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Yuri Pilipishin, I can accept your feelings.
I have a prevailing feeling that this covert cancer that has been secretly destroying the United States and the entire free world for the past 25 years since 9/11 is a long-term plan of the central Moscow KGB. They're doing it secretly and under the stack of false flags, of course, and this is the revenge for the dissolution of the USSR. Almost no one will talk about it openly out of sheer fear, because they might harm you if you voice this theory, so it's easier to shift the blame. The free world is caught on its own vices, and everybody knows that everything is wrong, and one could broadcast lots of conspirology, but this kind of conspirology seems much more suppressed than all other.
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Not only do I have to be careful not to hurt the small things that trouble various people, but we need to be aware of anient fault lines.
I have only an imperfect understanding of what is "Actual", but I have to be concerned about my responsibility as per ""The Butterfly Effect".
What seems cold dismissal, may be that a calculation is hoped to bring the best outcome of a very large number of potential "Actualities" which may emerge from a action.
But we don't really know the future, at best we recall the past.
If you want perfection then a higher order than me is required.
Ending
Last edited by Void (2026-10-24 08:46:49)
Be careful what you wish for.
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@yuri
it seemed to me like it all started around 2013.
in 2008, social media started, for real.
but it wasnt until 2013 their owners learned how to abuse them to manipulate public opinion.
with them they could bs ppl like never before.
and lo and behold.
in 2016.. out of all that social media turd.. trump emerged.
trump himself was asked, what was the reason for him becoming president and he said... twitter.
he could bs on twitter and all his crap got bombasted all over the place.
that hadnt been possible before.
and now, actors outside of the usa and elsewhere can manipulate public opinion via fb etc.
its a completely new world of bs campaigns.
and there are actors, outside the usa, who want its demise.
who are taking advantage of this.
sowing division,
and hatred within the west.
producing, exactly the mentality some ppl here have displayed.
about russias troll factories.
https://chatgpt.com/share/681779b2-f270 … 7321bf0555
if i were to describe the state of the world and consequently, social media.
i guess id describe it like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTSu53W … =1&t=2150s
guess david bowies brain wasnt just good at making music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tCC9yxUIdw
Last edited by offtherock (2026-10-24 10:16:26)
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@yuri
it seemed to me like it all started around 2013.
in 2008, social media started, for real.
but it wasnt until 2013 their owners learned how to abuse them to manipulate public opinion.
This covert nightmare had been creeping in much earlier, and I'd seen on the Net that 9/11 was orchestrated with Moscow's involvement. Specifically, there was a LiveJournal blog by Veronika Kamenskaya, in which she argued that Yevgeny Primakov was involved in coordinating the 9/11 plot. Her motive was personal revenge; the Primakov family had ruined her personal life. She noticed a pattern: whenever Yevgeny Primakov frequently appeared on television, some terrorist attack would occur in the world. Perhaps, she thought, Primakov was sending out secret messages in his television appearances that were used to coordinate spy networks. And so, in the summer of 2001, Yevgeny Primakov was constantly appearing on television. Kamenskaya wrote about how she expected something big to happen in the world, when Primakov constantly on television. And then came 9/11. Also, one day before 9/11, I was reading the political forum polit.ru, where the Moscow political public gathered, and an anonymous post appeared on the forum: "Well, here we have our missiles over New York... not as we dreamed, but still..." That way, I know for myself that Moscow intelligence services were involved in 9/11. However, at the public level, after 9/11, Moscow offered assistance to the US, in exchange for the unofficial right to cleanse Chechnya. And all traces of Moscow's secret involvement in 9/11 were erased from the internet.
Also, observing the general triumph on Moscow political forums after the catastrophe of the Columbia shuttle, I tried to imagine how Moscow intelligence services could have orchestrated this disaster. It was possible for them to do this; for example, they could have secretly launched a specially designed satellite that would approach Columbia from the belly side, shoot several heat shield tiles off, and fly away undetected. Perhaps now, when the Russian satellite have approached in space to the American satellite which is transmitting intelligence data to Ukraine, this scenario is no longer seemed impossible.
The catastrophe of Columbia after 9/11 was the turning point. After that, the shuttles were deemed unreliable, and this negated US space superiority. So, if you look back over the last 25 years, all this seems less impossible than before.
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To isolationist. The city of Venice Italy was founded in a swamp at the northern end of the Adriatic Sea. A time of turmoil with bands of raiders sacking, stealing, taking slaves. People trying to escape hid in the swamp. More than one group of raiders, more than one group of refugees. It grew to become the richest city in the world for a time.
Conversely, in 1930 the United States passes the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, a major contributor to the Great Depression.
Lesson is trade = wealth. Isolation = poverty.
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offtherock,
I've never had any kind of antisocial media account, apart from reading all the antisocial opinions people post here. That said, all the people who claim to hate America and the West are universally leftists, typically closet communists/marxists. I honestly don't know much about what President Trump has said on Twitter or Facebook because I really don't care. I don't watch television because I don't have one anymore, and I haven't for many years. I only pay attention to what policies get drafted and where the money goes. That tells me pretty much everything I need to know.
Leftists/marxists/communists are the ones sowing division within the West. Our Democrats never miss an opportunity to tell the world how much they hate their fellow Americans, the general idea of America as originally envisioned, the entire history of Western civilization, and pretty much anyone who won't pretend that a dude with a beard and chest hair is a woman because he says he is.
The list of major leftist freak-outs (not an all-inclusive list), but the highlights within living memory:
1. Vietnam War (deeply unpopular with people who only wanted to smoke dope and spread STDs)
2. The weather is changing over time (it was a great scam while it lasted, but there's zero buy-in from the developing world)
3. We started really going after Islamists who wanted to destroy America (leftists hate the very idea of America, so they found a common cause)
4. There were still more people with less melanin in their skin than more, so only more of their racism nonsense, which they're still miffed about because my fellow Republicans took their slaves away (do your own work... still, to this day; and no, Mexicans will not be your new slaves or indentured servants)
5. President Trump was elected, therefore the world is ending (Russian Collusion hoax, "muh racism and ism ism", and other laughably stupid nonsense to refuse to acknowledge that the American people told the Democrats where to stuff it)
6. Drag queen story hour and everyone on the left pretending that boys can be girls and girls can be boys (hasn't really caught on, especially amongst the lesbians and gays- go figure)
7. The Russians are still being themselves, a tin-pot dictatorship knocking off neighboring dictatorships (to quote President Obama, "The 1980s called, they want their foreign policy back")
8. Jewish people are allowed to exist in Israel and to defend themselves against racially/religiously-motivated mass murder by mass murdering the people who came into their country to mass murder Jews (I get that people on the left truly hate each other and everyone else, but my grandfather already fought that war and we're not fighting it again)
9. Weekend at Bernie's couldn't be hidden from public view, which was a total disaster, so President Trump was elected again (after the multiple assassination attempts and kangaroo court drama over a bank loan that was paid back to a bank and whatever money his lawyer paid to a hooker to buy her off)
10. Antisocial media is, well, antisocial, and not always in the direction marxists/leftists think it should go in (against their "enemies")
The fact that you give a crap about Russian trolls tells me what I need to know. Muh Russia! I couldn't care less about the opinion of Russians in general or what Russia tries and repeatedly fails to do these days. They're a dying backwater power with a joke military that probably isn't very funny at this point to all the mothers of their dead soldiers.
If Russia didn't have nukes, the 1st Infantry Division and 1st Cavalry Division could roll through Moscow inside of a week, but for some stupid reason we're never allowed to use our entire military to literally bring a country to its knees in a week, the way we did to Iraq. Russian and Chinese air defenses in Iraq, Venezuela, and Iran stopped a whole lot of nothing from getting through. B-2 stealth bombers from the 1980s made it through 2020s military equipment undetected, much less intercepted.
American and foreign leftists/marxists have attempted to sell the idea to the American people that their military is a failure since at least the Vietnam War. We never lost a single battle during that entire war, nor any war since, but according to our own leftist/marxist media "we lost, cause reasons". We got bored and left. The casualty numbers reflect reality. By their own admission, we inflicted 10:1 or greater casualty ratios on the NVA throughout the entire war. If our troops win every single battle they ever fight, and the results of every fight are not even close in terms of casualties inflicted, how exactly have we ever lost anything? I guess if a leftists/marxists claim we lost, we're supposed to believe them? I know how to count and yes, after the counting is done I do believe my "lying eyes", because the numbers are cold and ugly reality, not the narrative.
I'm just bored with their elaborate "games of pretend". I'm not going to pretend anything to appease them.
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Also, observing the general triumph on Moscow political forums after the catastrophe of the Columbia shuttle, I tried to imagine how Moscow intelligence services could have orchestrated this disaster. It was possible for them to do this; for example, they could have secretly launched a specially designed satellite that would approach Columbia from the belly side, shoot several heat shield tiles off, and fly away undetected. Perhaps now, when the Russian satellite have approached in space to the American satellite which is transmitting intelligence data to Ukraine, this scenario is no longer seemed impossible.]
I dont quite see how this connects with what i was saying.
The space shuttle was always super expensive and not really reusable. Just pretending to be.
Watched some documentary about it in the 90s. The shuttle was prohibitively expensive. 400 million dollars, every time it flew.
No cheaper than an expendable rocket.
It was possible for them to do this; for example, they could have secretly launched a specially designed satellite that would approach Columbia from the belly side, shoot several heat shield tiles off, and fly away undetected.
This is ridiculous.
Last edited by offtherock (2026-10-24 14:45:49)
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Leftists/marxists/communists are the ones sowing division within the West. Our Democrats never miss an opportunity to tell the world how much they hate their fellow Americans, the general idea of America as originally envisioned, the entire history of Western civilization, and pretty much anyone who won't pretend that a dude with a beard and chest hair is a woman because he says he is.
This left vs right view is not really beneficial.
Ive heard Trump is trying to play himself as right wing now. In bed with Russia. So Russia is now on the right.
Its just nonsene.
Trump has divided and weakened America more than any us president in the history of the united states.
If u cant see that, i guess i just cant help u.
Last edited by offtherock (2026-10-24 14:46:51)
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yuri wrote:Also, observing the general triumph on Moscow political forums after the catastrophe of the Columbia shuttle, I tried to imagine how Moscow intelligence services could have orchestrated this disaster. It was possible for them to do this; for example, they could have secretly launched a specially designed satellite that would approach Columbia from the belly side, shoot several heat shield tiles off, and fly away undetected. Perhaps now, when the Russian satellite have approached in space to the American satellite which is transmitting intelligence data to Ukraine, this scenario is no longer seemed impossible.]
I dont quite see how this connects with what i was saying.
The space shuttle was always super expensive and not really reusable. Just pretending to be.
Watched some documentary about it in the 90s. The shuttle was prohibitively expensive. 400 million dollars, every time it flew.
No cheaper than an expendable rocket.yuri wrote:It was possible for them to do this; for example, they could have secretly launched a specially designed satellite that would approach Columbia from the belly side, shoot several heat shield tiles off, and fly away undetected.
This is ridiculous.
The official version of the Columbia disaster bears about as little resemblance to the truth as the official version of 9/11. Interestingly, in the 1980s and 1990s, the shuttles were considered a symbol of American superiority in space, but now they are almost officially considered a failure. Money doesn't matter; the American shuttles were a symbol of victory in the space race. And it seems someone secretly conspired with Moscow to ensure that the shuttles were officially considered inferior to Buran. And these behind-the-scenes agreements are all too similar exactly to that covert cancer what led the United States and the entire free world to the current dismal state.
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This left vs right view is not really beneficial.
Ive heard Trump is trying to play himself as right wing now. In bed with Russia. So Russia is now on the right.
Its just nonsene.Trump has divided and weakened America more than any us president in the history of the united states.
If u cant see that, i guess i just cant help u.
offtherock,
When leftists don't have any intellectual arguments for why we should give them power again, they tell me this left vs right view is unhelpful. Whenever we give them power again, they fight amongst themselves, do nothing of utility for the average American except find more inventive ways to screw them over, and pursue their brain-dead antisocial experiments to monkey with what was previously a mostly-working society. More than 50% of young men and women won't have sex with each other any longer. Give the antisocial experiments a rest already. Find something constructive to do with your time.
Do you really not understand and accept that was exactly why President Trump was elected twice?
"Muh Russia" has died a natural death. Let it go already. This is the exact type of cockamamie nonsense that gets the left sidelined every single time during the very next election cycle. They tell a lie so outrageous that "it just has to be true", and then we find out they made up every bit of it because their elaborate game of pretend was more exciting than boring reality.
Yuri is on here claiming that a Russian spy satellite shot down the Columbia Space Shuttle when NASA has multiple videos of the launch showing a massive frozen chunk of insulation broke off the External Tank (deliberately put there to "solve" a problem that didn't need to be solved, thereby causing the very type of catastrophe it was supposed to prevent) and smashed the crap out of the tiles on its wing's leading edge. All these supposedly "smart people" should have known it was doomed from the moment it left the Earth's atmosphere, but because a bunch of know-it-alls played their elaborate "game of pretend" with basic flight physics (what actually happens when an ice block the size of a suitcase strikes a fragile heat shield tile at Mach 2.5), 7 irreplaceable astronauts died.
The American leftist media and counter-culture insanity has done more than any President in the history of the United States could ever fathom doing by intent or accident to hurt America. If you can't see that, it's because you're intellectually dishonest with yourself. Before President Trump, President Bush was the devil incarnate. Prior to that, the mainstream left simply didn't give any airtime to the left's lunatic fringes, because the mainstream left was afraid the American people, including many of their own supporters, would wholesale reject the edicts of their most radical activists. Now the average Democrat, the same people too afraid to publicly admit that men can never be women (because that's how biology works), are fixated on whatever the television tells them to fixate on. Turn it all off, formulate your own opinions based on your own thoughts, without any input from anyone else, and then maybe we can have an intellectually honest conversation that leads somewhere productive. As long as you're doom-scrolling the left's outrageous fear porn, there's nothing to talk about.
You literally can't stop talking about President Trump, because someone else told you to hate him. Someone quite literally used neurolinguistic programming to make you think one person is solely responsible for everything wrong with American society. You sound exactly like my father- this left vs right thing is not helpful, but also, blame everything on President Biden. He simply would not stop talking about President Biden, as if somehow a man who was never actually in charge of anything, except when the cameras were rolling (more elaborate pretending- the only thing Democrats do well), did anything more than sleep through his term in office and crap himself every so often in front of foreign dignitaries. I can't even really be mad at the guy because he doesn't know what planet he's on half the time. I'm mad at his wife and all the other diptwaddles who thought everything that went on during his term was a-okay f-i-n-e, but the man himself? Get real.
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im struggling to understand a lot of what ur saying.
maybe would be better if we like, narrowed down our discussion a bit.
because this is just some discussion forum online.
and we have all lived separate lives,
and then suddenly.. at considerable age just start talking here.
it can be hard to connect, the world of experiences we are all relating to in our discussions here.
for we dont have the same experiences.
havent had the same lives.
havent met the same people.
gone through the same things.
or read the same material etc.
More than 50% of young men and women won't have sex with each other any longer.
yeah thats huge.
people are stopping having sex.
stopping dating.
stopping having children.
stopping forming families.
its insane.
and happening, quite rapidly.
basically.... everywhere.
i had no idea, during my 1980s childhood.
i would view it the way i see it now.
it felt like nothing, while it was happening.
but afterwards.. geez.
take this, for example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTSu53W … =1&t=3140s
see that disco.
at 52:30
those kids dance.
and they look kinda silly sometimes.
but its... awesome. really.
i get so much nostalgia seeing that.
seeing what life used to be like,
before the internet
before cameras everywhere
before informational warfare everywhere
and im pretty sure, most of those kids there r seeing a camera for the first time in their lives.
which relates to nobody having sex anymore.
we are all under surveillance now
it didnt used to be like that.
there are cameras everywhere
informational warfare has gotten exponentially much more effective at ruining lives.
if u dance today
u r being recorded.
and with the click of a button
ur on youtube
forever.
can severly damage ur life.
and it doesnt have to be dancing it can be, just.. anything that makes u look bad.
there was a feeling in the 70s and 80s.
that those were the best of times.
and they were right.
nobody feels like that today.
were in the shit of times.
they even made a song, in 1979, about the year 2012.
what its gonna be like, and how badly he wants to go back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUlMRyL … rt_radio=1
ironically, in the song. he says they dont have sex anymore in 2012.
they just use pills.
and hes like... please take me back.
Last edited by offtherock (2026-10-25 07:50:38)
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and its quite interesting.
in that dancing video.
those kids have never seen a camera before and they dont quite know how to react.
and ominously, sometimes they look at it,
for a split second, with fear in their eyes.
they are like... wtf is that.
and wondering,
will this have consequences.
and ironically,
its like they are.. for a split second, seeing the future.
and it scares them.
that was the first time the camera entered the place.
which was, the most interesting time the camera entered the place.
its the camera, seeing the world, before there was camera.
and now
we dance, no more
have sex, no more
start families, no more
cheers to the death of sex, dancing and the family.
and much more, im sure.
anyways,
democracy is dying as well.
lets talk about that.
i need a drink.
Last edited by offtherock (2026-10-25 09:34:30)
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Yuri is on here claiming that a Russian spy satellite shot down the Columbia Space Shuttle when NASA has multiple videos of the launch showing a massive frozen chunk of insulation broke off the External Tank (deliberately put there to "solve" a problem that didn't need to be solved, thereby causing the very type of catastrophe it was supposed to prevent) and smashed the crap out of the tiles on its wing's leading edge.
I'm not claiming this is exactly what happened, but it's worth discussing.
Pieces of thermal insulation material have broken off the shuttle's external tank on previous flights as well, and this didn't cause a disaster. The video doesn't show whether the falling piece of insulation damaged the heat shield tiles. Thermal insulation foam is lightweight and shouldn't have damaged the heat shield tiles on the wing's leading edge. It was simply the only explanation for what happened. It's possible that the reality was different, and that something else, not the falling foam, destroyed the wing's leading edge.
The idea of approaching the shuttle and flying near it, filming it, and remaining as undetected as possible, must have interested Soviet developers back in the shuttle's first flights. It's quite possible such a secret project was developed back in the USSR. All that remained was to add a very small, specialized weapon capable of firing a projectile from a short distance, with a velocity and mass calculated to damage the heat shield, causing a catastrophic crash during descent.
The killing satellite would need to enter an orbit several kilometers behind the shuttle at night, on the far side of the Earth, in a location unobserved by the United States (for example, when the shuttle was flying over Russia, India, or China), remain undetected, and then quickly approach the shuttle from the belly, shoot off the heat shield tiles, and fly away, out of sight of the shuttle's windows. In the worst case, it would be impossible to prove that the heat shield was damaged by the shot and not by a collision with space debris. It would be impossible to catch such a satellite, nor prove whose satellite it is, so the risk is small. In a worst case scenario, Moscow could, with a stone face, claim it wasn't their fault and that extraterrestrials were to blame. Radio communication with this remotely controlled satellite, the shuttle killer, could have been established via other satellites. If Soviet space developers were able to launch a spacecraft to the Moon and retrieve soil samples back to Earth, couldn't they have done this, too? Surely it would have been easier?
After the KGB came to power in Russia, after the terrorist attacks that destroyed high-rise buildings (first the self-shooting in Moscow and only then the real attack in New York), when the KGB went on the warpath, this project could have been secretly put into action.
The KGB has previously been known to use secret new inventions for key assassinations and other important special operations. As long as this secret invention remains secret, the investigation is misguided, because investigators are unaware of this new, special secret invention. For example, Ukrainian freedom fighters Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera were assassinated by a KGB agent using a specially designed pistol that fired a stream of hydrocyanic acid. The investigation was unaware of this murder method and decided that they died of heart failure. Only when this KGB assassin surrendered to West German authorities did he reveal this secret invention and method of covert assassination. Also, for example, we don't yet know why Lindsey Graham died suddenly, but the strange circumstances of his death and Moscow's obvious profit from it suggest that a new KGB invention, a new method of covert assassination, may have been used. And another example: the distinguished Soviet inventor Lev Theremin invented the world's first wireless eavesdropping device, the victim of which was US Ambassador Averell Harriman, who was given a coat of arms containing the device. This method was unknown at the time, and the KGB listened the American ambassador's office for seven years with impunity.
In other words, in key, crucial cases, the KGB repeatedly used new inventions that remained secret simply because no one knew about them yet. The war of the secret services is also a war of secret inventors. And in the case of the shuttle crash, Moscow's advantages from such a terrorist attack were so great that they could have used this method. I'm not saying this is certain, but there are some suspicions.
The choice of which shuttle they shot down also seems no coincidence. Columbia was the shuttle that launched first, exactly 20 years after Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1981. Thus, it was a challenge, a way to symbolically reclaim April 12, Cosmonautics Day, and symbolically reclaim superiority in space. And the Columbia disaster symbolically brought Cosmonautics Day back to Russia. Therefore, the fact that the disaster happened specifically to Columbia also reinforces suspicions that Moscow orchestrated it.
Last edited by Yuri Pilipishin (2026-10-25 13:04:53)
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Yesterday the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) held a provincial election. First question was "Why"?
Last election was October 19, 2024. It's only been 2 years. Provincial constitution says a term of government is 5 years. Canadian federal constitution says a term is 5 years, although a past government passed a law making it 4 years. My province has 4 year terms, but BC has 5. Canada has a modified form of the British Westminster Parliamentary system, which says a federal parliament or provincial legislature can vote non-confidence at any time. That vote forces an early election. That didn't happen in BC this year. A Prime Minister or provincial Premier can choose to call an election early, if he so chooses. Federal constitution says if Parliament votes non-confidence "soon" after an election, then the Governor General will ask the leader of the Official Opposition (leader of the party with the second most seats) if he can form a coalition that will hold the confidence of the majority of Parliament. If so, then that leader is proclaimed Prime Minister without an election. This has happened once in Canadian history. This rule is mostly there to prevent a Prime Minister from forcing bills through Parliament with the threat that if he doesn't get his way then he'll call an election. As I said, it did happen once in 1926. It almost happened a second time in 2008. But the definition of "soon" is up to the discretion of the Governor General. In 2008, the Prime Minister threatened an election if he didn't get his way, and did so before the first day Parliament sat after the election. You can't get any sooner than that. He did manage to squirm out losing is job. But 2 years after the last election is definitely not "soon".
So why? Premier of BC was leader of the NDP, the 3rd party in Canada. They're very left-wing, very "progressive". But that party barely had a majority. The Premier was greedy, wanted more control. There are 93 seats in the BC provincial legislature. BC NDP won 47 seats, BC Conservatives won 44, and Green party won 2. The Liberals are the 2nd major party federally, and normally BC goes back and forth between NDP and Liberal. The BC Liberals have become known within the Liberal party as being very moderate. But in Canada, the speaker is not allowed to vote on bills and is supposed to remain impartial. So if the NDP chose one of their members to be speaker, then the Conservatives and Green party could gang up to vote down any bills. The Green party is very left-wing as well, but has their own agenda. The Green party kept demanding their agenda in order to continue to support the NDP government. The Premier didn't like that, he wanted a majority.
We've seen this before. In Ontario, in September 1987 the Ontario provincial Liberals were re-elected. In September 1990, they called a snap election. This was just 3 years since the last election, it wasn't time. But polls showed strong support for Liberals, so the Premier thought he could extend their mandate. Result was the NDP won the election, and got a majority of seats. This was the only time Ontario elected NDP. Result was the NDP did things most people in Ontario did not like. NDP were never elected again. But this was supposed to be a lesson. If you get greed, you lose.
This time BC Conservatives won 61 seats. This gives them a majority. This is the first time BC Conservatives have formed the provincial government since 1928. They were voted out in 1933.
For those trying to understand Canada. BC is different. Pacific coast voters are very left-wing. As mentioned, they have alternated between Liberal and NDP since 1933. Vancouver is the largest city by population in BC, and the 3rd largest in Canada. However, the Rocky Mountains form a divide, not just for rivers or weather, but for politics. Inland BC tends to be Conservative. One complaint about the out-going NDP government is they have ruled as if BC doesn't exist beyond they city of Hope BC. That means, as if inland BC doesn't exist.
(Ps. Canadian Conservatives are not MAGA. They're more similar to Ronald Regan Republicans, but even more Libertarian.)
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Yuri,
Actually, it's not worth discussing, because what you described never happened. It's not a good-faith argument. The Russians didn't bring down our Space Shuttle. We did. An unnecessary "engineering fix" to a problem that had never destroyed a vehicle before brought down Columbia. This "fix" addressed an aerodynamic heating problem which was apparently less severe than damaging the orbiter's heat shield during ascent. It consisted of a much larger piece of PU spray-on foam surrounding the LOX propellant feed line on the external tank. The enlarged but less aerodynamic foam block struck Columbia's wing leading edge during ascent to orbit. The foam was saturated with moisture from the surrounding atmosphere while the vehicle sat on the launch pad. Loading and feeding LOX into the orbiter subsequently "froze" this trapped moisture inside the enlarged foam block. The heavy, frozen PU foam block broke off the External Tank because of excessive atmospheric pressure during ascent. The separated foam block fractured the RCC leading edge thermal protection system of Columbia's wing. During reentry, superheated plasma entered Columbia's Aluminum-alloy wing box, causing a catastrophic structural failure, and the vehicle broke apart over Texas (and a couple other states, IIRC).
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Carl Benjamin talks us through how crazy things are in Britain.
https://youtu.be/q1aZDwzoaZw
The government is bankrupt. The interest payments on the government debt we already have, are £110bn, a sum of money that exceeds the education budget. Still they borrow more. Benefit payments now exceed income tax receipts. Let the craziness of that sink in. The government hands out more in benefits than it lifts from people who actually work. In Scotland, income tax rate is 45%. That is just income tax on jobs before they take even more. It doesn't include 'social insurance' which is another income tax that covers things like hospital fees. It doesn't include property tax, value added tax on what you buy. A 40% capital gains tax on money made from investments. Still it isn't enough. Still they want more. The UK's socialist government cannot understand that there could be any solution to the country's problems other than lifting more wealth from people that actually earn it. The net effect of this is a population that is generally quite poor compared to the US. Compared to most other western countries in fact. They won't be happy until they have reduced everyone to the bread line.
Usually a softly spoken man. The sheer insanity of the situation is clearly driving this man nuts. The UK loses 250,000 young people each year. People who have realised that if they want any kind of prosperous future, the first thing they have to do is leave. There really isn't a future here for anyone that aspires for more than a rock bottom existence.
Last edited by Calliban (2026-10-26 08:08:50)
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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