Russian Deputy Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russian forces are in control of the battlefield and pushing back the Ukrainians steadily back, plus this little gem of material reality—”Our servicemen have dispelled the myth of the superiority of Western weapons
Argentina is asking to become a member of NATO. Did the CIA actually raise Milei from childhood to be a perfect little neocon neoliberal? Leaving BRICS, joining NATO. Not the same things, but certainly woe to ordinary Argentinians, IMO. Milei is, though, just another backyard helper- critter, as far as the US is concerned. Help with the looting and the wars.
Watching to see if a measure enabling green card holders to be able to vote is introduced through Congress or more likely by presidential decree. The Dems are losing the black vote, from what I am seeing. That would likely never get through a GOP-held Congress - although Mike Johnson is certainly the Dems' little helper now - but I believe Biden can do anything he wants if it does not affect the US "budget". There may be too many eyes on the corrupted voting machinery now.
Always remember - the Dems motto is "any horrendous Dem-desired ends justify any horrendous Dem-inflicted means". A corollary is that anything horrendous that the Dems accuse others of doing usually means the Dems are already doing whatever that is. Crematory smoke, and mirrors.
The thing you do with Milei. Watch the specifics. Rhetoric is one thing; instead look closely at the specifics. He wants to join NATO now? His libertarianism has to be applied, and there are various ways to apply it. Will Milei protect his Argentinian industries from neo-liberalism? I wonder... I want to see specific policy decisions. The texts he is known to follow were all written in a quite different world political situation. His academic philosophy is from like fifty years ago, or even a hundred years ago. That was not a different world in most ways? Something does not computer here....
Milliei's basically an academic. They are usually ridiculously easy to turn. Bernie Sanders, Cornel West, it's a long list. Rightist academics are just as corruptible as the leftist ones.
Ninety Five Billion... $95,000,000,000... $95 FIVE FUCKING BILLION DOLLARS - Chuck Schumer wouldn't know a defense of democracy plan if it shot up his ass and out of his niece's mouth... Oh, that happened, didn't it? And, NO ONE is listening to the majority of us as these mental midgets in Washington are pretending everyone wants to continue this another minutes. Are Mr. & Mrs. America through with their wallet extraction to push us all to the brink of WWIII yet? I will never stop fighting against this shit.
I'm happy to finally see how non-stop the student pro-Palestine protest is across this nation where voices of the people reach deaf ears and the dead eyes only focused on war. WHAT the absolute fuck is going on where the heart and mind of the speaker does a 180 on pushing this legislation through.
Summer Lee won, and PA's a swing state. Hey, how many voted "uncommitted" for the prez primary?
"Write-ins" got 5.3% of the Democratic presidential primary vote. Over 55,000 statewide. Whoever Dean Phillips is got 6.3%, so I guess that's 11% of PA Dems rejecting Biden.
Those are truly cult-like numbers. It's getting to the point I can't even talk to what Ohio Democrats are left--they spout NPR talking points in an intellectual, lecturing tone that tickles my berserker rage gene.
Looks like the college protests have gone nationwide and aren't stopping. It reminds me of 1970 after Nixon invaded Cambodia.
I'll have to find out how PA faired in the "uncommitted" vote. I haven't had time to break it down.
NPR talking points is ALL I get in written form, and any time I see Casey and Fetterman's face. Fetterman's staff hung up on my ass when insisting for a real answer because of the same berserker rage gene that rises up from my base chakra !!!!!!
I did invite a number of "friends" to join me in giggling, guffawing, and snorting their morning coffee onto their keyboards here at this barbarous site, but apparently my "friends" have no sense of humor and are concerned that I seem contaminated with Putin Propaganda.... sigh. Thank YOU for being my friend! It's getting very lonely IRL.
Putin? Oh, I cited some RT stories. Well, where the hell else am I supposed to get news in English about things my own government's versions of Pravda will either ignore or lie about, especially things Russian? Where else will I get the Russian perspective? I certainly will take any songs they sing of Putin's praises with a big grain of salt.
If they haven't canceled you, tell your friends that Putin's very easy to understand and thus very easy to predict. He's a Russian patriot. Figure out what the Russian national interest is, and you know what he is going to want to do. Extinction is not in Russia's national interests, therefore Putin will not start a war with NATO. It's not complicated. In fact, I paraphrased what Putin's actually said. He's not freaking Genghis Khan.
And I'm glad of the giggling, guffawing, etc. Seeing that compliment makes my day. Thanks very much for following.
Yes, I go to RT constantly now not just to get another perspective, a geo-political story that isn't covered by the US media, it has always been better to get what the Russians say in their own words rather than what the US media tells us that Russian leadership says. But I have also been informed and entertained about/by Russian culture from some of their 'shows', i.e., Inside Visions....stories about the Bolshoi Theater, regional cultures in the RF, stories about RF nature preserves, etc., etc.
I think they have a nice site. You know I can't even look at it on my work's system? They blocked it right after the war began.
RT gets things wrong from time to time, but they have a far, FAR better record of accuracy than any Western corporate media outlet. They tend just not to talk about internal Russian politics much, but no news outlet is perfect and none should ever be perfectly trusted.
Great example. I still think he may be right about the Pentagon working with the Iranians. If the goal was to avoid a war with Iran, they succeeded.
I know for a fact there is growing discontent within the military. Be that as it may, I didn't mention several of Hersh's articles in a row because they were transparent Empire propaganda in new packaging.
The U. S. needs Iran. They are going to need an alternative to Israel and to the Saudis. The U. S. brought Shia and Sunni together on Iraq. Did they? There was a coalition of some type? Is that still working?
Russia has always had very clear foreign policy objectives. (I am not including the Soviet Union) in this. As far as it pertains to Western Europe, one should be able to understand that after the Teutonic Knights, Charles XII, Napoleon, Poland and Hitler they would like peaceful neighbors to the west. The arrogance of the U.S. meddling in Ukraine is beyond belief. Esp when it follows the looting of Russia by the neoliberals.
A few thoughts on Russia: 1. Masters of land warfare, bar none. The Americans should not brawl with the Russians. It won’t end well.
2. After the Russians chased Bonaparte out, czar Alexander elected, over the advice of his generals, to defeat Napoleon and bring peace to Europe. And so he did. Afterwards the Russians went home. Alexander faked his death and lived the rest of his life in Siberia as an Orthodox monk.
Yes, given all of that history, and relatively recent history at that, it is no wonder that Russia insists on at least peaceful neighbors to its west, and could not possibly allow Ukraine to join a hostile alliance that had proved itself capable of invading other countries on several occasions.
When it comes to war on or next to their own territory, the Russians have a well-established pattern going all the way back to the invasion of the Teutonic Knights you mentioned. They usually make some serious mistakes at first, and suffer serious losses, but they learn from those mistakes. They innovate. Then they counterattack.
When a random reptile sunning himself on the tarmac does more to impede your nation's genocide than its workers... /smh
FTR: I've lost patience with Americans. I am still anti-vengeance, and I don't use the word "deserve" to excuse torment, ever. But to me, if you're still going to work, when you can possibly survive not doing so, you might as well work in a prison staffed by child slaves building white phosphorus bomblets disguised as MREs to be dropped from IDF drones on aid convoys.
It's clear that everyone is totally cool with flaying infants from the sky, just so long as they get their next paycheck.
Maybe so, I, being an ignorant American, don't have enough exposure to that sphere to say. I will say that the project of civilization has failed in the sense that it was a project to improve day to day life and grant larger strategic options. Instead we traded day to day comfort for those options.
Sorry, but I'm not going to blame the victims of a system. If you're working to keep your kids fed, clothed, housed and hopefully schooled, you'll pay attention to getting that accomplished before considering ANYTHING else.
There were years when I did the exact same thing, years where I didn't even try to find the backstories of the break-up of Yugoslavia because I just didn't have the time while working 60-80 hours a week and, not coincidentally, didn't care very much.
I may be a barbarian but I try to avoid being a hypocritical one.
"Hypocrite" here FWIW is a tuquoque fallacy. "Sorry" but this is something that should factor in before you decide to make more humans inside a dystopia. I was in grade school when I decided I would not have children until I could afford to prevent them growing up poor.
Making babies isn't a right, it's a responsibility. And one that is optional in more senses than one. Obviously, in some cases, people are bait and switched, or essentially robbed. But equally obviously, having a kid isn't a moral blank check either. Would you cash in on IDF profits knowing it's going to blow burn a Palestinian baby's face off so yours can have comfier diapers? That's the honest to fuck horror choice some people are facing. Watered down, and obscured though it may be. And there's moral urgency in FUCKING DOING SOMETHING about it.
When exactly everyone finds a way to shrug their shoulders and collect a check, then those everyones incur moral debt. How each person discharges that debt is up to them, and how society collects, or not, is up to us. But the first step if you're not an amoral liar, is admitting there is some. Otherwise you're just eye deep in "just following orders" land.
"When you stand before God, you cannot say, 'But I was told by others to do thus.' Or that, 'Virtue was not convenient at the time.' This will not suffice. Remember that."
I may not be religious, but that principal is sound.
Hey, I empathize. I've felt that way before, but I think such outrage serves no useful purpose. I know from my own personal experience it's sure as shit never done ME any good, and I'm 65, so I won't beat my head against that wall any longer.
What I will do, as best I can, is to avoid dividing working class people against each other. I know who always benefits from that, and it ain't us, bro.
Zionism can be destroyed. Palestine can become a secular, majority-ruled state, and the US Empire kleptocracy can be overthrown, but only with real alliances and cooperation, which sometimes requires forgiveness.
I agree, just posted a video about it, ironically that video predates your reply and yet is totally on topic hehe. In it I clarify what I mean. We're still generally on the same page.
"...you'll pay attention to getting that accomplished before considering ANYTHING else." In my view, you are right to point this out, as this is an important economic consideration for understanding the world we live in. Bascially "everyone" participates in the system of employment. Or of course they could be owners, which is an even better sort of participation in a system. People said the economic system is "not really a system." Bullshit. The universality of our adherence to the employment and economic system is a large part of the explanation of things. To quit one's job or to sell one's business is completely out of the question. And history is made by the person who work and get paid, not by the surfers and bohemians as much...
Most people are always going to have to work and pull the stones up the side of the pyramid. At least it gets smaller towards the top.
Great roundup OB. By the way the real scandal of the Rwanda deportation plan is it will cost about a million per head, will deport only a few hundred, and these will be netted out 1 for 1 by immigration from Rwanda, as per the treaty. Or if you are generally pro immigration, the common ground critique is that this is pure "immigration theater" by a morally, politically and intellectually bankrupt Tory party that wants to throw "red meat" to its base without actually moving the dial one millimeter on the Uniparty globalist agenda.
I'm undecided about Millei. As a right libertarian sort myself I am cautiously optimistic but there are some worrying tell tales. He comes across a lot like the barely adolescent student libertarians I used to know back in the day. More worryingly his refusal to join BRICS and get a Plan B to dollar hegemony doesn't really fit with his libertarian declarations and smells of "belonging to [US] Intelligence", as they said about Epstein.
Millei is an ACADEMIC. Studied economics and fell in love with some libertarian theory. Probably thinks Ayn Rand was a philosopher. The Best must be allowed to succeed, and to hell with everyone else. Of course, the Best always includes whoever is advocating for them.
Millei is not an Argentinian Trump. More like an Argentinian Cornel West, except with a different ideology. Academics are usually the absolute worst when they get real power because they can't believe that their precious ideas, which were never put into practice before, can possibly have anything wrong with them.
God Bless The Alligator!!! It takes a reptile to halt the reptilian empire.
FYI, thought you and others would be interested in the following:
Mike Hampton is one of my early Substack subscribers. He is an activist in South Africa and been targeted by the government, I love the title of his Substack:
Same Shit, Different Government (SSDG)
So, today's post focused on an interview with a guy named Gary Stevenson, born poor working class in England but had a penchant for math and became a multimillionaire working trades for Citibank. The wealth brought a personal/moral crisis for him. He is now working for political change and speaking out about what is really going on and how it works.
Mike posted an interview that was 2 hours and I wasn't initially going to watch it but decided to watch the first 20 minutes. I watched it all the way through. He is reporting out of the belly of the beast and really explains what is happening, unfolding and where things are going and doing so from a working class view. He really understands both the poor and struggling and the super wealthy and what they are up to.
He really lays out the intentionally strategic hollowing out of the middle class that is going on worldwide and how the wealthy manipulate the working and middle class against themselves. We are now at the stage where the super wealthy will buy up and steal all the assets of the middle class, really taking us to a new fascism.
Combine this with the teachnofacists and it explains a lot.
I just watched the 8 minute short; thank you! A poor Englishman with a gift for math who got hired by Citibank by winning a card game, and he made millions by betting that there would be no economic recovery because the globalist kleptocracy.
I'll definitely watch his film, and look for his book.
I have had a serious aversion to alligators since watching Peter Pan on TV at a very impressionable age. I know, that was a crocodile, but I still can’t tell the difference. But now, I’ll never feel the same way about them again. Still won’t get near one, but will say ‘you rock, dude’ from a safe distance.
I live in Florida, and have a healthy respect for alligators. I can tell the difference between an alligator and a croc by looking at pictures, but would just run like hell if I saw either one coming in my direction . Crocodiles are MUCH worse than alligators. I had read that, but a trip to Australia drove that home. We visited a small aquarium and its main attraction was a two-story acrylic or whatever round environment that held a huge croc. There were steps on both sides so we could look at it straight on and then go up the steps and look down at it. The croc never stopped staring at us, turning around to follow us up and down the stairs. stalking. On the other hand, the alligators at Busch Gardens, as the most wonderful Dave Barry has noted, pretty much always look and act as if they have been up all night drinking beer and playing poker.
I just want to add that Florida has Dave Barry, and that makes this the best state.
In recovery from 6 years in Florida. Will miss a lot about it, but not enough to stay. Being the home of Dave Barry elevates it considerably, but not nearly as much as the plummeting of other 49 in so many ways.
Well said. I have been here since 1987, born and lived in Philly for 20 years, about fifteen years in Central Illinois, and almost two years in NC. Moved due to office closings. I don't ever want to be as cold as in central Illinois again, and while NC is beautiful, I lived in the RDU area, and was astonished at the overt racism. I don't know where I want to live if I move again, I am doing okay here at present. I do want to live near the water sometime. And yes about the other states. Well, not Ohio. But I would not want to live in California or New York, that's for damn sure.
One of Dave Barry's books, Dave Barry Does Japan, is one of the funniest things I have ever read, and he nails it, I used to work there a lot. Actually, everything he writes is funny. Weirdly, there is a YouTube channel called Useless Farms, and the woman who does it has the same dry hilarious sense of humor.
Thank you OB and fellow readers - but to recognize how far we have come or descended, tomorrow is the 79th anniversary of the 'Meeting on the Elbe'....here is a little remembrance....
Well worth the watch. The Russians have never been our natural enemies. It was our own lust for Empire which made them so, far more than anything they ever did.
The Russian perspective? You mean the Putin perspective. Putin says 500k Ukrainian soldiers have died, Zelenskyy, the Jewish Ukrainian president, says 32k. I believe the number of dead Russian conscripts is closer to 500k. But you keep spewing Putin’s propaganda, JD Vance!
And "...about those congresscritters"? They look so SELF-CONFIDENT. This is delusion, ultimate delusion. So confident, so wrong. Cannot admit they are wrong; incapable of it. There are people in the world who just won't admit they are wrong. There are no Ukrainians left. The Congresspeople are totally lost. This is mental delusion. Totally crazy. Let's face it, there is no sanity left. They should at least be sad-looking. So many dead; Ukraine clearly losing if not finished off. Yet these "critters," these insane persons looke to be crazy with joy --- just like the Saudi prince who chopped up the journalist That is how that Saudi prince usually is, in photographs. Insanely happy. No, just say "insane," that is description enough.
-thanks to Ohio Barbarian or whomever he call himself these days, for what? Letting me have a say and no requirement that I "pay up or die." (Comments are open to non-paying audiences all over the known universe, so thanks!)
I do not want to charge for comments for the simple reason that for half my life I wouldn't have been able to afford the luxury of paying anybody for that. After I retire, probably sometime next year now, I'll be more financially desperate and may consider it.
OTOH, if I get even a steady 100 paying subscribers by then shouldn't have to even think about it. As with so many things in these unsettled times, we'll just have to wait and see.
As for the Congresscritters being delusional, I really can't argue with that. The whole idea of even continuing the Empire, much less expanding it, is delusional. The world has changed.
Is it the swamp or the soup. It’s very fascinating how people who go to Washington DC become part of the blob. They arrive and there is a ray of hope. This person will be different. After about 3 years or so even the most revolutionary critter will have been absorbed by the blob and will move with the blob. Any person who still has any difference after 10 years is like 3 standards deviations out. And the distribution is definitely not “normal”
Argentina is asking to become a member of NATO. Did the CIA actually raise Milei from childhood to be a perfect little neocon neoliberal? Leaving BRICS, joining NATO. Not the same things, but certainly woe to ordinary Argentinians, IMO. Milei is, though, just another backyard helper- critter, as far as the US is concerned. Help with the looting and the wars.
Watching to see if a measure enabling green card holders to be able to vote is introduced through Congress or more likely by presidential decree. The Dems are losing the black vote, from what I am seeing. That would likely never get through a GOP-held Congress - although Mike Johnson is certainly the Dems' little helper now - but I believe Biden can do anything he wants if it does not affect the US "budget". There may be too many eyes on the corrupted voting machinery now.
Always remember - the Dems motto is "any horrendous Dem-desired ends justify any horrendous Dem-inflicted means". A corollary is that anything horrendous that the Dems accuse others of doing usually means the Dems are already doing whatever that is. Crematory smoke, and mirrors.
Most excellent, as always, thanks, OB!!!
Having similar doubts about Millei.
The thing you do with Milei. Watch the specifics. Rhetoric is one thing; instead look closely at the specifics. He wants to join NATO now? His libertarianism has to be applied, and there are various ways to apply it. Will Milei protect his Argentinian industries from neo-liberalism? I wonder... I want to see specific policy decisions. The texts he is known to follow were all written in a quite different world political situation. His academic philosophy is from like fifty years ago, or even a hundred years ago. That was not a different world in most ways? Something does not computer here....
or rather, Milei is more like an Apple 2 or something.
I agree with you and share your unease.
Milliei's basically an academic. They are usually ridiculously easy to turn. Bernie Sanders, Cornel West, it's a long list. Rightist academics are just as corruptible as the leftist ones.
Ninety Five Billion... $95,000,000,000... $95 FIVE FUCKING BILLION DOLLARS - Chuck Schumer wouldn't know a defense of democracy plan if it shot up his ass and out of his niece's mouth... Oh, that happened, didn't it? And, NO ONE is listening to the majority of us as these mental midgets in Washington are pretending everyone wants to continue this another minutes. Are Mr. & Mrs. America through with their wallet extraction to push us all to the brink of WWIII yet? I will never stop fighting against this shit.
I'm happy to finally see how non-stop the student pro-Palestine protest is across this nation where voices of the people reach deaf ears and the dead eyes only focused on war. WHAT the absolute fuck is going on where the heart and mind of the speaker does a 180 on pushing this legislation through.
Summer Lee won, and PA's a swing state. Hey, how many voted "uncommitted" for the prez primary?
they aren't mental midgets! They are mental super-heroes of delusion. The Superman of wrongness. I mean Supermen and women!!
"Write-ins" got 5.3% of the Democratic presidential primary vote. Over 55,000 statewide. Whoever Dean Phillips is got 6.3%, so I guess that's 11% of PA Dems rejecting Biden.
Those are truly cult-like numbers. It's getting to the point I can't even talk to what Ohio Democrats are left--they spout NPR talking points in an intellectual, lecturing tone that tickles my berserker rage gene.
Looks like the college protests have gone nationwide and aren't stopping. It reminds me of 1970 after Nixon invaded Cambodia.
I'll have to find out how PA faired in the "uncommitted" vote. I haven't had time to break it down.
NPR talking points is ALL I get in written form, and any time I see Casey and Fetterman's face. Fetterman's staff hung up on my ass when insisting for a real answer because of the same berserker rage gene that rises up from my base chakra !!!!!!
I did invite a number of "friends" to join me in giggling, guffawing, and snorting their morning coffee onto their keyboards here at this barbarous site, but apparently my "friends" have no sense of humor and are concerned that I seem contaminated with Putin Propaganda.... sigh. Thank YOU for being my friend! It's getting very lonely IRL.
Putin? Oh, I cited some RT stories. Well, where the hell else am I supposed to get news in English about things my own government's versions of Pravda will either ignore or lie about, especially things Russian? Where else will I get the Russian perspective? I certainly will take any songs they sing of Putin's praises with a big grain of salt.
If they haven't canceled you, tell your friends that Putin's very easy to understand and thus very easy to predict. He's a Russian patriot. Figure out what the Russian national interest is, and you know what he is going to want to do. Extinction is not in Russia's national interests, therefore Putin will not start a war with NATO. It's not complicated. In fact, I paraphrased what Putin's actually said. He's not freaking Genghis Khan.
And I'm glad of the giggling, guffawing, etc. Seeing that compliment makes my day. Thanks very much for following.
Yes, I go to RT constantly now not just to get another perspective, a geo-political story that isn't covered by the US media, it has always been better to get what the Russians say in their own words rather than what the US media tells us that Russian leadership says. But I have also been informed and entertained about/by Russian culture from some of their 'shows', i.e., Inside Visions....stories about the Bolshoi Theater, regional cultures in the RF, stories about RF nature preserves, etc., etc.
I think they have a nice site. You know I can't even look at it on my work's system? They blocked it right after the war began.
RT gets things wrong from time to time, but they have a far, FAR better record of accuracy than any Western corporate media outlet. They tend just not to talk about internal Russian politics much, but no news outlet is perfect and none should ever be perfectly trusted.
Yes, I don't rely exclusively on them for geo-politics, but no source (classic case Seymour Hersch) is perfect.
Great example. I still think he may be right about the Pentagon working with the Iranians. If the goal was to avoid a war with Iran, they succeeded.
I know for a fact there is growing discontent within the military. Be that as it may, I didn't mention several of Hersh's articles in a row because they were transparent Empire propaganda in new packaging.
The U. S. needs Iran. They are going to need an alternative to Israel and to the Saudis. The U. S. brought Shia and Sunni together on Iraq. Did they? There was a coalition of some type? Is that still working?
Russia has always had very clear foreign policy objectives. (I am not including the Soviet Union) in this. As far as it pertains to Western Europe, one should be able to understand that after the Teutonic Knights, Charles XII, Napoleon, Poland and Hitler they would like peaceful neighbors to the west. The arrogance of the U.S. meddling in Ukraine is beyond belief. Esp when it follows the looting of Russia by the neoliberals.
A few thoughts on Russia: 1. Masters of land warfare, bar none. The Americans should not brawl with the Russians. It won’t end well.
2. After the Russians chased Bonaparte out, czar Alexander elected, over the advice of his generals, to defeat Napoleon and bring peace to Europe. And so he did. Afterwards the Russians went home. Alexander faked his death and lived the rest of his life in Siberia as an Orthodox monk.
Yes, given all of that history, and relatively recent history at that, it is no wonder that Russia insists on at least peaceful neighbors to its west, and could not possibly allow Ukraine to join a hostile alliance that had proved itself capable of invading other countries on several occasions.
When it comes to war on or next to their own territory, the Russians have a well-established pattern going all the way back to the invasion of the Teutonic Knights you mentioned. They usually make some serious mistakes at first, and suffer serious losses, but they learn from those mistakes. They innovate. Then they counterattack.
Then they win.
Thank you for popping the word "patriot" into my head. I've been pondering what that word might mean for Americans in this era all week.
When a random reptile sunning himself on the tarmac does more to impede your nation's genocide than its workers... /smh
FTR: I've lost patience with Americans. I am still anti-vengeance, and I don't use the word "deserve" to excuse torment, ever. But to me, if you're still going to work, when you can possibly survive not doing so, you might as well work in a prison staffed by child slaves building white phosphorus bomblets disguised as MREs to be dropped from IDF drones on aid convoys.
It's clear that everyone is totally cool with flaying infants from the sky, just so long as they get their next paycheck.
By that measure, I suppose all Finns, and all EU citizens, and all NATO countries' citizens are just fine with slaughtering ethnic Russians.
Maybe so, I, being an ignorant American, don't have enough exposure to that sphere to say. I will say that the project of civilization has failed in the sense that it was a project to improve day to day life and grant larger strategic options. Instead we traded day to day comfort for those options.
Sorry, but I'm not going to blame the victims of a system. If you're working to keep your kids fed, clothed, housed and hopefully schooled, you'll pay attention to getting that accomplished before considering ANYTHING else.
There were years when I did the exact same thing, years where I didn't even try to find the backstories of the break-up of Yugoslavia because I just didn't have the time while working 60-80 hours a week and, not coincidentally, didn't care very much.
I may be a barbarian but I try to avoid being a hypocritical one.
"Hypocrite" here FWIW is a tuquoque fallacy. "Sorry" but this is something that should factor in before you decide to make more humans inside a dystopia. I was in grade school when I decided I would not have children until I could afford to prevent them growing up poor.
Making babies isn't a right, it's a responsibility. And one that is optional in more senses than one. Obviously, in some cases, people are bait and switched, or essentially robbed. But equally obviously, having a kid isn't a moral blank check either. Would you cash in on IDF profits knowing it's going to blow burn a Palestinian baby's face off so yours can have comfier diapers? That's the honest to fuck horror choice some people are facing. Watered down, and obscured though it may be. And there's moral urgency in FUCKING DOING SOMETHING about it.
When exactly everyone finds a way to shrug their shoulders and collect a check, then those everyones incur moral debt. How each person discharges that debt is up to them, and how society collects, or not, is up to us. But the first step if you're not an amoral liar, is admitting there is some. Otherwise you're just eye deep in "just following orders" land.
"When you stand before God, you cannot say, 'But I was told by others to do thus.' Or that, 'Virtue was not convenient at the time.' This will not suffice. Remember that."
I may not be religious, but that principal is sound.
Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7o_uFxToT4
Hey, I empathize. I've felt that way before, but I think such outrage serves no useful purpose. I know from my own personal experience it's sure as shit never done ME any good, and I'm 65, so I won't beat my head against that wall any longer.
What I will do, as best I can, is to avoid dividing working class people against each other. I know who always benefits from that, and it ain't us, bro.
Zionism can be destroyed. Palestine can become a secular, majority-ruled state, and the US Empire kleptocracy can be overthrown, but only with real alliances and cooperation, which sometimes requires forgiveness.
I agree, just posted a video about it, ironically that video predates your reply and yet is totally on topic hehe. In it I clarify what I mean. We're still generally on the same page.
"...you'll pay attention to getting that accomplished before considering ANYTHING else." In my view, you are right to point this out, as this is an important economic consideration for understanding the world we live in. Bascially "everyone" participates in the system of employment. Or of course they could be owners, which is an even better sort of participation in a system. People said the economic system is "not really a system." Bullshit. The universality of our adherence to the employment and economic system is a large part of the explanation of things. To quit one's job or to sell one's business is completely out of the question. And history is made by the person who work and get paid, not by the surfers and bohemians as much...
Most people are always going to have to work and pull the stones up the side of the pyramid. At least it gets smaller towards the top.
Great roundup OB. By the way the real scandal of the Rwanda deportation plan is it will cost about a million per head, will deport only a few hundred, and these will be netted out 1 for 1 by immigration from Rwanda, as per the treaty. Or if you are generally pro immigration, the common ground critique is that this is pure "immigration theater" by a morally, politically and intellectually bankrupt Tory party that wants to throw "red meat" to its base without actually moving the dial one millimeter on the Uniparty globalist agenda.
LOL. I didn't know the cost per head, as they used to say. Yet again, the grift must flow.
I'm undecided about Millei. As a right libertarian sort myself I am cautiously optimistic but there are some worrying tell tales. He comes across a lot like the barely adolescent student libertarians I used to know back in the day. More worryingly his refusal to join BRICS and get a Plan B to dollar hegemony doesn't really fit with his libertarian declarations and smells of "belonging to [US] Intelligence", as they said about Epstein.
Millei is an ACADEMIC. Studied economics and fell in love with some libertarian theory. Probably thinks Ayn Rand was a philosopher. The Best must be allowed to succeed, and to hell with everyone else. Of course, the Best always includes whoever is advocating for them.
Millei is not an Argentinian Trump. More like an Argentinian Cornel West, except with a different ideology. Academics are usually the absolute worst when they get real power because they can't believe that their precious ideas, which were never put into practice before, can possibly have anything wrong with them.
Thanks to all the protestors, including Mr. Gator.
God Bless The Alligator!!! It takes a reptile to halt the reptilian empire.
FYI, thought you and others would be interested in the following:
Mike Hampton is one of my early Substack subscribers. He is an activist in South Africa and been targeted by the government, I love the title of his Substack:
Same Shit, Different Government (SSDG)
So, today's post focused on an interview with a guy named Gary Stevenson, born poor working class in England but had a penchant for math and became a multimillionaire working trades for Citibank. The wealth brought a personal/moral crisis for him. He is now working for political change and speaking out about what is really going on and how it works.
https://www.mikehampton.co.uk/p/why-are-we-poorer-gary-stevenson-novara-media?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1023805&post_id=143184928&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2iji4s&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Mike posted an interview that was 2 hours and I wasn't initially going to watch it but decided to watch the first 20 minutes. I watched it all the way through. He is reporting out of the belly of the beast and really explains what is happening, unfolding and where things are going and doing so from a working class view. He really understands both the poor and struggling and the super wealthy and what they are up to.
There is a short 8-minute documentary on him that gives some good sense of what he's about and his roots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ6ZSgkxgFQ
I also ordered his book.
He really lays out the intentionally strategic hollowing out of the middle class that is going on worldwide and how the wealthy manipulate the working and middle class against themselves. We are now at the stage where the super wealthy will buy up and steal all the assets of the middle class, really taking us to a new fascism.
Combine this with the teachnofacists and it explains a lot.
I just watched the 8 minute short; thank you! A poor Englishman with a gift for math who got hired by Citibank by winning a card game, and he made millions by betting that there would be no economic recovery because the globalist kleptocracy.
I'll definitely watch his film, and look for his book.
The interview is very interesting. It confirms and adds context and explanation for much of what we know and intuit. A very interesting interview.
I have had a serious aversion to alligators since watching Peter Pan on TV at a very impressionable age. I know, that was a crocodile, but I still can’t tell the difference. But now, I’ll never feel the same way about them again. Still won’t get near one, but will say ‘you rock, dude’ from a safe distance.
I live in Florida, and have a healthy respect for alligators. I can tell the difference between an alligator and a croc by looking at pictures, but would just run like hell if I saw either one coming in my direction . Crocodiles are MUCH worse than alligators. I had read that, but a trip to Australia drove that home. We visited a small aquarium and its main attraction was a two-story acrylic or whatever round environment that held a huge croc. There were steps on both sides so we could look at it straight on and then go up the steps and look down at it. The croc never stopped staring at us, turning around to follow us up and down the stairs. stalking. On the other hand, the alligators at Busch Gardens, as the most wonderful Dave Barry has noted, pretty much always look and act as if they have been up all night drinking beer and playing poker.
I just want to add that Florida has Dave Barry, and that makes this the best state.
In recovery from 6 years in Florida. Will miss a lot about it, but not enough to stay. Being the home of Dave Barry elevates it considerably, but not nearly as much as the plummeting of other 49 in so many ways.
Well said. I have been here since 1987, born and lived in Philly for 20 years, about fifteen years in Central Illinois, and almost two years in NC. Moved due to office closings. I don't ever want to be as cold as in central Illinois again, and while NC is beautiful, I lived in the RDU area, and was astonished at the overt racism. I don't know where I want to live if I move again, I am doing okay here at present. I do want to live near the water sometime. And yes about the other states. Well, not Ohio. But I would not want to live in California or New York, that's for damn sure.
One of Dave Barry's books, Dave Barry Does Japan, is one of the funniest things I have ever read, and he nails it, I used to work there a lot. Actually, everything he writes is funny. Weirdly, there is a YouTube channel called Useless Farms, and the woman who does it has the same dry hilarious sense of humor.
Thank you OB and fellow readers - but to recognize how far we have come or descended, tomorrow is the 79th anniversary of the 'Meeting on the Elbe'....here is a little remembrance....
https://youtu.be/LQ-rgxJo3Kg
Well worth the watch. The Russians have never been our natural enemies. It was our own lust for Empire which made them so, far more than anything they ever did.
Good post, linking today @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
Please see my IMAGE FOR THE DAY from yesterday either on my website https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/2024/04/23/84125/ or Substack https://watchman2016.substack.com/p/image-for-the-day-from-httpsnothingnewunderthesu-22d. You will see that I think pretty much the same thing about "congresscritters"!!!!
Good one!
Love that GATOR!
Did you see they tried to fine Thomas Massie.
No, I did not.
The Russian perspective? You mean the Putin perspective. Putin says 500k Ukrainian soldiers have died, Zelenskyy, the Jewish Ukrainian president, says 32k. I believe the number of dead Russian conscripts is closer to 500k. But you keep spewing Putin’s propaganda, JD Vance!
And "...about those congresscritters"? They look so SELF-CONFIDENT. This is delusion, ultimate delusion. So confident, so wrong. Cannot admit they are wrong; incapable of it. There are people in the world who just won't admit they are wrong. There are no Ukrainians left. The Congresspeople are totally lost. This is mental delusion. Totally crazy. Let's face it, there is no sanity left. They should at least be sad-looking. So many dead; Ukraine clearly losing if not finished off. Yet these "critters," these insane persons looke to be crazy with joy --- just like the Saudi prince who chopped up the journalist That is how that Saudi prince usually is, in photographs. Insanely happy. No, just say "insane," that is description enough.
-thanks to Ohio Barbarian or whomever he call himself these days, for what? Letting me have a say and no requirement that I "pay up or die." (Comments are open to non-paying audiences all over the known universe, so thanks!)
I do not want to charge for comments for the simple reason that for half my life I wouldn't have been able to afford the luxury of paying anybody for that. After I retire, probably sometime next year now, I'll be more financially desperate and may consider it.
OTOH, if I get even a steady 100 paying subscribers by then shouldn't have to even think about it. As with so many things in these unsettled times, we'll just have to wait and see.
As for the Congresscritters being delusional, I really can't argue with that. The whole idea of even continuing the Empire, much less expanding it, is delusional. The world has changed.
I like you (despite your being a Yank, lol; joking there). I’m planning to subscribe soon as I get back to my desk.
Is it the swamp or the soup. It’s very fascinating how people who go to Washington DC become part of the blob. They arrive and there is a ray of hope. This person will be different. After about 3 years or so even the most revolutionary critter will have been absorbed by the blob and will move with the blob. Any person who still has any difference after 10 years is like 3 standards deviations out. And the distribution is definitely not “normal”