Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
July 16, 2022
In Politics Necessities Will Always Beat ‘Values’

When in 2018 the royal thugs send by the Saudi clown prince Mohammad bin Salman killed the Qatari lobbyist Jamal Khashoggi the Democrats made a huge issue out of it.

That was mainly because Khashoggi, a life long Muslim Brother propagandist, had been a columnist at the Washington Post where he published under his own name op-eds which were written in the Qatari embassy. Later the Qatari’s used his death to intensify their anti-Saudi agitation.

Biden needed the Post’s support and joined the Qatari campaign.

“We were going to in fact make them pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are,” Biden said of the Saudi government during a presidential debate in November 2019.

“They have to be held accountable,” Biden added.
Source:

The problem with such statements of ‘values’ is that – in the end – necessities will win. Biden needs lower oil prices to raise the chance for the Democrats to at least keep a majority in the House.

The Senate is already lost as Senator Joe Manchin, despite being a nominal Democrat, is blocking most things the Democrats wanted to achieve.

On Friday Biden’s flight to Riyadh was less dramatic than the humiliation of Canossa but still significant. He was greeted at the airport by only a minor prince. When president Trump had first arrived in Riyadh he had been greeted by the Saudi king.


bigger

At their first meeting clown prince Mohammad bin Salman had visibly fun with the humiliation of Biden.


bigger

The next day, when the other rulers of the Golf Cooperation Council arrived, MbS was at the airport and greeted everyone in person.

That he defeated the U.S. president like this has won MbS a lot of new prestige in the Gulf region and beyond.

As for more oil … none will be coming. The Saudis will stick to the current OPEC+ agreement that limits the output of its member states. When the agreement ends later this years the Saudis may increase their output but analysts doubt that they can currently produce much more than they already do. Way more likely is that the recessions in Europe and the U.S. will soon decrease the demand for oil and that prices at the pump will fall. That then could induce OPEC+ to prolong its agreement.

Joe Biden is known to be a revengeful man.

MbS should take great care of his personal security.

Talk of ‘values’ is also a big thing for the arrogant leaders of the EU and some of its member states. By sticking to those over the Ukraine issues they committed to suicide their own economies. Necessities will catch up with them and I predict that it will take less than four year for them to crawl to Moscow and to ask for forgiveness of their sins.

Comments

So far, this has been a relatively cheap lesson for Russia and the RoW.
Posted by: dfg | Jul 17 2022 7:12 utc | 97
We’ll, the $300b fiat balance of Russia has been achieved by selling the real stuff.

Posted by: RB | Jul 17 2022 8:16 utc | 101

Posted by: Milos | Jul 17 2022 7:39 utc | 98
————
Hmmm…someone could’ve helped that plane’s engine to go…

Posted by: ostro | Jul 17 2022 8:19 utc | 102

Posted by: Debsisdead | Jul 17 2022 1:25 utc | 74

Craig Murray has promoted a recent (Nov 2021) documentary about the attempts to free Julian Assange.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/07/ithaka/
I found the documentary on Bitchute in 2 parts:
https://www.bitchute.com/search/?query=ithaka&kind=video

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Jul 17 2022 8:20 utc | 103

Russian X-101 missiles covering most of North America
Russian air-launched cruise missiles X-101/X-102, using technologies to reduce radar visibility, can cover almost the entire territory of North America. This, in particular, is evidenced by the data of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) of the United States.
The situation is aggravated by the low awareness of the United States about potential launches of Russian ALCMs over its territory, and the low probability of hitting such missiles.

Posted by: ostro | Jul 17 2022 8:21 utc | 104

Talking about,”political necessities”
Quick question.
If the Ukrainian operation goes on and Russia succeeds with it’s objectives.
Who’s on the hook for Ukraine sovereign debt?

Posted by: Jpc | Jul 17 2022 8:38 utc | 105

Jpc @ 103
That is exactly what will trigger the divorce between the blocks in the world.

Posted by: alek_a | Jul 17 2022 8:41 utc | 106

Posted by: Debsisdead | Jul 17 2022 1:25 utc | 74
Posted by: waynorinorway | Jul 17 2022 6:36 utc | 95
Why act like a pair of munchkins hiding in the back of the bar muttering darkly about something or other?
You claim to respect Julian Assange. If so, then emulate him. He is where he is because he was fearless. We owe him a great deal for his bravery.
If you have something worthwhile to say, say it. Its the MoA way.

Posted by: Sushi | Jul 17 2022 8:57 utc | 107

Posted by: Jpc | Jul 17 2022 8:38 utc | 105
Excellent question.
My understanding is that the majority of US transfers to 404 have taken the form of “lend lease.” The US provides military hardware and funds 404 state operations with the expectation 404 makes future repayment.

Posted by: Sushi | Jul 17 2022 9:01 utc | 108

Posted by: Jpc | Jul 17 2022 8:38 utc | 105
Some of the US financial support comes in the form of loan guarantees:
The U.S. previously issued three separate $1 billion sovereign loan guarantees to Ukraine between 2014 and 2016. The State Department added that it would be seeking “additional ways to support Ukraine and its people.”
SOURCE:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/594238-us-offers-ukraine-1-billion-loan-guarantee/

Posted by: Sushi | Jul 17 2022 9:07 utc | 109

I predict that it will take less than four year for them to crawl to Moscow and to ask for forgiveness of their sins.
B, what you’re saying is music to my ears, you are so true. I cannot wait for that moment to happen.

Posted by: xiao pignouf | Jul 17 2022 9:15 utc | 110

Golf Cooperation Council?

Posted by: TJ | Jul 17 2022 9:40 utc | 111

US also tried to meet venecuelans and allowed export of venecuelen oil to Italy. Sounds funny among the larger tragedy.
Saudis would want to prices stay as it is so that Trump would be reelected. Alsou saudis have secret alliance with Israel.
Don’t forget they called street where Saudi embasy lies in the name of Qashoggi. I don’t think this was well reicewed by monarchy.

Posted by: Alef | Jul 17 2022 9:44 utc | 112

In the early 90s, Fidel Castro said that: “The next war in Europe will be between Russia and fascism, only fascism will be called democracy.” Exactly 80 years ago, the Battle of Stalingrad broke out, which became the beginning of the end of the Third Reich, marking the line after which its offensive to the east fizzled out and the front slowly, with heavy battles, but steadily and irresistibly rolled towards Berlin.
77 years have passed since the Victory, again, the Nazis in Europe and not only in Europe alone, raised their heads with the filing and blessing of our former “allies”! The repeatition the eternal “Drang nach ost”, starting with Ukraine, which has become a base and springboard for the new Nazism…
They, who in the West successfully “wrapped up” the denazification announced after the war, retained the personnel necessary for the future war against our country and raised new generations of Nazis, and at the same time worked on mistakes, such as using an ethnic Jew as the new Fuhrer of the Ukrainian neo-Bandera Reich. They are not at war with the Russian Empire and not with the Soviet Union. Hardly half of that country remained, and almost all of the territory that Hitler had to conquer in 1941 is already in their hands. Consider half the job done. The talk today is only about the war with Russia and Belarus. And with China…
How many years did it take for Hitler to turn highly educated, cultured, democratic Germany into the Third Reich? For a generation of Germans to grow up, ready to burn in the fire of the Second World War, sacredly confident in their national exclusivity and the right to world hegemony, which turned into ghettos, gas chambers and crematorium ovens in concentration camps, the theory of racial exclusivity and, as a result, the Nuremberg Tribunal? In Ukraine, they had more time, more money, and they gave her more weapons. The whole world has been collecting and collecting…
The only thing that everyone who prepared this bridgehead and training ground for the war with our country to the last inhabitant of Ukraine is now, hiding behind Ukraine and the Ukrainians, are trying to wage it, fearing only one thing: that this war would not hit them themselves, they did not count on it – it’s on that they are overtaken at the last moment. At first, despite eight years of preparation, there was no repetition of June 22, 1941, and now the SMO, repeating the Battle of Stalingrad, marked a new radical turning point in world history. The unipolar world order built by the West under its exclusive hegemony is collapsing. Once again revived Nazism is destroyed by the hands of the Russian military. Today, on the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, we pay tribute to their courage and heroism!

@SolovievLive

Posted by: ostro | Jul 17 2022 9:45 utc | 113

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 16 2022 22:02 utc
I believe the Uki plain was forced to deviate from its course while taking off from the Tehran airport, so that the Iranian air defence believed it to act as an incoming missile and shot it down. What caused the plane to turn is not clear. Pepe Escobar, I believe, suggested the plane was hijacked electronically. I thought it was hit by a projectile from a manpad that had managed to get to the northwest of the airport. We discussed this in the comment section on Moon of Alabama. Our host b came to the conclusion that the shooting was an unfortunate mistake.
Remember, however, that Iran launched a series of attacks on US forces bases in Iraq in response to the Soleimani killing and everyone was waiting for Trump to react in one of his more devious ways. I believe he ordered the plane to be shot down, full of civilians (most of them Iranian-Canadians flying home via Kiev) though it was. This is one of those things one has to disagree with b on (respectfully of course). Another is the corona virus and how it should be handled.

Posted by: Jonathan W | Jul 17 2022 9:59 utc | 114

Talk of ‘values’ is also a big thing for the arrogant leaders of the EU and some of its member states. By sticking to those over the Ukraine issues they committed to suicide their own economies. Necessities will catch up with them and I predict that it will take less than four year for them to crawl to Moscow and to ask for forgiveness of their sins.

King is made by following.
Latvia, Lithuania have depopulation rates of 1/3 in 30% years with Estonia, (pre 2014) Ukraine and eastern Poland with nazis being simmilar. They ruined their own countries with national ideology and superiority suposedly granting proserity. In these countries athmosphere is like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60ItHLz5WEA
They take very active part in EU structures with certain inclination like foreign policy and history. Some uncompromising pathocraty radicals could sway moderates with no other opinion.
EU grants certain well being for political classes so they could not care so mutch. Of corse all of the EU have idea of their moral and otherways superiority with values being an excuse.
Russophobia of Baltic states, Poland, UK have no rational basis. AT least in Baltics I think it is where they could put their frustration. It is a pathocraty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_ponerology
Political elites which ruined their countries will not crawl for forgiveness or at least compromise with reality, they will stand proudly ‘in spite’ till their final demise and turning their countries into some sort of reservation of past.

Posted by: Alef | Jul 17 2022 10:00 utc | 115

@Alef | Jul 17 2022 10:00 utc | 115

Political elites which ruined their countries will not crawl for forgiveness or at least compromise with reality, they will stand proudly ‘in spite’ till their final demise and turning their countries into some sort of reservation of past.

I think this is true, and it means such ‘elites’ simply have to be replaced before they ruin what is left. As there is no more doubt about these people, there can be no more patience.
People in power do not learn. It reminds me of something Max Planck said about science and which reflects the same thing: “science progresses, funeral by funeral”.

Posted by: Norwegian | Jul 17 2022 10:17 utc | 116

The 80s Called. They’re on Their Way for You, Mr. President

Posted by: ostro | Jul 17 2022 10:27 utc | 117

Biden is a study in contrasts. At times he seems vigorous, mostly when he’s reading his cue cards though. Most of the time, I do think age is settling in on him. I don’t know about senility that some folks accuse him of. He never was the sharpest tool in the shed, and most of the time he can speak intelligently. I am 10 years younger and occasionally I walk into a room and wonder why I am there. My problem with Sleepy is he is just so darn evil. That I can’t forgive. The lies, the payola, selling out our country to the Chinese…Impeachment begin Jan 22nd.

One of the comments…

Posted by: ostro | Jul 17 2022 10:38 utc | 118

“…
Talk of ‘values’ is also a big thing for the arrogant leaders of the EU and some of its member states. By sticking to those over the Ukraine issues …”
In which way?
This EU has never adhered to any values, let alone the ones it loudly proclaims. …

Posted by: Humml | Jul 17 2022 10:41 utc | 119

That is one major reason why none of them are investing anymore remotely what these industries have invested into capital expenditure in the past, and why it is still unclear that demand reduction in the US and EU will actually offset the ongoing demand shortfall – because supply is decreasing as well.
I have posted multiple pics showing that the capex spend at this point in time is literally under 20% of past capex levels during oil price increases/commodity cycle upswings.
That is the principal reason why this is going to be a supercycle as opposed to a normal cycle.

My oil friends disagree with your analysis.
The sweet spots in fraccing land are drilled. More drilling, which is occuring, over taps the reservoir, causing a decline in recoverable resource.
Similarly, all the world’s oil provinces have been explored, via 3-D seismic. Some remain untapped, mostly because cost to market exceeds investment, with the sole exception of Russia.
Rosneft’s arctic project requires massive investment, years to market, 400,000 workers to implement. This essentially with unlimited state funds.
The world’s oil endowment is finally tapped out…
Yet, projects which could make accomodation better, like double tracked, electrified mainline rail, carrying 90% of all freight ton-miles, remain dreams.
OR…
Windfuels, converting surplus wind power into distillate.
OR….
Insulating, and weather tightening all housing to PassivHaus standard.
OR….
NaS batteries to store surplus PV power.
OR….
Pumped storage schemes… with the sole exception of the PRC, where 250 Gwe are under construction..
OR…
Electric busses and local delivery vehicles
OR…
High Temperature Gas Cooled Pebble Bed Reactors….. with the sole exception of the PRC where two units went online recently
OR….
Thorium Fueled Molten Salt Reactors… with the sole exception of the PRC where two units went online recently.
OR….
Adoption of regenerative agriculture, long promoted by USDA, to produce high quality foods, at low cost…
Gabe Brown of Bismarck, ND…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RARFGkX3HBI
Rick Clark of Kentland, IN…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTqLyblGvEE
Which build upon the pioneering work of Alan Savory of Zimbabwe..
Lots to do…
Raping Russia is the only item on the agenda… which is proving impossible…
INDY

Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Jul 17 2022 10:45 utc | 120

Posted by: xiao pignouf | Jul 17 2022 9:15 utc | 110

I predict that it will take less than four year for them to crawl to Moscow and to ask for forgiveness of their sins.

EU ain’t gonna be around in 4 years!
My prediction.

Posted by: Sam Smith | Jul 17 2022 11:31 utc | 121

Posted by: Sam Smith | Jul 17 2022 11:31 utc | 121
These words :
“I predict that it will take less than four year for them to crawl to Moscow and to ask for forgiveness of their sins.”
Were B’s, not mine. I just agreed with it, as I do with yours.

Posted by: xiao pignouf | Jul 17 2022 11:37 utc | 122

Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Jul 17 2022 10:45 utc | 120
The sweet spots in fraccing land are drilled. More drilling, which is occuring, over taps the reservoir, causing a decline in recoverable resource.
Correct. These issues are poorly understood by the general public.
Conventional oil exhibits a long production decline. This decline may be forecast with a degree of certainty and occurs over a period of decades (depending on the reservoir).
In unconventional production (all of the fracked production) the resource extraction is “front loaded.” 80% of the resource is extracted within the first three years of production. This initial period is followed by a long tail in which the remaining 20% of the resource may be extracted. It is possible that well production may be extended by performing a further series of frack jobs. Whether this is economically feasible depends on the quality of the reservoir rock.
When these unconventional reservoirs are first drilled it possible to test and forecast the flow from the well. Some areas the wells will give excellent results; other areas may deliver much lower quality results.
In a fracked well the cost to drill and case the well is roughly 1/3 of the cost. The cost of the frack job, the cost of fluids and proppant, is 2/3 of the final cost. When plays like the Permian, Bakken or Eagle Ford were first drilled the operator would test the well and if the test results indicated a lesser quality well, the operator would not complete it. They would thereby save capital that could be applied to drill two more wells.
The consequence of this approach is that the play was well delineated (pun intended). The areas of high production were quickly identified and the lesser quality regions became known. When the operator sought further outside investment they could deliver data which showed the high production of existing wells and the large number of wells drilled but not completed. The operator did not explain the reason the wells were not completed was that they gave poor test results. The investor was left with the impression the uncompleted well inventory would give the same result as currently producing wells. Caveat Emptor.
The process described above is called “high grading.” You develop your most profitable wells first. In the high quality regions the operators then began a program of infill drilling in the attempt to determine the optimum spacing between well bores.
As Dr Oprisko’s post make clear, the consequence of this is that the play becomes “overdrilled” as too close a spacing “steals” production from an adjacent well.
What Does All This Mean?
1) Unconventional production has a productive life measured in years as opposed to decades for a conventional reservoir.
2) The existing inventory of drilled but uncompleted wells (DUC) may be of limited productive value.
3) The US may have a lower amount of resource than prevailing wisdom believes
4) Those foreign states counting on the US as a source of future NGL supply may have zero understanding of a complex area of human endeavour almost totally in the control of a horde of “deplorables” and therefore despised by pointy head bureaucrats and lying politicians.
5) All of the above is dependent on the prevailing market price. If the demand is high enough you can squeeze blood from a stone.
The fact we are fighting a war in Ukraine has nothing to do with my, or my son’s, multiple investments in that country.
Investments that I know nothing about.
Joe Tzu

Posted by: Sushi | Jul 17 2022 12:14 utc | 123

MbS didn’t pick up Biden at the airport, he’d forget it anyway..

Posted by: C | Jul 17 2022 12:24 utc | 124

Jonathan W@114…. Iran has never taken revenge for the killing of General Solomeni, “at a time of our choosing” was what they said…..the bill has yet to be paid.
Cheers M

Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Jul 17 2022 12:27 utc | 125

Mariupol today 17th July https://youtu.be/E_83o2AsaVw

Posted by: ostro | Jul 17 2022 14:29 utc | 126

@Jpc | Jul 17 2022 8:38 utc | 105
«If the Ukrainian operation goes on and Russia succeeds with it’s objectives.
Who’s on the hook for Ukraine sovereign debt?»
If Ukraine fights for the West’s proxy war until the last Ukrainian, then there’s no longer a people/territory, nor any debt to be paid.
Even if a part of Ukraine survives, then it’s very unlikely the current leaders/puppets will stay alive in Ukraine. The next leaders will declare that debt is illegitimate.
There’s the Russian assets stole by the West, but if they actually use that money, it will backfire even harder. And as Putin said, Russia is just getting started.
Long story short, that money is already “lost”. The USAmerican tax payers already paid for it. The Oligarchy of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) already has their guaranteed profit for 2022 season. And if it becomes too obvious, by 2023 they’ll find a war somewhere else.
This is exactly what Julien Assange described, and for that reason, he’s a political prisoner of USA’s dictatorship.
I remember I said in 2021 that if USA was getting out of Afghanistan, that meant a war was close. The MIC needs a constant income. What else is more constant than ignorant tax payers under the brainwash of the propaganda machine (MSM)? All that is needed is manufacture consent, and there they go. Pakistan? Uzbekistan? Taiwan? Myanmar? Venezuela? Mali? So many countries in the world so far away from USA…
But that all changes if Russia indeed succeeds with it’s objectives. Hence, the insistence on the idiot/vassal European “leaders” to get tax payers to fund the 2% for NATO. That’s the result of USA’s lunatic NeoCons corrupted by the MIC’s oligarchy, already preparing plan B: if there’s no war to profit, then the Western “friends” will pay for it.
Have you heard of the Uber files? How that fascist company of late-stage crony Capitalism bought all western politicians and crushed the workers’s rights in every country? Now imagine what the MIC does, with so much more money and power.
Didn’t you notice some speeches from European “leaders” are almost copy & paste the speeches made by some of Raytheon’s and Lockeed Martin’s public relations?
Why do you all think the European Union, instead of fighting corruption, decided to follow USA’s steps and legalize all sorts of lobbying? NeoCon and NeoLib “leaders” don’t pay for their campaign themselves! And the positive press for them, and negative press for alternative politicians (that dare to represent the people) also need funding.

Posted by: Carlos Marques | Jul 17 2022 16:33 utc | 127

Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Jul 17 2022 10:45 utc | 120
All those ‘or’s’ depend on the continued (over?) consumption and extraction of metals, rare metals, rare earths, etc using energy which is not free. Do you envisage this cycle of extraction/consumption extending into the infinite future?
Has anyone given any thought as to how civilisation will be funded/driven in, say, 1000 years from now. Fusion power has been “20 years in the future” for fifty years now. There is a finite limit to oil, metals, and other similar resources. Things which are either (practically) infinite are wave, solar and wind power, and wood, glass, and plant based materials. We have to downsize out lifestyles (3.5 Earths to support a current European lifestyle) to match that of current African ones.
In order to facilitate this the US must be either destroyed or divided – (the EU will dwindle anyway), and China / Russia / BRICS will then be able to implement downsizing in a controlled way, without US threats.

Posted by: Jams O’Donnell | Jul 17 2022 17:10 utc | 128

Apologies for the grammar – I think it can be understood anyway

Posted by: Jams O’Donnell | Jul 17 2022 17:12 utc | 129

Carlos@127
Good points. Big Pharma is another example of that.
They have huge influence and and are a very destructive force worldwide.
National gvernments are the only orgs with the power to protect their people from these predators, unfortunately they are working hand in glove with these industries. The very definition of fascism.

Posted by: CitizenKayne | Jul 17 2022 18:58 utc | 130

CitizenKayne | Jul 17 2022 18:58 utc | 130
Institutions try to preserve the problems to which they style themselves the solution. -Clay Shirky
There seems to be a memo going around to claim that without the state we would be defenseless against creatures of the state. Anyone who understands power relations will find these claims manifestly fucking stupid at first sight.

Posted by: sippy the shot glass | Jul 17 2022 19:39 utc | 131

Posted by: Melaleuca | Jul 17 2022 4:34 utc | 82
“6. Small tip, post sauce in first post. [Important, as this reduces thread clutter from multiple and repeated requests for sauce].”
Please: what is ‘sauce?’

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 18 2022 2:09 utc | 132

Posted by: Melaleuca | Jul 17 2022 5:01 utc | 86
“Our source went on to say: “Jamal Khashoggi was in the end an intelligence agent in journalist clothes. If he’s not found alive, he would be the victim of a game where journalism and intelligence services are all mixed up and which he had never imagined that one day it would turn against him.”
Unlikely that SA did the hit on their own without CIA say-so.
Al Quaida meanse ‘The Base’ we are told. It is shorthand for ‘The Database.’ Which referred to the CIA (and Mossad?) asset list data base in the ME.
‘Lil niggle: they are all in bed with each other. I think anyone who gets into the international Intelligence game probably knows that one day it might turn against him, but ….

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 18 2022 2:16 utc | 133

Posted by: Alef | Jul 17 2022 10:00 utc | 115
“Latvia, Lithuania have depopulation rates of 1/3 in 30% years with Estonia, (pre 2014) Ukraine and eastern Poland with nazis being similar. They ruined their own countries with national ideology and superiority supposedly granting prosperity. … Some uncompromising pathocracy radicals could sway moderates with no other opinion.
EU grants certain well being for political classes so they could not care so mutch. Of course all of the EU have idea of their moral and otherwise superiority with values being an excuse.
Russophobia of Baltic states, Poland, UK have no rational basis. AT least in Baltics I think it is where they could put their frustration. It is a pathocracy.”
1. I like to think I invented the term ‘pathocracy’ though no doubt many others did before me. It’s nice to see you use it although you spelled it pathocraty.
2. I met the Latvian govt in exile – or some of them. They owned a chateau in the Loire area near Chinon near Paris, chateau country. The chateau had over 100 bedrooms, summer dormitories for 200 more and two houses nearby for 50 staff. The chateau was rather baroque and weird but well built. Over twenty or so years, exiled Latvians would come to get together for fun but also to learn. They converted a large room into a library with thick walls to prevent sunlight from entering. There they kept archives of the pre-soviet days with music and lyrics – one of their most precious traditions – going back over 1,000 years, newspapers, books, films and so forth. They conducted workshops for people to learn how to restore buildings because the soviets were letting them go to pot and in many cases replacing them with crap. The Director was a very nice, soft-spoken well educated person.
The next year they sold the property (my group passed which was a huge mistake – the entire property was for sale for less than one million USD, about the cost of a 2 BR apartment in Paris!). And then soon thereafter they all went back home to Latvia (this was 1992 when we met). And then gradually I read occasional news stories and it seemed to me that the spirit they were cultivating on that French property didn’t carry far far in realpolitik once they got their country back finally.
Maybe the EU business (as with Ukraine) was too much of an ideological or concept-driven leap from the ordinary national reality they needed a decade or two to build before even considering such a thing. Maybe trying to divorce too quickly from Russian culture as well as the State was also too much too soon and they ended up being confused and torn from the get-go. I have no idea.
But it did occur to me reading those stories and now your post that I wonder if there are not many serious shortcoming in the Western way of setting up governance structures. Perhaps it’s also a corruption-from-BIS financing dynamic, but I think beyond that ubiquitous pathogenic factor that maybe our way of setting up political parties, legislature, executive and so forth, variations essentially on the 1770’s US constitution, maybe that way is structurally flawed.
If we compare our systems to Russia and China what is glaringly obvious is their far greater authoritarian quotient. They make strong states with strong leaders and work hard to have the nation pulling together, lower, middle and upper orders. I doubt any nation or civilization can thrive unless this is achieved. Doesn’t mean that all classes agree about everything but they do pull in the same overall direction and are proud and delighted to be doing so.

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 18 2022 2:46 utc | 134

re Posted by: Sushi | Jul 17 2022 8:57 utc | 107
I have made enough remarks about the clueless one’s predilection for repeating energy corporation lies & distortions openly going back several years, certainly proceeding your arrival, long enough that those who I wish to communicate with to cop my gentle reminder without provoking the sort of pointless arguments that you appear to thrive on. You wanna get into yet another negativity inducing multi-threaded ‘debate’? Look elsewhere sushi, I’m sure you’ll try & do your worst tossing insult baited hooks here, there & everywhere. However I won’t be biting, ‘cos responding to worthless & negative regurgitators of others’ thoughts is simply not worth the bother.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Jul 18 2022 3:45 utc | 135

Posted by: Debsisdead | Jul 18 2022 3:45 utc | 135
Amen.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Jul 18 2022 4:59 utc | 136

Debsisdead | Jul 18 2022 3:45 utc | 135
Thorstein Veblen didn’t name it, but debate is another bourgeois form designed to convert leisure into property, like all elite pastimes.

Posted by: sippy the shot glass | Jul 18 2022 14:17 utc | 137