I am posting this because it concerns religion and because Musk is saying it. I am not a Musk fanboy but I do recognize he is a powerful member of a somewhat amorphous faction of the American elite, and by extension the Western elite in general.
X is much better than Twitter and seems to have more actual free speech than any other major platform. The algorithm can be dicey and is not everything it could be but it is still pretty good by internet standards to date.
Notice that in the space of one week Japan’s PM resigned due to popular opposition to his open borders policy and that Nepal’s PM resigned over the banning of social media and corruption.
The voices of the people matter. The elite will always be with us and will always be affected by what the public thinks.
Musk is volatile and caused himself significant damage when he exploded over Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. Nevertheless, I like a lot of what he says and does, including his hatred of the woke mind-virus and the little bit he says above about religion.
It’s best to support the elite when they are doing good and oppose them mainly when they are not. ABN
Poland’s Prime Minister today warned ‘we are closer to war than any time since World War Two’ after his country was forced to shoot down Russian drones that violated its airspace.
Polish media is now reporting that Donald Tusk has requested the triggering of NATO’s Article 4, where member countries can bring an issue to the attention of the North Atlantic Council. Poland’s security council will also meet to discuss an ‘appropriate response’.
More than eight million Poles were ordered to hide in their homes as the drones flew overhead, with debris from one shot-down device crashing into a house. The full force of NATO’s fighter planes was unleashed to shoot down the drones.
After the organisation’s patriot defence systems detected the drones with their radars, Polish F-16 fighter jets, Dutch F-35, Italian surveillance aircraft, and NATO’s MRTT mid-air refuelling aircraft all came together to counter the drones.
The downing of Russia’s unmanned aerial vehicles marked the first-ever direct engagement between Moscow and NATO. It has long insisted it wants no confrontation with Putin. Kyiv has accused Russia of deliberately invading Poland’s airspace with 24 UAVs to test the West’s defences.
Multiple Russian drones leaving Ukraine airspace into Poland’s
On Wednesday, Tusk held an extraordinary meeting with top officials after Russia’s actions. Senior army officials are present at the gathering.
He said a number of drones that posed direct threats to Russia were shot down in a joint effort with NATO allies, and warned that Poland is ready to react. The prime minister added that he was in communication with allies.
Tusk also spoke in parliament and said some of the drones flew in from neighbouring Belarus, a staunch ally of Russia. He also confirmed that three or four of the nineteen drones were shot down.
UPDATE: The reasons for this are decidedly ambiguous. Could be to provoke NATO, to test Poland’s defenses, to prepare for negotiations or just to flex. How we interpret it is a psychosemiotic challenge. I doubt Putin wants war and also I doubt he would back down from war if provoked. It is very possible Poland or NATO has provoked Russia in some way we do not know about. Navrotsky said yesterday: ‘I’m not going to give my consent to send the Polish military to Ukraine’. I wonder if his views on that will change now. Another possibility is Zelensky sent doctored drones from Ukraine to provoke Poland against Russia. ABN
Social media ban was lifted on Tuesday but some demonstrations were continuing
Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli was forced to resign on Tuesday by angry young anti-corruption protesters who defied a curfew and clashed with police a day after 19 people died in a first day of protests.
Demonstrations led by young people angry about the blocking of several social media sites gripped the country’s capital a day earlier, and police opened fired on the crowds, killing 19 and injuring 100.
The ban was lifted Tuesday, but the protests continued, with demonstrators setting fire to the homes of some of Nepal’s top leaders and the parliament building. The airport in the capital of Kathmandu was shut, and army helicopters ferried some ministers to safe places.
As the protests intensified, Oli, 73, said he was stepping down immediately.
Protesters take selfies and celebrate at the Singha Durbar, the seat of Nepalese government ministries and offices, after it was set on fire during a protest against a social media ban and corruption in Kathmandu on Tuesday. (Niranjan Shrestha/The Associated Press)
Everything that preceded the 2020 federal election was a complex system of control by a network of ideologues, federal agencies, allies in the private sector, financial stakeholders and corrupt interests all working toward a common goal.
There’s no need to go through the background of how the election was manipulated and how the government and private sector, specifically social media, worked to influence the 2020 outcome because you have all seen it.
Whether it was local election officials working to control outcomes, federal agencies working to support them (CISA, FBI, DHS), financial interests working to fund them (Zuckerberg et al), or social media platforms controlling the visible content and discussion (Twitter Files, Google, Facebook etc.), the objective was all the same. It was a massive one-sided operation against the freewill of the American voter.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, those same system operators, govt officials, corporate media, private sector groups and social media platforms then circled the wagons to scatter the evidence of their conduct. If you questioned anything you were a threat. That’s the context to the dynamic that unfolded.
Lawfare operatives joined forces with Democrat staffers, and allies in social media platforms all worked in concert to target the voices of anyone who would rise in opposition to the corruption that was stunningly clear in the outcome of the election process. Corporate media then labeled, isolated, ridiculed and marginalized anyone who dared to point out the obvious.
When AG Merrick Garland says this of January 6, 2021: […] “the Justice Department has conducted one of the largest, most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history. We have worked to analyze massive amounts of physical and digital data. We have recovered devices, decrypted electronic messages, triangulated phones, and pored through tens of thousands of hours of video. We have also benefited from tens of thousands of tips we received from the public. Following these digital and physical footprints, we were able to identify hundreds of people.” {link} The targeting operation needs context.
Do you remember on April 27, 2024, when DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said, “more than 3.4 million search queries into the NSA database took place between Dec. 1st, 2020 and Nov. 30th, 2021, by government officials and/or contractors working on behalf of the federal government.” The result was “more than 1 million searches of private documents and communication of Americans that were illegal and non-compliant,” and over “10,000 federal employees have access to that database.” {OIG Testimony}.
Put the statement from Garland together with the statement from Horowitz, and you get an understanding of what was done.
Hundreds of stakeholders in the Lawfare network joined forces with hundreds of people who became staff researchers for a weaponized Congress. Hundreds more social media background agents then poured thousands of hours into feeding private information to the DOJ, FBI, J6 Committee and all of their hired staff working on the project.
In white societies, not long ago, it was considered a despicable act of cowardice to sucker-punch anyone, let alone someone who has done nothing to you. The other behavior which, not long ago, was universally consider a despicable act of cowardice is a group of shits ganging up on one person like this.
In Buddhism, self-defense is a virtue, and this includes whole societies defending themselves against POS, like the savages above.
When law courts and governments encourage savagery by sponsoring and permitting it, they define themselves as the enemy.
Oh, one other thing I forgot, allowing rampant crime under ‘color of law’ in days gone by was also considered a despicable act of cowardice. ABN
American Buddhist Net 