I don't think that I can answer this one as their strategy hasn't changed and is still ongoing. The Chinese have a long game in play, so unless we see a regime change and/or collapse in Beijing, I don't think it should be answered at present.
Mistakes? Personally, I'd be careful about using a word like that. So far, the great weakness of China, which Xi has not been able to correct, is China's exposure to the US bond-market. China is Uncle Sam's second biggest creditor (Japan is number one) and poor Xi, the last significant 'Marxist' leader on the planet has a problem that only a banker could appreciate (Marx would have loved the irony). China has begun reducing its holdings in US treasuries, but they are extremely vulnerable. Xi can now mobilise China against the US...and Washington's fifth column within China. Taiwan is now under the gun.
That is the fate of all imaginative and powerful minds. To his credit, Marx anticipated the effect that capitalism would have on old Europe. There were plenty of others who did too, but Marx championed the productive classes (the entrepreneurial and innovative bourgeoisie as well as the workers, above all the skilled workers). His successors were mostly caught up in bullshit...wars and revolutions radicalise people and push them into forms of insanity that get institutionalised, to the disadvantage of us all.
Keynes is even more complicated. IMO Keynes was a very reluctant reformer. His book on Versailles reveals him to have been a conservative at heart...he obviously longed to remake the world of the pre-war bourgeoisie, but had enough brains to realise that this simply could not be done. Keynes would be comatose with shock at the economics of the last generation (and offended at the rudeness and groupthink within the profession).
Many evils could be avoided if only people read books carefully. But ideas exist only to justify what people want to do anyway. And academics just want to pimp ideas out and they'll use their fists on their 'girls' and a lead-pipe on the rest of us to do it.
Those of us that are curious hope you go back and label the y-axis on the two subscriber graphs. Love the site and happy to pay, but when speaking about the site it is always better to have better data. It is not persuasive to say "twice as many subscribers as six months ago" when the six-month-ago number is 2...lol. Thanks
Canada: you once called Canada the quintessential Post national nation. I Assume you mean no heritage no history no culture no centre, just formless international community in a cold climate. Is that what you meant?
The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, articulated this when he told the New York Times Magazine that Canada could be the “first postnational state”. He added: “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.”
Canada has a history, and Canada has cultures (Quebecois, Newfie, Maritime, Native being the best examples of domestic, non-imported cultures). The rest is "we're not American", despite their extreme Americanization.
Oct 17, 2022·edited Oct 17, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Thank you.
Let me speak of a culture with no name. That culture is me and my relatives drinking beer and playing euchre in the garage at my grandfather‘s house. Blue collar, white, high school graduates, paying off mortgages, driving Camaros or Corvettes if you have a good job. We fight over the Leafs or the Red Wings.
Trudeau and his ilk (most of your readers?) hate our guts and consciously destroyed us, we in turn hate them but we are cowed, defeated, broken and ineffectual.
You destroyed our world with NAFTA - de industrialized and destroyed , but at least you gave us opiates.
You are right, some portion of the elite needs to join us the dispossessed or nothing will happen save our further defeat. 
My father, a man with incredible political instincts despite only finishing 12th grade (too poor to go to uni in the ex-YU) said during the NAFTA debates that Canadian manufacturing would be destroyed by it. My mother's cousin, an educated man, took the opposing view.
The anecdote sums up the situation perfectly. A generation was wasted before the obvious became sufficiently evident for acknowledgement and by now the damage has really added up. And people wonder why the deplorables are so angry.
It was obvious in the 90s that Buchanan was likely to be some kind of 'John the Baptist' preparing the way for another. Vast numbers of Republican Congressional staffers in the 90s were Buchanan fans, even though their bosses were not. I think they were mostly motivated by the aggressive nationalism, rather than any great concern for the white working classes.
My enduring peeve with Buchanan is that he never acknowledges that the relative social stability and wellbeing of the Cold War era was simply a temporary concession to the masses by a state/corporate coalition that needed to demobilise potential domestic opposition so they could focus on the struggle against the USSR. The escalating neo-liberalism of the last thirty years was very much a legacy of victory in the Cold War. And Reagan himself signed off on the first amnesty for illegal immigrants and it was Reagan's Sunbelt capitalism that did so much to develop the low-wage, precarious employment, model of development that white-anted America.
My father broke with the Left over trade policy (when the Labour Party in Australia lowered tariffs in the 70s) because he saw it as an abandonment of the old commitment to full employment and a fundamental betrayal. This is now held as the position of a 'dinosaur', but it was prescient.
IMO attitudes to the basics of economics and politics are very much a product of generational experience. My father was born in the 30s, lived through occupation and war and was a refugee. Economic security at all costs was (and is) an obsession for people with such experiences. The baby boomers, by contrast, experienced mass affluence and in their complaisance gave away the foundations required for the prosperity of future generations. Young people today who experience precarious employment coupled with debt-enabled consumption are likely to turn into militant anti-capitalists...chronic debtors without any prospects of ever acquiring substantial savings/capital of their own are unlikely to embrace any form of economic liberalism.
I have developed a thought recently, thinking it has really locally based roots because of my business-related experience. But reading your comment, it struck me how much of the idea can be found in your comment.
My thought goes something like this: my people here in Croatia are skipping basics in business (and in life) because they think they are smart (which by my estimation they usually are) which leads them to believe that basics of their trade are not so important and go straight to the sophisticated tools and techniques. For example: they have not ever lead a diary and suddenly, they think that they can write like for example our Niccolo here. This, although they have never ever written a serious publishing before.
Because of living in really prosperous and easy life, we have begun to imagine ourselves as more worthy and, "higher" peoples than those before us. But, I would argue, out fathers have more intimate relationship to tradition and hardship than us, and can better judge reality because of it. Our generation (I am early millennial, althought I am more in line of thought with Gen X) has been brought up by people well aware of scarcity, but we have experienced nothing less than plenty, which is to say, we have lived in a world of illusion (potentially). This is why you have so much victim groups nowadays, because they aren't aware how difficult life can really be (but that is mostly fathers to blame, because they became cowards and yes men). But the reason they do so is that their parents skipped basics of nurture and have consequently lead them to higher ego drive which makes them basically semi-retarded entitled brats.
I hope to instill a value system a bit different into my children than currently offered.
J.J. McCullough did a great video on Quebec Politics, I'm quite up to date on what's happening politically but even this was new to me. Highly worth the 20 minutes to watch.
Which makes him useful. He is a lightning rod for opposition. Trudeau can and will be disposed of when the time comes, but the faults of the system will be confused with his personal inadequacies. Trudeau embodies misdirection in politics.
OK so I read that article. Canada, Soviet like pessimism, an interesting thesis. Are you Canadian? If not why do you care about Canada? Canada is soft and mushy and tasteless like pablum how could you have an interesting article at your fingertips like that?
That comment by the odious Freeland to an African journalist at Q and Q about Africa being starved of restricted resources was shameful. Basically dismissing him with change your government to support west. She is very bizzare in her facial tics and mannerisms.
Considering her background (Freeland's grandfather was a crony of the war-time governor-general of Poland) she is unlikely to be uncomfortable with any kind of moral compromise for the cause. She was once photographed at a demonstration in Ottawa fondling the regalia of the OUN-B (the Ukrainian movement that used to give men in mixed marriages the choice between killing their wives and kids or being killed themselves).
As for the tics...her doctor mixed adrenochrome from the wrong batch of corpses with the botox.
Any plans to visit the States anytime soon? When’s the last time you did? Spending some time in DC and writing about what you observe would be fun, and I’d enjoy reading the perspective of everyone’s favorite littoral cave slav.
The last time I was there was in February of 2020 just as COVID-19 hit. I was in NYC on business. If I head out to the USA again any time soon, I will let readers know in advance.
One question directed to me constantly is: "What do you propose should be done?"
This is the most fair of questions to ask me, and it is something that is always in my head. It's just an incredibly tough one to answer, especially when the political world is a constantly moving target.
Without power, implementing any proposed solutions would be difficult. Without implementation, we can never truly know if they would work. Even if they were implemented and successful, many would still be unhappy with them for countless reasons.
You posted an open thread where people stated their ideal polity. Answers ranged wildly. Imagine politics as a massive amount of spectrums. Liberty <-> security, centralized <-> decentralized, secular <-> religious, etc. Any solution proposed will be derided as both “not enough X” and “not enough Y” on any X <-> Y spectrum.
Perhaps this is too cynical…. Anyways, I see the main utility in what you do as providing information and perspectives allowing us readers to make better decisions by our own metrics. These decisions vary wildly, but all are influenced by your insight.
And maybe, just maybe, someone with power will read your work, overcome any political resistance, and enact solutions based on your ideas :)
Tech needs to be wrested away from the PhDs. A 4-year degree should be sufficient for launching most engineers. One of the more famous non-graduates of a local undergrad school was booted due to poor class attendance - he took his patent collection and founded his own company.
Formal education has an unfortunate tendency to bore the crap out of anyone with an inventive, questioning streak.
The edifice has to collapse. People have to withdraw their participation. We must tell the truth without fear or coyness. We must be transparent in the working of our minds and demand that of others. And we must not comply.
What should be done: disassemble the administrative state, collapse 75% of it. Leave the bureaucrats with their pensions but kick them out of work. The lesson of the administrative state is it creates distortions and perverse incentives
Matt Stoller started a substack about monopoly power in the US. It was perfect timing, after 3 plus decades of Neo Liberal policies the ground is suddenly shifting (started under Trump accelerated under Biden. Now here’s the thing, for all the talk about Big Tech censorship in the Conservative media the GOP is fighting tooth and nail against anything that would stop that.
I quote liberally from Matt’s article but I highly recommend reading the whole thing
Matt Stoller started a substack about monopoly power in the US. It was perfect timing, after 3 plus decades of Neo Liberal policies the ground is suddenly shifting (started under Trump accelerated under Biden. It’s a theme that has split the conservative movement.
I quote liberally from Matt’s article but I highly recommend reading the whole thing
For the last five years, conservatives have noticed that dominant private firms who control key infrastructure are willing and able to use their power to censor or exclude people from political participation.
This piece continues a theme I’m fascinated by, which is the internal conflict within the Republican Party over corporate power. In this case, it’s about a lawsuit by Wall Street and Big Tech to have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is trying to stop banks from discriminating against customers, declared unlawful. If Wall Street is successful, they will be empowering banks to deny banking services to conservatives. And therein lies the possible tension.
-and-
For the last five years, conservatives have noticed that dominant private firms who control key infrastructure are willing and able to use their power to censor or exclude people from political participation.
But there’s a problem. And that is, the populist right is running smack-dab into the libertarian view of the administrative state. For the last forty years, conservatives, who aligned with libertarians, feared overreaching Federal power, because they saw the U.S. government as a fundamental threat to their liberties. But the power of libertarian thinking is falling apart in right-wing circles for a number of reasons.
it’s about a lawsuit by Wall Street and Big Tech to have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is trying to stop banks from discriminating against customers, declared unlawful. If Wall Street is successful, they will be empowering banks to deny banking services to conservatives. And therein lies the possible tension.
The Republican Party is populist in the streets, libertarian in the sheets
More worrisome is the raft of laws coming via the EU over "mis-information". The EU is giving itself the power to force big tech (not the media as far as I know) to censor any thing labelled misinformation. The lab leak theory was a great example, banned till it was allowed. I'll link to the story if I can find it again.
The EU sense the coming crisis and they need the ability to 'lockdown' the internet in order to contain the unrest due to the energy crisis/deindustrialisation. This winter will be nasty, but spring and summer potentially explosive.
They're doing it already - protests across Europe (Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Stuttgart) are being memory-holed by the "objective" press. A couple of videos on twitter, and crickets everywhere else.
As ever, we look to France for street politics. My father in law is a rightist with a keen interest in France, former teacher of French. He dismissed Le Pen as a busted flush and says only chance of getting rid of Macronite McKinsey pro USA policy is to elect Melanchon next. time.
I agree with you father-in-law re Madame Le Pen. Would they elect an Islamo-gauchist in preference to the 'Jupiterian' closet-case? What a choice! Crises of the kind that are forming are terrifying.
That means seemingly terrifying vaudevillian democracy will be replaced by the actually terrifying. Churchill was if you were German you know.
Yes we’re marching towards Russia, we have been since Bosnia. Yes we’re baiting China the same way we bailed Japan in 1941. Chips are the oil and steel of today.
I’m cold about these things.
Real war means actual men shove aside the creatures in dresses, the destruction of the Republic removes shackles from the strong. The withered weaklings in dresses have cut their own throats.
And as I said; we have elites who love our country at last - and they’re making alliance with DOD. Musk, Thiel, Bezos, tech, tech venture capital. That’s power, that’s real.
We 🇺🇸 have a chance now , I have something real to grasp , so I’m happy. The price was going to be paid anyway, at least we get something real for the price.
TLW, fair enough! I appreciate your worldview and do not discount the value inherent in anything that you are saying. The conflict is inevitable and was easy to foresee. You are 100% right about Bosnia as the decisive turning point.
But I am a lifelong civilian and I have my doubts about how it will all end up...war is nothing if not a revelation...we just have no idea what will be revealed. Victory and defeat are very difficult to distinguish politically, especially if you are not politically empowered to begin with. Furthermore, victory by the West would further entrench the current oligarchy, regardless of the fate of the withered weaklings in dresses. I doubt that any of us will get a 'land fit for heroes', more likely a 'land fit for heroines'. The official narrative for any victory will surely attribute success to female infantry or fighter pilots. Also, to be frank...I am concerned what stunts the gov't here will get up to under cover of war.
💬 Unbeknownst to most Americans,[...] their 1st Amendment rights are being vitiated, namely, by the European Union. There is a financial gun pointed at Twitter. But it is not the Biden administration, but rather the European Commission,[...] that has its finger on the trigger. The law in question is the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which was passed [...] amidst almost total indifference – in Europe as much as in the United States – despite its *momentous and disastrous implications for freedom of speech worldwide*.
💬 [EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation] requires signatories to censor what is deemed by the European Commission to be disinformation *on pain of massive fines*. The enforcement mechanism, i.e. the fines, has been established under the DSA.
Daiva, this is tag-team politics at the planetary level. There is no way that Brussels would pull a stunt like that at the expense of Big Tech without clearing it with Washington first. No way. Absolutely no way. It would be a guaranteed career-killer and the Eurocrats just do not sacrifice their careers (certainly not after watching what happened to DSK).
Washington would have been OK with it. Most likely Washington even asked Brussels to do it so as to help shape the regulatory environment overseas in preparation for an eventual, inevitable, push for something similar in Washington as a necessary measure to create a level playing field for the corporate sector.
Tag-team politics between jurisdictions is a staple for managing potentially unpopular or controversial regulation or de-regulation. Whitehall played this game endlessly with Brussels while they were in the EU. It was a genius move to direct or misdirect responsibility/blame at will.
Jurisdiction-arbitrage is integral to the way the regime operates. They do this all the time. For example, when you hear the crackpots and dribbling idiots bull-^^^^^^g everyone about the intrigues/mischiefs of the City of London, rest assured they are doing so to hide whatever Wall St is up to. The same is true of 'national' politics and the Washington/Brussels shell game.
Very worrisome is a historic neutral like Ireland backing the EU military package and do far ignoring the suggestion by Austria that neutral EU states should form an alliance. Yet 70 pc of Irish support military neutrality and if SF stick to their guns, ahem, nudge-nudge, on this issue, a referendum may be held Our political, academic and media classes are totally captured by AngloSaxon worldview. It is called being mature, just like being EU fanatics is called pooling our sovereignty, not diluting it. What is the general pro and anti sentiment as core per centage in each of your countries
Neutrality is a very hard game to pull off. The neutrals (Finland, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland and Ireland...and before that Portugal and Spain) only got away with it for so long because it suited the purposes of the major players in one way or another.
Neutrality was viable when Ireland had a smaller, much less developed, economy but today it is integrated into the global economy. The labour market for professionals is enough by itself to guarantee that Irish politicians remain flexible. The scents arising from the flesh-pots of Brussels and Strasbourg as well as the global institutions (IMF, the UN etc) and the global NGOs are especially fragrant for the well-connected. The classes that cannot aspire to employment/enrichment by such means are not considered 'deplorable' and xenophobic for nothing!!!
We have a PM now who lectures on international solidarity and responsibility, who sat as Minister in a cabinet which saw a 'sale' of our sugar beet quota to Germany (shotgun at the head) and who was in cabinet when the Troika (ECB/IMF etc) came in to take charge. His party historically claimed the mantle of The Republican Party and yet who seems terrified of a border poll or any ting which might upset His Majestys Government or Unionism. An actual jellyfish. His successor later this year in a coalition deal is varadkar, an WEF/GAE adherent.
At that stage the frontier was open, agricultural output for export was soaked up by England alone and industry was embryonic. By WW1 the US had grown enormous: big enough for Wall St to supplant London as financier to the world and by WW2 the US was frightened of being locked out of the giant trading blocs unless they got a decisive outcome that they could use to their advantage.
I yield to no one in my admiration for Jefferson and Jackson (practically the only decent men to ever run the US), but the US cannot return to neutrality without sacrificing a hell of a lot.
2. Speaking of Finite; Every inch of the Northern Hemisphere is defended directly or indirectly by nuclear weapons, mostly directly.
Most of the Southern Hemisphere that is worth having is defended indirectly or even directly by nuclear weapons.
The number of nations with nuclear weapons grows, because as Ukraine proves only nuclear powers are sovereign.
We’ll get a direct lesson on nuclear sovereignty before this is over. That will impose Westphalian international relations as even any and all versions of the Christian God could not, and make Space vastly more attractive.
There is a future to fight for, its the fighting part that’s terrible.
The Republicans are now confronted by the prospect of the euthanasia of the North American 'mittelstand'/small and medium business sector. Monopoly capital needs maximum consolidation at home in order to provide the economies of scale to compete with China. Concern over civil liberties is purely for the sake of public relations. The constituencies for libertarianism in any form are set to take a bruising once the stock market tanks.
Final comment (for this thread) over here in Germany the health minister seems determined to bring back a mask mandate, I guess it's easier to do that than to actually tackle the issues facing the HC system, which like everywhere are immense.
I think I shall avail myself of this opportunity to find out what you think of something that has been growing in my head, but for the understanding of which I lack sufficient financial knowledge and the time to correct this deficiency (I am a farmer moonlighting as a translator to pay the bills!)
It seems to me that the persistent tendency of the American Fed to wait far too long to make financial moves, then overcompensate badly, is not a bug, but a feature. By this I mean that in so doing the world is flooded by cheap money (when rates are rock bottom and investors desperately seeking returns), then all this money races back, at far higher relative exchange rates, when Fed rates are raised and investors can get better returns on T-Bills at far lower risk. Parallel to this, EMs take on huge EMF loans, in USD, when the incoming dollars can buy less local currency and achieve less local positive impact, then have to bankrupt themselves paying back these loans in expensive currency.
By doing this, so it seems to me, the American empire is achieving two realated goals:
a) systematically and periodically undercutting any potential competitor to its global monetary hegemony, and
b) providing an ever-growing need for dollars, which the Fed can then print on and on, to finance the American government in its profligacy. In other words, to finance the imperial lands.
What say you? Is this too far into the conspiracy theory weeds?
Nope, not too far into the weeds at all. If I may make some recommendations, look for the Epsilon Theory (https://www.epsilontheory.com/) with discussions about general financialization issues, and Heisenberg Report (https://heisenbergreport.com/) which includes bond market & global currency explanations.
The US practically pioneered currency competition as a covert form of economic warfare (though there are some who would argue that this had been anticipated once or twice in history).
The US uses the currency reserves of its trading partners and allies to anchor them within the empire. This has been the long-held view of Michael Hudson, the economist who advised the Nixon Administration about the likely effects of abandoning the gold standard.
I especially like the Saturday Update! I'm sure it takes a lot of work to find and digest that much information. Now that I've said I value the Update, I will have to sign up for a paid subscription.
It's Halloween!
Here's a fine Substack review essay on the top horror movies by female directors:
"Sexual Aberrations of the Criminal Female II: Hell Is Other Women"
"Wherein: my pick for greatest horror movie ever directed by a woman is revealed!"
Congratulations on the interviews; they are arguably the most hilarious thing one can find on the internet. And informational too. Like food that is good for you AND delicious. If they ever get assembled in a book, I would certainly buy it.
This is not the first time I asked several/many commentators to comment on this event. Thus far, most ignored thhe requuest entirely, or dismissed it as "of zero signifcance."
I wonder how thsi thread will respond.
***
On or about the 12th of March 2022 Ansastasia Kotvitska/Kotvitskaya, wife of rich person and former Zelinsky-comrade politician, left Ukraine with 29 million US dollars and some million Euros in cash. Ukrainan border authorities didn't notice anything unusual, but Hungarians inspected her luggage, found seven suitcases brimming with cash and asked about it. She claimed she was travelling to give birth in a safe place and needed "some cash."
Even though this was reported by Ukrainskaya Pravda and one strongly anti-Orban Hungarian site (Atlatszo) and was supported by several photographs, in the West it was only mentioned, only once, by Canada's National Post and a few small news sources in Asia. Certainly not by any member of the :main-stream media."
I inquired widely, and was ignored or told that this was not as important as, say, detailed accounts of someone eating 65+ hotdogs in a NY contest.
1) On the one hand, perhaps, I am not asking a question.
2) On the other hand, (sigh!) Ukraina/Ukraine is touted as the West's "Holy Cause." (At least it has been for months now; although the fervor is cooling somehat --- even while the billions keep being voted in/promised/delivered (?) So, even if keeping ca. 30 million US dollars cash around the house, and even if Kotvitska's chutzpah does not merit mention as a Guiness record, even if her smuggling (and other, somewhat lesser amounts), are not worth mentioning and discussing,
it is at least a peripheral news item in a situation where kids in the West are asked to donate their lunch-money to "help Ukraine in its hour of desperate need."
Unless I'm mis-comprehending, your original post asked us to raise topics worth discussing. So yes, there is a question buried in all this:
Effective sole power is ceded by EU Commission to Von Der Liar, a verified liar and almost certainly acting in US interests only. Google Heiko VDL and see his business ref Pfizer. She spent formative years in US. Her eradication of texts from Bourla is an attempt to cover fraud. Interesting to see how the investigation of the Pfizer deal goes. Probably nowhere but she has made many enemies.
If Kotvitskaya's husband was in any way connected to a faction that supported the Maidan or NATO you can bet she has protection from one or other Western intelligence service (US, UK, Canada or Germany most likely). If her old man was in any way connected to the Ukrainian opposition, the mainstream media would have covered it.
Second attempt (today) to see this post appear on your screen.
On or about the 12th of March 2022 Ansastasia Kotvitska/Kotvitskaya, wife of rich person and Zelinsky-comrade politician, left Ukraine with 29 million US dollars and some million Euros in cash. Ukrainan border authorities didn't notice anything unusual, but Hungarians inspected her luggage, found seven suitcases brimming with cash and asked about it. She claimed she was travelling to give birth in a safe place and needed "some cash."
Even though this was reported by Ukrainskaya Pravda and one anti-Orban Hungarian site (Atlatszo) and was supported by several photographs, in the West it was only mentioned, only once, by Canada's National Post and a few small news sources in Asia.
I inquired widely, and was ignored or told that this was not as important as, say, detailed accounts of someone eating 65+ hotdogs in a NY contest.
How do you view Europe demographically? I have the feeling we are moving away from "It is not happening and you deserve it happening to you" to "It's happening and it's good" in the GR debate.
The demographic crisis is by far the most important issue for Europe, and the ruling elites (outside of Hungary) have settled for continued immigration or are avoiding the question altogether (Denmark/Sweden as two countries now wanting to restrict it but without any pro-natal policies).
Climate Change emergencies will be used to ram though continued mass migration towards Europe in the near future.
How effective are pro-natal policies? I have the feeling it is not that effective. I think that the natal problem will resolve itself in time. Most have 0 or 1 child in conditions of modernity, while a select few (either due to religion, culture or genetics) have lots of children. They will eventually outnumber the first in due time. We see this in France already, because they went through the demographic transition first. The only true problem is immigration.
France's demographic problems go back centuries. They were a big issue in the 19th c. Immigration has always been used to remediate this, initially the immigrants came from Italy, Spain and Portugal, now from everywhere. Pro-natal policies have very mixed results, depending on the context.
I wonder what you make of the BAP critique that underpopulation is a fake problem and that a small but superior and organized demos can hold their own/enforce their will against large masses?
I don't think that I can answer this one as their strategy hasn't changed and is still ongoing. The Chinese have a long game in play, so unless we see a regime change and/or collapse in Beijing, I don't think it should be answered at present.
Mistakes? Personally, I'd be careful about using a word like that. So far, the great weakness of China, which Xi has not been able to correct, is China's exposure to the US bond-market. China is Uncle Sam's second biggest creditor (Japan is number one) and poor Xi, the last significant 'Marxist' leader on the planet has a problem that only a banker could appreciate (Marx would have loved the irony). China has begun reducing its holdings in US treasuries, but they are extremely vulnerable. Xi can now mobilise China against the US...and Washington's fifth column within China. Taiwan is now under the gun.
Marx was less of a Marxist than what followed.
Which is trifling compared to the fate of Keynes.
That is the fate of all imaginative and powerful minds. To his credit, Marx anticipated the effect that capitalism would have on old Europe. There were plenty of others who did too, but Marx championed the productive classes (the entrepreneurial and innovative bourgeoisie as well as the workers, above all the skilled workers). His successors were mostly caught up in bullshit...wars and revolutions radicalise people and push them into forms of insanity that get institutionalised, to the disadvantage of us all.
Keynes is even more complicated. IMO Keynes was a very reluctant reformer. His book on Versailles reveals him to have been a conservative at heart...he obviously longed to remake the world of the pre-war bourgeoisie, but had enough brains to realise that this simply could not be done. Keynes would be comatose with shock at the economics of the last generation (and offended at the rudeness and groupthink within the profession).
Many evils could be avoided if only people read books carefully. But ideas exist only to justify what people want to do anyway. And academics just want to pimp ideas out and they'll use their fists on their 'girls' and a lead-pipe on the rest of us to do it.
Hit the like button above to like this Open Thread. The rest of the instructions are in the body of the main post. Have fun and be nice.
Those of us that are curious hope you go back and label the y-axis on the two subscriber graphs. Love the site and happy to pay, but when speaking about the site it is always better to have better data. It is not persuasive to say "twice as many subscribers as six months ago" when the six-month-ago number is 2...lol. Thanks
Canada: you once called Canada the quintessential Post national nation. I Assume you mean no heritage no history no culture no centre, just formless international community in a cold climate. Is that what you meant?
Please do a think piece on Canada.
Justin Trudeau, October 2015:
The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, articulated this when he told the New York Times Magazine that Canada could be the “first postnational state”. He added: “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/04/the-canada-experiment-is-this-the-worlds-first-postnational-country
Canada has a history, and Canada has cultures (Quebecois, Newfie, Maritime, Native being the best examples of domestic, non-imported cultures). The rest is "we're not American", despite their extreme Americanization.
I will write on this at some point.
Thank you.
Let me speak of a culture with no name. That culture is me and my relatives drinking beer and playing euchre in the garage at my grandfather‘s house. Blue collar, white, high school graduates, paying off mortgages, driving Camaros or Corvettes if you have a good job. We fight over the Leafs or the Red Wings.
Trudeau and his ilk (most of your readers?) hate our guts and consciously destroyed us, we in turn hate them but we are cowed, defeated, broken and ineffectual.
You destroyed our world with NAFTA - de industrialized and destroyed , but at least you gave us opiates.
You are right, some portion of the elite needs to join us the dispossessed or nothing will happen save our further defeat. 
My father, a man with incredible political instincts despite only finishing 12th grade (too poor to go to uni in the ex-YU) said during the NAFTA debates that Canadian manufacturing would be destroyed by it. My mother's cousin, an educated man, took the opposing view.
I remember you commenting on that in one of your pieces. I value people with good judgement. You show good judgement.
The anecdote sums up the situation perfectly. A generation was wasted before the obvious became sufficiently evident for acknowledgement and by now the damage has really added up. And people wonder why the deplorables are so angry.
Once again, I get the opportunity to share this link:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/22/pat-buchanan-trump-president-history-profile-215042/
It was obvious in the 90s that Buchanan was likely to be some kind of 'John the Baptist' preparing the way for another. Vast numbers of Republican Congressional staffers in the 90s were Buchanan fans, even though their bosses were not. I think they were mostly motivated by the aggressive nationalism, rather than any great concern for the white working classes.
My enduring peeve with Buchanan is that he never acknowledges that the relative social stability and wellbeing of the Cold War era was simply a temporary concession to the masses by a state/corporate coalition that needed to demobilise potential domestic opposition so they could focus on the struggle against the USSR. The escalating neo-liberalism of the last thirty years was very much a legacy of victory in the Cold War. And Reagan himself signed off on the first amnesty for illegal immigrants and it was Reagan's Sunbelt capitalism that did so much to develop the low-wage, precarious employment, model of development that white-anted America.
Good stuff and thank you. I was in university during the Buchanan hay days and I remember the professors teaching me to hate him.
Notice the opulence of his home, can you afford that wood paneling? How does that happen?
My father broke with the Left over trade policy (when the Labour Party in Australia lowered tariffs in the 70s) because he saw it as an abandonment of the old commitment to full employment and a fundamental betrayal. This is now held as the position of a 'dinosaur', but it was prescient.
IMO attitudes to the basics of economics and politics are very much a product of generational experience. My father was born in the 30s, lived through occupation and war and was a refugee. Economic security at all costs was (and is) an obsession for people with such experiences. The baby boomers, by contrast, experienced mass affluence and in their complaisance gave away the foundations required for the prosperity of future generations. Young people today who experience precarious employment coupled with debt-enabled consumption are likely to turn into militant anti-capitalists...chronic debtors without any prospects of ever acquiring substantial savings/capital of their own are unlikely to embrace any form of economic liberalism.
I have developed a thought recently, thinking it has really locally based roots because of my business-related experience. But reading your comment, it struck me how much of the idea can be found in your comment.
My thought goes something like this: my people here in Croatia are skipping basics in business (and in life) because they think they are smart (which by my estimation they usually are) which leads them to believe that basics of their trade are not so important and go straight to the sophisticated tools and techniques. For example: they have not ever lead a diary and suddenly, they think that they can write like for example our Niccolo here. This, although they have never ever written a serious publishing before.
Because of living in really prosperous and easy life, we have begun to imagine ourselves as more worthy and, "higher" peoples than those before us. But, I would argue, out fathers have more intimate relationship to tradition and hardship than us, and can better judge reality because of it. Our generation (I am early millennial, althought I am more in line of thought with Gen X) has been brought up by people well aware of scarcity, but we have experienced nothing less than plenty, which is to say, we have lived in a world of illusion (potentially). This is why you have so much victim groups nowadays, because they aren't aware how difficult life can really be (but that is mostly fathers to blame, because they became cowards and yes men). But the reason they do so is that their parents skipped basics of nurture and have consequently lead them to higher ego drive which makes them basically semi-retarded entitled brats.
I hope to instill a value system a bit different into my children than currently offered.
J.J. McCullough did a great video on Quebec Politics, I'm quite up to date on what's happening politically but even this was new to me. Highly worth the 20 minutes to watch.
https://youtu.be/Y4WQUkRwLmM
As an aside I'm somewhat surprised that Trudeau, rather than Premiers, is getting all the heat over how covid was managed
But Trudeau so easy to dislike
Which makes him useful. He is a lightning rod for opposition. Trudeau can and will be disposed of when the time comes, but the faults of the system will be confused with his personal inadequacies. Trudeau embodies misdirection in politics.
Well said. Canada is worse than the States, we are woke, progressive, pious, little and silly .
Canada just seems worse because it had so much potential...which it wasted by turning itself into Absurdistan.
Here is an article on Canada that I found poignant but exceptionally interesting.
https://www.palladiummag.com/2019/09/19/how-not-to-build-a-country-canadas-late-soviet-pessimism/
I remember Pat Buchanan calling Canada a "Soviet Canuckistan"
OK so I read that article. Canada, Soviet like pessimism, an interesting thesis. Are you Canadian? If not why do you care about Canada? Canada is soft and mushy and tasteless like pablum how could you have an interesting article at your fingertips like that?
That comment by the odious Freeland to an African journalist at Q and Q about Africa being starved of restricted resources was shameful. Basically dismissing him with change your government to support west. She is very bizzare in her facial tics and mannerisms.
Considering her background (Freeland's grandfather was a crony of the war-time governor-general of Poland) she is unlikely to be uncomfortable with any kind of moral compromise for the cause. She was once photographed at a demonstration in Ottawa fondling the regalia of the OUN-B (the Ukrainian movement that used to give men in mixed marriages the choice between killing their wives and kids or being killed themselves).
As for the tics...her doctor mixed adrenochrome from the wrong batch of corpses with the botox.
I enjoyed that video thank you
Any plans to visit the States anytime soon? When’s the last time you did? Spending some time in DC and writing about what you observe would be fun, and I’d enjoy reading the perspective of everyone’s favorite littoral cave slav.
The last time I was there was in February of 2020 just as COVID-19 hit. I was in NYC on business. If I head out to the USA again any time soon, I will let readers know in advance.
One question directed to me constantly is: "What do you propose should be done?"
This is the most fair of questions to ask me, and it is something that is always in my head. It's just an incredibly tough one to answer, especially when the political world is a constantly moving target.
Without power, implementing any proposed solutions would be difficult. Without implementation, we can never truly know if they would work. Even if they were implemented and successful, many would still be unhappy with them for countless reasons.
You posted an open thread where people stated their ideal polity. Answers ranged wildly. Imagine politics as a massive amount of spectrums. Liberty <-> security, centralized <-> decentralized, secular <-> religious, etc. Any solution proposed will be derided as both “not enough X” and “not enough Y” on any X <-> Y spectrum.
Perhaps this is too cynical…. Anyways, I see the main utility in what you do as providing information and perspectives allowing us readers to make better decisions by our own metrics. These decisions vary wildly, but all are influenced by your insight.
And maybe, just maybe, someone with power will read your work, overcome any political resistance, and enact solutions based on your ideas :)
Power comes .
It has a price.
Its not asking.
Help has come .
Real tech wants a real America
https://future.com/building-american-dynamism/
Real tech is not Social Masturbation.
Real tech is for example DOD.
Real Tech has defected to DOD, and Red Empire (DOD). The price is war or arms race. War is very likely. The gain is Reindustrializing America.
Lattice- the OS for war.
Many such cases.
https://www.anduril.com
Read the American Dynamism link
The author is tech venture capital
The Elites stand for us at last.
To do this, we must reshore and re-industrialize.
They and it is they desire this, they make Red Empire DOD an ally.
As has Musk,
Bezos.
If the price of re-industrialization is war, indeed given our politics and actual government, war may be the only realistic path.
Our enemies domestic and the looters might well not be overpowered by anything less.
And for once we benefit. Instead of suffer needlessly.
The price may not be too high, in any case this is real.
Power isn’t asking in any case.
The rule of war is better than the rule of the Mad.
Tech needs to be wrested away from the PhDs. A 4-year degree should be sufficient for launching most engineers. One of the more famous non-graduates of a local undergrad school was booted due to poor class attendance - he took his patent collection and founded his own company.
Formal education has an unfortunate tendency to bore the crap out of anyone with an inventive, questioning streak.
This is literally wresting .
I’m afraid that’s all that can be done.
There’s nothing else out there.
No other path.
The edifice has to collapse. People have to withdraw their participation. We must tell the truth without fear or coyness. We must be transparent in the working of our minds and demand that of others. And we must not comply.
What should be done: disassemble the administrative state, collapse 75% of it. Leave the bureaucrats with their pensions but kick them out of work. The lesson of the administrative state is it creates distortions and perverse incentives
nah, its very clear what shuld be done
but too many on the right are still scared of being labeled whatever-phobe by the left.-
screw
it
They will never be your friends or anything
Fix society along conservative ideals, drop ANY kind of promotion of LGBT (the horror) focus instead on promoting the traditional nuclear family
things like that----
Hear, hear!
Matt Stoller started a substack about monopoly power in the US. It was perfect timing, after 3 plus decades of Neo Liberal policies the ground is suddenly shifting (started under Trump accelerated under Biden. Now here’s the thing, for all the talk about Big Tech censorship in the Conservative media the GOP is fighting tooth and nail against anything that would stop that.
I quote liberally from Matt’s article but I highly recommend reading the whole thing
Matt Stoller started a substack about monopoly power in the US. It was perfect timing, after 3 plus decades of Neo Liberal policies the ground is suddenly shifting (started under Trump accelerated under Biden. It’s a theme that has split the conservative movement.
I quote liberally from Matt’s article but I highly recommend reading the whole thing
For the last five years, conservatives have noticed that dominant private firms who control key infrastructure are willing and able to use their power to censor or exclude people from political participation.
This piece continues a theme I’m fascinated by, which is the internal conflict within the Republican Party over corporate power. In this case, it’s about a lawsuit by Wall Street and Big Tech to have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is trying to stop banks from discriminating against customers, declared unlawful. If Wall Street is successful, they will be empowering banks to deny banking services to conservatives. And therein lies the possible tension.
-and-
For the last five years, conservatives have noticed that dominant private firms who control key infrastructure are willing and able to use their power to censor or exclude people from political participation.
But there’s a problem. And that is, the populist right is running smack-dab into the libertarian view of the administrative state. For the last forty years, conservatives, who aligned with libertarians, feared overreaching Federal power, because they saw the U.S. government as a fundamental threat to their liberties. But the power of libertarian thinking is falling apart in right-wing circles for a number of reasons.
it’s about a lawsuit by Wall Street and Big Tech to have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is trying to stop banks from discriminating against customers, declared unlawful. If Wall Street is successful, they will be empowering banks to deny banking services to conservatives. And therein lies the possible tension.
The Republican Party is populist in the streets, libertarian in the sheets
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/who-loves-woke-wall-street?r=8ahwm&utm_medium=ios
More worrisome is the raft of laws coming via the EU over "mis-information". The EU is giving itself the power to force big tech (not the media as far as I know) to censor any thing labelled misinformation. The lab leak theory was a great example, banned till it was allowed. I'll link to the story if I can find it again.
The EU sense the coming crisis and they need the ability to 'lockdown' the internet in order to contain the unrest due to the energy crisis/deindustrialisation. This winter will be nasty, but spring and summer potentially explosive.
They're doing it already - protests across Europe (Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Stuttgart) are being memory-holed by the "objective" press. A couple of videos on twitter, and crickets everywhere else.
As ever, we look to France for street politics. My father in law is a rightist with a keen interest in France, former teacher of French. He dismissed Le Pen as a busted flush and says only chance of getting rid of Macronite McKinsey pro USA policy is to elect Melanchon next. time.
I agree with you father-in-law re Madame Le Pen. Would they elect an Islamo-gauchist in preference to the 'Jupiterian' closet-case? What a choice! Crises of the kind that are forming are terrifying.
Oh cheer up!
Real war is coming!
That means seemingly terrifying vaudevillian democracy will be replaced by the actually terrifying. Churchill was if you were German you know.
Yes we’re marching towards Russia, we have been since Bosnia. Yes we’re baiting China the same way we bailed Japan in 1941. Chips are the oil and steel of today.
I’m cold about these things.
Real war means actual men shove aside the creatures in dresses, the destruction of the Republic removes shackles from the strong. The withered weaklings in dresses have cut their own throats.
And as I said; we have elites who love our country at last - and they’re making alliance with DOD. Musk, Thiel, Bezos, tech, tech venture capital. That’s power, that’s real.
We 🇺🇸 have a chance now , I have something real to grasp , so I’m happy. The price was going to be paid anyway, at least we get something real for the price.
Sorry if this is disappointing.
There’s no other way.
TLW, fair enough! I appreciate your worldview and do not discount the value inherent in anything that you are saying. The conflict is inevitable and was easy to foresee. You are 100% right about Bosnia as the decisive turning point.
But I am a lifelong civilian and I have my doubts about how it will all end up...war is nothing if not a revelation...we just have no idea what will be revealed. Victory and defeat are very difficult to distinguish politically, especially if you are not politically empowered to begin with. Furthermore, victory by the West would further entrench the current oligarchy, regardless of the fate of the withered weaklings in dresses. I doubt that any of us will get a 'land fit for heroes', more likely a 'land fit for heroines'. The official narrative for any victory will surely attribute success to female infantry or fighter pilots. Also, to be frank...I am concerned what stunts the gov't here will get up to under cover of war.
💬 Unbeknownst to most Americans,[...] their 1st Amendment rights are being vitiated, namely, by the European Union. There is a financial gun pointed at Twitter. But it is not the Biden administration, but rather the European Commission,[...] that has its finger on the trigger. The law in question is the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which was passed [...] amidst almost total indifference – in Europe as much as in the United States – despite its *momentous and disastrous implications for freedom of speech worldwide*.
https://brownstone.org/articles/how-the-eu-is-forcing-twitter-to-censor-and-musk-cant-stop-it/
.
And kinda companion later piece ↓
💬 [EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation] requires signatories to censor what is deemed by the European Commission to be disinformation *on pain of massive fines*. The enforcement mechanism, i.e. the fines, has been established under the DSA.
https://brownstone.org/articles/et-tu-paypal-the-eus-role-in-financial-surveillance/
Daiva, this is tag-team politics at the planetary level. There is no way that Brussels would pull a stunt like that at the expense of Big Tech without clearing it with Washington first. No way. Absolutely no way. It would be a guaranteed career-killer and the Eurocrats just do not sacrifice their careers (certainly not after watching what happened to DSK).
Washington would have been OK with it. Most likely Washington even asked Brussels to do it so as to help shape the regulatory environment overseas in preparation for an eventual, inevitable, push for something similar in Washington as a necessary measure to create a level playing field for the corporate sector.
Tag-team politics between jurisdictions is a staple for managing potentially unpopular or controversial regulation or de-regulation. Whitehall played this game endlessly with Brussels while they were in the EU. It was a genius move to direct or misdirect responsibility/blame at will.
Jurisdiction-arbitrage is integral to the way the regime operates. They do this all the time. For example, when you hear the crackpots and dribbling idiots bull-^^^^^^g everyone about the intrigues/mischiefs of the City of London, rest assured they are doing so to hide whatever Wall St is up to. The same is true of 'national' politics and the Washington/Brussels shell game.
Very worrisome is a historic neutral like Ireland backing the EU military package and do far ignoring the suggestion by Austria that neutral EU states should form an alliance. Yet 70 pc of Irish support military neutrality and if SF stick to their guns, ahem, nudge-nudge, on this issue, a referendum may be held Our political, academic and media classes are totally captured by AngloSaxon worldview. It is called being mature, just like being EU fanatics is called pooling our sovereignty, not diluting it. What is the general pro and anti sentiment as core per centage in each of your countries
Neutrality is a very hard game to pull off. The neutrals (Finland, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland and Ireland...and before that Portugal and Spain) only got away with it for so long because it suited the purposes of the major players in one way or another.
Neutrality was viable when Ireland had a smaller, much less developed, economy but today it is integrated into the global economy. The labour market for professionals is enough by itself to guarantee that Irish politicians remain flexible. The scents arising from the flesh-pots of Brussels and Strasbourg as well as the global institutions (IMF, the UN etc) and the global NGOs are especially fragrant for the well-connected. The classes that cannot aspire to employment/enrichment by such means are not considered 'deplorable' and xenophobic for nothing!!!
Good reply.
We have a PM now who lectures on international solidarity and responsibility, who sat as Minister in a cabinet which saw a 'sale' of our sugar beet quota to Germany (shotgun at the head) and who was in cabinet when the Troika (ECB/IMF etc) came in to take charge. His party historically claimed the mantle of The Republican Party and yet who seems terrified of a border poll or any ting which might upset His Majestys Government or Unionism. An actual jellyfish. His successor later this year in a coalition deal is varadkar, an WEF/GAE adherent.
Neutrality and coalitions of neutrals during the Napoleonic wars was the original American foreign policy and served us very well.
At that stage the frontier was open, agricultural output for export was soaked up by England alone and industry was embryonic. By WW1 the US had grown enormous: big enough for Wall St to supplant London as financier to the world and by WW2 the US was frightened of being locked out of the giant trading blocs unless they got a decisive outcome that they could use to their advantage.
I yield to no one in my admiration for Jefferson and Jackson (practically the only decent men to ever run the US), but the US cannot return to neutrality without sacrificing a hell of a lot.
Unless we recognize 2 important changes;
1. Space is infinite, the earth is finite.
2. Speaking of Finite; Every inch of the Northern Hemisphere is defended directly or indirectly by nuclear weapons, mostly directly.
Most of the Southern Hemisphere that is worth having is defended indirectly or even directly by nuclear weapons.
The number of nations with nuclear weapons grows, because as Ukraine proves only nuclear powers are sovereign.
We’ll get a direct lesson on nuclear sovereignty before this is over. That will impose Westphalian international relations as even any and all versions of the Christian God could not, and make Space vastly more attractive.
There is a future to fight for, its the fighting part that’s terrible.
Social Credit Scoring by stealth.
The Republicans are now confronted by the prospect of the euthanasia of the North American 'mittelstand'/small and medium business sector. Monopoly capital needs maximum consolidation at home in order to provide the economies of scale to compete with China. Concern over civil liberties is purely for the sake of public relations. The constituencies for libertarianism in any form are set to take a bruising once the stock market tanks.
The Republican Party is very Marxist, as in Groucho: they have principles but if people don’t like those principles, they have others.
(Stolen, I forget who, some Irish fellow talking about neolib Sinn Fein).
I want to post my translation of _Finis Germania_. Where's an appropriate place to do so?
If it's copyrighted, you'd have to ask permission to do so from the copyright holders.
Final comment (for this thread) over here in Germany the health minister seems determined to bring back a mask mandate, I guess it's easier to do that than to actually tackle the issues facing the HC system, which like everywhere are immense.
There's always the Canadian solution - assisted suicide.
Hi Niccolo and friends,
I think I shall avail myself of this opportunity to find out what you think of something that has been growing in my head, but for the understanding of which I lack sufficient financial knowledge and the time to correct this deficiency (I am a farmer moonlighting as a translator to pay the bills!)
It seems to me that the persistent tendency of the American Fed to wait far too long to make financial moves, then overcompensate badly, is not a bug, but a feature. By this I mean that in so doing the world is flooded by cheap money (when rates are rock bottom and investors desperately seeking returns), then all this money races back, at far higher relative exchange rates, when Fed rates are raised and investors can get better returns on T-Bills at far lower risk. Parallel to this, EMs take on huge EMF loans, in USD, when the incoming dollars can buy less local currency and achieve less local positive impact, then have to bankrupt themselves paying back these loans in expensive currency.
By doing this, so it seems to me, the American empire is achieving two realated goals:
a) systematically and periodically undercutting any potential competitor to its global monetary hegemony, and
b) providing an ever-growing need for dollars, which the Fed can then print on and on, to finance the American government in its profligacy. In other words, to finance the imperial lands.
What say you? Is this too far into the conspiracy theory weeds?
Good stuff. I'll leave it to those with a better understanding than I presently have of the mechanics of money and global finance.
Nope, not too far into the weeds at all. If I may make some recommendations, look for the Epsilon Theory (https://www.epsilontheory.com/) with discussions about general financialization issues, and Heisenberg Report (https://heisenbergreport.com/) which includes bond market & global currency explanations.
I have been an avid reader of all Ben and Rusty's writing since the beginning! Really good stuff. I'll surely look into Heisenberg. Thanks.
The US practically pioneered currency competition as a covert form of economic warfare (though there are some who would argue that this had been anticipated once or twice in history).
The US uses the currency reserves of its trading partners and allies to anchor them within the empire. This has been the long-held view of Michael Hudson, the economist who advised the Nixon Administration about the likely effects of abandoning the gold standard.
https://michael-hudson.com/
Niccolo,
I especially like the Saturday Update! I'm sure it takes a lot of work to find and digest that much information. Now that I've said I value the Update, I will have to sign up for a paid subscription.
It's Halloween!
Here's a fine Substack review essay on the top horror movies by female directors:
"Sexual Aberrations of the Criminal Female II: Hell Is Other Women"
"Wherein: my pick for greatest horror movie ever directed by a woman is revealed!"
https://paulwgleason.substack.com/p/sexual-aberrations-of-the-criminal-90a
Merci beaucoup, Jean!
Just read this and it was great
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Would there be any point in you interviewing a liberal (left or right) who experienced the Yugoslavia Wars?
Unless it's Zizek, not really. Wars in the ex-YU are too niche a subject and too far back in history for readers here to give a shit.
Congratulations on the interviews; they are arguably the most hilarious thing one can find on the internet. And informational too. Like food that is good for you AND delicious. If they ever get assembled in a book, I would certainly buy it.
Still waiting for the Slavoj Žižek interview though; that would be something
He would be a killer get.
just make sure he "gets" deodorant and mouthwash first
World is collapsing but we still have FbF to help us make sense of it - seriously, is the world collapsing?
Yes. The old order is falling apart...for some. The forever wars, the petrodollar, global supply chains, the Dems.
The great disappointment is that the music of today is so insipid. What good is the collapse of the world if you can't dance your way through it?
Terrible music. So disappointing.
This is not the first time I asked several/many commentators to comment on this event. Thus far, most ignored thhe requuest entirely, or dismissed it as "of zero signifcance."
I wonder how thsi thread will respond.
***
On or about the 12th of March 2022 Ansastasia Kotvitska/Kotvitskaya, wife of rich person and former Zelinsky-comrade politician, left Ukraine with 29 million US dollars and some million Euros in cash. Ukrainan border authorities didn't notice anything unusual, but Hungarians inspected her luggage, found seven suitcases brimming with cash and asked about it. She claimed she was travelling to give birth in a safe place and needed "some cash."
Even though this was reported by Ukrainskaya Pravda and one strongly anti-Orban Hungarian site (Atlatszo) and was supported by several photographs, in the West it was only mentioned, only once, by Canada's National Post and a few small news sources in Asia. Certainly not by any member of the :main-stream media."
I inquired widely, and was ignored or told that this was not as important as, say, detailed accounts of someone eating 65+ hotdogs in a NY contest.
What exactly is the question that you are asking?
1) On the one hand, perhaps, I am not asking a question.
2) On the other hand, (sigh!) Ukraina/Ukraine is touted as the West's "Holy Cause." (At least it has been for months now; although the fervor is cooling somehat --- even while the billions keep being voted in/promised/delivered (?) So, even if keeping ca. 30 million US dollars cash around the house, and even if Kotvitska's chutzpah does not merit mention as a Guiness record, even if her smuggling (and other, somewhat lesser amounts), are not worth mentioning and discussing,
it is at least a peripheral news item in a situation where kids in the West are asked to donate their lunch-money to "help Ukraine in its hour of desperate need."
Unless I'm mis-comprehending, your original post asked us to raise topics worth discussing. So yes, there is a question buried in all this:
"Whatcha tink?"
1 Ukraine is a very, very corrupt country
2. all is forgiven while the war against Russia continues, so long as you don't step on the wrong toes
3. billions went missing during the war/occupation of Iraq, so this is chump change - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-6b-missing-in-iraq-may-have-been-stolen/
Nothing is allowed to get in the way of US foreign policy objectives, so "seepage" aka theft is just the price of empire
Oh, don't try so hard to cheer me up, OK? ;-)
Effective sole power is ceded by EU Commission to Von Der Liar, a verified liar and almost certainly acting in US interests only. Google Heiko VDL and see his business ref Pfizer. She spent formative years in US. Her eradication of texts from Bourla is an attempt to cover fraud. Interesting to see how the investigation of the Pfizer deal goes. Probably nowhere but she has made many enemies.
If Kotvitskaya's husband was in any way connected to a faction that supported the Maidan or NATO you can bet she has protection from one or other Western intelligence service (US, UK, Canada or Germany most likely). If her old man was in any way connected to the Ukrainian opposition, the mainstream media would have covered it.
Second attempt (today) to see this post appear on your screen.
On or about the 12th of March 2022 Ansastasia Kotvitska/Kotvitskaya, wife of rich person and Zelinsky-comrade politician, left Ukraine with 29 million US dollars and some million Euros in cash. Ukrainan border authorities didn't notice anything unusual, but Hungarians inspected her luggage, found seven suitcases brimming with cash and asked about it. She claimed she was travelling to give birth in a safe place and needed "some cash."
Even though this was reported by Ukrainskaya Pravda and one anti-Orban Hungarian site (Atlatszo) and was supported by several photographs, in the West it was only mentioned, only once, by Canada's National Post and a few small news sources in Asia.
I inquired widely, and was ignored or told that this was not as important as, say, detailed accounts of someone eating 65+ hotdogs in a NY contest.
The first attempt shows up as well as this one.
How do you view Europe demographically? I have the feeling we are moving away from "It is not happening and you deserve it happening to you" to "It's happening and it's good" in the GR debate.
The demographic crisis is by far the most important issue for Europe, and the ruling elites (outside of Hungary) have settled for continued immigration or are avoiding the question altogether (Denmark/Sweden as two countries now wanting to restrict it but without any pro-natal policies).
Climate Change emergencies will be used to ram though continued mass migration towards Europe in the near future.
How effective are pro-natal policies? I have the feeling it is not that effective. I think that the natal problem will resolve itself in time. Most have 0 or 1 child in conditions of modernity, while a select few (either due to religion, culture or genetics) have lots of children. They will eventually outnumber the first in due time. We see this in France already, because they went through the demographic transition first. The only true problem is immigration.
I don't agree that a shrinking heritage population is a good thing.
I don't see how to stop it in modernity.
France's demographic problems go back centuries. They were a big issue in the 19th c. Immigration has always been used to remediate this, initially the immigrants came from Italy, Spain and Portugal, now from everywhere. Pro-natal policies have very mixed results, depending on the context.
I wonder what you make of the BAP critique that underpopulation is a fake problem and that a small but superior and organized demos can hold their own/enforce their will against large masses?
Would you want to take such a massive risk with your own people?