They are destroying the world, as they believe their profit from central bank digital currency and their power will be enormous. They want to control all our movements and tax everything, even the smallest transactions on peasant markets in the hills of Himalayas or deep in the Amazon rainforest, all covered by satellite internet. The West and Russia and working on this project in unison.
It’s an interesting allegory of what might have occurred in Afghanistan - I don’t have a clue if you have a country in mind.
Often short stories deal with immediate action (despite being written in the past tense) and include dialogue to situate the reader in the narrative.
I’m a typo bore - readers will know you mean Bob Dylan.
It’s eloquently written. Only one phrase jarred with me, ‘ancestral homeland’. It’s a little tired. Admittedly not a great improvement but a phrase such as ‘locus of native obligation’ gets attention because of its bombast and ironic questioning of loyalty and the merit of constantly to-ing and fro-ing amidst disconcerting vicissitude.
Thanks! Greatly appreciated… Nefaristan is sort of a composite of 3rd World countries with ancient culture and traditions beset with revolutions. I’ll try to fix the typos.
Many people argue there are certain parallels between America and the Soviet Union. Question is are we at the beginning or the end of America’s version of the USSR? Has it only just started?
I think we're about halfway. Another 20 or so years to go. The beginning was post-9/11 with Iraq/Afghanistan and, domestically, the creation of DHS, Patriot Act, Cheney acting as a shadow president, etc. That's when the government stopped pretending like we had civil liberties or a legitimate interest in the direction of our country's foreign policy. That's when individualism started to lose to collectivism in the United States. After Trump and COVID, it has become totally normal to believe everything the government tells you so you don't get branded as some sort of "extremist" or far-right/far-left (acting like this gets you an eye roll from the "adults in the room" who just want "aNy FuNcTiOnInG aDuLt" for president). Believing everything your government tells you and being scorned/ridiculed for not following their line is hallmark Soviet. Economically, our shi!t is not as competitive as it used to be. We don't sell great stuff for cheap. We sell mediocre for high. (LNG and Boeing come to mind as two examples...)
An acquaintance of mine made an offhand prediction that EU countries are going to be fine with regard to energy supplies and prices over the next few months. I’m making a mental note of that forecast as we go into the winter.
Just listened. The comment that the Catholic Church has room for every lunatic was something Cecil Rhodes found impressive: "What has the main cause of the success of the Romish Church? The fact that every enthusiast, call it if you like every madman finds employment in it. Let us form the same kind of society a Church for the extension of the British Empire."
She also shared some Catholic Anti-Eurasian paranoid conspiracy about Dugina… whilst I appreciate people’s ability to imagine up whatever they want, isn’t there another locus of neopagan “fascism” that actually *has* infiltrated and influenced a government and population that is Catholic and has a pathological hatred of another neighbourly people? It felt like projection, but I don’t know anything about Dugin, even if his speech at his daughter’s funeral was as unnerving as they say.
Kinda like her belief in Christ starting the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy being schismatic is equally a mirror of what Orthodox Church says.
My prediction for this winter is that nothing of real consequence will happen. The war will continue in the background as we slowly shift our attention to the new current thing (the energy crisis, Taiwan, wave x of covid? Who knows). I think Europe will find a way out/through the energy crisis. It might not be pretty but it will not break up the Union (which interestingly is not even a concern for the first time ever since its inception in times of crisis) or completely destroy its economy (by that we mean Germany's). Maybe a boost for populists, but there is good reason to be cynical of those as well (as per the last saturday review). And come spring a new cycle begins...
I learned that two loud voices comparing wokeness and the 2020 USA riots to the collapse of Yugoslavia were of Serbs--Katarina Jovanović and Aleksandar Savic.
Really its hard to compare one country with another.
My view is Americans are repeating their own history with the Democratic Party reinstating human servitude this time on bad whites (non elite ) as opposed to Blacks. The Hispanic undocumented (illegal) and Asian H1B visa coders arrive that way.
If you look at Democratic rule over the 19th, 20th, 21st century there’s a marked tendency towards exactly that North and South , urban and rural. Also in effect 1 party rule. There’s Zero GOP in Jersey City NJ for example. There was no Republican party in the South from the end of Reconstruction until the 1980s. The urban machines like Tammany and the Southern sharecroppers (basically free serfs) share Democratic in common, there’s also been consistent violence from the 1850s on with varying groups and varying targets.
Anyone who says lawlessness and violence are threats to democracy knows nothing of Greece, Rome, America, India or France.
2020 urban riots were as much about reminding Bernie Bros who’s boss as much as any Trump voters (urban Trumpsters would have been in the closet the entire time anyway).
Its not the Serbs, the Fascists, the Communists or the Confederacy- its the Democratic Party and this is a constant.
William Shakespeare , Catholic to the Core, wrote MacBeth just months after the Gunpowder plot to murder Parliament, by disgruntled Catholics who wouldnt take the side of their own nation.
The Vatican tried and failed to thrust England back into the thousand years of civil war , Henry the Eighth said No.
Self righteous Equivicators , Jesuitical Casuists, the Original Holocaust Victims!! They still think so. Probably started that ball rolling for present Zionist thought.
German Greens. Shakespeare knew them well.
Master Equivocator Macbeth is the story as told by a sane person trapped in a dysfunctional family , or age.
Jesus wrote parables so as to tell Truth without immediately being offed by the High Priests.
Shakespeare emulated Him.
The Greens of Krautland are doing what they must. They must follow their Father, below.
Are you also in disbelief seeing the headlines of utter shock and dismay that Russia has stopped the gas? In style of “we’ll spark the biggest wave of Russophobia in modern history, send weapons to kill your guys and impose sanctions, how dare you do this to us?”
I pinch myself daily, because if this is really what they except from a nation they’re in de facto war, then their mental state is truly concerning.
Yes. I am. You’re right about the fantasy belief system.
The EU seems to have been trying to stockpile (doesn’t sound the right word for energy) gas and I believe got to 80% of target but that doesn’t take the possible length of the war into account. In the circumstances you describe it was inevitable stopping NordStream 1 would occur to Russia.
I was pro-EU for a long time but developing a common foreign policy is okay until someone like von der Leyen comes along. The policy now is do anything NATO prescribes. I began to go off the idea when the unelected British politician Catherine Ashton, as EU Representative for Foreign Affairs started meddling cluelessly in events which eventually led to the coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014. She also helped bring about the situation whereby Jens Stoltenberg wants to invade Serbia to sort out a dispute about driving licences.
German public opinion seems quite divided. It will be interesting to see if there’s long-term reaction to Annelena Baerbock saying to hell with voters, I know what’s right. She’s only making explicit the thinking of other European politicians.
I think it comes down to what one believes about whether Russia’s action is defensive. Obviously few people in the West accept that it is.
What do you make of the price cap plan being implemented by the uk that will likely be followed by EU nations? Seems like a way to keep consumers from noticing how bad this winter will be in the short term but will have serious long term consequences
I suppose the Tinfoil Lady didn’t want the public to go off the idea of funding the war in Ukraine. There’s a question of who’s going to pay for the projected £100 billion subsidy if they don’t tax energy companies. It’s good news for the general public in the short term, particularly pensioners but it doesn’t fit with the commitment to economic growth and tax cuts. What’s your take on it?
Your assessment seems about right. It seems like they’re trying to find ways to obfuscate how bad this energy crisis is in the minds of the public at least for a few months with price caps...but I don’t see the end game. The inflationary effects will be pretty bad and it’s not like Ukraine is going to turn the tide in the next few months, seems like there really is no plan, just bailing water
I can understand that the current crop of politicians have been dealt a bad hand (tough shit though, that’s what you’re there for) with getting to deal with not only the crisis of war, but throwing a unique challenge of having to be a statesman/woman without being equipped for it whatsoever; from the lack of knowledge of (very recent) history, to an incredible degree of naïveté. I mean, this is truly being Fisted by Focault, where virtue signaling eventually has a potential to starve you, but you do it nonetheless. I for one thought that at some point there will be at least one adult in the room, but it would appear they’re all uniquely immature and not up to the task at hand.
Sep 6, 2022·edited Sep 6, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
To Europeans, how are things there with regards to energy? The Western right wing media paints a pretty dismal picture but is that actually true? The reason I ask is because the European leftist media paints a dystopian image of the US as well and I know that is not correct.
Things are bad and expensive. They’re inept at governing, so since nobody dares touching the oil&gas profits, they make silly moves like cutting the VAT and/or capping the price with subsidies. The gas is in effect 300% more expensive now than it was before the conflict, and it went up twice in past two weeks ago. So yeah, it’s pretty shit. I’m calculating that going south over the winter will be cheaper than staying.
I can speak for a couple of countries based on discussions with friends and family.
Prices are high everywhere but some people (particularly in smaller ones...like Romania) feel like they have been cheated into imposing sanctions and which are not necessarily being applied by the larger more powerful countries who have ways of circumventing said sanctions. Other than price hikes there is no fear of actual shortage and government offering some subsidies for low energy consumers.
Most reports from Germany are pretty dire on the supply but I'm not so sure about the situation there.
In Switzerland I see zero real concern about this. In fact the main traders making a lot of the money from these artificially inflated prices sit around Geneva and Zürich, these are historical record-breaking years. I have first hand accounts of people telling me that stockpiles of coal in europe have never been higher, partly as companies are unwilling to sell unless they get a marked up price. So governments pay up. And other interesting stories of the sort.
As for France, so far they seem to be in the best position with nuclear energy (a couple of plants have been taken off for maintenance which caused some concern) and I haven't seen serious concern.
There's always the odd friend talking about the looming revolution but most people I talked to, although angry and annoyed at the situation, didn't paint such a doomsday picture.
By all means this is not at all a representative account of the sentiments. If people have other insights I'd also be curious to hear.
Looking at the fiendish midwit Annalena it is impossible not to be impressed by the sight of a Left career idealist wrecking Europe on behalf of the US and the Eurotrash oligarchy. Annalena could be a crisis actor hired by Vladislav Surkov...except she is working for Washington. Baerbock embodies real-life political/ideological convergence.
The triumph of the US over communism and three decades of unconstrained globalisation created the perfect conditions for normalising the gangster capitalism that the US and other Western governments sponsored in Yeltsin's Russia. Underregulated markets, the plunder of state assets, capital flight and Sado-Malthusian social and economic policies. It was all road-tested in Russia.
But the the hollowed-out institutions of the West lacked the capacity and the will to resist the spread of gangster capitalism on its own turf. Now Putin's regime, a legacy project of the old KGB, is remedying the damage done by Yeltsin and Western economists, while constraining the oligarchs at home and resisting NATO in Russia's near abroad. While in the US the intelligence services maintain the gangster governance fronted by the Democrats with the support of the US Left.
It is a geopolitical fugue state, a drama that could have been conceived by David Lynch. Part of me is moved by the horror. Part disappointed that even now too few admit that the Cold Warriors dug the grave for liberal capitalism as surely as they did for Marxism. Yet part is frustrated by the banality and tedium of it all...Dark Brandon is piss-weak, colourless and lacking vitality compared to Robert Blake (LOST HIGHWAY) or Dennis Hopper (BLUE VELVET). If we are to get a dystopia, I want a better one than this. Call me a dreamer.
Well laundering the Rape of Russia money were Westerners Philip, as public record. It wasn’t just road tested it was simultaneously imported.
The 2 great moves of Evil Genius of the Clinton Crime Cartel were Reinventing Government into a Contractor brokerage and institutionalizing corruption through DOJ above all.
Evil but genius.
As for a Better Class of Criminal and we so deserve Classing up this Joint ; history suggests we’ll get better. The Geriatric Interlude’s clear weakness will compel it. < Just as the Oligarchy came into being from self interest in not being regulated* out of existence so a leader and retainers shall rise.
As for me Aut Republic, Aut Nihil - and I’m a graduate of Nihilist field work in the University of Mesopotamia 💀.
Nihilism is fine.
No Constitution, no Oath, no Chains. Thank you Biden!
As you have seen from Iraq, long term governance by predation unconstrained by civility or legality is extremely difficult, but possible only on in an economy relying on resource extraction (which frees governements from having to rely on a productive population). The reigning coalition (de-nationalised corporate and professional elite, supported by an Afro-Saxon mukhabarat and Pentagon) can manage for now, but the dynamics of class, onshoring industry, and the spoils system will destabilise the regime.
IMO the system will collapse when two separate but related inflection points synchronise: the moment a significant portion of the current professional and managerial class realise that they or their children have no realistic prospect of remaining within the privileged classes and the moment the experienced hands within the IC decide that the gerontocratic vampires have become a systemic liability. It won't be very long...it just feels that way.
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on
the subway walls and tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence"
Hit the like button above and have fun (but please be polite to one another).
They are destroying the world, as they believe their profit from central bank digital currency and their power will be enormous. They want to control all our movements and tax everything, even the smallest transactions on peasant markets in the hills of Himalayas or deep in the Amazon rainforest, all covered by satellite internet. The West and Russia and working on this project in unison.
Friends;
Where does one publish/read “based” short fiction?
Here is one page turner of mine titled “Nefaristan”:
https://hojatsalehi.substack.com/p/nefaristan
All advice, comment and critique is greatly appreciated.
It’s an interesting allegory of what might have occurred in Afghanistan - I don’t have a clue if you have a country in mind.
Often short stories deal with immediate action (despite being written in the past tense) and include dialogue to situate the reader in the narrative.
I’m a typo bore - readers will know you mean Bob Dylan.
It’s eloquently written. Only one phrase jarred with me, ‘ancestral homeland’. It’s a little tired. Admittedly not a great improvement but a phrase such as ‘locus of native obligation’ gets attention because of its bombast and ironic questioning of loyalty and the merit of constantly to-ing and fro-ing amidst disconcerting vicissitude.
Thanks! Greatly appreciated… Nefaristan is sort of a composite of 3rd World countries with ancient culture and traditions beset with revolutions. I’ll try to fix the typos.
Many people argue there are certain parallels between America and the Soviet Union. Question is are we at the beginning or the end of America’s version of the USSR? Has it only just started?
I think we're about halfway. Another 20 or so years to go. The beginning was post-9/11 with Iraq/Afghanistan and, domestically, the creation of DHS, Patriot Act, Cheney acting as a shadow president, etc. That's when the government stopped pretending like we had civil liberties or a legitimate interest in the direction of our country's foreign policy. That's when individualism started to lose to collectivism in the United States. After Trump and COVID, it has become totally normal to believe everything the government tells you so you don't get branded as some sort of "extremist" or far-right/far-left (acting like this gets you an eye roll from the "adults in the room" who just want "aNy FuNcTiOnInG aDuLt" for president). Believing everything your government tells you and being scorned/ridiculed for not following their line is hallmark Soviet. Economically, our shi!t is not as competitive as it used to be. We don't sell great stuff for cheap. We sell mediocre for high. (LNG and Boeing come to mind as two examples...)
The Russians never believed their government. Thus the Solzhenitsyn quote about lying (“they know we know they are lying...”)
The deaths of despair definitely resemble those seen after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Like the parallels between us and Rome...
...or us and 1930s European Fascism ...
...no. No.
We’re actually redux 19th Century here with the Democrats out to enslave again , by whatever name.
The answer to Lincoln now is ALL SLAVE, ref House Divided speech.
That our history as opposed to another land’s history repeats itself here isn’t surprising although it is yet obscure to most.
The Democrats of course are no more Nazi or Communist now than they were in 1860.
They’re Democrats.
An acquaintance of mine made an offhand prediction that EU countries are going to be fine with regard to energy supplies and prices over the next few months. I’m making a mental note of that forecast as we go into the winter.
Europe will be fine.
It survived the fall of Rome and the Dark Ages.
Sticks and stones...
Actually make good firewood and makeshift fireplace. If any Euros are reading.
Was listening to a certain Sedevacantist podcast and one of the hosts seems to have had a blast in Croatia
She sure did.
Frank Zappa has a comment from the other side-
https://youtu.be/5fdcDN4LbYQ
Can you provide a link? Dunno who you're talking about
That’s déclassé bro
Well sheeeeyit
Presumably dasha?
It’s the latest Red Scare podcast ep 'Mr. Gorbachev, Start Up This Pod'
The episode also reveals that Taylor Lorenz went after our boy.
I don’t care for her.
Thx
Just listened. The comment that the Catholic Church has room for every lunatic was something Cecil Rhodes found impressive: "What has the main cause of the success of the Romish Church? The fact that every enthusiast, call it if you like every madman finds employment in it. Let us form the same kind of society a Church for the extension of the British Empire."
Dasha is schizo-intuitive, Anna is schizo-analytical.
She also shared some Catholic Anti-Eurasian paranoid conspiracy about Dugina… whilst I appreciate people’s ability to imagine up whatever they want, isn’t there another locus of neopagan “fascism” that actually *has* infiltrated and influenced a government and population that is Catholic and has a pathological hatred of another neighbourly people? It felt like projection, but I don’t know anything about Dugin, even if his speech at his daughter’s funeral was as unnerving as they say.
Kinda like her belief in Christ starting the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy being schismatic is equally a mirror of what Orthodox Church says.
My prediction for this winter is that nothing of real consequence will happen. The war will continue in the background as we slowly shift our attention to the new current thing (the energy crisis, Taiwan, wave x of covid? Who knows). I think Europe will find a way out/through the energy crisis. It might not be pretty but it will not break up the Union (which interestingly is not even a concern for the first time ever since its inception in times of crisis) or completely destroy its economy (by that we mean Germany's). Maybe a boost for populists, but there is good reason to be cynical of those as well (as per the last saturday review). And come spring a new cycle begins...
#nothappening gang wins again
Today is the saddest day of the year, in Canada the kids are back to school, Tuesday after Labour Day: summer is over. I never felt lower.
I learned that two loud voices comparing wokeness and the 2020 USA riots to the collapse of Yugoslavia were of Serbs--Katarina Jovanović and Aleksandar Savic.
https://youtu.be/i8RJE4hkZ_g
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Katarina-Jovanovic-4
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/aleksandar-savic-oath-keepers-jan-6
Really its hard to compare one country with another.
My view is Americans are repeating their own history with the Democratic Party reinstating human servitude this time on bad whites (non elite ) as opposed to Blacks. The Hispanic undocumented (illegal) and Asian H1B visa coders arrive that way.
If you look at Democratic rule over the 19th, 20th, 21st century there’s a marked tendency towards exactly that North and South , urban and rural. Also in effect 1 party rule. There’s Zero GOP in Jersey City NJ for example. There was no Republican party in the South from the end of Reconstruction until the 1980s. The urban machines like Tammany and the Southern sharecroppers (basically free serfs) share Democratic in common, there’s also been consistent violence from the 1850s on with varying groups and varying targets.
Anyone who says lawlessness and violence are threats to democracy knows nothing of Greece, Rome, America, India or France.
2020 urban riots were as much about reminding Bernie Bros who’s boss as much as any Trump voters (urban Trumpsters would have been in the closet the entire time anyway).
Its not the Serbs, the Fascists, the Communists or the Confederacy- its the Democratic Party and this is a constant.
William Shakespeare , Catholic to the Core, wrote MacBeth just months after the Gunpowder plot to murder Parliament, by disgruntled Catholics who wouldnt take the side of their own nation.
The Vatican tried and failed to thrust England back into the thousand years of civil war , Henry the Eighth said No.
Self righteous Equivicators , Jesuitical Casuists, the Original Holocaust Victims!! They still think so. Probably started that ball rolling for present Zionist thought.
German Greens. Shakespeare knew them well.
Master Equivocator Macbeth is the story as told by a sane person trapped in a dysfunctional family , or age.
Jesus wrote parables so as to tell Truth without immediately being offed by the High Priests.
Shakespeare emulated Him.
The Greens of Krautland are doing what they must. They must follow their Father, below.
It's all been said and done, before.
Reading The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel - (nonfiction) for anyone who loves books and libraries
Arabian Gulf carnival continues, we’ll see what the winter brings
Are you also in disbelief seeing the headlines of utter shock and dismay that Russia has stopped the gas? In style of “we’ll spark the biggest wave of Russophobia in modern history, send weapons to kill your guys and impose sanctions, how dare you do this to us?”
I pinch myself daily, because if this is really what they except from a nation they’re in de facto war, then their mental state is truly concerning.
Yes. I am. You’re right about the fantasy belief system.
The EU seems to have been trying to stockpile (doesn’t sound the right word for energy) gas and I believe got to 80% of target but that doesn’t take the possible length of the war into account. In the circumstances you describe it was inevitable stopping NordStream 1 would occur to Russia.
I was pro-EU for a long time but developing a common foreign policy is okay until someone like von der Leyen comes along. The policy now is do anything NATO prescribes. I began to go off the idea when the unelected British politician Catherine Ashton, as EU Representative for Foreign Affairs started meddling cluelessly in events which eventually led to the coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014. She also helped bring about the situation whereby Jens Stoltenberg wants to invade Serbia to sort out a dispute about driving licences.
German public opinion seems quite divided. It will be interesting to see if there’s long-term reaction to Annelena Baerbock saying to hell with voters, I know what’s right. She’s only making explicit the thinking of other European politicians.
I think it comes down to what one believes about whether Russia’s action is defensive. Obviously few people in the West accept that it is.
Sorry, Annalena. My mind must have been on annelid worms having Baerbock sects.
What do you make of the price cap plan being implemented by the uk that will likely be followed by EU nations? Seems like a way to keep consumers from noticing how bad this winter will be in the short term but will have serious long term consequences
I suppose the Tinfoil Lady didn’t want the public to go off the idea of funding the war in Ukraine. There’s a question of who’s going to pay for the projected £100 billion subsidy if they don’t tax energy companies. It’s good news for the general public in the short term, particularly pensioners but it doesn’t fit with the commitment to economic growth and tax cuts. What’s your take on it?
Your assessment seems about right. It seems like they’re trying to find ways to obfuscate how bad this energy crisis is in the minds of the public at least for a few months with price caps...but I don’t see the end game. The inflationary effects will be pretty bad and it’s not like Ukraine is going to turn the tide in the next few months, seems like there really is no plan, just bailing water
Still not regretting getting locked in contracts for energy residential and business.
Won’t either.
I can understand that the current crop of politicians have been dealt a bad hand (tough shit though, that’s what you’re there for) with getting to deal with not only the crisis of war, but throwing a unique challenge of having to be a statesman/woman without being equipped for it whatsoever; from the lack of knowledge of (very recent) history, to an incredible degree of naïveté. I mean, this is truly being Fisted by Focault, where virtue signaling eventually has a potential to starve you, but you do it nonetheless. I for one thought that at some point there will be at least one adult in the room, but it would appear they’re all uniquely immature and not up to the task at hand.
EU = 🇺🇸 US Govt.
Sorry.
With the current turmoil on the continent again, I wonder if anybody has read “the peace” by junger and had any thoughts on it?
To Europeans, how are things there with regards to energy? The Western right wing media paints a pretty dismal picture but is that actually true? The reason I ask is because the European leftist media paints a dystopian image of the US as well and I know that is not correct.
Things are bad and expensive. They’re inept at governing, so since nobody dares touching the oil&gas profits, they make silly moves like cutting the VAT and/or capping the price with subsidies. The gas is in effect 300% more expensive now than it was before the conflict, and it went up twice in past two weeks ago. So yeah, it’s pretty shit. I’m calculating that going south over the winter will be cheaper than staying.
I can speak for a couple of countries based on discussions with friends and family.
Prices are high everywhere but some people (particularly in smaller ones...like Romania) feel like they have been cheated into imposing sanctions and which are not necessarily being applied by the larger more powerful countries who have ways of circumventing said sanctions. Other than price hikes there is no fear of actual shortage and government offering some subsidies for low energy consumers.
Most reports from Germany are pretty dire on the supply but I'm not so sure about the situation there.
In Switzerland I see zero real concern about this. In fact the main traders making a lot of the money from these artificially inflated prices sit around Geneva and Zürich, these are historical record-breaking years. I have first hand accounts of people telling me that stockpiles of coal in europe have never been higher, partly as companies are unwilling to sell unless they get a marked up price. So governments pay up. And other interesting stories of the sort.
As for France, so far they seem to be in the best position with nuclear energy (a couple of plants have been taken off for maintenance which caused some concern) and I haven't seen serious concern.
There's always the odd friend talking about the looming revolution but most people I talked to, although angry and annoyed at the situation, didn't paint such a doomsday picture.
By all means this is not at all a representative account of the sentiments. If people have other insights I'd also be curious to hear.
Looking at the fiendish midwit Annalena it is impossible not to be impressed by the sight of a Left career idealist wrecking Europe on behalf of the US and the Eurotrash oligarchy. Annalena could be a crisis actor hired by Vladislav Surkov...except she is working for Washington. Baerbock embodies real-life political/ideological convergence.
The triumph of the US over communism and three decades of unconstrained globalisation created the perfect conditions for normalising the gangster capitalism that the US and other Western governments sponsored in Yeltsin's Russia. Underregulated markets, the plunder of state assets, capital flight and Sado-Malthusian social and economic policies. It was all road-tested in Russia.
But the the hollowed-out institutions of the West lacked the capacity and the will to resist the spread of gangster capitalism on its own turf. Now Putin's regime, a legacy project of the old KGB, is remedying the damage done by Yeltsin and Western economists, while constraining the oligarchs at home and resisting NATO in Russia's near abroad. While in the US the intelligence services maintain the gangster governance fronted by the Democrats with the support of the US Left.
It is a geopolitical fugue state, a drama that could have been conceived by David Lynch. Part of me is moved by the horror. Part disappointed that even now too few admit that the Cold Warriors dug the grave for liberal capitalism as surely as they did for Marxism. Yet part is frustrated by the banality and tedium of it all...Dark Brandon is piss-weak, colourless and lacking vitality compared to Robert Blake (LOST HIGHWAY) or Dennis Hopper (BLUE VELVET). If we are to get a dystopia, I want a better one than this. Call me a dreamer.
Well laundering the Rape of Russia money were Westerners Philip, as public record. It wasn’t just road tested it was simultaneously imported.
The 2 great moves of Evil Genius of the Clinton Crime Cartel were Reinventing Government into a Contractor brokerage and institutionalizing corruption through DOJ above all.
Evil but genius.
As for a Better Class of Criminal and we so deserve Classing up this Joint ; history suggests we’ll get better. The Geriatric Interlude’s clear weakness will compel it. < Just as the Oligarchy came into being from self interest in not being regulated* out of existence so a leader and retainers shall rise.
As for me Aut Republic, Aut Nihil - and I’m a graduate of Nihilist field work in the University of Mesopotamia 💀.
Nihilism is fine.
No Constitution, no Oath, no Chains. Thank you Biden!
As you have seen from Iraq, long term governance by predation unconstrained by civility or legality is extremely difficult, but possible only on in an economy relying on resource extraction (which frees governements from having to rely on a productive population). The reigning coalition (de-nationalised corporate and professional elite, supported by an Afro-Saxon mukhabarat and Pentagon) can manage for now, but the dynamics of class, onshoring industry, and the spoils system will destabilise the regime.
IMO the system will collapse when two separate but related inflection points synchronise: the moment a significant portion of the current professional and managerial class realise that they or their children have no realistic prospect of remaining within the privileged classes and the moment the experienced hands within the IC decide that the gerontocratic vampires have become a systemic liability. It won't be very long...it just feels that way.