France vs. 'Le Wokisme', "USA took out Nordstream 2", US Media Failures and Complicity Over "Trump-Russia", Irish Anti-Migrant Protests, The Sons of Chad
Have no choice but to agree. From a dispassionate perspective, Trump is the perfect figure to lead a controlled opposition. In office he was easily constrained. He is deeply obnoxious to the people the regime fears the most (its own core of supporters within the professional and managerial classes who are frustrated by the plutocracy and whose loyalty is under pressure from fear of downward social mobility under the regime of inequality and plunder) and cannot win them over. He has a passionate following, but no structure or organisation. MAGA is a fan club, not a disciplined political party. Trump is a safety valve for discontent, not an agent for meaningful change. Furthermore, his message plays best with people who want the impossible: to return to the old normal because they retain a stubborn belief in the system as it was once supposed to work. He can misdirect the energies of this constituency until they are exhausted.
Trump's Rasputin (Steve Bannon) has military intelligence written all over him. Probably a drinking buddy of whoever was in charge of the QAnon project.
Having said all that, Trump is fun to watch and it is gratifying to see him demoralise and outrage his critics and opponents.
Zack, I take it that you incline towards a No Fap position on the political orgy that is Panem on the Potomac?
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I will turn back to the book club tomorrow, and post a few more entries over the course of next week thanks to having a bit more time to devote to my writing.
RE: Wokisme, if you have a good grasp of French then there’s an excellent philosophy podcast called “Le Précepteur” that did a pretty solid episode on Le Wokisme—I think it gives a good insight into the way it’s perceived by French intellectuals; or at least, the ones who aren’t totally Atlanticized.
RE: Russiagate—something I’ve seen firsthand is how much normie progressives still believe in the whole thing and believe the conspiracy was vindicated by Mueller and co. It’s a complete motte and bailey argument; the now well established fact that some campaign officials like Manafort did in fact have contact with Russians is treated as proof that Russiagate was fundamentally correct, as if those contacts were what the whole conspiracy theory was about the whole time when in reality it was a cluster of wildly unhinged speculation about Trump working directly for Putin. It’s honestly embarrassing now thoroughly the Donald broke these people’s brains.
I laugh when the French go into spasms about Le Wokeism—they have their fingerprints all over this Frankenstein!
Woke is as French as Voltaire or the French pox.
If only they'd fulfilled Foucault's deepest fantasies and locked him in a dungeon and disciplined and punished him they way he liked it;
If only all his Maoist colleagues had been given a Holiday in Cambodia and a chance to attend one of Pol Pot's seminars instead of coming to America to get rich and famous (while denouncing all the things that made them rich and famous), maybe America would be not in the process of being deconstructed.
Blaming the French for Woke is like the English blaming the French for venereal diseases.
Proto-woke existed in the US generations before French theory was taken up by the Ivy League. Wyndham Lewis saw proto-woke or ur-woke for himself in the 1920s and wrote about it in PALEFACE: THE PHILOSOPHY OFTHE 'MELTING POT' (1929).
no single person place or idea is responsible for European civilization collapsing in spasms of performative guilt and other manifestations of decadent narcissism. i've read my Spengler so i know the end was written at the beginning in 1492 (unless that's 1619 ;))
Have you read Carlyle's French Revolution book? I wasn't always able to follow without a scorecard (it may be best read after you already know the main players and story lines), but the prose is magnificent.
Speaking of eloquent French writers I’m very partial to de Maistre—he’s one of those rare writers with a prose style so articulate that it approaches hypnotic.
oh yeah, i love "Journey Around My Room" and its sequel.
"The senseless destruction of living things and all the sorrows of humanity count for nothing in the great whole. — The death of a sensitive man expiring in the company of his disconsolate friends, and that of a butterfly cut down by the chill morning air inside the calyx of a flower, are similar moments in the course of nature. Man is nothing but a phantom, a shadow, a mist that scatters in air."
Naw. Wokeism is an entirely American project. It can’t just be Foucault even if his theories are used by American academics to justify woke, precisely because the French don’t do that.
I was mostly kidding, but at the same time let's not brush aside the role the French postMAOdernists (sorry) played in the Left's Permanent Revolution, more specifically how they represent the transformation of Leftism from a project based on workers' rights and the redistribution of wealth to an upscale boutique project based in the Academy.
After they discovered Levi-Strauss' structuralism, it became possible to fulfill all their radical fantasies but now without having to meet and smell any dirty proles (or join a terrorist cell) but by staying in the library, writing books and getting in the papers, while "interrogating texts" for their structural sins against socialist egalitarianism.
Once they located oppression in thought, language, nouns and verbs, they proceeded to spew their special brand of nihilistic acid, say a lot of stupid shit (“Reason and power are one and the same,” Lyotard LOL), and help us arrive at our current moment in art & culture, where every critic is an agent of the thought police, happily smothering free thought w the chloroform of "theory".
But I do know it's a mistake to blame "theorists" for the crimes of their descendants: for French intellectuals playing with transgressive theories is just another way to epatez le bourgeois and score as many groupies as Sartre did, while in American hands these same ideas evolved into a Marxist-flavored Puritan Reformation.
De mémoire je n'ai pas trouvé cet épisode sa meilleure vulgarisation et la trouve délicieusement bonifiée par le combat de coq qui s'en est ensuivi entre Antoine Goya et notre Précepteur!
Really interesting thank you. We in the United States are still reeling from how fast totalitarianism has gripped the world. As high as the potential for recognizing this many decades ago, the reality is we are deep into it now.
Was just reading Charles Dickens introductions to A Tale Of Two Cities. Seems like he is describing our present times and this was before the French Revolution. Many parallels. Thinking this could never happen is dangerous - obviously.
Being woke is being intellectually and psychologically moribund. Really important to teach strategies to overcome it - and why.
But recognizing the causes in deep history are even more important.
I had to read this part of the Nordstream piece twice:
“Under the new deal, the U.S. legal system would have jurisdiction in certain “agreed areas” in the North over American soldiers accused of crimes off base, as well as over those Norwegian citizens accused or suspected of interfering with the work at the base.”
Seems to me the US is trying to head off any bad cases like the ones at Okinawa or Korea. Occasionally soldiers get handsy with the locals, with this deal in Norway it’s a possibility that not only would a US soldier avoid prosecution, but perversely his Norwegian accuser might be prosecuted for interference.
Describing Norway as a vassal state is probably too generous.
SOFA - status of forces agreements - are standard.
If they weren't , we'd be hauled in regularly for every dispute and political matter.
Not to mention foreign laws are often so harsh people apply for asylum to escape.
They'd be hauling in soldiers for things that aren't crimes in most Western Nations, like holding a woman's hand.
That doesn't mean they get a pass, if they commit crime and are convicted they either they are punished under UCMJ which can and does include hard labor at Leavenworth, or often enough given to the local government for punishment.
In this case it may keep the Navy Divers out of a Norwegian Jail for blowing up Nordstream.
You seem to be arguing that local law is potentially too harsh and at the same time, not harsh enough. Of course the US bends over backwards not to offend local sensibilities in places like Saudi Arabia, but residents of Okinawa are none too happy with American occupiers acting like, well, occupiers and the locals having but little recourse.
They do occasionally commit crimes and are then punished.
However Japan is welcome to defend itself and see us off, funny they don't eh?
The residents of Okinawa as much or more than most places will resent foreigners, resent soldiers, and particularly resent foreign soldiers.
The Professional Left which of course exists in Okinawa as it does in all the West will certainly agitate against whatever and whoever is available, this being a career, and the US forces are available.
We shouldn't send military abroad then betray them, not that this bothers DC, it does bother me and the majority of non-psychopathic people.
If however you want my views: we should have ended our alliances 30 years ago, we didn't, now in this case since we manically built up China we can't leave yet.
China is a very different story than Russia, and in many ways all this nonsense stems from China acting in their foreign policy and diplomacy like drunken businessmen out of town, talking to 'working girls', and this is on China. China speaks to any nation it does trade with as if they were hired prostitutes and does so publicly, it speaks routinely to all foreign nations as if they were provinces of China, this is cultural autism not uncommon to great and large nations like America or China, America tells you to put up George Floyd murals in Kabul, China addresses your government as if they were a province that does not know their place.
That's actually a standard proviso in Defense Cooperation Agreements involving US bases (and yes, because of cases in Japan and Korea). Its purpose isn't to "head off" crimes committed by military personnel, but rather avoid imbroglios with local law enforcement so that the offender can be swiftly tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice---which I can tell you, dishes out much harsher punishment than any Norwegian law against a similar offense.
And yes, Norway is a GAE satrapy. But it seems to be an exuberant one. That the Navy divers deployed from a Norwegian mine hunter, and that the buoy which triggered the charges months later was dropped from a Norwegian P-8, reveals quite the cozy relationship between their military and ours. Moreover, it's not like Americans such as Ted Cruz were the only ones expecting to bank off this sabotage:
"With additional investments at Europe’s only LNG production plant Norway aims to extend peak production into the 2050s cementing its position as a key LNG supplier to Europe."
On the off-chance Norwegians dip into these comments, I have a question for y'all: What do you think your government was thinking when it got onboard with this NATO operation? Do you think they thought it was going to turn out well? Did they imagine your economic prosperity is not fettered to German industry, fueled by cheap LNG?
Are they aware Germany is now set to de-industrialize? Do they have any inkling of what this might portend for the EU? These are questions.
Yesterday Compact ran an article by a black left-wing Villanova professor about how a seminar he taught at the Telluride Institute was hijacked by his TA, a black super-woke recent Ivy League grad who'd been mentored by an unnamed professor who appeared in TV a lot. The TA was basically a cult leader.
Well this morning Princeton's Eddie Glaude, who fits the description of that professor, lost his shit. He's probably been sending his students all over the country to do shit like this and is angry someone blew the whistle.
Our professors really are a priesthood, because it seems they go to college/seminary to learn proper dogma and then reflexively recite it on any and every occasion.
Eddie Glaude can't really think, as thinking may accidentally lead to a heretical thought that would damage his career and the Permanent Revolution™, so he has to resort to reciting Holy Saint Foucault and pull out "the asymmetry of power here."
Unfortunately for him, if you read the article he's whining about, it's very clear who is holding the whip hand in the "asymmetry of power" chart.
I guess in his mind and the hivemind he belongs to, even if a member of a Protected Victim group has you down on the ground and is pummelling your face, they're still the victim, bc of historical imbalances.
May he live long enough to be on the receiving end of an "asymmetry of power".
Interesting stuff. Danton raising the alarm about Robespierre. Hopefully there will be something left to salvage of our society when the guillotine has taken them all.
The Nord Stream incident puts the importance of controlling Syria into context - had Putin not intervened when he did to save Assad the West could have begun ringforting Russian energy (Balkan pipeline also would have been key).
The US wanted to build a natural gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey via Syria. Assad refused. That was the principal driver behind the US support for the rebels.
Not angelic at all. Damascus supported the PKK in Turkey for many years, as well as innumerable intrigues in the region and beyond.
I never cease to be amazed at the strength of informed opinion in the West about the rights and wrongs of the region, but I have yet to meet anyone who bothered to find out anything about the Ba'ath or its allies. Cheney, Rumsfeld and co look apostolic compared to their West Asian peers. That takes effort.
Ireland seems to be a unique case in the West in terms of its nationalism having been originally developed in an anti-colonial context. Also, while there is no ostensibly populist party, there also is no party serving the function of dialectical negation.
Feb 11, 2023·edited Feb 11, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
don't worry the US State Dept is on it. I'm sure there's a cargo plane filled with "Diversity Consultants" on the way to Ireland right now.
The populace need to be educated to know that "No One is Illegal" and "Love Wins" and also that their homes and communities actually belong to various international banks and other bondholders.
"The emergence of a nationalist revolutionary movement from the ranks of the mostly Roman Catholic lower-middle and working class made Yeats reassess some of his attitudes. In the refrain of "Easter, 1916" ("All changed, changed utterly / A terrible beauty is born"), Yeats faces his own failure to recognize the merits of the leaders of the Easter Rising, due to his attitude towards their ordinary backgrounds and lives."
Yeats may have "reassessed some of his attitudes" but he lived and died w an aristocrat's hauteur and once he saw how icky politics was he retreated into mysticism and, of course, to writing some of the best poems in our language.
I think for him politics, romance, table-rapping etc were just different masks to wear to keep his poetry fresh and his poetic imagination kindled. and he very much succeeded, from say the 1890s to the 1930s he wrote some really great books, that are still fresh and vital today.
There's little poetry I can stand, I admire Yeats.
My main point being that while Elite Theory [no revolution without the Elites] is largely true and certainly holding true in America, in Ireland that's not been the case over and over again. That this present bruha is working class and women leading [again, Irish women are different] would normally make it another sad pilgrimage of grace. It probably will be.
There are other deeper seated issues here, the common Irish have no representation in government, just new landlords beholden to new bankers.
I recall reading years ago that the bureaucratic and professional classes are scared shirtless of hard working class women with kids in buggies, sure enough very evident in these protests. Women led the anti water charge campaign at the sharp end in their neighbourhoods. The sisterhood in media are trying to criticise them without their hatred and contempt showing, to interrupt their own private Brooklyns of the mind. Mullally, Holland, O'Connell, McCarthy, wagons all. Ask an Irish friend to explain wagon, basically a bumptious, narcissistic pain in the ass.
Reading about women's roles in Ireland reminded me of Louise Day Hicks, the South Boston city politician who became the face of the 1970s anti-busing movement
Interesting that France is such a "bad" place, but people still keep going there. I'm no expert in foreign affairs or Europe for that matter, but how long till the levy breaks? They've already had their fair share of ethnic conflicts between Caucasians and now other groups are being added. Who will implode first? The U.S. or Europe?
Europe. It is more densely populated. In the US people can still avoid ethnic conflict by moving state. After a generation of unconstrained illegal immigration it will be different. But for now it looks like Europe will go up in flames first.
And do not neglect the Mariel effect at work - the opportunity of governments to rid themselves of either their surplus population or the dangerous classes. Diasporas comprised by the unwanted, the Global South's gift to the West. Mass migration to the US in the 19th c. probably spared Western and Northern Europe revolutions in the early 20th c. The same phenomenon is helping to preserve the existing regimes and caste structures across the developing world right now.
Add to that the mischievous third parties like Erdogan's Turkey using control of mass migration routes to apply pressure.
A leaked State Department memo spells it out in black and white. The United States cares about human rights, wokeness, etc. only to the extent that doing so gives them influence, usually in the form of a stick with which to beat countries that the United States doesn't like, while ignoring far worse behavior in its chosen pets.
Forget the pets...it the owner who has the human rights problem, as we can see with the abusive detention of the Jan 6 political prisoners or the vindictive prosecution of Douglass Mackey.
Whereas I have nothing against gay population, or anyone else who found themselves on the hurt side in this story, the failure to convert Qatar for the World Cup was a joy to watch. I am in no way a fan of that societal structure, but it was awesome to see both a culture telling our western flame bearers to fuck off (oil supplying, so admittedly less heroism there) and the fore mentioned flame bearers acquiescing and buying the said oil, deeming it still more democratic and desirable than the Russian.
Now that Russian natural gas is off the menu (at least unless purchased through middlemen) Qatar is guaranteed an extraordinary degree of global influence. Exchanging the al-Thani (the ruling family of Qatar) for the Kremlin is going to have all manner of consequences for the Europeans.
Feb 11, 2023·edited Feb 11, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Niccolo, your concluding observation re le woke was very insightful. Woke is just one part of a wider phenomenon that aims to homogenize France with American standards.
Woke is simultaneously a critical challenge that needs to be faced, but success (if this is even possible) is not going to be sufficient to save France.
The Minority Engagement Strategy referred to by US Ambassador Rivkin in the cable published by Wikileaks requires a response. Perhaps France should return the favour by sponsoring identitarian, Trad and anti-woke activists in the US? Not likely to happen, but it would put TurboAmerica on notice.
Too bad you got to know Hersh via his Kennedy book - not his finest hour. He did absolutely great work and I recommend his autobiography but his Kennedy book was written, as he says himself, for the advance money and he steered people away from the JFK assassination research community, implicitly, which is a shame. Reducing Kennedy, to an extent, to his rumored sex life is a disservice to the man.
the reports of "destroying muh Ekonomie" are much overrated.
I understand that this whole thing comes from an anti-Nato, anti-Atlanticist POV which can be valid..buuut, we need also to have a solid tethering to reality
France's economy is fueled at around 20% by nuclear energy...
Germany's economy existed in strength well before that Russian cheap gas ( remember the powerhousethat was the FRG? and how much did the Soviets help?) and will exist after it.
And at least from the handful ppl I know from Dortmund (and the plentiful economic reports), the doomsayers prediction about mass unemployment and 1929-style crisis ...simply didnt happen.
Too bad, it seems that Russian gas isnt exactly the only thing running the wheels of the German economy.
Perhaps you shuld look beyond the borders of belarus to witness a country willing to destroy its economy and intl. position because, oh nooo, NATO in Kiev ( nevermind that since 2004, NATO is 80 km from St Petersburg --.... .i.e. ESTONIA)
Have no choice but to agree. From a dispassionate perspective, Trump is the perfect figure to lead a controlled opposition. In office he was easily constrained. He is deeply obnoxious to the people the regime fears the most (its own core of supporters within the professional and managerial classes who are frustrated by the plutocracy and whose loyalty is under pressure from fear of downward social mobility under the regime of inequality and plunder) and cannot win them over. He has a passionate following, but no structure or organisation. MAGA is a fan club, not a disciplined political party. Trump is a safety valve for discontent, not an agent for meaningful change. Furthermore, his message plays best with people who want the impossible: to return to the old normal because they retain a stubborn belief in the system as it was once supposed to work. He can misdirect the energies of this constituency until they are exhausted.
Trump's Rasputin (Steve Bannon) has military intelligence written all over him. Probably a drinking buddy of whoever was in charge of the QAnon project.
Having said all that, Trump is fun to watch and it is gratifying to see him demoralise and outrage his critics and opponents.
Zack, I take it that you incline towards a No Fap position on the political orgy that is Panem on the Potomac?
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I will turn back to the book club tomorrow, and post a few more entries over the course of next week thanks to having a bit more time to devote to my writing.
RE: Wokisme, if you have a good grasp of French then there’s an excellent philosophy podcast called “Le Précepteur” that did a pretty solid episode on Le Wokisme—I think it gives a good insight into the way it’s perceived by French intellectuals; or at least, the ones who aren’t totally Atlanticized.
RE: Russiagate—something I’ve seen firsthand is how much normie progressives still believe in the whole thing and believe the conspiracy was vindicated by Mueller and co. It’s a complete motte and bailey argument; the now well established fact that some campaign officials like Manafort did in fact have contact with Russians is treated as proof that Russiagate was fundamentally correct, as if those contacts were what the whole conspiracy theory was about the whole time when in reality it was a cluster of wildly unhinged speculation about Trump working directly for Putin. It’s honestly embarrassing now thoroughly the Donald broke these people’s brains.
Thank you for the suggestion. I am struggling with French but can still understand Le Précepteur. The author speaks clearly.
I laugh when the French go into spasms about Le Wokeism—they have their fingerprints all over this Frankenstein!
Woke is as French as Voltaire or the French pox.
If only they'd fulfilled Foucault's deepest fantasies and locked him in a dungeon and disciplined and punished him they way he liked it;
If only all his Maoist colleagues had been given a Holiday in Cambodia and a chance to attend one of Pol Pot's seminars instead of coming to America to get rich and famous (while denouncing all the things that made them rich and famous), maybe America would be not in the process of being deconstructed.
Blaming the French for Woke is like the English blaming the French for venereal diseases.
Proto-woke existed in the US generations before French theory was taken up by the Ivy League. Wyndham Lewis saw proto-woke or ur-woke for himself in the 1920s and wrote about it in PALEFACE: THE PHILOSOPHY OFTHE 'MELTING POT' (1929).
yeah i was just mostly being tongue in cheek.
no single person place or idea is responsible for European civilization collapsing in spasms of performative guilt and other manifestations of decadent narcissism. i've read my Spengler so i know the end was written at the beginning in 1492 (unless that's 1619 ;))
Someone (probably French) once quipped that the second edition of Rousseau's works were bound with the skin of those who had laughed at the first.
Lucky for you that the woke don't read that much.
think that was Burke, but maybe Carlyle.
Have you read Carlyle's French Revolution book? I wasn't always able to follow without a scorecard (it may be best read after you already know the main players and story lines), but the prose is magnificent.
Speaking of eloquent French writers I’m very partial to de Maistre—he’s one of those rare writers with a prose style so articulate that it approaches hypnotic.
oh yeah, i love "Journey Around My Room" and its sequel.
"The senseless destruction of living things and all the sorrows of humanity count for nothing in the great whole. — The death of a sensitive man expiring in the company of his disconsolate friends, and that of a butterfly cut down by the chill morning air inside the calyx of a flower, are similar moments in the course of nature. Man is nothing but a phantom, a shadow, a mist that scatters in air."
Who writes this well today?!?!
Such people exist...but they are either unpublished, unpublishable, or in hiding. Their works await discovery.
I believe that there are treasures being written and hidden. Without this belief I would give in to despair.
No. It goes on the list.
Naw. Wokeism is an entirely American project. It can’t just be Foucault even if his theories are used by American academics to justify woke, precisely because the French don’t do that.
I was mostly kidding, but at the same time let's not brush aside the role the French postMAOdernists (sorry) played in the Left's Permanent Revolution, more specifically how they represent the transformation of Leftism from a project based on workers' rights and the redistribution of wealth to an upscale boutique project based in the Academy.
After they discovered Levi-Strauss' structuralism, it became possible to fulfill all their radical fantasies but now without having to meet and smell any dirty proles (or join a terrorist cell) but by staying in the library, writing books and getting in the papers, while "interrogating texts" for their structural sins against socialist egalitarianism.
Once they located oppression in thought, language, nouns and verbs, they proceeded to spew their special brand of nihilistic acid, say a lot of stupid shit (“Reason and power are one and the same,” Lyotard LOL), and help us arrive at our current moment in art & culture, where every critic is an agent of the thought police, happily smothering free thought w the chloroform of "theory".
But I do know it's a mistake to blame "theorists" for the crimes of their descendants: for French intellectuals playing with transgressive theories is just another way to epatez le bourgeois and score as many groupies as Sartre did, while in American hands these same ideas evolved into a Marxist-flavored Puritan Reformation.
De mémoire je n'ai pas trouvé cet épisode sa meilleure vulgarisation et la trouve délicieusement bonifiée par le combat de coq qui s'en est ensuivi entre Antoine Goya et notre Précepteur!
Really interesting thank you. We in the United States are still reeling from how fast totalitarianism has gripped the world. As high as the potential for recognizing this many decades ago, the reality is we are deep into it now.
Was just reading Charles Dickens introductions to A Tale Of Two Cities. Seems like he is describing our present times and this was before the French Revolution. Many parallels. Thinking this could never happen is dangerous - obviously.
Being woke is being intellectually and psychologically moribund. Really important to teach strategies to overcome it - and why.
But recognizing the causes in deep history are even more important.
I had to read this part of the Nordstream piece twice:
“Under the new deal, the U.S. legal system would have jurisdiction in certain “agreed areas” in the North over American soldiers accused of crimes off base, as well as over those Norwegian citizens accused or suspected of interfering with the work at the base.”
Seems to me the US is trying to head off any bad cases like the ones at Okinawa or Korea. Occasionally soldiers get handsy with the locals, with this deal in Norway it’s a possibility that not only would a US soldier avoid prosecution, but perversely his Norwegian accuser might be prosecuted for interference.
Describing Norway as a vassal state is probably too generous.
The word you are looking for is "puppet". Norway is an American puppet state.
The United States usurped a similar role in occupied Iraq, which shows the level of subservience of Norway.
SOFA - status of forces agreements - are standard.
If they weren't , we'd be hauled in regularly for every dispute and political matter.
Not to mention foreign laws are often so harsh people apply for asylum to escape.
They'd be hauling in soldiers for things that aren't crimes in most Western Nations, like holding a woman's hand.
That doesn't mean they get a pass, if they commit crime and are convicted they either they are punished under UCMJ which can and does include hard labor at Leavenworth, or often enough given to the local government for punishment.
In this case it may keep the Navy Divers out of a Norwegian Jail for blowing up Nordstream.
You seem to be arguing that local law is potentially too harsh and at the same time, not harsh enough. Of course the US bends over backwards not to offend local sensibilities in places like Saudi Arabia, but residents of Okinawa are none too happy with American occupiers acting like, well, occupiers and the locals having but little recourse.
But they don't act like occupiers.
They do occasionally commit crimes and are then punished.
However Japan is welcome to defend itself and see us off, funny they don't eh?
The residents of Okinawa as much or more than most places will resent foreigners, resent soldiers, and particularly resent foreign soldiers.
The Professional Left which of course exists in Okinawa as it does in all the West will certainly agitate against whatever and whoever is available, this being a career, and the US forces are available.
We shouldn't send military abroad then betray them, not that this bothers DC, it does bother me and the majority of non-psychopathic people.
If however you want my views: we should have ended our alliances 30 years ago, we didn't, now in this case since we manically built up China we can't leave yet.
China is a very different story than Russia, and in many ways all this nonsense stems from China acting in their foreign policy and diplomacy like drunken businessmen out of town, talking to 'working girls', and this is on China. China speaks to any nation it does trade with as if they were hired prostitutes and does so publicly, it speaks routinely to all foreign nations as if they were provinces of China, this is cultural autism not uncommon to great and large nations like America or China, America tells you to put up George Floyd murals in Kabul, China addresses your government as if they were a province that does not know their place.
I dunno, taking up residence in a foreign country and not being bound by its laws sure sounds like being an occupier to me.
Although the idea that China is more bossy than the United States is a hoot.
Finster, stop being catty.
And you are.
We’re not residents, we’re allied soldiers, and we can’t be bound by allies laws. We couldn’t even and shouldn’t fight under those conditions
Lol.
That's actually a standard proviso in Defense Cooperation Agreements involving US bases (and yes, because of cases in Japan and Korea). Its purpose isn't to "head off" crimes committed by military personnel, but rather avoid imbroglios with local law enforcement so that the offender can be swiftly tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice---which I can tell you, dishes out much harsher punishment than any Norwegian law against a similar offense.
And yes, Norway is a GAE satrapy. But it seems to be an exuberant one. That the Navy divers deployed from a Norwegian mine hunter, and that the buoy which triggered the charges months later was dropped from a Norwegian P-8, reveals quite the cozy relationship between their military and ours. Moreover, it's not like Americans such as Ted Cruz were the only ones expecting to bank off this sabotage:
"With additional investments at Europe’s only LNG production plant Norway aims to extend peak production into the 2050s cementing its position as a key LNG supplier to Europe."
https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/equinor-invest-13bn-hammerfest-lng-strengthen-norways-position-largest-gas-supplier-europe
EDIT: what the long warred said. Beat me to it.
Thanks for clarification, it's also to avoid long battles in court, UCMJ is swift and harsh.
[Uniform Code of Military Justice].
I suspect Norway has raised it's status here, it's not just getting hands dirty,
IT'S MONEY, I SMELL MONEY.
Blue eyed sheikhs. Texans without stetsons. No need to raid monasteries...hydrocarbons are the way to go.
Addendum: Norway's direct involvement is amazing.
On the off-chance Norwegians dip into these comments, I have a question for y'all: What do you think your government was thinking when it got onboard with this NATO operation? Do you think they thought it was going to turn out well? Did they imagine your economic prosperity is not fettered to German industry, fueled by cheap LNG?
Are they aware Germany is now set to de-industrialize? Do they have any inkling of what this might portend for the EU? These are questions.
Yesterday Compact ran an article by a black left-wing Villanova professor about how a seminar he taught at the Telluride Institute was hijacked by his TA, a black super-woke recent Ivy League grad who'd been mentored by an unnamed professor who appeared in TV a lot. The TA was basically a cult leader.
Well this morning Princeton's Eddie Glaude, who fits the description of that professor, lost his shit. He's probably been sending his students all over the country to do shit like this and is angry someone blew the whistle.
https://mobile.twitter.com/esglaude/status/1624399229408927745
Our professors really are a priesthood, because it seems they go to college/seminary to learn proper dogma and then reflexively recite it on any and every occasion.
Eddie Glaude can't really think, as thinking may accidentally lead to a heretical thought that would damage his career and the Permanent Revolution™, so he has to resort to reciting Holy Saint Foucault and pull out "the asymmetry of power here."
Unfortunately for him, if you read the article he's whining about, it's very clear who is holding the whip hand in the "asymmetry of power" chart.
I guess in his mind and the hivemind he belongs to, even if a member of a Protected Victim group has you down on the ground and is pummelling your face, they're still the victim, bc of historical imbalances.
May he live long enough to be on the receiving end of an "asymmetry of power".
Interesting stuff. Danton raising the alarm about Robespierre. Hopefully there will be something left to salvage of our society when the guillotine has taken them all.
nordstream bombing: between Sweden and us navy I presume nothing larger than a single diver can move undiscovered in the Baltic Sea east of Denmark.
us navy seals advertise submersibles, that piggy back on submarines that could easily rig the mines that blew the pipes.
hidden sensor data, capability and motive
Herschel is correct
The Nord Stream incident puts the importance of controlling Syria into context - had Putin not intervened when he did to save Assad the West could have begun ringforting Russian energy (Balkan pipeline also would have been key).
The US wanted to build a natural gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey via Syria. Assad refused. That was the principal driver behind the US support for the rebels.
We had a lot of troubles to reconcile with the Syrians, who were no angels to their neighbors on the subject of supporting rebels.
Not angelic at all. Damascus supported the PKK in Turkey for many years, as well as innumerable intrigues in the region and beyond.
I never cease to be amazed at the strength of informed opinion in the West about the rights and wrongs of the region, but I have yet to meet anyone who bothered to find out anything about the Ba'ath or its allies. Cheney, Rumsfeld and co look apostolic compared to their West Asian peers. That takes effort.
This is what they had tried to do with the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline some 20 years ago as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku%E2%80%93Tbilisi%E2%80%93Ceyhan_pipeline
Ireland seems to be a unique case in the West in terms of its nationalism having been originally developed in an anti-colonial context. Also, while there is no ostensibly populist party, there also is no party serving the function of dialectical negation.
don't worry the US State Dept is on it. I'm sure there's a cargo plane filled with "Diversity Consultants" on the way to Ireland right now.
The populace need to be educated to know that "No One is Illegal" and "Love Wins" and also that their homes and communities actually belong to various international banks and other bondholders.
How do you say "Struggle Session" in Gaelic?
Ireland is a different kettle of fish, and so are Irish women.
ive always been a fan of lady gregory
As was Yeats:
"The emergence of a nationalist revolutionary movement from the ranks of the mostly Roman Catholic lower-middle and working class made Yeats reassess some of his attitudes. In the refrain of "Easter, 1916" ("All changed, changed utterly / A terrible beauty is born"), Yeats faces his own failure to recognize the merits of the leaders of the Easter Rising, due to his attitude towards their ordinary backgrounds and lives."
Ireland is a different place than most.
Yeats may have "reassessed some of his attitudes" but he lived and died w an aristocrat's hauteur and once he saw how icky politics was he retreated into mysticism and, of course, to writing some of the best poems in our language.
I think for him politics, romance, table-rapping etc were just different masks to wear to keep his poetry fresh and his poetic imagination kindled. and he very much succeeded, from say the 1890s to the 1930s he wrote some really great books, that are still fresh and vital today.
There's little poetry I can stand, I admire Yeats.
My main point being that while Elite Theory [no revolution without the Elites] is largely true and certainly holding true in America, in Ireland that's not been the case over and over again. That this present bruha is working class and women leading [again, Irish women are different] would normally make it another sad pilgrimage of grace. It probably will be.
There are other deeper seated issues here, the common Irish have no representation in government, just new landlords beholden to new bankers.
I recall reading years ago that the bureaucratic and professional classes are scared shirtless of hard working class women with kids in buggies, sure enough very evident in these protests. Women led the anti water charge campaign at the sharp end in their neighbourhoods. The sisterhood in media are trying to criticise them without their hatred and contempt showing, to interrupt their own private Brooklyns of the mind. Mullally, Holland, O'Connell, McCarthy, wagons all. Ask an Irish friend to explain wagon, basically a bumptious, narcissistic pain in the ass.
They don’t have to do that. The sociological departments of Irish universities are captured.
And is that enough?
There's more in heaven and earth than can be seen from the sociological department.
[and yes, I think you're having me on ;)
Reading about women's roles in Ireland reminded me of Louise Day Hicks, the South Boston city politician who became the face of the 1970s anti-busing movement
Interesting that France is such a "bad" place, but people still keep going there. I'm no expert in foreign affairs or Europe for that matter, but how long till the levy breaks? They've already had their fair share of ethnic conflicts between Caucasians and now other groups are being added. Who will implode first? The U.S. or Europe?
Europe. It is more densely populated. In the US people can still avoid ethnic conflict by moving state. After a generation of unconstrained illegal immigration it will be different. But for now it looks like Europe will go up in flames first.
Same reason people from countries that were wrecked by US foreign policy try to get to the US.
They wreck them by being themselves, and plenty of countries where we have no intervention at all have people coming to the West for welfare.
In the case of Germany the Free Pussy they take by rape.
This is who they are, and why their rulers are such brutes; their people are worse.
Syria?
Try India. LMAO.
And do not neglect the Mariel effect at work - the opportunity of governments to rid themselves of either their surplus population or the dangerous classes. Diasporas comprised by the unwanted, the Global South's gift to the West. Mass migration to the US in the 19th c. probably spared Western and Northern Europe revolutions in the early 20th c. The same phenomenon is helping to preserve the existing regimes and caste structures across the developing world right now.
Add to that the mischievous third parties like Erdogan's Turkey using control of mass migration routes to apply pressure.
Why is the simple explanation that wokeness is just one more clever wedge in the ever successful divide and Conquer strategy not correct?
Wedge between whom? Divide and conquer who?
Why all of us save the .1 percent
I.e populism is on the retreat
They were already in control, and "wokeness" pre-dates the most recent surge in populism.
They were already in control to be sure but not near the control they desire and not near the wealth
All I am saying is that wokeness might be easily weaponized against ALL parties
Yes but Wokeness in America has massive subsidies and indeed government offices, NGO's et al since the 1960s.
Wokeness is just HR and Civil Rights becoming the new Official Civic religion, to replace the Constitutional Civic Religion.
That race and woke vs populists is used is obvious.
Keep them Divided and Fighting each other to stay on top.
You do overestimate Elite grasp, their grip, if not their span.
It is a broad span of control with a tenuous grip, shaky at times.
Divide and plunder may be a better term in some cases.
We've had long discussions here about the real estate boom bust in the American Inner Cities being Civil Rights becomes Crime, arson, looting.
Follow by Law and Order [90s] and Gentrification, real Estate Boom.
Follow by 2020 bust, BLM, Crime wave.
[the real muscle in the Left is crime, that's what gets the bourgeois running for the hills].
Now in 2022 suddenly LAW AND ORDER!
No doubt they'll be some more police brutality in 24, etc etc.
sure wash rinse repeat.
but while you say it is tenuous and in the long run is, in the short run their grip has never been tighter
And yet they tremble in person....how long is long run?
They loot as Mongols, but they are no Mongols.
oh they are the most insecure people you will ever meet
LOL. Nothing like Mongols. If you like your heroes without self-pity, check this out. https://youtu.be/TqnhXqJGwlo
An amazing film. Life affirming.
A leaked State Department memo spells it out in black and white. The United States cares about human rights, wokeness, etc. only to the extent that doing so gives them influence, usually in the form of a stick with which to beat countries that the United States doesn't like, while ignoring far worse behavior in its chosen pets.
www.politico.com/amp/story/2017/12/19/tillerson-state-human-rights-304118
Forget the pets...it the owner who has the human rights problem, as we can see with the abusive detention of the Jan 6 political prisoners or the vindictive prosecution of Douglass Mackey.
Whereas I have nothing against gay population, or anyone else who found themselves on the hurt side in this story, the failure to convert Qatar for the World Cup was a joy to watch. I am in no way a fan of that societal structure, but it was awesome to see both a culture telling our western flame bearers to fuck off (oil supplying, so admittedly less heroism there) and the fore mentioned flame bearers acquiescing and buying the said oil, deeming it still more democratic and desirable than the Russian.
Now that Russian natural gas is off the menu (at least unless purchased through middlemen) Qatar is guaranteed an extraordinary degree of global influence. Exchanging the al-Thani (the ruling family of Qatar) for the Kremlin is going to have all manner of consequences for the Europeans.
100%
How is this different from any other country?
Niccolo, your concluding observation re le woke was very insightful. Woke is just one part of a wider phenomenon that aims to homogenize France with American standards.
Woke is simultaneously a critical challenge that needs to be faced, but success (if this is even possible) is not going to be sufficient to save France.
The Minority Engagement Strategy referred to by US Ambassador Rivkin in the cable published by Wikileaks requires a response. Perhaps France should return the favour by sponsoring identitarian, Trad and anti-woke activists in the US? Not likely to happen, but it would put TurboAmerica on notice.
Too bad you got to know Hersh via his Kennedy book - not his finest hour. He did absolutely great work and I recommend his autobiography but his Kennedy book was written, as he says himself, for the advance money and he steered people away from the JFK assassination research community, implicitly, which is a shame. Reducing Kennedy, to an extent, to his rumored sex life is a disservice to the man.
America committed an act of war against Russia and Germany. Hum.
Probably be fine
The sabotage of Nordstream was a geopolitical humiliation ritual for Germany.
For Russia it was confirmation of the wisdom of turning towards Asia (China, India, South Korea). In time it may help sow discord within the EU.
For Europe at large it is an illustration of the old Chinese expression: killing the chicken to frighten the monkies.
And got away with it. You know that TurboAmerica is a thing when it can wage war and the victim dares not even acknowledge being attacked.
Just imagine what TurboAmerica would be like with a stronger industrial base and the right president/commander-in-chief?
Fearsome
Ah Germany
such drama
dont like the intl. energy power play?
Develop your own clean, nuclear energy
Also, for realpolitik, there are no real friends in diplomacy
Only interests.
and sorry, Germany was stripped of sovereignity in 1945.
Being realistic means aligning with whatever the USA says... the 2003 opposition to Iraq war was a blip that was allowed to pass
Does "being realistic" include destroying your own economy for the benefit of others? Why have a country in the first place then?
the reports of "destroying muh Ekonomie" are much overrated.
I understand that this whole thing comes from an anti-Nato, anti-Atlanticist POV which can be valid..buuut, we need also to have a solid tethering to reality
France's economy is fueled at around 20% by nuclear energy...
Germany's economy existed in strength well before that Russian cheap gas ( remember the powerhousethat was the FRG? and how much did the Soviets help?) and will exist after it.
And at least from the handful ppl I know from Dortmund (and the plentiful economic reports), the doomsayers prediction about mass unemployment and 1929-style crisis ...simply didnt happen.
Too bad, it seems that Russian gas isnt exactly the only thing running the wheels of the German economy.
Perhaps you shuld look beyond the borders of belarus to witness a country willing to destroy its economy and intl. position because, oh nooo, NATO in Kiev ( nevermind that since 2004, NATO is 80 km from St Petersburg --.... .i.e. ESTONIA)
What does paying much, much more for energy than previously do to a manufacturing economy?
"Why have a country in the first place then?"
Dude, they're Globalists.
They don't have countries, they have itineraries.
Berlin? Nice Airport.
Much better than JFK...
But the Night Life !!
Oh and...
The answers: INCOME and STATUS. TITLE.
Poor people have countries.
Bloody peasant ! next He'll be asking why we have Room Service !
Speaking of which ....
Poor people have countries.
Rich people have property (including the human kind).
Poor people had countries or thought they did.