's Migrant Crisis

Callum Smile
Rebel News
Sat, 18 Feb 2023 07:57 UTC
Ireland Migrant crisis
© YT Screenshot
Irish citizens are rising up in large numbers through peaceful demonstrations around the country to oppose uncontrolled mass immigration.

For months now, peaceful demonstrations have been growing around the country and publicised using the hashtag #IrelandIsFull. The protests have been countered by opposition groups using the hashtag #IrelandForAll.

2022 alone saw a 415.5% increase from 2021 in those seeking international protection in Ireland. In 2023, according to the Irish Civil Service, they anticipate 180,000 migrants will be seeking refuge in Ireland.

So far in 2023, there have been over 4,500 so-called refugees and asylum seekers entering Ireland.

Under no international obligation due to the Lisbon Treaty, Ireland — through no democratic consent — has decided to open the country to mass migration from around the world.

Comment: It is probably part of the PTB agenda to destroy national states in Europe. Protests like this one in Ireland are more common and at the same time, there is a rise of the right-wing parties in Europe.

Most of the migrants are consequences of the proxy wars that the US is having around the globe. It is a dirty war against all humanity. In direct wars, they will destroy the targeted country and use all their resources and in an indirect way, all the people who will run from these places will go to Europe as refugees.

This 'agenda' can destroy the national countries across Europe and weaken their economies, rising nationalism, inflicting a rise in crime, and fear among people, and, drastically changing the demographic map of Europe, while silently destroying it.

See also:

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Pirates

Flashback Best of the Web: US, EU and Soros NGOs threaten newly-elected Zelensky with 'political instability' if he enacts electoral promise to seek peace with Russia

Danielle Ryan
RT
Fri, 24 May 2019 19:33 UTC

Comment: And they even issued their threat via their offices in downtown Kiev...


Zelenskiy
© Reuters / Valentyn OgirenkoUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
When President Volodymyr Zelensky won a landslide victory in the free and undisputed April elections, most accepted that he was given a fairly strong mandate to lead Ukraine. But it seems not everyone is so democratically-minded.

Particularly unmoved by the democratic process are a collection of Ukrainian 'civil society' groups, who have just issued a lengthy list of "red lines not to be crossed" by the new president, lest he risk provoking a new wave of political instability - that they would presumably instigate.

Issuing their catalog of demands on Thursday, the groups claim to be "politically neutral" but "deeply concerned" about the first actions taken by the comedian-turned-politician Zelensky, including his decision to appoint members of former President Viktor Yanukovych's government to positions within his own government.

Comment: Ukraine thus joins the rest of the West in having the coherent democratic will of three quarters or so of its population being told 'nyet' by a minority of deviant elites.

The US imperialists and their ramified networks across the world now 'own' Ukraine, so, while democracy is all well and nice, Zelensky was being reminded that his mandate is what they tell him to do. If he doesn't, they'll whip up political instability and force him out.

See also:

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