Condi Rice Calls for Turbo America, Almost Everyone Now is a Fascist, US/CAN vs. Mexico's Judicial Reforms, Marxist to Rawlsian Liberal Pipeline, Who Killed Pasolini?
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Very good SCR. Condoleeza Rice is as dishonest as she is ignorant and self-serving. China was subject to an attempted Colour Revolution in the 1980s, the Tianmen Square movement. It failed. Following this China got to watch the behaviour of the West in post-Soviet Russia. If the US ever succeeds in getting a Chinese Yeltsin into the Zhonghnanhai (the Chinese Kremlin), China's developnmnt would cone under the direction of Washington. For the Chibese people the results would be very grim indeed.
America has little or nothing to offer China. America makes nothing that China needs beyond money laundering services for corrupt Chinese officials. The US model of doing things is broken and US elites simply cannot be trusted. The US went broke in the 70s and has been living off capital flight and tributary exactions from trading partners, allies and frenemies ever since.
The ability of the US to maintain the status quo is shrinking fast. Any country with effective air defenses can assert their independence from Washington. Once Russia brings a readily affordable form of air defense onto the market the US empire will collapse in a heap.
Rice's disdain for Russia gives the game away. If Putin were eligible for the US presidency he'd be elected in a landslide. US voters want precisely the kind of national development that Putin offers Russians: reindustrialisation, law and order, pattiotism and support for inheitited furms of social and cultural life.
Thank you. Putin is roadtesting a model for a future America shoukd the US intelligence agencies ever see any value in restoring America rather than collecting the rent on its managed decline.
Why should they? Voting is only effective when citizens are capable of cooperating together, mobilising en mass if necessary and asserting themselves.
The liberal democracies fetishise voting but are anxious to suppress mobilisation.. hence the panic over 'populism'.
Under present conditions mass mobilisation is unlikely in the US. So the regime can ignore voters. The only price is less enthusiasm for politics, less trust in authority, but the regime can live with that. They can import whoever they need for essential tasks.
Democracy, as a practical matter, is basically an exercise in passing the buck, in avoiding responsibility. The technical term for this is a "beard".
Those in power claim to answer to and derive their authority from someone else, going ultimately back to "the people" who themselves do not directly exercise power, and who would find it difficult to exercise as a collective action problem, even if they had the formal authority to do so.
What this means is that real power is often in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, who typically don't even want to stand for election because they don't want the voters to know what their programs are, much less to exercise any oversight. Robert Moses is the classic example here.
Even that minimal level of scrutiny is too much for some, and real power is often exercised by people not formally part of any government structure. Corporate lobbyists or Robert Kagan come to mind .
Taking into account how wildly unpopular most western politicians and their policies are with their respective publics, "democracy" as it is practiced is basically a cover for rulers to do what they want.
After all, your elected representatives approved this. If you don't like it, you can vote for a different carefully vetted corporate imperialist muppet, so until then, shut up and fall in line!
I for one don't quite understand how Americans are going to compete or even be capable of restarting manufacturing. How can Americans compete against countries like China that have no social security, welfare, DEI, race and sex quotas, workers' compensation, EEOC lawsuits, etc., and where labor costs are 1/10th to 1/15th? There are also countries, like Hungary and Ireland, that tax corporations less. All in all, the US, other than finance and computer and entertainment software, seems rather hostile, and a difficult terrain for businesses to navigate.
Yes, but what are we protecting? A sacred-victim, entitled parasite culture?
If you create a society where certain groups cannot be criticized and you put these groups into postions of power one would think you've enterd into a 3rd-world state (a very expensive one in the US). The chief hallmark of the 3rd world is that there is no feed-back loop. The top 5% own everything, with a small managerial layer, followed by everyone else. Nobody critiques the top 5%. If you can destroy people's careers by labeling them racist, or now fascist, this sounds like a great way to do it.
Protectionism sounds good but the reality is becoming harder for me to understand its benefits. I sincerely hope I'm wrong.
Protecting the economy is important. If the US becomes a 3rd world economy, the domestic political issues you're concerned about will vanish. No time for DEI when you're working in sweatshops.
Why would they get rid of DEI? You seem to think humans are rational. My whole point is that we are creating a culture of sacred victims and putting them into positions of power.
Why did you link to that article? I have no sympathy for extremists. Branding people as "far right" when they are exercising their right to free speech is another issue altogether.
Bob, if people really wanted to make the US great again or just survive they could ealsy do it by eliminating race and sex quotas, and bring back freedom of association. They could do this in like 10 minutes. No one even mentions these two things. Nobody.
Bob, are you aware that over 50% of law school stuents are women? They doh't want no stinkin' retail jobs. They want power. Race and sex quotas are at the top of the pyramid now anyway. Whenever you read a headline about first woman this or first black that it's acknowledging a race/sex quota.
Actually, you've accidentally hit on their real problem. How do they get white men to maintain the system they built while simultaneously keeping them as 2nd class citizens?
Step 1- eliminate the unnecessary civil rights legislation of the 60's and all the activist rulings that are thin cover for Marxist policies will fall.
Labour costs in trade exposed industries in China are rising very fast. China is competitive because of the skills of its workforce and the high levels of investment in infrastructure.
Not to quibble but money goes a lot further in China and education, health care and transportation are heavily subsidised. The lack of onerous regulatory burdens (DEI) would be very significant.
It would be an easier problem to solve if the US was Machiavellian enough to try and develop its allies rather than drain them. India, if developed ruthlessly, could have been a friendlier alternative to China. But we’re true believers, so we need every allied government to spit out the same lines that we do, or else we kick them to the curb. Notice that Condi Rice’s article explicitly calls out India as a future “authoritarian” enemy.
I foresee a half-century long managed decline in which the US oligarchy, desperate to conserve wealth and status without resolving any of its intrinsic socioeconomic problems, strips the house bare.
Thanks for your correction. Overall, compared to the West it's still a very low part of cost of production, I would think. It appears migrant worker's wages are declining relative to GDP. You are right about some level of accident or death insurance according to this site:
The elites certainly view AI as a national security issue. And coupled with robots it could compete, I suppose. But . . . they'd have to do some kind of cultural metamorphosis to stop foreign infiltration. Literally stand on their collective head.
Pasolini's death is not a mystery. He was killed by either the Italian police or a Gladio paramilitary unit. Like Aldo Moro Pasolini was a threat to the Americans. His intellect, his passion and his courage made him very dangerous. Reading THE LUTHERAN LETTERS you can see why they feared and hated him. He was by far the most potent public intellectual in Europe at that time. He was vulnerable because he pissed off his fellow Marxists. He saw through the Left more thoroughly and more incisively than any conservative. And he was fearless in speaking his mind.
Pasolini energised people. His circle included the novelist Sciasca, the philosopher Agamben (who played the Apostle Philip in THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATHEW), the journalist Oriana Fallaci and (if memory serves) Alberto Moravia. There is nobody remotely like him today. To be frank, the Italian state won. They silenced him. They scared everyone else into going along with the narrative and you only have to look at Italy today to see the results.
Pasolini remains relevant because despite his Marxism he was committed to Italy's heritage and history in a way that puts so-called conservatives in perspective. And he was sincere in this. There is an extraordinary scene in MAMA ROMA where you see the reactions of common, everyday, prisoners to the sound of Dante. That scene alone explains why the regime in America is so desperate to erase the past....they are threatened by anything that is not produced by them or for them, anything that they cannot control.
Ultimately, Pasolini's independence of mind cost him his life.
It's very funny seeing American energy and mining corporations get their hopes up that this will be the president who finally lets them fully take advantage of Mexico's resources only to have it taken away at the last second. This is not the first time and it won't be the last
Though to be fair they are very, very far from purging yankee influence, as seen in who's succeeding AMLO
Whenever I see accusations of "fascism" -- especially in German media -- I recall the pleasant German festive season known as "Fasching" (see https://bit.ly/4ghOlI5) -- it doesn't get more "populist" (or enjoyable) than that.
It annoys me when people talk about some secret cynical cabal on Twitter. Reading Condi's essay shows once again these people are telling you exactly what they plan to do, and they're, frankly, fucking crazy and high on their own supply.
>china dominates what the US used to
Well it was probably a bad idea to offshore to Asia wasn't it?
>russia is now an isolated heavily miltarized state
Like that's some kind of victory and not an extremely dangerous situation.
On Trump's foreign policy, I think the best anyone can hope for is he takes down the temperature with China and Russia. If he manages a win of course.
"...as it has done throughout its history, Russia has stabilized the front, relying on old-fashioned tactics such as human wave attacks, trenches, and land mines."
I have no idea how this "human wave attacks" meme got embedded in the Blob's neuroplasma. Russia literally hasn't done that once. It's as if an Atlantic Council analyst was overworked one day and instead of giving his usual briefing just had his bosses watch Enemy at the Gates. Also: how about drone-generated telemetry? Integrated air defense? Glide bombs, anyone?
These people grow increasingly detached from reality by the year. And perhaps not merely in the geopolitical sense -- Rice is 69. It'd be sad, if it wasn't so terrifying.
"Le human wave" makes even less sense when you think about how this has been going on since 2022 and the maps haven't drastically changed in either direction for about a year. There probably would have been significant territorial gains or losses by now if they were throwing bodies at Ukrainian strongholds.
The more times I read that sentence the more insane it sounds. "They've STABILIZED the front by sending a shitload of guys into a meat grinder and they're holding back all of the drones and jets we have given Ukraine with uhhhhh landmines"
I remember early in the war they were saying how russians were using missiles using electronics from washing machines. It started as propaganda, but I think they started actually believing it.
Ha! I'd forgotten about that one. How about the Ghost of Kiev? Or that time one of their own missiles somehow went backwards and blew up a house in Poland -- which they openly blamed on the Russkies?
Every war involves propaganda. I hope some aspiring historian is keeping tabs on the Pro-Ukraine stuff. It'll make for amusing reading once this is all settled.
Was reading more from Rice, exemplifying 'Turbo-America':
"Finally, the Russian opposition cannot be abandoned. The Baltic states house much of the organization built by the activist Alexei Navalny, who died in a Siberian prison in February. He was one of the few leaders who had a real following in much of Russia. His death cannot be the end of his cause."
In reverse order: Western media initially claimed Putin knocked off Navalny because he posed a political threat. But apparently he just died from being in a Siberian prison. Tragic, to be sure. Truly though, he was a political non-entity in modern Russia. So why is Rice trying to dragoon Baltic leaders into supporting Navalny's cause of regime change in the Kremlin? I have a theory: she's a brainwashed sociopath.
I'm friends with a guy from Latvia. But this goes out to Estonians and Lithuanians too: Washington is putting you in harms way. Moscow no longer trusts people like Rice. They want NATO back to 1997 borders, based on the NATO-Russia Founding Act:
I think a guy like Joe Biden is 100% cynical. With Rice, again going by the "russia is isolated and armed = win" quote. says to me, at least on some level, she's a believer. She's trying to deceive others but deluding herself in the process.
It's a comforting thought -- that they're cynical propagandists orchestrating the Narrative to assuage us plebs. It's comforting because it implies there's some hard-headed pragmatist who's actually in charge, who's stealthily captaining the USS America ship of state and will yell "Hard Port!" to avoid the proverbial iceberg.
Sorry, but that guy doesn't exist. Condoleeza Rice truly believes Ukraine can prevail. She'll believe it no matter how many Kinzhal missiles turn Ukrainian infrastructure into rubble. And why wouldn't she? Every single person she interacts with believes it too. The Narrative isn't for us. It exists to maintain cohesion among the vying factions in Washington. And to get ahead there you must believe the Narrative.
I forget who said it (it may have been our host here), but they were correct: America is the last truly ideological state. And the state ideology is taking us to some wild and wacky places.
If China has 20% unemployment, why do they need population growth? I suppose this is a exponential growth obsession from capitalism.
Also the Ukrainian war doesn't make sense. At the beginning we heard of high age cutoff in the draft. Supposedly 10 are killed for every Russian.... So yeah they would be depleted, but somehow we still see videos of young guys getting thrown into vans to fight. How exactly did they not get taken before?
It's almost like a fake war in order to excuse why Europe is screwed.
Also, why did Boris Johnson need to physically visit to derail the peace treaty?
Why did Russia agree to the later treaty that was "in secret" which in effect nullified it without any ability to enforce it?
Like I said, bullshit Orwellian endless war.
Don't forget that boot production increased and chocolate rations are up 5%.... (Like Stock market bullshit)
Rices article is crap. Not little crap, big CRAP. Power and $ and control by the brain dead narcissists so called elites, who can not even tie their own shoes. No thought or consideration of the American citizen
If one reads Wikipedia instead of that excessively hagiographic FT article, it seems fairly clear it was the mafia (or whatever the local equivalent is named) who did it, perhaps even in defense of family values. One instance where screwing underage kids backfired, eh, Pier Paolo. Whatever you do, dear reader, don't watch Salo/120 Days, even if there are some likenesses with a certain middle eastern country's current affairs.
The strength of Marxism is its focus on power. A lot of inequality is not the product of business skills but rather of connections and bending rules. We see now with the Biden administration a bit more attention to monopoly power but it is just a beginning.
It is my main problem with what has been sold to us as "left" in the last decades: it reduces inequality by handing out subsidies and at the same time it gives more power to businesses that they will use to increase their exploitation of the consumer.
I have to comment on this, pardon if others already got it:
"It is hard to overstate the shock and sense of betrayal that gripped U.S. leaders"
US leaders and their spouses, specifically Paul Pelosi, created modern China, voluntarily, at a time when their motive could not have been any sort of pressure from Chinese leadership, using our manufacfuring capacity and disassembling it in the process. This is demonstrated in the book Factory Man and in various stories about Pelosi (one of the first outside investors in China's modernization) and others. This was not some cosmic mystery that took them by surprise, this was not some learnable known thing they overlooked while converting Iraq to democracy, they did this. The phrase "unleash Chiang" comes fron the CIA deciding they liked Mao better and stifling US support of the KMT. The machinery in some Chinese applications is actually US machinery that was taken apart, crated up, and sent to China.
This breathtakingly clueless gibberish is a perfect parallel to the same foreign policy blob not understanding why nobody is impressed by the recycling of the Russia-fetish from eight years ago, or why recruiting goes down after our twenty-year surrender wars.
Condileeza Rice : how to tell everyone you are a shill for the military industrial complex and deep state without saying you’re a shill for the military industrial complex and deep state…… in a REALLY long, hysterical article.
Thanks Niccolo. Did anyone notice Condi's marxisto-hegelian concept of "internal contradictions"? What does that mean within the neoconservative framework?
Hit the like button at the top or bottom of this page to like this entry. Use the share and/or re-stack buttons to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so.
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Very good SCR. Condoleeza Rice is as dishonest as she is ignorant and self-serving. China was subject to an attempted Colour Revolution in the 1980s, the Tianmen Square movement. It failed. Following this China got to watch the behaviour of the West in post-Soviet Russia. If the US ever succeeds in getting a Chinese Yeltsin into the Zhonghnanhai (the Chinese Kremlin), China's developnmnt would cone under the direction of Washington. For the Chibese people the results would be very grim indeed.
America has little or nothing to offer China. America makes nothing that China needs beyond money laundering services for corrupt Chinese officials. The US model of doing things is broken and US elites simply cannot be trusted. The US went broke in the 70s and has been living off capital flight and tributary exactions from trading partners, allies and frenemies ever since.
The ability of the US to maintain the status quo is shrinking fast. Any country with effective air defenses can assert their independence from Washington. Once Russia brings a readily affordable form of air defense onto the market the US empire will collapse in a heap.
Rice's disdain for Russia gives the game away. If Putin were eligible for the US presidency he'd be elected in a landslide. US voters want precisely the kind of national development that Putin offers Russians: reindustrialisation, law and order, pattiotism and support for inheitited furms of social and cultural life.
Excellent! Your final paragraph is the one that hits-home. Spot-on!!
Thank you. Putin is roadtesting a model for a future America shoukd the US intelligence agencies ever see any value in restoring America rather than collecting the rent on its managed decline.
Nobody cares what American voters want.
Why should they? Voting is only effective when citizens are capable of cooperating together, mobilising en mass if necessary and asserting themselves.
The liberal democracies fetishise voting but are anxious to suppress mobilisation.. hence the panic over 'populism'.
Under present conditions mass mobilisation is unlikely in the US. So the regime can ignore voters. The only price is less enthusiasm for politics, less trust in authority, but the regime can live with that. They can import whoever they need for essential tasks.
Something I wrote elsewhere:
Democracy, as a practical matter, is basically an exercise in passing the buck, in avoiding responsibility. The technical term for this is a "beard".
Those in power claim to answer to and derive their authority from someone else, going ultimately back to "the people" who themselves do not directly exercise power, and who would find it difficult to exercise as a collective action problem, even if they had the formal authority to do so.
What this means is that real power is often in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, who typically don't even want to stand for election because they don't want the voters to know what their programs are, much less to exercise any oversight. Robert Moses is the classic example here.
Even that minimal level of scrutiny is too much for some, and real power is often exercised by people not formally part of any government structure. Corporate lobbyists or Robert Kagan come to mind .
Taking into account how wildly unpopular most western politicians and their policies are with their respective publics, "democracy" as it is practiced is basically a cover for rulers to do what they want.
After all, your elected representatives approved this. If you don't like it, you can vote for a different carefully vetted corporate imperialist muppet, so until then, shut up and fall in line!
Your screed against the US is belied by the existence of Silicon Valley.
In what way? Silicon Valley are desperate for Chinese approval.
Thanks, for an interesting roundup.
I for one don't quite understand how Americans are going to compete or even be capable of restarting manufacturing. How can Americans compete against countries like China that have no social security, welfare, DEI, race and sex quotas, workers' compensation, EEOC lawsuits, etc., and where labor costs are 1/10th to 1/15th? There are also countries, like Hungary and Ireland, that tax corporations less. All in all, the US, other than finance and computer and entertainment software, seems rather hostile, and a difficult terrain for businesses to navigate.
Protectionism is the antidote to arbitrage and the race to the bottom.
Yes, but what are we protecting? A sacred-victim, entitled parasite culture?
If you create a society where certain groups cannot be criticized and you put these groups into postions of power one would think you've enterd into a 3rd-world state (a very expensive one in the US). The chief hallmark of the 3rd world is that there is no feed-back loop. The top 5% own everything, with a small managerial layer, followed by everyone else. Nobody critiques the top 5%. If you can destroy people's careers by labeling them racist, or now fascist, this sounds like a great way to do it.
Protectionism sounds good but the reality is becoming harder for me to understand its benefits. I sincerely hope I'm wrong.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/08/26/infiltrating-the-far-right
Protecting the economy is important. If the US becomes a 3rd world economy, the domestic political issues you're concerned about will vanish. No time for DEI when you're working in sweatshops.
Why would they get rid of DEI? You seem to think humans are rational. My whole point is that we are creating a culture of sacred victims and putting them into positions of power.
Initiatives like DEI are a luxury that 3rd world economies can't support. When people's standard of living drops, their priorities change.
Why did you link to that article? I have no sympathy for extremists. Branding people as "far right" when they are exercising their right to free speech is another issue altogether.
They don't care what you or I think, and they have the power.
Bob, if people really wanted to make the US great again or just survive they could ealsy do it by eliminating race and sex quotas, and bring back freedom of association. They could do this in like 10 minutes. No one even mentions these two things. Nobody.
Too many people in bullshit jobs to want to upset that gravy train.
Are there race and sex quotas in the trades? Factory work? In agriculture, mining and fisheries? In jobs that are not high paying or glamorous?
#1 job type for men: driving occupations
#1 job type for women: retail related
Bob, are you aware that over 50% of law school stuents are women? They doh't want no stinkin' retail jobs. They want power. Race and sex quotas are at the top of the pyramid now anyway. Whenever you read a headline about first woman this or first black that it's acknowledging a race/sex quota.
Actually, you've accidentally hit on their real problem. How do they get white men to maintain the system they built while simultaneously keeping them as 2nd class citizens?
Step 1- eliminate the unnecessary civil rights legislation of the 60's and all the activist rulings that are thin cover for Marxist policies will fall.
Labour costs in trade exposed industries in China are rising very fast. China is competitive because of the skills of its workforce and the high levels of investment in infrastructure.
Shanghai is now $370/month minimum wage. A month. Without all the costs I mentioned and no race and sex quotas and legal crap.
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/minimum-wages-china/
Not to quibble but money goes a lot further in China and education, health care and transportation are heavily subsidised. The lack of onerous regulatory burdens (DEI) would be very significant.
It would be an easier problem to solve if the US was Machiavellian enough to try and develop its allies rather than drain them. India, if developed ruthlessly, could have been a friendlier alternative to China. But we’re true believers, so we need every allied government to spit out the same lines that we do, or else we kick them to the curb. Notice that Condi Rice’s article explicitly calls out India as a future “authoritarian” enemy.
I foresee a half-century long managed decline in which the US oligarchy, desperate to conserve wealth and status without resolving any of its intrinsic socioeconomic problems, strips the house bare.
Thanks for your comment. I get that feeling too, of a long-managed decline.
Chinese workers have social security, welfare, health insurance and workers compensation. I know, I am working in China.
Thanks for your correction. Overall, compared to the West it's still a very low part of cost of production, I would think. It appears migrant worker's wages are declining relative to GDP. You are right about some level of accident or death insurance according to this site:
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-work-related-injury-insurance-scheme-empowering-employees-employers-alike/
It's interesting. But it's hard to tell if it applies to foreign-owned companies only.
I see here there is some sort of social security effort being made:
https://chinadashboard.gist.asiasociety.org/winter-2021/page/labor
AI.
The elites certainly view AI as a national security issue. And coupled with robots it could compete, I suppose. But . . . they'd have to do some kind of cultural metamorphosis to stop foreign infiltration. Literally stand on their collective head.
Pasolini's death is not a mystery. He was killed by either the Italian police or a Gladio paramilitary unit. Like Aldo Moro Pasolini was a threat to the Americans. His intellect, his passion and his courage made him very dangerous. Reading THE LUTHERAN LETTERS you can see why they feared and hated him. He was by far the most potent public intellectual in Europe at that time. He was vulnerable because he pissed off his fellow Marxists. He saw through the Left more thoroughly and more incisively than any conservative. And he was fearless in speaking his mind.
Pasolini energised people. His circle included the novelist Sciasca, the philosopher Agamben (who played the Apostle Philip in THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATHEW), the journalist Oriana Fallaci and (if memory serves) Alberto Moravia. There is nobody remotely like him today. To be frank, the Italian state won. They silenced him. They scared everyone else into going along with the narrative and you only have to look at Italy today to see the results.
Pasolini remains relevant because despite his Marxism he was committed to Italy's heritage and history in a way that puts so-called conservatives in perspective. And he was sincere in this. There is an extraordinary scene in MAMA ROMA where you see the reactions of common, everyday, prisoners to the sound of Dante. That scene alone explains why the regime in America is so desperate to erase the past....they are threatened by anything that is not produced by them or for them, anything that they cannot control.
Ultimately, Pasolini's independence of mind cost him his life.
It's very funny seeing American energy and mining corporations get their hopes up that this will be the president who finally lets them fully take advantage of Mexico's resources only to have it taken away at the last second. This is not the first time and it won't be the last
Though to be fair they are very, very far from purging yankee influence, as seen in who's succeeding AMLO
yes, so true. AMLO's replacement looks to be the Randi Weingarten of Mexico. Globalism at its finest.
Jason Stanley's definition of fascism sounds a lot like Obamamania.
Whenever I see accusations of "fascism" -- especially in German media -- I recall the pleasant German festive season known as "Fasching" (see https://bit.ly/4ghOlI5) -- it doesn't get more "populist" (or enjoyable) than that.
Germany is the one country in Europe where fascism is impossible. They don't need or want a repeat. Simply out of self-interest.
It annoys me when people talk about some secret cynical cabal on Twitter. Reading Condi's essay shows once again these people are telling you exactly what they plan to do, and they're, frankly, fucking crazy and high on their own supply.
>china dominates what the US used to
Well it was probably a bad idea to offshore to Asia wasn't it?
>russia is now an isolated heavily miltarized state
Like that's some kind of victory and not an extremely dangerous situation.
On Trump's foreign policy, I think the best anyone can hope for is he takes down the temperature with China and Russia. If he manages a win of course.
High on their own supply indeed:
"...as it has done throughout its history, Russia has stabilized the front, relying on old-fashioned tactics such as human wave attacks, trenches, and land mines."
I have no idea how this "human wave attacks" meme got embedded in the Blob's neuroplasma. Russia literally hasn't done that once. It's as if an Atlantic Council analyst was overworked one day and instead of giving his usual briefing just had his bosses watch Enemy at the Gates. Also: how about drone-generated telemetry? Integrated air defense? Glide bombs, anyone?
These people grow increasingly detached from reality by the year. And perhaps not merely in the geopolitical sense -- Rice is 69. It'd be sad, if it wasn't so terrifying.
"Le human wave" makes even less sense when you think about how this has been going on since 2022 and the maps haven't drastically changed in either direction for about a year. There probably would have been significant territorial gains or losses by now if they were throwing bodies at Ukrainian strongholds.
The more times I read that sentence the more insane it sounds. "They've STABILIZED the front by sending a shitload of guys into a meat grinder and they're holding back all of the drones and jets we have given Ukraine with uhhhhh landmines"
I remember early in the war they were saying how russians were using missiles using electronics from washing machines. It started as propaganda, but I think they started actually believing it.
"...using electronics from washing machines."
Ha! I'd forgotten about that one. How about the Ghost of Kiev? Or that time one of their own missiles somehow went backwards and blew up a house in Poland -- which they openly blamed on the Russkies?
Every war involves propaganda. I hope some aspiring historian is keeping tabs on the Pro-Ukraine stuff. It'll make for amusing reading once this is all settled.
Was reading more from Rice, exemplifying 'Turbo-America':
"Finally, the Russian opposition cannot be abandoned. The Baltic states house much of the organization built by the activist Alexei Navalny, who died in a Siberian prison in February. He was one of the few leaders who had a real following in much of Russia. His death cannot be the end of his cause."
In reverse order: Western media initially claimed Putin knocked off Navalny because he posed a political threat. But apparently he just died from being in a Siberian prison. Tragic, to be sure. Truly though, he was a political non-entity in modern Russia. So why is Rice trying to dragoon Baltic leaders into supporting Navalny's cause of regime change in the Kremlin? I have a theory: she's a brainwashed sociopath.
I'm friends with a guy from Latvia. But this goes out to Estonians and Lithuanians too: Washington is putting you in harms way. Moscow no longer trusts people like Rice. They want NATO back to 1997 borders, based on the NATO-Russia Founding Act:
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_25468.htm
Your nations joined NATO in 1999. Think about it.
"human waves" - they don't believe any of the things they say, they're just narratives for the people they disdain.
I think a guy like Joe Biden is 100% cynical. With Rice, again going by the "russia is isolated and armed = win" quote. says to me, at least on some level, she's a believer. She's trying to deceive others but deluding herself in the process.
It's a comforting thought -- that they're cynical propagandists orchestrating the Narrative to assuage us plebs. It's comforting because it implies there's some hard-headed pragmatist who's actually in charge, who's stealthily captaining the USS America ship of state and will yell "Hard Port!" to avoid the proverbial iceberg.
Sorry, but that guy doesn't exist. Condoleeza Rice truly believes Ukraine can prevail. She'll believe it no matter how many Kinzhal missiles turn Ukrainian infrastructure into rubble. And why wouldn't she? Every single person she interacts with believes it too. The Narrative isn't for us. It exists to maintain cohesion among the vying factions in Washington. And to get ahead there you must believe the Narrative.
I forget who said it (it may have been our host here), but they were correct: America is the last truly ideological state. And the state ideology is taking us to some wild and wacky places.
As long as those missiles do not touch her or hers, she will only want more, more, more.
This SCR is already wayyyyy too long,
Naw it was just the right length
If China has 20% unemployment, why do they need population growth? I suppose this is a exponential growth obsession from capitalism.
Also the Ukrainian war doesn't make sense. At the beginning we heard of high age cutoff in the draft. Supposedly 10 are killed for every Russian.... So yeah they would be depleted, but somehow we still see videos of young guys getting thrown into vans to fight. How exactly did they not get taken before?
It's almost like a fake war in order to excuse why Europe is screwed.
Also, why did Boris Johnson need to physically visit to derail the peace treaty?
Why did Russia agree to the later treaty that was "in secret" which in effect nullified it without any ability to enforce it?
Like I said, bullshit Orwellian endless war.
Don't forget that boot production increased and chocolate rations are up 5%.... (Like Stock market bullshit)
Fog of war, but it appears Ukraine has suffered 1 million casualties. 9-10 million have long since fled the country.
Rices article is crap. Not little crap, big CRAP. Power and $ and control by the brain dead narcissists so called elites, who can not even tie their own shoes. No thought or consideration of the American citizen
If one reads Wikipedia instead of that excessively hagiographic FT article, it seems fairly clear it was the mafia (or whatever the local equivalent is named) who did it, perhaps even in defense of family values. One instance where screwing underage kids backfired, eh, Pier Paolo. Whatever you do, dear reader, don't watch Salo/120 Days, even if there are some likenesses with a certain middle eastern country's current affairs.
The strength of Marxism is its focus on power. A lot of inequality is not the product of business skills but rather of connections and bending rules. We see now with the Biden administration a bit more attention to monopoly power but it is just a beginning.
It is my main problem with what has been sold to us as "left" in the last decades: it reduces inequality by handing out subsidies and at the same time it gives more power to businesses that they will use to increase their exploitation of the consumer.
So is China "fascist"? They don't have a lot of immigrants, leftists, liberals, minorities, homosexuals, or women in power.
Anyway, Condi needs to explain why the US didn't befriend Russia to take on China.
I have to comment on this, pardon if others already got it:
"It is hard to overstate the shock and sense of betrayal that gripped U.S. leaders"
US leaders and their spouses, specifically Paul Pelosi, created modern China, voluntarily, at a time when their motive could not have been any sort of pressure from Chinese leadership, using our manufacfuring capacity and disassembling it in the process. This is demonstrated in the book Factory Man and in various stories about Pelosi (one of the first outside investors in China's modernization) and others. This was not some cosmic mystery that took them by surprise, this was not some learnable known thing they overlooked while converting Iraq to democracy, they did this. The phrase "unleash Chiang" comes fron the CIA deciding they liked Mao better and stifling US support of the KMT. The machinery in some Chinese applications is actually US machinery that was taken apart, crated up, and sent to China.
This breathtakingly clueless gibberish is a perfect parallel to the same foreign policy blob not understanding why nobody is impressed by the recycling of the Russia-fetish from eight years ago, or why recruiting goes down after our twenty-year surrender wars.
Is the Factory Man you mention by Beth Macy? Sounds interesting
Condileeza Rice : how to tell everyone you are a shill for the military industrial complex and deep state without saying you’re a shill for the military industrial complex and deep state…… in a REALLY long, hysterical article.
Thanks Niccolo. Did anyone notice Condi's marxisto-hegelian concept of "internal contradictions"? What does that mean within the neoconservative framework?