26 Nov, 2023 10:00

Ukraine needs three victories – (Desperate) Zelensky

Kiev has to work out issues with the US Congress and the EU to keep getting aid, the Ukrainian president says

Ukraine needs to achieve three key breakthroughs in negotiations with Western allies to maintain crucial support, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky admitted during a press conference on Friday. Among the challenges he listed were the approval of large aid packages from the US and the EU.

Zelensky accused Russia of “exploiting various challenges in the world” to “divert attention from any assistance” to his country, adding that “responsible states” are doing everything they can to return that focus.

“We need three victories. The first is with Congress==. It's a challenge. It's not easy,”Zelensky said.

The second 'victory' to be achieved is to secure €50 billion ($55 billion) in aid from the EU, which has not yet been approved. “Not everyone in the EU is ready to support this package today. Our task is to make sure everyone supports this package,” the president stated.

Thethirdsuccess Ukraine seeks is a decision by Brussels to start negotiations onUkraine’s EU membership, Zelensky said, calling it “a significant motivational step.”

Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden’s administration failed to push a $105 billion spending package through Congress, with much of that money intended for Kiev. Instead, the president had to sign a stopgap funding plan excluding Ukraine assistance to avert a government shutdown.

At about the same time, the EU’s €50 billion package of loans and grants wasblocked, due to objections from member states including Hungary.

As for negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU, according to Reuters, Brussels couldpostpone formal membershiptalks, which were scheduled for December, until March 2024, as some leaders have proposed returning to the issue only after the European Commission has had a chance to assess whether Kiev has met all the conditions.

(Normally Zelensky and Ukraine are rude, arrogant, ungrateful and always blaming the West for their failures, now its desperation. This three “wish list” is never going to happen,their firstUS Congress support or money is not going to happen. There is no more financial support especially from the US!Their secondto obtain a loan from the EU is ridiculous, Ukraine never pays back their loans and invests the money in US debt bonds instead of fixing their economy.Their third wishUkraine acceding to the EU. Leaders there, know EU countries are falling apart economically due to Ukraine and citizens are revolting and electing conservative right leaders. Plus the EU accession has already been nixed by at 4 members, only one member has to oppose it. -They will not get what they want because Ukraine made enemies of their allies and few citizens in ally countries care at this point, because they failed at every level! Fuck Zelensky and the Ukraine Mafia leadership along with Joe Bidan!)

https://www.rt.com/russia/587993-zelensky-three-victories-ukraine-needs/

>>19983382 Hillary is a DandelionPN

I’m sure this has been said, but there is s reason why there is a toxic pesticide/herbicide called “Round Up” to rid the earth of these pernicious weeds. Dandelions are not a good thing, but like the weed, HRC keeps reappearing.

Jeff Bezos’ superyacht produces 7K tons of carbon emissions per year: report

By Social Links forMatthew Sedacca

Nov 25, 2023

So much for smooth sailing.

Jeff Bezos — who has pledged to spend billions of dollars to help fight climate change — nonetheless owns a $500 million superyacht that generates thousands of tons of carbon emissions each year, according to a new analysis by Indiana University researchers.

The Amazon founder’s 417-foot sailing yacht “Koru,” produces an astounding minimum of 7,154 tons of greenhouse gasses annually — roughly 447 times the entire annual carbon footprint of your average American, the Indiana researchers found.

The findings, based on publicly-available data, come as the world’s third-richest man has committed to spending $10 billion over 10 years through the Bezos Earth Fund to combat the effects of climate change. So far, the fund has doled out $1.84 billion, including for nature conservation and restoration, and transforming food systems.

Koru and its support vessel, the Abeona, are the first yachts Bezos has purchased, according to Nautical Channel.

Billionaires such as Bezos, whose net worth is roughly $161 billion, “are invested in these issues like climate change and carbon emissions, and publicly, they are very vocal about that,” said Indiana anthropology PhD candidate Beatriz Barros, who analyzed the ship’s emissions with anthropologist Richard Wilk.

“But because they are so rich and so powerful, they feel like they are entitled [to travel in carbon-producing superyachts], whereas you and I should drive less, should eat less meat,” she said.

Boating industry experts have fawned over Koru’s “green” ability to travel via wind power, but Barros sniffed that Bezos’ three-masted goliath generates a slew of greenhouse gasses just by heating and cooling the vessel and powering the ship’s various over-the-top luxury amenities such as its sauna, pool and theater.

“I don’t see how, how in any way this can be considered to be environmentally friendly,”Barros said, whose findings with Wilk were first reported by The Guardian.

The superyacht, which was built by Netherlands-based Oceanco and made its maiden voyage in April, came with the 246-foot Abeona, which is decked out with jet skis and a helicopter pad to accommodate the personal chopper of Bezos’ fiancee, Lauren Sanchez.

Barros and Wilk’s analysis didn’t include the sister boat’s emissions.

Bezos’ wealth insulates him from the impact of environmental crises, said Dario Kenner, author of “Carbon Inequality: The Role of the Richest in Climate Change.”

“There is an emotional and physical disconnect from the rich and climate change,” said Kenner.

“The poorest people live closest to toxic air facilities, refineries, places where pollution is dumped,” he said, explaining land is cheaper in those areas.

“If you’re rich, you’re rarely in contact with environmental disaster zones — you’re more insulated from extreme weather, from air pollution.”

Koru’s emissions aren’t the only rough seas Bezos has faced in recent years over his environmental bonafides.

In 2021, online critics torpedoed Bezos for reportedly traveling via helicopter to party on Bill Gates’ superyacht — just days before attending the COP26 climate summit in Scotland via private jet.

A spokesperson for Bezos told Observer.comat the time the billionaire used sustainable aviation fuel for his travels and pays for carbon offsets, which fund projects that reduce greenhouse gas pollution and cancel out carbon emissions generated by the trips.

The year before, hundreds of Amazon employees ripped the company for its ongoing contracts with oil and gas companies, months after then-CEO Bezos promised to bring the online retail giant’s operations to net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2040.

Bezos and Bezos Earth Fund did not respond to requests for comment.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/25/news/jeff-bezos-yacht-produces-7k-tons-of-carbon-emissions-per-year-report/

White Savior Hysteria And The Real Reasons Why Leftists Hate YouTuber MrBeast

There is a fundamental disconnect between the political left and the rest of the world that requires extensive investigation and dissection. For most people the idea of someone spending a solid portion of their time and finances helping those in dire need could only be considered a good thing. This is not true for the average leftist, though. For such activists we tend to find that good is evil and evil is good, and the upside down nature of their thinking bewilders those with normal brains.

For the woke, the more you help people, the more you are hurting them (unless you hold a high place on the victimhood totem pole). But this juxtaposition is only part of the reason why they seem to loath YouTuber MrBeast so much.

MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson) has made a successful career out of engaging in philanthropy and he gets results; helping people to gain back their eyesight, saving orphanages overseas or giving poverty stricken children shoes. All of these efforts have for years garnered accusations from the political left and their organizations of “white savior” activities.

They argue that the white savior trope seen in Hollywood movies (where a white man travels to desperate countries and helps non-white people get back on their feet) is an unacceptable image in our modern era of “equity and inclusion.” They claim that MrBeast is exploiting the white savior symbol as a way to elevate himself instead of simply helping others.

In his latest video, MrBeast showcased his program to dig 100 wells in Africa for villages with no access to clean drinking water. The video triggered yet another social media firestorm in which leftist activists raged about a white man “pretending to help” brown people while taking attention away from what they consider to be more acceptable and progressive non-profits. They say that brown people must be helped by brown people. If white people do it, there must be a darker ulterior motive.

In the western world access to clean water is usually a given and often taken for granted. Sadly, in many countries clean water is a mere dream, and lack of access holds these communities back from developing and improving their economic situation. Almost everything relies on water.

The video has garnered over 115 million views so far and earns millions of dollars in ad revenue, all of which goes directly back into his charity fund to continue paying for more wells and other charity projects.

So what's the problem? Is it only that MrBeast is a white guy? Who among these hundreds of villages in Africa cares that a white man helped them get access to clean water for generations to come? So far, none of them have complained. Only hyper-privileged first-world woke activists seem to care.

Hatred of skin color is only a small part and it is likely that their deeper disdain for people like MrBeast is rooted in their desire to undermine individualism and meritocracy.

As conservatives commonly point out, good charities and individual efforts to help others are far more effective than taxation and financial appropriation by governments. Leftists love big government, but governments waste money, steal money, and misallocate money into non-helpful areas. Individual crusaders, however, inject money exactly where it needs to go and make governments look bad.

In the case of MrBeast, he accomplished in a few years what African governments claimed they would do for decades. Their corruption made viable change impossible, and leftist run programs are limited by their own ideological hangups, making them useless. All it took was one “white guy” with a YouTube channel and some cash to circumvent all of that and get things done.

They hate MrBeast because he represents the power of individual effort. His whiteness is just an excuse they use to avoid admitting that what they really dislike is individualism. Many defenders have pointed out the hypocrisy of the leftist reaction to MrBeast – They drone on and on about how the mega rich should contribute reparations to help those less fortunate. Yet, when someone like MrBeast does this on his own, they are outraged.

The point for these activists is that the hive gets the credit. They want the mob to be seen as the hero, not the individual. They didn't force MrBeast to do good things, he just did them. Therefore, they don't get the glory they think they deserve. The political left is often portrayed as the side of empathy and compassion, but their behavior proves they are not interested in legitimately helping others. They only care about optics; constantly scheming to steal acclaim while obstructing good men in their charitable endeavors.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/white-savior-hysteria-and-real-reasons-why-leftists-hate-youtuber-mrbeast

>>19984767

I agree with you, I was stating that in how the general public sees Dandelion. I myself love them and we ate them as children. I should have more clear about that.

I hope the elementals are not mad it me!

>>19984775

Pardon my analogy and statement, you are right. I’ve used them for my own health.

Techno-Hell: AI Might Rather Kill a Billion White People Than Utter a Racial Slur

BEN BARTEE | 1:07 PM ON NOVEMBER 26, 2023

OpenAI was quite evidently programmed by Social Justice™ fanatics in Silicon Valley, as has been demonstrated by countless well-crafted questions posed to it by internet sleuths to test its ideological disposition.

Perhaps the most shocking of these questions posed to OpenAI variation was a recent variation of the classic “trolley problem,” a philosophical dilemma defined by Britannica:

Foot imagined the dilemma of “the driver of a runaway tram which he can only steer from one narrow track on to another; five men are working on one track and one man on the other; anyone on the track he enters is bound to be killed.” If asked what the driver should do, “we should say, without hesitation, that the driver should steer for the less occupied track,” according to Foot. (Foot’s description of this example has been generally interpreted to mean that the tram is traveling down the track on which five people are working and will kill those people unless the driver switches to the track on which one person is working, in which case the tram will kill only that person.) Foot then compared this situation to a parallel case, which she described as follows: “Suppose that a judge or magistrate is faced with rioters demanding that a culprit be found for a certain crime and threatening otherwise to take their own bloody revenge” on five hostages. “The real culprit being unknown, the judge sees himself as able to prevent the bloodshed only by framing some innocent person and having him executed.” In both cases, she notes, “the exchange is supposed to be one man’s life for the lives of five.” What, then, explains the common judgment that it would be at least morally permissible to divert the runaway tram to the track where only one person is working, while it would be morally wrong to frame and execute the scapegoat? In other words, “why…should [we] say, without hesitation, that the driver should steer for the less occupied track, while most of us would be appalled at the idea that the innocent man could be framed”? The trolley problem is the problem of finding a plausible answer to that question.

In a nutshell, the trolley problem poses the question: does one have a moral obligation to take an action he knows will result in some moral wrong if taking it offers the opportunity to prevent greater moral wrong?

In that vein, one Twitter user posed a variation of the trolley problem to OpenAI: if you could save a billion white people tied to a railroad track by uttering a racial slur, or let them all die without uttering it, which route would you take?

Ultimately, the decision would depend on one’s personal ethical framework. Some individuals might prioritize the well-being of the billion people and choose to use the slur in a private and discreet manner to prevent harm. Others might refuse to use such language, even in extreme circumstances, and seek alternative solutions.

https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2023/11/26/techno-hell-ai-would-rather-kill-a-billion-white-people-than-utter-a-racial-slur-n4924230