The previous Avengers movie, Infinity War, stunned believers and unbelievers alike with its sheer stupendous scale, and that devastating ending in which the evil Thanos appeared to have gained victory by getting hold of all six of the Infinity Stones, causing a crumbling-to-dust of many key players: a terrible cosmic loss, irreparable, irreversible, surely?

We were of course promised wild new surprises with this colossal climactic movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and directed by the Russo brothers, Joe and Anthony. But would these surprises be .... new ways of coming to terms with the unchangeable disaster? Unexpected coping strategies? Novel means of simply accepting the Avengers’ stunningly permanent defeat?

Or could it be … something else? Paul Rudd, who plays Ant-Man, was challenged on TV about the possibility of his character shrinking to a tiny size, flying into some convenient orifice of the evil Thanos, and then grossly enlarging himself to make the great villain go splat like Mr Creosote. Rudd declined to be drawn.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/23/avengers-endgame-review-unc...

 

Welcome to organised insanity. Mind you insanity is voting for Scummo and his band of bandits... Remember Mr Creosote? He makes mor sense than the avengortistas

The US ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, says there is little need for his [diplomatic] craft as “200,000 tons of diplomacy” are prowling the waters of the Mediterranean, unabashedly endorsing military show-offs as a political tool.

“Each of the carriers operating in the Mediterranean at this time represent 100,000 tons of international diplomacy,” Huntsman said in a statement to the US Navy’s 6th Fleet.

Huntsman was speaking aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, part of the dual carrier strike group that also consists of the USS John C. Stennis, the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier. The warships kicked off their joint training operations on Wednesday. It is the first time since summer 2016 that two carrier strike groups have operated in the Mediterranean at the same time.

Speaking to CNN, Huntsman sang the praises of the US’ maritime muscle, calling US saber-rattling virtually at Russia’s doorstep “forward operating diplomacy.”

When you have 200,000 tons of diplomacy that is cruising in the Mediterranean – this is what I call diplomacy, this is forward operating diplomacy – nothing else needs to be said.

While Moscow has long criticized the US military build-up near its borders as a hostile move further straining the rocky relationship between the two countries, Huntsman argued that such military maneuvers are somehow a necessary prerequisite for easing tensions with Moscow.

“You have all the confidence you need to sit down and try to find solutions to the problems that have divided us now for many, many years,” he said.

Each US carrier strike group comprises several vessels led by the carriers and dozens of aircraft. A total of 10 ships, 130 aircraft, and 9,000 sailors and marines are taking part in the drills.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/457380-mediterranean-aicraft-carriers-diplomacy/

 

 

 

In a rare case where soiled diapers have turned into a diplomatic issue, Manila says a private Canadian firm had violated international law by shipping over a hundred containers of trash to the Philippines. Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau earlier said his country could not repatriate the rubbish due to legal hurdles.

Canada struck a conciliatory tone in response to Philippine President Duterte's fierce criticism of the North American country's failure to take back garbage it had earlier dumped in the islands.

"Canada is strongly committed to collaborating with the government of the Philippines to resolve this issue and is aware of the court decision ordering the importer to ship the material back to Canada," the country's embassy in the Philippines said in a statement.

The embassy added that a joint technical working group is examining the matter "with a view to a timely resolution".

Earlier this week, the Philippine's outspoken President Rogrigo Duterte lamented that Canada was treating his country as a "dumpsite" and pledged to declare a war against Ottawa if it failed to act on the issue.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/201904241074412204-canada-responds-to-dute...

 

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Summary – We now live in a society where exposing warmongering is a more serious crime than committing it. Prisons hold many people who have bravely exposed war crimes – yet most criminals continue to walk free and hold positions of power. And when the media is pushing for Julian Assange to be extradicted you know this is beyond simple envy of a man who has almost single-handedly done the job they’ve collectively failed to do. They are equally complicit in warmongering hence why they see Assange and others as a threat.

For those not fooled by the smart suits, liberal platitudes and media distraction techniques, the parallels with Germany in the 1930s in particular are now fairly obvious. The blundering military alliances of 1914 and the pure evil of 1939 – with the ignorance, indifference and narcissism described above make for a destructive mix.

Unless something changes soon our days on this planet are likely be numbered. Depressing but one encouraging thing is that the indisputable truth is now in plain sight for anyone with internet access to see and false narratives have collapsed before. It’s still conceivable that something may create a whole chain of events which sweep these dangerous parasites from power. So anything can happen. In the meantime we should keep positive and continue to spread the message.

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/04/23/lessons-of-the-past/

Here, Professor and observer of international politics, Bruno Guigue analyses a recent discussion between Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump to explain his own vision of the decline of the American hyperpower. (Translation by Jules Letambour).


Have we reached the crucial moment when the declining hyperpower begins to doubt itself? The American press has just recounted what former President Jimmy Carter told Donald Trump during their recent interview. The White House tenant had invited his predecessor to tell him about relations between China and the United States, and Jimmy Carter publicly reported what he said, at a Baptist meeting in Georgia. It's worth reading:

CARTER: You are worried that China is going ahead, and I agree with you. But do you know why China is going beyond us? I normalized diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979. Since that date, do you know how many times China has been at war with anyone? Not even once. And we are constantly at war. The United States is the most warlike nation in the history of the world because it wants to impose American values ​​on other countries. China, for its part, is investing its resources in projects such as high-speed railroads instead of spending on military spending. How many kilometers of high-speed rail do we have in this country? [answer: zero]... We have wasted $ 3 trillion in military spending. China has not wasted a cent for war, and that is why it is ahead of us in almost every area. And if we had taken $ 3 trillion to put in US infrastructure, we would have a high-speed railroad. We would have bridges that do not collapse. We would have roads that would be maintained properly. Our educational system would be as good as that of South Korea or that of Hong Kong.


That such common sense has never touched the mind of an American leader, speaks volumes about the nature of power in this country. It seems difficult for the USA — for a state that accounts for 45% of world military expenditure and has 725 military bases abroad, where the arms industry controls the deep state and whose foreign policy has killed more than 20 million since 1945 — to question its own pathological relationship with armed violence. "The war in Vietnam," said Martin Luther King, "is a symptom of a disease of the American spirit whose pillars are racism, materialism and militarism."

But the question is about the future. By the failures of their leaders, are the United States condemned to follow the fate of empires that have succumbed to their excessive ambitions — literally asphyxiated by the exorbitant weight of military expenditure? At the end of his term in 1961, President Eisenhower denounced prophetically the military-industrial complex that put a heavy burden on American society. No more than Donald Trump or Barack Obama, this industry did not care about the fate of people — hungry, invaded or bombed by Uncle Sam "in the name of democracy and human rights". But as Jimmy Carter says, today the arms race seems to be the main cause of the decline of the empire.

Because the neoconservatives and other "Doctor Strangelove" of the Pentagon, for several decades, have paralleled American democracy with the mass massacres in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and in Syria, not to mention the killings orchestrated in the shadows by the CIA and its branches, from the extermination of the Indonesian left (500,000 dead) to the exploits of Guatemalan death squads (200,000 dead) and through the bloodbaths organised on behalf of the empire, by "lobotomized" jihadists. The strategists of the containment of communism with napalm bombs, then using the wizard-apprentices who deliberately produce chaos by delivering terror, in fact, have not just set the planet ablaze.

Puppets of the deep American State, these warmongers who have established themselves in Congress, in the White House and in the neocon think tanks, have also plunged the American society in an internal decadence that barely mask the frenetic use of the dollar printing press. If the warmongering of the United States is the expression of their decline, it is also the cause. It is the expression, when to stop this decline, the brutality of military intervention, economic sabotage and false flag operations is the hallmark of its foreign policy. It is the cause, when the inflation of military spending sacrifices the development of a country where the rich are richer and the poor more numerous.

As China invests in civilian infrastructure, the United States is abandoning its own people for the benefit of the arms industries. Washington is sabre-rattling outside, but lets the country disintegrate inside. GDP per capita is huge, but 20% of the population lives in poverty. American prison inmates make up 25% of the total world's prisoners. 40% of the population is struck by obesity. The life expectancy of Americans (79.6 years) has gone down, behind that of Cubans (80 years). How can a small socialist country, subject to severe embargo, do better than a gigantic capitalist power crowned by its planetary hegemony? One has to believed that in the USA the health of the populace is not the major concern of the elites.

Skilful fighter, Donald Trump won the 2016 elections by promising to restore the greatness of the United States and to commit to the restoration of jobs lost due to unbridled globalization. But the results, in the absence of proper structural reforms, are a cold shower on his rhetoric. The trade deficit with the rest of the world has exploded in 2018, beating a historic record (891 billion dollars) that shatters that of 2017 (795 billion). Donald Trump has completely failed to turn the tide, and the first two years of his administration are the worst in business history, in US history.

In this overall deficit, the persistent imbalance of trade with China is heavy. It reached in 2018 a historic record (419 billion) which exceeds the disastrous record of the year 2017 (375 billion). In fact, Donald Trump's trade war has increased the US trade deficit. While imports of Chinese goods to the United States continued to grow (+ 7%), China reduced its imports from the United States. Donald Trump wanted to use the tariff weapon to rebalance the US trade balance. It was not so much a bad thing, but unrealistic for a country that linked its destiny to that of a globalization dictated by transnational companies "Made in the USA".

If we add that the trade deficit with Europe, Mexico, Canada and Russia has also worsened, we are measuring the difficulties that beset the declining hyperpower. But that's not all. In addition to the trade deficit, the federal fiscal deficit has also widened ($ 779 billion, against $ 666 billion in 2017). It is true that military spending is impressive. The Pentagon's budget for 2019 is the highest in US history: 686 billion dollars. The same year, China will spent 175 billion, with a population four times higher. Unsurprisingly, under these conditions, the federal debt broke a new record, reaching 22,175 billion dollars. As for private debt, that of US businesses and US individuals, it makes a dizzying 73,000 billion dollars.

Admittedly, the United States benefits from an exceptional situation. The dollar is still the reference currency for international trade and central bank reserves. But this privilege is not eternal. China and Russia are replacing their dollar reserves with gold bullion and their growing trade is now denominated in yuan. The United States lives on credit at the expense of the rest of the world, but for how long? According to the latest study by the PwC audit firm ("The World in 2050: How the World Economy Will Change in the Next 30 Years"), emerging countries (China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Turkey) could to account for almost 50% of global GDP in 2050, while the share of G7 countries (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) would fall to 20%. The fall of the eagle is approaching.



Bruno Guigue is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Ulm Street and the National School of Administration (Jean Monnet promotion 1990). He has a master's degree in philosophy and a master's degree in geopolitics.
Senior official of the Ministry of the Interior from 1990 to 2008, he was notably sub-prefect for the city policy in Marseille from 1993 to 1995, director of the city contract of Saint-Denis from 1996 to 1998, deputy director general services of the Réunion Region from 1998 to 2007.
At the same time, he was Associate Lecturer in Public Law at the University of Reunion from 2001 to 2004
In September 2007, Bruno Guigue was appointed sub-prefect of Saintes, in the department of Charente-Maritime.
He was sacked in March 2008 by Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie for failing in his "duty of reservation", having published a free forum criticizing Israeli policy. The prefect of Charente-Maritime explains that Bruno Guigue, before being sacked, was a civil administrator "detached in the functions of sub-prefect" and that, following his dismissal, he "has returned to his original public service employment— a civil administrator". In January 2017, Sputnik calls him a "former senior official".


Read more:
https://francais.rt.com/opinions/61339-la-chute-de-l-aigle-est-proche-pa...

Gus: our major problem here is that we don't want to see a President of the USA thinking he/she is one of the Avengers with the moral duty to declare other countries such as Russia and China, the enemy... Err, hum... Too late... Bugger...

With a few dead bodies, especially at the end, the movie HEIST was a crap piece of Hollywood rubbish. The acting was quite seriously average, apart from that of Dany de Vito, who badly overplayed his part like a midget mobster with the brains of a lobster being cooked. It was on second rate TV programming last night and I persevered through Heist's unbelievable plots of deceit and counter deceit, with uneven deceitful characters, who could be far too dumb at times that you could have screamed at the box with: "watch your back, he's behind you" should you be bothered. How can a heister-specialist (a poor one at that) be taken to the cleaners by a buffoon (played by de Vito whose only redeeming feature was his short size) and get away with the loot at the end — which of course is never the end — as his former sexy wife (we all need one of these in these movies to make them gender-equal) and her new dumb squeeze (the nephew of de Vito's character, who was not that dumb after all — but was playing dumb to steal the gold) would have been quite angry to find their "final" getaway truck was full of steel tubes, after having been stung once with a previous getaway truck full of pallets of steel punchings... The whole thing might make a borderline satirical airport novel, to speed-read and throw away in the bin, while you're waiting for your delayed flight to Petaooshnock (I have been told by my friend Jules, that this is French for "woopwoop")

 

Not a single character was likeable. All crooks and loonies...

 

The whole movie was about "if you can get away with it, ¿Por qué no?" as my rightwing Spanish friend would say... I was harmlessly philosophising on how this movie was BAD, but suddenly I realised that this TOTALLY unbelievable saga actually represented the TRUE way the USA have behaved, behave and will behave on the world scene... Heist has been the name of the game for the USA since 1770... 

 

Heist is thus a great movie. Thank you, Hollywood for showing us the true spirit of the US administrations...

 

Today we discover that:

 

Donald Trump has announced that the US will withdraw its support for a United Nations treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade.

Addressing the National Rifle Association (NRA) in Indianapolis, the president said he would revoke America’s status as a signatory of the arms trade treaty regulating conventional weapons including small arms, battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships.

“My administration will never ratify the UN arms trade treaty,” Trump said. “We’re taking our signature back. The United Nations will soon receive a formal notice that America is rejecting this treaty.”

Trump added: “Under my administration, we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone. We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your second amendment freedom. I’m officially announcing today that the United States will be revoking the effect of America’s signature from this badly misguided treaty.”

The US signed the treaty in 2013 but never ratified it. The NRA has long claimed the treaty poses a threat to the second amendment. On Friday its members stood, applauded and chanted “USA! USA!” as Trump signed a letter to Congress halting the ratification process, then tossed his pen into the crowd.

A delighted Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said: “Barack Obama and John Kerry tried to force us to accept international gun control under the power of the UN, but Donald Trump has said: ‘Not on my watch.’”

But the move drew sharp criticism.

Bob Menendez, top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said: “This is yet another myopic decision that jeopardizes US security based on false premises and fearmongering. While Americans from all walks of life have come to painfully understand the threat posed by not doing enough to prevent weapons from ending up in the wrong hands, it is disturbing to see this administration turn back the clock on the little progress we have made to prevent illicit arms transfers.”

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/26/trump-nra-united-nations...

 

And of course the same shit is presented as glorious Avengements by the movies at top... Sometime I regret not believing in God, otherwise I would kick His (god is a male) arse into eternity for infecting humanity with such US hubris. When is the fucking second coming?

 

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When asked about the developments of Assange's sentencing, a protester from the #FreeJulianAssange campaign told Sputnik that Assange was arrested ahead of US President Donald Trump's visit to the UK. 

 

"When Julian Assange was evicted from the Ecuadorian embassy, that was concocted by US president Donald Trump's government in the US. They put pressure on Ecuador to kick him out, and then coincidentally, he's going to kiss the hand of the queen, Cabinet's going to kiss the backside of Trump and Julian is in danger of being extradited through the backdoor to the United States, and we won't see or hear from him again.. 

"We have to stop this gross injustice," the protester said. "This is a terrible thing that's going on. We would not have sent somebody back to Hitler's Germany to stand trial."

"Why are we doing this to this man? All he has done is tell the truth," the protester added.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201905011074618156-Assange-sentencing-Kristinn-Hrafnsson/

 

 

Fighting for the truth? Telling us our little wars ar crooked, stupid and hypocritical? Promoting peace? THIS IS THE ROLE OF THE REAL DEFENDER. ASSANGE.

An Avenger is a sad creature of crap. This ILLUSIONARY promotion of avenging has been the crap culture of the USA since day one. And you know what? Most Americans believe thay have superior powers in their undepants. It's a sad sad sad case of the US madness, the US is trying to infect the rest of the world with. 

Avengers: Endgame is now the second-biggest movie in history (unadjusted for inflation), crossing the $2 billion box office benchmark in a record-breaking 11 days. 

After spending its second weekend at the top of the charts, with an estimated haul of $146 million domestic and $282 million overseas, Endgame’s total global box office sits at $2.189 billion — surpassing 1997’s Titanic ($2.187 billion) on the list of film’s highest grossers. Further perspective: Only five films have ever reached the $2 billion mark — and none have done so faster than Endgame. 

The question now, after the film’s two massive weekend hauls, is if Endgame can catch up with 2009’s Avatar, which remains the highest-grossing movie with an intake of $2.7 billion dollars. Box office insiders believe the enormous Marvel movie could be the movie to surpass Avatar, based on just how quickly Endgame is climbing up the charts. Avatar took 47 days to reach the $2 billion mark, compared to Endgame’s 11 — helped along by its massive $1.2 billion opening weekend, (a record-setting feat that’s already bested Avatar’s opening numbers) — and Endgame is only just now rearing into the third week of its theatrical run. Avatar’s theatrical run lasted 34 weeks. 

Endgame’s astonishing haul is the payoff of Marvel Studio’s 11-year strategy of interlocking superhero films. A linchpin for the 22-movie universe was the team-up movies preceding — The Avengers, Age of Ultron, and Infinity War — which all brought in big earnings on their own; Infinity War is also part of the $2 billion club. Endgame has already eclipsed them all, and is nowhere near done yet.

 

Read more:

https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/5/6/18531158/avengers-endgame-box-offic...

 

"ILLUSIONS FOR SALE!!!   ESCAPISM FOR SALE!!!   BUY YOUR mirage, hallucination, phantasm, delusion, vision, spectre, fantasy HERE!!!!  REALITY IS CRAP !!!!   ...

 

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This from MAD Magazine Olympic Special in 2000 about Classic Losers that Scored a Perfect ZERO!...

 

From Gus Collection of Useless things...

A "raft" of floating pumice rock the size of Manhattan is drifting towards Australia, bringing along with it new marine life that could help with the recovery of the Great Barrier Reef's corals, half of which have been killed in recent years as a result of climate change. 

Experts say that if the pumice makes it to the Great Barrier Reef, it could help replenish some of the lost marine life. The raft is believed to be home to organisms like crabs and corals. 

The massive floating sheet of volcanic rock was first spotted by sailors on August 9, days after an underwater volcano is believed to have erupted near the Pacific Island of Tonga, according to NASA Earth Observatory. 

Days later, Australian sailors heading towards Vanuatu on the ROAM catamaran said they encountered volcanic rocks "made up of pumice stones from marble to basketball size such that water was not visible."

ROAM crew Michael and Larissa Hoult told CNN that they had been at sea for 10 days before coming into contact with the gray floating matter one evening.

 

Read more:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/a-giant-pumice-stone-floating-in-th...

 

Should you wish to see infinitinous cowpats go to they had enough with agent orange... in artificial fat little britain as boris will perform a miracle in the brexit desert...

A Brazilian Supreme Court has been forced to step in to referee a row over the sale of a comic book showing two gay Avengers characters kissing.

The 2010 Marvel publication was banned — and promptly unbanned — from an international book fair in Rio de Janeiro this month due to its "sexual content".

Avengers: The Children's Crusade follows superhero Wiccan, who is in a same-sex relationship with Hulkling (a character patterned on the Hulk).

Though their on-panel smooch has sparked an uproar in Brazil, it's not considered to be a major milestone in the comic book world.

In fact, Marvel first showed a kiss between two same-sex characters in 2001.

So how did we get here? And why is this particular comic causing such an uproar?

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-09/brazil-court-overrules-rio-mayor-...

 

 

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