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Seismograph

Best of the Web: USGS seismic data points to 2,000% increase in major earthquakes since 1900

chart
Last week we looked at the state of our planet...Two-thirds of all animal and insects extinct by 2020: Dying oceans fish replaced by plastic: One in five of the world's plant species threatened.

Today we will see the incredible rise of major quakes since 1900 and the mindblowing fact these statistics are not mentioned on MSM or even mentioned by our religious leaders, below is the famous quote from Jesus to His disciples...

Luke 21: 10,11. Then he said to them: "Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, and in one place after another food shortages and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and from heaven great signs.

Smiley

Best of the Web: Epic troll: #Pr0udBear billboards pop up in UK celebrating Putin's Brexit victory

putin brexit
Spoof billboards celebrating Russian President Vladimir Putin's "contribution" to Brexit have been put up in London by a satirical group which says it wants to secure recognition for the role Russian military intelligence played in the referendum.

Britain has said it found no evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit vote and Moscow has repeatedly denied even trying, though opponents of Brexit have repeatedly questioned whether the Kremlin played a role.

In the referendum, 17.4 million voters, or 51.9 percent, backed leaving the EU while 16.1 million, or 48.1 percent, backed staying. Britain is due to leave on March 29.

The posters in London showed a picture of Kremlin chief Putin winking and holding the Russian flag beside the slogan: "Lets celebrate a Red, White and Blue Brexit." The "r" of Brexit was reversed to give it the look of a Cyrillic letter.

In a statement, the people claiming to be behind the campaign said they were a group of Russian military intelligence (GRU) officers who wanted their true role in the Brexit vote to be recognized.

"The group hopes to counter recent unwarranted negative publicity about the GRU by putting up advertisements highlighting their part in Britain's imminent liberation from the EU," said the group, which calls itself Proud Bear.

Comment: ProudBear's Twitter account is hilarious. What's even funnier is how many people seem to have been unsure whether or not it was a hoax...







The IRA "troll farm" is back in the news too. The Daily Beast, among others, are taking claims seemingly from IRA itself 'declaring victory in the U.S. election and warning the "citizens of the United States of America" that "your intelligence agencies are powerless."'
"Despite all their efforts, we have thousands of accounts registered on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit spreading political propaganda," read a statement attributed to the St. Petersburg-based organization. "These accounts work 24 hours a day, seven days a week to discredit anti-Russian candidates and support politicians more useful for us than for you."

The statement appeared on a website titled the "Internet Research Agency American Division" that popped up over the weekend. Featuring a clip art logo of a green goblin typing on a laptop, and packed with absurd boasts about the IRA's prowess, the site at first appeared to be a lampoon. But on Tuesday night it posted a previously unseen list of 100 IRA Instagram accounts that Facebook confirmed as authentic.

It's still not entirely clear if the website is intended as self-parody, a parody of U.S. perceptions of Russian information operations, or an earnest effort to terrify the American citizenry and cast doubt on the midterm results.
That's worthy of only one response: LOL. It gets funnier:
"Hundreds of your fellow citizens are our unintentional agents unaware of the fact that they actually act for the good of the Russian 'troll farm,'" the statement declared. "We have allies and spoilers intervening the political campaigns of the candidates for both parties. The victory of the Democratic party is our top priority in these midterm elections."

"Soon after November 6, you will realize that your vote means nothing," the statement reads. "We decide who you vote for and what candidates will win or lose. Whether you vote or not, there is no difference as we control the voting and counting systems. Remember, your vote has zero value. We are choosing for you."
Followed by more and more people in all seriousness taking this very, very seriously...


Eye 2

Best of the Web: FBI bombshell report: Ukrainian neo-Nazis met and trained with US white supremacists in Charlottesville riot

Azov rally Ukraine
© Reuters / Gleb GaranichSupporters of Azov National Corps hold torchlight rally in Kiev, Ukraine, October 2017.
Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov battalion is "believed to have participated in training and radicalizing" US-based white supremacists, the FBI said in a recent indictment of several California men involved in the Charlottesville violence.

Four members of the "Rise Above Movement" (RAM), described by the FBI as a "white supremacy extremist group" were indicted for conspiracy to riot over the August 2017 violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, among other things. In the affidavit, signed by FBI Special Agent Scott Bierwirth, 28-year-old Robert Rundo is said to have traveled to Germany, Italy and Ukraine in the spring of 2018.

Rundo allegedly met with Olena Semenyaka, one of the officials of the National Corps - a political wing of the Azov Battalion.

Comment: Well, well, well. As we said at the time: there is no real 'white supremacist, KKK, Nazi' movement in the USA. There is only a fake one controlled and used by the US deep state to tarnish Trump and his supporters.


Eye 2

Best of the Web: CIA Democrats: The plan to stack Congress with ex-spooks and military operatives (UPDATES)

CIA Logo
Part I: Introduction

An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history.

If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the lower chamber of Congress.

Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently clearing the field for a favored "star" recruit.

Comment: As we now know, the Democrats picked up 27 seats in the House of Representatives - more than enough to set much of the CIA-inspired agenda of wresting political control - not only over the half-hearted Republican party - but effectively over anything Trump will try to do as well. He will now likely be faced with a ramped-up onslaught of "investigations" and calls for his impeachment.


Quenelle - Golden

Best of the Web: 'Forty years of American hostility': Iran posts video response to Trump's sanctions

Iran FM Javad Zarif
"Taking a long, hard look at its own wrong choices and changing its approach from the failed one it has stubbornly followed for decades, instead of prescribing behavioral changes for Iran, will be far more effective in bringing about resolutions to conflicts…”
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif chastised the US for causing "catastrophes and crises" in the Middle East and vowed that Tehran's allies will stand with it against US sanctions, in a rare video response to US policies.

In the three-minute long video posted to YouTube on Tuesday, Zarif calls sanctions reimposed by the Trump administration on Monday "unlawful" and "fundamentally flawed."

The video was released less than a day after the formerly lifted sanctions were reinstated, targeting the country's banking, energy and transport sectors, and just hours after Iranian banks were suspended from accessing the global SWIFT financial messaging system.


Comment:


Hammer

Best of the Web: Who is really 'undermining' American democracy?

Ballot box icecrack
© Karen Norris, The Christian Science Monitor
Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com.)

Summarizing one of the themes in his new book, War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine To Trump and Russiagate, Cohen argues that Russiagate allegations of Kremlin attempts to "undermine American democracy" may themselves erode confidence in those institutions...
Ever since Russiagate allegations began to appear more than two years ago, their core narrative has revolved around purported Kremlin attempts to "interfere" in the 2016 US presidential election on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump. In recent months, a number of leading American media outlets have taken that argument even further, suggesting that Putin's Kremlin actually put Trump in the White House and now is similarly trying to affect the November 6 midterm elections, particularly House contests, on behalf of Trump and the Republican Party. According to a page-one New York Times "report," for example, Putin's agents "are engaging in an elaborate campaign of 'information warfare' to interfere with the American midterm elections."

Cross

Best of the Web: Double standards. ECHR says you can insult Christianity, but not Islam

pussy riot
© Getty Images / Gary MillerPussy Riot performs in concert during Day For Night festival on December 16, 2017 in Houston, Texas
Two recent rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) demonstrate not only that it's a political and hypocritical organization. They also show the severe structural defects of human rights law in general.

On October 25, the ECHR found in favor of Austria and against a claimant, Frau S., who had been prosecuted for saying in 2008 that the Prophet Mohammed "was a pedophile" because he had married a six-year-old girl. The applicant had claimed that the criminal sentence she received violated her right to free speech, enshrined in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court found against her and in favor of Austria, which had convicted her of inciting religious hatred.

On July 17, the same ECHR, by contrast, had found in favor of Russian applicants from the now famous 'Pussy Riot' band, and against the Russian state, which convicted them for having incited religious hatred by staging a performance of a 'punk prayer' in Moscow's Christ the Savior cathedral in 2012. This case was considered under three different articles of the European Convention on Human Rights but it made two judgements under the same Article 10 which the judges later said could not protect Frau S. In the Pussy Riot case, the court found that the girls' right to freedom of expression under Article 10 had been violated.

Caesar

Best of the Web: The Gulag Archipelago: A new foreword by Jordan B. Peterson

Jordan Peterson
© Andy Ngo
Editor's note: The following essay is Jordan B. Peterson's new foreword to the new edition of The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Penguin, November 2018, 544 pages). Reproduced with the kind permission of the author.

From the speech delivered by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to the Swedish Academy on the occasion of his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature:
Once we have taken up the word, it is thereafter impossible to turn away: A writer is no detached judge of his countrymen and contemporaries; he is an accomplice to all the evil committed in his country or by his people. And if the tanks of his fatherland have bloodied the pavement of a foreign capital, then rust-colored stains have forever bespattered the writer's face. And if on some fateful night a trusting Friend is strangled in his sleep-then the palms of the writer bear the bruises from that rope. And if his youthful fellow citizens nonchalantly proclaim the advantages of debauchery over humble toil, if they abandon themselves to drugs, or seize hostages-then this stench too is mingled with the breath of the writer. Have we the insolence to declare that we do not answer for the evils of today's world?...

The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme-only not through me. But it is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie! For in the struggle with lies art has always triumphed and shall always triumph! Visibly, irrefutably for all! Lies can prevail against much in this world, but never against art...

One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.
* * *

Blackbox

Best of the Web: Is Brazil's Bolsonaro a Pinochet or a populist? - George Galloway

Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro
© Global Look Press / Cris FagaSupporters of Jair Bolsonaro in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 24 October 2018
The victory of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Latin America's most populous country and co-founder of the BRICS bloc, has understandably caused much fluttering in the dovecotes of leftists and liberals around the globe.

But what the Bolsonaro victory shows is not so much the strength of far-right ideas as the weakness of the left.

First, though, a word about fascism.

It has become in vogue for left wing people to brand everyone to the right of them 'a fascist'. This is not just wrong it is entirely self-defeating. As the famous 'Boy who cried Wolf' found out, it can end up with one being eaten when folks conclude that if everybody is a fascist then, for practical purposes, nobody is.

Comment: Brazil swings right, elects right-wing nationalist Jair Bolsonaro as president


USA

Best of the Web: American breakdown: Uncle Sam finally pays an overdue visit to the psychiatrist couch

uncle same parade balloon
© Reuters / Eric Thayer
After a tumultuous week that included letter bombs, a swooning stock market, a caravan of migrants approaching the border, and a deadly mass shooting at a synagogue, the US finally sought out professional help.

Hello, Doctor. I am so grateful that you agreed to see me at this late hour. I am at my wit's end with the latest turn of events and could really use some consultation. Yes, I would be happy to recline myself on your fine couch, thank you.

Tell you about myself? Well, alright. My name is Uncle Sam and I manage a political entity known as the United States of America, perhaps you've heard of it. It's a sprawling democratic franchise that is home to some 325 million restless souls, each with their own endless desires and demands. They always want something! As for myself, I turned 242 years old in July, and I guess you could say I'm struggling with a mid-life crisis of sorts. Although my friends say I am sprightly for my age, ongoing events have taken a toll on this body and mind. And now with this maverick Donald Trump in the White House I haven't had a moment's rest in a long time. Why, I barely recognize my own country anymore!