36 Comments
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Steel's avatar

OK. Freespoke is interesting but lets just remind ourselves that the elite creeps sometimes create 'freedom-loving' honey traps where they can ensnare the disobedient sector of society, and if nothing else, data-mine it. So always be cautious about these things.

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Brett Stephens's avatar

As long as we're talking alternative search engines, let me put a word in for oldestsearch.com it returns the oldest results it can find on a search term.

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Mark Wauck's avatar

Word taken. Tx

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Joanne C. Wasserman's avatar

Thank you for writing this article, very much. I believe you are right in your analysis, and hope with all my heart that Trump remains soberly serious about ending the war in Ukraine because he demands that all the killing permanently stop. I want Putin to persevere in his national security

position for his country, and his protective demands for safe-guarding the age-old cultural practices and traditional norms which are shared by both Russian and Ukrainian citizens, e.g. Orthodox Christianity, Russian mother tongue, local customs, public signage in the local language, et cetera. Trump has the opportunity of his lifetime to demonstrate that he is a statesman, a noble leader of his country, who also aims for just settlement of this egregiously wrongful murder of a far away nation: by the West's subjugation, falsely promised partnership, killing of its youth, trafficking of its children and women, theft-by-privileged contracting of its natural resources, and the evil ruination of its fruitful soil and waterways. My prayers are for Putin to remain steadfast in his terms of settlement even as he is a statesman in his diplomacy with a fellow lion in winter.

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Shy Boy's avatar

"clownish appointments to satisfy clownish supporters"

Yep. Pretty much this. That's one of the troubles with populism.

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ML's avatar

Come on man! For 16 years the Russians have said “Nyet!” to Nato membership for Ukraine. Does the US/Nato blob need more proof that they mean it, given the many Russians and far more Ukrainians killed in battle? I’m flabbergasted that the same demand that led to this war is being trotted out again, and by the losers of the conflict no less! If Trump doesn’t see this, then he’s going to play Wylie Coyote to Putin’s Roadrunner in any negotiations with the Russians. Ideology has to make way for reality as has been said by Mark and various other commenters.

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Shy Boy's avatar

An apt analogy; with the military-industrial complex as ACME Inc.

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Brother Ass's avatar

The other guy in the running was Cornyn of Texas… so, I guess it was heads they win, tails we lose.

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Sarcastic Cynical Texan's avatar

I have a suspicion that Cornyn(holio) is going to make some excuse to resign his seat and none other than Greg Abbott will roll right in to the vacant seat .

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Retired FL LEO's avatar

Yves Smith,”Trump lashes out….” Sounds like every MSM descriptor of Trump disagreeing with something espoused back in 2017 or 18. Did a quick Google search on the descriptor (should have used Freespoke🤦‍♂️) and apparently “lashes out” is still in vogue today.

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D F Barr's avatar

Support for the war in Ukraine is still an article of faith amongst the National Review crowd and wing of the party. They don’t even attempt to explain why anymore, no more defending democracy crap or other nonsense. It’s just that any dissent from the consensus narrative is simply dismissed and mocked as being anti-Semitic now. How that’s the case beats me. Like with everything else we’ve witnessed lately, reality will assert itself eventually.

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dissonant1's avatar

It could be a vestige of the fact that many (perhaps the majority) of the most prominent neoconservatives have been Jewish and that the movement has always been stridently pro-Israel. Plus, that labelling has been so universally successful, why try anything different? These folks have always lacked imagination.

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ML's avatar

Yes, and “stridently anti-Russian” as well!

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Jeff Cook-Coyle's avatar

The Russians are both claiming those four oblasts as a part of Russia. They are acknowledging the results of the election where the citizens of those four oblasts voted to join Russia, I believe.

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Mark Wauck's avatar

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-reportedly-plans-continue-aid-ukraine-will-raise-nato-spending-5

This is just damned if you do or don't stuff. Continued support for the proxy war on Russia will simply tell the Russians that Trump isn't serious about real peace.

"the Russians have made it clear that they will accept no temporary truces, no ceasefires, no more promises made to be broken like piecrusts, no pauses as cynical tricks to get the Russians to forgo their current and growing military advantage. ..., there must be either a genuine, definitive, binding settlement that ensures a lasting peace based on mutual security, or Russian forces will press on until their objectives – notably “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine – are achieved militarily. Such an outcome would mean at least replacement of the current regime in Kiev and, more likely, the end of Ukraine’s statehood."

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dissonant1's avatar

It would not surprise me if this story is true. However, the propagation of it in the media is based on "three unnamed sources." And presumably they are European. At this point there are many who would like to trap Trump into the positions THEY want him to take. For that reason, I am looking to what comes out of Trump's mouth or his Truth social account as the only definitive statements about his positions.

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Dec 21
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Joanne C. Wasserman's avatar

I'm hoping that you're right on Trump's playing people until he makes his decision. He knows that all of America is going to be massively impacted by the decisions he will make on Ukraine, on the NATO organisation, on perhaps new relationships with the UK government/MI6 and the European Commission. Perhaps Trump is already guiding the American people toward the decisions he is intending to declare, for certain, once he takes the oath and officially can wield executive power. I'm thinking about his rally-like speech at the Arizona AmFest, today. (I didn't watch it.) He could be giving clues about US national security policy formulation in Trump 2.0 admin.

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AmericanCardigan's avatar

What do Elon and Vivek think in order to continue that courtship? Versus piss them off and lose their support.

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Dec 22Edited
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Mark Wauck's avatar

I'll simply repeat what I've been saying. Objectively, Trump's MAGA project is doomed if these wars continue. I believe he knows that, and so is under enormous self-imposed pressure to put an end to it all. The nonsense rhetoric may be an attempt to fool the Russians into not perceiving that pressure, but I agree with most observers that that's hopeless. Again as I said, I don't believe the Russians see any benefit from humiliating Trump and so may allow some sort of minor face saving.

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NedZeppelin's avatar

Completely agree. Prepare to be surprised on this one. Trump is not about to get bogged down in Ukraine and I think he and his team are thinking a much bigger deal with Russia to put this foolishness to bed. Trump won the election folks, the game will change. Ignore the NR crowd, Ives Smith and even the mighty Simplicious. They are dead wrong.

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PeterH's avatar

What about the bio-labs in Ukraine that are managed by the U.S. Department of Defense? I don’t buy the story that they are for public health and safety. If they were, they would be in The US.

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D F Barr's avatar

They’re working on a cure for that bird flu

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Cosmo T Kat's avatar

Actually they are working on a cure, led by Bill Gates, for the Malthusians fear of a crowded planet.

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AmericanCardigan's avatar

And to keep Epsteins list hidden.

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Cosmo T Kat's avatar

Yes! Many of those on the list are trying so hard keep it a secret, but we ask, "What secret, everyone knows who most of these sexual predators are!"

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Brother Ass's avatar

As predicted, the Anglo-zionists have escalated once again in a desperate attempt to set-off WWIII. How will the Russians respond?

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/12/21/ukraine-targets-drones-to-hit-residential-buildings-in-kazan-russia-1000km-from-ukraine-border/

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D F Barr's avatar

“However, everyone understands the targeting and hardware for these drones is supplied by the U.S. and NATO forces.” He left out the part about it many times being operated by US and NATO forces.

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Mark Wauck's avatar

Woops. Shoulda read your comment first.

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Mark Wauck's avatar

I incorrectly stated that Freespoke is new. It seems it's not--as the quote from Wikipedia makes clear.

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Shy Boy's avatar

I was curious enough to dig in a little more. The first question to ask of any web search engine is "where does your index come from?" It's expensive to maintain a crawler. Most all of them just repackage some combination of Google and Bing data (which is sold in bulk). The problem, of course, is that censorship is already done as the indexes are built.

Freespoke apparently gets most of their web search index from Brave:

https://freespoke-support.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/150000178875

The problem with that is that Brave's indexing, while purportedly independent, mirrors Google's by design:

https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/#semi-independent-indexes

My conclusion is that Freespoke is a better choice in terms of who you're supporting, and probably ranks more fairly (as they claim) the data they do have access to, but is unlikely to contain much genuinely suppressed material.

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Mark Wauck's avatar

Thanks.

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Bob's avatar

For searches unrelated to politics or social mores/consciousness I use Perplexity, Best AI search I've found.

https://www.perplexity.ai/

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Shy Boy's avatar

Alternatives are always welcome. I still recommend Yandex for suppressed political content, but I'll give Freespoke a try.

It's easier to beat Google at search than it's ever been, since their leadership decided (back in 2019) to flex their near-monopoly power by deliberately degrading their user-facing search capabilities in order to (like Facebook) keep users "engaged" with their ad platform. This is exceedingly well documented, and doesn't require the presumption of bad motives beyond short-term profit, although I am convinced that the national security state pulls heavy strings in there as well.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google

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Brother Ass's avatar

I second the recommendation of Yandex.

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