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I detect a little communism.

Matti Nykanen, the absolute hero of the 1984 Olympics, was one of the greatest athletes in Ski Jumping. He said - "Life is life. It's always 50/60%" He was never sober and always won.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gc4QTqslN4 I'm leaving.

I'm the best pal you boys ever have.

U.S. military aid is a luxury, not a necessity, for Ukrainian combat operations to counter Russian aggression. From what I’ve seen, the country is perfectly capable of fighting its own war—with or without the American military aid. However, recent news reports and social media commentaries highlight the fact that Ukraine’s armed forces suffered at least 13 combat deaths during the 55 days in which the Trump administration withheld nearly $400 million in military aid from mid-July to mid-September. The implication is that Ukraine is treading water in its war effort, suspended over the abyss of defeat at Russia’s hands only...

Intro: From Phnom Pehn to Srebrenica In 1977, Noam Chomsky and his co-author, the late Edward S. Herman, wrote an essay for the Nation entitled “Distortions at Fourth Hand,” in which they scorned reports that the Khmer Rouge were turning Cambodia into a charnel house. Stories of genocide, they suggested, were either exaggerated or fabricated outright by refugees, and any deaths—regrettable though they may be—were most likely the result of disease, starvation, and confusion caused by America’s devastating involvement in the foregoing civil war. The two books that bore the brunt of Herman and Chomsky’s disdain were John Barron and...

Rubber Duck

The idea that all life on this planet is in jeopardy if America doesn’t wean itself from fossil fuels is just hyperbole. ‘Climate change is an existential crisis,” Senator Elizabeth Warren declared Tuesday, unveiling her plan to fight climate change in advance of CNN’s interminable townhall event on the topic with ten Democratic presidential candidates. The use of the term “existential crisis” is ironic. No doubt, they mean “existential threat,” i.e. that global warming threatens to end life on earth. It doesn’t. But we’ll get back to that in a second. The term “existential crisis” comes from psychology or philosophy,...

Commentary Useful Idiot The curious case of Max Blumenthal AUG, 2019 BY BRUCE BAWER Its back cover features encomia from Reza Aslan, Andrew Cockburn, and Oliver Stone, and its jacket copy promises that readers will find in its pages “the real story behind America’s dealings with the world” and proof that “the extremist forces that now threaten peace across the globe are the inevitable flowering of American imperial design.” The book is The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump, and its author is Max Blumenthal, the son of...

Furious at the breakout success of the HBO series Chernobyl, Russia is planning to make its own series portraying the nuclear disaster as the work of an American CIA operative. Russian television broadcaster NTV announced that it had commissioned the series, and principal photography has already begun in Belarus under director Alexei Muradov. In response to the HBO series' depiction of Soviet bureaucrats bungling the response both during and after the 1986 nuclear accident in the Ukrainian SSR, the Russian version plans to tell the tale of a heroic KGB agent trying to thwart a supposed CIA sabotage plot. 'One...

President Obama's former White House counsel Gregory Craig was indicted on Thursday for concealing information and making false statements to federal authorities in an investigation stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the 2016 election. Details: Craig, who also served in the President Bill Clinton’s administration, is facing up to 5 years in prison for allegedly lying about his work with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort for the Russia-aligned government of Ukraine. The investigation of Craig is part of a larger crack down on foreign lobbying by the Department of Justice's Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) unit.

State television praised the ‘modern’ tech despite photos revealing actor in costume A “hi-tech robot” shown on Russian state television has turned out to be a man in a suit. Russia-24 praised the ersatz android during coverage of a youth forum dedicated to robotics, boasting that “Robot Boris has already learned to dance and he’s not that bad”. But sharp-eyed bloggers were dubious. The Russian website TJournal listed questions about the robot’s performance: Where were Boris’s external sensors? Why did the robot make so many “unnecessary movements” while dancing? And why did the robot look like a person would fit...

Following the sinking of one of the world’s largest dry docks on October 29 in a shipyard in the far northwest part of Russia, officials have finally admitted that they are unable to continue work on Russia’s sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, for the time being. While Russia’s shipbuilding industry is reportedly looking into alternatives, no timely and viable solution to continue retrofitting work on the Russian Navy’s flagship has emerged to date. “We have alternatives actually for all the ships except for [the aircraft carrier] Admiral Kuznetsov. Our enterprises are in operation, [including] the Nerpa [Ship Repair Factory],”...

Belgium said on Thursday it had chosen Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth jets over the Eurofighter Typhoon to replace its aging F-16s in a 4 billion euro ($4.55 billion) deal, saying the decision came down to price. ... Belgium joins a list of other European NATO allies, including Britain, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey, to take the American-made plane, which is also set to be the U.S. military’s main fighter aircraft for decades to come. “We have landed! This government is investing heavily in defense. With the purchase of F-35A fighter planes ... we ensure your safety and that of our...

<p>WASHINGTON — More than 100 U.S. Marines were sent as reinforcements to a remote coalition outpost in southern Syria on Friday after Russia threatened to attack militants in the area, the Pentagon said.</p> <p>The troops were flown by helicopter to the base at At Tanf — a small town near the borders of Syria, Iraq and Jordan. The base is used by U.S. special forces to train Syrian fighters who are confronting Islamic State militants.</p>

Rolls-Royce has released plans for a flying taxi that could be taking to the skies in the early 2020s. The British manufacturer will unveil its designs for an electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) vehicle at the Farnborough Airshow, which will be officially opened by Prime Minister Theresa May tomorrow. The air show is one of the biggest events in the aviation calendar, and May is expected to use the occasion to announce a slew of new initiatives to boost employment and growth in the UK’s aerospace industry, and to protect the supply chains that companies such as Bombardier, Rolls-Royce...

Reporters have photographed what appears to be evidence of people voting twice in Russia’s presidential election. Vladimir Putin returned to power at the weekend with a of the vote. In the town of Ust-Djeguta, in southern Russia near Georgia, Reuters reporters photographed 17 people who appeared to cast two ballots. Leila Koichuyeva, a member of the election commission, when shown the pictures of people who apparently voted twice, said: “They could be twins.” Zukhra Chomaeva, another election official at polling station number 217, said: “How do I know if they’re the same person? They might look the same.” Ludmila Sklyarevskaya...

I finally watched it today. It is not a hilarious comedy as the trailer suggests. It is a very very black comedy as everything in this movie really happened and the atmosphere it hints at without going too dark is very real. Perhaps this is a good way to teach this part of the history so far often neglected. The kids and adults will see this movie and think it was over the top and then will seek more information only to learn that this is how insane that horror really was and the movie was basically the exact retelling.

My cousin is an anesthesiologist. I think she is really smart, but she works 13 hours every day and perhaps doesn't have time to think. She is saying the dumbest leftist things, but I know she is not a bad person. Perhaps you guys have some pieces of advice on how to talk with your family when they've been fooled like that.

Russia's culture ministry on Tuesday withdrew permission for the release of British film The Death of Stalin later this week after officials and top arts figures labelled it offensive and "extremist". Armando Iannucci's comedy, which had a world premiere in September, takes a satirical look at the power scramble after Stalin's 1953 death and includes actors playing historical figures such as World War II commander Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Nikita Kruschev and Vyacheslav Molotov. "The distribution certificate for the film 'The Death of Stalin' has been withdrawn," a spokeswoman for the culture ministry told AFP. The ministry said the film's release...