Famine Follows Locusts
We Live In A World Where Babies Go Boom – Because Long Long Ago, Boomers Went Baby
Note – auto-estimated reading times are especially vastly exaggerated today – more than twenty pages of links and quotations from great essays by others on the state of the world follow my own much shorter piece, which already has lots of photos and breathing space for your eyes, anyhow. (‘Cause the world is very hectic right now, and BigNews has never been less honest, clear or helpful, when it comes to genuine understanding)
Hey Folks
I know my title is feisty this week – but I mean to offer you some non-delusional hope, once again. The trick is, we can’t do non-delusional hope, when we are still deeply devoted to (in love with) delusion.
The really weird thing about this, is that (left and right) we are some of the whiniest people who have ever walked the earth and among the most delusional – but we are just as completely certain that our delusion IS HEROIC and our unregulated emotion and contempt for even the idea of respect for others who disagree, and principles we all long held in common, is what proves that we are the sane ones.
Today I want to look directly at something we never talk about in the west, the complete collapse of all honour, duty and respect which has led us to a feeling of unending crisis, where once we had society.
I also want to untangle some things which we have been trained to take as linked, because that link has made us defend extreme harm for generations, as if it is a necessary price of some far greater good.
Do you know that old joke about teachers pay? “For the amount of work they do, they are paid way too little – on the other hand, for the (mass illiteracy) results they achieve, they are paid way too much!”
Boomers are a lot like that. If you measure by their myths and way they feel about themselves, they are a sincere heroic generation who made the world better, and can’t understand why everyone else is mad.
On the other hand, they inherited a functioning fast-growing economy, rising living standards and life-expectancy, expanding rights, aspirational institutions (ethics central, if not always fully empowered), decent food, air and water, and cultural traditions which had (with a few bumps, for economic crises) given each new generation a measurably better run than the last, for more than a century.
None of that – not one bit – will survive them. They consumed the riches of the world, not using them carefully then passing them on to others, as they were once passed on to them, rather devouring without any eye to the future. And even after having by far the richest and easiest ride of any large group of human beings in recorded history, they still show zero gratitude for the multi-generational bounty they grew fat on – all they offer is self-righteous indignation! (That is, pig-ignorance, backed with the exact kind of complete (and completely unfounded) confidence which best-empowers state violence).
As far as I can tell, they have honestly not even noticed that EVERY SINGLE KID was dealt lifetime damage by our lousy response to SarsCov2. They’re still angry, not the least bit regretful or apologetic.
It never even occurs to them that they took far more than their fair share off the picnic table, and there are starving millions waiting in line behind them, who will now get nothing. All they ever want is more – and the price in desperation which others will be forced to pay is just plain “not my problem.” (I have even heard them describe the assertion that they ever had an unmet responsibility as “Abusive”).
Creepy stuff – in no way a description of a responsible adult. Then again, Capitalism always hated the idea of individual adult people exercising their own judgment and responsibility. In a very real way, the Boomers, flattered to make their selfish tantrums feel like heroic rebellion, have actually served as the most faithful weapons of capitalism in modern history for precision community-smashing. While on the other hand, it was their unprecedented middle class income that recapitalized and re-invigorated the almost dying stock market (saved Richard Nixon’s ass), just with the sheer staggering weight of their pension plans. By far the most helpful horde of mindless servants that modern capital has enjoyed.
But like I say, if you ask them about it, they are the greatest rebels who ever lived – so maybe don’t.
Science Fiction has done strange work in western culture for more than a century. Sometimes encouraging us to dream about positive possibilities that might seem remote, sometimes offering a useful caution about where a slow-building danger could lead us. But I think my own favourite type is the stuff which is really “Verboten” non-fiction, because it describes the aspects of our own reality which are so uncomfortable or controversial we can’t easily discuss (or even directly confront) them.
The old Black and White “Twilight Zone” was perhaps the greatest exemplar here – with so many fantastic stories about cold war paranoia and social dissolution, only set on another planet – or in the universe just next door (where offence was dilute, and censors could be far more easily misdirected).
But I also had a personal fondness for the space opera series “Babylon 5” – almost an anti Star Trek, where instead of a Pollyanna universe with humanity ascendant, we are second-rate idiots on the grand scale, and everything is tense, complicated, hyper-political and altogether worrisome.
In one episode, the crew of the station (kind of a United Nations city in space) have to entertain (and hopefully impress, or at least flatter) a diplomat from a new race, who they badly want to bring into their war alliance. Problem is, this race is famously one of the most racist in the known galaxy.
They tour the station, and again and again, the very best achievements they can show all look like crap to this arrogant racist alien – nothing aliens do, could possibly be as good as their own work, after all. But then the alien notices that there are certain areas of the station they are not being shown, and feeling duped, demands to see them also. The humans try to dissuade him, “That’s Down Below, where poor desperate refugees and criminals live,” but he insists, and when he does see, he is overjoyed!
As he tells his baffled hosts, “We despise all other races, knowing ourselves superior to them, but this poverty you have, is a truly amazing achievement. You humans have figured out how cleave-off and despise parts of your own race! I can’t wait to bring this exciting new social technology back home!”
For almost an hour, we’re looking down on this guy as a hateful bastard, and suddenly he turns it around on us and we are left naked, without any possible defence. “Not my brother’s keeper” is us.
That’s the boomer revolution in a nutshell (or house). Again, if you ask them, they will say what makes them special is that they are uniquely courageous freedom fighters. But the real social innovation of their age was that theirs was the very first generation which did not believe in making sure their kids did better than they did. They saw their own interests as in competition with those of their offspring.
This is why the kids of immigrants in the west so often do far better here, than western-born kids – it isn’t genetics, it isn’t even about Tiger Moms or “Vestigial structures of authoritarian cultures” it’s about BEING BOTHEREDNESS – a form of time-tested social technology we abandoned, for magic beans of never to be realized self-actualization (more properly, cruel selfish rationalization, posing as) that millions demanded for decades, even if it meant the confiscation of hope for future generations.
Now before some mistake my point entirely, let me describe some of the positive things which absolutely did not require this destruction, but have become fatally linked to it, because of lazy habits.
More rights dignity and options for women is all up-side. So is gay people being able to live openly and without shame or fear of persecution. Fifty years of youth poverty and no starter jobs? Not so much!
Rights are things we leave behind for the use of others, not just things we want and demand for ourselves at any cost to everyone else. We can’t be “Sociopaths for Justice” much as we have tried. Also, crucially, a fast growing middle class was what let the boomers “do their own thing,” not superior morality. Other generations have no less right to express social good in their own way – but they would need to have similarly empowering resources and options to do this.
Boomers didn’t win ANY rights, because the lifetime arc of their economic activity actually stole the ability to make and assert rights and dignity from all others to come. Poverty is a wall-less prison.
“By any means necessary,” by far the most famous line of Malcolm X, requires a moral foundation to deliver moral results. The moment the goal becomes unworthy or the morality compromised, it stops encouraging heroic sacrifice, and instead licenses outright sociopathy.
The genuinely scary thing is that it can still inspire just as much passion, even when turned to evil.
One odd clue to which I keep returning is a strange dynamic between Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King. Those interested in history remember King demanded civil rights, and Johnson was the genius level Machiavellian political manipulator who could actually get the bill passed, even though his own (Democratic) party was packed with unreconstructed southern racists, who hated blacks and liked segregation the way it was. (The party split over this, look up Dixiecrats sometime).
What fewer remember was that Johnson actually told King “You have to make me need to do this.” Even with his extremely advanced political skill, Johnson needed King to bring the outside social pressure also, in order to get what they both wanted, done.
The reason I find this strange dynamic (the beginnings of our modern kayfabe (fake-fight) politics?) so important to think about, is that I am convinced this same emotional-loading game has been played against us all, again and again, by forces of capital and state control. It isn’t efficient if they steal from us overtly – that kind of thing sparks mass resistance very reliably and they know it. But if they can make us demand that they confiscate our rights and freedoms, because we are so distracted by a highly emotional narrative – they can tighten our leash brutally – and we’ll actually outright thank them for it!
Of course we do still have a host of inhibitions and institutions that are supposed to safeguard the most important things about our society from such manipulation. But OMG do we ever have a hell of a lot fewer of them now, than we used to. After all, duty only works as an inhibition, if you believe in duty. Which is, I’m afraid, one reason the boomers were trained to be shock troops for duty destruction.
An operating philosophy like “All You Need Is Love” was always simplistic and naive, but might still have helped many, if it was ever actually tried. But “Why Should I?” the operative philosophy which actually did characterize this cohort’s behaviour throughout their lives, has always served greed and evil.
Put another way, over the last half century we westerners gleefully destroyed community, tribe and family, and replaced these enduring humane connections with nothing at all – leaving a gigantic sucking vacuum of the soul, which we each try to fill as individuals, from birth to death (always unsuccessfully) with vanity, jealousy, selfishness, desire, and endless consumerism. (The precise opposite of every recognized form of happiness, satisfaction, purpose or wisdom – ancient or modern).
There are a few qualifiers I should pause to offer. Emotions feel overwhelmingly important both to people who are deeply emotionally wounded, and those who simply never grew up. Making this distinction (saving our sympathy for people with actual, rather than self-invented problems) is crucial. Obliterating this difference is a way to sidestep care, in favour of reflex-dogma. (and ultimately waste and dull our hearts)
And this is itself revealing, because avoiding key principles, in favour of an assertion like “No, but in this case my feelings are more important than any aspect of objective external reality” is the basic goal of a shocking proportion of modern “Thought” “Philosophy” and “Debate”. Our goal is rationalization (excuses) instead of reason (self-challenge leading to increasing usefulness).
But wait – thought, philosophy and debate are key parts of our social principles – being able to think twice, and consider whether we are ourselves wrong, having a guiding belief system, and exchanging ideas with those who differ without throwing tantrums, are all load-bearing and necessary components of any basic adult mindset (that is, one able to place responsibility, ahead of desire and emotionality).
Which is what makes this second qualifying distinction so important. Names are not the things named. Labels are not revelations of the fundamental nature of individuals, within their catch-all label-sets.
We modern westerners get confused on this one especially all the time. Doing fancy impressive logical operations on symbols, while getting ever further from the world the symbols were intended to reflect. This is one reason why youtoob is now flooded with examples of people throwing selfish tantrums for “anti-hate” “togetherness,” or freaking-out completely in an unhinged snot-rage for “acceptance.”
Calling yourself a social justice warrior does not make you helpful, just, or social (or a warrior, either). Most often it is really just a mask for a selfish imbecile who assumes that their own upset feelings about the world, actually are the deep and true nature of the world, so they can pretend the world somehow deserves their tantrums. Symbol-substitution only people, utterly asleep to consensus reality.
It’s not even just a matter of how foolish it is to assert “I am the centre and sole judge of the universe” but also “My transitory and poorly regulated emotional states are more important decision and planning factors than any other people’s needs, lives, experience, ideas or opinions.” Pathos supremacism.
Most revealing, the majority who now call themselves atheists, act as if they are themselves god. (which is a completely different sort of belief-system altogether, a scary one, which helps no one at all).
Now before you mistake me, there are also innumerable cases of people on the right who show sneering unashamed and fundamental disregard for their own stated principles, and instead insist their latest personal upset or obsession is more important than any real thing on earth, including the rights of other human beings to be different (live and let live), and sometimes even their right to be alive at all.
This is the reason I keep returning to post-tribalism. We can’t assemble a winning team for social rebuilding, reality contact and responsibility fostering, without bringing the best of all tribes together. (Which, rather curiously, was the same basic insight which inspired positive-revolutionary Pan Africanism).
We are exhorted again and again by the BigNews media (that both sides have ten thousand great reasons to mistrust) to see the main fault-line as running between two sides of the much-magnified culture wars, when I instead very clearly see it running straight down the line between ALL adults and ALL overgrown psychotic brats.
I find adults on both sides of the culture fence to be intelligent, well-intentioned and worth talking-to, even when I disagree – psycho ego-brats? Never – not on either side, and not even when they think that they agree with me completely (which I know to be a logical impossibility, because you can’t frame a house in toilet paper – not even really sincere toilet paper!)
The key modern transition in terms of the relative importance of self-versus the world, happened from the mid-sixties to the mid seventies – and by the time that transformational run was done, almost everything we were talking about, debating and demanding, was fake, stupid, evil, or power-serving.
We can study the influence of television, consumerism as a designed and mass promoted belief system (both of which I’ve written about before), and we can also critique shallow consumerist bourgeois “revolutionaries” who first challenged the state to a fight, giving it cause to arm itself against the populace, then ran away to write poetry and tend gardens (disappeared up their own assholes).
But I don’t want to trace causes and emotional reactions today, I want to stick with the functional. I can even offer you a super clear way to consider the real problem. It is all about getting over yourself.
But first, I have to offer one more crucial qualifying argument. If you find yourself taking all this personally and feel as if I’m hurting your feelings, I really am sorry about that – that is not my intent. But today’s subject isn’t your feelings, it’s the rights and future of all the other people you have successfully ignored for your entire life, in favour of your feelings, ‘kay?
Arguments seeking practical improvement in the world should be considered on practical merits only. (stuff needs doing, and how)
People who feel like puppies are being murdered before their eyes, whenever someone disagrees, should be encouraged to meet and form a mutual-infuriation for fun and sport club elsewhere. Preferably far away from adult discussions about practical solutions, held in good and open spirit. (Yes yes, seems like a fantasy just now – but people have been capable of this, and we can be again).
The trick is, we have to learn to recognize and easily reject false versions – and this is a real challenge, because the modern world offers us appealing and easy to consume false versions of EVERYTHING. (And yes, AI is set to make this whole mess a million times worse still, with ever more expert algorithm-goading of our personal stupidites).
I really do mean everything, too. Rather strangely (or perhaps inevitably, considering power-seekers) the thing we seem to have the most false versions of, of all, is the search for truth itself! (Yikes!)
People on the left pride themselves on being able to see religious fakers on the right, without ever once stopping to realize that everything about their modern “New Age” spirituality is a consumerist fraud.
People on the right now quite enjoy ridiculous “Leftists” (bourgeois egotists) pretending to be revolutionaries, even while throwing tantrums and revealing total contempt for even the idea of the basic rights of others.
Thing is, Schadenfreude (enjoyment of the pain of others) is a form of lazy contempt – certainly not an outstandingly better and more responsible position, let far alone one dedicated to overcoming and healing divides – just one more flavour of comfortable (ignorance preserving) consumerist sneer.
We all love most to hate, and select the targets of our hate to suit our own preference. No wonder our communities, societies and nations are in so much trouble. The few Adults who do try standing and representing a balanced and mutual position are instantly drowned-out by tribalists, as soon as they raise their heads – so we are left with no adult voices on any side of anything. (and no easy to find signs of hope, since BigNews is all fear).
But just like getting over ourselves, it isn’t rocket science – humans have always done these things! Verifying the possibility of genuine hope for yourself (it is indeed an easily replicable experiment) is about pulling your head out of permanent upset, and deploying it in a more responsible and measured way. That’s all!
The part of this that I find most frustrating, is that again and again we see genuinely useful and practical ideas insulted and degraded by emotionalist-tribalists, and thus taken out of the pool of common solutions.
An economic idea gets right-coded, and is instantly opposed (even if helpful), likewise with an idea which ‘feels’ too left. Doesn’t matter if it makes sense, millions will hate it anyhow. And in the meantime, while we’re all squabbling and even rejecting what we know are each other’s best ideas out of petty spite, the only legislation which ever does pass, (without a guarantee of instant repeal, the next time government changes hands) is that which serves the creepiest, most corrupting super-rich only.
Seriously folks, the culture war is THEIR game, turns us all into their sacrificial pawns, instead of us becoming ever more skilful players playing together against THEM, as we should be (always assuming we really do want to win).
I wish I could find one neat compact single program which was behind all of this alienation, dishonour and foolishness. A sneer in a cape. Some grand evil commissioning agent, who said let’s con environmentalists into becoming media extremists to back the agenda of mega-bankers, and for an encore we’ll con people of religious faith to put greed and avarice ahead of god, and make them the ones to say “no more room at the inn.”
My regular readers will know already that there actually are A LOT of creepy think-tanks (and NGOs), which specialize in releasing appealing but subtly twisted messages, which are carefully (expensively) designed to encourage us to wallow in righteous emotion and stay very dumb, instead of learning and doing better over time, as has been the clear duty of every human who every showed up on earth.
But I think this is one of those cases where “Never explain as malice, that which may be adequately explained as stupidity” really works well. It isn’t that we haven’t been subjected to malign forces from our earliest years (media was about state brain-colonization, LONG before cellphone culture arrived), but that the “THEY did this to us” ‘take’ trains us to respond by emoting about victimhood, so we take one more pose of (learned) helplessness, instead of simply sidestepping the trap and overcoming.
We MUST recognize WE FUCKED UP. Not the eternal fantasy-subhuman-opponent Them, We!
Not just the right, the left, the passive middle, the shameless yuppies or the brainless hippies. It wasn’t mainly about the degradation of the integrity of the intelligentsia or the long term embitterment and fracturing of the working class – WE ALL DROPPED THE BALL. Citizens are supposed to do better.
This alone is HOPE. Because this alone reveals the way to overcome – smarten up! Get over ourselves! BE AGAIN WHAT WE ONCE WERE (not outdated content, I mean valid underlying structure).
Yes there is a lot wrong in other countries (and other people also), but we have direct control over only one being, and that being makes goofy faces at us in the mirror every morning. We are our only point of action, the only agent of change who we can direct, by force of will. But we need to develop our ability to see reality (and stand the sight) before we can make use of whatever tools we are granted.
The contrary plan, super popular for modern consumerists of left, right and middle – finding a way to keep being angry helpless victims forever – means never having to say you’re sorry, admit you were wrong (learn something new), or say you’re grateful for anything at all. (Liberation psychopathology)
At risk of repeating this point too much – we don’t ever get happiness into our life by complaining, we get it (when we are lucky) by appreciating, and learning to appreciate even when we aren’t so lucky, is a huge part of calibrating our set-points so that we can actually experience some genuine happiness.
The false but popular idea that we become great heroes to the world by throwing grand tantrums over our internal feelings, completely destroys our own happiness (even as it also destroys the simple peace of others around us, to whom we used to know enough to show basic respect – as a small incremental payment toward earning the very same consideration from others).
Fairness isn’t idealism, it is practical. But it is also two-ways or not at all. Demanders destroy it.
I wanted to share a small insight a friend from Ghana gave me (without meaning to) but I was nervous that my chums on the right would roll their eyes, because it sounds so close to some mindless slogans that the modern (unthinking) left now uses, instead of scholarship and personal discipline. But then I read a short piece by John Carter (Postcards from Barsoom) one of the smartest and most widely read Canadian writers on the right, and I got a very useful insight with which to balance my own.
He spoke of meeting other westerners who, like him, had spent a few years living in Japan, where they experienced racism in a way which surprised them and changed their thinking forever. It wasn’t just that the Japanese have no tradition of suppressing or being ashamed of their own racism (part of why they have one of the worst population collapse problems in the world?) but also that they could see, as they lived there, that they really were unsophisticated uncivilized barbarians, in that context.
So when I tell you my friend from Ghana taught me things about happiness and family which I had never before put together, I don’t mean we haven’t figured out some things which Ghana has not (we had some choice arguments too, to be sure) only that some cultures really are better at some things.
Our modern western culture is total shit at doing family. He of course was too polite to ever say that much directly, but over the years, as we talked about our lives and families, his pity for me grew and grew, and in strange way, just having someone sincerely say to me “How could someone have a boy as clever as you, and not send them to university?” changed my own ideas about what I meant and was worth. And it took a man who came from a small village on the upper Volta River, to work as a technician first in Calgary, then Toronto, just so he could send money back home to help his extended family, tribe and village (he was a chief) to give me that deep (and yet also unadorned) sense of being worthy.
I don’t mean to invoke pity here (or wallow in my own weird tale) just to put things in terms of direct personal witness, instead of a vague generality. The man’s attitude was a genuine blessing in my life, even though some of his other ideas conflicted with my lifelong leftist dogma catalogue, very sharply.
The other thing is, even though I was raised in a demented cult full of collectivized neurosis and abuse, I was lucky as hell right after that and I know it. Not just to find love. Somehow I also presented as ‘good material’ and attracted some very fine mentors, to help me grow my talents and my thinking, with constant useful challenge.
But oddly, just as I was then a wounded survivor of a demented childhood, most of my (boomer) mentors were also somehow broken, on a deep level. Sometimes they were traumatized, sometimes just weirdos who (back then especially) had been forced to adapt to constant contempt from all sides, for more or less everything. (Conformity is very different now – far more fake and mass-produced, but it is a very old frustration for those who decide to, and those who are forced to, remake themselves from scratch).
Not one of my mentors had a healthy family relationship – not with their parents, or even with their own kids – and I feel sure to this day that it was because my friend from Ghana did have that powerful current of connection in his life, that he could bless and energize my soul without even meaning to, in ways that they, for all their fine intellectual insights, were not even capable of seeing.
For all his frailties, contradictions and limits, he was really and truly over himself, in service to others.
I must add that even within Africa, Ghana is recognized as being especially family-centred, which long made them far happier than their economic standing might seem to indicate, to consumerists here.
I should also say that Catherine’s Doctor-cousin has volunteered in many countries in Africa for decades, with Medecins Sans Frontieres, and the only thing we agree on completely (aside from glorious Chess) is that taken as a whole, Africans remain incomparably MORE civilized than modern westerners.
This is absolutely NOT the way we see Africa and Africans depicted on the (supposedly “anti-racist”) western news – which instead features only disasters which promote a pitying sub-human framing – and there are certainly regions which are under extreme stress, and remain exceptions to the rule.
But BigNews has been selling endless racist war this entire century, non-stop. So why would we believe them about anything, at this point? (unless we are just too damn tired or lazy to even object to war, anymore, in which case maybe we’d better just shut up, whenever morality is being seriously discussed).
I realized something a few years ago, which my dear wife had been trying to teach me for ages. Because I started as the man from Mars (cult escapee) I remember what feeling friendless, lost and unbalanced is like, and I have always naturally extended extra care, towards those in such difficulty.
But just as I was struck by the philosophical profundity of the line from the St John’s Red Cross handbook: “Never endanger the rescuer, or the rescue vehicle,” my wife has long insisted “You’re too trusting for your own good.”
What I finally realized (yet again, that is, but I’m really trying to make it stick, this time) is that you can never realistically expect to get respect, from people who do not even have self-respect.
Sounds harsh, I know, but it’s really about understanding difference. What other people have and don’t have to offer. Doing good without ever expecting (or seeking) thanks, is the only sound policy – that, and making sure we preserve our most generous useful side, for people who won’t make us feel like a total sap, for extending ourselves on their behalf. (A post is not the goal, not even thanks or credit, just effect!)
I am not saying we should not strive to be kind and respectful, and help others whenever we can, especially when we have particular insight into what they are struggling with. I’m only saying that we might well help them through a dire crisis, but that is still extremely unlikely to alter their fundamental nature in even the slightest way! (and it would be fool-ego on our own parts, to think otherwise).
Where we live - why they visit
"You should expect grace, that which makes life more than manageable, but you look elsewhere, seeking some delight other than that. Your conscious being, with what you've been given, should be like a beautifully laid-out park with wildflowers and cultivated wonders, a swift stream with secluded places to sit and rest beside it. When a grieving person se…
Now here’s the thing about our universal fakeness (in which we’ve created not-over-ourselves versions of EVERY faith, doctrine and philosophy which was always supposed to be about getting over ourselves) and the way it replicates and does increasing damage.
Below, I share a truly superb Cynthia Chung story which explains a huge number of American military adventures in the post-war period, which had long seemed mysterious or just plain evil.
The top echelons of the (unelected/unsupervised) US security state settled on a policy for confronting the USSR, and as part of that policy, they decided the vestiges of the British Empire must be supported, to keep the geopolitical chessboard favourable to them, long term. The rights and aspirations of the people ‘underfoot’ were discarded entirely – by powerful psychopaths, thousands of miles away!
Lazy people might assume evil was the intention all along (the case can certainly be made), but again, as with the victim or idiot contrast I drew earlier, I think we learn way more if we consider how often we too believe that one thing connects directly to another, and never return to re-examine that link we made, even as powerfully contradictory information, which should worry us very greatly, comes in.
The idea that neoliberal bankers will fix the environment is by far the stupidest faith-association like this on the left. This exact cabal has been mass-murdering all around the world, this entire century. That isn’t just contradictory evidence, it is PROOF OF FUNDAMENTAL EVIL. By the time you say, “well you can’t save a planet without bombing a few countries into the stone age,” you are well past nuts!
The funny thing here is that, if you ask a leftist what’s wrong with the economy and foreign policy, they’ll point to lingering Reaganomics and Neoconservatives, and if you ask someone on the right the same question, they’ll say we’re still living with the mess Clinton and his Neoliberal cabal created – and BOTH ARE CORRECT – yet they will all spend shocking amounts of time and energy, insisting on rejecting half the lesson!
Now for my chums on the right, let me be clear, I am not trying to pretend-away real differences in attitudes and philosophies. Kumbaya is not ever going to be the rallying-cry of a new popular front.
“Let’s all throw those thieving mass-murderous entitled fuckers out on their ass” on the other hand...
Also, for my friends on the left, I have to say simply, you are even more wrong about people on the right, than they are about you. Seriously folks, pure dumb-ass ignorant bigotry. I’m not saying you won’t still hate them, if you get to know them better (John Carter is precisely correct there, the popular slogan-over-thought idea that ‘all bigotry is ignorance’ is refuted again and again, throughout history).
The point is, if you really want to fight, grapple with who they really are, not some dumb caricature you erect and preserve, simply because you are so deeply in love with your (superiority-“proving”) personal hate that you’d actually rather stay dumb and angry, than get over yourself and become useful.
And for both teams (who so obviously can only win a fight this big, when we finally form ONE TEAM) I must insist, we will all be far happier and more interesting people when we talk to more sane people who aren’t like us, at least as often as we talk to those who agree. (do try your best to avoid dolts, on all teams - non-representative, I swear).
The first true thing I learned, as the clueless man from Mars, a stranger even to my own culture, is that there is always a contact point, from which you can (if both choose to allow it) establish a basis of mutual respect or interest. Could be sports, a hobby, a philosophy, a kind of art, science, craft or skill.
This discovery was actually the first time that being a book-crazy autodidact finally seemed useful to me – pay-off for all that unrewarded homework! Thanks to my reading obsession, I am a genuine enthusiast in a thousand areas, which means I know a thousand dialects, which can help bridge social gaps.
EVERYBODY loves something. If we can get over ourselves enough to meet on that plane first, and really establish fellow-feeling through humbling mutual reverence for something much greater or more impressive than ourselves and our emotional excursions, every argument past that, even huge ones, is an argument between friends. Generates new clues, not lasting bitterness.
I mean, if you actually LIKE alienation, misery, the sense of helplessness in the face of onrushing doom, by all means carry-on. All of our collected idealisms and passionate tantrums added-up have brought us right up to this mad and dangerous precipice together, so if this kind of panicky ruling-class-serving madness suits you, you already know how to ask for and help create still more of it.
But honestly my friend, does being miserable, isolated and hopeless really suit you? (or any of us)
To review, thanks to our modern (absent) standards – when a westerner says “I am a” (fill-in-the-doctrine) they almost always mean “I use a few convenient ideas from this school, to justify whatever the heck I wanted to do and feel, anyhow.”
Examples abound, but yoga directed at vanity, and what is meant to be self-overcoming enlightenment directed instead at self-aggrandizement, are the most obviously ridiculous variants on the left (so common as to overwhelm the genuine article, many times over). These same self-described “Spiritual” people also sneer at Christians (while inhabiting the legacy of Christendom). So whatever they are using for faith, is not even strong enough to compel respect for other faithful beings. Weak tea.
Of course there are some false Christians who abuse their faith also, but they are for other Christians to call-out (that is, people who actually know what they are talking about, don’t project their inner nonsense, and do care about the people and faith involved).
By contrast, when we say something simpler like, “I’m still trying, here’s what I’ve found so far,” we are being real (even when still deluded or flat-out ignorant, the “so far” part allows new light to keep entering).
But here’s the really tough qualifier to that, for us modern cynics especially – there actually are many people who still are “the real thing” in faith (though they are never as loud as the fakes). That is to say, they relate to great faiths as encompassing disciplines for self-overcoming, belonging, and for constant growth.
I mean genuine Christians especially, (very tired of being scorned by the cynical consumerists, but here in large numbers all the same, and still as always, contributing a great deal to the society we share). Those of other faiths also (though here, the genuinely faithful are mostly fresh immigrants, because our schooling works against the passing-on of such traditional faiths and generally makes default Canadian consumerist emotionalist cynics, out of most in the second generation and almost all in the third).
I know many (on the left and right), who think the idea of surrendering the petty chattering jealous selfish part of ego to a greater system like that, is a kind of humiliation, a loss of self, dignity or power.
And remember – I came from a dangerously defective all-encompassing belief system myself, so I know all too well how many ways (and how shockingly far) it can all go wrong, when false-hearted.
Nevertheless, anyone who has ever read ten great books has seen overwhelming clear evidence of just such a submission to a greater humbling standard, and enjoyed results in terms of rigour and excellence, which preference-seeking ego alone could not ever have attained.
We may even need that tested and enduring outside structure to humble and inspire us, discipline our efforts and make us work ever harder, simply so that we may fail ever more gloriously as we go.
Difficulty we choose is how we build muscle for new challenge – make ourselves more useful beings.
Getting over what we know (or assume) already, and even more, what we feel, so we can actually be clear-eyed and objective witnesses to the reality of the moment?
That’s how we make our lives real.
(and just incidentally, the way we can rescue happiness itself again, even in this late dystopia)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now, before the link-fest, here’s a weird short film I made a few years ago, that wants to join-in. Go big-screen, if you can (no speech, text only)
Since I have an especially rich trove of links and quotes for you today, I’ll divide them into sections for a change (hopefully the sections will make for good intermission and snack-break spots) Lots of overlap, to be sure, especially on war, empire and economics
“West Asia” “Economics” “Empire and the Ukraine war” “News and ideas from around the world” and finally a few bits of pure “Head-Food” (inspiring, cool and very freaky stuff – lots about AI today).
Tally ho! (And seriously, thanks for coming, eh? Your eyeballs and the thoughtful brain behind, are why I write)
Before I get into any of my categories though, I have to share a fresh piece from my favourite sane modern leftist feminist (yes, such a beast exists, read on and be delighted!)
One of my favourite John Brunner books, was a doubling down after a critique which revealed misunderstanding about the basic point he was trying to make – (Stand on Zanzibar was considered “Too dark” so he followed it up with the dystopian masterpiece “The Sheep Look Up”)
Here, Tara Van Dijk responds to some insulting and deliberately misunderstanding criticism, by doubling down and making her point with every possible referent and argument clarified (and even rendered in the exact critical language her critics accused her of lacking – ROTFL!)
“…What gets feminists off is politically and culturally relevant because today The Patriarchy is about as analytically useful for understanding or improving the material conditions of women as blaming the Devil, fate, or the Illuminati would be. The rule of the Father is history. Traditional patriarchal orders were dissolved by the forces and relations of capitalist development quite some time ago and no centralised or hegemonic gender regime has replaced them.
Feminist ideology is a morbid symptom of this interregnum. The belief in a transcendent, ever-present, and ever-evasive tormentor shields feminists from confronting an unsettling truth: the throne is empty. There is no Patriarchy lurking behind capitalist societies or the Chinese Communist Party, plotting to dominate women and redistribute the spoils to men. And yet, the Patriarchy fantasy is perfect for identity politics. Here, victimhood is currency, and claiming to represent an oppressed group can be lucrative. Patronage politics doesn’t flow from collective material interest but from those who insert themselves as gatekeepers between institutions and “the marginalised.”2
Contrary to popular third wave feminist doctrine, feminism is not intersectional, its contradictory.3 And the one thing that unites all the factions and fractions together is fidelity to the Patriarchy fantasy. In Lacanese, The Patriarchy functions as a quilting point (point de capiton)—the master or empty signifier that stitches together disparate complaints, interests, and identities into a seemingly coherent narrative. What is feminism without the Patriarchy mythos of history and society? Beyond being female, what is the one thing women have in common, according to feminists? That they are all oppressed by The Patriarchy—whether they realise it or not.
Feminism, like all successful ideologies, is not just a discourse. It is a structure of desire and an economy of enjoyment. Thus, we must shift registers to grasp the appeal of The Patriarchy. This is not an epistemological issue, but a libidinal one. The Patriarchy anchors feminist desire. It serves as the psychic centre of gravity. What sustains feminist fidelity to this fantasy is not veracity, but enjoyment. What follows is an introduction to A Pervert’s Guide to Feminism.4”
Here’s her own site, and a guide to the whole series of brilliant and long-overdue articles (grand critique of the whole psychologically harmful academescam variant)
And now, back to the show!
WEST ASIA
I have recommended Alestair Crooke for years, but he has been especially helpful lately, because his wife reads Hebrew, and can therefore see what the Israeli press says internally (a surprising amount of which is never translated for the English versions, even of outright heroic newspapers like Ha’aretz).
“When someone tells you who they are, believe them.”
“Ten Days Left Until Famine in Gaza, (Amos Harel, Haaretz Hebrew):
In internal discussions within the defense establishment, officials from the Coordination of Operations in the Territories and the Southern Command admit that there are only about ten days left until a serious crisis erupts, to the point of famine in some areas. Last night, it was reported that US Secretary of State Rubio spoke with Netanyahu and expressed the administration's concern about the situation. This is the background to Israel's willingness to relax its stance somewhat, in order to allow a partial entry of goods. But the government continues to be under pressure from far-right ministers to avoid this … Over the past few weeks, the cabinet and the defense establishment have been feverishly working on a plan to distribute food through civilian subcontractors, ostensibly American companies. In practice, it appears that the plan is full of loopholes, especially since behind the scenes Israeli businessmen are involved, who are more interested in potential economic profits than in preventing a mass disaster.”
“...A senior Hamas official told Drop Site that the group received a direct commitment from Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, that two days after the release of U.S. citizen and Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, the Trump administration would compel Israel to lift the Gaza blockade and allow humanitarian aid to enter the territory. Witkoff, according to the official, also promised that Trump would make a public call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for negotiations aimed at achieving a “permanent ceasefire.”
“It was a deal,” said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau who has previously engaged in direct talks with U.S. officials. He said the pledge was made by “Witkoff, himself.” In an interview with Drop Site, Naim said the agreement was: “If we release [Alexander], Trump will speak out thanking Hamas for its gesture, obliging Israel on the second day to open the borders and allow aid to come into Gaza, and [Trump would] call for an immediate ceasefire and to go for negotiations to end the war.”
“He did nothing of this,” Naim added. “They didn't violate the deal. They threw it in the trash.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.”
Here’s some painful first-hand witness of the stuff BigNews doesn’t think we need to know about the ongoing tragedy – you know the one – the grotesque evil both parties have backed, full-force.
Something which cannot be said often enough – by one of our truly outstanding voices of conscience
And in case you think I was making up Biden’s complete refusal to act on Israel - nope
“...Former Israeli ambassador to the United States Mike Herzog acknowledged on Israeli media on Sunday that the Biden administration never at any time pressured Israel for a ceasefire in Gaza.
“God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period, because it could have been much worse,” Herzog said. “We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did.”
So everyone who said the Biden administration was working for a ceasefire lied. They lied that whole entire time. They committed genocide and lied about it, and then they said you were crazy and irresponsible if you didn’t support them.
People’s rage should shake heaven and earth.”
Inimitable (and refreshingly direct) ex CIA Larry Johnson is a great source for obscured realities.
“...While the prospect of a US-supported attack by Israel on Iran looms on the horizon, there is a chance that diplomatic intervention by the Gulf Arabs might dissuade Trump from embracing the suicidal proposal of Israel to destroy Iran’s nuclear processing facilities. Trump also is keen on making the Abraham Accords a reality — an impossible goal if the US attacks Iran in tandem with Israel. I agree with Doug MacGregor’s view that an attack on Iran will likely lead to Iran launching military strikes that will shutter the Persian Gulf. Maybe I am grasping at straws, but I am trying to identify some alternatives to a devastating, horrific war that the US will not be able to control or win.”
Here’s Will Schryver with some sharp big-picture ideas about the strange trap of the declining empire
“...The inexorable decline of the American Empire has arrived at an Imperial Paradox. It must either fight a war and die, or not fight a war and yet still die.”
Kitt Klarenburg with more on the humiliating defeat Ansar Allah just inflicted on US imperial power
“...On May 12th, the New York Times published a forensic autopsy of the failure of the Trump administration’s renewed hostilities against AnsarAllah in the Red Sea. The probe teems with extraordinary disclosures, spelling out in stark detail how the combined air and naval effort - launched with enormous fanfare and much bombastic rhetoric from US officials - was an even greater debacle, and devastating defeat, for the Empire than hitherto thought. The cataclysm’s scale may explain Washington’s sudden determination to reach a negotiated settlement with Iran.
Perhaps the most striking revelation is that Trump’s blitzkrieg against Yemen was initially planned to be a long-term, large-scale engagement, culminating in a ground invasion using proxy forces. General Michael Kurilla, Commander of the Pentagon’s Central Command, which covers Central, South and West Asia, had been in favor of all-out war with AnsarAllah ever since the Resistance group’s righteous anti-genocide Red Sea blockade commenced in late 2023. Reportedly though, Joe Biden was wary that a “forceful campaign” would elevate God’s Partisans “on the global stage.”
Here’s the Christian Pastor/Marxist/Journalist Chris Hedges, with some very interesting insights.
“The 19th century socialist Louis-Auguste Blanqui, unlike nearly all of his contemporaries, dismissed the belief central to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, that human history is a linear progression toward equality and greater morality. He warned that this absurd positivism is perpetrated by oppressors to disempower the oppressed.
“All atrocities of the victor, the long series of his attacks are coldly transformed into constant, inevitable evolution, like that of nature… But the sequence of human things is not inevitable like that of the universe. It can be changed at any moment.” Blanqui warned.
Scientific and technological advancement, rather than an example of progress, could “become a terrible weapon in the hands of Capital against Work and Thought.”
“For humanity” Blanqui wrote, “is never stationary. It either advances or goes back. Its progressive march leads it to equality. Its regressive march goes back through every stage of privilege to human slavery, the final word of the right to property.” Further, he wrote, “I am not amongst those who claim that progress can be taken for granted, that humanity cannot go backwards.”
and
“…To trust in the fairy tale of human progress to save us is to become passive before despotic power. Only resistance, defined by mass mobilization, by disrupting the exercise of power, especially against genocide, can save us.”
As I’ve mentioned repeatedly, I read a lot of people who have a very different perspective from my own, and I learn a heck of a lot more that way, than I would, sorting for preference (confirmation bias).
Ex FBI Mark Wauck is one of my favourite writers who had early hopes for Trump (and articulated them soundly). The question of who is pulling the strings is still important, but the whole point of employing someone so rude, was to bulldoze right through the old puppet masters, to get past war. Should he prove entirely unwilling or unable, the costs of his bluster to diplomacy, become ruinous.
There are still aspects to new policy which oppose very destructive old games, (and as a post tribalist, I will take any wins we can get, from any side we can win them from) but it is clearer than ever that he wasn’t ever against US hegemony, as many had hoped, just against doing it ‘the old way.’
“...The Anglo-Zionist controlled regime in the Imperial City on the Potomac keeps dragging America deeper into the moral mud of inhumanity. Trump is fronting for this obscenity, but We the People are being tarred. Please understand—”Libya” is not a country, and hasn’t been since the Anglo-Zionist regime under Obama/Biden/Clinton destroyed Libya in 2011. Just as, now, under Trump, Syria is no longer a country. Both Libya and Syria are simply war zones. Trump would simply strong arm one faction to go along with this depravity—it’s called “peace” in TrumpSpeak, but make no mistake about it. This will be bipartisan. Just as the earlier destruction of Libya and Syria were.
Drop Site @DropSiteNews
BREAKING: The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, according to a report by NBC News, citing five sources with knowledge of the effort, including two people they said with direct knowledge, and a former U.S. official.”
Here’s the extraordinary Journalist/Doctor Matt Bivens, on Child Casualties in Gaza
Here’s Mark Wauck again with a superb review of Israeli attitudes (broad support for madness) and a whole bunch of Biden stuff that BigNews suppressed.
Wauck again, with some key information about how “Our” terrorists are rebranded for political use
“...Former U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement, James Jeffrey, disclosed the existence of a covert project aimed at rebranding Al-Qaeda leaders as political figures, during a confidential seminar held on May 10, 2025.
According to Jeffrey, a UK-based organization, operating under direct supervision of the British government and with approval from Washington, had been working for years to reshape the public image of Al-Qaeda members, training them in civil discourse and political engagement.
As part of this secret initiative, individuals previously listed as terrorists were reportedly retrained and reintroduced into the public sphere as emerging political actors, with Abu Mohammad al-Jolani cited as a prominent example.”
And as for “How did we get here?” Wauck again
“...In this fascinating discussion, Jim starts with the history of the original petrodollar system. And he knows the subject well, having helped create it.
The premise of the 1974 petrodollar agreement was that Saudi Arabia would only sell oil in dollars, which would stimulate demand for greenbacks as a reserve currency.
Here’s Jim explaining the basics to Steve Bannon’s audience:
“We had a carrot and stick approach. Bill Simon, who was Secretary of the Treasury, went to the Saudis and said ‘everybody in the world needs oil, and if you price oil in dollars, then everybody needs dollars.’
And that basically underpins the role of the dollar today as the world’s reserve currency.
The stick was, if you don’t do it we’re going to invade Saudi Arabia and take over oil production.
The carrot was, if you price oil in dollars, we’ll give you a security umbrella.
In other words, Anglo-Zionist hegemony is a protection racket. Pure and simple.”
John Mearsheimer literally wrote the book on the Israel Lobby. The deluge of trouble this brought him, has made him extra clear and nervy! (If only all university professors had this much brains and guts in combination)
“…The most extraordinary censorship is being exercised across many Western countries, but especially in the United States and Germany, to silence anyone who tries to speak out what everyone already knows is going on in Palestine. It is no accident that the two countries that make the most of the Holocaust as universal civic education are the two countries that most actively enable a real-time genocide being committed and shown live on our computer screens and social media pages.”
“Silencing the victims’ cries so the killers can continue with the butchery, and criticism is considered racial hate speech against the killers and their apologists. Who does that?”
“The West cares more about the feelings of the butchers than the lives and limbs of victims. Western ‘civilisation’ now sounds like a contradiction in terms.”
Here’s a take from Sam Kriss, whose politics are never clear (that is, boastful) but whose brilliant writing and penetrating insights never fail to fascinate. The link he draws here (to Rwanda) is outright stunning.
“...Georges Ruggiu is a former special needs teacher from a small town in the south of Belgium. He grew up as the youngest of four: three sisters; sneering, cruel. When he became a man, he was a very quiet, careful man. Conscientious, rule-following. Five feet tall, skinny, with weird staring eyes. Permanently single. He didn’t move out of his parents’ home until he was 35 years old, when he went to the big city to reinvent himself. The big city in question was Liège, about twenty kilometres away. For a while he lived alone in a tower block there, not really talking to anyone. But one day his neighbour’s water pipe burst, and Ruggiu helped him fix it. The neighbour was called Jean Bizimana, and he was also an outsider in Liège, a Rwandan civil servant interning abroad. Ruggiu ended up falling in with Bizimana’s friend group of Rwandan expats. Some of them had political connections back home; they kept inviting him to visit. The first time Ruggiu went to Kigali, fifty people were there at the airport to welcome him to the country. When he moved there permanently, the Rwandan government gave him a house and a job, presenting a French-language show on Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, also known as Radio Genocide. Ruggiu’s broadcasts were more sophisticated than a lot of what went out on RTLM. He referred to the Tutsis as cockroaches and told people to exterminate them on sight, but he also referenced De Gaulle and the fight against fascism, Robespierre and the ideals of the French Revolution, Dante and the European humanist tradition. He called on the Interahamwe to hack children to death in the name of civilisation.”
ECONOMICS (and trade weirdness)
I went off on a rant about the crucial role of the underpinnings of industry (tool and die trade) recently – here’s the amazing (legal minded and much harder working) Matt Stoller with his own (great) take!
“...First, I’m going to focus on China, because China has a monopoly over a lot of things we need, and breaking that monopoly is going to be very difficult, if not impossible. China is just better at making and inventing stuff now than America, and we’re falling further and further behind. That’s not inevitable, and it’s not inherent to anything about our two nations. China did not cause our current predicament, Wall Street did.
To understand why, we only have to look at America’s own history, in particular, a 19th century workshop in Boston on Court Street run by Charles Williams, an independent maker of telegraphic and telephone equipment.
This shop was part of the world of machine tools in the 1870s that supplied the practical engineering skills and materials to innovate around telegraphy, electricity, and telephony. Williams helped many famous inventors, including Thomas Edison. Alexander Graham Bell, who was a speech therapist attending lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the time, used Williams’ services; Bell needed the help in areas he was weak. This machine tooling hothouse spurred four innovations in the 1870s - the telephone, the phonograph, the electric power system, and the quadruplex (or broadband) telegraph, birthing modern telecommunications and the electric utility industry.
It’s hard to overstate how important these innovations were, but the idea of a single great man as an inventive genius was public relations, crafted at the time often for patent litigation. In truth, America’s vast productive capacity was built on skill with machine tools, which are the specialized tools that cut, bore or bend metal.”
And
“…Simply put, modern American law is oriented towards ensuring very high returns on capital to benefit Wall Street and hinder the ability to make things. In America today, a pharmaceutical firm can take a bunch of risk and spend billions to try and invent a new pharmaceutical, or it can pay a few lawyers to engage in patent cheating to extend the life of its already profitable billion dollar plus drug. Which one is a better return on investment?
Similarly, a private equity firm can invest a hundred million dollars to build a steel plant and potentially earn a 7% profit starting in two years, or it can borrow a hundred million dollars and buy an existing company and sell that firm’s real estate immediately and lease it back to the company it just bought while shedding labor contracts in bankruptcy. Which one is a better return on investment?
Behind these kinds of investment incentives are laws, laws that make it easy to extend patents, laws that facilitate gambling with other people’s money, or laws that facilitate pools of capital to take over companies and break labor contracts. The only actual investment we see in real stuff is “blitz-scaling,” which is to say, a tech firm losing money to acquire so many customers so quickly that they become a monopoly with pricing power, like Uber or Amazon.”
“…In 2002, six years before Western capitalism’s near-death experience, Chirac defeated Le Pen because the socialist and the communist parties directed their voters to him. Under the slogan: “We vote for you today, we oppose you tomorrow morning!”, voters who were at odds with the establishment voted for an establishment figure in order to keep a neofascist out. All the while, they retained their allegiance to parties of the Left. In contrast, Emmanuel Macron won by annihilating the parties of the Left.
Working-class voters, who were suffering the consequences of the centrists’ austerity policies, were incensed with Macron, a former banker determined to impose “green” taxes on them while giving tax breaks to his haute bourgeois mates. With nowhere else to go, these voters drifted en masse to Le Pen. Then something startling happened: Macron and Le Pen grew co-dependent, their mutual antipathy notwithstanding. The more austerity he imposed on the many, the deeper their discontent and the higher her support. And the higher her support, the better able he was to appeal to anti-fascists to hold their noses and vote for him in order to keep her out.”
and
“…Their proposed solutions may be wrongheaded, half-baked, even crazy, but at least Trump’s team has identified the problem. Voters may not understand that these unsustainable imbalances are at the root of their plight, but enough of them have the sixth sense to intuit that Trump’s people are on to something, unlike the centrists who act like King Canute ordering the tides of discontent to reverse course.”
“...In effect, the EU has embraced a hyper-mercantilist, export-driven growth model, prioritising trade surpluses over internal economic development. This approach has come at the expense of both its own citizens, who face stagnating wages and underfunded public services, and its trading partners — most notably the United States — who have absorbed the EU’s export surpluses as part of an increasingly unbalanced global economic relationship.
Trump’s tariffs should therefore be seen as an opportunity for Europeans to finally confront the deep flaws of the EU’s export-led economic model — a reckoning that is long overdue. Meanwhile, in the short term, the EU could announced an economic and geopolitical rapprochement with China, further weakening the US’s leverage. Unfortunately, neither scenario is likely. The most probable outcome is that the EU will further align itself with Trump’s confrontational stance on China, hoping to secure trade concessions from the US — all in an effort to sustain an economic model increasingly rendered obsolete by the emerging post-liberal world order.”
Here’s Geary Johanson once again being brilliant and completely unclassifiable!
“...The best understanding of FDR is be obtained through one of my favourite C. S. Lewis quotes: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
People forget that FDR did everything in his power to undermine the Commerce Clause of the Constitution in pursuit of Federalism. Perhaps the most nefarious of his aims related to the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and involved destroying perfectly good food in the pursuit of agricultural stabilisation, especially at a time when so many people were hungry. In 1933, 10 million acres of cotton were ploughed under, and 6 million pigs were slaughtered. This did not improve land, labour, or capital efficiency but sought to raise prices through scarcity.
It was also a tax and spend policy, paid for by added taxes to basic food processing- like milling or animal slaughter- raising food prices for poor people struggling to feed their children. Understandably this provoked a huge public backlash, although in 1936 a majority were willing to swallow the bitter pill of higher food prices in return for the promise of employment. It doesn't sound at all like the FDR one was taught about in school or can find in history books, does it? Ironically, if one remembers one's West Wing- Jed Bartlett was against raising food prices on children to the benefit of farmers, even his own constituents. He was no FDR, despite idolising the false memory of the man.”
Why Trump and FDR are Similar - by Geary Johanson
I still consider Bill Gates smiling and talking about energy use (carbon footprint) and population and saying “Obviously, one of these numbers has to drop to zero” one of the scariest public statements ever made. I really do believe he believes that, but the full implications (elite war on everybody) are incomprehensibly staggering.
Here are a few more clues that many of our problems are engineered, not inevitable.
(Disaster planning is now inverted like “Firemen” (book burners) in Bradbury’s Farenheit 451)
Chris Bray is one of my favourite angry writers, and almost always finds righteous targets. This one is just so damn revealing about the whole tribalism over principle problem. Pure democratic party dogma-barf
“The California legislature: It’s like somebody put a whorehouse in a mental hospital.“
Lee Fang is fantastic at spotting the contradictions between words (and commentary also) and deeds!
Here, Alex Krainer takes a turn at the chalkboard – looking at the big weird question – “What is Money?”
I will be watching all of my energy specialists for more on this – but if it is viable? Freakin’ WOW, man!
And just to note this once more clearly (though it has been proven several times now, over a span of many years) Apple is not just on, but officially now IS the evil team.
“...In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option. To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath. Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. The real evidence, detailed herein, more than meets the clear and convincing standard to find a violation. The Court refers the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.
This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order. Time is of the essence. The Court will not tolerate further delays. As previously ordered, Apple will not impede competition. The Court enjoins Apple from implementing its new anticompetitive acts to avoid compliance with the Injunction. Effective immediately Apple will no longer impede developers’ ability to communicate with users nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases”
Fairness means noticing when someone you don’t like, does something you do like. (and this one is truly BIG, for a whole lot of unjust underdog vs. state fights)
“...The Code of Federal Regulations contains over 48,000 sections, stretching over 175,000 pages — far more than any citizen can possibly read, let alone fully understand. Worse, many carry potential criminal penalties for violations. The situation has become so dire that no one — likely including those charged with enforcing our criminal laws at the Department of Justice — knows how many separate criminal offenses are contained in the Code of Federal Regulations, with at least one source estimating hundreds of thousands of such crimes. Many of these regulatory crimes are “strict liability” offenses, meaning that citizens need not have a guilty mental state to be convicted of a crime.
This status quo is absurd and unjust. It allows the executive branch to write the law, in addition to executing it. That situation can lend itself to abuse and weaponization by providing Government officials tools to target unwitting individuals. It privileges large corporations, which can afford to hire expensive legal teams to navigate complex regulatory schemes and fence out new market entrants, over average Americans.”
Here’s a sharp and perceptive piece about the state of unravelling in American society (advanced)
“...Coming from the likes of David Brooks, a call for a “national civic uprising” felt like a joke, but we’re starting to hear the same types of arguments emanate from more serious characters. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker just joined in the call for “mobilization” and “mass protests” in a New Hampshire speech, comparing Republicans to Nazis, saying their names will be reserved for museums dedicated to “tyrants and traitors,” and adding that “do-nothing” Democrats need to “step out of your comfort zone and step out into the streets” and “fight, fight, fight.”
The speech has been hailed across the pundit-o-sphere, with the Boston Globe saying Democrats “finally seem to understand the assignment,” while the Washington Post said the call to make sure Republicans “cannot know a moment of peace” has already driven 2028 “campaign buzz.” Instead of making fun of an heir to the Hyatt fortune cosplaying Lev Trotsky, Republicans have grumbled in response. Stephen Miller suggested the speech could be construed as incitement to violence, an argument ridiculed when Democrats made it about Trump’s “fight like hell” comment on January 6th. There have been growing calls for resistance beyond things like “Hands Off!” marches, but those have been marked by an ominous vagueness. Anne Applebaum of the Atlantic suggested a reason resistance hasn’t been more forceful is a divide among protesting demographics, between those playing by old rules, and those ready for obliquely-defined “new” solutions.
And
As Greg Collard notes in today’s Timeline on “Political Advocacy by Open Letter,” the Trump era has been marked by a comically high quantity of “open letters.” Many have involved intelligence honchos, from a 2016 group letter with former CIA chief Michael Hayden and former Homeland Security head Tom Ridge to a 2018 letter protesting the removal of former CIA head John Brennan’s security clearance, to the infamous “51 spies” letter, to a 2024 letter by the mysterious “NSL4A” (National Security Leaders for America) endorsing Kamala Harris and condemning Trump’s “vengeful impulsiveness.” The NSL4A, which features a half-dozen former CIA directors, still exists, still issues statements about episodes like SignalGate, and markets itself as the voice of the exiled intelligence sector so unabashedly that one almost expects the release of a We Are The Deep State single, with Brennan playing the George Michael role and Leon Panetta as Bono.
Here’s some stuff on both the “why can’t we have nice things?” and also the “what the hell happened to VICE?” files.
“...But because there are so many different agencies, jurisdictions, and authorities involved, this means an incoherent, expensive, and ultimately underwhelming plan for the entire corridor is not just an accident, but a virtual guarantee. With no one setting goals, there is nothing for these agencies to be trying to achieve other than to fix what’s broken.
As a result, for the people building and funding these projects, the goals are to rebuild a crumbling rail system, whatever it costs, because it is too important to fail. Nobody I spoke to for this story wants the Northeast corridor to fall apart. They want it to get better. But there is an undeniable insanity to spending $100 billion just to slowly rehabilitate the infrastructure we already have when other countries similar to us are spending much less to make their trains much better.”
And here’s a bit more to soothe those who are panicking about DOGE data invasion (the time to panic about all this was twenty years ago, dude, if you slept through that, you might as well just go back to sleep).
“…Even with bombshells like the 2013 releases of Edward Snowden (whom the Times editorial once praised as having done a great service for his country) leading newscasts and hitting the front pages, the expanded surveillance state has been massively undercovered, for reasons of varying stupidity and cravenness. Data “purloined” by DOGE geeks stuffing laptops into sacks is an arresting image, but we’re decades into a world in which info from your bank, credit card company, or cell phone carrier can be accessed with just a click, no backpacks needed.”
UKRAINE (Tragedy and Intel and Empire)
Here’s Scott Ritter with some hard realism WRT the war in Ukraine (Odessa moment indeed – and if they push-it and lose this late chance, they may very well cease to be an economically viable state!)
Here’s Kitt Klarenburg on the way Drone Warfare has changed everything (Pandora’s weapons system)
Here’s an especially interesting recent discussion with Nima from Dialogue Works and Alex Krainer
For those who suspect Trump was trying to do some useful things, as well as some nutty and infuriating ones, there is a ton of frighteningly plausible insight within.
Here’s a frightening entry in the “Two Things (wrong) At Once” File – a story about just how despotic Germany has become, in fear of allowing democratic expression to actually count (which is obviously the only possible way that it could serve to relieve dramatic and still-building social pressures).
Summarizing note for the especially innatentive ANTI-WAR is NOT FASCIST (Pro-War IS)
EU Sanctions German Journalists - on Sonar21
Here, hilarious and hard-nosed energy critic Irina Slav finds the contradictions of the panicky ‘good guys’ even stupider than most (that is, with rare clarity).
Veteran international correspondent Patrick Lawrence has deep (loving) insight into where exactly Germany lost it
“...History, which I invoke throughout this series, haunts this transformative moment like a ghost. Many are they who saw in the postwar republic a promise that the trans–Atlantic world could take a new direction, that the West might cultivate—I’ll go to shorthand here — a more humanist, or humanized, form of democracy. In the 1960s, Ludwig Erhard, economics minister under Konrad Adenauer, fashioned the soziale Marktwirtschaft, the social market economy, a model considerably at variance with the free-market fundamentalism Cold War America was by then imposing upon the world. It made unions powerful and gave workers seats on corporate boards, among much else, and in so doing prompted the thought that Europe’s social-democratic tradition might at last tame capitalism’s excesses.
In the late 1960s, Willy Brandt, the Social Democratic foreign minister and subsequently chancellor, developed his long-celebrated Ostpolitik, a policy that opened the Federal Republic to its East Bloc neighbors and the Soviet Union. This was a rejection not only of Washington’s Cold War binary; more than this, it was a decisive reply to the anti–Russian animus that has scarred German history for a century.
To know this history now is to recognize the February elections as a defeat of considerable magnitude that extends, again, well beyond what was so recently Europe’s most powerful nation. Friedrich Merz and his coalition partners—who include a Social Democratic Party that has cravenly repudiated the very tradition it once championed—has abandoned more, much more than the Federal Republic’s past. Anyone who entertained hope that the Continent might serve as a guide to a more orderly world is in some way bereft now, left with one less reason to hope the wandering West will find its way beyond the cycle of decline into which it has fallen.”
“...George Kennan must be rolling over in his grave in light of the 19 May article in Foreign Policy journal, written by Michael Klimmage, director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington. Here is a classic example of an academic who learned to speak Russian, but does not understand a damn thing about Russia. Klimmage is caught in a Cold War time warp, and insists that Putin is a diehard commie intent on world revolution.”
Why are all the most psychotic warmongers calling for a ceasefire? ‘Cause they want way more war!
“The moment there is a ceasefire the coalition of the willing can operate on Ukrainian soil” — Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken says France, Uk, Belgium and others will move in troops into Ukraine instantly when the fighting stops. Russia cannot agree to a ceasefire because of that.
Well, there you have it—what I’ve been talking about for months now is spelled out with exceeding clarity: as soon as the ‘ceasefire’ trap is laid on Russia, Europe intends to flood Ukraine with troops in order to freeze the conflict until such time that Ukraine can be pumped up to the gills with new arms and is able to restart its aggression against Russia.
Some background (that some of us have known for years, and some still will not hear)
“...The Clarion call for Project Ukraine was launched on 26 September 2013 when Carl Gershman of the National Endowment for Democracy published an OpEd in Washington Post calling for Ukraine's accession to EU and NATO, and declaring that for the US, "Ukraine is the biggest prize." A month later, on 30 October 2013, the Obama administration set off the opening salvo by filing an arrest warrant in Vienna against one Dmitro Firtash - one of the most powerful Ukrainian oligarchs and chief political patron of President Viktor Yanukovich.
The lawfare attack was orchestrated by Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder and Victoria Nuland. Three days later, Nuland flew to Kiev for a meeting with Yanukovich. After their meeting, Nuland declared triumphantly that, "the President made it clear that Ukraine has made its choice and its choice is for Europe." The very next day, the extradition request for Firtash was dropped.”
Here’s another very intelligent and principled writer (Larry Johnson), who had early hopes for Trump, and is now calling him out on principle, for betraying those hopes.
“...Donald Trump continues to orient his policy toward Russia based on at least three faulty, wrong assumptions. First, he believes that Russia is suffering massive casualties and cannot sustain these losses. Second, he believes that Russia’s attack on Ukraine was based on some personal animus on the part of Vladimir Putin. Third, he believes that the war is causing great strains on the Russian economy and that Putin is looking for a way out.
Trump is mistaken on every single point. In a recent article, I posted an image of a graph listing the exchange of Russia dead for Ukrainian dead [note — the graph was incorrectly titled by its author as “The Second World War”]. The three exchanges that have taken place since March 28, there are at least 25 Ukrainian cadavers for every single Russian soldier. Not only does this show the disproportionate losses on the part of the Ukrainians, but it also is an indicator of the increasing speed of the Russian advance along the line of contact. If you want a good, reliable source for tracking Russian progress on the battlefields in Ukraine, I recommend you follow Marat Khairullin’s substack.”
Here’s another insightful piece from Wauck, about not only the war in Ukraine, but religion also
“...Everyone knows that Russia has won the war, has defeated NATO. There will be repercussions—there always are when a major conflict ends in a major defeat. Those repercussions will be both political and economic. We’re seeing this happening already in Europe, despite the efforts to hold things together. But the Anglo-Zionist Empire—the senior partner in this war on Russia—stands to lose the most. The Anglo-Zionist Empire has been held together and ruled by the financial leverage of King Dollar, and this lost war will be a blow to that entire structure. Defeat will preclude MAGA, as we now know it is intended—an extension of Anglo-Zionist hegemony:”
Here’s an interesting piece from Washington insiders “Responsible Statecraft” which characterizes several indy media people unfairly (non-aligned isn’t Maga-adjacent) but makes a strong point about the anti-war momentum actually being on THE MAGA RIGHT now – so sorry for the sanctimonious who were used to thinking it was their thing (not since you voted for Obama the second time, dolts).
The great fade out: Neocon influencers rage as they diminish - Responsible Statecraft
I am the very opposite of a pro-gun person, but I noticed long ago that my friends who grew up in remote areas ALWAYS had a different attitude, and I’ve worked hard to disentangle urban snobbery from my own opposition. I am also acutely aware of history, and that “We aren’t over it” which means I am forced also to consider ideas like the following, which are just as sound, as they are distasteful.
“...The Maidan Revolution itself was the violent overthrow of the democratically elected although extremely unpopular and ineffective Yanukovich presidency. Certain forces organized 40,000 men to rise up in protest. Long story short, thousands of armed “activists” decided the fate of a country with a population of 40,000,000 at the time. This leads to point number one – if one group of people has weapons and the other does not, guess who will eventually dominate whom?
During this revolutionary period many Anti-Maidan Ukrainian citizens began to protest in response. This was especially true in the south and east of the country. The most vivid protest, and a huge spark that later lit the fires of war in 2022 was the burning of the “House of Unions” in Odessa on May 2nd, 2014. Anti-Maidan activists had ceased this building more of less peacefully, only to be locked inside and burnt to death by various Neo-Nazis and Banderites of one flavor or another. Later, in response to similar but more effective mostly peaceful uprisings out east, the authorities in Kiev started their “Anti Terrorist Operation”. This military campaign was to subjugate, ironically through terror, the areas in and around the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.”
and
“…The first tanks from Kiev soon arrived on the horizon in the Donbass. Many people went empty handed to stand in front of the war machines as a form of non-violent resistance only to be slaughtered. Pacifism doesn’t work against an enemy with a fascistic ideology that takes great joy in seeing you die. Kiev essentially launched a war against half or more of the population of the country for being disloyal untermenshchen. This leads to point number two – in a European country in the 21st century non-violent protestors were massacred en mass AND their government consciously waged war against its own citizenry. Non-violent resistance became a death sentence.”
The Ukraine War Validates The Second Amendment - on Sonar21
“...More than three years ago, in the months before the Russian military invasion, the Kremlin offered our White House drafts of a proposed treaty — similar to ones that Russia had repeatedly offered over the past 12 years or so — to re-design the world’s security architecture. Moscow insistently asked for formal talks. They also warned they would resort to violence and vigilantism, if we continued to maintain an enormous, hostile, CIA-guided presence in Ukraine.
This was obvious and easily inferred at the time, both from the public record and from Russian and independent expert commentary, and it was confirmed several months ago by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
“President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement,” Stoltenberg told a joint committee meeting of the European Parliament. “That was what he sent us. And [that] was a pre-condition for not invad[ing] Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that. … [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”
Klarenburg again, with still more background, context and OMG are we in trouble now.
“...However, “planners never envisioned a NATO without the US, and for decades, Europe’s military logistics have been built on the assumption of American support.” Much of the continent’s transport infrastructure has thus been “shaped by the expectation that US reinforcements would arrive from across the Atlantic,” and “both legacy and new military mobility projects rest on the premise that the Americans will come.” Of course, the obvious question of whether Washington ever intended to actually fulfil that “premise” is not asked by Politico.
‘Independent Fortress’
With the collapse of Communism across the Warsaw Pact in 1989, and the Soviet Union’s reduction to reliable US lickspittle by the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, European leaders started to think critically about the continued necessity of NATO - a military alliance created to prevent an invasion that never came, now rendered invalid. In 1991, French President François Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl commenced discussions about integrated defence and foreign policy across Europe, with the explicit purpose of reducing US influence over the continent.”
This is a long piece (and paid, so you’ll have to use the offered free unlock) but it puts together clues from SO MANY KEY PIECES OF VIOLENT IMPERIAL HISTORY, with a great deal of often stunning first-hand insider witness. (I’ve been studying this “file” for decades, and I learned a TON of new stuff, whole new areas of the puzzle!)
“...The meeting devolved into a tirade from Harvey, who lashed out at Britain’s intelligence failures and what he saw as its declining global relevance. Wright defended his position, arguing that the British had no obligation to share RAFTER early on and that the Americans had shared little in return. Harvey wondered: “Who else knows about RAFTER?” Wright revealed that the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been informed of its existence. “The Canadians!” Harvey exclaimed, hitting the table with his fist. “You might as well tell the fuckin’ Papuans as the Canadians!” Angleton calmly explained how the Brits would need to accept American superiority if they were to gain access to their secrets. Harvey was more blunt: “Just remember, you’re a fuckin’ beggar in this town.” The encounter ended in the early morning hours, with Wright walking out, refusing further engagement.”
“...In the 1960s and 1970s, journalists and Congress exposed a vast Cold War program in which the CIA covertly funded nonprofits, unions, student groups, and media outlets to influence elections and public opinion across the globe. Beginning with the 1947 National Security Act, the agency used front groups like the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and funneled money through foundations such as Ford and Farfield to support pro-American intellectuals, anti-communist unions, and liberal-aligned civil society groups. A 1967 Ramparts exposé on CIA funding of the National Student Association led to the 1975 Church Committee hearings, which documented the agency’s creation of a global influence network designed to shape the “acceptable spectrum” of democratic politics. As former CIA official Tom Braden later wrote, “The CIA did not infiltrate these organizations; it built them.”
In response to the scandals of the 1970s, the Reagan administration created something called the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 1983 to do overtly what the CIA had previously done covertly. “You don't say, ‘Hi, I'm sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency,’” explained Benz. “You do something like the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which merged with [George Soros’] Open Society Foundation in 1991, right when the Cold War ended. You have to run these things through NGOs and philanthropic fronts and educational, higher education, universities, all these different aspects of media outlets.”
Benz describes a 1948 memo by US foreign policy strategist George Kennan, on the “inauguration of organized political warfare.” At the end of memo, he said, “it goes through how to set up philanthropic and NGO front organizations to carry out this work and then gives explicit directions about whether or not they should be formally or informally organized or whether they should be a formal committee or it should be a loose network.”
“…Formed in the early years of the Reagan administration in response to increasing controversy surrounding the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, NED set out to engage in pro-American foreign influence initiatives that were once the domain of covert operations. “This program will not be hidden in the shadows. It will stand proudly in the spotlight, and that's where it belongs,” stated Reagan in 1983.
"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," stated former acting NED president Allen Weinstein in a widely quoted 1991 interview with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. “The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection,” Ignatius noted.
The primary U.S. funder of overt operations has been the NED, the quasi-private group originally headed by Carl Gershman that is controlled by the U.S. Congress, Ignatius explained. Through the late 1980s, it did openly what had once been covert -- such as dispensing money to anti-communist forces behind the Iron Curtain and funding dissident media known as ‘samizdat’.”
Larry Johnson caught some very telling comments from Pakistan (totally suppressed, by BigNews)
“...Asif emphasized three key points:
Collaboration with Western Powers: Asif stated, “We have been doing this dirty work for the United States for about three decades, you know, the West, including Britain.” This comment was made in the context of discussing Pakistan’s historical role in supporting Western-led initiatives, which he suggests have contributed to the current challenges with terrorism.
Training of Mujahideen: Reflecting on Pakistan’s past decisions, Asif acknowledged that the country had trained Mujahideen fighters during the Afghan-Soviet war, stating, “We prepared them and now they have become terrorists.” He emphasized that Pakistan should not have engaged in such activities at the behest of other nations.
Critique of U.S. Military Actions: Asif has criticized the United States for its military interventions, noting that Pakistan has suffered due to its alliance with the U.S. He pointed out that the U.S. left behind high-tech weapons in Afghanistan, which have contributed to the rise in terrorism within Pakistan.”
Wow – my streak of amazing timing backup from other writers continues! (touch wood). For any who felt I skipped over the back room history a bit fast or loose last time, here’s brilliant Cynthia Chung with an absolutely fantastic piece about most of the key historical markers I invoked – and she not only draws extraordinary and revealing lines of connnection (superb scholarship) but names names (nerve!)
“…Western Europe has only 20 to 30 more years of democracy left in it; after that it will slide, engineless and rudderless, under the surrounding sea of dictatorship, and whether the dictation comes from a politburo or a junta will not make that much difference.”
– Willy Brandt (German Federal Chancellor, right before he stepped down in 1974)
and
“...NSC-68 would be drafted the same year, declaring that the U.S. was in the moral equivalent of war with the Soviet Union and called for a massive military buildup to be completed by 1954 dubbed the “year of maximum danger”, the year JIC-502 claimed the Soviets would achieve military superiority and be able to launch war against the U.S. This proposed military buildup would increase the defense budget from $10 billion to $40 billion from 1950-53.
During this same period another security doctrine was drafted, titled “NSC-75: A Report to the NSC by the Executive Secretary on British Military Commitments”. The report concluded that if the British Empire collapsed, and Britain could no longer carry out these deployments, in defending the “free world” against the Soviets, the U.S. would not be able to carry out its current foreign policy, including NSC-68.
It was thus concluded in the report that it would be more cost-effective to aid Britain in saving its Empire!
If you were ever wondering why the CIA was constantly found paired with British Intelligence, starting from its very inception, in a series of coups in countries they had no reason to be in, now you know why.”
All of which fits awfully well with one of Alex Krainer’s more challenging ideas (one with which Jeffrey Sachs agreed instantly and with a sad laugh of relief, mind you).
“...I have to say, this interpretation of history has not won me many friends and even among my friends, the idea that the much weaker player, the UK could manipulate and control the superpower USA was met with disbelief. But over the last few years, more and more information has emerged, supporting what I uncovered through my research for the book, "Grand Deception" (published in 2017), and it is becoming clear that people are noticing. Recently, Jeffrey Sach weighed in on the question in very accusing language:
“All problems in the world lead back to the British. That’s true in India-Pakistan, that’s true in China, that’s true throughout the middle east, that’s true here in Cyprus. Because they were the most powerful empire for 200 years, and they left behind conflicts everywhere. You know, the disaster taking place in Palestine right now; one of the reasons is that between 1915 and 1917 the British promised the same territory to three different groups. So, first [Henry] McMahon communications, the British promised it to the Arabs. You fight with us, against the Turks, it’s yours. Then they negotiated the Sykes-Picot to say to the French, ‘it’s yours.’ Then in the Balfour declaration in 1917 they said it’s a Jewish homeland. So, the British promised three times land that wasn’t even theirs; they’ve got a lot of nerve, as far as I’m concerned. And now, you need to disentangle all of this. But this is where the problems originate.”
This view has been confirmed by the reaction of the British government to Donald Trump administration's abandonment of Project Ukraine. Rather than breathing a sigh of relief that their brutish, violent ally has suddenly become interested in brokering peace, Keir Starmer's government is showing itself to be desperate to keep Ukraine fighting to the last Ukrainian. Of course, this is not Starmer's policy - it is British policy and it has been constant for decades, under cabinets of John Major, Tony Blair, David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Theresa May and Rishi Sunak. It doesn't matter who occupies 10 Downing Street or which political party is in power: the policy remains the same, along with rabid, hysterical Russophobia.”
And yes that does fit into better known history extremely well (with altogether terrifying repercussions, in terms of the lethal stupidites of the moment).
“…In a 2016 radio-interview with John Bachelor, late professor Stephen Cohen noted that,
“NATO has decided to quadruple its military forces on Russia’s borders or near Russia’s borders… The last time there was this kind of Western hostile military force on Russia’s borders was when Nazis invaded Russia in 1941. There has never been anything like this. During the 40-year Cold War there was this vast buffer zone that ran from the Soviet borders all the way to Berlin. There were no NATO or American troops there. This is a very radical departure on the part of the [Obama] administration. … Russia is not threatening any country on its border.”
$75 trillion worth of democracy and freedom
Professor Cohen was right. Russia really wasn’t threatening any of its neighbors, and no Russian leader has either explicitly or implicitly expressed any territorial pretentions against any European nation. The deranged claims that once they are done with Ukraine, the Russians will continue on to Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and then, who knows, perhaps Paris and London, are based on nothing but European leaders reckless fear mongering, aimed at justifying NATO’s continuing preparations for war.
The ultimate reason isn’t the belief that Russia will launch a medieval invasion of Europe and deprive us of our democracy and freedom, but the certain knowledge that Russia is sitting on an estimated $75 trillion of our freedom and democracy. Those precious resources are utterly wasted on the unworthy Russians. Here’s what the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher once said (video at this link):
“If you were to make a table of countries in proportion to the natural resources they have, the top one would almost certainly be Russia. She has everything. Oil, gas, diamonds, platinum, gold, silver, all the industrial metals, marvelous standing timber, a wonderfully rich soil. But countries are not rich in proportion to their natural resources. Countries are rich whose governments have policies which encourage essential creativity, initiative and enterprise of man and recognize his desire to do better for his family.”
And while we’re on the subject of intel (Again? Still?) here’s a fascinating short piece about the extraordinary perspective of ultra-insider Caroll Quigley, one of the CIA’s greatest early outside philosophical influences, only made compact and readable (and not so damn evil) at long last - huzzah!
Got to love “The Inmate” from “The Asylum” a sharp, funny, fearless cartoonist, who also has a keen eye for the big and juicy clues!
NEWS (and clues) from around the world (NYT will run these stories too, in a couple years)
First, something truly inspiring from Africa (part two of Nicholas’ superb series)
“...The Alliance des États Sahels have laid their political mandate down to the world; it states clearly that they are a politically sovereign confederation of nation-states and from here on, will take independent decisions and action on their security situation, political relations and economic policies. The future has definitively changed, because of this very present and fast developing event that has shaken the stagnant corridors of the African Union and other mysteriously quiet presidential houses around the continent. The plantation managers that run ECOWAS for their western masters, have piped down from their previously aggressive threats of military invasion and are now showing signs of sanity, thanks to the incredible response from the African youth towards the AES and especially towards the new iconic figure of Cpt. Ibrahim Traoré. What initially appeared as a messy and chaotic situation; the Junta led coup d'états that occurred in the three countries quickly organized themselves into political accordance with one another and it was actually the outside attacks from France, U.S.A and their ECOWAS puppets, that in many respects forced the group to unify the way it has.”
Now something incredibly frustrating which bears directly on my own Canada, where for some reason, I still have to put up with imbeciles who call themselves left or moderate, but actively celebrate their recent election of an investment banker.
A little hint for the celebratory brainless hordes – Investments that are designed to steal a quarter of the income of a poor person are the work of goddamned SCUM, not principled and inspirational leaders! WE GOT OUR OWN LIQUIDATOR (just polite)
“...U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, like Justice Boasberg in the Facebook case, has recently become famous, in her case for for blocking Trump’s transgender military service ban. Two years ago, on December 6, 2023, she settled in for a hearing between the city of Lima, Peru and a toll road concession (“Rutas de Lima”) backed by one of the world’s largest private equity firms, the aforementioned Brookfield Asset Management. The Peruvians felt they’d been conned by Western finance conquistadors who bribed their way to an exploitative, obscenely overpriced toll deal, which they wanted vacated.
The Lima mess, as reported here, has roots in a scandal involving the Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht. Like its similarly gigantoid American counterpart Halliburton, the firm was caught in a vast bribery scandal, forced to pay a $3.5 billion fine after handing out $788 million to officials around the world to win contracts. The toll deal was initially struck between Odebrecht and then-Mayor Susana Villarian (eventually sentenced to 29 years for her Odebrecht ties) in 2013, but once Odebrecht executives began getting arrested in 2015, the Canadian finance giant Brookfield snapped up a controlling stake for the discount price of $430 million (the firm would eventually place an internal valuation of the stake at $3 billion). The road connected dirt-poor Pueblos Jóvenes villages with the city center. When residents in a country with an average monthly salary of about $250 saw they’d be paying roughly $3 a day just to get to and from their homes, a period of furious protests and demonstrations commenced.”
Here are several sharp insights from Doomberg – just as Alex Krainer tied Canadian energy finance to the war in Iraq (and American banks), Doomberg saw Alberta oil, and predicted Carney. (and a very credible version of why)
For any who think British Intelligence is a less stupid or dangerous beast than the American version – yeah, no.
“...this issue “goes to the very heart of parliament’s ability to hold the government to account for those actions being taken in secret, behind closed doors, funded by the public purse.” His statement noted the Conservative government of Rishi Sunak agreed to an “emergency uplift” to offset the ISC’s fatal funding shortfall prior to the July 2024 general election, but “officials [have] declined to implement it” ever since Labour’s landslide victory.
The Times was at pains to frame the ISC’s “robust criticism of the inner workings of government” as “rare”, and the Committee’s grievances as a mere “administrative matter”. In March however, Beamish voiced similarly grave anxieties about “intelligence activity” being conducted in Britain “without democratic accountability,” sounding alarm the ISC was “on the brink”, with “serious gaps which need to be addressed.” He slammed the established framework under which the Committee operated as “woefully out-of-date”, and savage Cabinet Office cuts to its already inadequate workforce:”
and
“…Starmer’s rapid, ruthless rise to power strongly suggests he was groomed and protected by Britain’s deep state every step of the way. This interpretation is amply reinforced by the premier’s longstanding, intense relationship with London’s security and intelligence services. His much-vaunted spell leading the CPS was typified by suspiciously destroyed files related to the persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and insulating notorious paedophile Jimmy Savile from justice. In gutting the ISC, Starmer may be paying off some of his accumulated debts to MI5 and MI6.”
Here’s Matt Ehret with a brilliant reminder that (pre-tribalist idiocy) we all used to know better, and have many more doubts about the true value and goals of elite American institutions
“...In the usual tribalist (stupid) way, BigNews is telling us to think of Harvard as just a nice sincere University doing its best for the next generation, when a big bad man got scary.
As usual, it ain’t anything like that simple – and the stuff left out of that simplification, is much more important than the petty slap fight framing they demand (both for ratings – and to preserve our widespread ongoing ignorance).
The epicenter of this influence was the Harvard Management Company (HMC) - a legally separate investment engine with a $50+ billion war chest, shielded from public oversight and run by individuals whose ties read like a blueprint of coordinated control.
Think Blackstone. Rothschild. Rockefeller. Goldman. Davos. CFR. Trilateral Commission. Ford Foundation. Asia Society. Bilderberg.
This is not speculation. This is structure.
Harvard’s stewards weren’t merely investors. They were architects of consent. The same people who managed the endowment also advised world governments, funded foreign propaganda, sat on intelligence-adjacent foundations, and chaired elite economic forums. From their seats inside HMC, they funneled resources into the very infrastructure - financial, medical, technological, and ideological - that kept the old system intact.
The collapse we’re witnessing now - the donor flight, the resignations, the endowment sell-offs - isn’t just about public relations. It’s the systemic implosion of a command node.
Here’s stalwart Mark Wauck, with more well timed “Think Again” about the polarizing Ivy League
“...He maintains that Harvard’s foreign student program has been a mainstay of US global hegemony—training foreign students in American neo-liberal ideology and sending them back to become the ruling elites of their countries of origin. Or remaining in America to serve as the ideological bridge of the Anglo-Zionist empire to the rest of the world. One way or another, these foreign students become part of an Anglo-Zionist global elite that reflexively sees the world and reality itself through neo-liberal colored glasses. Tearing down this structure, argues Arnaud, is actually a big win for the rest of the world in terms of liberation from Anglo-Zionist hegemony. So, he argues, from an Anglo-Zionist perspective this attack on Harvard is “batshit insane” because it’s self defeating in the big picture of maintaining global hegemony.
and
7/ Revolutions are almost never started from “outside” the system because those outside do not know how to attack it. That is why real revolutions are always an insider game.
8/ So why can’t most people see that the situation in America is revolutionary? Firstly, because politically we have come to associate revolutions with the political left.
9/ But this is misleading. Revolutions are simply a rapid cycling of elites, where an incumbent elite - usually one that is dysfunctional - is eliminated and replaced with a new elite. They have happened throughout human history, long before the left-right divide emerged.
10/ The second reason we cannot recognise the nascent revolution is because we think revolutions must have a new vision of society - communism or Jacobinism or whatever - but again the reality is just one of elite cycling.
11/ But it is imperative that people recognise what is happening in America as a revolution because revolutions are forces of nature. They are not driven by intellect but by instinct.”
Here’s a long exerpt (and link) from Alex Krainer, reminding us there was no ‘good’ choice, last round
“…Two months ago, America First Legal (AFL) revealed the astonishing scale of efforts by the Obiden administration to permanently crush free speech in the United States and muzzle the American people. Determined to learn from the free world’s very best, Biden’s National Security Council (NSC) invited the British government to share their know-how and experience in running censorship operations.
As a result, on 10 August 2021, UK’s Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) brought a presentation to a meeting organized by the NSC’s Interagency Policy Committee (IPC). CDU is the British “cross-departmental” entity that coordinates state censorship programs across the whole of the British government and helps formulate “coordinated Government response” to disinformation and misinformation.
All onboard!
The meeting was attended by the who’s who of the US security state apparatus, including the White House, the NSC, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Departments of State, Treasury, Defense (DOD), Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. Agencies for International Development (USAID) and Global Media (USAGM), as well as high-ranking officers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
On the occasion, the CDU made specific recommendations to their American audience, including establishing a dedicated unit to lead government-wide censorship programs; enacting coercive legislation to regulate tech companies’ policies on disinformation and sanction noncompliance; forging partnerships with big tech to “flag” proscribed content, and leveraging the government’s foreign policy structures to coordinate with other governments and supranational institutions
The documents obtained by the AFL reveal an Orwellian alliance between the US Global Engagement Center (GEC), US Agency for International Development (USAID), the British Foreign, Commonwealth, Development Office (FCDO) and media censorship organizations, all working in concert to manipulate public discourse, control media narratives, and suppress free speech. These efforts were not limited to the UK and the US: the GEC’s objective was to “combat foreign disinformation abroad.” Thankfully, the GEC shut down in December 2024, about a month after the election of Donald Trump.”
This one has serious implications – Klippenstien’s reporter’s habits serve him (and us) well, here.
But on the other hand, this is definitely a two-party (uniparty) pincer movement (OMFG)
“...The Biden Administration labeled Americans who opposed the COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as “Domestic Violent Extremists,” or DVEs, according to newly declassified intelligence records obtained by Public and Catherine Herridge Reports. The designation created an “articulable purpose” for FBI or other government agents to open an “assessment” of individuals, which is often the first step toward a formal investigation, said a former FBI agent.”
Ex FBI (and still serious Catholic) Mark Wauck checks-in helpfully on this subject also
Germany, for those who haven’t been watching, has gone completely and truly insane (which is never good for the rest of us).
Euggipius is my favourite writer on this subject, because he manages to be frustrated as can be, but still find some (VERY DRY) humour, while going directly at the strife.
Geary Johansen may be the least pretensious super-intelligent writer on substack – all thought, no decorations – but wow does he ever have a fascinating way of asking and following useful questions.
“...Legacy media often hosts experts willing to claim that media consumption changes behaviour. When challenged to provide evidence they always pivot to Motte and Bailey, claiming it’s theory which they strongly suspect is true, but for which it is extremely difficult to collect evidence. To date, despite decades of research on Media Effect Theory, evidence is yet to be forthcoming. At best, Media Effects can act as an imprimatur, a stamp of approval, to highly dangerous individuals, the ticking timebombs or loaded guns of our society, waiting for a target, and as post hoc justification for their actions, their desperate search for relevance in a society which judges them as decidedly subpar individuals.
My strong suspicion is that we are seeing three effects, not one. First, media consumption does influence political behaviour and voting patterns. This is actually a good thing, healthy for society. One doesn’t want a large segment of the public disenfranchised from the voting process, and feeling that nobody in media, the institutions or government cares about them. The lack of a feeling that societies institutions ‘have your back’ can lead to large segments of the workforce dropping out of labour participation. It can make the already socially vulnerable susceptible to mental health problems of the type generally treatable by cognitive behavioural therapy, or contribute to community level patterns of drug and alcohol abuse. It can even lead to periods of civil strife, unrest and violence we saw with both BLM and Jan 6th. I don’t mean to claim it’s a causative factor, but it can act as the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. For those still sceptical of the economic insecurity argument which the MSM is so keen to discredit as to why populism has become prevalent in almost every advanced economy prone to mass migration, the book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case and Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton remains a pivotal read for anyone still struggling to make sense of what is happening in the West.”
geary.substack.com/p/elias-rodriguez-and-the-imprimatur/comments
Here, courageous Lee Fang discovers that Epstein is STILL doing fresh damage, years after his death
“...Nearly two years ago, Bryan shut off the valve of a smattering of unflattering documents released as part of the island territory’s lawsuit with J.P. Morgan. After initially seeking $190 million from the bank for its role in aiding Epstein’s operations, Bryan shocked observers by firing his own attorney general and reportedly pushed to end the lawsuit.
The initial 2022 lawsuit charged that J.P. Morgan had “turned a blind eye” to clear evidence that Epstein had used the bank to facilitate his sex trafficking operations. USVI claimed in court that it had uncovered evidence that J.P. Morgan officials had repeatedly raised red flags about Epstein, who maintained around 55 accounts and routinely referred his network to the bank’s wealth management services. Meanwhile, J.P. Morgan executives joked over email about his interest in young girls.
But the bank hit back with a countersuit and filed hundreds of documents, exhibits, and emails alleging “a decades-long quid pro quo between Epstein and the USVI government.” The legal probe revealed the former financier’s extensive system of alleged bribes and influence payments to USVI officials – money, J.P. Morgan’s lawyers claimed, that “created a haven for Epstein’s criminal activity.”
These records show that Epstein placed the former first lady of the island, Cecile de Jongh, on his payroll. She suggested campaign donations and targeted gifts to universities, civic groups, and the families of powerful politicians. The gifts appear to have helped Epstein win special benefits, including visas to bring young girls to the island and $300 million in illicit tax exemptions for his fraudulently registered information technology company.”
Here’s an outstanding piece from El Gato Malo – one of the most thoughtful sharp critics of our times
(Definintely not a leftist, but smart as hell and seeking reality-in-common, the only true foundation for anything that can actually work, and last long enough to prove it!)
PURE HEAD-FOOD (Emphasis on OMG and WTF studies of AI, this time)
Neal Stephenson is probably my favourite living writer. Ultra smart and imaginative, he’s also interested in approximately everything, which I find incredibly sympathetic! Here’s his very unusual and interesting take on how humans and AI may adjust to accomodate one another, over time.
“Speaking of the effects of technology on individuals and society as a whole, Marshall McLuhan wrote that every augmentation is also an amputation. I first heard that quote twenty years ago from a computer scientist at Stanford who was addressing a room full of colleagues—all highly educated, technically proficient, motivated experts who well understood the import of McLuhan’s warning and who probably thought about it often, as I have done, whenever they subsequently adopted some new labor-saving technology. Today, quite suddenly, billions of people have access to AI systems that provide augmentations, and inflict amputations, far more substantial than anything McLuhan could have imagined. This is the main thing I worry about currently as far as AI is concerned. I follow conversations among professional educators who all report the same phenomenon, which is that their students use ChatGPT for everything, and in consequence learn nothing. We may end up with at least one generation of people who are like the Eloi in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, in that they are mental weaklings utterly dependent on technologies that they don’t understand and that they could never rebuild from scratch were they to break down. Earlier I spoke somewhat derisively of lapdogs. We might ask ourselves who is really the lapdog in a world full of powerful AIs.
To me this seems like a downside of AI that is easy to understand, easy to measure, with immediate effects, that could be counteracted tomorrow through simple interventions such as requiring students to take examinations in supervised classrooms, writing answers out by hand on blank paper. We know this is possible because it’s how all examinations used to be taken. No new technology is required, nothing stands in the way of implementation other than institutional inertia, and, I’m afraid, the unwillingness of parents to see their children seriously challenged. In the scenario I mentioned before, where humans become part of a stable but competitive ecosystem populated by intelligences of various kinds, one thing we humans must do is become fit competitors ourselves. And when the competition is in the realm of intelligence, that means preserving and advancing our own intelligence by holding at arms length seductive augmentations in order to avoid suffering the amputations that are their price.”
The more of our lives happen online, the creepier the ‘break things’ ethic becomes, in terms of corruptions and repercussions.
“...Looking at this from one angle, there’s nothing necessarily unusual here. Social media algorithms are designed to match people to their likes. Cardi B enthusiasts will meet other Cardi B enthusiasts and people who like gummy bears will see gummy bears. But “the recommendation algorithms worked as intended” in the context of matching minors to “groomer-esque behavior” is unsettling nonetheless.
There was more on the subject, though according to Benedict’s story Boasberg cut off the cross, suggesting Meta was falling into the FTC’s “trap” of diving into what the judge described as “ancillary” matters. When I asked Brendan what the response was among reporters watching the trial from an overflow room, he said, “The press was shocked” and “Everybody’s been talking about it,” with some calling it the high moment of the trial.
Nonetheless, apart from Brendan, only Bloomberg did a story: “Instagram Suggested ‘Groomers’ Connect With Minors, FTC Says.” Lee Hepner of the American Economic Liberties Project tweeted about it, saying the data was “beyond disturbing” and “Meta had a designation for ‘groomers’ and recommended millions of minors to them. Front page stuff.” As Stoller noted, a lot of ink is spilled about how platforms allowed online phenomena like QAnon, so a revelation like this getting so little coverage is odd.”
Here’s El Gato once again with a joyous romp around some generated AI angst
Okay, now that we’ve had a bit of a laugh on the weird recursions implicit, a caution
“...There’s a phenomenon called Berkson’s Paradox, which is that two unrelated traits appear negatively correlated in a selected group because the group was chosen based on having at least one of the traits. So if you select the best paper-writers from a pre-selected pool of PhD students, because you think better paper-writers might also be more original researchers, you’d end up selecting the opposite.
With AI models I think we’re starting to see a similar tendency. Imagine models have both “raw capability” and a certain “degree of moralising”. Because the safety gate rejects outputs that are simultaneously capable and un-moralising, the surviving outputs show a collider-induced correlation: the more potent the model’s action space, the more sanctimonious its tone. That correlation is an artefact of the conditioning step - a la the Berkson mechanism.”
And here’s more weirdness of high value! I love people who can be bothered to do the work, and then show the work they did.
Here is a very soundly conceived project from Tree of Woe, with very curious results.
AI is truly weird stuff (and I’m too old and grumpy, and anyhow find it too distasteful, to do this myself), but some questions absoltely must be asked! (while we’re still allowed)
You have to love Ted Gioia – one of the great defenders of humane art, in a digital age
“...Critics aren’t perfect.
Sometimes they get facts wrong. Sometimes their judgment is faulty. Sometimes they dangle their modifiers or split their infinitives with everybody watching.
I’ve been there. And it’s awkward. But I’ve never seen anything as embarrassing as the “Summer Reading List for 2025” in the Chicago Sun-Times.
It gave glowing reviews to books that don’t exist. And I bet you can guess why.
Yes, the newspaper relied on AI to write the article.”
Rat Says remains highly entertaining and also very distinct. We check what rat says, every single day!
Here’s another great Gioia piece about how to revive culture. (Oddly, he, like me, is often misunderstood as a doom-and-gloom guy, when actually he’s very serious about joy and positivity – he’s just also aware of thermodynamics, and so, realistic!)
Finally, here’s an outright delicious piece of short fiction from Mark Leidner (and published by the excellent CLUNY journal) which reminds me of what really imaginative short fiction (even that inspired by life) can be – stealthily brilliant and surprisingly revelatory!
Having only read 5000 words, I don't have an opinion, but add that emoticons don't save people nor persuade me I'm loved. PS: I Am GOD. I spent The Eighth Day relaxing with 'The Killjoys'.
Thanks for the plug....though you may want to retract it since I am a "Boomer."