more re: Natural gas / financial impacts
Another thing I think, is how the second-tier EU members are going to react to the financial crunch, whose energy aspect is yet to peak (discussed in previous comments).
As usual, countries would use their veto in the EU governing structures, to ensure they don’t get left shortchanged by relief policies. One point of concern is that this behavior might go beyond the veto of the financial relief policies, but could also include veto of de-escalation measures — as we have already seen from Lithuania, for example. It would be unhelpful to say the least, but the motivations will be intense. German firms will lose money, but even if bankrupt, they can be taken over by other firms or creditors within their country. That won’t be the case for industries of financially weaker EU countries. This is in addition to cases when the veto / blocking country is simply play-acting the part, as more of a proxy function.
I guess the point is, the crisis, in both financial and geopolitical terms, is likely to continue well beyond whenever all the major players publicly declare that they’re ready to stop it.

Posted by: ptb | Jul 4 2022 14:04 utc | 304

I think that if Russia was really waging a full war against Ukraine that Lviv would already be rubble and nobody in Kiev would have food, fuel, light or internet.
Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 4 2022 13:35 utc | 349
———————-
Russia simply can’t do that as, even in Lvov, there are Russians and Russian-speaking people living there. Russia will not raze Kiev either. But, RF will demilitarise Ukraine, one way or another. As a result, the NATO countries would lack the resources to wage war within NATO territory. Kiev, by the way is full of Russian speaking Ukrainians, who’d all of a sudden would become Russians, if/when RF forces would come there.
Then, the energy war is already waged against the Unfriendlies, the results will be seen around October-November…I wonder, if the routine stoppage of the two Nord Stream lines in 11th July would ever end, on the 21st July.

Posted by: ostro | Jul 4 2022 14:09 utc | 306

KingsMeg #334

Posted by: Tim | Jul 4 2022 14:13 utc | 308

KingsMeg #334
Thanks for the heads up about black propaganda. I am sure you are right. It is very difficult to know what is true. However I would like to pick up on a couple of things..
1. There is clear evidence that the Dominion systems were compromised. There was an ingenious piece of work that showed that precincts with Dominion systems showed a marked swing to democrats compared to polling data.
2. The vaccine can get into the blood if the vaccine is not administered properly by “aspirating”, if the needle happens to go into a blood vessel in the muscle. This explains myocarditis.

Posted by: Tim | Jul 4 2022 14:17 utc | 310

sad to think a few well placed Zircons on the true decision making centres may have
Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Jul 4 2022 14:15 utc | 363
—
The escalation of the war against NATO beyond Ukraine’s borders should be unthinkable.
Defeating all of NATO with a limited engagement is the best outcome.

Posted by: too scents | Jul 4 2022 14:28 utc | 312

Furthermore, in Weimar Germany, when no jobs were to be had, it truly was a miracle that Hitler and the NSDAP were able to revitalize so quickly its economy, sidestepping western finance, and with no union help. Heh. Go figure.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jul 4 2022 2:26 utc | 217
This is not true at all!
Western finance was instrumental in the rise of Germany as were many Western corporations during this period.
Antony Sutton showed the key role Wall Street played in the rise of Hitler.

Posted by: Down South | Jul 4 2022 14:53 utc | 314

Make an argument which can stand on its own!
Posted by: Vick | Jul 4 2022 14:54 utc | 369
—
An engagement where NATO sends its limited treasure into Ukraine to be destroyed is sufficient to end the Atlantic alliance.

Posted by: too scents | Jul 4 2022 14:58 utc | 316

Posted by: too scents | Jul 4 2022 14:58 utc | 372
———————-
Or, the US of A becomes the Divided States…😏

Posted by: ostro | Jul 4 2022 15:02 utc | 318

@Vick & Gabriel et al.
Your tone and agression does not fit at this board. I am all for discussion but you are not doing it in good faith. So I will just ignore you now although I am always up for opposing views.

Posted by: alek_a | Jul 4 2022 15:26 utc | 320

Again, I’m not a doctor or researcher. Components of the vax require active transport to move out of the muscle and into the bloodstream. Except that’s what our immune system does, it recognizes foreign bodies, envelopes them in transporter cells, and moves them into the bloodstream. But that’s not going to move a nanobot or a graphene oxide ‘razor blade’; those would be so foreign that our immune response would never be activated, so they would dissolve in situ or remain where they are.
Posted by: Kingsmeg | Jul 4 2022 14:05 utc | 357

The rat study available at the following link indicated that detectable quantities of lipid nanoparticles from the Pfizer vaccine were in numerous organs within hours of injection into a muscle.
https://www.docdroid.net/xq0Z8B0/pfizer-report-japanese-government-pdf
I didn’t find this surprising, being that immune system components aren’t all that the blood carries away from cells.

Posted by: David Levin | Jul 4 2022 15:30 utc | 322

Down South@368
What Nemesis knows about German history is negligible. What he can do is propagandise on behalf of fascism.
As you say western finance and Wall Street in particular poured money into German investments, the cases of General Motors (Opel) and Ford being notorious.

Posted by: bevin | Jul 4 2022 15:33 utc | 324

Posted by: Kingsmeg | Jul 4 2022 14:57 utc | 371
“I do not believe it explains myocarditis, because it seems that an actual majority of recipients experienced some level of sub-clinical myocardia from the injections. How many were injected directly into a vein, less than 1% certainly? I believe it explains the immediate reactions to the vax, like anaphylactic shock or coma within seconds or minutes.”
Am no doctor but myocarditis things look like chronic inflammatory conditions which always involve immune system impairment. But there is also a blood element it seems in what the Chinese would refer to as the Heart-Kidney matrix. But immune system stuff shows up all over the place affecting different people in different ways. There are also many neurological nasties frequently reported.
It’s a nasty business and no mistake. And the worst is the degree of complacency in the professional and lay populations. The West has already collapsed; we just don’t know it yet. (Another reason why there won’t be a real war – our side is not capable of waging one. And even if we did, half of ‘us’ would be rooting for ‘us’ to lose.)

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 4 2022 15:37 utc | 326

Posted by: Paco | Jul 4 2022 15:29 utc | 333
“but not for long, a new class appeared and their luxury apartments with views to the Kremlin were acquired sometimes by killing the former inhabitants by the new class of mafia criminal oligarchy. There is a film that illustrates the above, Старые Клячи, Old Nags, see if you can find it with subtitles, comedy with a lot of laughs and tears.”
Thank you. Very interesting, though I suspect there was more continuity than you describe albeit the entire communist attempt went through so many convulsions and then collapse so rapidly that it’s hard to say either way. Putin, for example, was elevated by several movers and shakers in the background, right? (An oligarch whom he later pushed out and so forth, but also quite a few others no doubt…)
I wonder if this is also true in China that there isn’t inherited status, that everyone starts equal (which is what you are implying, no?). That sounds pretty good though some of the more artful aspects of civilizational culture will suffer perhaps. It’s not always a terrible thing to hand down skills, including leadership skills, from one generation to another, or to build a nice property with working farm or business and hand it on. A middle way must be found always, and I suspect the emerging multipolar initiative is going to deliberately attempt to find one.

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 4 2022 15:47 utc | 328

But the vax doesn’t go directly into our bloodstream from the intra-muscular injection site. So it can’t flood your bloodstream with nanotech robots or micro-tracking chips or any of the similar claims I’ve seen. Some of the stories are black propaganda, and it’s really hard to tell the difference without studying the underlying biology. But spreading these stories harms the anti-(mRNA)-vax movement, as intended.
Posted by: Kingsmeg | Jul 4 2022 12:57 utc | 334
I was with you until stated what is bolded. I think you are wrong.
https://regenerativemc.com/biodistribution-of-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine/
The nano-bots stuff requires data and I have not seen anything solid.
Additionally, Pfizer’s attempt to hide data for 75 yrs. does not give me ANY CONFIDENCE in the “magic elixer”.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/judge-scraps-75-year-timeline-for-fda-to-release-pfizer-vaccine-safety-data-giving-agency-eight-months
By the way, the Long Term Effect studies ARE NOT DONE YET !!!!
Yet we get this News,
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/fda-future-framework-covid-vaccines/

Posted by: Tom_12 | Jul 4 2022 15:50 utc | 330

Reuters is reporting that Ukraine has raised its flag again on Snake Island……..winning, winning, winning
Americans are waking up but I am not sure what will become of that.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 4 2022 15:56 utc | 332

There is no doubt that the CV vaccine does not prevent repeated CV infections/illness.
There is no doubt that the shot produces an inflammatory response.
Many are predisposed to Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS) – a debilitating biotoxin-triggered immune dysfunction disorder.
A series of tests for CIRS should be performed by a medical doctor before receiving the vaccine.
Some of the markers for CIRS are night sweats, sexual dysfunction, red eyes, blurred vision, color blindness, having had Lyme disease.
https://www.drelenaklimenko.com
/diagnosing-cirs-complete-guide-testing/

Posted by: Chaka Khagan | Jul 4 2022 15:57 utc | 334

@Tom_12 #336

I was with you until stated what is bolded. I think you are wrong.
https://regenerativemc.com/biodistribution-of-pfizer-covid-19-
vaccine/

I’ve been following the biodistribution data for some time. The key is in the time factors given:
over 48 hours, distribution was mainly observed to liver, adrenal glands, spleen and ovaries, with maximum concentrations observed at 8-48 hours post-dose.
Why 48 hours? Because the components of the vax are being moved via an active transport mechanism. If it were moving directly into the bloodstream from the injection, for example by dissolving in our plasma, that would blanket the entire body within a few minutes. An intramuscular injection of morphine takes effect in about 10 minutes, I know from experience.
The vax is transported from the injection site via our immune system’s transport cells like macrophages. One of our autoimmune problems caused by the vax is that as the macrophages try to enclose the whole nanolipid envelope, the envelopes pierce the macrophages and deliver their mRNA payload into macrophages, resulting in colonized macrophages entering our bloodstream and growing spikes on their surface that then break off in our bloodstream instead of at the injection site like we were told. This appears to be what causes myocardia and blood clotting, since the spike has an affinity for the lining of our blood vessels, etc. The fragments of the now broken nanolipid envelope then float around in our blood and accumulate in ovaries, testes and liver, causing the reproductive system dysfunction we’ve seen.
Again, I am not an expert on this, I just read stuff and try to rewrite in plain English.

Posted by: Kingsmeg | Jul 4 2022 16:13 utc | 336

@juliania 226
@Paul Greenwood 233
Year Amount (tons) %
1941 360,778. 2.1
1942 2,453,097 14
1943 4,794,545 27.4
1944 6,217,622 35.5
1945 3,673,819 21
Total 17,499,861 100 (Wikipedia)
Lend Lease was helpful but not critical in defeating Germany.
The first significant aid to arrive in the USSR was the PQ1 convoy, which departed Hvalfjörður on September 29, 1942, arrived at Arkhangelsk on October 11, 1942, meaning that goods from the convoy only arrived at the front in February 1943, long after Project Uranus, the Soviet Red Army’s 19–23 November 1942 strategic counter-offensive operation which ultimately lead to the surrender of the remnants of the German Sixth Army and Italian Right Army on 2 February 1943. The first US aircraft, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft with serial number 42-32892, to reach the USSR, was only handed to the Soviet Air force in Fairbanks, Alaska, on March 12, 1943, before being flown the 5,650 kilometers to Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. Like the heavy bombers which the Soviets repeatedly requested, but were never supplied, transport aircraft would have been really helpful before then.

Posted by: Hermit | Jul 4 2022 16:25 utc | 338

TY James now @ 343…
Reminding thread topic as well as quibbles over the word “war”

Posted by: crone | Jul 4 2022 16:27 utc | 340

There is another aspect to public policies regarding the “novel virus” — now mutating at ever greater speed due to high prevalence, except in China — which in this round of discussion has gone as yet unmentioned.
The collective West’s vaccination only policy eliminated, erased, cancelled preventive and early treatment remedies used by experienced clinicians, treatments which cost little to nothing to employ, ensuring viral spread, worst outcomes and, not least, high profit margins to pharmaceuticals.
While ordinary people were oppressed and harmed with guaranteed-to-fail partial lockdowns, experimental for-profit risky vaccines, and general social chaos, psychological and financial, the blob grew ever more powerful in its ability to harm regular people and societies.
If early treatments had been allowed to be recognized, the vaccines’ emergency use recommendation would have been denied, that is if existing law had prevailed.

Posted by: suzan | Jul 4 2022 16:29 utc | 342

Posted by: Melaleuca | Jul 4 2022 13:36 utc | 304
Paraphrasing Dima he believes that Ukraine is holding back their best troops until they get the big money from US.
So they recruit women, the elderly and the disabled as placeholders/cannon fodder.

Posted by: Chaka Khagan | Jul 4 2022 16:30 utc | 344

NemesisCalling @217
Furthermore, in Weimar Germany, when no jobs were to be had, it truly was a miracle that Hitler and the NSDAP were able to revitalize so quickly its economy, sidestepping western finance, and with no union help. Heh. Go figure.
Hitlers system of finance is shrouded in mystery. He basically bypassed the international monetary system. He created a public works system to put people back to work by issuing non-inflationary bills of exchange, called Labor Treasury Certificates. These bills are what the workers were paid in. He basically founded a medium of exchange founded on the productive capacity of people, not gold or any other instrument.
He said, was taught, was led, or was instructed, I do not know if he was actually that smart..
“We were not foolish enough to try to make a currency [backed by] gold of which we had none, but for every mark that was issued we required the equivalent of a mark’s worth of work done or goods produced. . . .we laugh at the time our national financiers held the view that the value of a currency is regulated by the gold and securities lying in the vaults of a state bank.”
I think it was Hjalmar Schacht that taught the Nazis to abandon the English economic theory. In other words, Germany issued debt-free and interest-free money from 1935 on.
For international trade they moved to a barter system. Of course, under the transfer agreement they looted Jewish wealth by offering some to leave under very favorable conditions to Germany. Sort of like what Spain did to the Jews when they kicked them out.
Loans to buy stock were outlawed along with many other favorable regulations to kill the classic speculative economy of finance
To fiance rearmament he created MEFO bills held by a dummy company called Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft. They were basically short term letters of credit that could be resold to the bank at favorable conditions.
All this is also similar to the greenback spent into circulation by Lincoln as he did not want to borrow money at usurious rates to pay for the civil war. After his assassination the greenbacks were withdrawn from circulation. This caused a massive downturn in the economy. Silver is another story. Mined and minted into circulation, that was killed off as well causing great economic destruction.
This type of money allegedly appeared for a short time under JFK. These United States Notes were to issued directly by the US Treasury and spent into circulation not borrowed into circulation like our fiat system. His dad was very familiar with Hitlers system of fiance. Some say this was the proximate cause of his death.
All and all it is a complex and lightly studied system. Very little is written on this subject. Who is behind the levers of power to shroud all this in mystery? Who knows. One thing I do know, their system of finance is destructive to a persons life essence and it the under the power of a small group of people.

Posted by: circumspect | Jul 4 2022 16:34 utc | 346

This has pompeus to say, some quotes:
(first in his class at West Point, an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and cofounded Thayer Aerospace, before entering politics)
Nine American presidents dismembered the Soviet Empire at enormous great human costs, to allow it to even begin to be reconstitution unthinkable.
It is my conviction that America and the West must acknowledge the centrality of hydrocarbon energy to the world geopolitics
NATO solidarity is essential Germany and France must not defer to any of the Kremlin’s wishes.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a form of imperialism. It is the manifestation of a corrupt intent to entrap less developed countries with promises of loans and infrastructure improvements.
the United States must help in building of the three lighthouses for liberty. .. Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. linking these three bastions with NATO, as well as the new and expanded security framework for the Indo-Pacific will form a global alliance for freedom. This will benefit America.
Projecting?

Posted by: gary | Jul 4 2022 16:36 utc | 348

There is no virus. There is only mass-hysteria and killer injections. Horrific as a WWIII might be, it probably wouldn’t kill as many as the effects of panic, despair and the so-called vaccines will.

Posted by: Dale | Jul 4 2022 16:39 utc | 350

Kingsmeg | Jul 4 2022 16:28 utc | 347
The blob is multifaceted in its banal, macabre splendor.

Posted by: suzan | Jul 4 2022 16:40 utc | 352

Other than denazification and demilitarisation of Ukraine, the economy of the Ukraine is rapidly collapsing. That collapse is showing in the economies of the Unfriendlies, even though at the moment the ruling elites of the Unfriendlies are hiding it from their citizens. Energy and fuel is a weapon that RF is using and it is not that interesting to Russia how much it earns from the Unfriendlies for fuel and energy, but how much Russia can hurt the economies of those unfriendlies by not letting them have that fuel and energy. The chances are that the unfriendlies won’t be able to fill the gas and coal storages for the winter. Let’s see where the unfriendlies be after the 21st July…

Posted by: ostro | Jul 4 2022 16:44 utc | 354

Pompous Pompeo’s multipolar world:
Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the USA.
What? no Saudi Arabia? That’s a Lighthouse too.
On its way to BRICs.

Posted by: Chaka Khagan | Jul 4 2022 16:46 utc | 356

The whole SMO is to kick the ass of the US of A and the USD. One should go back in time and read/listen to what Putin said, from around September 2021. To make this world a multi-polar world, get rid of the USD as the reserve currency…and, isolate US of A.

Posted by: ostro | Jul 4 2022 16:54 utc | 358

That said, am looking forward to Putins explanation of how he sees the new polycentric world order working in practice. He may not be a Saint but he still might be a truly great world statesman leading us out of trenches we have all been mired in since long before 1913….
Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 4 2022 11:43 utc | 273
And again, thanks, Scorpion! This is why I went very slowly through a discussion of “The Master and Margarita” which was written during the Stalinist regime and not published until 1966. It has a cult following in Russia still. The epigraph, front page significant phrase, is from Goethe:
To the question “Who are you?” being posed by Faust, Satan in the guise of Mephistopheles responds:
“I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”
Russians do know that complexity, that life-fusion; it is in their deepest sensibility that such is life as it must be lived and even celebrated. So it is also in classical German writing. What is basic is not the evil, however dastardly it presents itself, and will present itself in future; what is basic is the good.
Even the Greek playwrights knew it: Sing sorrow, sorrow; but good win out in the end. That’s not just a hope, though we, sunk to the very depths at times, forget it; that is what happens. It’s the light separated from the darkness; evening then morning, one day, which in Genesis precedes the heat of the sun.

Posted by: juliania | Jul 4 2022 17:02 utc | 360

One thing I find interesting in the SMO is despite the failures on the Ukrainian side, the military incompetence hasn’t affected the USD/Ukrainian exchange rate. (I only now learned that the Ukrainian unit of currency is called the Hryvnia). Since near the end of April, the Hryvina has been very steady, trading at about 29.5 UAH to 1 USD. You’d think with the absolute dogs mess of Ukraine the UAH would be a lot less stable than it is today.
The strength of the ruble doesn’t surprise me. Before the war it was hanging around at 75 RUB to 1 USD, then with the aggressive sanctions it dropped to 135 RUB to 1 USD at about March 1st. Ever since then, the RUB has picked up speed in strength and is at a rate of 55.4 RUB to 1 USD. The last time the RUB was this strong against the USD was 2014.
Maybe a person better schooled in economics than I am (what I know could be written on an index card) can explain the first phenomenon; perhaps the following explains the second:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-ruble-currency-russian-economy-sanctioms-2022/

Posted by: Ursula Zandt | Jul 4 2022 17:10 utc | 362

Re: biodistribution of vaccines
I really cannot claim to have a full grasp of the matter (not even close), but I know one thing: regarding the uptake of anything injected into a muscle (including any vaccine), the very first thing to take into account is not the blood stream as a circulatory system, but the lymphatic system. That’s where the magic happens, and right at the beginning, before any substance or particles might enter the blood stream.

Posted by: Scotch Bingeington | Jul 4 2022 17:15 utc | 364

Pompeo cited: China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a form of imperialism.
Posted by: gary | Jul 4 2022 16:36 utc | 354
Typical misunderstanding, or Gary plays cute. Words have meaning in CONTEXT. Here the context was marshaling various reason why China is not only bad, but very bad. As we know from Aristotle in Ancient Greece, each political system has an OK form and a degenerate form. Thus
OK: democracy
degenerate: ochlocracy
OK: monarchy
degenerate: tyranny
OK: aristocracy (the rule of the “best”, e.g. Aristotle was the best the)
degenerate: oligarchy (the rule of the”few”, random chaps of mediocre quality)
And this does not exhaust all possible political system, so we need to add an appendix:
OK: fascism as practiced by forebears of Chista Freehand and similarly inspided folks today
degenerate: Canadian truckers
OK: imperialism (like invasions or debt traps) as practiced by USA
degenerate: imperialism as practiced by everybody else.
I must admit that the case of imperialism requires some care. Suppose that Australia or Israel keeps some nations in debt traps or invade. Is it degenerate? No, because it is not really imperialism: it has a chain of deference involving USA, e.g. Australia defers to USA, and fill the blanks for {USA, Israel}. So it is not like Australia usurps imperial prerogatives, and neither does Israel. And no one so astute as to read MoonOfAlabama would think that there is a chain of deference from China to USA.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jul 4 2022 17:16 utc | 366

OK: pointing to a possible typing mistake
degenerate: changing the text when you are not looking
Aristo- means best in Ancient Greek, so Aristotle means “best tle”, not the “best the”. Nevertheless, we must put up with autocorrect, I guess it is a feature approved by the Lords of MoonOfAlabama.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jul 4 2022 17:22 utc | 368

Posted by: juliania | Jul 4 2022 17:02 utc | 366
“What is basic is not the evil, however dastardly it presents itself, and will present itself in future; what is basic is the good.”
Indeed. In the oldest and most fruitional Tibetan Buddhist School (Nyingmas = Old Ones; doctrine features dzogchen = Ultimate/Final/Original Great/Vast/Space) the iconography features a male-female deity in union called Kunto Zangpo which basically means All-Good.
The creation / collective dream realm we are now all sharing and co-creating is fundamentally, basically good. Good to the core, good ab initio. Some translate the notion simply as ‘basic goodness.’
All the great traditions start and end on this point one way or another. Simply because it is true. It is not ‘objectively’ or factually true – things which materialists obsess over unnecessarily – but primordially, spiritually and above all experientially true.
You have inspired me to read Margaret and the Master. It is on the waiting list. First we build the house. Then we move in the furniture. Then Scorpion reads!!!

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 4 2022 17:28 utc | 370

@aquileia 306
Your stunning acceptance of propaganda in place of actual history leads you far astray from reality.
Communism’s principal virtue is that it avoids the Six Great Thefts of Capitalism. See https://www.greanvillepost.com/2021/09/13/the-six-great-thefts-of-capitalism/
For a brief summary of the actual history of the USSR, see https://bit.ly/USSR-Nutshell The USSR in a Nutshell: A Brief History of the Rise and Destruction of the Soviet Union and What Happens Next.
And for the lies about the USSR having “murdered millions” before WW II, see http://bit.ly/LiesAboutUSSR “Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union”

Posted by: Hermit | Jul 4 2022 17:31 utc | 372

TKingsmeg @ 347
Posted by: oldhippie | Jul 4 2022 17:18 utc | 373
What has Covid got to do with the SMO in th eUkraine, by the way? That’s a US (and the puppies) problem, that is, the Pfizer vax and other western vax. Russia didn’t use any of the “western” vaccines…
Posted by: ostro | Jul 4 2022 17:29 utc | 377

My original point was about recognizing different types of propaganda. The Ukraine war is being fought primarily on the propaganda front. I used election fraud and the vax as examples.

Posted by: Kingsmeg | Jul 4 2022 17:39 utc | 374

@oldhippie #373

The only thing we know is the covid propaganda..
Records are not being kept. There is no data. Data analysis never happens.

We can, and I do, say the same thing about Ukraine. In fact that’s why I wrote my initial (now-censored) ‘black propaganda’ post, and I’ve commented elsewhere on certain sources that are quoted here on a regular basis.
Before accepting at face value the opinion of a Martyanov or Ritter, or god forbid Chomsky, you need to analyze their history, figure out who they’re working for and what the agenda is. There’s more than one type of propaganda, and it’s put out for more than one reason. Sometimes it’s just a honey trap to identify dissenting voices.

Posted by: Kingsmeg | Jul 4 2022 17:47 utc | 376

“…the communists in Russia had nothing to do with large-scale famines and massacres which didn’t even actually happen apparently…” scorpion @355
The Communists in Russia were often incompetent, corrupt, cruel and stupid. In this they differed little from the rulers of other countries. But the context in which they ruled was one designed to prevent the regulatory system-which mitigates and generally prevents such things from becoming serious- from working.
The aim of the imperialists was to prevent the Soviet Union from functioning as the thing they feared most: a real democracy, economic, social and political.
What was that regulatory system? Rule through the Soviets which were committees in permanent session, of the delegates, subject to immediate recall of factories, military units, villages and other communities. The delegates (some elected, others on a rotating basis or chosen by lot) brought the concerns of their constituents to the Soviet and reported the decisions of the Soviet to their
assembled constituents.
Constant war, subversion of the sort the whole world now understands to be baked into imperialism, bribery, blackmail and corruption of every kind provided the ammunition that those Communists who were inclined to shortcuts used to disassemble the Soviet system and replace it with the sort of electoral system familiar to us in the bourgeois world. The difference between the One Party state, in which factions promoted rival policies and the two party state in which factions promote indistinguishable policies, is not very large.
The Revolution in Russia in 1917 was long overdue and immensely popular, it involved almost the entire population. This was not a surprise to anyone- the entire world had been waiting for the Romanovs to be overthrown for the better part of a century. The revolution was welcomed everywhere except in those western quarters which viewed it as a weakening of the Entente in war.
What was not welcomed, and led to a vicious and seventy year long war against it, was the way in which the Russian peoples- freeing themselves from centuries of oppression in which they had been treated as virtual slaves- did not hesitate to identify the private ownership of land and other means of production as the cause of their suffering.
It is difficult to see how they could have concluded anything else: the social and economic basis of the small liberal and revisionist socialist parties was tiny. The dominating forces in Russian capitalism were foreign financiers who could bankroll parties but had no votes. The only other forces opposed to socialisation of land and industry were remnants of the landowning aristocracy who dominated the military, but even they were divided.
It was clear to all that the Russian revolution had to be socialist or defeated. Hence the vicious civil wars (most of them civil only in the sense that foreign powers employed as many Russian mercenaries as they could recruit, even Kornilov and his like represented only a minority within the communities which they mobilised) which reached their apotheosis in the 1990s when Yeltsin and other fruits of the system effortlessly turned themselves into the sort of class the Revolution had overthrown- comprador agents of foreign capital organised to suck every kopeck’s worth of food and wealth out of the country and onto the markets that they controlled. In the process reducing the people to the misery from which the mere policy of socialising the means of production had sufficed to deliver them, despite everything. Despite war, despite subversion, despite the constant din of propaganda most of it unadulterated fiction, despite the need to earmark not 2% but closer to 20% of the annual product to ‘defence.”
The Soviet Union did not collapse of its own faults, it was ground down and part of the grinding down was supplied by corruption within the Communist Party and the bureaucracy. Which is where we began because the Soviets were designed to act as popular control over government, bureaucrats and individuals and cliques within the system.
For those with time on their hands a study of the 1936 Constitution of the USSR would probably be rewarding.
Another study yet to be conducted would assess the number of casualties of the neo-liberalisation of the former Soviet Union after 1990. In terms of deaths the number would probably exceed those who died in the war, in terms of other casualties, from untreated medical conditions leading to life long handicaps to lives interrupted and ruined by, for example, the cessation of education, in terms of the replacement of Soviet ideology by the various forms of fascism imported from the “west” and the consequent violence (see Donbas) would occupy several Robert Conquests for decades. It would be unlikely to attract financing from the CIA or the Foreign Office, however.

Posted by: bevin | Jul 4 2022 18:00 utc | 378

Bernhard has new thread up for UKRAINE
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/07/ukraine-open-thread-2022-103.html#comments

Posted by: crone | Jul 4 2022 18:14 utc | 380

One thing I find interesting in the SMO is despite the failures on the Ukrainian side, the military incompetence hasn’t affected the USD/Ukrainian exchange rate. (I only now learned that the Ukrainian unit of currency is called the Hryvnia). Since near the end of April, the Hryvina has been very steady, trading at about 29.5 UAH to 1 USD. You’d think with the absolute dogs mess of Ukraine the UAH would be a lot less stable than it is today.
[…snip…]
Maybe a person better schooled in economics than I am (what I know could be written on an index card) can explain the first phenomenon[…snip…]
Posted by: Ursula Zandt | Jul 4 2022 17:10 utc | 368

In the perhaps futile hope that documenting my own knowledge of the subject might require a second index card, one possibility seems to be that an agent of the US government might be using US dollars to purchase Hryvinas (if that’s the right plural form), so as to prop up the latter.

Posted by: David Levin | Jul 4 2022 18:53 utc | 382

Posted by: David Levin | Jul 4 2022 18:53 utc | 388
I think it was Jacob Dreizin (or Tom Luongo) who said that Ukraine’s expenses are paid by the US, which is what the US always does when it takes a country over, like Afghanistan or South Korea.

Posted by: Jonathan W | Jul 4 2022 19:36 utc | 384

Posted by: Hermit | Jul 4 2022 17:31 utc | 378
“For a brief summary of the actual history of the USSR, see https://bit.ly/USSR-Nutshell The USSR in a Nutshell: A Brief History of the Rise and Destruction of the Soviet Union and What Happens Next.
And for the lies about the USSR having “murdered millions” before WW II, see http://bit.ly/LiesAboutUSSR “Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union” ”
Thank you for sharing that work. I found both quite persuasive, more the second than the first, but would need to see more detailed examples to feel confident in your conclusions. That said, have always found some of the huge numbers in Soviet history hard to swallow and the ones later published from the archives make more sense. (The same thing happened when Russian records from the German camps were released but we won’t go there!) I am not yet convinced that all the stories of early atrocities from the Cheka and various famines are entirely fantastical but reading your report was an eye opener and to me, at least, apart from your sometimes frothy rhetoric about enemies whose hyberbolic stridency tends to make the reader distance himself from the author’s voice, it sounded more realistic than any account have read before (admittedly not many).
I would want to hear Solzenitsyn’s side of the story before entirely discounting everything he said and wrote as you do, for example. In your piece you quoted him thusly:
“All the time progressive public opinion demands democratic political reform while supporting acts of terrorism’. ‘Those who seek rapid democratic reform, do they realise what will happen tomorrow or the day after? In Spain there may be democracy tomorrow, but after tomorrow will it be able to avoid falling from democracy into totalitarianism?’ To cautious inquiries by the journalists as to whether such statements could not be seen as support for regimes in countries where there was no liberty, Solzhenitsyn replied: ‘I only know one place where there is no liberty and that is Russia.’
He may have been too hasty in his condemnation of democracy but it does indeed seem like it has been hijacked in the West and we are now collectively staring into a decidedly totalitarian abyss which is using the many flaws in any democratic election and managerial process to facilitate its adoption. The alarming way people pick up on ideas fed to them and parrot them back, also participate in cancelling those who do not succumb, is concerning to say the least, but far more than mere conformism seems right around the corner – and all facilitated by the cover democracy provides.
I also don’t understand how Russia enjoyed high growth and greater wealth per capita than other European countries at the time – at least according to some accounts I’ve read – whilst the peasants were so terribly abused as you recount. Was the world Tolstoy described really so entirely divorced from the reality your account seemingly portrays? We wonders, aye, we wonders, Precious.
Of course in these relatively short pieces you cannot present extensive detail so I’m not criticizing on that score; it’s just that given the great difference between Version A and Version B it’s hard to just immediately go along with the new one.
But again: thank you very much for sharing those pieces. I now understand why many insist that there was no Holodomor, there were no millions murdered in Russia and so forth, although I note they still insist that the Germans killed thirty million Russians in WWII – something I find fantastical – and they also deny the millions of post-war Soviet-perpetrated rapes and murders and of course affirm all the mainstream Nazi atrocity stories even though those same Russian archives you use to bolster your well-made argument also contradict the oft-cited and legally enforced numbers just as the Swiss Cross records do (the two archives having almost identical figures in most cases I believe, far lower than the officially approved numbers).
I come away from your pieces with the sense that most likely all the stories about this period about all sides have a huge hyberbole quotient but am not persuaded that extremely ugly things happened on all sides. Very hard to feel confident either way without investing hundreds of hours in study which am not willing to undertake.

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 4 2022 19:50 utc | 386

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 4 2022 19:50 utc | 392
errata, last paragraph should read:
“I come away from your pieces with the sense that most likely all the stories about this period about all sides have a huge hyberbole quotient but am not persuaded that extremely ugly things DID NOT HAPPEN on all sides…..”

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 4 2022 20:05 utc | 388

Is this capitalist-fascist propaganda too do you think?
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18644/china-xinjiang-human-rights
“Documents and photos of thousands of ethnic Uighurs arrested by Chinese authorities, made public in late May, lend additional indisputable evidence to the Communist regime’s massive human rights violations in Xinjiang. Many of the leaked documents are official Chinese Ministry of Interior dossiers of incarcerated individuals just from Shufu, one among 61 counties in Xinjiang Province. The Shufu County in the Kashgar Prefecture is the site of several large internment camps.
One of the leaked documents, which contains “a shoot to kill order” for guards in the camp’s watchtowers, confirms that these camps are indeed prisons. Another leaked report stipulates how detainees are to be transported from one site to an alternate location: ankle shackles, handcuffs and hoods.
The documents also contain policy papers and speeches by high-level officials of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) concerning the “Uyghur Question.” One speech was delivered on June 18, 2018 by Xinjiang Party Secretary Chen Quanguo , the principal architect of the Uyghur Re-education Infrastructure. Chen developed his minority-suppression model while regional Party leader in Tibet from 2011 to 2016. Chen was then transferred by China’s President Xi Jinping to apply his skills to Xinjiang, where he was Party leader from August 2016 to December 2021. Chen’s replacement should not be viewed as a demotion for Chen. He remains a full (voting) member of the CCP Politburo and may be promoted even further in the upcoming 20th CCP Congress this autumn.”

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 4 2022 21:31 utc | 390

@396 scorpion
Ultimately, it matters not the validity of such claims.
What matters is that the U.S. and any other country that desires it, should seek immediate decoupling from China and other SW Asian countries.
Tariffs need to be reinstated en masse, domestic manufacturing must be employed, and a general attitude of protectionism should prevail. Then, and only then, can we take each trade on a case-by-case basis and where it is assured that the business on our end be tempered with a fervent sense of nationalism.
We can not act as the world police any longer. Caring for another country’s population is just a ruse to enable globalists.
Let the Church work its humanitarian struggle where it can. It is, after all, the original and sole legitimate proprieter of corporate globalism.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jul 4 2022 22:01 utc | 392

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jul 4 2022 22:01 utc | 398
“We can not act as the world police any longer. Caring for another country’s population is just a ruse to enable globalists.”
I wasn’t thinking along those lines, rather just a little alert to those who think that China is a World Savior or some such.

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 4 2022 23:03 utc | 394

oldhippie | Jul 4 2022 18:01 utc | 385
“……MRNA and lipid nanoparticles have been around a good long time now and mainly confined to livestock. Not livestock you intend to breed, livestock headed for the slaughterhouse. “
Well. More and more I find the analogy that people are livestock….increasingly apt.

Posted by: Melaleuca | Jul 5 2022 0:14 utc | 396

Posted by: james | Jul 4 2022 22:00 utc | 397
james, maybe you misread my post. I’m am a strong advocate for using the time stamp. I’ve written at least 5 times about it in the
past 6-8 months. What I meant in my post @| Jul 4 2022 19:50 utc | was to question the very need for a post number. If there was no post
number people would more readily use the time stamp.
As we both know and have said numerous times, it’s so simple to copy and paste the time/date info.
(But even c1ue argued that it is not necessary, and he knows everything.:)
I see no purpose for the existence of post numbers.
cheers back atcha from Tromsø island

Posted by: waynorinorway | Jul 5 2022 4:04 utc | 398

@ waynorinorway | Jul 5 2022 4:04 utc | 404
thanks… yes, i must have misunderstood you….my apologies! the island where you live looks quite beautiful! cheers james

Posted by: james | Jul 5 2022 15:24 utc | 400