Vicki Nuland Unleashed, Is BRICS' NDB An Alternative to World Bank/IMF?, CIA Is Buying Your Ad Tracking Data, The Man Who Killed Google Search, 21st Century Hunter-Gatherers
Wow the Jew haters have really come out of the woodwork lately. But hey, at least you're out, loud and proud in your Jew hate and not weeping crocodile tears for "Palestinian babies", this year's luxury must-have. I guess Jew hate is like miniskirts or wide lapels, it always eventually comes back into style.
I owe you guys commentary on both what is happening in Georgia and on the assassination attempt made against Premier Fico of Slovakia. I also need to publish the next entry of the Spanish Civil War series. Getting there, please bear with me.
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Also: I have about 700 emails, DMs from various apps/platforms/etc. on my desk to get through. Please be patient as I wade through them and address them. Merci beaucoup.
That's nothing. I'm verging on 21000 unpoened emails. And that's just for one addy.
A million thanks for turning me on to Ed Zitron's newsletter, Niccolo. I'm encouraged that someone is doing the onerous legwork of detailing the degeneration of the once impressive technology of Internet keyword search into profit-seeking mind rot, as a chronicle for the historical record.
The evidence is incontrovertible that the degeneration of Google Search really was intentional. I had known for some time that my keyword searches had gotten twisted into something that doesn't remotely resemble the original clean lines of a library Subject search, or the Index of the Readers Guide to Periodicals. But the whistleblowers and evidential record turned up by Zitron makes it clear that the most powerful people at Google completely sold out objectivity and clarity to make themselves wealthier, when they already had more money than the lifetime paycheck earnings of the janitorial crews who empty the wastebaskets of their office buildings.
"Don't be evil"...pfft.
I'm of the mind that this is a much more serious problem than the major news media and Congress think it is. It's abhorrent that the information potential of the Internet could be squandered this way. The blatantly unethical decisions of the top execs of Google is sufficient proof that its de facto monopoly should be dismantled.
Russia/Ukraine....I think much of Russian behavior historically can be viewed as a kind of sulk at being rejected by the West. In the 19th c. Russia wanted desperately to be part of the European fold. And again in 1990 there was a great opportunity to embrace Russia; which opportunity was foolishly wasted (especially by the Americans and Brits). Russia's geopolitical perspective (and every country has one of those) was casually trampled on. The naive thinking went something like this: either you instantly re-invent yourselves as a full-on liberal democracy from day one or you go straight back to the world's naughty corner as enemy number one.
And whilst on the subject....."Vladimir Putin may be a paranoid autocrat and a failing military strategist but when he talks about people in the West who want to "destroy [its]traditional values and impose their pseudo-values... which would corrode [it] from within" you surely have to ask yourself if does have a point?...." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
The way I put it is "Even countries run by leaders we don't like have valid national security concerns." And other valid concerns as well, such as not being condescended to and disrespected by arrogant and hypocritical self-ordained arbiters of moral stature. Trustworthy communication becomes impossible without a baseline of mutual respect.
This perspective has been more wisely understood by the shotcallers who keep hostilities from getting out of hand in American prisons than by the denizens of the US Department of State.
>In the 19th c. Russia wanted desperately to be part of the European fold.
If the great Russian writers of the 19th century are any authority on the matter, this is patently untrue. The Russians have had a vastly different historical experience as (self-designated) inheritors of Byzantium and the brand of Christianity more tinged by Greek philosophy than either the Catholic or protestant confessions which have had such a major impact on the development of Western Civilization. In practice, integrating Russia into the Western fold has been and always will be probably as impossible (and undesirable, if you respect diversity like Niko) as integrating, e.g., China or Iran.
Well... Yes... and No to this. The problem is that comment threads are not so good for nuanced discussion. I think the biggest omerta in the West's Russia-as-eternal-bete-noir narrative is Russian literature, music and art....quintessentially and gloriously European. This is not remotely true of your chosen comparitors China and Iran. And Russian history is a Christian story...China and Iran's isn't. And by the way I never said anything about "integrating"...only about a family connection.
My main quibble is with your idea of Russia wanting to be part of the European fold in the 19th century. I think they did have status anxiety and Europe was their natural yardstick, but [at least in the works of the great writers] they seemed very much to want to make their own mark and show the superiority of the "Russian Soul" to the spiritual "graveyard" of Europe.
Last week there was an interesting interview where 2010s legend Ta Nehisi Coates appeared to take up a Peter Beinart like view of human rights, prompted by Gaza. That this is completely at odds with the 2014-15 writings that made him famous is not discussed
Does Nuland believe what she is saying or is she diabolically evil, a female Richard III?
I am inclined to go with the former. She is a lifelong striver who required total immersion in the cliches, prejudices and worldviews of her superiors. She has convinced herself that the received wisdoms of Foggy Bottom are fundamentally sound. Self-induced cognitive reengineering or something like it.
I have the same question. She really has the cliches down pat. Completely removed from reality and full of false assumptions, descriptions and flat out lies. In the end in matters not if she is a true believer or not. Her impact is just as pernicious. The best part is her transformation into Jabba. It reminds me of the Warner Bros cartoon that ends with "this time we didn't forget the gravy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psoAtTD0NHc
There’s nothing external stopping BRICS countries from settling trade, holding reserves, extending swap lines etc in their own currencies. They could do it tomorrow if they liked. They don’t have to ask permission!
Except that… they all run current account surpluses and the gorilla in the room, China, has a closed capital account. Oh well, take it up with Chairman Xi, BRICScels.
Unrelated: “democracy” if the Nuland variety is going to suffer a crisis of confidence as America trends ever-further towards a non-white future. Trump’s charisma halted the process briefly but the future remains a majority-minority D country with unassailable electoral strength. A sort of ANC-lite situation.
Will the historic, nation-forming white population consent to be ruled “democratically” by a coalition of browns - nearly all of whom are recent imports? I’m skeptical.
The nation-forming community already consented to generations of social engineering in the name of Civil Rights, including the loss of quality education to non-elite white children, replacement level immigration, collapsing law and order in key cities and de-prioritisation via DEI.
I am skeptical that they would get off the couch if ANC-lite turned into full strength Rwanda. Obama's low-intensity rassenkrieg barely elicited a yawn. Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make woke.
People’s mental models hasn’t caught up to the rapidity of change. As recently as 1990, the country was 80% white. It’s easy to tolerate all sorts of luxury beliefs in that kind of a society.
D’s will be majority-minority at the national level as soon as the 2028 election. The country will be majority-minority sometime in the 2040s.
Will whites “get off the couch”? idk. I don’t think armed rebellion is likely. But there will be a growing sentiment that the “democracy” has no legitimacy and the “country” is an artificial legal fiction.
Fully agree. I expect that there will be a range of reactions as reality sets in: capital flight, emigration, a mass retreat to shrinking enclaves of relative safety though millions will seek benefits by supporting the regime. The legitimacy crisis has already begun.
Forget the stuff about guns and uniforms, secession is impossible because no-one with any real-world agency wants to undermine the bond market by separating Washington from the economically critical resource-rich regions. Every economically active player on the planet would prefer a genocide of Red America over systemic bank failures. Thanks to the Basel Accords everyone with a bank account that operates through SWIFT needs a viable market for US Treasury paper. The genuine elites in Texas are no different in this than their fellow Lizard People (or the plebs with savings).
Re real-world experience, I have worked with plenty of non-whites and would happily do so again. I get on very well indeed with most Chinese and even with many Indians too. But I am not a fool. Ethnic nepotism is a worldwide issue, of course, but whites of all heritage who are not well-connected are in for a horrific future of discrimination and deprioritisation. When ethnic nepotism is supercharged with legislative advantage (as with DEI) one can safely predict pauperisation on a grand scale. I do not envy young white men seeking to pursue a serious career in any field.
I will not dox myself or others to provide anecdotal substantiation but I can assure, I could spend days typing it up. It is a miserable subject and provides me with no satisfaction whatsoever.
I’ll cheerfully dox myself by saying that as a white, cisgender, heterosexual, American male who needs merely conversion to Protestantism to be at the absolute apex of the oppressor matrix, I feel exactly zero sentiment toward anyone else in any of those groups, save one. It’s genuinely confusing to me to even try and consider some form of solidarity with white people or men or heteros.
This reminds me of a point I may have made before, but my favorite irony about white supremacy is that the argument in its favor, such as an argument exists - art, music, literature, architecture, etc. - is wholly unknown to those who exclaim that supremacy.
Personally, I would have been fine with a race blind society. But quite clearly non-white groups prefer an explicitly racialized society and use political power to achieve it at every turn. I suspect they’re going to get their wish.
It doesn't matter that you claim to "have been fine with a race-blind society" personally. All of us are are stuck with the reality of History. Recent History.
The US really did begin with a population around 18% black, and up until around 160 years ago, 90% of them were enslaved. The white majority really did have the option to pursue the goal of a race-blind society in 1865, and what the US got instead was a President assassinated by a conspiracy of embittered losers and a ten-year regional military occupation intended to secure equal rights for the formerly enslaved population that had been liberated to be landless, penniless, and illiterate. In 1870, estimated 4% of black Americans in the Southern states were literate. Their access to basic literacy had been forbidden by law. The postwar military occupation ended in 1876, andin the aftermath, much of this country really did impose a system of legally enforced Apartheid. It only began breaking down with the integration of the armed forces. In 1948. It took another 20 years before a slate of basic equal rights protections were passed by Congress. I once spent a couple of weeks attending a legally segregated public school in Georgia in 1963, before my military family moved on post and I had black and Asian kids in my class.
So don't be all phony about how American society used to be all about the content of individual character, before the Civil Rights movement showed up and ruined everything.
The “race blind” society referred to in the past tense is obviously the post civil rights era of the 80s- early 2000s. Which was still unsatisfactory for activists
The 1980s was when the Drug War showed up as an attractive nuisance to the children of the blue-collar precariat, with its prohibition price supports and illusions of a path to upward mobility in a glamour profession. It derailed the below-median income stratum of black and Latino Americans first, of course. In the 1980s, the fallout of the criminalized monopoly of the Drug Market was just something that white Americans watched on their televisions.
But eventually, the attractions of Using Dope and Dealing Dope laid waste to the already shaky political economy of the abandoned factory Rust Belt and the hollowed-out white-populated countryside too, didn't it? (Followed by mass internal migration of street addicts to the Pacific Coast states.) The trade in Prohibited Drugs also corrupted the values of the wealthier neighborhoods, including a massive increase in cynicism about "the government." A cushion of affluence makes a crucial difference, in some ways. For the fortunate. But it's also evidence of affluent/wealthy class privilege.
You're offering a sweeping generalization about entire populations, apparently based on an academic-social media fad that does not have the consensus of support that you imply. Even in terms of the grossest measure- Presidential elections- around 1/4 of black and Latino American males voted for Trump in that last election, and according to the polls, his appeal has only risen. The Democratic Party getting on board with Woke has done nothing to improve their appeal to nonwhites- instead, it's led to a decline. Much of that decline is precisely because most nonwhites are interested in having their concerns addressed as People, not as Races.
At least the Race obsessions of the Woke have some basis in social justice concerns. Unlike the Race obsessions of white supremacist paranoids, with their insane hyperbole and their doomsaying hints about an urgent need for Ethnic Cleansing and a white ethnostate. Willful ignorance of Historical Reality serves that agenda, incidentally. So does Chicken Little scaremongering about the future of the country.
If you really want to help, find some way to make yourself useful. The most educational job I ever had was a year spent driving a van for the disabled in Washington DC. It widened my perspective as much as the years I spent driving a cab in Sacramento. Certainly more broadening than college, as far as getting to know how human beings really are. Or is that beneath you? Are you too well-off to give either of those jobs a try? Or too many DUIs, maybe? Ever consider working in a hospital? If all the nonwhite medical professionals and immigrant workers disappeared from my local hospital, there wouldn't be anyone left. How about helping to show the world that white people still have what it takes to work in the healing professions? LOL, any white supremacist who shows up as a patient in an American hospital is in for a real shock.
But I know who most of the American white supremacists are nowadays- you're young males, too young to even need to step inside of a hospital to care for your aging parents. White supremacy just happens to be your particular form of Luxury Belief. One day you'll hit the wall.
The “woke” have the biggest, scariest paramilitaries with the biggest elite backing in this country, as deployed in 2020. They are a lot less scary than the paramilitaries that existed in the last century, but they are what we have to live with and are what people have to be concerned with whether they meet your definition of paranoid young men or not.
There is no way to talk about any large population without making sweeping generalizations.
For the record, I am not a white nationalist, still less a white supremacist and I am not young. As a Gen Xer the only luxury belief I could ever afford was cynicism. It has served me well.
Lincoln proposed an ultimate final solution to the black problem; Repatriation of freed slaves to Liberia. Lincoln was not a 19th century’s version of a neocon but believed the United States was fundamentally a white nation.
Emancipation was the solution that Lincoln eventually settled on.
And no matter who "believed that the United States was a fundamentally white nation" (a murky statement that--correct me if I'm wrong-- is your choice of words, not anything Lincoln said), I'm dubious that the Anglo-Saxon tribes of Northwestern Europe have any fair justification to lay exclusive claim forevermore to a national territory that eventually grew to the size of the EU, just because they invented a nation-state out of raw material all nice and legal-like on a part of the planet that no European even knew existed 1000 years ago. Especially given the fact that the territory was already inhabited by a "nonwhite" population that dwindled while the European settlers- basically squatters--increased their ethnic share of the population of the US to a peak of around 82% of the total of inhabitants.
It was never 100%, of course. At the time of the founding of the nation c.1790, about 19% of the total consisted of the population shanghaied from Africa and castaway across the ocean to do a hefty share of the heavy lifting, as unpaid labor. They couldn't quit, either. Then, later on, we adopted a sizeable Spanish-speaking population as part of the spoils of conquest in the war fought by the US against Mexico around 1850, where the Mexico ended up losing 1/3 of its territory and we got an extra 25% of real estate to add to the territory of the US.
So I'm not impressed by any Appeal to Authority on that score.
I don't know what was right back then; human beings have a sketchy track record in general, all around. All over the world. But that's no excuse for continuing to steal and murder and carry on like it's all about us, over all others, forever. There needs to be some acknowledgement of what's Fair in the here and now. The British colonists hogging 100% of a territory 40 times the size of their homeland for their exclusive possession is not Fair. (I'm not even including Alaska in that survey, much less Canada.) Cutting some other European nationalities in on the deal while cutting everyone else out is not Fair, either. It's Wrong. A Wrong thing.
Neither am I impressed by paranoid whinging that the lessening of the share of Europeans in the total US population from 82% to 62% amounts to "White Genocide." Numerically, that 62% adds up to 204 million Americans of "unmixed" European ancestry, i.e., "white" (I'm rolling with the "one drop" rule, since that's still the prevailing definition in this country. From back when the "race realists" made the rules.)
204 million US of A whiteys c.2020 is more than the c.2021 combined white populations of England and Wales (48.2 million), Ireland (4.4 million), Scotland (5.2 million), France (55 million), Germany (59 million), Austria (6.7 million) Norway (4 million), Sweden (7 million), and Denmark (5.2 million).
So basically the Europeans of the United States not only managed to take over 3 million North American square miles (not counting Alaska); their population also amounts to an extra Western Europe. That isn't even counting Canada, and the non-Hispanic white European populations of Central America and South America (16 million ethnic Germans in Brazil alone.)
Yet the White Supremacists of the US refuse to be satisfied with taking that Win for the Herrenvolk. They have to have it All. Otherwise- oh no, there's only 200 million of us! 4 million gone, with a single rounding error! White Genocide! Because relative population decline of 25% over the previous 50 years. In a territory that had approximately zero Europeans less than six centuries ago.
For what it's worth, the black American population has had its own waxings and wanings: c.1930, 95 years ago, the percentage of black Americans in the total US population had declined to 9.7%- half of what it had been in 1790.
The population has since rebounded somewhat- to 14.2% (including the new self-report category of "multiracial" with some black ancestry.) That percentage is still a drop of 25% from the 1790 peak percentage of 19.3%.
I'm just trying to provide some statistical perspective, here. Metrics.
You folks in the audience can run these numbers, too. (Pro tip: use a real computer, not a phone.)
One of the things that a diligent researcher will find is that achieving a "fundamentally white United States" would more be about a mass removal of the "Latino/a" aka "Hispanic" population, that's presently 18.7% of the total. 62 million people. Larger than the present-day population of Germany. Do the White Ethnostaters have a realistic comprehension of what's required for that project? Combined with the expulsion of 47 million black people that would be required, that's 108 million. Add 24 million Asians to the White Lebensraum scheme, and that adds up to disappearing, by hook or by crook, 132 million people.
Considered dispassionately, it seems to me that the Fundamentally White United States Project is bound to run into overriding performance constraints. There was never a time when the obstacles to achieving Racial Purity in this country weren't formidable. But really. 132 million people.
And that reminds me- I forgot to subtract the Jews from the White American population, where most of them have camouflaged themselves! Wait...is that part negotiable now? At least some of the Alt Right is down with Zionism these days, no? Politics gets so confusing, in this synthetic world we're living in. Reminds me of a couple of observations by Lily Tomlin:
"No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up."
"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you're winning, you're still a rat."
My statement isn’t at all ‘murky’ but U.S. based on public statements he made during the 1860 elections in debates with Stephen Douglas and later after taking office on several occasions. Lincoln was by all contemporary liberal-left standards; racist and white supremacist. Lincoln used the term ‘White’ not ‘Anglo-Saxon’ to describe the identity of The United States. As for what percentage Negro slaves were at one time, it is irrelevant as they weren’t citizens or even considered fullly human under The Constitution.
We need to think of ourselves as post-Americans. Nothing is forever. All Empires collapse eventually. While the United States and its criminal ruling elites still very wealthy and militarily powerful the center is hollow and rapidly deteriorating. Short of a complete social, economic, and political revolution, nothing will stop it. Certainly not clueless and asinine ‘conservatives.’
Race and demography are certainly important factors in shaping the character and nature of a particular society. No, they are not ‘everything’ but far more important than economic or political arrangements and more valuable in the long run than creeds and propositions.
BRICS architects are struggling with the fiat currency system that facilitates international trade. They seem to want to learn the hard way by revisiting failed models from the past.
I don’t think they struggle with it - the central bankers in both Russia and China are pretty sharp cookies - they just don’t want to do it.
All the talking about “BRICS” is some combination of public relations and busywork for mid-tier functionaries, neither China nor Russia has any illusions about what kind of changes would be required to make it happen and neither one is going to do it
I credit Pepe Escobar for introducing me to BRICS and the SCO. He's been described as a public intellectual.
Economist Fadhel Kaboub is a pretty sharp cookie, but few people read his substack.
Between public intellectuals and heterodox economists we have what is known as 'business as usual'. Lot of huffing and puffing and generous salaries. Great work if you can land one of those positions.
Re: "It never ceases to be funny (at least for me) that Nuland and co. insist that neighbouring states being western liberal democracies somehow pose an existential threat to Russia."
I agree with this.
Which is why military aggression by Russia should not be seen as anything other than what it is - military aggression.
Arguments that putting NATO "on Russia's borders", is some kind of provocation, is similarly ridiculous. By that logic, Russia has the "right" to attack any nation that borders them, in series, until their borders reach the sea!
After WWII, the allies - except Russia - gave back all of the conquered territory, including Japan and West Germany.
Russia has a very different history.
Sure, the US CIA and military have engaged in regime change and destabilization in many nations since WWII (Iran, and a whole slew of others). But the solution is not unilateral disarmament, or appeasement of aggressors, but rather finally putting a stop to efforts to destabilize or control other nations. Weakness does indeed invite aggression, and industrial weakness and dependence (e.g. the self inflicted US deindustrialization and dependence on China) inevitably leads to military and political weakness, and decline. This is not a critique of China, but of US feckless and corrupt leadership over the past three decades, allowing government policies that predictably led to industrial, economic, and military weakness.
A Biden quote from 2019:
“China is going to eat our lunch? They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean in the West. They can’t figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, I you know they’re not bad, folks. But guess what. They’re not a competition for us.”
"A rising China is good for the US and the world"
This has been the attitude of feckless US pols on China policy over past three decades. And even by 2019, Biden - and the whole groupthink establishment - still couldn't see in retrospect, what many predicted long before it even happened. Because their profits (and in some cases, their corrupt influence peddling) depended on them not seeing it.
The threat NATO poses to Russia is real. NATO has nukes in Poland and Rumania. A Ukraine hosting NATO forces, integrating militarily with the West and holding joint military exercises on Ukrainian soil is a threat. To say nothing of the biowarfare research outsourced to labs in the Ukraine by the Pentagon.
Any nukes anywhere within range are a threat to anyone else.
Since when has any NATO country attacked Russia?
Russia invaded Georgia, Crimea, then Ukraine.
Also, Poland is supposedly a "threat", because they are effectively saying: Don't invade us, or we'll nuke you? Simple solution: Don't invade Poland.
The logic of Russia having the "right" to re-estabish dominance over eastern Europe - against the will of the citizens in those nations - is flawed. Citizens have the right to choose their government. Poland doesn't want to be ruled by Russia.
OK, I see some of the logic that citizens of Crimea may have wanted to be part of Russia. OTOH, many of them now have "buyer's remorse", as the oligarchs have grabbed all the prime real estate, hogged it for themselves, and left the citizens worse off than before.
NATO's bombing of Belgrade, the involvement of the US and EU in the coup d'etat in Kiev in 2014 and Western support for the coup leaders in the subsequent civil war indicate hostile intent.
I would prefer that the US not engineer coups, and also prefer that Russia not try to do the same. West and East pointing fingers of blame at each other for "influencing" politics in Ukraine. Unfortunately, both are to blame, and it has continued to escalate.
You mention existential threat in your first paragraph and then go on to ignore what it means. It's not a military threat, it's a cultural/spiritual threat. It's why the Russians kicked out Pussy Riot and various CIA- and Soros-supported NGOs. It's why the US government spent $787M in Afghanistan attempting to indoctrinate Dadaism – LOL – into their elites.
Germany is still occupied with U.S. military bases and a ruling elite placed in power by the United States (first in their western zone and now known as all of Germany). The United States has been in endless wars constantly since 1945 with troops and bases stationed on virtually every continent. I’ll trust Putin over Nuland and her gaggle of ‘New York intellectual friends’ any day of the week.
The USA did not tolerate Soviet nukes in Cuba. The USA would not tolerate a Chinese client regime in Mexico City that joined a Chinese military alliance with the aim of regime change in Washington, DC.
"It never ceases to be funny (at least for me) that Nuland and co. insist that neighbouring states being western liberal democracies somehow pose an existential threat to Russia. It’s NATO, NATO, NATO, NATO."
You're making the obvious mistake of conflating Russia with Putin. Of course liberal democracy in Ukraine is not an existential threat to the country of Russia. But it absolutely is an existential threat to the Putin regime.
Again, you're conflating Russians with the Putin regime. Have you asked Russians what they want? It's almost like they have no democracy (let alone a liberal one) to actually freely express what they really want.
This BRICS and sanctions shit reminds me of a 1984 like fake war. The war is really against people, not governments. Remember, we were always at war with EastAsia 😂
Oh and the boot production is up 20% even though everyone is broke and have old boots. (The boot and chocolate stuff in 1984 reminds me of the stock market bullshit we have been fed over and over.)
We have been in a version of the world Orwell wrote about from at least his time. People fear that world coming, not seeing we have been in this already for decades!
It was funny to see the Hungarian foreign minister point out that the sanctions are fake on a video played on the Jimmy Dore show the other day.
He stated that Hungary is building a nuclear power plant with the Russian nuclear industry. At the construction site, there's plenty of French, German and other Western contractors being paid by Russia. Add to the mayhem, US is saying to not buy Russian nuclear fuel, when the US gets most of theirs from Russia.
The Hungarian minister also explained how India literally bypasses the sanctions on Russian oil and the west allows this to happen. Someone is making money on the hike of energy prices and it's not the workers or citizens!
It's all a show to excuse why governments can't give their people things. It's all a show to promote war. It's all a show to make the wealthy even wealthier.
Yeah, modern digital surveillance is a total hellscape. What Nico brought attention to is only the tip of the iceberg. Real blackpill moment once you start digging and realize just how bad it is.
(Warning: Resistance is not Effortless. Inconvenience is involved.)
You can start by treating your portable phone as a landline, except when you really require mobile access. Feel free to turn it off sometimes. You have voicemail, yes?
Also: cash. Do not allow the Controllers to abolish the anonymity of hard copy cash money.
It doesn't exist as of yet.
Go to @FistedFoucault on Twitter and search “Jewish” 😉😉
Wow the Jew haters have really come out of the woodwork lately. But hey, at least you're out, loud and proud in your Jew hate and not weeping crocodile tears for "Palestinian babies", this year's luxury must-have. I guess Jew hate is like miniskirts or wide lapels, it always eventually comes back into style.
The Aryan Supremacist juvenile auxiliary is entertaining us with their ignorance today.
I owe you guys commentary on both what is happening in Georgia and on the assassination attempt made against Premier Fico of Slovakia. I also need to publish the next entry of the Spanish Civil War series. Getting there, please bear with me.
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Also: I have about 700 emails, DMs from various apps/platforms/etc. on my desk to get through. Please be patient as I wade through them and address them. Merci beaucoup.
Well then I'm guessing mine must be in there somewhere.
That's nothing. I'm verging on 21000 unpoened emails. And that's just for one addy.
A million thanks for turning me on to Ed Zitron's newsletter, Niccolo. I'm encouraged that someone is doing the onerous legwork of detailing the degeneration of the once impressive technology of Internet keyword search into profit-seeking mind rot, as a chronicle for the historical record.
At first, I thought his take would be more dispassionate, but I was quickly disabused of that notion.
The evidence is incontrovertible that the degeneration of Google Search really was intentional. I had known for some time that my keyword searches had gotten twisted into something that doesn't remotely resemble the original clean lines of a library Subject search, or the Index of the Readers Guide to Periodicals. But the whistleblowers and evidential record turned up by Zitron makes it clear that the most powerful people at Google completely sold out objectivity and clarity to make themselves wealthier, when they already had more money than the lifetime paycheck earnings of the janitorial crews who empty the wastebaskets of their office buildings.
"Don't be evil"...pfft.
I'm of the mind that this is a much more serious problem than the major news media and Congress think it is. It's abhorrent that the information potential of the Internet could be squandered this way. The blatantly unethical decisions of the top execs of Google is sufficient proof that its de facto monopoly should be dismantled.
Russia/Ukraine....I think much of Russian behavior historically can be viewed as a kind of sulk at being rejected by the West. In the 19th c. Russia wanted desperately to be part of the European fold. And again in 1990 there was a great opportunity to embrace Russia; which opportunity was foolishly wasted (especially by the Americans and Brits). Russia's geopolitical perspective (and every country has one of those) was casually trampled on. The naive thinking went something like this: either you instantly re-invent yourselves as a full-on liberal democracy from day one or you go straight back to the world's naughty corner as enemy number one.
And whilst on the subject....."Vladimir Putin may be a paranoid autocrat and a failing military strategist but when he talks about people in the West who want to "destroy [its]traditional values and impose their pseudo-values... which would corrode [it] from within" you surely have to ask yourself if does have a point?...." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
The way I put it is "Even countries run by leaders we don't like have valid national security concerns." And other valid concerns as well, such as not being condescended to and disrespected by arrogant and hypocritical self-ordained arbiters of moral stature. Trustworthy communication becomes impossible without a baseline of mutual respect.
This perspective has been more wisely understood by the shotcallers who keep hostilities from getting out of hand in American prisons than by the denizens of the US Department of State.
>In the 19th c. Russia wanted desperately to be part of the European fold.
If the great Russian writers of the 19th century are any authority on the matter, this is patently untrue. The Russians have had a vastly different historical experience as (self-designated) inheritors of Byzantium and the brand of Christianity more tinged by Greek philosophy than either the Catholic or protestant confessions which have had such a major impact on the development of Western Civilization. In practice, integrating Russia into the Western fold has been and always will be probably as impossible (and undesirable, if you respect diversity like Niko) as integrating, e.g., China or Iran.
Well... Yes... and No to this. The problem is that comment threads are not so good for nuanced discussion. I think the biggest omerta in the West's Russia-as-eternal-bete-noir narrative is Russian literature, music and art....quintessentially and gloriously European. This is not remotely true of your chosen comparitors China and Iran. And Russian history is a Christian story...China and Iran's isn't. And by the way I never said anything about "integrating"...only about a family connection.
My main quibble is with your idea of Russia wanting to be part of the European fold in the 19th century. I think they did have status anxiety and Europe was their natural yardstick, but [at least in the works of the great writers] they seemed very much to want to make their own mark and show the superiority of the "Russian Soul" to the spiritual "graveyard" of Europe.
Last week there was an interesting interview where 2010s legend Ta Nehisi Coates appeared to take up a Peter Beinart like view of human rights, prompted by Gaza. That this is completely at odds with the 2014-15 writings that made him famous is not discussed
https://slate.com/podcasts/a-word/2024/05/ta-nehisi-coates-on-the-black-palestinian-connection
Thanks for this. I will take a look.
Does Nuland believe what she is saying or is she diabolically evil, a female Richard III?
I am inclined to go with the former. She is a lifelong striver who required total immersion in the cliches, prejudices and worldviews of her superiors. She has convinced herself that the received wisdoms of Foggy Bottom are fundamentally sound. Self-induced cognitive reengineering or something like it.
Why not both
I have the same question. She really has the cliches down pat. Completely removed from reality and full of false assumptions, descriptions and flat out lies. In the end in matters not if she is a true believer or not. Her impact is just as pernicious. The best part is her transformation into Jabba. It reminds me of the Warner Bros cartoon that ends with "this time we didn't forget the gravy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psoAtTD0NHc
I think she's a true believer.
Regardless, she is easily replaceable.
There’s nothing external stopping BRICS countries from settling trade, holding reserves, extending swap lines etc in their own currencies. They could do it tomorrow if they liked. They don’t have to ask permission!
Except that… they all run current account surpluses and the gorilla in the room, China, has a closed capital account. Oh well, take it up with Chairman Xi, BRICScels.
Unrelated: “democracy” if the Nuland variety is going to suffer a crisis of confidence as America trends ever-further towards a non-white future. Trump’s charisma halted the process briefly but the future remains a majority-minority D country with unassailable electoral strength. A sort of ANC-lite situation.
Will the historic, nation-forming white population consent to be ruled “democratically” by a coalition of browns - nearly all of whom are recent imports? I’m skeptical.
The nation-forming community already consented to generations of social engineering in the name of Civil Rights, including the loss of quality education to non-elite white children, replacement level immigration, collapsing law and order in key cities and de-prioritisation via DEI.
I am skeptical that they would get off the couch if ANC-lite turned into full strength Rwanda. Obama's low-intensity rassenkrieg barely elicited a yawn. Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make woke.
People’s mental models hasn’t caught up to the rapidity of change. As recently as 1990, the country was 80% white. It’s easy to tolerate all sorts of luxury beliefs in that kind of a society.
D’s will be majority-minority at the national level as soon as the 2028 election. The country will be majority-minority sometime in the 2040s.
Will whites “get off the couch”? idk. I don’t think armed rebellion is likely. But there will be a growing sentiment that the “democracy” has no legitimacy and the “country” is an artificial legal fiction.
Fully agree. I expect that there will be a range of reactions as reality sets in: capital flight, emigration, a mass retreat to shrinking enclaves of relative safety though millions will seek benefits by supporting the regime. The legitimacy crisis has already begun.
Or.. secession? Texas economy larger than Russia
Whites are already a minority in Texas. Mexicans and Blacks there won’t support secession.
I think Latinos, especially the 2nd and 3rd gen, might be more inclined towards a white aligned worldview than you might give them credit for
Secessionism was resolved at Appomattox.
Forget the stuff about guns and uniforms, secession is impossible because no-one with any real-world agency wants to undermine the bond market by separating Washington from the economically critical resource-rich regions. Every economically active player on the planet would prefer a genocide of Red America over systemic bank failures. Thanks to the Basel Accords everyone with a bank account that operates through SWIFT needs a viable market for US Treasury paper. The genuine elites in Texas are no different in this than their fellow Lizard People (or the plebs with savings).
What's the firsthand real-world experience basis for your fantasy projections? You all sound like Bevis and Butthead on Day 4 of a meth binge.
You should hear me when I hit the hard stuff.
Re real-world experience, I have worked with plenty of non-whites and would happily do so again. I get on very well indeed with most Chinese and even with many Indians too. But I am not a fool. Ethnic nepotism is a worldwide issue, of course, but whites of all heritage who are not well-connected are in for a horrific future of discrimination and deprioritisation. When ethnic nepotism is supercharged with legislative advantage (as with DEI) one can safely predict pauperisation on a grand scale. I do not envy young white men seeking to pursue a serious career in any field.
I will not dox myself or others to provide anecdotal substantiation but I can assure, I could spend days typing it up. It is a miserable subject and provides me with no satisfaction whatsoever.
ahh, you ain't even American.
I may as well be. You Yanks took the place of England long ago and we are governed to suit the advantage of Washington, just as is England herself.
I’ll cheerfully dox myself by saying that as a white, cisgender, heterosexual, American male who needs merely conversion to Protestantism to be at the absolute apex of the oppressor matrix, I feel exactly zero sentiment toward anyone else in any of those groups, save one. It’s genuinely confusing to me to even try and consider some form of solidarity with white people or men or heteros.
This reminds me of a point I may have made before, but my favorite irony about white supremacy is that the argument in its favor, such as an argument exists - art, music, literature, architecture, etc. - is wholly unknown to those who exclaim that supremacy.
All you care about is Race, eh?
Personally, I would have been fine with a race blind society. But quite clearly non-white groups prefer an explicitly racialized society and use political power to achieve it at every turn. I suspect they’re going to get their wish.
It doesn't matter that you claim to "have been fine with a race-blind society" personally. All of us are are stuck with the reality of History. Recent History.
The US really did begin with a population around 18% black, and up until around 160 years ago, 90% of them were enslaved. The white majority really did have the option to pursue the goal of a race-blind society in 1865, and what the US got instead was a President assassinated by a conspiracy of embittered losers and a ten-year regional military occupation intended to secure equal rights for the formerly enslaved population that had been liberated to be landless, penniless, and illiterate. In 1870, estimated 4% of black Americans in the Southern states were literate. Their access to basic literacy had been forbidden by law. The postwar military occupation ended in 1876, andin the aftermath, much of this country really did impose a system of legally enforced Apartheid. It only began breaking down with the integration of the armed forces. In 1948. It took another 20 years before a slate of basic equal rights protections were passed by Congress. I once spent a couple of weeks attending a legally segregated public school in Georgia in 1963, before my military family moved on post and I had black and Asian kids in my class.
So don't be all phony about how American society used to be all about the content of individual character, before the Civil Rights movement showed up and ruined everything.
The “race blind” society referred to in the past tense is obviously the post civil rights era of the 80s- early 2000s. Which was still unsatisfactory for activists
The 1980s was when the Drug War showed up as an attractive nuisance to the children of the blue-collar precariat, with its prohibition price supports and illusions of a path to upward mobility in a glamour profession. It derailed the below-median income stratum of black and Latino Americans first, of course. In the 1980s, the fallout of the criminalized monopoly of the Drug Market was just something that white Americans watched on their televisions.
But eventually, the attractions of Using Dope and Dealing Dope laid waste to the already shaky political economy of the abandoned factory Rust Belt and the hollowed-out white-populated countryside too, didn't it? (Followed by mass internal migration of street addicts to the Pacific Coast states.) The trade in Prohibited Drugs also corrupted the values of the wealthier neighborhoods, including a massive increase in cynicism about "the government." A cushion of affluence makes a crucial difference, in some ways. For the fortunate. But it's also evidence of affluent/wealthy class privilege.
You're offering a sweeping generalization about entire populations, apparently based on an academic-social media fad that does not have the consensus of support that you imply. Even in terms of the grossest measure- Presidential elections- around 1/4 of black and Latino American males voted for Trump in that last election, and according to the polls, his appeal has only risen. The Democratic Party getting on board with Woke has done nothing to improve their appeal to nonwhites- instead, it's led to a decline. Much of that decline is precisely because most nonwhites are interested in having their concerns addressed as People, not as Races.
At least the Race obsessions of the Woke have some basis in social justice concerns. Unlike the Race obsessions of white supremacist paranoids, with their insane hyperbole and their doomsaying hints about an urgent need for Ethnic Cleansing and a white ethnostate. Willful ignorance of Historical Reality serves that agenda, incidentally. So does Chicken Little scaremongering about the future of the country.
If you really want to help, find some way to make yourself useful. The most educational job I ever had was a year spent driving a van for the disabled in Washington DC. It widened my perspective as much as the years I spent driving a cab in Sacramento. Certainly more broadening than college, as far as getting to know how human beings really are. Or is that beneath you? Are you too well-off to give either of those jobs a try? Or too many DUIs, maybe? Ever consider working in a hospital? If all the nonwhite medical professionals and immigrant workers disappeared from my local hospital, there wouldn't be anyone left. How about helping to show the world that white people still have what it takes to work in the healing professions? LOL, any white supremacist who shows up as a patient in an American hospital is in for a real shock.
But I know who most of the American white supremacists are nowadays- you're young males, too young to even need to step inside of a hospital to care for your aging parents. White supremacy just happens to be your particular form of Luxury Belief. One day you'll hit the wall.
The “woke” have the biggest, scariest paramilitaries with the biggest elite backing in this country, as deployed in 2020. They are a lot less scary than the paramilitaries that existed in the last century, but they are what we have to live with and are what people have to be concerned with whether they meet your definition of paranoid young men or not.
There is no way to talk about any large population without making sweeping generalizations.
For the record, I am not a white nationalist, still less a white supremacist and I am not young. As a Gen Xer the only luxury belief I could ever afford was cynicism. It has served me well.
Lincoln proposed an ultimate final solution to the black problem; Repatriation of freed slaves to Liberia. Lincoln was not a 19th century’s version of a neocon but believed the United States was fundamentally a white nation.
Emancipation was the solution that Lincoln eventually settled on.
And no matter who "believed that the United States was a fundamentally white nation" (a murky statement that--correct me if I'm wrong-- is your choice of words, not anything Lincoln said), I'm dubious that the Anglo-Saxon tribes of Northwestern Europe have any fair justification to lay exclusive claim forevermore to a national territory that eventually grew to the size of the EU, just because they invented a nation-state out of raw material all nice and legal-like on a part of the planet that no European even knew existed 1000 years ago. Especially given the fact that the territory was already inhabited by a "nonwhite" population that dwindled while the European settlers- basically squatters--increased their ethnic share of the population of the US to a peak of around 82% of the total of inhabitants.
It was never 100%, of course. At the time of the founding of the nation c.1790, about 19% of the total consisted of the population shanghaied from Africa and castaway across the ocean to do a hefty share of the heavy lifting, as unpaid labor. They couldn't quit, either. Then, later on, we adopted a sizeable Spanish-speaking population as part of the spoils of conquest in the war fought by the US against Mexico around 1850, where the Mexico ended up losing 1/3 of its territory and we got an extra 25% of real estate to add to the territory of the US.
So I'm not impressed by any Appeal to Authority on that score.
I don't know what was right back then; human beings have a sketchy track record in general, all around. All over the world. But that's no excuse for continuing to steal and murder and carry on like it's all about us, over all others, forever. There needs to be some acknowledgement of what's Fair in the here and now. The British colonists hogging 100% of a territory 40 times the size of their homeland for their exclusive possession is not Fair. (I'm not even including Alaska in that survey, much less Canada.) Cutting some other European nationalities in on the deal while cutting everyone else out is not Fair, either. It's Wrong. A Wrong thing.
Neither am I impressed by paranoid whinging that the lessening of the share of Europeans in the total US population from 82% to 62% amounts to "White Genocide." Numerically, that 62% adds up to 204 million Americans of "unmixed" European ancestry, i.e., "white" (I'm rolling with the "one drop" rule, since that's still the prevailing definition in this country. From back when the "race realists" made the rules.)
204 million US of A whiteys c.2020 is more than the c.2021 combined white populations of England and Wales (48.2 million), Ireland (4.4 million), Scotland (5.2 million), France (55 million), Germany (59 million), Austria (6.7 million) Norway (4 million), Sweden (7 million), and Denmark (5.2 million).
So basically the Europeans of the United States not only managed to take over 3 million North American square miles (not counting Alaska); their population also amounts to an extra Western Europe. That isn't even counting Canada, and the non-Hispanic white European populations of Central America and South America (16 million ethnic Germans in Brazil alone.)
Yet the White Supremacists of the US refuse to be satisfied with taking that Win for the Herrenvolk. They have to have it All. Otherwise- oh no, there's only 200 million of us! 4 million gone, with a single rounding error! White Genocide! Because relative population decline of 25% over the previous 50 years. In a territory that had approximately zero Europeans less than six centuries ago.
For what it's worth, the black American population has had its own waxings and wanings: c.1930, 95 years ago, the percentage of black Americans in the total US population had declined to 9.7%- half of what it had been in 1790.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States#Black_population_as_a_percentage_of_the_total_population_by_U.S._region_and_state_(1790%E2%80%932020)
The population has since rebounded somewhat- to 14.2% (including the new self-report category of "multiracial" with some black ancestry.) That percentage is still a drop of 25% from the 1790 peak percentage of 19.3%.
I'm just trying to provide some statistical perspective, here. Metrics.
You folks in the audience can run these numbers, too. (Pro tip: use a real computer, not a phone.)
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/improved-race-ethnicity-measures-reveal-united-states-population-much-more-multiracial.html
One of the things that a diligent researcher will find is that achieving a "fundamentally white United States" would more be about a mass removal of the "Latino/a" aka "Hispanic" population, that's presently 18.7% of the total. 62 million people. Larger than the present-day population of Germany. Do the White Ethnostaters have a realistic comprehension of what's required for that project? Combined with the expulsion of 47 million black people that would be required, that's 108 million. Add 24 million Asians to the White Lebensraum scheme, and that adds up to disappearing, by hook or by crook, 132 million people.
Considered dispassionately, it seems to me that the Fundamentally White United States Project is bound to run into overriding performance constraints. There was never a time when the obstacles to achieving Racial Purity in this country weren't formidable. But really. 132 million people.
And that reminds me- I forgot to subtract the Jews from the White American population, where most of them have camouflaged themselves! Wait...is that part negotiable now? At least some of the Alt Right is down with Zionism these days, no? Politics gets so confusing, in this synthetic world we're living in. Reminds me of a couple of observations by Lily Tomlin:
"No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up."
"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you're winning, you're still a rat."
My statement isn’t at all ‘murky’ but U.S. based on public statements he made during the 1860 elections in debates with Stephen Douglas and later after taking office on several occasions. Lincoln was by all contemporary liberal-left standards; racist and white supremacist. Lincoln used the term ‘White’ not ‘Anglo-Saxon’ to describe the identity of The United States. As for what percentage Negro slaves were at one time, it is irrelevant as they weren’t citizens or even considered fullly human under The Constitution.
We need to think of ourselves as post-Americans. Nothing is forever. All Empires collapse eventually. While the United States and its criminal ruling elites still very wealthy and militarily powerful the center is hollow and rapidly deteriorating. Short of a complete social, economic, and political revolution, nothing will stop it. Certainly not clueless and asinine ‘conservatives.’
Ditto.
Race and demography are certainly important factors in shaping the character and nature of a particular society. No, they are not ‘everything’ but far more important than economic or political arrangements and more valuable in the long run than creeds and propositions.
BRICS architects are struggling with the fiat currency system that facilitates international trade. They seem to want to learn the hard way by revisiting failed models from the past.
I don’t think they struggle with it - the central bankers in both Russia and China are pretty sharp cookies - they just don’t want to do it.
All the talking about “BRICS” is some combination of public relations and busywork for mid-tier functionaries, neither China nor Russia has any illusions about what kind of changes would be required to make it happen and neither one is going to do it
I credit Pepe Escobar for introducing me to BRICS and the SCO. He's been described as a public intellectual.
Economist Fadhel Kaboub is a pretty sharp cookie, but few people read his substack.
Between public intellectuals and heterodox economists we have what is known as 'business as usual'. Lot of huffing and puffing and generous salaries. Great work if you can land one of those positions.
Re: "It never ceases to be funny (at least for me) that Nuland and co. insist that neighbouring states being western liberal democracies somehow pose an existential threat to Russia."
I agree with this.
Which is why military aggression by Russia should not be seen as anything other than what it is - military aggression.
Arguments that putting NATO "on Russia's borders", is some kind of provocation, is similarly ridiculous. By that logic, Russia has the "right" to attack any nation that borders them, in series, until their borders reach the sea!
After WWII, the allies - except Russia - gave back all of the conquered territory, including Japan and West Germany.
Russia has a very different history.
Sure, the US CIA and military have engaged in regime change and destabilization in many nations since WWII (Iran, and a whole slew of others). But the solution is not unilateral disarmament, or appeasement of aggressors, but rather finally putting a stop to efforts to destabilize or control other nations. Weakness does indeed invite aggression, and industrial weakness and dependence (e.g. the self inflicted US deindustrialization and dependence on China) inevitably leads to military and political weakness, and decline. This is not a critique of China, but of US feckless and corrupt leadership over the past three decades, allowing government policies that predictably led to industrial, economic, and military weakness.
A Biden quote from 2019:
“China is going to eat our lunch? They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean in the West. They can’t figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, I you know they’re not bad, folks. But guess what. They’re not a competition for us.”
"A rising China is good for the US and the world"
This has been the attitude of feckless US pols on China policy over past three decades. And even by 2019, Biden - and the whole groupthink establishment - still couldn't see in retrospect, what many predicted long before it even happened. Because their profits (and in some cases, their corrupt influence peddling) depended on them not seeing it.
Self inflicted deindustrialization.
The threat NATO poses to Russia is real. NATO has nukes in Poland and Rumania. A Ukraine hosting NATO forces, integrating militarily with the West and holding joint military exercises on Ukrainian soil is a threat. To say nothing of the biowarfare research outsourced to labs in the Ukraine by the Pentagon.
Any nukes anywhere within range are a threat to anyone else.
Since when has any NATO country attacked Russia?
Russia invaded Georgia, Crimea, then Ukraine.
Also, Poland is supposedly a "threat", because they are effectively saying: Don't invade us, or we'll nuke you? Simple solution: Don't invade Poland.
The logic of Russia having the "right" to re-estabish dominance over eastern Europe - against the will of the citizens in those nations - is flawed. Citizens have the right to choose their government. Poland doesn't want to be ruled by Russia.
OK, I see some of the logic that citizens of Crimea may have wanted to be part of Russia. OTOH, many of them now have "buyer's remorse", as the oligarchs have grabbed all the prime real estate, hogged it for themselves, and left the citizens worse off than before.
NATO's bombing of Belgrade, the involvement of the US and EU in the coup d'etat in Kiev in 2014 and Western support for the coup leaders in the subsequent civil war indicate hostile intent.
I would prefer that the US not engineer coups, and also prefer that Russia not try to do the same. West and East pointing fingers of blame at each other for "influencing" politics in Ukraine. Unfortunately, both are to blame, and it has continued to escalate.
Which coups did Russia engineer?
You mention existential threat in your first paragraph and then go on to ignore what it means. It's not a military threat, it's a cultural/spiritual threat. It's why the Russians kicked out Pussy Riot and various CIA- and Soros-supported NGOs. It's why the US government spent $787M in Afghanistan attempting to indoctrinate Dadaism – LOL – into their elites.
Germany is still occupied with U.S. military bases and a ruling elite placed in power by the United States (first in their western zone and now known as all of Germany). The United States has been in endless wars constantly since 1945 with troops and bases stationed on virtually every continent. I’ll trust Putin over Nuland and her gaggle of ‘New York intellectual friends’ any day of the week.
The USA did not tolerate Soviet nukes in Cuba. The USA would not tolerate a Chinese client regime in Mexico City that joined a Chinese military alliance with the aim of regime change in Washington, DC.
What were the alternatives?
Tell Russians living in the breakaway republics (oblasts) they're on their own?
Tell them to evacuate to mother Russia before ultra-nationalist Ukrainians liquidate them?
This was/is a humanitarian mission, not an existential one.
Russia already has NATO on its borders and is able to live with it.
Nuclear powers need not fear a military invasion by their neighbours, but there are other threats that nukes are not an antidote for.
"It never ceases to be funny (at least for me) that Nuland and co. insist that neighbouring states being western liberal democracies somehow pose an existential threat to Russia. It’s NATO, NATO, NATO, NATO."
You're making the obvious mistake of conflating Russia with Putin. Of course liberal democracy in Ukraine is not an existential threat to the country of Russia. But it absolutely is an existential threat to the Putin regime.
How? Why?
Liberal Democracy is an existential threat to all countries.
A majority of Russians support the Putin regime after having experienced liberal democracy firsthand.
Russians do not want western liberal democracy, which is why Nuland's claim is ridiculous.
Again, you're conflating Russians with the Putin regime. Have you asked Russians what they want? It's almost like they have no democracy (let alone a liberal one) to actually freely express what they really want.
Most Russians remember what the 90s and the reign of Boris Yeltsin was like.
Ah yes, the expected and constant answer of Putin apologists. Just like clockwork.
Putin apologism isn’t required to realize that expecting the same color revolution to strike twice is futile.
This BRICS and sanctions shit reminds me of a 1984 like fake war. The war is really against people, not governments. Remember, we were always at war with EastAsia 😂
Oh and the boot production is up 20% even though everyone is broke and have old boots. (The boot and chocolate stuff in 1984 reminds me of the stock market bullshit we have been fed over and over.)
We have been in a version of the world Orwell wrote about from at least his time. People fear that world coming, not seeing we have been in this already for decades!
It was funny to see the Hungarian foreign minister point out that the sanctions are fake on a video played on the Jimmy Dore show the other day.
He stated that Hungary is building a nuclear power plant with the Russian nuclear industry. At the construction site, there's plenty of French, German and other Western contractors being paid by Russia. Add to the mayhem, US is saying to not buy Russian nuclear fuel, when the US gets most of theirs from Russia.
The Hungarian minister also explained how India literally bypasses the sanctions on Russian oil and the west allows this to happen. Someone is making money on the hike of energy prices and it's not the workers or citizens!
It's all a show to excuse why governments can't give their people things. It's all a show to promote war. It's all a show to make the wealthy even wealthier.
America has to respect the 'sphere of influence' of other large economies. Is that not multi-polarity?
America is not respecting them, though.
What will it take to garner respect?
Does an aircraft carrier have to be sent to the bottom of an ocean?
But that wouldn't garner respect, it would provoke warmongering outrage.
Vicki Nuland Unleashed…heads straight to the buffet line.
It takes a buffet to maintain that figure.
I get the schadenfreude over her weight gain but pretty petty to harp on it. Plenty of other ways to attack her substance wise.
I hope she travels in a helicopter.
Yeah, modern digital surveillance is a total hellscape. What Nico brought attention to is only the tip of the iceberg. Real blackpill moment once you start digging and realize just how bad it is.
What can be done about it?
(Warning: Resistance is not Effortless. Inconvenience is involved.)
You can start by treating your portable phone as a landline, except when you really require mobile access. Feel free to turn it off sometimes. You have voicemail, yes?
Also: cash. Do not allow the Controllers to abolish the anonymity of hard copy cash money.
The movement to end cash is the real plan. I'm horrified anytime someone tells me they never carry cash and always pay by credit card.
Okay then, be horrified.
Cash doesn't protect you. It didn't protect anyone from needing a ration coupon to purchase the necessities of life in the US during the war effort.
It seems like Ms. Nuland is stuck in a pre-2003 worldview. And one that was wrong then, at that.
Warmongering talking points are eternal wisdom, passed from generation to generation.
This is rapidly becoming my favorite blog (substack). As a NakedCapitalism reader, I appreciate the reviews and commentary on the postings there.
Putler forever!
I appreciate Yves' sober takes and her refusal to get too excited about certain matters like many others in the alternative media space.
You're one of the regulars at Mike Norman Economics. Cheers!