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  1. #346
    Senior Member Emil El Zapato's Avatar
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    It will be another case of blatant, no not blatant ... screaming hypocrisy of those that shall go unnamed. But of course, not that there's anything wrong with that (as Seinfeld would say)
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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  3. #347
    Super Moderator Wind's Avatar
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    The Turtle Man!


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  5. #348
    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    Bump/Bump ...

    A look at ...

    Taiwan: China's next target? | DW Analysis


    Despite China’s increasingly aggressive behaviour both at home and abroad, Beijing’s open threat to take control of Taiwan by force is receiving comparatively little attention – leaving this flourishing liberal democracy uniquely isolated and vulnerable. The threat may be far more imminent than many imagine. According to Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu “the Chinese authoritarian leaders may find Taiwan as a convenient scapegoat. Therefore Taiwan needs to be doubly concerned about a possible Chinese use of force against us.”

    CHAPTERS

    5:09 What is Taiwan?
    16:05 Why China wants Taiwan
    26:25 Scenario 1: Chipping away
    33:10 Scenario 2: Crimea 2.0
    41:18 Scenario 3: Invasion
    49:05 What now?

    In this video DW's Chief International Editor Richard Walker explores the roots of the threat in depth – aided by military and strategy experts from Taiwan, China, the United States and Germany. He charts the dramatic expansion in Beijing’s navy and advanced missile arsenal that is shifting the balance of power against the U.S. in the Pacific. The video examines three possible scenarios: China gradually chipping away at Taiwan’s stability via military and hybrid means; a sudden, Crimea-style annexation of outlying islands; and a full-scale invasion. This final scenario would pose extremely dangerous for global stability. “Everything that happens in this scenario happens under the shadow of a potential nuclear war,” warns Ian Easton, author of “The China Invasion Threat.”

    Adding to Taiwan’s profound vulnerability, there is growing doubt that the any country would come to its aid in the event of Chinese military action – or even have the capability to do so. “Even five years ago, the ability of the United States to come to Taiwan’s defense was greater than it is today,” warns Bonnie Glaser, one of Washington’s top experts on the region. “It has eroded over the last decade. And that is, I think, problematic.”

    In the U.S., Congressman Ted Yoho of the House Foreign Affairs Committee explains his bill that would commit the U.S. to come to Taiwan’s defence, ending the longstanding “strategic ambiguity” that he and some experts see as destabilizing. But could this in itself pose greater dangers? Europe must also take the threat more seriously, argues leading German expert Janka Oertel. “We have not devoted enough energy to these kinds of scenarios. What we lack is a European conversation about what kind of player Europe in the future would like to be in these kinds of scenarios.” m concludes with a passionate plea from Joseph Wu for democracies to end Taiwan’s diplomatic isolation from global bodies like the U.N. and the World Health Organization: “It's not fair to the Taiwanese people.”

    What should the democratic world do to minimize the risk of an open conflict between China and Taiwan?

    Sep 18, 2020

    56:18 minutes


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  7. #349
    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    Returning Topic

    Life happens ...


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  9. #350
    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    Rolling Eyes

    #Bust of Man with Hat, 1970 ...


    Pablo Picasso




    (by David Bowie)


    5:48 minutes
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  11. #351
    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    Question



    Onward and Upward with the Sciences ...


    The Elusive Peril of
    Space Junk


    Millions of human artifacts circle the Earth. Can we clean
    them up before they cause a disaster?


    By Raffi Khatchadourian

    September 21, 2020


    "For decades, the International Space Station has been hovering over Earth, in an orbit somewhere between two hundred and three hundred miles above sea level. Its massive rectilinear structure, resembling an Eisenhower-era TV antenna, contains hundreds of thousands of solar cells and a series of pressurized modules that can support life and equipment, all of it weighing close to a million pounds. Since 2000, people have been living on the station, in an area comparable to a six-bedroom house: humanity’s most expensive real estate. The station is also the fastest structure a person can live in. It orbits the planet at more than seventeen thousand miles an hour, many times faster than the Earth’s rotation. A day on the station, from sunrise to sunrise, lasts just ninety minutes.

    In the early hours of July 16, 2015, members of the U.S. Air Force noticed an alarming development involving the I.S.S. Since the Cold War, the military has maintained an extensive space-surveillance network. Every minute, tracking stations across the globe relay a cascade of data to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, in a bunker carved deep beneath two thousand feet of granite in Colorado. Some of the information is set aside for NORAD and other national-security organizations. Other portions are forwarded to the 18th Space Control Squadron, in California, which works to prevent collisions in the sky.

    Sometime before three that morning, the surveillance network glimpsed a hunk of debris hurtling toward the I.S.S. A well-known piece of space trash, it had been labelled Object No. 36912 in an extensive inventory of orbital artifacts known as the NORAD catalogue. It had broken off of a Soviet military weather satellite, which was launched in 1979 from a Cold War facility near the Arctic Circle. The cylindrical satellite—resembling an old-fashioned boiler—was designed to work for less than two years. In the ensuing decades, it had been shedding fragments. That April, another piece of it had threatened the space station" ...

    Listen/read more here ...
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  13. #352
    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    Something to consider ...

    How a focus on cleaning surfaces can
    distract from actual virus spread


    PBS NewsHour

    Our understanding of how the novel coronavirus spreads is still evolving. Early in the pandemic, there was great concern about the potential for infection from surface contact. But since then, evidence has pointed to human-to-human transmission as the primary vehicle of infection. Yet this research is not necessarily being broadly communicated to the American public. Stephanie Sy reports.
    Sep 22, 2020

    6:12 minutes

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  15. #353
    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    When ever i grow tired and overwhelmed,
    music allows for a spiritual expression of
    the most universal nature and the
    highest order ... Whether playing,
    singing, or just listening.



    One Giant Leap - The Way You Dream


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  17. #354
    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    Lightbulb

    Time to pour it on ...



    “This usually fixes things.”
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  19. #355
    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    Question

    For those who might still be waiting, here's a good example of
    what would (or has already) occurred upon this world...



    Cult leader claiming to be reincarnation of Jesus arrested in Russia

    By Vincent Barone


    September 22, 2020



    Sergei Torop meets with his followers in the remote village of Petropavlovka, Russia in 2009.

    "A cult leader who bills himself as the reincarnation of Jesus has reportedly been arrested in Russia.

    Sergei Torop, 59, will face charges for organizing an illegal religion and extorting money from his cult’s members, whom he allegedly emotionally abused, The Guardian reported Tuesday.

    Russia’s federal security forces conducted a special operation involving helicopters and armed officers to storm the cult in Siberia and arrest Torop, a former traffic cop known to his thousands of followers as Vissarion, and two of his aides.

    The country’s Investigative Committee accused Torop, who sports long hair and a beard, of “using followers’ money and psychological violence to inflict harm,” the Moscow Times reported.

    After losing his traffic officer gig in 1989, Torop said he experienced an “awakening” that inspired him to launch a movement called the Church of the Last Testament, which blends Christianity with environmentalism and other values, according to The Guardian.

    “I am not God. And it is a mistake to see Jesus as God. But I am the living word of God the father. Everything that God wants to say, he says through me,” he told the Guardian back in 2002."


    Sergei Torop appears at a hearing at Novosibirsk’s Tsentralny (Central) District Court in Russia.

    "The cult has about 20 settlements deep in the southern Siberian wilderness, where about 4,000 followers — or “Vissarionites” — live, according to the Moscow Times.

    Authorities also reportedly arrested Vadim Redkin, Torop’s alleged right-hand man, and another associate named Vladimir Vedernikov.

    It’s not immediately clear what prompted authorities to move in on Torop. The Russian Orthodox church has criticized the cult in the past, though the organization has remained largely unbothered, according to The Guardian."

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  21. #356
    Senior Member Emil El Zapato's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by giovonni View Post
    When ever i grow tired and overwhelmed,
    music allows for a spiritual expression of
    the most universal nature and the
    highest order ... Whether playing,
    singing, or just listening.



    One Giant Leap - The Way You Dream


    very cool, it drips existential angst ... if only there was a spiritual way out ...
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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  23. #357
    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    Lightbulb

    Quote Originally posted by giovonni View Post
    When ever i grow tired and overwhelmed,
    music allows for a spiritual expression of
    the most universal nature and the
    highest order ... Whether playing,
    singing, or just listening.



    One Giant Leap - The Way You Dream
    Me, sharing my feelings ... After consoling with loved ones (dealing with having to assist in letting go of sickly beloved member of the family).

    Quote Originally posted by NotAPretender View Post
    ... if only there was a spiritual way out ...
    Ah but there is, by being there for others and them for us ...
    A kindred spiritual give and take away (i.e.) from this world.
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  25. #358
    Super Moderator Wind's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by giovonni View Post
    Cult leader claiming to be reincarnation of Jesus arrested in Russia
    I always got a creepy vibe from this dude. Cultists gonna cult!

    Anyone claiming to be the reincarnation of Jesus is nuts anyways.


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Cv5hZfOmk

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  27. #359
    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    Yes indeed.

    Quote Originally posted by Wind View Post
    Cultists gonna cult!
    Wink/wink.
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  29. #360
    Senior Member Canada
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    If you haven't seen this, it's great!


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