First some news blips. As if Putin's desperate gambles (supported by fellow autocracies) weren't enough: "Russia is ramping up malign disinformation campaigns against France, French President Emmanuel Macron, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), aiming to disrupt or discredit this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris."
As for President Biden's semi clamp-down at the U.S. border: he should accompany this with a warning to the leaders of Nicaragua, Guatemala, Venezuela etc.
"You are waging war against your own people, making them refugees and hurling them at us. You assume that crime will then turn us into paranoid fascists. The experiment worked a bit, when Putin did it to Eastern Europe. And it's already worked on some U.S. citizens. So here's the deal. We must clamp down a bit on our deep American nature of welcoming kindness... just a bit and for a while. Only meanwhile, YOU cruel tyrants had better watch it. Waging war on your own people, you are also waging war on us."
(BTW any leftists raging against this ought to go talk to U.S. Latino & Latina citizens, who have wanted this border action for a long time. Then talk to liberals in Poland, Hungary etc. about the success Putin had with this tactic, transforming European politics. If you want good things (continuing the massive progress of the 2021-22 Pelosi bills) then you need power. And that entails prioritizing.)
This and much else can be found in Polemical Judo.
== How to win ==
Alas, four years after I published it, to help in the 2020 election, there's not a single chapter or page of my book about political tactics that is obsolete. Roughly 100 proposed methods that would likely be useful right now, at this critical time...
...and not one of those proposed tactics has been taken up or used. Not by any blue politicians or leaders. Not one of the 'generals' on the blue, Union side in this desperate phase of the recurring, 240 year US Civil War. As appalling as the confederate side's treasonous madness is the blue/union/democracy side's utter ineptitude at polemics... and dullard refusal to consider any fresh ideas.
I'll offer my book again, online. I can promise it'll be entertaining and eye-opening! Take a look at... Polemical Judo: Memes for Our Political Knife-fight.
== One potential disaster … averted? ==
Remember in May when Earth got slammed by a Solar Coronal Mass Ejection… or sun-storm of ions hurled our way, in one of the largest such events recorded? Millions got to see aurorae as far south as Florida or as far north as Brisbane. And yet, there appeared to be none of the predicted fizzling and popping of power systems and fried computers. Oh, we’re not completely out of the woods… and this is no guarantee that a sharply pulsed and localized EMP event, triggered by some desperate Earthly foe, won’t knock us back on our heels. But it does seem – tentatively – that desperate tyrants have to write off one of their ‘mad-gamble-weapons’. Which brings up a longstanding topic of mine…
A fundamental trait of any society is resilience: Never was it more relevant to discuss what we should have done by now... and can still do... to help our nations, civilization and families be more robust against the batterings of fate. Especially in a year when desperate foes might EMP us, or AI hallucinations run wild, or electricity nets fail, or...
In this "interview I recently did on resiliency", come see where I dissect a dozen areas we should be doing more, while prepper lords build refuge redoubts to ride out some coming 'Event.'
== More mundane… and terrifying political crises ==
Ever more, it seems that the United States Supreme Court has been (the majority) suborned into an instrument of enemies of the Republic.
Justice Breyer Says SCOTUS Risks Creating “A Constitution That No One Wants.”
(* Just as Roger Taney's top job was to protect the Fugitive Slave Act. History will rank them together.)
It seems like no week passes without more evidence of rabid partisanship or outright corruption by at least four of the six blatant right wingers on this court.
But time passes. And they know that the 2024 election may affect even them. And as far as the oligarchy is concerned, keeping copntrol over the Supreme Court is even more important than Congress or the Presidency.
I wrote the preceeding paragraphs before the RNC and the choice as running mate - by ol' Two Scoops - of JD Vance, who is now self-immolating almost every day. And certainly we must gird ourselves for when/if Trump tells Kant Dance to ease himself out, on any excuse...
...and/or when/if the oligarchs say the same thing to Donald Trump.
Which is why I am daring to offer wagers (of course I must be given odds) that Donald Trump will no longer be the GOP nominee, by November. Amid his brownshirt/MAGA ravings, some of them (the few with actual knowledge) can recall how the Prussian aristocracy lost control of their Nazi tools, in 1934. They are desperate to set up a Bush-type tool and Nikki Haley is the Bush-in-waiting. But that means she must suck up to MAGA now, in calibrated ways.
This Great White Hope is why the Romney wing has made no move quite yet, risking all our lives, in this scheme to set up Bush III. Though I will mention one more name you haven't heard in a while, because the Crown Prince of Bushism has been biding his time.
Paul Ryan. Look for either of these names to come up, if JD (kant dance) Vance continues to self-immolate.
Of course, never forget that we got Bush II because the fripper-flakes on the left flounced off to Kremlin agent Nader ... and then they flounced to the KGB's Jill Stein and gave us Trump. In both cases, their betrayal of the only coalition that can save civilization, was indefensible. But now?
Well, Kamala appears to have staunched that self-destructive lefty-flake reflex, as Obama did. Still, you freepers be on notice. Do it again and we will remember you. This time, we won’t forget.
== Is body shaming a legit tactic? No… but PARENTAL failures are! ==
Why fall for the trap of body shaming? Late-night comics are always making personal appearance cheap shots. (The fact that Donald Trump turns himself into a glowing pumpkin is what's important, not any of the fat jokes. Didn't make-up-wearing males used to draw ridivule from macho-ists?)
Anyway, there's something far more devastating based on the biblical passage "By their fruits you shall know them." And sure, economic outcomes are always better from Democratic administrations, and they get <1% as many indicted appointees. (I do not exaggerate. Step up with wager stakes!)
But no, I mean something closer to that passage.
Why does no one tabulate the lives of the children of those who lecture to us about family values? From Palin to Boebert to Green to Trump to so many others, GOP officials and lawmakers' 'fruits' appear to average as stunning examples of failed parenting.
Is that why they so frantically attack poor Hunter? Without ever even naming a crime? Sure, a black sheep. Though when your brother was a spectacularly great American like Beau Biden, the average 'fruit' quality was still pretty damn high... Anyway I'd compare HB's entire life to any random month of any of the Trump boys.
And anyway... that part... the Hunter part... is over now.
Never mind that. Let's just see a statistical outcomes comparison of fruits! And wager me what'll be the outcome? Like rates that GOP pols' kids have trouble with the law or out-of-wedlock children. Or the fact that blue state sex education inarguably results in lower rates of STDs, teen pregnancy and abortion... and even rates of teen sex... than the puritanical finger-wag "sex ed" offered in red states!
Red States (except Utah) where rates of nearly every turpitude average higher than the averages in Blue States!
(Bets? First, look up the word 'turpitudes.' And include net tax-parasitism on the rest of the nation. Then recite aloud the Seven Deadly Sins... and TRY not to think of Donald Trump in every case?)
Our delusional neighbors use assertions as fact-canceling incantations. But I find that one phrase - "Let's bet $$!" - often rocks them back. They blink, suddenly remembering that facts and assertions are very different things. And - despite their macho - they run.
== Again, it’s TACTICS, stupid ==
Referring to testimony by former Trump confidant and lawyer Michael Cohen, Jim Wright on his Stonekettle posting says: "You know, I've had bad days. But it was never sitting in court listening as they read your name into the historical record forever as "Vonshitzinpants" bad."
Go ahead and giggle. But while giggling, alas, no one seems capable of using such things tactically!
The best thing The Lincoln Project could do is not just list all the former Trumpists who now denounce him. Sure, it numbers over a hundred. But next tabulate them… and finally punch it with:
"Trump has been 'betrayed' by more appointees who he formerly called "great guys!!" than all other U.S. presidents... combined. You can make up stories about that all you like, but one fact is indisputable.
"Donald Trump is a crappy judge of character."
That’s the sort of jiu-jitsu tactic that I offer in Polemical Judo.
Moreover, if you can get anyone on any Democratic campaign - even the assistant staffer on a race for city council - to ask me, I'll send a PDF for free. But I'll not put in the same kind of effort as I did in 2019 and 2020. The book is utterly pertinent as ever. I do have more to add...
...but why should I bother?
== Finally... ==
Finally, might this be your most-influential political act?
Right now Democratic Party mavens are measuring how many new, individual donors each of the VP front runners are bringing in. Thus you can influence Kamala Harris's choice, simply by being a $5 New Donor for any of the top candidates.
Just sayin'
254 comments:
1 – 200 of 254 Newer› Newest»Mr. Brin,
I have for many years respected you as an apparently sage observer of world affairs, largely due to your correct emphasis on the paramountcy of transparency. Which is why I find your increasingly cartoonish confinement to the librul bubble, as the credibility of the West on the world stage disintegrates before our eyes (at least for those of us who have noticed the propaganda blanket we are enveloped in and proactively sought to peek outside it), all the more hilarious.
Our (I'm a Westerner) "representatives" being all-in on g*nocide (see: Zionism) and war-no-matter-what (see: post-Maidan "Ukraine") is pretty clear evidence that we are the regressive drag on civilization, not the ones to "save" it. Putin's meeting is not a "desperate gamble" - rather, that is an apt description of the increasingly morally bankrupt actions our vassals resort to (see: UkroN*zis blowing up a children's hospital, for one).
I could go on, but I'll save the effort. It would not surprise me if you were to restrict the publication of this comment, which would pretty conclusively demonstrate to me that your motivated reasoning and blindness to countervailing perspectives is more conscious than not.
Dr Brin in the main post:
Do it again and we will remember you. This time, we won’t forget.
Hey, I haven't forgotten the other two times.
* * *
The commenter above me proved himself ignorable with the first sentence of his second paragraph. Nothing to see there.
A reader's letter makes a good point:
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Jul28-1.html
Finally, protest votes have always struck me as the equivalent of a 4-year-old being told that the family's planned trip to the child's favorite restaurant had to be changed at the last minute because the restaurant was closed. The child whines and cries and doesn't go along with the family because they aren't getting the one thing they want. Some part of their mind thinks that their expression of disappointment will be heard by someone who cares and has the power to change things, even when it is patently obvious that such a thing will never be. Protest voting is exactly the same: Nothing will change, and you are more likely to get something you don't want than something you do.
Shaggzg Your final remark pretty much says it all. You know nothing about me and clearly nothing about the 99% open policy we have here. We can do it because the level of discourse is high enough that trolls (and I do not include you in that encomium) get bored or daunted, and wander off.
Were it worth the effort, I might ask that you trace the gnealogy of the very values that you purport to represent... values that were NOT extant during any previous, non -enlightenment culture acropss at least 6000 years. In fact, they are what any scholar of the history of thought would call 'liberal American' values. Values that America has failed to live up to again and again! Failing ... except by comparison to EVERY other large nation that ever existed, across all of history.
Except for that.
While I pray thet B Netanyahu will rot in prison for neglecting the duty of the strong to take proper care for reduction of collateral harm to civilians... YOUR inability to take into account the delight of Hamas at herding hundreds of those civilians to serve as human shields, is a sign of a reflexive and deeply inferior mind. As is your double standard toward any and every other oppressive regime on the planet, including those who treat their women as chattel and slaves.
But why do I bother? Your siding with the mad Russian Empire, in its latest, reborn czardom version, pouring fire on millions in a war of evil aggression, reveals who and what you are. And hence I call you by your name, oh, Kremlin basement dweller.
Ivan.
LH protest votes CAN matter, under certain circumstances. The prrof of Nader/Stein evil was their refusal of offers of vote swapping viz Florida etc vs safe or futile states. Either of them might even have got say in a cabinet post under Gore or HClinton.
The operative theory is they were carried away with sugarplum fantasies. But I put money down and will take odds on eventually learning they were Kremlin agents, all along.
Dr Brin:
But I put money down and will take odds on eventually learning they were Kremlin agents, all along.
Stein certainly is/was, having been filmed at that 2016 fete in Russia that Ron Johnson also attended--on July 4, no less.
I don't know enough about Nader's motivation, but I suspect that if nothing else he was flattered, financed, and encouraged by the same Republican operatives who have now been shown to have Russian connections--Manafort, Roger Stone, and the like.
Dr Brin:
protest votes CAN matter, under certain circumstances.
If one is really so disheartened at both major candidates that neither is more acceptable than the other, then yes.
If one cares about the many Enlightenment causes that a Trumpublican administration would relegate to the dustbin of history, but is just not excited about the other major candidate, then a protest vote is a counterproductive "own goal".
This was made obvious after the fact with Trump. Three supreme court justices and a whole bunch of federal judges later, can any liberal or left-leaning voter still assert that a Hillary presidency would have been "just as bad"?
Dr. Brin (my apologies for earlier calling you Mr., in error),
Thank you for your considered reply. My sentence that you reference was more reflective of the unwillingness I see in most-all liberals to consider the issues I raise, and it was unfair of me to attribute that to you. I agree with you regarding there being no better representative of Enlightenment values prior to America, but there has been a catastrophic abandonment of transparency in its post-WWII commitment to a profit-oriented permanent war economy, resulting in a railroading of civilization's direction away from progressive enlightenment.
Despite the popular will desiring world peace, the aforesaid economic imperative ensures endless military aggression. We can see this in the "missile gap" meme concocted to falsely depict American war spending as playing catch-up (rather than, in reality, maintaining initiative). Or in peaceful coexistence being quietly removed as an electoral option with the assassination of JFK (whose official explanation cannot withstand scrutiny and reflects a coverup, further demonstrating the abandonment of the Enlightenment).
Rather than being a "mad empire", Russia has sought NATO membership since the '90s and has been turned down at every turn. Its desire for a shared security umbrella is incompatible with the aforesaid economic imperative, which requires a frontier to conquer. This is also why Ukraine's expressed desire for neutrality vis a vis Russia and the EU was not acceptable to America, resulting in the 2014 coup (with the subsequent puppet state not reflecting popular will and why I previously put it in scare quotes). Rather than being evil, Putin showed an excessive amount of trust in what should have been obviously disingenuous Western "peace negotiations" such as Minsk, which Merkel bragged about having been done in bad faith (echoing Gorbachev's earlier naivete in believing American promises to forgo NATO's westward expansion). The subsequent peace agreement he was ready to sign with Zelenskyy that got shot down by Western puppetmasters is yet another data point in this throughline of Western subversion of popular will towards peace.
As for Hamas, their brutal extremes are a natural consequence of the multi-decade railroading that has removed all moderate parties from the table, reflecting the longterm goal of excluding the possibility of Palestinian statehood (through means we've been conditioned to avoid spelling out in polite society). Netanyahu has said as much in his more candid moments, much like Biden saying that if Israel didn't exist America would need to create it. These extremist "opponents" are actually symbiotic dance partners. The carnage on 10/7, with entire parking lots' worth of cars reduced to husks, exceeds the destructive capacity of Hamas (but not America-provided Hellfire missiles). Even Haaretz can no longer deny how the Hannibal directive was in play on that day.
I've tried to avoid going into too much detail due to length concerns, but the common element here should be obvious. Where there's a will, there's a way, and the Western will is towards war. It's no accident that so much effort is put into keeping these datapoints out of the popular Western conversation, or into scrubbing the history of economic thought from Western academia. Were we able to plainly contrast the aspirations of a bygone world understanding (industrial) capitalism as evolving into socialism, we'd be able to see the skinsuit that (financial) capitalism wears to disguise its degeneration into (neo)feudalism. Or, as we call it, neoliberalism.
which Merkel bragged about
Merkel never bragged about anything. She was in essence first, an Anti-Schröder, then an Anti-Trump. She was shrewd*, calm, machiavellian at times, and made many mistakes** (including being too friendly to Russia)- but she always kept her cards close to the chest.
*You don't become the head of a conservative party without being able to keep a dozen packs of alpha-wolves in check.
**The social democrats, which she was in government for 12 of her 16 years, bear more responsibility for the lenient course and our then-dependency in Russian gas. It was Steinmeier, not Merkel, who negotiated the Minsk agreement.
Der Oger,
You're right, she was shrewd and reserved, which is why one would need to read between the lines in her statement to extract the gleeful meaning of the "peace" talks having bought time that was used to strengthen warmaking abilities. America treating Putin's gas as unacceptably (to America) affordable for Germany puts the lie to America's happy talk of trade displacing military conflict. It arranging the NordStream 2 bombing is the nail in that propagandistic coffin, though this is, of course, another one of those data points we are not allowed to discuss in this "rules-based order" (antonym of international law, where we make the rules and give the orders).
Whoever blew up Nordstream II did us a massive favor.
Neither have we been frozen to death during the last winter, nor did all high-energy producers go bankrupt. While energy prices are up, this is mostly due to war profiteering (something you cannot fight with a libertarian minister of finances) and the regulations of the Euro energy market.
And while the Kremlin dogs like the AfD and the cult followers of Sarah Tsar-Knecht bark and howl, we are free of the Russian energy leash, at least as long as the Greens are in government.
Over 60% of our public net electricity production are renewable now.
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/2024/public-electricity-generation-2023-renewable-energies-cover-the-majority-of-german-electricity-consumption-for-the-first-time.html
That said, almost every Pole, Estonian, Latvian, Lithunian, Moldavian, and Ukrainian citizen whom you OBVIOUSLY DENY THE RIGHT TO EXIST IN FREEDOM FROM A FASCIST CLEPTOCRATIC REGIME would answer your posts here with: Go, F*ck yourself, Kremlin-Shill.
It is never about them or their fears or their rights to exist as human beings (I have even heard that from "leftists"), it is never about actually making the world better, it is America did this, America did that, bad, evil America etc blabla. That, and the narcicisstic, bloated ego of fringe activists, or the constant shadow of fear that every russian agent right now has - to fall prey to the next wave of clean-up.
You are waging war against your own people, making them refugees and hurling them at us. You assume that crime will then turn us into paranoid fascists. The experiment worked a bit, when Putin did it to Eastern Europe
If there is one nation on Earth that never ever will voluntarily ally with Russia, and will fight an invasion even harder than the Ukraine, it is Poland.
There are more complex roots to their brand of fascism, though.
First of all, it is a deeply catholic country, and it's catholicism is so conservative that it would paint the average Tennessee churchgoer or Taliban a liberal. During the years behind the iron curtain, it was the Catholic Church who fed the resistance, even before Solidarnoc.
The polish resistance groups were the Vaticans mujaheddin.
And being situated between two nations which have invaded, partitioned and subjugated it multiple times, they have every right of being militantly independent.
Another factor is the change in the electorate. During the early years of the open borders, millions of Poles - often with an academic education - went to western countries to earn money.
(The same happened to all former Warsaw pact states, most notably East Germany and Hungary.) I believe there is a similar phenomenon in the US - Blue Drain?- Yet, this trend is reversing; many are returning as Poland grows wealthier, and the living conditions there have improved since the accession to the EU.
Der Oger,
Did you notice how readily your curiosity ceased after your passing mention of "whoever" blew up NS2? This mysterious agent, having done Germany the favor of having rendered Germany's industrial cost structure unviable by forcing the purchase of American energy for multiples of the previous price, sending existing German industry to America? After Biden unsubtly insisted that America has ways of "ending" it, and refusing to clarify what he meant? You don't find it curious that the worst eco-terrorist event in history, that happened in strictly surveilled NATO waters, with the aforesaid winners and losers, meets a wall of silence from all of the agencies tasked with getting to the bottom of such things, in the nations that are supposed torchbearers of Enlightenment values?
You don't find it weird that the "Greens" are the most rabidly pro-war, i.e. the activity with the most devastating environmental consequences, party? Or see the irony in calling Putin's a fascist kleptocratic regime (which is very legalistic, restrained and enjoys high favorability ratings) while German "representatives" publicly state that German public opinion doesn't matter when it comes to fighting UKraine, even as it coincides with plummeting living standards for Germans? Such inversions are what the term "Orwellian" was made for.
You say I deny the "right to exist" of post-Soviet states, which is a strange takeaway from my having referenced the American 2014 coup that denied Ukraine's right to exist in a state of neutrality. In the "rules-based order" you're either with us or against us, there is no peaceful coexistence. The revisionist erasure of Russia's staggering sacrifices in defeating the Hitlerians, after America absorbed their scientists through Project Paperclip (as well as Imperial Japan's Unit 731 biowarfare research), while we rehabilitate the N*zi-collaborating batallions of the Banderites in "Ukraine" and their analogues in the other post-Soviet states, to say nothing of the Zionist project, should clue you in to the nature of the West's relationship to the international order. If it looks, swims, and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck, Orwell be damned.
@ Alfred Differ, from the last thread:
I think they all should have been slaughtered, but then I'm a barbarian, no? A few exceptions could have been made I suppose, but keeping their gains is not one I would have tolerated.
Siding with evil has consequences.
Siding with insanity has many more.
Well, you had your chances, during the Nuremberg trials (IG Farben Trial, Krupp Trial, Flick Trial). And then, there was Operation Paperclip and this rocket scientist.
But I assume if the issue of Stalin taking over Europe had not been so pressing, the verdicts might not have been so lenient.
But hanging people, imprisoning them, or taking away voting rights was only the first step in denazification (and a terribly inconsequential and weak one, I could write hours about it).
The second was the introduction of the Basic Law, plus the first forty years or so of testing it in the courts.
The third one was the Shah's visit in Berlin, and the following Rebellion of 1968 (when a generation of leftist students decided to break with the authoritarian spirit of their parents).
The fourth one was Willi Brandts taking-a-knee in Warsaw and the policies he enacted (the enraged conservatives branded him as a traitor).
The fifth one the changes in the education system.
All of this took at least one full generation, was imperfect, but DID change our culture in the West. In the GDR, there were more death sentences, but less changes in the authoritarian nature of the culture.
It might take you at least as long to get rid of Trumpism, culturally. But maybe only if it is not a voluntary process.
@shagggz
You are boring, regurgitating propaganda I have heard and read thousand times, and the 1001st time makes it not less boring or false.
The truth is: Putin can end the war immediately. He just has to withdraw all troops from the Ukraine as in the pre-2014 maps. Go, look them up.
The truth also is: The Greens foresaw the invasion of Ukraine, whereas other parties downplayed it prior to the 2021 election.
The truth also is: Ukraines far right parties scored 2% during the last election. Look up where other nations far right parties trend.
The truth also is: You actively support unspeakable atrocities committed by Russian soldiers and Hamas Death Cultists. You are a despicable person, and I refuse to interact with you again unless you atone for it. May justice find you.
Der Oger,
Putin will not end the war while Russia's security concerns (that he tried to address through peace talks done in bad faith by the West) remain unaddressed, so he will create the buffer zone required to address them. He will do so slowly and methodically, with humanitarian concern for his regrettably commandeered compatriots. The same sort of humanitarian concern visibly lacking in the IDF, but which points at Hamas its government railroaded into viability to justify its own lack of such concern. Symbiotic dance partners.
Your wall of silence regarding my pointed questions about "whoever" bombed NS2 reproduces the very same wall of silence from our Enlightened "representatives" that I referenced, and thus comes as no surprise and demonstrates my point neatly.
The "Greens", being fanatically pro-war, managing to "foresee" the Russian invasion after all its attempts at peaceful resolution are refused, should likewise come as no surprise.
The all-roads-lead-to-war "rules-based-order" is the true death cult, and your heaping of personal venom onto me for trying to help you see it for what it is is very much in line with that. May clarity find you.
About Israel's alleged genocide in Gaza, isn't the fundamental problem the nature of the Palestinian nation itself, such that Hamas is absolutely mainstream in their politics, not just some crazy extremist group?
When the Nazis took over Germany in 1933 it had already existed as a unified nation-state for 62 years, and the Germans had been recognized as a people for centuries more (I'd go back to the 1512 Diet of Cologne which proclaimed the "Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation"). This meant that it was easy to contemplate a Germany after Nazism, because there had actually been a Germany before Nazism. Similarly, Japan in 1945 was also an ancient and well-defined nation.
By contrast, the Palestinian nation is defined almost entirely by its war with Zionist colonization: almost all the rest of their culture along with their language is shared by other Levantine Arabs (Syrians, Lebanese and Jordanians). If Zionism had never happened then it is unlikely that Palestinians would exist as a distinct people either: they'd either still be Syrians, or perhaps (if a partition like Sykes-Picot had still happened) Jordanians.
Violent Arab resistance to Zionist colonization began in 1920 with the Nabi Musa riots in Jerusalem, when the local Arabs still saw themselves as Syrians: one of the cries of the rioters was "Faisal is our King" in reference to the Hashemite King of Syria (soon after deposed by the French and ending up with Iraq as a consolation prize). And what ultimately made the Palestinian nation what it is now is the trauma of the 1948 Nakba: note the role of the key (representing the dream of returning to pre-1948 homes that often no longer actually exist) in their iconography.
Nothing says 'humanitarian concern' like 576,00 casualties, on your own side alone, for a land grab.
And Putin's alleged "humanitarian concern" for Russian-identifying people in Ukraine (and note that just because someone in Ukraine speaks Russian as their first language doesn't mean they identify as Russian: note that most IRA members spoke English as their first language!) is also exposed as a lie by the fact that the men in the Russian-occupied Donbas were ruthlessly conscripted to be used as cannon fodder in Putin's war against the still-free Ukrainians.
As for the "rules-based order", while it hasn't achieved everything that idealists hoped for (with the US-led invasion of Iraq being one of the more egregious violations), one part of it which did remain solid prior to the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, was respect for territorial integrity: the notion that the borders of nation-states should not be changed by war. A world order based on territorial integrity (which takes away one of the biggest motivating factors for wars) will be far more peaceful (and thus conducive to human progress) than a world of empires and conquerors.
(Note that one of the reasons why Saddam's Iraq was seen as fair game by so many in the West was precisely because prior to Putin in 2022, Saddam Hussein was the most recent dictator to try to wipe someone else's country off the map.)
Maybe the major news outlets are also kompromat-ed?
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Jul29-7.html
We just cannot help but notice that when Joe Biden garbled his words, it was time for seven different critical op-eds in The New York Times. But Trump implies he wants to bring an end to presidential elections, and many outlets decide it's barely worth a mention. And it's hardly the only way in which his campaign has been authoritarianism-adjacent. Project 2025. Threatening to use the U.S. Army to invade Mexico and round up undocumented immigrants. Threatening to summarily eject 10 million+ existing U.S. residents. Promising to reinstate the Muslim travel ban. Impeaching any and every Democrat whose name House Republicans can spell. We do not propose that Biden's missteps should not have been covered, but does giving three and four and five times the coverage to "Biden loses his train of thought" as compared to "Trump suggests that 2024 will be the last election" make any sense at all? Not to us.
The above is in reference to Trump's rally in Florida in which he said:
"Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote."
"my beautiful Christians"
The blasphemy, it burns.
@scidata,
Blasphemy is the new piety.
A few years ago--before COVID certainly--I proposed creating a t-shirt reading something to the effect of, "I'd rather follow Trump than Jesus." I figured it would sell to both sides, to Democrats as snark and to Republicans because they are proud of that stance.
It wouldn't even be parody any more.
See, I think the politically-vocal "Christians" are actually atheists, who only use scripture as a tribal marker. If they really feared God or loved Jesus, they couldn't possibly say or vote for the things they do. It's obvious that they don't fear for the disposition of their immortal soul.
Re: Immigration policies:
Current data shows that it is of no use copying right-wing populist policies to win back voters- all that does is justifying it, and people tend to vote for the original, not the copy. Also, from climate change to unfair trade agreements, I have seen almost no attempts to mitigate "push factors" of unwanted migration (while pull factors are overrepresented).
Of course that would mean that we had to atone for our colonial past and make amends for our past follies.
What works is giving people something to vote/work/live for.
Whimsically put, 'rockets with fins' like in the Golden Age of SF.
This has the added effect of laying bare the paucity of what tyrants offer.
Der Oger,
How much do you think right-wing populism is about defending fossil-fuelled lifestyles against environmentalist attacks? This would explain both their pro-Russian stance (because Russia is a petrostate and thus would naturally oppose any global movement to curb fossil fuel consumption) and their extreme anti-immigration stance (because they don't really believe climate change isn't happening: they just value their own lifestyles more than any number of Global South lives).
Is it case of (to quote James Howard Kunstler in 2005) that Americans (and presumably other Westerners) would "vote for cornpone Nazis before they would give up their entitlement to a McHouse and a McCar"?
George Carty:
they just value their own lifestyles more than any number of Global South lives).
Perhaps because of our own unfortunate colonial history, the Global South seems all to anxious to side with Russia and China. Which isn't quite as funny as "Juden fur Hitler," but up there.
Is it case of (to quote James Howard Kunstler in 2005) that Americans (and presumably other Westerners) would "vote for cornpone Nazis before they would give up their entitlement to a McHouse and a McCar"?
That might be the case for some well-off Republicans. But I think for the most part they vote for Nazis because they like the image of a jackboot stomping on the upturned face of humanity.
Larry Hart,
Perhaps because of our own unfortunate colonial history, the Global South seems all to anxious to side with Russia and China.
In the case of siding with Russia I often thought it was a case of bastardizing Karl Marx's famous call-to-arms into "Natural resource exporters of the world, unite!"
That might be the case for some well-off Republicans.
An awful lot of Americans live very car-dependent suburban or exurban lifestyles but wouldn't consider themselves "well-off".
George Carty redux:
before they would give up their entitlement to a McHouse and a McCar"
There is something to that.
I enjoy plenty of creature comforts which I can't assume will always be available. It's a conscious choice for me to enjoy the benefits I have while I have them and not take for granted that I always will.
Conservatives who have acquired many comforts and conveniences seem to feel entitled to always retain what they have and in fact acquire a steady stream of more from now to eternity. And it's up to us--individuals and society--to make whatever sacrifices it takes in order for that to happen.
George Carty:
An awful lot of Americans live very car-dependent suburban or exurban lifestyles but wouldn't consider themselves "well-off".
Ok, point taken. I consider us to be well off, but I tend to count my blessings rather than the things I covet. YMMV.
Nevertheless, people who require cheap oil shouldn't necessarily side with the nations of OPEC+, whose whole reason for being is to increase the price of oil. Trump supporters wistfully recall the COVID days of gas under $2 a gallon, but conveniently forget that he brokered a deal between Russia and Saudi Arabia to bring back up the price of oil.
Larry Hart - I saw it reported that he said:
...my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I'm NOT a Christian.
I also saw it claimed that he misspoke. Said the truth accidently.
Dr. Brin:
Thanks for the "Trump and the Seven Deadly Sins" collage. I knew all that, but seven pictures are worth seven thousand words. Is this collage by you or another? I've emailed it to an R friend of mine, under the title line "Walk Away".
I'm glad that folks on this thread take appropriate alarm at Trump promising to end the chore of voting. He made voting for him sound like a huge burden, fortunately only once.
I 'applaud' a linguistic innovation of his: the word 'nah'. He said "I'm nah Christian," which is halfway between "I'm a" and "I'm not". Nah! A word meaning both One and None! It's Trumpian mathematics!
But Dr. Brin, one thing worries me: here you are denouncing the 7 Deadly Sins, and here I am applauding your denunciation. Is this Trump's reverse-psychology way of turning us into Nah Christians? Are he and the fundies practicing inverse leadership by counter-example?
reason:
I saw it reported that he said:
...my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I'm NOT a Christian.
I thought I had heard it that way too, though it seems to have fallen into the memory hole.
I figured he meant it in the sense of ,"Even though I'm not a Christian, you Christians should vote for me because I love you Christians and will do whatever you Christians want."
I don't call the religious right "Christians". I call them "Christianists", used in the same way as "Islamicist." It's not that they believe in the teachings of Jesus. What they believe is that the United States (and all western nations, really) is a nation of those who successfully claim the name "Christian", and that they alone are full citizens. Everyone else is the hired help, a guest, or an intruder.
Paradoctor:
Nah! A word meaning both One and None! It's Trumpian mathematics!
With a name like "Paradoctor," you must appreciate the fact that if one and none are equal, then all is possible.
here you are denouncing the 7 Deadly Sins, and here I am applauding your denunciation. Is this Trump's reverse-psychology way of turning us into Nah Christians?
No, it's a way of denouncing Trump to his Christian followers. It's like pointing out that Lindsey Graham is gay. We're not denouncing his gayness. We're pointing out the hypocrisy of being anti-gay and yet voting for him.
How much do you think right-wing populism is about defending fossil-fuelled lifestyles against environmentalist attacks?
Yes, that is a contributing factor, at least in the western parts of our country. The eastern parts are more about racism and GDR nostalgia.
But there is more to that.
Larry coined it well:
Conservatives who have acquired many comforts and conveniences seem to feel entitled to always retain what they have and in fact acquire a steady stream of more from now to eternity. And it's up to us--individuals and society--to make whatever sacrifices it takes in order for that to happen.
We call it "Wohlstandsverwahrlosung", roughly translated as,"moral decay caused by wealth", the inability to endure the lack of certain inconveniences and to show solidarity with those unfortunate enough to suffer real hardships, like the Ukrainians currently have to endure.
Perhaps because of our own unfortunate colonial history, the Global South seems all to anxious to side with Russia and China. Which isn't quite as funny as "Juden fur Hitler," but up there.
Wagner renamed part of it's company as "Afrika Corps".
A bit more, lately, I've been flattered to receive attention from Putinist agitprop trolls. Some (one can tell linguistically) are Kremlin basement gnomes (hope you've got AC, guys!) Others appear likely to be American or Western 'useful idiots,' as Lenin called the type, parroting slogans that'd be truly pathetic, if many of them were not - right now - incantations for circle-jerk masturbation by millions of our crazed fellow citizens.
So, let me reiterate a few points:
1. Vlad Putin openly and repeatedly declared the dissolution of the USSR & Warsaw Pact to be "history's worst tragedy." He - along with all of the 5000 "ex" commissars he put in power - grew up reciting Leninist catechisms. And while (with Cheney clan help) those "ex" commissars snapped-up Soviet state companies to become overnight billionaires, none of them are known to have renounced Leninism. Though now they erect statues to czars who (as youths) they denounced. And they ecstatically rebuild cathedrals that some of them personally tore down - with eagerly-shouted slogans - in younger days.
2. The KGB and other spy dens had long waged covert war against the U.S. and West. They were relabeled but not dissolved. No one was fired, nor were files released or longtime western 'assets" revealed. New labels were slapped on and the same guys continued using the same techniques (e.g. bribery, blackmail and ideology) to suborn and control western tools, with the same end goal... our doom.
...but with one huge difference.
3. What did change was the specific segment of western political life they targeted. After trying and failing for 80 years to win over the American Left - (the most vigorously anti-Soviet component of American life was always the U.S. labor movement; bet me $$$$ on that!) - the relabeled KGB changed a few symbols and lapel pins to style themselves as no longer 'socialists' but instead mafiosi. Veering in that new direction, almost overnight, the "former" KGB and "ex" commissars won their greatest victory... complete take-over of the American Right, who are now eagerly Putin's defenders and bitches.
4. Putin's whines about 'NATO expansion' distract from a core truth, that NONE of the old USSR satrapies want ever again to have anything to do with Russians or Moscow. Ever again. From Estonia to Bulgaria, almost all of the freed citizens of those nations have eagerly, even desperately, sought to prevent their ever again being under that cruel thumb. Obama etc TRIED to slow down NATO expansion by offering Poland etc milder security promises, which - in plebiscite after plebiscite - peoples of Eastern Europe rejected in favor of pushing for full membership and the protection that they now are clutching desperately.
continued
5. I'll admit to seeing feral cleverness in Putin's excited exacerbation of America's recurring, 250 year culture (and often civil ) war. This time, the Confederacy found its foreign sponsors... and masters. (Obeisance to a king, then to plantation lords, then plutocrat inheritance brats and mafiosi... and now to New Czar-Commissars, has always been a theme for confederates since 1778... along with the fierce anti-science, anti education and pro-racism obsessions that Robert Heinlein so eloquently denounced: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2017/03/looking-back-at-heinleins-future.html )
In this case, Putin's control over the GOP is via a House of Cards of blackmail that could collapse at any moment if (possibly when Biden offers pardons) some of the blackmailed get fed-up and decide to step up, at long last, as heroes.
6. Of course Vlad is only the central leader of a worldwide oligarchic attempted putsch that also includes murder sheiks, casino moguls, hedge lords, inheritance brats of all kinds, drug and banana caudillos and some (not all) tech-bros. All united in a non-sapient/ingrate determination to re-establish 6000 years of feudalism, the Model that Always Failed. But sure, we are all descended from the harems of brutally shortsighted kings. Did I mention they are non-sapient/ingrates? Who will regret throwing away the enlightenment when, instead of harems, they get tumbrel rides.
Rant mode off... but let me know if I left out anything crucial. If this list spreads and influences some, then our visiting troll may come to regret having triggered it!
Oh, then there's this:
6. Nazis? Ukrainian Nazis? Because... the KGB said so?? Ukrainians have offered to let international commissions roam the whole country polling citizens and looking for 'nazis.' How about Putin make the same offer?
Dr Brin:
the relabeled KGB changed a few symbols and lapel pins to style themselves as no longer 'socialists' but instead mafiosi.
That's pretty much what they have become, but as far as labeling to appeal to the American right, isn't that more related to their being the staunch defender of white Christian supremacy against the "woke" west?
Dr Brin:
then our visiting troll may come to regret having triggered it!
I was wondering (up above) why you said you didn't consider him a troll. Maybe I misread.
Although after your response and Der Oger's, he switched from troll to sealion.
Nazis? Ukrainian Nazis? Because... the KGB said so??
The Wagner Group* which Der Oger mentioned above is named after Richard Wagner, favored composer of Hitler's. If they want to de-Nazify a country, all they have to do is leave.
* Hal Sparks makes a point of always pronouncing it as "VAHG-ner" rather than the more American "WAG(the dog)-ner"
Dr. Brin,
Thank you for your (this time, less-than-considered) response. I see I have made nary a dent in your meticulously cultivated liberal bubble. That you see no contradiction in insisting on being above international law in favor of the "rules-based order" while proclaiming yourself to be the torchbearer of Enlightenment values is grimly amusing, and I can't pretend to be surprised by this reflexive refusal to introspect, I nevertheless enjoyed our exchange. Thanks again and have a nice day.
The Sand People are easily startled, but they'll be back, and in greater number.
Tusken Raiders really harsh my mellow.
The Wagner Group* which Der Oger mentioned above is named after Richard Wagner, favored composer of Hitler's. If they want to de-Nazify a country, all they have to do is leave
Ever dug into The Ring of Nibelungs , Wagners alleged masterpiece? It has anything OGH continuously warns against: feudalist inheritance brats ruining everything, death cult suicide pacts, rape, murder, robbery, theft, greed, revenge, envy, jealousy ... no wonder the Nazis and Prighozhin liked him.
Der Oger:
Ever dug into The Ring of Nibelungs , Wagners alleged masterpiece?
Yes, because one of the Marvel Comics writers in the 1970s--Roy Thomas--was such a fan that he incorporated Ring Opera imagery in several comics, mostly but not exclusively in the pages of Thor. Later on, he and artist Gil Kane collaborated on a graphic novel of the actual opera, which was not all that different from the version depicted in Thor.
In that graphic novel, which was not published by Marvel, they made a point of keeping their Norse gods distinct from the Marvel versions. Instead of Thor, the thunder god went by the Teutonic name Donar, but even that was spelled phonetically "Donner".
Which made me realize that the reindeer names "Donner and Blitzen" in "The Night Before Christmas" were not random. Donner/Donar/thunder god and Blitzen/lightning. Any wonder that everything I know I learned from comic books?
Stonekettle on Threads:
https://www.threads.net/@stonekettle
I don't see the Republican Party as JUST trying to take away people's rights.
No, I also see Republicans have become an ideology of mean, bitter, spite completely willing to give up THEIR OWN rights, liberty, and self respect, and who are completely willing to burn down The Republic and embrace absolutism, solely in order to make everyone else miserable too.
From the Russian perspective, the 'Ukro-nazi' label has a certain validity.
Hitler's invasion left deep scars on the Russian psyche. The Soviet army bore a heavy brunt in pushing him (and Napoleon) back. With only a little propaganda assistance, it has held an exalted place in sentiment ever since.*
It didn't go unnoticed that large numbers of Ukrainian forces promptly defected when Hitler came a' calling in 1941.
As to *why* the Ukrainians defected, look up the term 'Holodomor'.
* A sentiment that Putin is currently pissing against the wall at high volume. The lack of 600,000** sons and fathers for a 'police action' can't be hidden forever.
** a figure estimated to be reached in 2-3 weeks.
Tony Fisk,
The UkroN*zi label does not merely have a "certain validity from the Russian perspective." The Azov batallion and various Banderites are actual collaborators whose views are indistinguishable from those of the Hitlerians (despite being Slavs that Hitlerians consider untermenschen). But such an apparent contradiction is nothing new, it can be seen in how Zionists collaborated with the Hitlerians as well (see the Haavara Agreement https://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/24/the-treachery-of-the-nazi-zionist-alliance/). Eliminationist ethnosupremacists have converging goals despite being of different ethnicities.
It's strange of you to depict the heavy Soviet brunt in defeating the Hitlerians as being due to "propaganda assistance" when the far heavier such lift is the Western campaign to revise that brunt out of history, in order to facilitate turning former friends into foes and vice versa (with the rehabilitation of collaborationist batallions). The hammer of the permanent war economy will turn everything into a nail and has no off-switch, even as it hollows out its host societies.
The only sense in which Putin has been "pissing up a wall" is believing that the aforesaid war profiteers are open to peaceful coexistence under any circumstances. I understand his bitterness at being played like this, but cannot blame a man for trying to put his best foot forward and appealing to better angels. Turns out, our war criminal overlords have none.
Dr Brin:
1. During what we must now call "Cold War I" the mainstream view is that the West's enemy was communism as an ideology, and the three Baltic states were the only acquisitions of the USSR proper to be widely seen as illegitimate. Groups like the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations which argued that Russian imperialism had far deeper roots than Communism were widely seen then as far-right extremists, especially given (see below) the OUN's prominent role within that organization.
It wouldn't surprise me if the more radical ABN-type view (perhaps extending to the belief that the current Russian Federation should also be broken up) is becoming more commonplace in the West.
2. Blackmail is the key to how the KGB/FSB built their fifth column in the West, but I'm not sure if you understand how much they played the long game.
As a rule, the Kremlin's agents don't kompromize people already elected to public office, as these people would understand they were targets for enemy agents. Instead they kompromize politically-active men in their twenties and then help them into public office: like the RAF's Operation Black Buck (in which about a dozen Victor tankers were used to get a single Vulcan bomber to the target) only a few kompromized individuals are helped into elected office, with the rest being employed to help them on their way.
3. I'm not sure that Putin's regime specifically targeted the far right, so much as that they targeted any enemies of the system in the West (examples of left-wing fifth columnists would be Jill Stein in the US, George Galloway in the UK, or Gerhard Schröder in Germany). Perhaps right-wingers were just more inclined to moral turpitude and thus more likely to be ensnared by the Kremlin's honeytrap operations?
The motivations of traitors are described by MICE, and as the Western left increasingly recognized the USSR as the Evil Empire that it was (which is why they coined the derogatory term "tankie" for those who remained loyal to the Soviets) Ideology took a back seat, with Money (Schröder's main motivation), Coercion (ie blackmail) and Ego becoming more important instead.
4. Obama was irrelevant given that all the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact states along with the three Baltic republics had joined NATO by 2004, which was at the midpoint of the George W Bush administration.
5. Since the West has liberalized on gay rights the Kremlin's main blackmail weapon of choice has been pedophilia, as that is still beyond the pale in contemporary Western society and carries serious prison time. It doesn't matter if (for example) Donald Trump is an utterly shameless guy, if the kompromat that Putin has on him is the kind of stuff that could send him to prison for life.
6. When Putin and his sympathisers talk about Ukrainian "Nazis" they aren't so much talking about far-right parties within Ukrainian politics, as suggesting that the whole concept of a Ukrainian nation separate from Russia was an invention of Germany (along with perhaps Austria-Hungary before it: the western region of Ukraine under Habsburg rule was a haven of Ukrainian culture which elsewhere was suppressed by Tsarist Russification policy).
During the 1930s Poland (which then occupied the same western region of Ukraine) was terrorized by the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), and their leader Stepan Bandera attempted to collaborate with the Nazis against their shared Soviet and Polish enemies: he ended up in Sachsenhausen concentration camp for his trouble as the Nazis of course saw Ukraine not as a potential ally but as prime Lebensraum for German colonization.
Much of the symbolism that has become common in post-2014 Ukraine was rooted in that 20th-century nationalist insurgency: for example the now world-famous call-and-response greeting "Slava Ukraini! Heroyam Slava!" ("Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!")
George Carty,
It's curious that you infer any potential pedophilic blackmail regarding Trump would be Russian kompromat, when the only evidence we have pointing in that direction is Trump's association with Epstein and flying to his infamous island. Here we should remember that such flights are a thoroughly bipartisan affair (with the client list remaining under judicial seal from public scrutiny), Epstein's Mossad ties, and that Israel is the only "ally" America has ever countenanced attacking it (see: the USS Liberty), to say nothing of the ongoing g*nocide that is so tarnishing American global standing. Israel's influence over America is in a league of its own, with the apparent inability of America to refuse its bidding. This is the level of influence achievable through blackmail.
As for Ukraine, it's no accident that the collaborationist rehabilitation you reference has become prominent specifically in post-2014-coup "Ukraine".
Dr. Brin,
Am I the "sicko Ivan" you reference? I'm not sure what "huff" you're talking about. For the record, any right-wing associations you may be projecting onto me are in error. I've merely become disillusioned with the liberal propaganda bubble whose north star is war under illegitimate means against the public interest (being hellbent on world domination is more befitting a Bond villain than a civilized society). I'm more of a peacenik, and point to China as the best example of leadership worthy of the name, as demonstrated by their peaceful rise, productive investment and "no first use" policy on their nuclear warheads.
George Carty, you get post-of-the-day. You clearly worked hard on that one and it is mostly right-on.
As for our sicko Ivan. The moron leaves in a huff… then addictively hangs around. Dig it, dope. There are ALWAYS idiots trying to shock their parents with shaved heads and swastikas. BET NOW with major $$$ stakes that I can’t find hundreds of Russian idiots who did that, as well. That’s not what makes a ‘nazi regime.’ It’s brutally imposing a one-party state, murdering opponents and engaginfg in dogma that “our kind of people is the best and only good kind of people!” Today’s Russia.
OTHER STUFF:
Apparently – widely reported – Trump said:
“...my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I'm NOT a Christian.”I also saw it claimed that he misspoke. Said the truth accidently."
Perhaps: “I love you Christians. SO delicious…”
Paradoc the 7 sins collage is not mine. Jpegs tend to escape their creators’ attribution and live feral, in the wild.
GC: Fossil fuel lords certainly remain a major influence in the world oligarchic putsch, and delaying sustainables has been both a goal and a major crime against us all. Still, I get an impression that the oligarchy is moving on, now that TEXAS is saving itself with vast sustainables. Watch, they’ll proclaim: “Who, us? We NEVER denied climate change and were ALWAYS onboard with replacing fossils!”
---
Referring back a ways: “Dave Sim (sorry) advocates that if you actually have the nerve to ask for a sign, and you then in fact receive it, you probably shouldn't dismiss that.”
Feh. Try the Big Sermon. Stepping outside with a believer in prayer and asking for the clear and EXPLICIT statement of what He wants and for it to be visible to all on Earth. So that never again will a person be consigned to damnation for innocently believing wrong stuff his parent told him. To NOT do this, when so much is at stake in fiercely murderous Judgement, is spectacularly nasty. So I simply refuse to believe that ‘Judgement’ was ever anything but a threat concocted by deeply, deeply sick men.
WHat a stunningly goofy fellow, that he appears to believe ANY of that raving flies here?
From the opening 'your greatest admirer, and can't believe how you can...' pitch, the gaslight has been on full.
Dr Brin:
Referring back a ways: “Dave Sim (sorry) advocates that if you actually have the nerve to ask for a sign, and you then in fact receive it, you probably shouldn't dismiss that.”
Feh. Try the Big Sermon
...
So I simply refuse to believe that ‘Judgement’ was ever anything but a threat concocted by deeply, deeply sick men.
I thought we already addressed this. You're responding as if I said "I've seen signs of miracles, so now I believe everything that the Christian Bible claims about the Judeo-Christian God."
All I said was that since I asked for a specific sign ("If I'm still hearing the radio station after 150 miles when I usually lose it around 70, I might have to rethink atheism") and then that thing actually happened, I was willing to entertain the possibility that something unexplained was influencing events with its own conscious agenda. That thing might be God, but it also might be Satan or Loki or even Puck of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
As I already told John Viril, "newfound faith" was not a good description. At most, I went from "I have never seen evidence of any kind of supernatural phenomena," to "Ok, maybe I just did." Hardly an endorsement of any particular religion.
Even if a supernatural power was responsible for a sign, I would have no idea why he/she/it did so. A playful trick? Helpfulness? Or do I now owe it my soul?
I mentioned nothing about judgement.
Well, that didn't last long.
That is a pretty impressively high backpatting-to-refutation ratio you guys have managed to rack up. Incalculable, dividing-by-zero being what it is. You sure disabused me of my initial diagnosis of an impenetrable liberal bubble, eh? Bonus points for jumping to ad hominem rather than pondering the possibility that those profiting off the misery I've amply referenced have not given you the full picture to warrant such confidence.
Larry,
Once can experience immanence or extreme improbability and not attribute it to supernature, so I dig what you're saying - "the world is stranger than we can imagine".
Pappenheimer, who once ticked off his wife by guessing which of her hands held the black pawn enough times in a row that I finally got nervous and quit.
(She didn't notice at first that I was calling the color before pointing to the hand. Am I psychic? Sure has blazes hope not, I understand there's a well-equipped lab under the Rockies waiting for folks like that.)
Pappenheimer
shagggz,
The source of the kompromat on Trump almost certainly was his trip to Jeffrey Epstein's island!
Epstein was a professional blackmailer of celebrities, and someone in that line of business was almost certainly going to end up blackmailing the wrong person (someone linked to either organized crime or a national intelligence service) and being made an offer he couldn't refuse.
So it was almost certain that he was working for some country's intelligence service, but which one?
The fact that Republican politician Alexander Acosta helped cover up Epstein's crimes in 2008 (and in 2017 was rewarded by Trump with the position of US Secretary of Labor) suggests it was a power seen by the US establishment as an ally, which Russia certainly wasn't in 2008. And Trump's "Russia" circles and "Epstein" circles have pretty much no-one in common except Trump himself is an additional argument suggesting that Epstein himself wasn't working for Russia.
And it's also unlikely that Epstein had been working for Israel, because Epstein met Shimon Peres in person, and there's no way Mossad would have allowed that to happen if Epstein had been running a pedophile honeytrap on their behalf. The most likely foreign power then that Epstein was working for was Saudi Arabia: during the 1980s he had been a financial consultant who had a fake Austrian passport that gave his place of residence as Saudi Arabia, and one of his clients had been a Saudi arms dealer involved in the Iran-Contra affair.
So how did the Russians end up with kompromat on Trump then?
Putin used the billions he'd stolen from the Russian people to (amongst other things) create phony billionaires in the West that would do his bidding, and Trump was a super-famous property tycoon who was actually a terrible businessman (he managed to bankrupt a casino for goodness' sake!) Given that, it's likely that the Kremlin bought the kompromat on Trump from Epstein's Saudi handlers (who had no use themselves for Trump) so that they could use his property empire to launder their money.
And Roger Stone (who persuaded Trump to run for President) and Paul Manafort (who became his campaign manager, but only after visiting Saudi Arabia, presumably to renegotiate the agreement with Russia re the Trump kompromat) were both essentially life-long traitors, having been kompromized by the KGB in the 1970s.
LH my talk of the Great Sermon was not directed at you.
The troll is just fizzing and popping and uttering nothing with any semantic or discursive content. I will admit it now seems unlikely to be a Kremlin basement dweller, OR a 'useful idiot.' My theory is now that it's a paid shill drawing reactions for bot synthetic programs. I intend to react no further because it's all still Putin-boy fecal swill.
Dr. Brin,
I've uttered plenty of semantic content that has been studiously ignored. Totally in line with my expectations for the cultivated blind spots of a good little librul, as stated at the outset. What I did not expect was your apparently sincere refusal to believe in the mundane reality that a regular-ass Western citizen could watch the same manufacturing of consent movie play out enough times to arrive at conclusions deemed verboten by our betters. Instead, you reach for a truly wild assortment of fantastical scenarios of what could motivate such a person, that to me read more like a parody of cognitively captured liberals than something a preener about the value of Enlightenment and transparency such as yourself could genuinely believe. I really thought your sensemaking algorithm was more nuanced than that. The world continues to amaze.
@George Carlin:
I am not sure that it was kompromat or money in the case of Schröder. I could imagine that Gas-Gerd formed a genuine friendship with VP, as weird as it sounds.
Also, the whole reliance on gas may be explained with traditional party lines: Conservatives always relied on nuclear energy to provide for our needs, while the social democrats choose fossile energy (and the voter base of coal miners and refinery workers). The greens prefered renewables.
I hadn’t read much about the rally shooting recently, but saw this.
Ronny Jackson (Trump’s personal physician who oversaw a white house medical unit that lead to a scathing 80 page US Inspector Genera Report No. DODIG‑2024‑044l ) , the same Ronny J who bandaged his big boy T after the shooting, said via twitter.
“My nephew was injured at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Thankfully his injury was not serious and he is doing well. My family was sitting in the front, near where the President was speaking. They heard shots ringing out — my nephew then realized he had blood on his neck and something had grazed and cut his neck. He was treated by the providers in the medical tent. Thank you to all those that have reached out to check on him. “
T’s camp being all NDA and hushy, hushy regarding the medical report inclines me to think that his wound was likely similar to that of Ronny’s nephew. It also raises doubt on T being the target and increases the likelihood that the (aim) was to inflict random damage on a crowd. (Sorry Larry for disagreeing with you intitally, but I'm leaning toward your POV)
The other aspect of the shooting which seemed obvious all along was that the communication broke down between the local law enforcement and the SS. I figured that the local enforcement was the snag but it's actually the converse. The county sniper team has gone to press and told their side of it. The local snipers followed protocol, saw the suspicious (gunman) and radioed what was going on to the SS detail, who failed to act on it until shots were fired. This begs the question about T’s tendency to surround himself with the “best people” like Ronny J part MD part NDA. I don’t know the answer to this, just wondering does T get to choose his detail, screen applicants and mandate NDAs?
Pappenheimer:
Once can experience immanence or extreme improbability and not attribute it to supernature...
Of course. That's the whole point of Vonnegut's snarky "How much longer can I go on being an atheist?"
It's only the fact that I actually said out loud, "If we're still hearing this station in Champaign, I might have to rethink atheism," and then we were still hearing the station in Champaign. If there was ever a time that someone was trying to tell me something, that might have been it.
Now I see what someone was complaining about earlier--that the commenting page looks radically different, and it jumps you back to the top after you comment. Funny, that change didn't occur for my PC until now.
Ditto on the commenting page. On eargate - someone did actually die. If there's even the slightest whiff of pre-knowledge of that event, by anyone, then accessory to murder comes into play.
Dr. Brin: Thanks for the feral 7-deadlies collage meme.
About Trump's "you won't have to vote anymore" speech: he sounded like voting for him was a heavy lift, so he promised that they won't have to do it ever again. If so, then why even do it now?
Also: he said "I'm nah Christian". That's midway between "I'm a" and "I'm not". In Trumpian mathematics, "nah" = both One and None. What a convenient new word!
OMG.
Without giving spoilers, I just realized how much the ending of the 2019 tv Watchmen miniseries presages President Biden passing the torch to Kamala Harris.
"With all he could do...he could have done more," followed by the very last moments involving a black lady.
"How much longer can I go on being an atheist" :)
Hey, I watched a lot of the Olympics opening ceremony on Friday--not all of it.
I've heard a few times this morning that Christians are complaining about it. What's that all about?
Paradoctor:
About Trump's "you won't have to vote anymore" speech: he sounded like voting for him was a heavy lift, so he promised that they won't have to do it ever again. If so, then why even do it now?
Because they have to get him back into office this one time. After that, the reich will last a thousand years without further inconveniences such as voting.
Slim M you ask a good question about whether DT has a big say in his security detail. Certainly his need for flattery has always outweighed competence. If Crooks had been a crack shot, then some kind of conspiracy might have remote fizzworthiness. But he was a dope and hence incompetence is the only plausibility. EXCEPT for the weird Grisham-thriller plausibility I alluded to, earlier. (The head slap scenario; very unlikely but possible.)
I disagree re shooting into the crowd as the goal. Nah.
Quick skim. Again, no discursive content other than essentially a whine: “Not, *I’m* not dumb *YOU* all are!!”
If I had cheap dittos to assign to dealing with idiots, I’d answer. As is, using up my valuable time is THE feature for such twits.
There are reports and rumors that imprisoned Russian dissidents have "disappeared". Whether they are dead already, negotiations for prisoner swaps are underway or another game is played, who knows. And there is a german national on death row in Belarus, which Lukashenko "considers to pardon".
Dr Brin:
Again, no discursive content other than essentially a whine: “Not, *I’m* not dumb *YOU* all are!!”
Does anyone with an unpronounceable pseudonym and no visible profile who essentially says, "You haven't conceded my brilliant points in the five seconds I've been here, so goodbye!" ever actually--whatayacall--departed?
Dr Brin:
As is, using up my valuable time is THE feature for such twits.
There's a name for that. Sealioning. I learned that here on this site.
https://wondermark.com/c/1062
It seems that the tendency towards petty personalization and sophistry is being projected onto me, in service of same. If there was much on offer to refute the general pattern of Western pretexts to justify its constant trajectory of military aggression, we would've seen it by now. Oblique snark fills the void.
Say what, shagggz?
Orwell would not be pleased.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/
Eschew obfuscation! :D
Larry Hart,
Your charge of sealioning would have merit if what I reference was irrelevant or false, but it's not. Take 10/7, for example. It is acknowledged fact that the IDF was acting on orders not to let ANY of the concertgoers leave alive, i.e. the Hannibal Directive, supposedly to prevent hostagetaking. It stands to reason that most people killed on that day were by Israel's hands (evident from the many rows of car husks, not something Hamas is capable of).
Is this not evil?
This fits into my broader point of Western war racketeering. Instead, I get called all manner of nasty names for "supporting Hamas" because I point to this bigger picture of who has the real power and where the consistent failure to achieve peace actually comes from.
Is anyone here capable of living up to the intellectual honesty required to address this, rather than reaching for cheap excuse to dismiss uncomfortable facts?
A. F. Rey,
Orwell is my literary hero, and I do eschew obfuscation. That has been my goal here, to pierce the corporate Western media bubble that misleads good people into supporting evil causes. I do sometimes get tripped up over my own needlessly complex sentences, and it's something I'm working to improve.
A few years back, we had a discussion about goals, and why modern A.I., for example, is entirely lacking such. Without goals, discourse is just a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. All this talk of piercing bubbles and opening others' eyes to the Truth rings hollow. It begs the question: Why? What's the goal?
How much energy is being spent in shagging other political parties and perspectives? Especially ones that have a far more delusional and malevolent ideology than this here happy little band, in which the very word 'ideology' is frowned upon.
Ok, just on the off chance you're attempting sincerity...
That has been my goal here, to pierce the corporate Western media bubble that misleads good people into supporting evil causes.
It sounds to me as if you've been misled into doing just that yourself. Whatever you may think of Israel or the west, Russia's aggression and Hamas's terrorism are evil causes. That you excuse everything both entities do while condemning everything their victims do does not convince anyone that you are a neutral arbiter of truth. More like a Rupert Murdoch propagandist.
Just imagine that you were the (actual) guy who popped in here in 2016 to inform us of Hillary Clinton's pedophile ring in tunnels beneath Comet Ping Pong. He was just as certain as you are that he was imparting important truth that we just didn't want to accept, and that every one of us except him was duped by the DNC. And that certainty didn't mitigate the fact that we were right to dismiss him out of hand, and that he was either an intentional spreader of disinformation or an unthinking dupe.
That's how you're coming off here.
I do sometimes get tripped up over my own needlessly complex sentences, and it's something I'm working to improve.
It's not your complex sentences at issue. It's your coming into a new community with insult guns ablazing ("librul", "N*zi") and then being shocked...shocked that the community doesn't respond in good faith.
We can get the same thing from Robertson’s old book:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5d/NWO_Pat_Rob.jpg
@LH: I've heard a few times this morning that Christians are complaining about [the Olympic opening ceremony]. What's that all about?
In case you haven't already learned the answer: One of the numerous tableaux in the opening ceremony pageantry was a parody of a Bacchanalia. The blue-bodypaint figure of Bacchus himself was not shown in the US broadcast. (Were they concerned he was showing too much skin? or that he was obviously a pagan deity?) Without that visual clue, many people jumped to the conclusion that the parody was actually of Leonardo's Last Supper. (Which makes no sense, because THAT painting is in Italy; the French have the Mona Lisa, which was featured earlier in le programme.)
Combine that with some extremely mild suggestions of the existence of LBGTQ+ romance and ta-da, one cauldron of ready-mix outrage, poured out by a minority of Americans (generously one-third), a nation which in turn comprises one-twentieth of the world population. Even given the outsized amount of power this 1.3% of the human race can wield, it's ludicrous for them to claim this was an insult directed specifically at them... but claim it they do, with no sense of hubris at all.
As to the Russian grand strategy, I went back for extra reading/digging after realizing that the Czarists followed most of the same policies that the Leninists copied and that carried over to the Putinists. I had previously assumed the Leninists just copied Czarist structures as they had no better ideas, but the throughput nature of Russian "foreign policy" seems to be more deeply rooted than ideology or personnel.
Trying to even conceptualize the paranoid pain-avoidance mindset of Russian culture makes my head hurt, but I got a few pieces of insight through --
(1) Anything without at least a degree of Russian influence is assumed to be hostile. No amount of either rational evidence or emotional appeals will change this base certainty.
(2) Likewise, no matter how much influence, power, or wealth is amassed, Moscow is always under threat. Always. Russia can never accept permanent security arrangements because by definition, no amount of preparation, buffer, or assurances can be enough.
If Russia ever did conquer the entire planet, they'd immediately start building a space navy and engaging in active SETI to try and influence away the alien invasion they'd be absolutely certain was on its way.
...corporate media new world order neo-lib’ral/neo-con elitist wire-pulling hegemonic globalists...
(3) Because Russian security hunger is insatiable, imperialism cannot end; indeed, this is the epoxy that binds imperalism into the Russian identity. Whoever is Russia's neighbor must be Russia's proxy -- any other situation is, axiomatically, an enemy at the gates. Once influence is obtained -- and it need not be full control, just enough influence to veto whatever Russia thinks might be a threat -- that neighbor is in the 'sphere of influence'... and their neighbors fall under the same rubric, lest Russia's influence be disrupted.
(4) Because influence, not conquest, is the goal, Russia is always intriguing towards anyone in their reach. Now that we have a global civilization, that means they intrigue against *everyone*. No change of labels or tactical identities changes this fundamental aspect of the Russian state.
(5) Since (shocker!) most folks don't like Russians constantly interfering with their lives, this progressively turns targets of Russian attitudes against them. Russia is the cause of most of their neighbors wanting NATO protection and trying like hell to paddle away from Moscow's reach. Russia is incapable of comprehending this fact, however, because they can't imagine actual friendly relations with other countries from a standpoint of mutual respect.
(6) Because Russia assumes autonomy = hostility, there are types of diplomacy they simply can't engage in, or even really understand. Mutually assured destruction wasn't an optimum concept to stabilize the Cold War, but it was one of the few the Russians could accept as a basis. Spheres-of-influence makes sense to them, but only on their own terms; when shown the cooperativity and flexible delegation of command at NATO HQ, the Russian generals assumed it was a Potemkin dumbshow.
(7) Autonomy = hostility applies within Russia as well as without. Russia can't bring itself to decentralize despite the myriad advantages it could bring them -- because it can't trust itself. Anything not under centralized control is automatically a threat to Moscow and to regime stability. And they assume the rest of the world works the same way. Hence fantasies of the US descending into another civil war, which are treated as not just possible but highly likely in Russian circles. If we were a centralized command-and-control regime like they assume, they wouldn't be too terribly wrong...
(8) ... but most crucially, they can't comprehend the strength of avoiding centralization. By the Russian rules, all three of Cincinnatus, G. Washington, and J. Biden are absolutely insane for walking away from power. In Russia, that gets you killed -- and there are numerous examples every generation to keep that knowledge foremost in their heads.
That there could even *be* another way to live *just doesn't compute*.
Larry Hart,
Russia's "aggression" is actually it being goaded by those seeking war (as was predicted/warned against within since leaked Western diplomatic cables). Ukraine's expressed popular will for peace was subverted by the 2014 coup, after which it began doing pogroms on ethnic Russians on its Western oblasts. After Putin gave disingenuous peace talks more credence than they warranted, he accepted the oblasts' votes for independence and had his parliament ratify them, before citing the UN Kosovo precedent to justify his intervention. All of this is the behavior of someone demonstrating far more respect for legality and action towards peaceful resolution than, say, America invading Iraq because of 9/11 (ha). The conflict was started by a subversion of the popular will (post-coup pogroms), sustained through another such subversion (Western rejection of a completed peace agreement), and continues to this day through yet more subversion (Zelenskyy having exceeded his constitutionally mandated term and not extended through proper legal channels, with opposition parties banned).
As for Hamas, calling it exercising its legal right to resist illegal occupation "terrorism" drains the term of meaning, especially when considering the conduct of the more powerful party in this situation and its conduct. All previous attempts at peaceful resolution were kneecapped (literally, with sniper fire, often at children). Hamas' thriving is the intentional consequence of Netanyahu's stated goal of keeping the possibility of a Palestinian state off the table. Why confine blame to those fighting for survival in the face of extermination, rather than the more powerful actors whose goal was to bring such a struggle about?
I don't see how you can dismiss the West's goal of world domination ("rules-based order" being the euphemism for defying international law without limit) as not being evil, and only focusing on the evil reactions its illegitimate goal produces. In a situation with two wrong actors, greater blame falls on the more powerful actor that chooses to maintain initiative in keeping the wrongs going.
You're right, I did myself no favors by coming in as hot as I did. I am only human, after all (despite speculations to the contrary lol). It's good that you bring up 2016, because I was then a reluctant Hillary supporter, confined to the narrow range of thought the lesser-evilist duopoly browbeats us into. As much of a putrid malevolent fraud Trump may be, the Dems' more hawkish stance on the world stage makes it less clear to me that he really is the greater evil. The great lengths the deep state has gone to to remove him (Russiagate, lawfare, assassination) has only underscored to me how lawless the PTB really are, and I've come to revile playing the cheerleading role they've assigned me.
I thank you for allowing for the possibility that I'm simply trying to engage in good faith dialogue, unconventional as it may be.
Catfish 'n Cod,
If Russia cannot tolerate mutual security arrangements, why did it want to join NATO? Why would NATO reject it, if it really is the defensive organization it pretends to be? If Russia considers autonomy to be hostility, why was it America that couped Ukraine in 2014 for the crime of being neutral vis a vis EU and Russia? Why is it America and not Russia that says "you're either with us or against us"?
shaggz
Russia has ALWAYS been the aggressor!
Napoleon's invasion was in response to a Russian attack
WW2 started when Hitler and Russia BOTH attacked Poland
Since then Russia has attacked and invaded 12 countries - with ZERO countries attacking Russia
Given the polysyllabic syntax and RT-driven subject matter, I suspect that our new sealion/ troll is another in a long line of sock puppets that have appeared here from time to time. I used to think that they were a foreign operation, now I think that they are just the same sad Brin super-fan, over and over again, perhaps with some bad AI help in fixing the idiosyncratic bits of text.
If they are a real person and not the latest sock puppet, then we are simply cursed to suffer a long line of useful fools trying to help the world's worst autocracy.
Ignore and move on to the real fight.
Russia is a sideshow clown.
Smart, amoral billionaires are the real enemy.
People have not been talking about what is probably the biggest electoral danger. That is the number of election deniers who are now in a position to oversee elections. There is a big danger of them causing chaos in the election which could then lead to violence when their attempts to help Trump are overruled. There is a smaller danger of them actually succeeding.
I would expect that the Democrats are making preparations but keeping quiet about exactly what those precautions are.
I think we have already seen the results of their precautions in another area. The transition from Biden to Harris has been so smooth that it looks like the activation of a contingency plan.
The question is just when did Biden and others decide to activate this plan? I suspect it was shortly after his poor debate performance. I very much doubt it was just before his withdrawal.
The timing of the announcement of his withdrawal was obviously chosen to take Trump's VP pick into account.
An interesting question is whether after the debate Biden deliberately made himself look frailer and senile to encourage mistakes by the Trump camp? I wouldn't put it past him. He has baited them into having to support his policies in the past. He does seem to be the Br'er Rabbit of US politics.
No more unconventional than horoscopes, or the I Ching.
Lack of detail is a persistent difficulty.
shagggz:
I thank you for allowing for the possibility that I'm simply trying to engage in good faith dialogue, unconventional as it may be.
Yeah, well I see where that got me. The thing is, you don't sound like a Trumpist/QAnon, but the reality you perceive so differs from my own that it's like arguing with a Trumpist/QAnon. You don't merely draw different conclusions from the facts--you draw your own facts. Since you're a fan of Orwell, you know what I mean when I say that sooner or later, one of us will have to bump up against solid reality, (probably) on a battlefield.
As much of a putrid malevolent fraud Trump may be, the Dems' more hawkish stance on the world stage makes it less clear to me that he really is the greater evil.
Words fail me.
The great lengths the deep state has gone to to remove him (Russiagate, lawfare, assassination) has only underscored to me how lawless the PTB really are,
Words fail me again, but I'll try. "Russiagate" was a real scandal, despite being buried by Trump's own DOJ. "Lawfare" is not a thing. Trump committed crimes and was convicted by a jury of his peers, one of whom claimed to get his news from Truth Social. The assassin--if that's what he was and not just a normal mass shooter--was a Republican. What you refer to as "the deep state" is just the normal functioning of government outside of politics.
Again with Orwell, you are engaging in "Freedom is Slavery" use of words to mean their opposite. To you, an impartial jury is biased against Trump precisely because it is not biased for Trump. Just as the George W Bush administration once claimed that the press doing critical analysis was biased against Bush, and that only unquestionably repeating his talking points proved fairness. Trump weaponized the DOJ and the courts in front of our very eyes, but when a Democratic AG provides Trump with a fair trial and finds him guilty, that's "weaponizing".
I don't see how you can dismiss the West's goal of world domination ("rules-based order" being the euphemism for defying international law without limit) as not being evil, and only focusing on the evil reactions its illegitimate goal produces. In a situation with two wrong actors, greater blame falls on the more powerful actor that chooses to maintain initiative in keeping the wrongs going.
I don't get your distinction. The "rules based order" is one based on international law. Its opposite is the rule of intimidation and force--Russia's and China's way. Greater blame accrues not to the strongest actor, but to the most heinous actor. That's Hamas and that's Russia.
As for Hamas, calling it exercising its legal right to resist illegal occupation "terrorism" drains the term of meaning, especially when considering the conduct of the more powerful party in this situation and its conduct
And yet, you don't apply this justification to Ukraine's right to resist occupation.
All of this is the behavior of someone demonstrating far more respect for legality and action towards peaceful resolution than, say, America invading Iraq because of 9/11 (ha).
Don't blame me. I voted for the other guy.
Ok, enough with the sealioning.
@Alan Brooks,
Hmmm, it seems that in this new blogger configuration, when you "REPLY" instead of just posting another comment, your reply appears underneath the original post. Which I suppose makes it easier to understand a back-and-forth conversation, but I'm not used to going back up the list to see new posts.
Not sure I like it.
He mentioned Maidan in passing: but not the details as to what happened a decade ago.
Peace treaties on whose terms, and how is the peace to be implemented & sustained?:
which gets into a bit more detail.
Centaurs besieging Kamalot. We're living in an SF novel.
Lloyd F I guess we’ll see, when JoeB hits the campaign trail with vigor and pundits whine “Where WAS this guy?”
LH the ratio of Republicans to Democrats indicted and also convicted by Grand Juries and by juries of serious crimes is over 40:1 for GOP officials. And much higher for child predators. In order NOT to draw the obvious conclusion – that the GOP is a criminal org – they must concoct that half a MILLION skilled civil servants, FBI & Intel guys, Justice folks and the US military officer corps are all in on the most perfectly flawless, well-organized and seamlessly airtight conspiracy in the history of our species.
Or else… the slightly relabeled KGB found it VASTLY easier to suborn, bribe and blackmail the right than the left.
----
Craig (Catfish) thanks for the excellent run-down about intensely and relentlessly reinforced Russian paranoia. But let me add there are also ADMIRABLE traits, like those I portray in my novella about a pair of Russian sisters in exile in New Siberia… harvesting and trimming giant crystal trees growing on asteroids. It’s called “The Logs” and it’s in Best of David Brin stories… http://www.davidbrin.com/bestofdavidbrin.html
… and it depicts the incredible *endurance* - amid pain – that Russians have always been capable-of. Perhaps more stoic, stolid endurance of pain than any other people could manage. As evidenced now by their dogged persistence in obeying suicidally idiotic orders from imbecilic generals and commissars, who absolutely count on that stoical nature lasting. And it will last until – finally – it doesn’t anymore.
In fact, Impaler Putin himself has referred almost obsessively – like a bird fascinated by a snake – to the 1917 Soldier’s Revolt, when men in the trenches finally had enough and headed to Moscow. He repeatedly brings it up! As if doing so will somehow cancel out the possibility that he makes more real, every day.
------
Those who ignored all 8 points - that I scrupulously listed and offered to bet $$$ over - cannot then veer back and huff “*I* am the one arguing fair here!”. No, he is a shimmering pustule of fecal stoopidity. And I am only responding now, despite plans to ignore the idiot, because… well… it was actually kinda fun to say that, without any fear of hurting a sapient human’s (or even a dog’s) feelings.
Okay. I've worked through many of the comments left by shagggz and feel that I've mostly wasted my time. Mostly. The problem is we won't agree on facts let alone how they mean something in context.
------
There is one point they make where I agree, though. I don't think what Hamas is doing qualifies as terrorism. It is more properly called asymmetric warfare. For it to be terrorism, it really must come from within and who here honestly believes that Hamas believes Israel has a right to exist... let alone that it's people are citizens of Israel?
No. Hamas is engaged in warfare. Likely illegal warfare. So is Israel. Yes... illegal. Let's not call it terrorism. Let's just recognize what Hamas is doing for what it really is. An incredibly f*cking stupid way to fight a war for independence. A war with goals decided by people with no skin in the game.
Seriously. How many millions of martyrs do they need? I'm sure Israel will provide for them if Hamas just writes down the number.
Larry Hart,
You won't be seeing me on any battlefield, as any war I'm dragooned into would only be to the benefit of the "smart, amoral billionaires" matthew referenced above. The facts I draw on that are so foreign to you, I've had to proactively seek out after having been misled by the mainstream media too many times.
Russiagate was indeed a scandal, one of abuse of opaque intelligence processes like that of FISA warrants and other fine-grained details that escape me (Matt Taibbi has done great work on this). Lawfare is indeed a thing, and in Trump's case is the selective/politicized prosecution of otherwise mundane business affairs (Naked Capitalism has done great work on this). The assassin's partisan affiliation (to the dubious extent he even had one) is irrelevant, the real story being the suspiciously convenient series of "errors" in security that just happened to align with rubbing out someone the deep state wanted gone (JFK all over again).
There would be no need for the term "rules-based order" if it adhered to international law. The "rules" are demonstrably arbitrary unilateralism. I don't deny Ukraine's right to resist occupation, we should just keep in mind its attempts at coming to peaceful resolution and being denied by its puppetmasters. It is being used, having been denied autonomy from the getgo and every step of the way. The thinking being, more dead Slavs and more war profits - what's not to like?
The thing that struck me most from having lived through the Trump and Biden admins is how eerily similar the latter's conduct was, after accusing the former of it. The "norms violations" (prosecuting a former president in an election year), the corrupt self-dealing (Hunter Biden's Ukraine shenanigans), the "stochastic terrorism" (constantly calling Trump an unprecedented existential threat to the republic, implying a proportional remedy being warranted).
My point is not that I like Trump or want him to win. It just rankles me to see the same righteous indignation that I used to repeat, on the mistaken belief that what led me to believe it was all above board or for my own good. A properly functioning system would not have led to someone like Trump being viable to begin with, and it will not surprise me when there is another attempt on his life with the same feigned innocence from those in charge who want him gone. This thing is neither republic nor democracy, and our interests are not being represented.
Trump and his followers have tried to portray the contest against Biden as strength against weakness. This has now been turned against them. The Harris campaign has more ammunition than the Clinton campaign ever did and is pointing out how Trump and followers' aggressiveness makes them creepy and weird. And that seeing aggression as strength makes it hard for the Trump campaign to climb out of their hole.
Dr. Brin, I'm glad you're having fun. For anyone interested in supporting rigorous scholarship that sheds light on the state crimes against democracy that would free you from carrying water for amoral psychopaths, check out the American Exception podcast. It's a Patreon subscription, as academia in this society with so-called free inquiry does not allow a light to be shone on the true power center, even with credentials as unimpeachable as host Aaron Good's Ph.D.
Heh. Reveals himself as a warrior in the battle against the smartypants.
Yawn.
Lloyd Flack,
...makes it hard for the Trump campaign to climb out of their hole.
I'd like to believe that, but we are still weeks away from the election. Partisans still have time to evolve.
Is it time to roll out the molding cheddar cheese imagery. I'm sure someone could do a good photoshop of the orange dude turning white then blue/green. Would that piss off Wisconsin voters... or be something they'd understand in their bones? 8)
Alfred Differ,
That seems like a willful misreading of what I said. The guy has a Ph.D. It's just that there's a limit to what organized power will countenance.
shagggz:
This fits into my broader point of Western war racketeering. Instead, I get called all manner of nasty names for "supporting Hamas" because I point to this bigger picture of who has the real power and where the consistent failure to achieve peace actually comes from.
Isn't the real reason why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so intractable that which I already mentioned upthread: that the entire Palestinian national identity was formed out of the conflict with the Zionists (culminating in the trauma of the 1948 Nakba) and will never allow them to make peace with Israel?
George Carty,
Here is a relevant snippet from Yanis Varoufakis' speech shut down by German thugs on phony pretexts:
Why don’t Palestinians pursue their objectives by peaceful means?
They did. The PLO recognised Israel and renounced armed struggle. And what did they get for it? Absolute humiliation and systematic ethnic cleansing. That is what nurtured Hamas and elevated it the eyes of many Palestinians as the only alternative to a slow genocide under Israel’s Apartheid.
(https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/04/yanis-varoufakis-my-berlin-speech-on-palestine-that-german-police-entered-the-venue-to-ban.html)
Here is a long list of peace proposals by Hamas rejected by Israel:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/1/22/how-israel-has-repeatedly-rejected-hamas-truce-offers
Note the 2017 proposal to accept the 1967 borders, capitulating to the illegal post-Nakba occupation.
The simple fact is that Israel will not accept peaceful coexistence, much like post-JFK America. They're on a supremacist mission from God, an American mini-me recapitulating Manifest Destiny. But unlike the American genocide grandfathered in through historical distance, they picked the wrong century to attempt such a project.
Or else… the slightly relabeled KGB found it VASTLY easier to suborn, bribe and blackmail the right than the left.
Every political corner gets their own specialized approach.
Leftists (at least over here) are easily manipulated by outrage against the "Evil American Empire" (conveniently forgetting the evil of the Warsaw pact, Afghanistan I, Chechnya, the clampdowns on protesters, the corruption and grift).
Centrists have been captured by the promise of easy access to cheap ressources to maintain their base of operations.
Political Scientists have been courted by Russia through invitation, flattery, stipends.
Parts of the climate movement are thought to have been infiltrated as well.
Where they continually fail if they target persons who only nominally belong to a certain camp, or who are already aware of the threat. Here, they usually use Zersetzung, "decomposition" or "disintegration" - making persons socially unacceptable, through libel, slander, or intimidating supporters. (The Kreml has obviously chosen this route with Hillary Clinton and our Greens. There are signs that this happened in the academic community, to ease the way for their own pawns.)
Alfred Differ:
Okay. I've worked through many of the comments left by shagggz and feel that I've mostly wasted my time. Mostly. The problem is we won't agree on facts let alone how they mean something in context.
Maybe "Sealioning" wasn't the correct term after all. The correct term is "Gish Galloping", although I am not aware of the origins of the term. It refers to debating by spewing such a firehose of false assertions that it is impossible for the opponent to refute them all.
------
There is one point they make where I agree, though. I don't think what Hamas is doing qualifies as terrorism. It is more properly called asymmetric warfare.
Blowing up ships and buildings counts as asymmetric warfare. What happened on Oct 7--slaughtering civilians and taking hostages--looks more like terrorism to me.
L. H.,"Gish gallop" is a reference to the debate "Style" of the late Duane Gish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Gish Adherence to rules of debate didn't seem to be a winning strategy for a creationist, for some reason.
'Gish galloping' sounds familiar: a synonym might be 'Trumpa-lumpa-ling'
shagggz:
You won't be seeing me on any battlefield, as any war I'm dragooned into would only be to the benefit of the "smart, amoral billionaires" matthew referenced above.
For a supposed devotee of George Orwell, you don't seem to recognize metaphor. The "battlefield" can be any situation where one is finally overrun by reality despite the alternate universe one might prefer to believe in. For example, Florida's and North Carolina's attempts to legislate climate change out of existence won't stand against rising oceans.
Dragooning has nothing to do with it.
The facts I draw on that are so foreign to you, I've had to proactively seek out after having been misled by the mainstream media too many times.
You can find any facts you want out there X-Files style. I trust people I've heard from whose descriptions of reality seem plausible over the likes of Steve Bannon and yes, Matt Tabbi. I'll see you and raise you Hal Sparks and Philip Ittner.
I know I will never convince you--I hardly care to. I responded to see if it were possible to reach synthesis, but the answer is "no". You can have plenty of last words--I'm not even claiming I won't read them--but I no longer care to respond. In the not too distant future, one of us will "run up against solid reality" on a METAPHORICAL battlefield. Sniping about predictions ahead of that seems pointless.
Firefox displays CB in the traditional format, but Chrome does things the funky new 'reply don't scroll' way.
Slim Moldie:
Sorry Larry for disagreeing with you intitally, but I'm leaning toward your POV)
Story of my life. Even my wife requires independent confirmation from someone who's not me.
scidata:
...Chrome does things the funky new 'reply don't scroll' way.
Microsoft Edge is also displaying the new way, and I wouldn't be surprised if your Firefox "catches up" eventually, since my formatting didn't change until this week.
There are Javascript and Rust patches to revert to the autoscroll format, but whenever I delve into browser scripting, I can scratch at least three days off my schedule. I just updated to the latest Firefox Portable (my favourite browser) and it still works the beloved old way. As the timeless evolution heuristic says, 'good enough, move on'.
scidata:
whenever I delve into browser scripting, I can scratch at least three days off my schedule.
I break into a panicked sweat whenever a fix for some application at work involves editing the registry.
I view the blog on Safari.
Alfred, because I respect YOU…
Yes, Hamas must do asymmetric warfare or quickly lose a conventional fight. That is separate from the deliberate herding together of human shields and only shooting at Israeli troops over the shoulders of civilians. And always, always using hospitals and aid stations and schools as firing points.
One understands the coldly evil logic of Hamas… civilian corpses are winning them public relations victories. And Netanyahu is both vile and stupid for not realizing this, nor returning to internationally recognized standards for minimizing civilian collateral losses. That would slow down the IDF progress greatly and add to IDF losses. But the “we don’t need the world” stance of some of his supporters is insane.
But when you have been surrounded by Death howls in all Arab textbooks and TV shows and screams for 80 years – amid the sheiks’ deliberate abuse of most of their own people - it can harden hearts.
As for the attention hog - I ask that this insipidly drooling troll set up his own blog and drop by here with a one sentence announcement whenever he posts. Folks can then go over there. Here, his assertions are simple all – 100% of them – just plain masturbatory falsehoods, in most cases diametrically opposite to verifiable facts. I would ask that he have his atty verify escrowed wager stakes… which is what an actual man would do… but this is no man.
Go away. You are not an adversary, you are a steaming turd. If you remain here – except perhaps to accept my offer of a posting announcement max-weekly – then you have proved your mother ‘raised’ a rude ass.
What I can say is I won’t be back so long as you guys, in your admirably amiable enjoyment of argument, encourage the twit with continuing attempts at sapient engagement.
Dr Brin:
What I can say is I won’t be back so long as you guys, in your admirably amiable enjoyment of argument, encourage the twit with continuing attempts at sapient engagement.
Well, I for one just announced my reasons for not continuing to do so.
I've ruminated in the past on setting up a dedicated 'Pig Pen' blog where trolls and miscreants could rassle to their hearts' content. But of course, that's not what they want.
Following up on Catfish's appraisal of predictability of paranoia by Russian leaders. This from ISW: "Russian officials and Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) representatives are advocating for the Kremlin to codify a state ideology premised on the idea that the sovereign Ukrainian state should not exist, into Russian federal law."
National seizure of thousands of companies, justified by state ideology (now the Orthodox Church, ever-so-slightly different than the Communist Party), clamping down on the infosphere and jailing/killing critics, issuing daily talking points that even the most rambunctious milbloggers now recite dutifully.... these are all part of the 're-Sovietization' of Russia that the peoples of Estonia, Latvia, Poland etc all knew would happen, someday.
This time, the odds aren't good. Amidst steep declines in both population demographics and educated cadres, with their southern neighbor eyeing Siberia lustily, with suffering troops at the front murmuring talk of 1917... the Impaler has just one hope -- that his blackmail-enforced, wholly owned US Republican Party will deliver Putin's favorite tool back into office. Or else, short of that, an incited US Civil War will weaken us enough...
The part of all this that surpised me the most was the utterly reliable low quality of Russian weapons systems on the actual battlefield and the incompetence of what had been the highly-vaunted Kremlin hacker threat. So far, Western weapons... consisting till now of older models shipped to Ukraine from almost retired stocks... have proved superior to a degree that surprises even former optimists. And we have not yet seen any of the better stuff in action. Or large-scale use by AFU of glide bombing.
https://www.iswresearch.org/
Further: "Western officials remain concerned about Russian efforts to influence the US presidential election. The Associated Press (AP) reported on July 29 that an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) warned that Russian actors are trying to use unwitting US citizens and Russian commercial public relations (PR) firms to spread propaganda and disinformation about the US presidential election.[83] The official warned that Americans should consider that any online content, especially on social media, could be foreign propaganda." Ah for the good old days, when Vlad's asset appointed *blatant* KGB agents Flynn as National Security Advisor and Manafort as campaign chairman and fired or drove out the top counter-intelligence guys at CIA and FBI. Those good times might return. His agents are here, trying hard.
scidata:
a dedicated 'Pig Pen' blog where trolls and miscreants could rassle to their hearts' content.
Wasn't that Parler? Or Rumble? Or Truth Social?
Dr Brin:
Russian actors are trying to use unwitting US citizens and Russian commercial public relations (PR) firms to spread propaganda and disinformation...
A few even on this site.
Dr. Brin,
Amnesty International investigated the Israeli claims that Hamas used human shields in prior Gaza conflicts, and found "no evidence of Hamas directing civilians to shield military assets or forcing them to stay near buildings used by fighters. "
I very much doubt there can be any such investigation of an ongoing conflict, though Human Rights Watch found 2 instances of Israeli citizens (hostages, I presume) being used as human shields by Hamas in 2024.
It's also extremely doubtful that ALL Hamas actions are initiated from "hospitals, aid stations, and schools" as you stated.
Hamas is an extremist organization and has definitely used terror tactics, but please avoid hyperbole.
Pappenheimer, who finds it distasteful to defend Hamas
Hey, I clicked on the "Comments" link again, and got this same page in the old format. I've even got both up at the same time--old and new.
Despite a computer science degree, I find PC technology incomprehensible, if not indistinguishable from magic.
Larry Hart,
You're right, I should've caught your meaning of "battlefield" as metaphorical. I suppose the truculent vibe here has primed me in another direction. Funny for you to reference reality running over a preferred alternate reality, because that is exactly what led me to abandon the mainstream talking points I've accepted at face value for years. I used to be you.
I thank you for the time you've spent on at least trying to engage honestly, and I understand if you don't reply again. I suggest that instead of simply asserting that what I've said is false (it's not), or leaning on empty words like "terrorist" (Mandela was still on the watchlist until 2008), try applying some basic critical thinking principles. If incentives matter, is it really so mysterious that America's profit-oriented war-hammer keeps finding a nail? Is there a conflict of interest, if your interest is in conflict? Where did that much-touted "counteroffensive" go? What about "the ruble will be rubble"? Why does big bad Putler have to swallow things on his border that we never would? Why is social decay exploding across the West while Russia has just overtaken Germany and Japan in PPP terms, per the World Bank? I will note that for all the squawking here about "facts", not a single person has even acknowledged the 2014 coup I've referenced multiple times. It's a major red flag that such a pivotal reality is so indigestible to the desired narrative outcome of "Russian aggression".
If you're really interested in reality-testing your command of the supposed "facts", I suggest you have a gander at the commentariat over at Naked Capitalism. They have a vigorously enforced No Making Shit Up policy, so you'd best come prepared if you want to draw upon facts that are actually verified. I don't want to be impolite, but let's just say that the feculence-oriented insults spewed by our gracious host that apparently substitute for intellectual integrity would not cut it there.
If the articulate twit had based ANY of his assertions upon ANY actually verifiable facts - or even not-trivially refutable blabbings - the glaring purity of his shill/fecal nature would not have been so clear. I would be puzzled by WHY he would do the diametrically opposite thing... if I cared enough to stay awak... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
@Dr Brin,
I tell you as a friend: You are sending us extremely mixed messages. "I'll take my ball and go home if you engage with him," but then engaging with every post yourself. It has me walking on eggshells. Just sayin'
Dr. Brin,
Dude. You are just embarrassing yourself at this point. I've pointed you towards the path of demonstrating your supposed command of the facts, if you were willing to stick your neck out rather than preening within your converted groupthink flock. Try to steelman rather than strawman; there are more substantive possible motivations I might have for deviating from the narrative of discredited, conflicted warmongers and you show yourself to be a shallow thinker in your continued reaching for the easy, pre-programmed "shill" excuse and excretory-based insults. Have some self-respect and start showing rather than telling. I would love to see you post a comment on NC and receive pushback from people who actually know what they're talking about.
Larry Hart,
It's no mystery to me why he can't help himself. Try as he might to dismiss me in the easy prepackaged way described above, he can see that there is a little more sense to what I say than he is comfortable completely dismissing out of hand. He has not completely been consumed by jingoistic brainworms. Not quite yet. The Two Minutes Hate is a powerful bludgeon, but the human mind remains stubbornly curious.
zzzzzz
Very disappointing. You show your preening about Enlightenment values to be mere hot air, when the way to show rather than tell has been spelled out for you and you desperately cling to the latter.
In this new era of 'centaurs', a veneer of erudition and trappings of academia are for sale everywhere at $1/lb. But constructing comprehension from first principles remains the real coin of the realm. It's what draws me to transistors, circuits, and computation.
For the humor value alone...
https://www.threads.net/@stonekettle
FOX News' Jesse Watters: "When a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman."
Stonekettle: The plan of winning the election by just letting Republicans talk is working.
For the rest of you, I offered palpably testable assertions to be backed by $$$ wager stakes and adjudicated by a panel of not-overtly political retired senior military officers – the very same men and women who won the Cold War and the War on Terror, who cultists now deride as ‘deep state’ because they dare to say. “That’s not factually true.”
The magical cancellation-incantation to evade such accountability is "Truth is not adjudicated by 'experts.' scratch anyone who says that crap and they are weenie cowards who know their 'facts will shrivel before such light.
More fully and generally (and most of you have seen it before: Here's my standard (paste-in) wager demand. "Have a reputable atty verify you escrowed $10k stakes. We'll put evidence to a nonpartisan panel of retired Sr military officers. (Most former lifelong Republicans.) Pool with fellow MAGAs. Take MY $$!
*Grand juries across USA (mostly white retirees in mostly-red-run states) indicted almost a HUNDRED X as many top Repubs as dems! Your cult is a criminal gang. Bets?
*Pick any RANDOM 10 of Trump's 75,000 registered lies tofact-check. Or evidence of ANY election 'steal.' Or name 1 fact-profession NOT hated-on by Fox?
*Ask those heroes (who won the Cold War &War on Terror) to weigh Hunter B's whole life vs any random WEEK of the Trump boys. Let's tally NDAs & hush payments!
*Come to sea with me and a Ph meter! Bet whether acid is killing the oceans. Or start caring.
*Check Fox anti-science 'campus indoctrination' rants. Let's knock on 20 RANDOM doors at a nearby university!
*Compare DEATH rates of those who refused vaccines!
*Bet which party is ALWAYS more fiscally responsible? Or whether Red-run States (except Utah) average higher on EVERY turpitude!
No MAGA/Putinist EVER shows manly guts to back up their blab, as grampa would've. Blowhards flee, amid the ruins of their macho. Only HOW they yammer and yammer on their way out. O - in this case - they STAY to anonymously yammer, not caring at all what is says about their mothers.
David (I no longer feel warranted in honoring your supposed honorific),
Put up or shut up. Over and over, you show yourself too timid to wade outside of your hermetically sealed American bubble. The bad Orange Man is a Putler puppet, yes, we know. Go post on Naked Capitalism if you really want to show you wear the big boy pants you pretend to. You'd get destroyed. I try to extend the benefit of the doubt as far as reason allows, but it becomes ever harder to avoid the conclusion that you're just a self-satisfied fraud.
Pfff. I have no need to talk at someone who walked in with bad faith and keeps snarking at it while demanding good faith from others. Call it what one will, that's not productive.
However, discussion about the Kremlin's tactics -- which are, wittingly or unwittingly, driving our needler's rhetoric -- are worth discussing, as illustrations of my previous post.
For example: Russian-NATO engagement. A 1990 Gorby-Bush deal consisted of: German reunification with the former East, swapped for non-aligned status in former states of the Warsaw Pact. For all of 1990 and 1991, that agreement was respected.
In December 1991, the Soviet Union was disbanded. Gorbachev was suddenly powerless and fifteen sovereign states emerged (in some cases, were resurrected). Under Putinist axioms, this should have changed nothing! But outside Moscow, it seemed that there were now two layers of buffer states between NATO and the Russian homeland. So when the Warsaw states started knocking on the NATO door, it didn't seem proper to deny them anymore.
Since autonomy = hostility, though, Moscow saw any deviation from their previous influence as an aggressive action. Since acquiescence to Moscow buys no positive goodwill for a foreign nation, but deviation earns Moscow's ire, there is only one way the ratchet of relations can move -- downwards. Thus the increasing sourness of relations in the 1990's as NATO intervened in the Balkans; despite Russia's lack of capability to act alone in the area, they were nonetheless aggrieved at actions taken without them.
Russian diplomatic engagement works along the same lines as any other influence operation by Russia. The primary goal of Russian diplomacy, whether bilateral or through institutions, is to obstruct or sabotage any actions or ideas perceived as hostile to Russia. Russian engagement with any nation or international organization is proportional to their ability to achieve this goal.
A great example is the United Nations. Much bemoaning has been made over the decades regarding the inability of the UN to adapt its charter to the evolving shape of world diplomatic, military, and economic affairs. What is rarely remarked upon is that this rigidity was a non-negotiable Soviet demand. Likewise, the absolute veto power of all permanent members of the Security Council was a non-negotiable Soviet demand.
There would have been no UN, as a unifying and comprehensive world organization, without acceding to these demands; and as the lack of universality strangled the previous attempt (the League of Nations) in its cradle, the other powers felt they had no choice but to agree. However, though the UN has had some minor successes in brushfire conflicts, it is helpless to deal with maleficent actions by any of the permanent members -- who, being among the most powerful nations, are also some of the greatest threats to world peace. And all this is exactly according to Russia's intended design.
Even though the envisioned spheres-of-influence model mostly collapsed as decolonization disintegrated the British and French Empires and the Chinese convulsed with internal conflict for another generation and a half, the design still protects Russia's paramount desire: to be able to strike at perceived threats and control other nations in its perceived sphere with impunity.
Russian engagement with NATO has been along similar lines. Moscow only engages when it perceives a possible capability of vetoing, sabotaging, or influencing NATO actions. The instant NATO does something Moscow doesn't prefer, it's disengagement and cries of betrayal and grievance. The same occurs if any Russian personnel in a partnership role start manifesting thoughts or actions outside Moscow's decision loop. Autonomy = hostility, so even if the personnel are completely loyal to Russia and acted only to further Russian interests, they become distrusted and are either recalled or exiled.
Despite a computer science degree, I find PC technology incomprehensible, if not indistinguishable from magic.
Einstein was wrong. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is not insanity. It's computer science. :)
Catfish 'n Cod,
I've owned up to my needlessly inflammatory initial approach, adjusted it and continued having core facts be ignored over and over and over again. The tone policing I've been subjected to is a mere pretext to justify the predetermined refusal to engage points inconvenient to the narrative. That's because the whole shebang falls apart if the elephant in the room is acknowledged. The silence about the 2014 coup, and 10/7 Hannibalizing, is deafening. Since this isn't the first time you've gotten on your "to Russia, autonomy = hostility" talking point, I'll just paste my earlier response that you ignored:
"If Russia cannot tolerate mutual security arrangements, why did it want to join NATO? Why would NATO reject it, if it really is the defensive organization it pretends to be? If Russia considers autonomy to be hostility, why was it America that couped Ukraine in 2014 for the crime of being neutral vis a vis EU and Russia? Why is it America and not Russia that says "you're either with us or against us"?"
Re: Civil War
Ok, how would that play out? Look at any political map of the US,, and you'll see a vast sea of red counties with big blue urban centers.
So, I doubt that the sides would line up by states. In a battle of urban centers vs red rural areas, the first move would b for them to stop food deliveries.
How long would those urban centers last without a wave of food riots?
Seems to me, such a battle would break down to the ability of urban centers to seize enough food supplies to prevent collapse. I'm not sure how to evaluate such a battle.
At risk of angering our host, a quick response.
The silence about the 2014 coup...is deafening.
Because it is isomorphic to, "The silence about Hillary's child sex ring at Comet Ping Pong is deafening."
the predetermined refusal to engage points inconvenient to the narrative. That's because the whole shebang falls apart if the elephant in the room is acknowledged.
That's because you're either sealioning or Gish Galloping, bombarding us with assertions that conflict with our understanding of the universe, and then insisting that we refute every item or else tacitly accept them. No, life's too short.
Ok, now I'm--whatayacall--half finished.
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is not insanity. It's computer science.
Sounds a bit like the unit test suites one must run these days before the git lords will accept your offering.
Browser scripting? Currently having fun writing an svg based thingy. Learning new and interesting ways to trigger events.
W3C schools and Mozilla networks are your friends.
Did someone say 'Transparency' earlier? Some good news that's been coming for a while: MethaneSAT data is now available for all to see. Scope evaders can't hide any more.
Catfish 'N Cod:
Likewise, the absolute veto power of all permanent members of the Security Council was a non-negotiable Soviet demand.
I wish the UN would take more seriously Ukraine's assertion that Russia was not a member of the UN and not on the permanent security council. The Soviet Union was, but that entity no longer exists. Ukraine, on the other hand was a founding member of the UN in 1945. You can look it up.
True, it was then called the "Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic", but it's the same entity under a different name, like Rhodesia becoming Zimbabwe. The Russian Federation, on the other hand, is not the same thing as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and allowing the one to inherit the place of the other is a courtesy.
https://research.un.org/en/unmembers/founders
John Viril:
In a battle of urban centers vs red rural areas, the first move would b for them to stop food deliveries.
How long do they stay afloat without cash flow from selling food? Meanwhile, Canada reaps a windfall.
Larry Hart,
"At risk of angering our host, a quick response" - you sound like an abused underling in a domestic violence situation, lol. Listen to yourself. Walking on eggshells, indeed.
No, the Ukraine coup is not isomorphic to Pizzagate. But I'll save my breath. You're clearly committed to interpreting the endless string of impoverished failed states that result from our meddling as just a good-faith attempt at "spreading democracy."
You hit the nail on the head regarding your accusation of Gish galloping as reflecting merely "assertions that conflict with our understanding of the universe". I guess you'll just have to continue straining ever harder to dismiss anomalous facts as they pile up. I've cited enough of them, and can't make a horse drink. Still, as I look around and see where the bar is, I applaud your effort.
And you sound like a quad preacher or a flat-earther, trying to convince me that everything I know is wrong and I have to trust only you and your selected sources over my lying eyes.
Now, I'm--whatayacall--all finished.
shagggz,
The guy has a Ph.D.
Meh. So do I.
I know what they mean and don't mean better than most.
I have a special grading key I've used for papers submitted to me for review, internet posts, and comments for about 20 years now. It is a Crackpot Index. Scores near zero mean I can't be sure one way or the other, but strongly negative scores usually mean I shouldn't waste my time.
Problem is, your 'read this stuff' suggestions come off making them sound like crackpots. Whether they are or not, crackpot followers are among the entries on my index that lower the score. Specifically... it is stuff like this... and many others.
It's just that there's a limit to what organized power will countenance.
Consider the possibility that it isn't your facts we find unpersuasive. It's you... and that is a good thing. A change of approach might be enough to get around that.
Larry Hart,
No, I didn't say trust only me, I cited evidence that your own lying eyes would lead you to conclude that the corrupt grifters with a track record of failed predictions are not worth believing. And I pointed you towards one of the few remaining web presences with a rigorously truth-oriented commentariat unafraid to slay sacred cows. I hate to break it to you, but that ain't here. I encourage you to avail yourself of Naked Capitalism before it gets banned completely (it's already been tried before), and see for yourself whether the things you think you know can actually withstand principled scrutiny.
Other, unrelated stuff:
After watching Oppenheimer for the third time, I finally noticed that the guy who claimed the math said the A-bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and also said that the final implosion test had failed was the one who turned out to have been a Soviet agent all along. Presumably, his dire warnings were meant to slow down or halt development of the bomb.
I don't know the true history, and I'm not sure if the film was trusting the audience to put those pieces together or being coy because they made it all up. But it was a fascinating detail when I finally noticed.
Alfred Differ,
I'm happy for you and your grading key. I don't need to ask you to know that it doesn't rate highly, if it even allows the issue to be raised at all, critical scrutiny of the intelligence-insulting farce that is the official account of the JFK assassination. The lie this puts to the notion of "free inquiry" speaks for itself.
As for personalizing my "approach" as being the reason for my bumping up against the limits to the aforesaid inquiry our betters have set for us, so diligently adhered to in this community, I've already addressed it in my previous comment regarding tone policing. 'Tis a pretext for easy dismissal of uncomfortable thoughts, nothing more.
@LH: In terms of sophistry, you're right. In terms of practical diplomacy -- which uses sophistry as a tactical tool -- the situation remains exactly as it did in 1945: calling Russia's bluff transforms the UN from the universal diplomatic touchstone and mechanism to assist international cooperation back into a partisan alliance. Kicking Russia out of the UN is tantamount to acknowledging that the UN is failing at its prime directive.
Which, of course, it is -- but you can bet your boots the UN itself will only admit it when forced to. That's why Ukraine is pursuing bilateral and multilateral security guarantees outside the UN framework, while also calling for UN reform.
@David -- Why does poor quality of Russian materiel surprise you? (Or is it ISW that's surprised?) Russia's military strategies have always focused on quantity over quality, on using their own troops as cannon fodder, and on overwhelming the enemy with bulk of logistics and (as you note) stoic endurance. Against enemies with more hubris than they (Prussia, Austria-Hungary, early-modern Sweden, the Ottomans, the Nazis) that system worked rather well. Against enemies not quite so wedded to their own fever dreams (the Second Reich, NATO, the mujahedeen, modern Ukraine) it's not quite so effective.
Speaking of, let's talk Russia and Ukraine, because that's the focus that became so relevant to America's internal politics. Ukraine, in Russia's mind, was always supposed to "come home" to the orbit of Moscow (now rebranded as "Eurasian Union" after some false starts). That wasn't a completely unreasonable idea given the Russian-speaking minority, longstanding cultural connections, and lingering Soviet links. But it was also not a given, since Ukraine also had quite a lot of grievance against Russia (the actions of Reds on Whites in the Russian Civil War, the Holodomor, the treatment of Cossacks, the Chernobyl incident mishandling, and so on).
Russia bases its claims of "Western subversion" of Ukraine -- and of Russia itself, for that matter -- on the support for developing civil society organizations in all lands. There's both an idealistic rationale for that (civil society organizations stabilize and improve their host societies) and a cynical/opportunistic one (allows for cooperative ventures and integrating with Western-aligned international norms), but it's pretty standard all over. It's nothing specific about Russia; it's what the West does as a matter of course, everywhere.
Russia sees such as "subversion" because, in the Russian political memeplex, decision-making not under state influence should never exist. Anyone trying to make independent decisions about anything is potentially a possible focus of rebellion -- and therefore is treated as if it already is in rebellion. Agency, in the Russian political theory, cannot exist among the citizenry (aka proletariat, aka commons, aka peasantry). If actions are taken by common folk, it is axiomatic that there must be some faction, elite force, or conspiracy causing it.
In Russia, where any act of politics has been beaten down for centuries on end, that is probably an accurate model. But Russians who grow up in that mindset have grave difficulty believing that anyone else has a different system. Most can't even conceptualize it, even when staring it in the face.
Update on the MethaneSAT thing: a little premature. The data currently displayed is *not* from the satellite but equipment test runs taken from aircraft over the last couple of years.
Catfish, in what the Kremlin deemed its biggest mistake since Holodomor and killing most of the Soviet officer corps, just before Barbarosa, the USSR delegates stormed out of a security Council meeting in 1950 allowing the SC to pass a compulsory enforcement police action in Korea, under US leadership. The Sovs made the same mistake with the 1960-ish Congo Crisis.
Thereafter, Sov delegates and then Russian ones have virtually slept in the SC chamber to ensure the veto will never be neglected again.
Re NATO expansion, I can see the Russian POV, that’s colored (as you say) by 2000+ years of often-justified (but not now) paranoia. Their POV that promises viz NATO expansion were betrayed.
Only note that in all of the Putinist anger over that, not one word has ever been mentioned by the Kremlin over the purest fact… that the peoples of Eastern Europe – including Ukraine – don’t f-----g want Russians around, anyhow. Period. Ever. (Apologies to Lynryd Skynryd.)
That’s been confirmed from too many angles, in too many varied fora and elections and millions of personal contacts. (ASK Poles, Lithuanians etc. Personally ask.) EVERY satrapy that’s been dominated by Moscow slips away and then hurries toward protective alliances, as soon as they can.
The monstrously evil incantations about “Ukrainian Nazis!!!” ignore any possibility of actually checking. Sending neutral teams to find out what Ukrainians actually want. (And right now they want revenge… but might settle for immense reparations for the ashes and ruins spread by czarist… er commie… um Putinist forces. Minefields, ruins and ashes. Ah, ‘liberation.’)
(Side note. Moscow avoids prisoner exchanges. Every released Ukrainian (and they are fewer, by far) adds to AFU strength while every returning Russian soldier tell truths back home and then explains - back at the front - how to surrender and get a nice safe vacation.)
NONE of the incantation spells about Putinist reasons for the war refers to the possibility of citizen rights, public opinion, self-determination or even accurate polling of opinions and attitudes. Never, ever ever. Nor do they ever refer to the stunning courage and innovative determination of Ukraine’s volunteer forces.
NATO grew… and will grow… out of fear of a real danger. And then there’s this. If the Putinists were EVER fearful of NATO attack, why have they stripped their borders with Finland, Estonia, etc of nearly all military assets? Right now, a pack of angry cub scouts could march on Minsk, collecting BeloRussian volunteers and be in Smolensk and VolokiLuki in a week. Finnish girl scouts could take St. Petersburg. Oooh so fearful of attack by NATO.
THAT is what is meant by rule of law. Putin can strip his borders because he knows it won’t happen. Because no combination of western leaders would order it and commanders would not obey.
Because – until conditions change – it would be against the law.
Catfish 'N Cod:
Kicking Russia out of the UN is tantamount to acknowledging that the UN is failing at its prime directive.
I understand the realities that preclude challenging Russia's claim to the mantle of the old USSR. It's just fun to call attention to the fact that there is a legitimate challenge to their claim.
And I wouldn't call for kicking Russia out of the UN. They could have joined as a new member any time after 1991.
“Quad preachers.” Every Comic-Con there are loudspeaker ‘preacher’ yammerers screaming damnation at the thousands entering/leaving the convention center, howling the vilest crap. Try to argue and they spit "Get thee behind me, Satan!" If the democrats were deeply flawed, at least they'd protect me from Nehemia Scudder.
Only, in fact, they are not deeply flawed. They are America.
Alfred, the ‘facts have (so far) been so perfectly and diametrically OPPOSITE to factual that it cannot be error, but part of the flat-out evil, all-out campaign against the very concept of fact.
Craig I am not totally surprised that RF weapons are low quality. But THIS low?
Alexander Solzhenytsin (The First Circle, etc) was anti communist but a huge Russian nationalist. But he wrote that in the Gulag of how Ukrainians nursed deep grudges and did not want to be Russian. And this was the 1950s. He recommended winning them over with a multigenerational love campaign. A love campaign. Hos that going for you guys? Ukrainians might have had ambivalences before, especially over language. No more. They now lean INTO differences in pronunciation and spelling, and philologists are striving tpo keep up.
Finally, it's no accident that Putin's most-loathed human is the same as Rupert Murdoch's. George Soros. Fox regularly calls him scary for 'toppling ten foreign governments!" And dumb Fox dittohead viewers never ask: "Um, WHICH ten foreign governments did that scary man 'topple?'"
Sounds like it's time again for this excerpt from Mark Twain's "The Czar's Soliloquy".
There are twenty-five million families in Russia. There is a man-child at every mother's knee. If these were twenty-five million patriotic mothers, they would teach these man-children daily, saying : "Remember this, take it to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it."
With twenty-five million taught and trained patriots in the land a generation from now, my successor would think twice before he would butcher a thousand helpless poor petitioners humbly begging for his kind-ness and justice, as I did the other day.
It is downright surreal watching you guys recite this received wisdom that is so completely opposite to the reality. When our idiot rulers who apparently got high off their own propaganda supply expected Russia to simply fold once they pushed their magical "sanctions" button (illegal, btw) and froze/stole a bunch of its dollarized wealth, destroying their own credibility to the onlooking world in the process, their hubristic cluelessness was laid bare. At the time, my gullibility more resembled yours than it does now. Russian morale and equipment are a joke! Ukrainian victory is just around the corner! They are valiantly standing up for freedom and democracy!
Now, it's hard for me to even wrap my mind around how you can believe such things, even though I was once in the same boat. It feels more like an anthropologist observing zoo animals, or even space aliens. Remember, Ukraine already was a democracy on Western terms in 2014. They just voted the wrong way (like another recipient of American "democracy spreading", Iraq, voting for American troops to vacate their land, to no avail, of course). So "someone" intervened.
Tell me, can you name even a single thing that has gotten better for the Ukrainian citizens since this corrective action was so benevolently imposed? Foreign land ownership has been legalized, opposition parties have been banned, an entire generation has been thrown in the meat grinder (with fresh new dragoons being yanked off the street of an ever expanding age range), I could go on...
Oh but DO go on! It costs us nothing but the nasal membranes that quiver when we go "Snork!"
YOU are opposite to facts... No YOU are! An effective incantation... in some places. But we know which side wages all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.
Esp vs science.
And gradually more wise folks will issue distinct wager challenges. From which anonymous cowards flee.
Oh, re a civil war. Of course much depends on the atual military, whose officer corps will likely side with the republic and science and all that... but I worry about the Fox ever yammering in the noncoms' ready rooms.-
setting them aside, while nearly all cities will go blue, including the entire Dallas-San Antonia - Austin Houston corridor, not all rural areas will go red. Sure, California central valley folks vote GOP. The Nation's bread basket. I very much doubt they'd go all secesh.
Food would flood in from all over the globe and it's amazing how efficient things get when you go vegetarian.
But see OUR WAR and also TEARS OF ABRAHAM. A couple of excellent, worrisome novels.
Kamala Harris issues cojones challenge to Donald Trump: "...if you’ve got something to say, say it to my face."
Lol, did he just say the war on terror (a concept, and a vapid one at that) was "won"?
Damn, his ravings resemble less and less the same tired old partisan tripe and more and more like a psychotic fugue state.
Yeah, that counteroffensive is gonna take off aaaaaaany day now!
Guys, don't forget while this shaggy-guy may be a single person sitting in his parent's house basement, soiling his pants in anticipation of NATO being "defeated" and/or Ukrainians and Jews being raped, mutilated, deported and murdered, it may also be that "he" is actually several persons, working in shifts.
Or a LLM.
His/Their current desperation is telling, though. 50% of MAGA social media accounts on Egon von Brauns plattform have found to be not in the US, and even his own digital child, Grok, disses him. Remember, the commissars do not take failure lightly, and if an individual troll displeases his masters, he might easily be send to the meat grinder as a reward.
Bahahahah wow, you guys really believe this horseshit, don't you? Do you realize the preposterous lengths you're going to rather than allow for the apparently unthinkable possibility that someone could have a working brain and stop listening to the self-serving lies of proven liars and the self-respect to stop carrying water for them?
Like I said, I'm a peacenik. And a Western one. So rather than wishing for these depraved lurid things you project onto me (no surprise given the allowable range of thought your psychopathic overlords have assigned for you), I stand to lose quite a lot from the severe diminishment in Western standing that is hurtling towards us. I don't spend my emotional energies on a futile endeavour on something like turning this sinking ship around. I do, however, find great amusement in seeing reality for what it is, which in this case would be, in the words of a once-great man, a "reactive, inferior mind." I'll spare you the scatological self-beclownment, though.
@Catfish
Against enemies not quite so wedded to their own fever dreams (the Second Reich
I'd dispute that in part. The whole of Europe was in a fever dream, at least 1914/15. 1916 onwards slow realization set in that this wasn't a heroic adventure, but a slaughterhouse.
In the end, the Tsars fever dream broke first.
When will yours?
DerOger, because so many of you got sucked into engaging the anonymous coward. I scanned again for clues. Linguistically this creep is not a Kremlin basement troll, even assisted by AI. Nor is he multiple people, the syntax is too idiosyncratically repetitive.
Nor is he an agent provocateur, since his cycles are utterly self-referential and are far more centered on preening faux equality with us, so he can thereupon claim superiority, by having risen above us. HE is his own main audience and any effects upon us are secondary.
The penultimate clincher is the desperately repetitive "I pity you all!" masturbation.
The final piece is utter avoidance of dealing in facts, but relentlessly yowling THAT he has facts. Assertions are all equal in merit since facts are not actually things. I gave a long list of fact-checkable wager matters that - were even just ONE of them true (and all of them are) his stances would be unsupportable. He changed the subject frantically.
It's a syndrome I've seen plenty from would-be alphas who know they will always be betas. The final symptom, seen in every single one of the twit's postings, is the insipidly predictable "All the things you lemmings believe are diametrically opposite to all the true things that I can see and you all cannot!!!" And thus an inferior mind (with some language skills) uses a reliable incantation to preen above those who he knows are much smarter and know tons more.
He could disprove this by offering assertions that are directly falsifiable or provable by unambiguously checkable facts. But the 'facts' that he offers are always more assertions.... assertions whose entire credibility rests on them being opposite to what lemmings frantically believe. That opposite to accepted wisdom trait IS their validation.
Assertions, all the way down, and if they are obviously untrue? Well, only FOOLS believe the obvious!
I repeat my invitation for him to come here once in a while to offer a link to his own blog, which is what a person who had a scintilla of honor - or was raised by a competent or decent mother - would do. He won't, because he is a blowhard anonymous coward, whose mom did a truly crappy job of raising a decent person.
Oh and let me add this anonymous coward is also a poo-poo head.
----
Okay guys. Did I engage enough? Can we get on with life and leave him to stew?
That is really rich for you to claim I think myself superior when you're the one who immediately right out the gate called mine a "reflexive, inferior mind" for having the temerity for going against the imperial programming you are so obviously motivated to conform your perceptions to. Can't get a man to see that which his meal ticket depends on him not seeing, and all that. I've provided these links and facts that are so contrary to your motivational matrix enough times to show where your carefully cultivated blind spots are.
I don't blame you, you do what you gotta do in this world. I just can't help but find the contrast of your preening about Enlightenment values as you demonstrate their limitations, like a piece of self-unaware performance art.
Yeah, you've plumbed the metaphorical toilet enough times, so you might as well bring my mother into it at this point. Stay classy, Dave. I do appreciate the invitation, though. No hard feelings, really.
Dr Brin:
DerOger, because so many of you got sucked into engaging the anonymous coward. I scanned again for clues. Linguistically this creep is not a Kremlin basement troll, even assisted by AI. Nor is he multiple people, the syntax is too idiosyncratically repetitive.
Note that I only engaged with him because he'd denied that Russia had kompromat on Trump, arguing that Israel did instead by way of Epstein. I pointed out that I agreed with him that Epstein was the most likely original source of the Trump kompromat, but that Epstein wasn't working for Israel (although regarding someone with such a Yiddish* surname that would certainly be an understandable error) and that Russia most likely purchased the kompromat from the people whom Epstein was working for.
(* Could anyone advise incidentally if there is a more appropriate term than "Yiddish" to describe surnames that are linguistically Germanic but associated overwhelmingly with Ashkenazi Jews?)
It is weird how you guys seem so touchy about upsetting Dave's diktat that I not be engaged with, on the still quite amazing to me theory that I must be some sort of Kremlin shill or worse. Open your minds, jeez.
Only Trump could make this happen?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-01/us-reporter-released-by-russia-in-multi-country-prisoner-swap
Russia is releasing Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan as part of a major prisoner swap with the US, according to people familiar with the situation.
One time reposting, because I'm sure it was buried in all the s### that was stinking up Dr Brin's living room carpet at the time.
* * *
After watching Oppenheimer for the third time, I finally noticed that the guy who claimed the math said the A-bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and also said that the final implosion test had failed was the one who turned out to have been a Soviet agent all along. Presumably, his dire warnings were meant to slow down or halt development of the bomb.
I don't know the true history, and I'm not sure if the film was trusting the audience to put those pieces together or being coy because they made it all up. But it was a fascinating detail when I finally noticed.
I've been reading here for close to 15 years. I don't even try to post anymore because you guys are all way more articulate than I am.
It took me about 7 years to give up on Loco, now I just skip his postings entirely.
It took me about 2 years to do the same to the Ent (did he finally find an Entwife?)
Took me 3 days for shaggy. A new record.
Russia is releasing Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan as part of a major prisoner swap with the US, according to people familiar with the situation.
I assume that Vadim Krassikow, the Tiergarten Killer, will be part of the deal. He had a life sentence for murdering a political dissident. He will be welcomed back with great honors as a "patriot who killed a bandit" (taken from the Tuckyo Rose interview with VP).
I would find this decision difficult; if just for the reason that Putin could always decide to let the dissidents to be killed later, and others could easily be encouraged. The Skripal poisoners got a seat in the duma, IIRC.
Stonekettle on Threads.
https://www.threads.net/@stonekettle
Repeat after me: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE DEEP STATE
What these cud chewing dipshits call the Deep State is simply continuity of government, the day-to-day normal operation of one of the largest and most complex governments in history, operated by career professionals most of whom are proud to keep the wheels turning and the gears lubricated.
Can you imagine if government was completely changed out every new administration? New people new procedures, it would be total and utter chaos.
This fellow, a respected contributor at Current Affairs, shows just how blatant the New Nazis are now, describing a book - UNHUMANS - that's blurbed by JD Vance, calling liberals sub-beings, worthy of extinction - with plenty of racism, misogyny and Jew hate mixed in. One would picture that - and the quotations I've seen - having been exaggerated satire, in Norman Spinrad's wonderful THE IRON DREAM. But satire has become reality, making 1933 Germany no longer a mere metaphor or even exaggeration.
https://x.com/curaffairs/status/1818813431731892321
Our greatest danger arises out of the utter incompetence of the goodguys, at polemically eviscerating this madness. Blue pols are generally good and honest and fact-oriented policy wonks and the 2021-22 Pelosi bills were wonders of effective policy, with unambiguously and massively positive outcomes.
But lib-pundits are incapable of calling things what they are. e.g. the slightly relabeled Kremlin & KGB, while raising statues to cruelly stoopid czars, are led by 5000 "ex" commissars who never renounced their lifelong fealty to Lenin and Stalin - while now borrowing liberally from Mein Kampf. (Putin repeatedly calls the fall of the USSR 'history's greatest tragedy.'
Their relentless attempts to divert - by calling Ukrainians 'nazis' and US liberals 'communists' should be answered with the wise retort of the sage Peewee Herman.
"No we're not. YOU are!"
Larry Hart beat me to comparing Shagggz's arguments to those of flatearthers.
Dr Brin:
Their relentless attempts to divert - by calling Ukrainians 'nazis' and US liberals 'communists'...
I don't think their stereotypes are as successful as they once were on post-Boomers. Certainly, the usual racist/sexist dog whistles about Kamala Harris don't seem to have traction. Their leadership is even telling them to cut it out, despite their being constitutionally unable to do so.
"No we're not. YOU are!"
The "weird" meme seems to be catching on and driving them (more) insane. It's juvenile, but I'll go with results.
Vadim Krassikow is exchanged.
There seems to have been a high level of disagreement between the Chancellory and the Foreign Ministry. Had that been resolved earlier, Nawalny would have been part of the deal.
David,
Alfred, the ‘facts have (so far) been so perfectly and diametrically OPPOSITE to factual that it cannot be error, but part of the flat-out evil, all-out campaign against the very concept of fact.
Yes. I've been coming around to your POV on this. It has been a challenging evolution because I can't really see myself as anyone's enemy. Apparently I am when acting as part of the knowledge caste.
Okay guys. Did I engage enough? Can we get on with life and leave him to stew?
Yes. Shields up.
Don Gisselbeck:
Larry Hart beat me to...
Heh. It's not a race, dude.
comparing Shagggz's arguments to those of flatearthers.
Flat-earthers, newly-converted Christians, new initiates to any sort of cult. Always so desperate to reinforce their new worldview by proving that anyone exposed to it will recognize its wonderfulness and wonder how they ever felt otherwise.
"Once you get used to the smell of hog rendering, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it."
I did visit that website that he kept touting. OMG, what a circle-jerk of pro-Putin, pro-Hamas, anti-West, anti-Israel counter-factual propaganda, all reinforcing each other into believing that they (smugly) know the real truth, and the other 300 million Americans are credulous sheeple led by the nose. There would be no point for anyone to wade into that cesspool and try to present an alternate POV. You'd just be flame-warred. As it is, I need a drink and a shower, and to wash out my eyeballs with disinfectant.
Ok, I exaggerate, but whoa.
Catfish 'n Cod,
Russia sees such as "subversion" because, in the Russian political memeplex, decision-making not under state influence should never exist.
I agree. On a board I used to frequent I met a guy who was over there 'teaching' Democracy. He and his friends despised Obama and Clinton for not doing more to help the people of Ukraine liberate themselves, so they figured they had to do it themselves. They didn't teach rebellion specifically, but teaching democracy and a sense of dignity was certainly going to wind up with the Russian puppets being ousted.
The guy I knew was very careful not to release his name and we all understood why. That an American could be over there teaching people they should be able to self-govern would be interpreted by Russia as America being over there teaching all that. There would be no distinction made.
The guy I knew likely wouldn't be happy with Ukraine's people dying in this war, but he would have argued this kind of war with Russia was a better outcome than remaining as a puppet state.
I've lost touch with him... and I'm fine with that. I think of him now and then, though, when people argue we can't affect the world except through our governments. Obviously we can. Well... barbarians can. He and his friends went over there and found fertile minds where liberty and dignity could grow. He's probably arguing they are fighting a just war... and I agree.
Most can't even conceptualize it, even when staring it in the face.
Exactly.
Larry,
Always so desperate to reinforce their new worldview by proving that anyone exposed to it will recognize its wonderfulness and wonder how they ever felt otherwise.
I would add those quad preachers, but I think their belief in exposing people to a truth is self-delusion. We all know they engage in delusion, but I think the actual purpose of the screeching is to provoke us into persecution. THAT is what reinforces their world view. Our anger expressed directly in their faces forces them to build more of that emotional wall Roger Waters described much more artistically than I ever will.
I saw too many mid-20's bachelors pass through their depressions be captured by cults and cult-ideas. I've often wondered what we could do to reduce the risks that the next crop of kids will succumb in similar numbers. Seems like it be a worthy accomplishment if we could figure out how to do it.
[The only thing I could think of involves ensuring they all get laid. Often. Very often. The sooner we put unwanted pregnancies and STD's out of business, the better.] 8)
Cultism, particularly Ptolemaic geocentrism and early Christianity, are well explored in "Agora" (2009), the Hypatia story. Fear of the feminine mind is an overwhelming historical force for evil.
Larry Hart,
"...and the other 300 million Americans are credulous sheeple led by the nose" - But you are, though. If you somehow allowed yourself to go not by what self-interested parties tell you, but by something objective like predictive value, you'd see NC has been consistently early and correct on all sorts of issues, precisely because they don't take things on faith that warrant a skeptical eye. As for their supposedly "flame-warring" anyone who presents an alternate view, that is not true at all. They'd merely demand evidence for the assertions made, and enforce a strict no ad hominem policy. Quite the opposite treatment from what you see here from Dave, heaping literal poo-poo level namecalling on unwelcome views.
I really don't know how you guys can lend credence to these fairy tale stories about American motivations for their interventions abroad. Setting aside all the PNAC resource wars, how is what Ukraine has been reduced to now less of a puppet state than what they were in 2014? They never wanted this war, and now they have it, with American officials publicly lusting after their resources and gleefully marveling at what a good deal it is for America to have them "fight to the last Ukrainian" on its behalf. If you were following developments along on NC you would not be surprised by their circling the drain as they currently are, then tossed aside like a used napkin as we move onto the next one.
Props to LH for at least looking, though. Like I said, the bar here is in hell. You sure do love your priors massaged.
Putin would never let Navalny go.
These exchanges make Putin giggle. When he wants to get a spy or assassin back, he just kidnaps some westerners. Laughing at rule-of-law.
But POW exchanges terrify him. First, there are far more Russian POWs, though many refuse to go home. Those who do refute every state pushed meme when they go home… and/or tell RF troops about the country-club POW camps they were in.
“The only thing I could think of involves ensuring they all get laid. Often. Very often.”
Well, the programming of the sex-bots needs to be very, very closely watched.
Finally: Dope unintentionally illustrates my point. “We BOTH call each other inferior!” Implicitly, all assertions are equivalent things. Yeah, sure. Alas, in his case it is a baseless assertion, like all of his utterances, refuted by my open ID and reputation that I earn daily more than he ever will, across many decades. That plus facts.
The syndrome is as I described.
“I have superior cred BECAUSE everything I say is opposite to what all the smart guys know! OPPOSITE incantation makes me look like a brave rebel against lemming consensus!!”
No, it makes you look like a septic-head, putin-shill idiot with a vocabulary. And an anonymous coward.
pfeh
Alright, Dave. Speaking of Navalny and the Western tendency to use people like tools, you might be interested in the divergence of his wife and mother on how his name is being used: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/02/navalny-organization-splits-into-whites-and-reds-as-lies-multiply.html
The only thing I could think of involves ensuring they all get laid. Often. Very often. The sooner we put unwanted pregnancies and STD's out of business, the better.
Did not help with the Manson Family, our Red Army Faction and approximately half of our male Social Democrats visiting "World Socialist Congresses" (Read: Kompromat Harvesting Days) in their youth.
What would help: Training to recognize toxic persons, who often have a both political and sexual charisma, and strengthening traits to resist them, actually making society less depressing or making depressions easy to detect and treat, and finally, creating structures that those toxic leaders cannot easily crack.
In case anyone needs a good book to refute the various JFK conspiracy theories, [i]Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK[/i] by Gerald Posner is an excellent source for eviscerating them. He goes through the various theories and shows how the facts disprove each one. Well worth reading for anyone who still buys into those dusty, tired, just-so stories.
A quick Olympic observation re gender.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imane_Khelif
She represented Algeria in the women's lightweight event at the 2020 Summer Olympics, where she was defeated by Ireland's Kellie Harrington in the quarterfinals.
You would think with such a testosterone advantage she would have easily won gold in 2020 (actually 2021 with the covid delay)
She didn't even medal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_at_the_2020_Summer_Olympics
Khelif fights as a women's lightweight, 60kg or 132 lbs, equivalent to a featherweight in the male category.
Gee, you'd think such a brawny manish beast would weigh more.
Instead Khelif got her ass whupped in the last Olympics by an Irish gal.
https://www.the42.ie/kellie-harrington-olympic-bronze-medal-5513227-Aug2021/
Kellie Harrington wins quarter-final to secure Olympic bronze medal
The Dubliner was too strong for Algeria’s Imane Khelif.
KELLIE HARRINGTON WILL return from the Olympics with at least a bronze medal after winning her quarter-final bout against Algeria’s Imane Khelif.
Harrington advanced to the semi-finals of the lightweight division with a commanding unanimous decision victory.
Harrington had eased past Italy’s Rebecca Nicoli in her round of 16 fight on Friday.
And the Dubliner was just as impressive against Khelif, starting strongly to take a tentative first round with four of the five judges.
Harrington then landed some good shots at the beginning of the second round, her speed and movement proving too good for Kehlif. Harrington’s momentum was paused following a trip over her own shoelaces, but she took control again to take the round with all five judges.
And she dominated the third round, landing a number of impressive, clean shots as she dragged Khelif around the ring.
What has changed since 2020 to make this an issue?
Maybe people on the Right are using this for anti-trans political purposes.
Apparently, out Attorney General hat to be ordered by the Ministry of Justice to let the killer go. Source is public broadcasting ARD.
That is, at that level, usually one short step before being fired.
I wonder if we still have a government after the elections on September 1st.
He’s not an agent:
Russians hiring standards are higher.
DP,
"Maybe people on the Right are using this for anti-trans political purposes."
Of course they are. But it's not like (what passes for) the left doesn't use trans people for political purposes. Hiding behind minorities to lead the charge has become standard practice for how America conducts imperialism. The former spokesperson trans woman Sarah Ashton-Cirillo is a good case in point, who encourages us to "embrace the hate of the Russians" and had her deranged video calling them "devils" taken down after it became an embarrassment for Ukraine. I thought love was supposed to conquer hate?
Or how Jewish people are deployed as the tip of the imperial spear to brush off any criticism of the lawless barbarity of the Zionist project as "antisemitism" even as they conduct mass starvation on another Semitic people (80% of all starving people in the world were in Gaza not long ago, was it?). One would laugh at the absurd insanity of the rhetoric, were it not for the tragedy. But they'd have to even be open to such unwelcome facts to begin with, wouldn't they? I know that's not a popular position here. Only feelgood stories that cast us as the good guys, please!
You’re too vague—
the devil is in the details.
They never wanted this war, and now they have it,
This is what I mean about my lying eyes (well, ears anyway).
I heard "I need ammunition, not a ride."
Ok, this really will be my last dip into the shit. Because I wanted to address this yesterday.
Quite the opposite treatment from what you see here from Dave, heaping literal poo-poo level namecalling on unwelcome views
Not on unwelcome views. That's the part you don't get. When you crash a party in someone else's house--the door open to the public but still his house--and shit all over the rug, don't be surprised at the reaction you get.
And really, what are you accomplishing here? Worst case--every one of us is a fool who will eventually run up against solid reality on some kind of battlefield. So, what's it to you? Say "I told you so," when the time comes.
I know I will.
Ok, now I'm--whatayacall--more than finished.
"the devil is in the details." - It sure is. That's why something like 75% of killed journalists were in Gaza last year. The most moral army in the world, folks.
"I need ammunition, not a ride." - I'm sorry, I don't have the relevant polling at my fingertips. I can only do so much. You starting to open your mind to the larger pattern of American involvement somehow always ending up in war, which they have a material interest in perpetually stoking, would help spread the factfinding burden, though.
"what are you accomplishing here?" - If I help my fellow humans put a dent in their kneejerk faith that we are the good guys regardless of how consistently we are marshalled into the role of belligerent aggressor engaged in negative-sum activities, indifferent to international law, that seems like a good use of time to me. The ecological walls are closing in and there are far wiser uses of our dwindling resources than this idiocy, guys.
You do not have to provide fine-grain details; but then you need not be taken seriously.
And, if you don’t give us a name (‘shagggz’ could be something out of Austin Powers), there might remain a suspicion you’re being excessively cagey.
Yet not a Cagey Bee.
"but then you need not be taken seriously" - Look, I don't want to be rude here, but the issue here is not whether you have verifiable proof of my real-world identity, but the number your propaganda bubble has done on your perceptions. You were more willing to take seriously the idea that I'm an LLM (lol!) than the idea that the people who lied you into Iraq and all the rest, lied you into yet another one. This is ridiculous, to put it mildly.
"Yet not a Cagey Bee" - Heh. Nicely done, sir. Fine, I'll come out and say it. I'm actually a dog. Haven't you heard that on the internet, nobody can tell if you are one?
Alan we have a consensus. He is an anonymous coward who plagues places he is unwanted (morally related to rape), had an ineffective mother and thinks that opposite-to-fact assertions are superior to fact-based maturity, BECAUSE they are opposite to fact. Enough. If he compulsively insist on shitting on our rug, I will eventually (zzzzz) get around to reporting and banning...
... but zzzzzz
Oswald had means, motive opportunity and expertise in a perfect location.
None of which explains Jack Ruby. UNLESS the mob had a frantic reason to eliminate Oswald.
My guess. Some mob guy tried to talk Oswald into it as just a semi-drunk what-if…
... and never figured it would work, then had to act quick to cover the trail. NOW it fits all the facts.
If you-know-who (and I don’t mean Oswald) was hired by a Western agency to discredit the far-left, his handlers each deserve an extra turkey this Christmas.
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