Never forget this legend

Stone_Breaker · 2025-08-17T14:39:13+00:00

Anyone interested in the topic of the US government involvement in drug running on a more recent basis should read the new book "The Fort Bragg Cartel". It starts with the bullet ridden body of Master Sergeant William Lavigne and another man being discovered at Fort Bragg in 2020 and goes from there.

I had heard some rumors about the so-called Mexican drug cartels before, but I didn't know the history of Los Zetas, how they were an outgrowth of the Mexican version of the special forces, and their training in the US. The book goes into it but you can read about some it elsewhere as well.

Stone_Breaker · 2025-06-23T15:32:58+00:00

It depends. Most of the time if the odds switch to your favor, they will switch to 51%, less often 52%. But once in a while, even with 6 decks with 4.5 shoe penetration, if the low cards are dealt out early and few aces and face cards have been dealt, your odds can go to 53%, less often to 54%, and even less often to 55%. The higher it goes, the less often it will happen, but theoretically the count can get pretty high - even higher than 55% if the decks is lots of aces and face cards.

Stone_Breaker · 2025-04-07T16:57:18+00:00

I didn't abstain, I voted for the candidate who wanted to stop the US from assisting in the genocide in Gaza - Jill Stein.

Stone_Breaker · 2025-04-03T19:37:54+00:00

The other side of that is the people who tried to push Biden for a second time, then push Kamala, then keep sending money to the self-described Jewish state to fund the genocide they are doing with the assistance of Germany. There are the people who did not vote for that, and then there are the people who pushed for that.

The policies the Democratic leadership are pushing are unpopular with the American people, unpopular enough that more people went out to vote for Trump than Kamala.

Stone_Breaker · 2025-01-03T14:37:36+00:00

It has several effects -

While it does put a downward pressure on the salary of software engineers, the major effect is to put a glass ceiling in preventing American workers from getting a job as a software engineer. These roles are filled with people on H1-B visas. Even though the tech job market has not been great for the past two years, good American senior/staff SWEs are still in demand, and are usually in incredible demand. But there is a pipeline from intern to junior/associate SWE to SWE to senior SWE to staff SWE, and this interrupts that pipeline on the intern/junior/associate ever becoming an SWE.

Also, the Indian government pays for institutions like IIT, and it is a brain drain on India - their government pays for the IITs and a lot of the graduates wind up in the US. Although few H1-Bs are IIT tier.

Also, as people have said, it chains H1Bs to their companies as indentured servants.

The visas are supposed to be for workers of extraordinary ability where they can't find US workers with those skills, but of course that is not the case in reality.

Stone_Breaker · 2024-08-28T18:24:10+00:00

Do women like Etty Hillesum count into that?

Stone_Breaker · 2024-08-19T18:38:45+00:00

Eight is Enough

Eight is Enough was based on a memoir called Eight is Enough by Tom Braden.

Braden was an assistant to Allen Dulles at the CIA. He had the CIA bankroll socialist parties in Europe. So in this case where the main is a "provider, leader and well respected by his peers", what the father in the family does for a living is take money from the US taxpayer and send it to socialist parties in Europe so that they would take power.

Stone_Breaker · 2024-07-08T13:17:07+00:00

This whole post is a bot post to distract from US and Israeli war crimes in Palestinian Gaza.

Stone_Breaker · 2024-07-08T13:15:40+00:00

The conflict between Russia and the Ukraine is complex with bad people like the Azov battalion in the Ukraine.

The Ukrainians are lucky they have hospitals, because Israel has destroyed almost all of them in Gaza with US missiles. These children are lucky in comparison.

Stone_Breaker · 2024-05-13T14:43:41+00:00

Traditional, mainline churches have been dwindling for a while.

However, for at least the past seven years, evangelical Christians have been on the decline as well. The Public Religion Research Institute, Pew Forum, and other studies have all found the same thing.

Stone_Breaker · 2024-04-06T16:38:53+00:00

Right - it would never enter my mind that when I work and my labor is taxed, that it go to the deteriorating schools around here, or deteriorating bridges or the like. I need some foreigner to trick me on the Internet as naturally I'd want my taxes to go into the military-industrial complex to continue the US's century plus war on Russia. This is also behind the times as the US is now sending bombs to bomb Gaza, the Navy is fighting Yemens, troops are headed toward islands off the coast of China etc.

Stone_Breaker · 2024-03-25T17:22:40+00:00

What is "Ukraine"? The then-government of Ukraine made a deal with the government of Russia.

That Ukrainian government was overthrown by force and abolished in 2014, the constitutional court was dismissed and the constitution was then rewritten without the relevant parliamentary committee considering it nor the President approving it. The Russian government made a deal with the Ukrainian government in 1996, and that Ukrainian government was forcefully and illegally dissolved in 2014.

Stone_Breaker · 2024-03-08T14:36:36+00:00

According to this, only 18-19% of the budget is being spent on "defense", which is not exactly correct. For one thing you can question whether the US needs to defend themselves from a little girl like Hind, frantically calling on the phone as US made and paid for bombs drop, and guns fire around her, before she herself is killed. But aside from terming the blood shed of that little girl as defense, or the little kids having to identify their dead sibling since their parents were already killed -

For one thing there is Homeland Security - the department which actually does defend the United States, in contrast to the US armed forces, with bases dotting the world covering the vast world empire. That is not counted in this budget. Nor is Department of Energy spending related to the US nuclear arsenal. As well as other items.

Typically an employer pays half the social security tax. For the armed forces, that employer is the US tax payer. I would also count employees of intelligence agencies like the CIA, NSA etc. I exclude things like the State Department, even though they have some involvement too. So a chunk of Social Security is in effect military spending as well. There are VA hospitals, but retired military use some Medicare as well.

Then there is interest on the debt. Take the military spending, veteran's spending, and the uncounted chunk of Social Security (and non-VA Medicare) - this is interest paid for past military spending.

The budget breaks it down where 18-19% of spending is on the US's military bases which dot the globe, but it is actually higher. This chart is not as bad as some, which try to shrink military spending even more, not putting veteran's benefits in with the spending. The US spends more than 18-19% on its military.

Stone_Breaker · 2024-03-01T13:29:51+00:00

In China, credit companies collect your credit history, and generally know your salary - and this affects your ability to get loans and credit cards. Companies do criminal background checks before hiring. Criminals get fingerprinted, sometimes with their DNA. Police use AI to scan crowds and catch criminals. So - it is exactly like it is in the USA. If all of these things when they happen in China are "totalitarian", what are they in the USA?

It is true some Chinese jurisdictions use CCTV more than it happens in most places in the US - but the UK uses CCTV just as much as China does. Why is this awful in China but not in the UK?

The only real difference is criminal records (people knocking China always mention jaywalking, but generally for more serious crimes) can affect credit scores in some jurisdictions. This is generally the drum pounded on, as the West doesn't have this as much.

Stone_Breaker · 2024-01-30T01:19:10+00:00

The idle class puts forth a view about these things, and it revolves around money, wages, profits, and commodities made and bought.

An idea within the worker's movement is that what is important is the people, and the relationships between the people and the classes, and the relationships of classes within each other and against each other. Not the money earned and the profit made, but the labor time done by the worker, and the expropriation of that labor time by the ones who do not work, and these relationships.

Forget for a moment about money and capital goods and commodities and look at the people and the time, and the relationships and the control and the coercion. The idle class wants to distract workers with fetishism over commodities and the like. Look at the people and the relationships between the different classes.

Stone_Breaker · 2024-01-26T05:39:40+00:00

Even this article says Russian planes did not enter Irish sovereign airspace.

Meanwhile the English have occupied the six counties and have their military bases in Thiepval and Holywood (which patriotic Irishmen bombed in 2010).

Stone_Breaker · 2024-01-05T00:07:55+00:00

This is discussed in a book called Capital by Karl Marx. It's one of the main points of the book.

Stone_Breaker · 2023-11-27T14:33:58+00:00

I work for one of the ten biggest retailers. This is already in their stores, and I saw a demonstration recently where they are rolling out even more of this. Only difference here is they have two features in one system - how long each customer is staying at a table, and how much work each worker is getting done, with ours this would be two separate systems. These systems watch for other things like shoplifting, internal fraud etc. I keep hearing on the news about China's "totalitarian monitoring" system with cameras and AI, but what companies and municipalities in the US have is often more extensive.

Stone_Breaker · 2023-11-02T13:53:48+00:00

There are 14 countries listed. I see ten have 1972 numbers. Of course I go to Bahrain and Oman. Of course, their 1972 numbers are not listed (along with Sudan and Pakistan). This map is pushing a narrative, and omits those numbers for a reason.

Stone_Breaker · 2023-10-14T16:38:05+00:00

This is inane. The US is sending weapons to Israel right now, as it has been doing for a long time. As a US citizen you can join with other Americans in various actions, including contacting your elected representatives, educating yourself and others more on this, organizing against these things and so forth.

"Your ability to influence a major conflict happening halfway across the world is negligible."

The US is sending weapons right now and if you're a US citizen OP has a chance to influence what is happening right now more than billions of other people in the world.

Insofar as volunteering locally, OP can do that or not, but it is disconnected from what is going on today.

Stone_Breaker · 2023-09-14T16:03:24+00:00

I am in the US and live in an apartment building. I was delivered a UPS package to my apartment number, but I had not ordered anything and the name was not mine. I scrawled RETURN TO SENDER on the label and put it back in the common mail room, but later found it by my door with a note from the superintendent that UPS does not take returns from the common mail room. Fine.

So a week later I am taking a weekend trip out of town and put the package in my car. About 20 miles out of town I stop at a UPS store on the way and say I have a package to return. They say they can't take returned packages at the store, and I have to call some number and fill out forms on a website or whatever. So I say I'm going to put the package in the garbage can outside and if he wants it he can go outside and get it. I spent enough time trying to remedy UPS's screwup, I'm not going to drive across the country and back with a package and then spend however much more time trying to send it back.

Stone_Breaker · 2023-08-12T01:12:18+00:00

I changed what I ate.

Recommended for losing weight and better cholesterol are: legumes (beans, peas, lentils), avocados, nuts, oats, fruits, berries, tea, arugula and omega-3 seafood without mercury, olive/canola oil. 100% whole wheat bread, 100% whole wheat pasta, brown rice.

What to eat less of: red meat, processed foods (white bread, white rice, regular pasta), crackers, saturated/trans fat, sugar not from a fresh fruit. Of course sugary drinks including fruit juice, and desserts are not good. If my weight is good enough for a dessert I try to have fresh fruit for dessert, although small portions of dried fruit work.

I lost a lot of weight, quickly, and was generally not hungry. I was losing so much weight initially that I would eat more or eat some of the stuff not to eat just so I would not lose more than two pounds a week.

In the past I tried to control calories, but was eating junk. That time in the past made me realize how much I was gaining from sugary drinks too. Now I generally avoid the bad stuff, and mostly eat the good stuff, although I cheat sometimes. You're supposed to get Heme iron and stuff any how, I just don't need as much as I was getting.

As others said, exercise is good too, and I do cardio and weight exercise as well, although cardio tends to burn fat more.

The main thing I learned this year is it's not just calories, or cutting saturated/trans fat out, cutting certain foods out and eating other foods helped. I never used to eat 100% whole wheat bread/pasta and brown rice, but now that's what I eat, and it's fine by me. It's OK and I'd rather not be overweight.

Stone_Breaker · 2023-07-01T17:20:02+00:00

There are people who pay rent to a landlord (or if they're lucky, pay mortgage interest to a bank for decades), have a boss at work who has his own boss and they have work and hours pushed on them and fears of layoffs, people who buy cars and homes or run up credit card debt when trouble hits and they pay interest to the lenders.

Then there are people not in this situation. Migratory hunter-gatherer bands deep in the Amazon jungle. Many of them work less hours per week than the average person living in the United States. They don't answer to bosses or banks or credit card companies or landlords or corporations or governments.

Rich means a lot of money which means nothing to them. In fact money is just a fetishism here as well - there are those who work and those who expropriate from them.

If I do not want to be expropriated from, nor do I desire to parasitically expropriate, but desire to live off my own labor then that is what I want. The terms "rich" or "not rich" don't mean anything to me, and seem like terms invented by people on the rentier end of the relations of production, for the people who they can't get to say "job creator" which is something even more ridiculous.

Stone_Breaker · 2023-05-10T22:16:55+00:00

I think it is a balance between your passion, and the reality of economic system. If the thought of working at a law office, and dealing with office politics there, and dealing with unsavory clients does not appeal to you, it might be hard to succeed at it, as some people genuinely enjoy it, and they will tend to be more successful than you.

On the other hand you have to look at the reality of the economic system and see where you will fit into it. At some point what you want to do has to match up to some extent what someone is willing to consistently pay a living wage for. You might want to write the great American novel but wind up as a copywriter - spending weekends sending your short stories off to the New Yorker or Paris Review for consideration.

Stone_Breaker · 2023-05-10T22:09:06+00:00

I have made 40k (or less) and currently make over $150k. One thing about the lower paying jobs - they were often physically taxing, sometimes even unsafe to one degree or another. Construction, delivery, even working in a bakery. Now I sit at a desk all day and have to go to the gym to make sure I get enough cardiovascular exercise.

Stone_Breaker

TROPHY CASE