The USA's "Disinformation Complex", Resurrect the Polish-Lithuanian Union?, "Liberal Authoritarian" Dubai, Highways and Social Fabric, 17th Cen. Paris' 'Transfusion Affair"
Even worse, half the country will cheer on its implementation because, of course, it will be branded as hurting their perceived enemies on the other side of the political divide.
Josh Homme and QOTSA don’t get enough credit for the work they did on their last album, Villains, envisaging the coming American dystopia. It was almost a foregone conclusion. Much has been made of the dumbing down of the population, but the insidious nature of the experiment is far more nuanced, IMO. Inundate a culture with an existential fear of growing old, convince them that people who hold different political views are the enemy, and keep ratcheting up the Fear as the people fight each other and barely notice how their rights are steadily stripped away.
I think most of the songs “Domesticated Animals” and “Un-Reborn Again.” Withering insights/indictments of American society lol. Plus it’s just awesome that Homme totally ripped off the “Bee Movie” theme and turned it into something far more menacing haha.
Great work as always on the Saturday news. That Tablet article’s given me Cassandra-level chills.
For the Baby Boomers, the internet is not a staple in their life. They still get their news from television. I view alternative media as a last hurrah to knowing what's going on in the world. The old news networks, the newspapers, and the journalists with integrity who worked for them, are extinct.
Yes. However, we didn't know just how corrupt the media was prior to the internet even if some people did have a good idea/engaged in critical analysis.
Apr 1, 2023·edited Apr 1, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
The article about disinformation hits very close. The people who I know are involved with the disinfo industry are generally young women who would've gone into HR 5 years earlier. Ghastly little tyrants they are, I'm sure you know the type. Conform to the stereotype almost to the T. SSRI-eyed college graduates with little concern for truth or justice.
At least during the totalitarian regimes of the early 20th century they were honest about what they were. Some apparatchik working at the ministry of public enlightenment could be pointed out. They knew what they were. Our modern "disinformation experts" genuinely believe that they are objective and true. I can hardly think of people I hate more as a group than they.
It's a new, massive, sprawling industry that is very well-funded and is absorbing a significant segment of graduates with otherwise useless university degrees.
Apr 1, 2023·edited Apr 1, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
It is a make-work scheme for graduates who are superfluous to the needs of the productive side of the economy. If the masses end up on UBI, the disinfo industry will enrich and empower this strata of the email caste in much the same way that the managers of the workhouses did in Victorian England (think of Mr Bumble in OLIVER TWIST).
The beauty of this is that the regime's need for countering disinformation is unlimited and the costs are passed on by Silicon Valley to the consumers. The dissidents and skeptics supply the 'disinfo' that needs to be corrected while people with the wrong thoughts who read their stuff constitute the insoluble problem to be managed. The apparatchiks are deployable across all areas, because they need no skill other than following the cues from the regime's 'experts'.
D-notices were honest? COINTELPRO was honest? I'm sure many of people working in those 20th ct. propaganda apparatus were convinced of the rightness of their campaigns of lies just as these "women" you seem to find problematic.
Justice or truth has rarely, if ever, been a concern for governments, whether of kings, or parliaments. An appearance of justice is necessary to justify the monopoly on usage force, but never truth or justice itself. Specific people might care, but the institution as a whole doesn't. Even an institution as (royal) "science" whose existence is justified as a pursuit of truth is plagued by conflicting, subterranean drives and motives.
For the people who make a living within it, justice is an industry. A source of jobs, power, respect and other thrills.
In the UK there was a chief justice in the mid 20th c. who habitually ejaculated when delivering the death sentence. Ex-schoolmates recalled that even as a child the future was fascinated by the death penalty and would entertain the other boys by reciting the death sentence ("The sentence of this court is that you will be taken from here to the place from whence you came..."). The claims about the late chief justice's behaviour were made by his clerk, who kept a spare pair of freshly pressed trousers on hand when he expected they'd be needed.
As Kant pointed out, nothing straight has ever been fashioned from the crooked timber of humanity.
DEI has proven to be a corporate fig-leaf. DEI officers are being laid off and their departments shuttered across the business sector:
Hamstrung by ‘golden handcuffs’: Diversity roles disappear 3 years after George Floyd’s murder inspired them
The attrition rate for DEI roles was 33% at the end of 2022, compared to 21% for non-DEI roles. Amazon, Applebees and Twitter lead the way with DEI layoffs since July 2022, according to Revelio Labs, a New York-based company that uses data to analyze workforce dynamics and trends.
Another survey showed that Black employees represent only 3.8% of chief diversity officers overall, with white people making up 76.1% of the roles. Those of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity make up 7.8% and those of Asian ethnicity make up 7.7%
From this I think we can safely extrapolate that the Woke agenda’s acceptance by business was a fig-leaf nearly across the board. And how could it not be? PMC Woke is X-face. Profit and power are of course the real goals.
Not so fast: ESG continues to insert itself into business, with Larry Fink of BlackRock doubling down on it. Link to Bloomberg piece - https://archive.is/cbdp8
If you're in the business world, ESG is everywhere.
Gender equality is promoted more than actually achieved
Overall a good article (way better than most) with some mistakes around the edges (all understandable mistakes as Emiratis are extremely private people and will never share anything personal with strangers) - “they go into a tent and when they come out there’s a new king” is a pretty accurate description of decision making throughout the Gulf (exception being Kuwait). It’s definitely all still happening here though, a very interesting time. Probably the most interesting time since I came here 20+ years ago.
It appears to work very well. The minor Gulf States (once mocked for their backwardness) have avoided the political upheavals and extremism of other parts of the Arab world. They are pioneering their own distinctive form of modernity. They have the advantage of natural resources, of course, but the traditions of familial/tribal rule clearly help.
The Chinese are actually trying to produce super soldiers out of micro-organisms. Humans have got to be the only species who actively seek out to reduce its own position in the food chain.
From the article: "The Hong-based South China Morning Post has a doozy of a headline out this week based on a breakthrough announcement by a team of scientists linked to the Chinese military, working in Beijing: "Chinese team behind extreme animal gene experiment says it may lead to super soldiers who survive nuclear fallout."
Yup. They certainly are trying. Combine this with the AI talk, seems like a lot of people really need to find a God to worship as the ultimate ability to diffuse responsibility.
I hope Taibbi & Shellenberger report on how the Rittenhouse trial was censored by Twitter. An obvious case of self-defense against separate, consecutive lynch mobs and Twitter insta-banned practically anyone who spoke out in the kid's favor.
If the national security state was involved in this, it would be a gold mine for the right. I hope the GOP would pounce in such a case (my hopes aren't up).
Censored? Leaving the coverage itself aside, the trial itself was a transparent circus designed to keep the Deep State's role in organising the Kenosha pogrom suppressed. The judge, the defence and the prosecutor all appeared to be colluding to avoid any meaningful discovery of exactly why the FBI had drones with state-of-the-art night-vision cameras hovering over the riot yet never charged anyone except Rittenhouse. Or why so many of the figures in the middle distance of the TV and internet footage appeared to be acting in a co-ordinated fashion of the kind you'd expect from military or police units. So far the other guy charged on that night (he was at the scene of the shooting moments before Rittenhouse discharged his weapon) has not been brought to trial. Most likely charges were dropped. My guess is that the other guy (a union organiser from Chicago) was an FBI asset charged by the cops so as to be used as leverage to secure a half-way fair-trial for Rittenhouse.
Sorry to be conspiratorial, but the trial was way too theatrical to be taken at face value.
There are no available means to counter the disinformation complex beyond a neo-Luddite avoidance of all media and social media. You can't argue with believers and it is a waste of energy to apply formal logic to any exchange in which at least one party is emotionally engaged. Artistic/aesthetic resistance via meme-warfare is possible but runs phenomenal risks as Douglass Mackey (Ricky Vaughn) has found.
We are now seemingly trapped within a giant digital pain box.
Navigating the current internet is like taking a trip trough Chernobyl in 1986. It should be reserved to the "happy few" who have the capacity to do it. And even then they have to use an Hazmat suit.
“There are no available means to counter the disinformation complex beyond a neo-Luddite avoidance of all media and social media.”
This here has been my strategy. I have no social media. Any news I get is from either this Substack or something referenced in a Taibbi piece. Does this make me ill-informed? God damn right! But I’d rather occupy myself with classical music and literature and philosophy and art, because at least our society has so thoroughly abandoned those pursuits as having value that they’re MOSTLY left alone (and they are conveniently my passions).
Apr 1, 2023·edited Apr 2, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Back in The Good Old Days, the news business was hard. A printing press was expensive and required specialists to operate. You had to pay for every sheet of paper printed, whether or not you sold or gave anything away. Plus, unless you planned to publish news as a sort of expensive hobby, you needed advertisers and distribution, which meant that every publisher soon learned whom he could not afford to piss off. (Radio and TV were similar, but if anything more so, and you needed a license since bandwidth was limited.)
The fact that a publishing house had physical assets tied to a physical location only made libel suits that much easier.
The internet changed all that. Now, any jerk with a laptop (blogging software available for free) and wifi (no further away than the nearest McDonald's) can go into the publishing business by nightfall, with advertising revenue supplied by the platform and worldwide distribution to boot.
Naturally, that has People Of Influence And Authority very concerned, and they are working hard to stuff that genie back into the bottle.
> The internet changed all that. Now, any jerk with a laptop (blogging software available for free) and wifi (no further away than the nearest McDonald's) can go into the publishing business by nightfall, with advertising supplied by the platform and worldwide distribution to boot… Naturally, that has People Of Influence And Authority very concerned, and they are working hard to stuff that genie back into the bottle.
Like the nuke they dropped on Hiroshima, that's another genie that's never going back in the bottle, barring total human extinction.
There was something to that Greek theory of nemesis following hubris, or the closely related karmic slogan, "What goes around comes around."
(Like nearly everything online, today's post is far too multi-layered an onion for this non-techie (anti-techie?) to unravel. So be it. Sigh . . . )
But, as for resurrecting the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, I welcome/applaud the notion and woudl gladly sign up in support of it. Difficult? Not really; considering what the Washington-Bruxelles has been able to accomplish --- on paper, at least.
Polish nostalgia for the past (the Commonwealth, the intermarium etc) is inexcusable geopolitical madness. Any Greater Poland would inevitably end up at war with Russia...a calamity beyond description. Poland needs constructive relations with Russia and Ukraine alike. If the current crop of fools in Warsaw had any serious patriotism, they'd stand up to Washington and insist on peace talks, d'etente, Ostpolitik ASAP. And if they were fully lucid (too much to ask for IMO) they'd welcome seeing Washington's fifth column in Kiev (Pravy Sektor) driven into exile by the Russian Army.
They'd also seek better relations with China and the incorporation of East-Central Europe into the Belt and Road initiative. Poland belongs within Eurasia. They should leave the dying lands of the West to rot.
Exactly. Polish elites will be stabbed in the back by America like every other "ally". I really don't get what they hope to gain. Do they really want to end up like Ukraine?
Doubtless key elements within the Polish elite expect to be looked after by the Atlanticist defence sector. Others are banking on jobs in America. Do not forget: the Ukraine is getting destroyed, but the Ukrainian political class and key fifth columnist are getting looked after in a grand fashion. The demonstration effect of this is not lost on their peers in Warsaw.
If the Ukraine is left a rump state or a protectorate of Poland it will be run like Mussolini's 'Republic' after he was sprung from captivity. For ambitious politicians it is better to serve generous foreign masters than rule over an independent society beholden to no-one but the voters.
They are opportunists and gangsters. They'll intrigue for a partitioned Ukraine, but it will all come down to how many soldiers they have on the ground by the end of the year who are able to fight. The Polish army should be able to deal with them. There were rumours that the Poles fighting in Ukrainian uniform killed some of their Ukrainian officers after being ordered on a suicide mission. This is a good sign.
The bitter medicine will be Poland's. Incorporating western Ukraine will increase the number of Ukrainians living within Poland's borders. The great danger is that NATO may try to 'Palestinianise' the Ukrainian cause in some way and set up something like Arafat's Resistance Incorporated. Germany also faces a problem from refugees. Much will depend on Washington. Stoltenberg is apparently soon retiring to head the Norwegian reserve bank. There are rumours Chrystia Freeland takes his spot running NATO. If this happens, expect trouble.
I can tell you from first-hand experience that the Poles have been whipped into a frenzy of Russophobic hatred. I don't expect that the GAE will have any trouble recruiting enough Polish men to march into the mouth of hell.
Hatred is a very poor basis for making life and death decisions. Putin was able to win over the Chechens, but the Poles prefer to risk their cities and their soldiers for Washington and Brussels. You could scarcely think up a better clinical test for diagnosing delusion or dissociative thinking.
I'm still skeptical that this energy will be maintained if they ever enter into the war. Especially once the poles see the Ukrainians being stabbed in the back by the US. It will happen before the end of the year in my opinion. We will see i guess.
I know the Polish mentality well. A lot of Poles (and not just their leaders) would gladly slit their own children's throats, if that mean that an American would pat them on the head and call them a good dog. That goes double if the result would be to spite Russia.
If you think what I wrote is hyperbole, look how Poles have embraced the biological and direct ideological descendants of the very people who so gleefully murdered their grandparents. Pretty much every Polish person lost relatives to the Ukrainian Nazis, but that doesn't stop Poles.
I understand completely. The fact that Warsaw is comfortable with the many Chrysta Freeland types in and around NATO and the EU speaks for itself. Personally, I suspect that Washington enjoys playing this card to provoke and to test. As they say, personnel is policy.
Naturally, no one is guilty of crimes committed by their grandparents, but the tone of the third or fourth generation OUM-B diaspora types (to say nothing of the Pravy Sektor itself) should have the Poles in no doubt what is at stake. The behaviour of the SVU and Azov, Aidar and Kraken units proves this beyond any doubt.
Any respect I had for Poland disappeared after the attack on the Russian Ambassador in Warsaw last May. The relaxed attitude of the authorities was disgusting and demoralising but it clarified things.
NATO has had incredible success in poisoning people's minds. You just have to look at Ukraine. The NATO/EU stooges brainwashed the soccer hooligans in Kharkov and Dnipropetrovsk into hero-worshipping Bandera.
It will all end very badly for the Poles and Ukrainians. They hate Russia more than they love their own sons. What can you say about insanity like this?
The irony is that Russia provides about all of Poland's utility to the Empire.
Take away Russia, and Poland would go from America's Special Little Buddy to a midtier backwater satrapy of no particular importance. Colombia with delusions of grandeur, but no cocaine.
EXACTLY! Poland's principal value to the West is as a source of affordable skilled labour (without the quality assurance issues associated with the immigrants from the ####-hole countries) and as cannon-fodder.
For Ukraine, the West has taken the place of the Nogai and Crimean Hordes and the Ottomans.
Any such Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth would only be another GAE vassal. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if it turned out that the idea was being floated by Washington as another tool of proxy warfare on Russia.
Exactly. It is either b.s. from the psyops units or just the result of lazy thinking by mid-wit foreign policy wonks.
The former Warsaw Pact countries need peace, affordable energy, trade and an alternative to the standard Western model of 'austerity, now, austerity tomorrow, austerity forever'. Washington and Brussels are not interested in anything like that.
After the Ukrainian civil war and the present fiasco you'd have thought that people would have wised up to reality.
That's exactly what it is. Its also completely delusional to think that America can put the commonwealth together tough. I guess the standards for being an NGO worker aren't very high.
The Beltway NGOs are simply an effect of elite overproduction. They are staffed by Ivy League grads who could not be trusted with 'risk management' or ESG ratings in Silicon Valley banking.
A great deal...for Washington. For the European peoples, nothing. Even worse, the EU has further inflamed the situation by endorsing the further Americanisation of inter-European relations: substituting hyper-moralistic approaches in place of traditional forms of pragmatism and compromise without which war becomes a permanent state of affairs. The attempted criminalisation of Russia and the refusal to work towards a peace-deal will leave a dangerous legacy for future generations.
If the Ukrainian war proves anything it is that Brussels is incapable of acting autonomously and is equally incapable of identifying any European interests that are separate from those of Washington.
The EU is a sort of leash for Washington. Far easier to give Brussels the orders and Brussels to make the EU members go along than it is to order a couple dozen fractious satraps and puppets.
I agree. They EU provides political/institutional intermediation with the illusion of European autonomy. In truth the EU commissioners are Atlanticist gauleiters to keep the natives in line. The bureaucracy and the lobbyists provide lucrative employment for the collaborators.
> how the first farmers in human history must have felt, when they mastered the rudiments of agriculture… Were they prone to idealist and utopian visions thanks to this massive technological breakthrough?"
Fascinating question! It not only applies to the more recent technological breakthroughs, but to the ape-like evolutionary ancestors of humans. Evidence has been found that they used fire to create sharp-pointed stone tools.
How long, I wonder, did it take them to boast about the utopian nature of their "tech," and then, to weaponize it?
I was toying with including pre-humans and tools, but they could never have come anywhere close to coming up with a concept like "utopia", so I decided to not include it.
> I was toying with including pre-humans and tools, but they could never have come anywhere close to coming up with a concept like "utopia", so I decided to not include it.
Another fascinating point!
Of course there are no records of pre-human "spoken" language, so at best they would have had some kind of sign language in addition to the body language that most (all?) nonhuman animals have.
Therefore we can conclude that there were no prehuman Sir Thomas Mores writing about Utopia, or prehuman Klaus Schwabs prattling about owning nothing and being happy.
But what in fact is the origin of the concept of Utopia?
I nominate two candidates, and there might be many more:
1. Nostalgia for early childhood experiences of unconditional love and protection, a Garden of Eden.
2. Drug-induced "oceanic" experiences of loss of personal boundaries, like the Dalai Lama's hot dog in the "make me one with everything" joke.
So much pivots on Russia / Ukraine. I’m not suggesting an easy good vs evil dynamic but it seems to me this conflict has the potential to carve up the next century. That AEI paper is amazing. They seem so certain of their victory they are already counting their spoils. It’s obvious to me that Russia and China know exactly how important this conflict is but are very careful in showing their hand, yet our big brained thinkers seem as certain of this victory as they were of victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. I keep wondering if it’s a pride before the fall scenario, as Russia keeps slowly gaining territory while China is making world changing diplomatic moves and Europe mired in high inflation / energy problems that cannot be sustained, or maybe I’m the dummy for underestimating them.
You will notice that its always the same with these American forever wars. They never really have defined victory conditions and tangible ways of accomplishing them. Only vague, and often delusional, ideas of what they want to do in the future. With that said maybe you are right and we all are underestimating them. There are still competent people in the American empire.
Whoever the competent people might be they are not in charge of military procurement or the promotions board within the Pentagon. At its height NATO's army in Germany was designed to hold off the Soviets to buy a bit of time for Washington to decide if it wanted to use nukes or not. Today Washington lacks sufficient capacity to project force on scale across the Ukraine. Which means that Moscow decides the fate of Ukraine. Washington gets to watch. The military moves it is making are performative steps to manage the narrative.
US wars are never declared. This provides constitutional and legal cover for evading effective accountability and oversight by Congress, but it means that State (in reality the White House and CIA) micromanage the conflict at the expense of the most senior commanders and they do so by prioritising political over military considerations. It is a disgraceful way to do things and counterproductive.
Completely agree with everything you said in this post. The current US elites are only experts at perception management, not much else. That's why "Empire of Lies" is such a great description of the American Empire.
How do you see the situation play out in Ukraine? They have invested so much into this, if they lose, i don't see how they will be able to worm their way out like usual.
Whatever happens Ukraine will be a sordid mess with military and political upheavals that blend comic opera with cruelty and death. Imagine a Balkans war on a grander scale.
The most likely scenario at this point in time is that Russia patiently forges ahead. Time is on her side and Putin is supremely cautious (for which he is often criticised in Russia). Slower is better for Russia. The rapid rebuilding underway in eastern Ukraine will have a very powerful demonstration effect on people in the centre and west.
Ukraine cannot replace lost troops. Europe is steadily sinking into turmoil. NATO is breaking apart: Macron is buying Russian LNG via China and paying yuan for it. Germany has a government unsurpassed in spinelessness and lack of public spirit. The UK is seeing a very serious crisis in living standards. Patience for Zelenskyy is running out. By the end of the northern summer the energy crisis will begin to truly bite like never before...Europe needs to fill up her gas reserves over summer. The reception Zelenskyy received from the Austrian parliament the other day is a small taste of what is to come.
If Kiev attacks Crimea then Russia simply crushes the Ukrainian state and possibly pushes all the way to the borders with Poland itself. Russia's natural frontier lies on the Dniester and the Carpathians so the Stavka (Russian General Staff) would have endless contingency plans for a speedy resolution to the war should this be required. As Ukraine weakens the likelihood of a general uprising in Odessa grows.
Putin has said that Halychyna would be happier with Poland than with Russia (perfectly true) but much depends on the realism of Warsaw. If Poland had a pragmatic government now would be the time to co-operate with Moscow and prevent a humanitarian tragedy.
If Ukraine is careful and their defenses crumble without any attack on Crimea they still have a chance of negotiating with Moscow. Ultimately, a great deal will depend on how desperate the US is to play spoiler and how crazy Warsaw is to let Washington play them like fools.
As for the post-war scenario, Washington will prioritise narrative management at home over all else. If the end of the war is dramatic enough they will use apocalyptic scare-mongering and constructed hysteria. This might work. Just look at the Chinese weather balloon fiasco. The sight of Kiev in ruins would certainly help Washington sell its Cold War 2 narrative. Since Lincoln every American gov't has used war as an excuse to crush dissent. The destruction of Ukraine certainly provides Washington with opportunities for domestic repression.
At the end of the day politics in Washington is always about Washington. Biden needs another crisis (foreign or domestic). Without one his administration disintegrates. If the crisis is big enough Ukraine is irrelevant.
Good point. One could argue this stuff endlessly. IMO victory means reaching the point where the enemy does your bidding or you can do whatever you like (seize territory, displace or enslave populations, whatever).
An ambiguous strategy is attractive for a power that relies heavily on PR, but it fails the test of reality. In real life people know what victory feels like. Ditto defeat. The hormonal/neurochemical truth test. We cannot escape it.
America's trouble is that it has had too many ambiguous outcomes for way too long. If you are explaining, you are losing. Even if you achieve a technical win, too many feel that they have lost or are just confused.
Forever wars are what the various factions of the US Deep State uses instead of nukes. There is really only one Forever War, but it keeps changing location. It was Vietnam, then Cambodia, then Afghanistan. When they move, they pull out so as to cause total destruction to the formerly protected “ally.” Ukraine is scheduled to be the next Afghanistan when they move the war to Taiwan.
Which is why China stays out of Taiwan except for some trivial provocations.
Further to Siegel's article on disinformation, here is a link to a recent youtube video of an interview with Mike Benz (mentioned in some of the Tablet material) who spells out the issues. It may be useful for those readers who might wish to hear, rather than read, more about the subject.
Consider as a thought experiment that globalism isn't happening and that country X under the old rules of nationalism encountered the changes wrought by tech and social media. You might in that world have some real sympathy for the regime. Grouse about manufacturing consent as you will but it is not clear that mass societies can get on without some pretty firm policing of Overton Windows. Social media in such a situation might get out of hand--like Darwinism, a nice concept but too easily manifest as a "universal acid."
So a Regime interested in stability and, indeed, in the well-being of its people might need to find ways of managing new forms of communication.
But that is following the model of one nation, and it does not reflect the global world we are actually in. A lot of your article cannot help but use the terminology of "nation" ("defense establishment", "CIA"), since the people with an interest in crushing social media work for instrumentalities of the national government. But whose water are they carrying? Manipulating social media would be one thing if it was about making for a better nation. But it seems less about that than it is about enabling a global order, one in which the well-being of the citizens of the nation are not the main foundation for authoritative action.
I am willing to cede some media autonomy if I can reasonably conclude it is a price I pay for good things. I am less willing to make those concessions if they benefit others but not me, and if that is their design and intent..
One of the key concepts ushered in by globalism was that of "post-nationalism", a condition that still colours the current western elite. They do not act in the interests of their nation, but rather for a global set of elites like themselves, all of whom answer to Washington DC and the powers that gather there and who grant them power as well.
Apr 1, 2023·edited Apr 1, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
On your "Resurrect the Polish-Lithuanian Union?" topic, correct me if I am mistaken, but there seems to be a presupposition that Russia is going to be defeated... therein I believe lies the error... Russia is facing an extensional threat from the West, and if there is anything that has been shown from history about Russian resolve it is that they will not back down from such a threat... the only question now is who will throw the first nuclear punch. America's attempts at world hegemony and the brinkmanship being employed to achieve it is becoming a very dangerous game of chicken that is certain to have dire consequences.
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Total information control = the end of politics
The sad thing is, the vast majority of the population won't notice. They tuned out of politics for parochial concerns a long time ago.
Even worse, half the country will cheer on its implementation because, of course, it will be branded as hurting their perceived enemies on the other side of the political divide.
Josh Homme and QOTSA don’t get enough credit for the work they did on their last album, Villains, envisaging the coming American dystopia. It was almost a foregone conclusion. Much has been made of the dumbing down of the population, but the insidious nature of the experiment is far more nuanced, IMO. Inundate a culture with an existential fear of growing old, convince them that people who hold different political views are the enemy, and keep ratcheting up the Fear as the people fight each other and barely notice how their rights are steadily stripped away.
I think most of the songs “Domesticated Animals” and “Un-Reborn Again.” Withering insights/indictments of American society lol. Plus it’s just awesome that Homme totally ripped off the “Bee Movie” theme and turned it into something far more menacing haha.
Great work as always on the Saturday news. That Tablet article’s given me Cassandra-level chills.
I love Josh deeply but QOTSA just aint the same without Nick Oliveri (or Joey Castillo)
Villains was way overproduced to my ears.
Politics was corrupted for decades, already under total information control.
The radio and TV news companies merged for easier control of the message.
Advertising dollars came from mega corporations.
Today, they're a bit late. I was worried that this was going to happen after 911, when the internet was still not a staple of American life.
For the Baby Boomers, the internet is not a staple in their life. They still get their news from television. I view alternative media as a last hurrah to knowing what's going on in the world. The old news networks, the newspapers, and the journalists with integrity who worked for them, are extinct.
Yes. However, we didn't know just how corrupt the media was prior to the internet even if some people did have a good idea/engaged in critical analysis.
Also please let me know if these weekend reviews are getting too long.
No!
Make them twice as long and I'd still read them!
no
Bolding the relevant parts is a great idea
Hell, no.
not too long. perfect for saturday morning read.
Goldilocks unlocked 👌
Perfect for bagels and lox.
Lo: haiku we keyed 😁
Wouldn't mind them being even longer.
The article about disinformation hits very close. The people who I know are involved with the disinfo industry are generally young women who would've gone into HR 5 years earlier. Ghastly little tyrants they are, I'm sure you know the type. Conform to the stereotype almost to the T. SSRI-eyed college graduates with little concern for truth or justice.
At least during the totalitarian regimes of the early 20th century they were honest about what they were. Some apparatchik working at the ministry of public enlightenment could be pointed out. They knew what they were. Our modern "disinformation experts" genuinely believe that they are objective and true. I can hardly think of people I hate more as a group than they.
It's a new, massive, sprawling industry that is very well-funded and is absorbing a significant segment of graduates with otherwise useless university degrees.
It is a make-work scheme for graduates who are superfluous to the needs of the productive side of the economy. If the masses end up on UBI, the disinfo industry will enrich and empower this strata of the email caste in much the same way that the managers of the workhouses did in Victorian England (think of Mr Bumble in OLIVER TWIST).
The beauty of this is that the regime's need for countering disinformation is unlimited and the costs are passed on by Silicon Valley to the consumers. The dissidents and skeptics supply the 'disinfo' that needs to be corrected while people with the wrong thoughts who read their stuff constitute the insoluble problem to be managed. The apparatchiks are deployable across all areas, because they need no skill other than following the cues from the regime's 'experts'.
Yes, this. The result of having too many priests and not enough pulpits. Solution: make more pulpits.
Not just pulpits...pillories too!
D-notices were honest? COINTELPRO was honest? I'm sure many of people working in those 20th ct. propaganda apparatus were convinced of the rightness of their campaigns of lies just as these "women" you seem to find problematic.
Justice or truth has rarely, if ever, been a concern for governments, whether of kings, or parliaments. An appearance of justice is necessary to justify the monopoly on usage force, but never truth or justice itself. Specific people might care, but the institution as a whole doesn't. Even an institution as (royal) "science" whose existence is justified as a pursuit of truth is plagued by conflicting, subterranean drives and motives.
Let's not idealize a non-existent past.
For the people who make a living within it, justice is an industry. A source of jobs, power, respect and other thrills.
In the UK there was a chief justice in the mid 20th c. who habitually ejaculated when delivering the death sentence. Ex-schoolmates recalled that even as a child the future was fascinated by the death penalty and would entertain the other boys by reciting the death sentence ("The sentence of this court is that you will be taken from here to the place from whence you came..."). The claims about the late chief justice's behaviour were made by his clerk, who kept a spare pair of freshly pressed trousers on hand when he expected they'd be needed.
As Kant pointed out, nothing straight has ever been fashioned from the crooked timber of humanity.
Found on internet:
DEI has proven to be a corporate fig-leaf. DEI officers are being laid off and their departments shuttered across the business sector:
Hamstrung by ‘golden handcuffs’: Diversity roles disappear 3 years after George Floyd’s murder inspired them
The attrition rate for DEI roles was 33% at the end of 2022, compared to 21% for non-DEI roles. Amazon, Applebees and Twitter lead the way with DEI layoffs since July 2022, according to Revelio Labs, a New York-based company that uses data to analyze workforce dynamics and trends.
Another survey showed that Black employees represent only 3.8% of chief diversity officers overall, with white people making up 76.1% of the roles. Those of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity make up 7.8% and those of Asian ethnicity make up 7.7%
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/diversity-roles-disappear-three-years-george-floyd-protests-inspired-rcna72026
From this I think we can safely extrapolate that the Woke agenda’s acceptance by business was a fig-leaf nearly across the board. And how could it not be? PMC Woke is X-face. Profit and power are of course the real goals.
Not so fast: ESG continues to insert itself into business, with Larry Fink of BlackRock doubling down on it. Link to Bloomberg piece - https://archive.is/cbdp8
If you're in the business world, ESG is everywhere.
The UAE is an authoritarian state (true)
Gender equality is promoted more than actually achieved
Overall a good article (way better than most) with some mistakes around the edges (all understandable mistakes as Emiratis are extremely private people and will never share anything personal with strangers) - “they go into a tent and when they come out there’s a new king” is a pretty accurate description of decision making throughout the Gulf (exception being Kuwait). It’s definitely all still happening here though, a very interesting time. Probably the most interesting time since I came here 20+ years ago.
It appears to work very well. The minor Gulf States (once mocked for their backwardness) have avoided the political upheavals and extremism of other parts of the Arab world. They are pioneering their own distinctive form of modernity. They have the advantage of natural resources, of course, but the traditions of familial/tribal rule clearly help.
The Chinese are actually trying to produce super soldiers out of micro-organisms. Humans have got to be the only species who actively seek out to reduce its own position in the food chain.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/chinese-team-behind-dangerous-human-animal-gene-manipulation-says-it-could-lead-radiation
From the article: "The Hong-based South China Morning Post has a doozy of a headline out this week based on a breakthrough announcement by a team of scientists linked to the Chinese military, working in Beijing: "Chinese team behind extreme animal gene experiment says it may lead to super soldiers who survive nuclear fallout."
"may lead"
Yup. They certainly are trying. Combine this with the AI talk, seems like a lot of people really need to find a God to worship as the ultimate ability to diffuse responsibility.
I hope Taibbi & Shellenberger report on how the Rittenhouse trial was censored by Twitter. An obvious case of self-defense against separate, consecutive lynch mobs and Twitter insta-banned practically anyone who spoke out in the kid's favor.
If the national security state was involved in this, it would be a gold mine for the right. I hope the GOP would pounce in such a case (my hopes aren't up).
Censored? Leaving the coverage itself aside, the trial itself was a transparent circus designed to keep the Deep State's role in organising the Kenosha pogrom suppressed. The judge, the defence and the prosecutor all appeared to be colluding to avoid any meaningful discovery of exactly why the FBI had drones with state-of-the-art night-vision cameras hovering over the riot yet never charged anyone except Rittenhouse. Or why so many of the figures in the middle distance of the TV and internet footage appeared to be acting in a co-ordinated fashion of the kind you'd expect from military or police units. So far the other guy charged on that night (he was at the scene of the shooting moments before Rittenhouse discharged his weapon) has not been brought to trial. Most likely charges were dropped. My guess is that the other guy (a union organiser from Chicago) was an FBI asset charged by the cops so as to be used as leverage to secure a half-way fair-trial for Rittenhouse.
Sorry to be conspiratorial, but the trial was way too theatrical to be taken at face value.
There are no available means to counter the disinformation complex beyond a neo-Luddite avoidance of all media and social media. You can't argue with believers and it is a waste of energy to apply formal logic to any exchange in which at least one party is emotionally engaged. Artistic/aesthetic resistance via meme-warfare is possible but runs phenomenal risks as Douglass Mackey (Ricky Vaughn) has found.
We are now seemingly trapped within a giant digital pain box.
Navigating the current internet is like taking a trip trough Chernobyl in 1986. It should be reserved to the "happy few" who have the capacity to do it. And even then they have to use an Hazmat suit.
The Ricky Vaughn conviction and possible Restrict Act passage are the death knell for any honest thought on the internet...
True. It is very depressing but clarity on this is important, so that people are at least aware of the conditions under which we live.
“There are no available means to counter the disinformation complex beyond a neo-Luddite avoidance of all media and social media.”
This here has been my strategy. I have no social media. Any news I get is from either this Substack or something referenced in a Taibbi piece. Does this make me ill-informed? God damn right! But I’d rather occupy myself with classical music and literature and philosophy and art, because at least our society has so thoroughly abandoned those pursuits as having value that they’re MOSTLY left alone (and they are conveniently my passions).
Also, I just got a land line telephone. 👌
Back in The Good Old Days, the news business was hard. A printing press was expensive and required specialists to operate. You had to pay for every sheet of paper printed, whether or not you sold or gave anything away. Plus, unless you planned to publish news as a sort of expensive hobby, you needed advertisers and distribution, which meant that every publisher soon learned whom he could not afford to piss off. (Radio and TV were similar, but if anything more so, and you needed a license since bandwidth was limited.)
The fact that a publishing house had physical assets tied to a physical location only made libel suits that much easier.
The internet changed all that. Now, any jerk with a laptop (blogging software available for free) and wifi (no further away than the nearest McDonald's) can go into the publishing business by nightfall, with advertising revenue supplied by the platform and worldwide distribution to boot.
Naturally, that has People Of Influence And Authority very concerned, and they are working hard to stuff that genie back into the bottle.
You wrote:
> The internet changed all that. Now, any jerk with a laptop (blogging software available for free) and wifi (no further away than the nearest McDonald's) can go into the publishing business by nightfall, with advertising supplied by the platform and worldwide distribution to boot… Naturally, that has People Of Influence And Authority very concerned, and they are working hard to stuff that genie back into the bottle.
Like the nuke they dropped on Hiroshima, that's another genie that's never going back in the bottle, barring total human extinction.
There was something to that Greek theory of nemesis following hubris, or the closely related karmic slogan, "What goes around comes around."
(Like nearly everything online, today's post is far too multi-layered an onion for this non-techie (anti-techie?) to unravel. So be it. Sigh . . . )
But, as for resurrecting the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, I welcome/applaud the notion and woudl gladly sign up in support of it. Difficult? Not really; considering what the Washington-Bruxelles has been able to accomplish --- on paper, at least.
Are you serious or just being tongue-in-cheek?
Polish nostalgia for the past (the Commonwealth, the intermarium etc) is inexcusable geopolitical madness. Any Greater Poland would inevitably end up at war with Russia...a calamity beyond description. Poland needs constructive relations with Russia and Ukraine alike. If the current crop of fools in Warsaw had any serious patriotism, they'd stand up to Washington and insist on peace talks, d'etente, Ostpolitik ASAP. And if they were fully lucid (too much to ask for IMO) they'd welcome seeing Washington's fifth column in Kiev (Pravy Sektor) driven into exile by the Russian Army.
They'd also seek better relations with China and the incorporation of East-Central Europe into the Belt and Road initiative. Poland belongs within Eurasia. They should leave the dying lands of the West to rot.
Exactly. Polish elites will be stabbed in the back by America like every other "ally". I really don't get what they hope to gain. Do they really want to end up like Ukraine?
Doubtless key elements within the Polish elite expect to be looked after by the Atlanticist defence sector. Others are banking on jobs in America. Do not forget: the Ukraine is getting destroyed, but the Ukrainian political class and key fifth columnist are getting looked after in a grand fashion. The demonstration effect of this is not lost on their peers in Warsaw.
If the Ukraine is left a rump state or a protectorate of Poland it will be run like Mussolini's 'Republic' after he was sprung from captivity. For ambitious politicians it is better to serve generous foreign masters than rule over an independent society beholden to no-one but the voters.
That will be bitter medicine for Ukrainian Banderites who regard Poles as subhumans.
They are opportunists and gangsters. They'll intrigue for a partitioned Ukraine, but it will all come down to how many soldiers they have on the ground by the end of the year who are able to fight. The Polish army should be able to deal with them. There were rumours that the Poles fighting in Ukrainian uniform killed some of their Ukrainian officers after being ordered on a suicide mission. This is a good sign.
The bitter medicine will be Poland's. Incorporating western Ukraine will increase the number of Ukrainians living within Poland's borders. The great danger is that NATO may try to 'Palestinianise' the Ukrainian cause in some way and set up something like Arafat's Resistance Incorporated. Germany also faces a problem from refugees. Much will depend on Washington. Stoltenberg is apparently soon retiring to head the Norwegian reserve bank. There are rumours Chrystia Freeland takes his spot running NATO. If this happens, expect trouble.
Chrystia Freeland? We didn't know how good we had it with Stoltenberg.
I can tell you from first-hand experience that the Poles have been whipped into a frenzy of Russophobic hatred. I don't expect that the GAE will have any trouble recruiting enough Polish men to march into the mouth of hell.
Hatred is a very poor basis for making life and death decisions. Putin was able to win over the Chechens, but the Poles prefer to risk their cities and their soldiers for Washington and Brussels. You could scarcely think up a better clinical test for diagnosing delusion or dissociative thinking.
I'm still skeptical that this energy will be maintained if they ever enter into the war. Especially once the poles see the Ukrainians being stabbed in the back by the US. It will happen before the end of the year in my opinion. We will see i guess.
"Poland needs constructive relations with Russia and Ukraine alike."
Add Belarus to Poland's list of required constructive relations.
I know the Polish mentality well. A lot of Poles (and not just their leaders) would gladly slit their own children's throats, if that mean that an American would pat them on the head and call them a good dog. That goes double if the result would be to spite Russia.
If you think what I wrote is hyperbole, look how Poles have embraced the biological and direct ideological descendants of the very people who so gleefully murdered their grandparents. Pretty much every Polish person lost relatives to the Ukrainian Nazis, but that doesn't stop Poles.
I understand completely. The fact that Warsaw is comfortable with the many Chrysta Freeland types in and around NATO and the EU speaks for itself. Personally, I suspect that Washington enjoys playing this card to provoke and to test. As they say, personnel is policy.
Naturally, no one is guilty of crimes committed by their grandparents, but the tone of the third or fourth generation OUM-B diaspora types (to say nothing of the Pravy Sektor itself) should have the Poles in no doubt what is at stake. The behaviour of the SVU and Azov, Aidar and Kraken units proves this beyond any doubt.
Any respect I had for Poland disappeared after the attack on the Russian Ambassador in Warsaw last May. The relaxed attitude of the authorities was disgusting and demoralising but it clarified things.
NATO has had incredible success in poisoning people's minds. You just have to look at Ukraine. The NATO/EU stooges brainwashed the soccer hooligans in Kharkov and Dnipropetrovsk into hero-worshipping Bandera.
It will all end very badly for the Poles and Ukrainians. They hate Russia more than they love their own sons. What can you say about insanity like this?
Why can't these white people get along?
Perhaps our vestigal Neanderthal DNA?
Homo homini lupus est (man is a wolf to man).
When skin color is the same, we look for something else to discriminate against.
The irony is that Russia provides about all of Poland's utility to the Empire.
Take away Russia, and Poland would go from America's Special Little Buddy to a midtier backwater satrapy of no particular importance. Colombia with delusions of grandeur, but no cocaine.
Ukraine would be a pariah state.
EXACTLY! Poland's principal value to the West is as a source of affordable skilled labour (without the quality assurance issues associated with the immigrants from the ####-hole countries) and as cannon-fodder.
For Ukraine, the West has taken the place of the Nogai and Crimean Hordes and the Ottomans.
Any such Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth would only be another GAE vassal. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if it turned out that the idea was being floated by Washington as another tool of proxy warfare on Russia.
Exactly. It is either b.s. from the psyops units or just the result of lazy thinking by mid-wit foreign policy wonks.
The former Warsaw Pact countries need peace, affordable energy, trade and an alternative to the standard Western model of 'austerity, now, austerity tomorrow, austerity forever'. Washington and Brussels are not interested in anything like that.
After the Ukrainian civil war and the present fiasco you'd have thought that people would have wised up to reality.
That's exactly what it is. Its also completely delusional to think that America can put the commonwealth together tough. I guess the standards for being an NGO worker aren't very high.
The Beltway NGOs are simply an effect of elite overproduction. They are staffed by Ivy League grads who could not be trusted with 'risk management' or ESG ratings in Silicon Valley banking.
And what exactly has the EU accomplished?
A great deal...for Washington. For the European peoples, nothing. Even worse, the EU has further inflamed the situation by endorsing the further Americanisation of inter-European relations: substituting hyper-moralistic approaches in place of traditional forms of pragmatism and compromise without which war becomes a permanent state of affairs. The attempted criminalisation of Russia and the refusal to work towards a peace-deal will leave a dangerous legacy for future generations.
If the Ukrainian war proves anything it is that Brussels is incapable of acting autonomously and is equally incapable of identifying any European interests that are separate from those of Washington.
Exactly, i completely agree. I was being cheeky, as the brits say. I really hope the poster i responded to was trolling.
The EU is a sort of leash for Washington. Far easier to give Brussels the orders and Brussels to make the EU members go along than it is to order a couple dozen fractious satraps and puppets.
I agree. They EU provides political/institutional intermediation with the illusion of European autonomy. In truth the EU commissioners are Atlanticist gauleiters to keep the natives in line. The bureaucracy and the lobbyists provide lucrative employment for the collaborators.
Clare Daly in the European Parliament could give you a run down of EU accomplishments.
Excellent assortment of interesting and topical themes/links- thank you
You wrote:
> how the first farmers in human history must have felt, when they mastered the rudiments of agriculture… Were they prone to idealist and utopian visions thanks to this massive technological breakthrough?"
Fascinating question! It not only applies to the more recent technological breakthroughs, but to the ape-like evolutionary ancestors of humans. Evidence has been found that they used fire to create sharp-pointed stone tools.
How long, I wonder, did it take them to boast about the utopian nature of their "tech," and then, to weaponize it?
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/10/early-humans-were-using-fire-300000-years-ago-to-forge-superior-stone-tools/
I was toying with including pre-humans and tools, but they could never have come anywhere close to coming up with a concept like "utopia", so I decided to not include it.
You wrote:
> I was toying with including pre-humans and tools, but they could never have come anywhere close to coming up with a concept like "utopia", so I decided to not include it.
Another fascinating point!
Of course there are no records of pre-human "spoken" language, so at best they would have had some kind of sign language in addition to the body language that most (all?) nonhuman animals have.
Therefore we can conclude that there were no prehuman Sir Thomas Mores writing about Utopia, or prehuman Klaus Schwabs prattling about owning nothing and being happy.
But what in fact is the origin of the concept of Utopia?
I nominate two candidates, and there might be many more:
1. Nostalgia for early childhood experiences of unconditional love and protection, a Garden of Eden.
2. Drug-induced "oceanic" experiences of loss of personal boundaries, like the Dalai Lama's hot dog in the "make me one with everything" joke.
Ah yes, magic mushrooms of pre-history.
Catnip. A whole big bed of it in which to roll around. Feline Utopia.
Katniss. A whole big bed on which to "roll around". Female Dystopia.
From Wikipedia:
> Katniss becomes a galvanizing symbol of rebellion against the oppressive Capitol
My kind of gal.
You rang?
A neverending story. Reaching for the stars. Being forever young.
It would have been idealist and utopian until the availability of fossil fuels. Then we blew it by procreating to 8 billion and counting.
So much pivots on Russia / Ukraine. I’m not suggesting an easy good vs evil dynamic but it seems to me this conflict has the potential to carve up the next century. That AEI paper is amazing. They seem so certain of their victory they are already counting their spoils. It’s obvious to me that Russia and China know exactly how important this conflict is but are very careful in showing their hand, yet our big brained thinkers seem as certain of this victory as they were of victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. I keep wondering if it’s a pride before the fall scenario, as Russia keeps slowly gaining territory while China is making world changing diplomatic moves and Europe mired in high inflation / energy problems that cannot be sustained, or maybe I’m the dummy for underestimating them.
Only time will tell ;)
You will notice that its always the same with these American forever wars. They never really have defined victory conditions and tangible ways of accomplishing them. Only vague, and often delusional, ideas of what they want to do in the future. With that said maybe you are right and we all are underestimating them. There are still competent people in the American empire.
Whoever the competent people might be they are not in charge of military procurement or the promotions board within the Pentagon. At its height NATO's army in Germany was designed to hold off the Soviets to buy a bit of time for Washington to decide if it wanted to use nukes or not. Today Washington lacks sufficient capacity to project force on scale across the Ukraine. Which means that Moscow decides the fate of Ukraine. Washington gets to watch. The military moves it is making are performative steps to manage the narrative.
US wars are never declared. This provides constitutional and legal cover for evading effective accountability and oversight by Congress, but it means that State (in reality the White House and CIA) micromanage the conflict at the expense of the most senior commanders and they do so by prioritising political over military considerations. It is a disgraceful way to do things and counterproductive.
Completely agree with everything you said in this post. The current US elites are only experts at perception management, not much else. That's why "Empire of Lies" is such a great description of the American Empire.
How do you see the situation play out in Ukraine? They have invested so much into this, if they lose, i don't see how they will be able to worm their way out like usual.
Whatever happens Ukraine will be a sordid mess with military and political upheavals that blend comic opera with cruelty and death. Imagine a Balkans war on a grander scale.
The most likely scenario at this point in time is that Russia patiently forges ahead. Time is on her side and Putin is supremely cautious (for which he is often criticised in Russia). Slower is better for Russia. The rapid rebuilding underway in eastern Ukraine will have a very powerful demonstration effect on people in the centre and west.
Ukraine cannot replace lost troops. Europe is steadily sinking into turmoil. NATO is breaking apart: Macron is buying Russian LNG via China and paying yuan for it. Germany has a government unsurpassed in spinelessness and lack of public spirit. The UK is seeing a very serious crisis in living standards. Patience for Zelenskyy is running out. By the end of the northern summer the energy crisis will begin to truly bite like never before...Europe needs to fill up her gas reserves over summer. The reception Zelenskyy received from the Austrian parliament the other day is a small taste of what is to come.
If Kiev attacks Crimea then Russia simply crushes the Ukrainian state and possibly pushes all the way to the borders with Poland itself. Russia's natural frontier lies on the Dniester and the Carpathians so the Stavka (Russian General Staff) would have endless contingency plans for a speedy resolution to the war should this be required. As Ukraine weakens the likelihood of a general uprising in Odessa grows.
Putin has said that Halychyna would be happier with Poland than with Russia (perfectly true) but much depends on the realism of Warsaw. If Poland had a pragmatic government now would be the time to co-operate with Moscow and prevent a humanitarian tragedy.
If Ukraine is careful and their defenses crumble without any attack on Crimea they still have a chance of negotiating with Moscow. Ultimately, a great deal will depend on how desperate the US is to play spoiler and how crazy Warsaw is to let Washington play them like fools.
As for the post-war scenario, Washington will prioritise narrative management at home over all else. If the end of the war is dramatic enough they will use apocalyptic scare-mongering and constructed hysteria. This might work. Just look at the Chinese weather balloon fiasco. The sight of Kiev in ruins would certainly help Washington sell its Cold War 2 narrative. Since Lincoln every American gov't has used war as an excuse to crush dissent. The destruction of Ukraine certainly provides Washington with opportunities for domestic repression.
At the end of the day politics in Washington is always about Washington. Biden needs another crisis (foreign or domestic). Without one his administration disintegrates. If the crisis is big enough Ukraine is irrelevant.
If you define victory in a very specific way, you increase your chances of not achieving a victory. Ambiguity is a strategy all its own.
Good point. One could argue this stuff endlessly. IMO victory means reaching the point where the enemy does your bidding or you can do whatever you like (seize territory, displace or enslave populations, whatever).
An ambiguous strategy is attractive for a power that relies heavily on PR, but it fails the test of reality. In real life people know what victory feels like. Ditto defeat. The hormonal/neurochemical truth test. We cannot escape it.
America's trouble is that it has had too many ambiguous outcomes for way too long. If you are explaining, you are losing. Even if you achieve a technical win, too many feel that they have lost or are just confused.
Bingo!
Forever wars are what the various factions of the US Deep State uses instead of nukes. There is really only one Forever War, but it keeps changing location. It was Vietnam, then Cambodia, then Afghanistan. When they move, they pull out so as to cause total destruction to the formerly protected “ally.” Ukraine is scheduled to be the next Afghanistan when they move the war to Taiwan.
Which is why China stays out of Taiwan except for some trivial provocations.
We are at the start of a hundred-year war.
Further to Siegel's article on disinformation, here is a link to a recent youtube video of an interview with Mike Benz (mentioned in some of the Tablet material) who spells out the issues. It may be useful for those readers who might wish to hear, rather than read, more about the subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGTDBzUDKIk&t=145s
Very informative interview. Thanks for the recommendation.
Excluding the RINOs, the right have as little to work with as the alternative/dirtbag left.
Consider as a thought experiment that globalism isn't happening and that country X under the old rules of nationalism encountered the changes wrought by tech and social media. You might in that world have some real sympathy for the regime. Grouse about manufacturing consent as you will but it is not clear that mass societies can get on without some pretty firm policing of Overton Windows. Social media in such a situation might get out of hand--like Darwinism, a nice concept but too easily manifest as a "universal acid."
So a Regime interested in stability and, indeed, in the well-being of its people might need to find ways of managing new forms of communication.
But that is following the model of one nation, and it does not reflect the global world we are actually in. A lot of your article cannot help but use the terminology of "nation" ("defense establishment", "CIA"), since the people with an interest in crushing social media work for instrumentalities of the national government. But whose water are they carrying? Manipulating social media would be one thing if it was about making for a better nation. But it seems less about that than it is about enabling a global order, one in which the well-being of the citizens of the nation are not the main foundation for authoritative action.
I am willing to cede some media autonomy if I can reasonably conclude it is a price I pay for good things. I am less willing to make those concessions if they benefit others but not me, and if that is their design and intent..
One of the key concepts ushered in by globalism was that of "post-nationalism", a condition that still colours the current western elite. They do not act in the interests of their nation, but rather for a global set of elites like themselves, all of whom answer to Washington DC and the powers that gather there and who grant them power as well.
On your "Resurrect the Polish-Lithuanian Union?" topic, correct me if I am mistaken, but there seems to be a presupposition that Russia is going to be defeated... therein I believe lies the error... Russia is facing an extensional threat from the West, and if there is anything that has been shown from history about Russian resolve it is that they will not back down from such a threat... the only question now is who will throw the first nuclear punch. America's attempts at world hegemony and the brinkmanship being employed to achieve it is becoming a very dangerous game of chicken that is certain to have dire consequences.