Swedish political party that’s jointly in government in Sweden, has a history white supremacy and Neo-Nazism.
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2022/09/15/689255/Sweden%E2%80%99s-Kristersson-tasked-with-forming-new-government-supported-by-far-right

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Sep 15 2022 16:50 utc | 3

Legislation in the US Senate, if passed will see $4.5 billion worth of military equipment sold to Taiwan, and sanctions placed upon China. China has reacted furiously to this and promises some form of retaliations if the legislation is passed. It wasn’t that long ago that Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, again this upset Beijing, US aggression knows no bounds, so China and Russia have carried out joint naval activities in the South Pacific.

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Sep 15 2022 17:08 utc | 5

I really dont get how “white supremacy” slogans get imported to countries like sweden or germany or poland.
This “white supremacy” stuff does make if at all make sence in a context in which -lets say- 60% of population are white and 13% are black. In a population of 10ü% whites this categorization is pure nonsense.
Somebody who calls any swedish politician a “white supremacist” is nothing but an idiot who is importing american concepts to europe without even considering that it is senseless here.
Sorry but in order to be a proper racist you need to check your environment to find the proper outgroup.
Sweden never even had any colonies.
The neonazi stuff (in which case you primarily hate and feel superior to other white people such as jews or slavs) is more relevant to europe but i dont know about sweden. The last time i saw a neonazi here in austria was probably around 1998. You know at the time skinheads were a thing.
Maybe, just maybe, we should calm this stuff a little down instead of exaserbate it all the time.

Posted by: Orgel | Sep 15 2022 17:18 utc | 7

Posted by: Petri Krohn | Sep 15 2022 16:40 utc | 1
My initial assessment was posted to a prior thread and re-posted here
The Rand Document – An Assessment
Known Facts:
1) The document was first reported in RT
2) The document contains poor English grammar and syntax
3) The document is the “Executive Summary” of a larger study on the same topic
4) RAND is a recognized and well respected “think tank.” It is the original model for the independent think tank organization and its core client has been the US government
5) RAND has disavowed any responsibility for the publication and has denounced it as misinformation
6) The document lists the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, on the distribution list
Preamble:
I was lurking on MoA the night of the SMO when MoA went “live” with detailed commentator reporting of the conflict sourced from Telegram and similar sources. This reporting was hours in advance of any similar reporting by western MSM.
Since then I, like many others in the bar, have attempted to cut through the MSM brain fog and come to a credible understanding of the SMO and its possible implications for me and my family. Key to this understanding has been the work of Dr Michael Hudson, the translations presented here by karlof1, and the clear headed analysis by b. The great value of MoA has been the depth of the commentariat; when ZNPP was a critical factor MoA carried posts by nuclear plant engineers with the competence to speak to issues of concern. The same quality response has been found in respect of topics such as semiconductor engineering and production, the workings of financial markets etc. What is even more remarkable is the fact that when the topic concerns foreign opinion the conversation draws response from persons located in the region or state of concern; these posters deliver “ground truth” almost never found in MSM reports. Furthermore, topics of concern result in heated discussion and razor sharp acerbic wit, both of which serve to clarify and speed understanding.
Assessement:
That the RAND document may in fact be genuine.
Reasons:
R1) The description of the economic affects and cleavages, and the likely benefits to the US government are fundamentally correct. The document was ostensibly published in advance of the SMO, and prior to the imposition of the Western sanctions regime, but it has knowledge of the fact of the to-be-imposed sanctions.
R2) The above suggests the document was prepared by someone with considerable knowledge and foresight. It is taken me 7 months and the benefits of the interchange derived in the Preamble to come to this assessment. Someone else was able to arrive at a similar set of conclusions prior to the SMO.
R3) It is agreed the language and syntax fail to meet the editorial standard found in other RAND publications. But RAND is a think tank that offers “brains for hire,” it is closely aligned with the state but free to draw independent conclusions. RAND therefore offers an intellectual, out-of-the-box, check on opinion shaped by organizational needs and bias. The issues with language and syntax support the view that this was RAND reporting undertaken for a specific client and performed outside of RANDs public report offerings. It is also possible the report was written with the assistance of person(s) knowledgeable of European issues whose first language is other than English. Perusal of publications ranging from NYT to WaPo and similar frequently demonstrates inaccurate spelling, syntax, and incorrect word choice.
R4) While it is common to deprecate the military, the upper echelons of the military are fully aware of the risks posed by armed conflict. War is entirely democratic. It is the only interaction in which the enemy is guaranteed a vote. It is the first opportunity to determine the “real world” effects of all the expensive hardware. Remember the Patriot failures in Gulf War II? The inability to locate and destroy the Scud launchers? The danger presented by this WWII derived weapons system in causing an enlargement of the conflict? If our weapons prove inadequate against sheep-herders how will they function against a peer, or near peer adversary? What we presently witness in 404 is the Western world poking the bear with a stick. The last time this occurred the US was gung-ho to invade. It was not until decades after the Cuban conflict that the US discovered the Soviet Union already had tactical nukes and warheads ready to fire and aimed at the US. The RF, China and North Korea have all demonstrated hypersonic weapons against which there exists no known defence. An angry bear does not need to use nukes. Hypersonics allow RF to do to the US what RF is presently doing to 404 using conventional missiles. The American MSM does not contemplate this fact; I guarantee you the military brass is fully aware and will be advising restraint.
R5) It must be clear that the Biden regime has completely politicized the civil service. This fact is barely noted in the MSM which operates as an arm of the state. The Biden regime has reason to fear a significant loss of seats in the coming mid-terms. Can they afford another Afghanistan debacle? Can they undertake a conflict that would rally the American people to the defence of a foreign democracy and billions of foreign subsidy while American’s are stranded in urban tent cities and the Castro disappears under the weight of excrement?
I would not be surprised to learn the DNC enlisted RAND to obtain a formal outside opinion on a Democratic apparatchik’s Hail Mary intended to save the mid-terms and cause the electorate to forget the Afghanistan blunders. I believe the military would have opposed poking the bear because of the unlimited downside risks. The RAND report and opinion was sought to deliver an outside perspective to justify US conduct in 404.
Certainty of Assessment
P1) The best proof of the truth of the matter would be a public release of the entirety of the report for which the present document is the purported executive summary.
Link to the Document:
https://theduran.com/apparent-rand-document-leak-is-shocking-video/?ml_subscriber=2039460379255379640&ml_subscriber_hash=p1y2
—————-
Subsequent to the above, I attempted to verify the provenance of the document. It appears to originate with an American presently in Ukraine. His name is John Mark Dougan and he appears to have a checkered past:
https://wikibious.com/john-mark-dougan/
and
https://www.thedailybeast.com/florida-fugitive-john-mark-dougan-heads-into-ukraine-war-zone-to-prove-bioweapons-conspiracy
If Dougan is in fact the source then it casts the authenticity of the document into question.
I still believe the release of the full document for which the present release is the Executive Summary would assist in determining authenticity.

Posted by: Sushi | Sep 15 2022 17:23 utc | 9

Posted by: Stonebird | Sep 15 2022 16:48 utc | 2
The gobal derivates market may be as much as ten times global GDP:
The derivatives market is, in a word, gigantic—often estimated at over $1 quadrillion on the high end. How can that be? Largely because there are numerous derivatives in existence, available on virtually every possible type of investment asset, including equities, commodities, bonds, and currency. Some market analysts even place the size of the market at more than 10 times that of the total world gross domestic product (GDP).
SOURCE:
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052715/how-big-derivatives-market.asp
Once one asset class begins to fail, that will spill over into the next asset class and the process will continue until global economic collapse occurs.

Posted by: Sushi | Sep 15 2022 17:29 utc | 11

A study appears to show that Black American’s were targeted in far greater numbers than white American’s during the CIA’s MK-Ultra programme.
“A study by academics at the University of Ottawa’s Culture and Mental Health Disparities Lab sheds significant new light on this underexplored component of MKULTRA and illuminates a hitherto wholly unknown dimension of the program; people of color, overwhelmingly Black Americans, were disproportionately targeted by the CIA in its service.”
https://www.mintpressnews.com/new-research-cia-mkultra-black-americans-experiment-guinea-pigs/281698/

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Sep 15 2022 17:40 utc | 13

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Sep 15 2022 17:08 utc | 5
US arming Taiwan will at a certain moment boomerang back in the form of China sending arms to Russia. Even if just for the purpose of “testing out”.

Posted by: unimperator | Sep 15 2022 17:45 utc | 15

ZX | Sep 15 2022 17:24 utc | 10
A Brief History Of Currywurst
What most have come to know as an integral part of Berlin’s beloved street food scene goes much deeper than you might initially think. It’s not just toothsome grab-n-go food, it’s emblematic of Berlin’s post-war resilience and its mindset to skyrocket onward. Most have become acquainted with the ubiquitous grub, whether it be as a tourist treat or a late-night necessity, but its history is simple yet complex, mirroring the dish itself.
Arguably, like most things brought into existence in this world, it started with a woman; her name is Herta Heuwer. Little did she know her concoction would spiral into becoming a part of the iconic fabric of Germany’s capital; there’s even a currywurst museum.
She was born in 1913 in Königsberg, a city largely destroyed in World War II, where only the vestiges of the 13th-century city remain. In 1946, it was officially renamed Kaliningrad, as it underwent different rule on the East side of Germany. Herta, like much of Germany, didn’t let devastation color her future. She was a woman of progress, a woman who had to become used to her country as a constant palimpsest, and to evolve meant to take the good and keep building. Eventually she would make it to Berlin where she settled up in the West and opened a fast-food kiosk, or imbiss. A plaque sits today where her imbiss once rolled out hot meals to the hungry on the corner of Kant Strasse and Kaiser-Friedrich Strasse.
In 1949, Herta came across a British solider who (in some sort of exchange) ended up giving Herta ketchup and curry powder. Maybe Herta stumbled upon the recipe through trial and error or maybe her matured palate after years of slinging grub to the street omnivores knew what the people wanted. She mixed the ingredients obtained from the British soldier with a few other elements and voilà, currywurst reared its saucy head into the world. First boiled, then fried, then drenched in a sauce medley coined (by Herta) as chillup: the name resembling a colloquialism of the internet guzzling millennials didn’t stick for long, but was patented in 1951.
It was in Charlottenburg where her street eats sold like hot cakes. Her stand was reported to have sold 10,000 currywurst per week, and remained in business until 1974. Today, currywurst is sold all over Berlin and Germany. Falling under the umbrella of fast food doesn’t keep it in the shadows. Currywurst stands are tantamount to Starbucks in NYC. It’s a beloved favorite in the Hauptstadt,with 70 million being sold yearly, which is only overshadowed by the 800 million that sell in Germany every year. Even the Volkswagen in Wolfburg supplies its employees with a special currywurst clad cafeteria. It might be time to rethink the symbol of Berlin.

Posted by: Gurnaco | Sep 15 2022 17:50 utc | 17

Israel continues to bomb Syrian airports in night raids including bombing the main airport of Damascus, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group, which in reality is some guy based in Coventry in a room above a clothes shop, who is anti-Assad, blames the Syrian government for aiding Iran, I suppose any excuse is better than none.
Whilst the cat’s away (Russia) the mice play (Israel) as the saying goes.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-syria-strikes-carnage-airports-escalation

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Sep 15 2022 17:58 utc | 19

Republicofscotland | Sep 15 2022 17:58 utc | 19
Painfully obvious

Posted by: xcroc | Sep 15 2022 18:07 utc | 21

“Interesting. The Swedes probably should’ve thought about that before turning their country into a mecca for grenade attacks and rape gangs, but… oh well!”
ZX (10).
You appear to be tarring all immigrants with that comment, many, many immigrants contribute to societies around the world, a very small proportion give the rest a bad name, and the media is very efficient at highlighting that.

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Sep 15 2022 18:13 utc | 23

Nobody talking about what kind of discussions are going on about Azerbaijans attack on Armenia? People have posted pictures of the Russian peacekeeper facilities that have been shelled too and now abandoned. Armenia asked for Russian assistance per CTSO.
I am assuming the timing was made after the Ukrainian breakthrough and prospect of the war in Ukraine escalating and lasting for even longer making it the perfect time to attack Armenia and take more land with less fear the Russians would intervene. It also comes after Turkey’s genocidal talk towards Greece and Cyprus. (Also done while NATO is under pressure with the Ukraine war hoping that NATO will just sigh and tell Greece to give them a bone, if it weren’t for the large wealthy and influential Armenia diaspora in France we supposes Greece wouldn’t have anyone backing them up even rhetorically.) Erdogan’s moves may have inspired the Azeris who share a Turkic conqueror identity and see it as their right to continue expanding at the expense of their historic victims (Greece and Armenia) no matter how much human civilization has declined for their efforts and how little they have produced in return.
But once again another massive example of Turkey playing all sides and still being tolerated by all sides. Amazing. Turkey are like the neocons, you can’t ever trust them, they will betray you the next day.
Armenia was saying 100 soldiers dead at last count.

Posted by: Altai | Sep 15 2022 18:27 utc | 25

Posted by: Oralgel | Sep 15 2022 17:18 utc | 7
Sweden never had colonies LOL
Sweden established colonies in the Americas in the mid-17th century, including the colony of New Sweden (1638–1655) on the Delaware River in what is now Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, as well as two possessions in the Caribbean during the 18th and 19th centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_colonies_in_the_Americas

Posted by: Jimmy Flies By | Sep 15 2022 18:42 utc | 27

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Sep 15 2022 18:13 utc | 23
You appear to be tarring all immigrants with that comment, many, many immigrants contribute to societies around the world, a very small proportion give the rest a bad name, and the media is very efficient at highlighting that.
That’s nice. I hope people remember that the next time there’s a grenade attack / lorry of peace / massive organised rape gang / whatever.
Posted by: Gurnaco | Sep 15 2022 17:50 utc | 17
Everybody loves currywurst, but we were hoping Europe would still have a functioning economy to go with it.
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Sep 15 2022 18:17 utc | 24
Suvorov makes a compelling argument, and all evidence points to him playing both the Axis and the Anglo-Americans like a Stalin’s organ.
Certainly, he didn’t trust the Brits and the feeling was mutual. One of the Cambridge spies got caught because he warned the USSR about important military intelligence on Nazi German forces that the Allies somehow neglected to share with their Russian allies while the latter were fighting for their lives.

Posted by: ZX | Sep 15 2022 18:55 utc | 29

Extending Russia

Posted by: diagonal | Sep 15 2022 19:03 utc | 31

Lithuania is still holding African refugees caught in 2021 in internment camps behind barbed wire.
https://humanglemedia.com/african-refugees-asylum-seekers-facing-discrimination-prolonged-detention-in-lithuania/
African migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are discriminated against in Lithuania as the country’s authorities prolong detention without a mandated court-issued extension. Many people are reported to have grave vulnerabilities and have been tortured or sexually assaulted.
An international humanitarian organisation, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), in a press statement released on Tuesday, described it as a ‘hierarchy of suffering’ where people also experience an alarming deterioration in their mental health due to flawed migration practices.
Currently, about 700 refugees and asylum seekers are being detained in Kybartai, Pabrade, and Rukla, as well as Naujininkai Foreigner Registration Centres (FRCs) in Lithuania, after having crossed the border from Belarus in 2021.
MSF observed that people from certain countries “are significantly more likely to have this detention extended, remain detained after their detention order has expired, or have the limited freedom of movement they may have been granted revoked”.

Posted by: emblem | Sep 15 2022 19:22 utc | 33

Derivatives are only important if you’re interested in maintaining the western financial system and the value of the USD and euro. The system that thinks they can sanction everyone else. The oil and gas and other resources will still be there.
The IAEA just demanded that Russia remove its troops from Zaporizhzhya. What are the chances of that happening?

Posted by: financial matters | Sep 15 2022 19:45 utc | 35

It is a fact that RAND outsources some of its reports, so the English language quality may not necessarily be great (truthfully, many native English speakers are borderline illiterate by old standards, including some PhD holders).
The economic thesis regarding unsustainable debt and interest has already been put forward by Michael Hudson and seems plausible. The effects on Europe seem plausible as well, given that the resources Europe has given up are not easy to replace on short notice but are required immediately – so it does stand to reason that the negative effects would be strong and cumulative, with a heavy hit on EU global competitiveness. The gradual inching of Germany towards independence is a reasonable thesis and Nord Stream 2 was going to be one of the strongest moves in that direction. The observations regarding the Greens appear correct as well. The two times the Greens were in power, Germany bent toward the US immediately (pushing toward the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, and now). The possibility of the US to extend its current model without the much feared reform via leeching the EU also does make sense, since the US political elites seem mortally afraid of changing anything in the way the country is run – the entire Trump saga showed that they consider even the thought of that (which Trump was hardly ever going to realize) is tantamount to a declaration of war.

Posted by: V87 | Sep 15 2022 19:50 utc | 37

NemesisCalling | Sep 15 2022 18:17 utc | 24
you are very adorable with the cuddly Nazi teddy bears you cling to. you are the bulworth against the rising flood of bolshevism! i mean, bulwark.

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Sep 15 2022 19:53 utc | 39

emblem | Sep 15 2022 19:22 utc | 33
no mass grenade gang rapes and currywurst for those hunds, aye?

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Sep 15 2022 19:55 utc | 41

“history is bunk, mostly” yet somehow
“the bitch is still in heat.”
the communist threat is so great that it requires yet another civilizing mission against the faceless Slavic hordes.
who needs RAND to tell them the US is in the game to steal Russia’s oil and gas? why would the US not consider and thinktank and game plan and stratego-ize the destruction of Germany in the name of some other cause? cuz germans are aryans and afghanis are n- word?

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Sep 15 2022 20:01 utc | 43

@etri Krohn #1
A number of people, including myself, see this “Rand” document as fake.
NC notes it is stylistically and is formatted differently.
For my part, there are numerous examples of “inner voice” speaking as well as confusion of objective analyst voice with “in group” voice.
I see it as a clever forgery which incorporates what the conspiratorial see as US aims over Europe into an otherwise generally reasonable overview, or (very unlikely) possibly a very early draft of a document before any editorial review.

Posted by: c1ue | Sep 15 2022 20:18 utc | 45

How foreigners could buy Gazprom stocks at moscow stock exchange?

Posted by: Tiroler | Sep 15 2022 20:25 utc | 47

oh, wait, banning Russian athletes. let’s not forget that.
i don’t recall seeing bombed out Baghdad in the news. or stories of Iraqi refugees. or care about water supplies in Iraq. we never see or hear a peep or pixel inside the life of Gaza city. au contraire, kids throwing rocks at US-funded IDF tanks are “terrorists.”
but oh boy, do we care about Ukraine. i’ve got the yard signs to prove it! i put one yard sign up for every 10 billion dollars of NATO funds spent (or “spent”) in Ukraine. i am already ordering 200 more yard signs.

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Sep 15 2022 20:42 utc | 49

I’d be willing to bet $ that RAND doc is a fake. The use of the term “Old Europe” harkens back to Donald Rumsfeld and smacks of politicized garbage. The title itself is silly, just a riff on the “over-extending” Russia report from 2019. Weakening Germany, LOL.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 15 2022 21:08 utc | 51

I’ve had some professional experience with reports like this.
Fake. For reasons given.
A tiny possibility that it is real.
Perhaps, it is an early draft of an internal RAND competition for interns to brainstorm various topics.
More likely a fake by Dougan himself. Or passed onto him.

Posted by: Moaobserver | Sep 15 2022 21:30 utc | 53

Posted by: V87 | Sep 15 2022 19:50 utc | 37
The “fact” that RAND outsources work doesn’t mean they accept subpar bullshit as acceptable work.
For “facts”, why don’t you (or the helpful staff at the “independent” media outlet RT) go and find any other RAND — JUST ONE — paper that is as subpar as these thing you are peddling on the internet.

Posted by: obvious-bullshit | Sep 15 2022 22:30 utc | 55

@ Republicofscotland | Sep 15 2022 17:08 utc | 5
Many barflies confuse the rhetoric of the West with how China does things. They cannot measure or compare.
Upset = furious = disgusted = bad
It’s the same thing to them.
Instead, you all should use a color coded scale. Where normally, China at “yellow alert”. And the provocations of late have been “orange alerts”. This document passes the “red alert” phase and goes straight to “BLACK BLACK BLACK”.

Posted by: Rufus Arrrr | Sep 15 2022 22:55 utc | 57

Posted by: Gurnaco | Sep 15 2022 19:52 utc | 38
Crikey, I’m glad we cleared that up.
Posted by: emblem | Sep 15 2022 19:22 utc | 33
Lithuania is still holding African refugees caught in 2021 in internment camps behind barbed wire.
Rather unsporting of the Lithuanians to park their country so close to Africa.
Posted by: Rufus Arrr | Sep 15 2022 22:45 utc | 56
Yes, starting a war with China is the point. What will it take to provoke these notoriously belligerent Chinese into an actual shooting conflict with the United States? They’ve tried insulting them, sailing aircraft carriers in front of their house, sanctioning them, jailing their CEO’s – nothing has worked.
So sending weapons to Taiwan it is. If that doesn’t work, there’s always the old reliable false flag operation to fall back on.

Posted by: ZX | Sep 15 2022 23:02 utc | 59

It’s hard not to see desperation creeping into western behavior. The game’s not lost but options are narrowing while risks are rising. Except they (we) can’t stop. To go imperial cold Turkey would be harsh; nobody can be seen as the one who lost it; and one more big bet might just pay off. One has to imagine that just below the level of public leadership, which is generally and purposefully ignorant of anything except media perceptions, there’s a deep panic setting in. The thoughts turn toward deflecting blame and self-preservation at the national, political and even personal level.
The decision/action timeline gets shorter and shorter. Behavior is likely to get more irrational. Nobody’s doing what they’re told, like they’re supposed to. Not the Chinese or the Indians or even the Hungarians, much less the Russians. And they’re running a world that’s ridiculously complex (because it’s the most short-term profitable) and over-extended in just about every way. Every day is now a high wire balancing act performed by people who created a historical moment far, far too big for them. Unfortunately, among these people who really move the policies of the west, more war and destabilizing as much as possible will be the only actionable decision that might pay off.
It’s all desperation all the way down now.

Posted by: Lex | Sep 15 2022 23:36 utc | 61

Then there is the thesis (thesis is the correct word) that most of Dylan’s early work was written by Cohen. When yo are tired of war news look into that.
Posted by: oldhippie | Sep 15 2022 21:03 utc | 201
I was aware and I believe that is what Joni was hinting at. She would be in a position to know.
Posted by: Opport Knocks | Sep 15 2022 21:51 utc | 207
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Two (of many great lines)
“Looks like freedom but it feels like death..
busted in the blinding lights of closing time”
Joni was a junkie for a while. She met a Tibetan lama tight with Allen Ginsberg. He blew into her mouth and she was instantly cured. (Don’t remember the details but it’s a true story.) In any case, Joni likes to rant like a ‘dry drunk.’ She’s also a Power in her own right. Nothing these people say should be held onto beyond the moment of utterance.
The way I hear what she said about D was mainly talking about him early on in the Village days. He pretended to a hobo, a reincarnation of Woodie Guthrie, a white boy from the mid-West. All of that of course was an act. But also he was finding a way to become something beyond himself turning his everyday persona into a vehicle for his his art, of which he truly is a master, which is American folk song. If you doubt his Knowledge of the Art, find his Theme Time Radio Hour broadcasts. NOBODY I bet has ever surveyed American music the way he did it. Masterful. Fun. Encyclopedic.
And nobody could write an album like Modern Times or that latest song about JFK. Nobody. If you didn’t listen to Dylan for a while, try Modern Times. I ended up spending 3 months driving around Mexico with it and it got better every time like all the good albums – in any genre – do.
Cohen was great: combined old Jewish Cantor streams with urban hip laced with biblical references and Zen awareness (he meditated regularly at Zen centers for decades).
Dylan also was steeped in the Bible (as were most educated Westerners of their generation both Jew and Gentile) but was seriously American (unlike Cohen), and also into bringing Song alive in a funky, vibrant, timeless and quintessentially American way. He is the pre-eminent lineage holder of American song going back to the turn of the last century. There is nobody else like him that way, certainly none in the rock and roll era. He went far further and far deeper into unknown but deeply familiar realms. Tangerine Man. Cohen couldn’t have touched that even though that Closing Time song is a total classic – and so many others.
Joni and Cohen were Canadians. They don’t have that lineage, indeed Canadians don’t really have any lineage unless they are native, French-speaking Quebecers or Cape Bretoners. Cohen was Jewish and Montreal urban and Europe in that order. Not America though he was part of the 60’s. Even if someone else wrote the younger Dylan songs on his earlier or later slow-down / dead-zone albums years later (which I doubt), it couldn’t have been Cohen because those songs too were America and Cohen doesn’t do America.
Woodie Guthrie befriended him. Good enough for me.
Ditto the folk scene around NYC at the time adored him.
Ginsberg was in awe and if you ever heard Allen expound on American poetic lineage you knew that he too knew his stuff and was a lineage holder of that Art. (But poetry is SO boring compared to music so he tried to learn the Indian accordian thingy to maybe catch up to Dylan but it didn’t come close.)
Dylan became, for a while, a living bard.
He was greater than real, way beyond being phony.
He is indeed a very questionable individual, but he is an unquestioned National Treasure.
The passing of QE II has affected me in ways I simply cannot understand and never would have expected. Probably because it signifies the end of the world I grew up in, which for me is sad.
The passing of Dylan will no doubt affect me similarly as well. When he goes, the post-war America I grew up in as a young adult will be no more. And I shall rue its passing greatly. It was a great country back then. I have no idea what it is now…
In any case, Joni is right in a way. His artistic persona is not the same as his individual persona. He channels songs. He’s a medium. He channeled the spirit of America for a while. I cannot think of another artist in his era quite like him that way…
I didn’t notice mmathis had gone to town on Dylan. I’ll check it out. But whoever he is or was the voice is unique, original. And NO WAY Cohen wrote his stuff unless maybe a song or two for fun or something…

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 16 2022 0:02 utc | 63

@ uncle tungsten | Sep 15 2022 21:20 utc | 52
The unfortunate Ethiopian civil war saga continues. After the fall of the Mengistu regime of 1974-1991, the Ethiopians redrew their state boundaries according to ethnic groups and languages, presaging a possible disintegration of Ethiopian state into a number of ethnonationalist entities. While the Tigrayans have borne the brunt so far, the big split is between the Oromos (34.5% in the 2007 census) and the former imperial people, the Amharas (26.9%). Like the Serbs in former Yugoslavia and other ruling groups in now-defunct imperial states, the Amharas found that equality rendered them a minority in their former realm, and they do not like it. Furthermore, as the imperial people, Amhara minorities are scattered in all of the Ethiopian states, where they formerly served to bind each area to the center, and naturally today they are resented in those states. The worst feature is that the capital city, Addis Ababa, is a separate state with the Amharas dominant and Amharic the lingua france, but it is completely surrounded by Oromia, the sprawling region where the Oromos, historically particularly despised by the Amharas, are 88% and the Amharas 7%. This is similar to the situation of Brussels, the French-speaking capital city of Belgium which is completely surrounded by Flemish-speaking territory and thus is a huge political problem in any prospective division of the country.
While the shooting war of the Oromos against the Amharas is only sporadic, the two are tending to leave the state in which they are the minority and migrate back to their own state, much like what happened in the constituent republics of the USSR before and after its brakeup, and relations are now punctuated by frequent ethnic-cleansing massacres. Also, the different states have designs on each others’ territory, particularly illustrated by the Amharas’ annexation of a very large proportion of Tigray.
The position of the Tigrayans, only 6% of the total population, is somewhat anomalous, as they were considered the lesser of the two imperial peoples under the empire, even having an emperor of Ethiopia, Johannes IV (1872-1889). As the secondary imperial people, they might bear some comparison with the Hungarians in Austria-Hungary. The Amharas and Tigrayans speak closely-related languages derived from Ge’ez, the old Ethiopic language, and both belonged mostly to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. So when the Tigrayans overthrew the unpopular Mengistu in 1991, the Amharas were shell-shocked and not immediately opposed, but eventually all the non-Tigrayans grew tired of the Tigrayan domination that lasted about 27 years. Out of power, the Tigrayans did not like the threat to their national autonomy, and the war with the center was on.
Unfortunately, when nationalism settles on people, it becomes all but impossible to reason with them. Only their nationalist logic applies. Their chief characteristic is named “obsession” by George Orwell in his well-known 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism” ( http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part30 ). On the whole, nationalism is a very negative force. One might well ask the former inhabitants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire if they are really better off in their present national states.
The excuse of nationalism, however, is always, “We need our own nationalism to protect us from people X, who already have nationalism and threaten us because of it, so we need to fight fire with fire.” This is an irrefutable argument according to nationalist logic. And the greater irony is that at the moment it seem to be only nationalism that is a significant force opposing hegemonic, financializing globalism.

Posted by: Cabe | Sep 16 2022 0:13 utc | 65

Orgel @ 7:
Sweden was enamoured of eugenics policies in the early 20th century to the extent that it ran perhaps the longest eugenics policy in the 20th century from the early 1930s (or possibly from the 1920s on) to 1975 when it finally ended the policy. This policy included the compulsory sterilisation of people deemed to be inferior in some way. Over 60,000 people, most of whom were young women or teenage girls, ended up being sterilised over a 40-year period.
SWEDEN STERILIZED THOUSANDS OF ‘USELESS’ CITIZENS FOR DECADES (Washington Post, August 29, 1997)

… The sterilization program had its roots in the study of eugenics, whose advocates believed in the potential of human engineering to create a superior race, a pseudoscientific theory that helped bring about the horrors of Nazi Germany. Sweden was the first nation to establish an institute on racial biology, in 1922, and enacted its first law authorizing sterilization for the mentally ill in 1934. By then, Germany, Denmark and Norway had similar laws.
The law in Sweden was broadened in 1941 to include sterilization not only for reasons of mental incompetence, but for what was considered antisocial behavior. The new law dramatically increased the number of sterilizations. In 1935, there were 235; in 1941, there were 800; from the late 1940s into the 1950s, there were about 2,000 per year.
At first, about 70 percent of those sterilized were women, [doctoral candidate Maija Runcis] said, but in the 1950s and 1960s, the figure grew to about 90 percent. The program was abolished in 1974 as a result of the growing women’s rights movement. Runcis said that while the idea behind the policy was racial, its implementation was based more on economics and social behavior. But as late as 1963, according to the newspaper series, a sterilization was carried out on someone deemed of “mixed race.”
The growth of the program after World War II is especially troubling to many people today. In Sweden, which remained neutral during the war, there was little of the post-war vilification of the Nazis that occurred elsewhere; neither was there any serious debate about the sterilization program. According to a 1991 radio documentary, the program was strongly supported by Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, who wrote a pioneering book about race in the United States and were considered enlightened progressives at the time …

[Gunnar Myrdal was an economist and sociologist and his wife Alva was a politician, diplomat and sociologist. Both won Nobel Prizes but separately from one another: the husband won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1974 and the wife won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982.]

… Politicians in Sweden defended the program as a way to hold down the costs of the enlarging welfare state. They argued that it was important to limit the size of families, especially those with a history of antisocial behaviour. Runcis said the Social Democrats “argued that it was necessary to sterilize people who got a lot of benefits from the welfare state because the welfare state was only for people who behaved themselves.”
No one can document with certainty how many of these sterilizations were involuntary, but those who have looked at the program believe that, at its peak, a sizable majority were forced. The victims, many of whom were in mental institutions — although by today’s standards they would not be considered mentally ill — or in reform schools, were told they had to sign a document authorizing the procedure if they wanted to be released.
In some cases, couples judged to be inferior parents were sterilized, as were their children when they became teenagers — all part of a theory that social [misbehaviour] is hereditary and that society would be improved if the cycle were broken by sterilization…

Significantly the Social Democrats were on board with compulsory sterilisation because the social welfare state they supported was intended only for those who behaved themselves and not for free riders, people who were going to be a burden on the state (eg people with inborn mental or physical disabilities) or for people who did not conform with society in some way.
The Swedes didn’t have to look far to find “outgroups” – they found them readily enough.

Posted by: Jen | Sep 16 2022 0:31 utc | 67

@ Lex | Sep 15 2022 23:36 utc | 61
It is also my impression that the power elite are in a snit and kind of a panic. Of course, they don’t want to show this directly. But it seems to me that this is where Trump derangement syndrome comes in. Why did the liberal mainstream media unite so totally against Trump? Why, instead of attacking his positions and then when he was in office his acts, did they concoct the obviously false and completely disproven Russiagate hoax? If they wanted to preserve “democracy,” which they interpret as the validity of the electoral system, why did they question Trump’s election or reject the legitimacy of his being president? Some say it was all just an act. I find that improbable, and even if it were initiated like that by a few persons, it would not explain the general revulsion of all loyal liberal statists that was produced. I think explaining their actions as a massive, panicky overreaction that actually was counterproductive and harmed their own case more is better and more convincing.
And, Trump aside, it seems the panic continues with their sanctions and unpopular overreaction against Russia. All they have is to reignite the Cold War to divert attention from economic malaise and possible incipient collapse.
Yet, I find in certain of my academic colleagues a credence that everything is just fine, whose source I can’t understand. Yes, today bourgeois life in the US is still chugging along, sort of, but how can people be so blind as to not see all the catastrophes near at hand, which include how a very large part of the population now lives. The decline of the educational system I work in is palpable. Health care is a mess, as we all know. And the people I speak of are not stupid, nor are they simply ideologically invested in the deep state. Rather, they are just poorly informed and deceived, and maybe do not want to face facts, because they are afraid of what they will see.

Posted by: Cabe | Sep 16 2022 1:03 utc | 69

“He hosts a huge body of work on science, art, people and numerous odd subjects. I will just say his work rings true to me.” http://mileswmathis.com/dylan.pdf
Posted by: SwissArmyMan | Sep 16 2022 0:22 utc | 67
From the conclusion:
“This is the predictable outcome of art controlled by trade.
But I have since learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.”
Well, the Buddha rightly advised people not to be middle-men – which is what trade is, buying from one and selling to another. It means you don’t stand on your own ground for yourself.
Miles is clearly a high intelligence dude. But I find everything he creates fails to land somehow, it keeps floating and where exactly it floats is hard to say – which of course is the nature of floating.
That most of the rock stars (and celebrities) are part of Intelligence I have no doubt. That Dylan’s early career got a boost from that network is totally believable. I don’t think someone who played with so many people for so many years can be a total phony though. Did he sell his soul for success? Quite possibly. But no more than anyone with a corporate or government or military job. All whores on some level one might argue. The world is a dirty business.
But just as I criticized miles for floating I could say the same about Dylan. He also floats. Of course that’s more palatable for artists perhaps but still. There is something very weird about him which has a strong whiff of deception. I figured this was because for a long time he was pretending to be a mid-West white dude instead of a rich middle class Jew, not that he never wrote and played the songs.
This is all a bit like talking about the Queen. Maybe the person wasn’t what was portrayed. Maybe the institution has skeletons in the closet – I personally have no doubt about either as in the answer is yes and yes. But there is something about what actually happened in the interaction of performer and audience that matters. Whether it is the experience of listening to many of his songs either during their time or years later. Or it is how millions line up for hours to walk by a closed box with a flag draped over it. Such connections matter. Much of what Dylan was a part of is real that way even if it may be intangible.
But then that which is most real in life is intangible. Them’s the rools…

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 16 2022 1:44 utc | 71

For those interested in the Dylan/Cohen thread I believe this was originally theorized by Miles Mathis one of the most iconic and prolific people on the internet. He hosts a huge body of work on science, art, people and numerous odd subjects. I will just say his work rings true to me.
http://mileswmathis.com/dylan.pdf
Posted by: SwissArmyMan | Sep 16 2022 0:22 utc | 67

The Dave McGowan series on the US Intel links to the Laurel Canyon music scene is also worth a read. I found it odd that he only mentions Dylan in passing, given what was already out there.
https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/laurelcanyon/

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Sep 16 2022 1:52 utc | 73

Did Leonard Cohen write for Bob Dylan? Perhaps they just collaborated, perhaps Dylan just mimicked his style.
https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-visions-of-johanna-lyrics
The phrasing and cadence of that song is far more typical of Cohen than anything Dylan wrote before or after. Listen to it and imagine it in Cohen’s voice.
Ditto for “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”.
I’m with Miles and Joni on this one.

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Sep 16 2022 2:13 utc | 75

But like you, I honor the greatness that a people imbue a suitable vessel with, and I honor the simple human classic nature of one who strives be suitable in such a way, for her whole life, whether it be short or long. Duty. No one speaks of duty, as if it is a forgotten concept. But there have been those who have believed in it.
Posted by: Grieved | Sep 16 2022 1:50 utc | 73
Thank you for so eloquent a reply and your kind words.
Whilst reading yr reply an image arose, that of a large wave rushing in towards the shore and then all that accumulated power climaxing into chaos. As the wave turns and breaks all are swept up in it, sand, water, surfers, swimmers, fish, sunlight, wind, seashells, the earth and sky switch directions as all tumbles in mayhem. Times shared in society are like such waves and although the CIA like to project that they are controlled X or Y via Mockingbird or MK this or Michael Jackson that, in fact they are swept up as much as everyone else!!
I’ve been thinking about multiverses recently, partly because of all the levels at play with the pandemic and then the SMO. Schematically one might describe it as wheels within wheels but that is all on the same level somehow. Multiverses are simultaneous different realities. The quantum crowd, nearly all of whom are still materialist scientists, can only think of these things as physical spaces, just as they imagine our current world we live in as a physical dimension. They do this because for them the mental dimension isn’t ‘real’ because it isn’t (and therefore doesn’t) matter (literally).
But the imaginative, felt, perceived mental or – as I prefer to call it – experienced realms are no less real, they just aren’t tangible, material. If one can stretch one’s conception of ‘reality’ that way then one can see we live in multiversal worlds 24/7. On the simplest level every second we have both a mental and a physical experience co-existing. But there is also inner world sense (me in this body) and outer world sense (that which I perceive outside). They are also simultaneous, inseparable but separate. We have our family world, our country, our neighbourhood world, we are perceived as one thing by our dog, another by our child, a third by our spouse and so on. These are multiverses on some level.
So are many of the issues we wrestle with, both personal and societal. We would like, cognitively, to anchor them down into simple, monistic definitions. The war is about this, the truth about the pandemic is that, what’s happening with Trump and all the arrests these days is because of X and means Y. But in a multiversal reality such monistic interpretations fall far short.
I am beginning to conclude that really all we are left with is choice (one type of which you described as duty). Individually, we can choose to create a reality that values good things and avoids bad things rather than taking refuge ideologically, scientifically, societally and so forth, all of which are conceptual constructs not true experience. And collectively we can do this too, and the degree to which we can determines the degree to which our society is human and healthy or inhuman and depraved.
Or something. I’ll leave this thesis open too.
Like life…

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 16 2022 2:27 utc | 77

Bob Dylan’s personal papers and artifacts now reside in a newly dedicated museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Included in this collection are numerous lyric drafts – written in his own hand – from across his entire career. The notion that anyone else, other than officially credited, was responsible for Dylan’s output is simply an unfounded rumour. He is one of the most scrutinized persons ever, and the basic facts of his work and biography can be determined through multiple sources.
Posted by: jayc | Sep 16 2022 2:03 utc | 75

I am not suggesting Dylan did not write much/most of his body of work. But he was known to have serious dry spells in writing and performing *cough – drugs*.
Perhaps some researcher, not in the Dylan hagiography business, can compile a list of songs for which there are no handwritten versions and compare the style, cadence and phrasing to people like Leonard Cohen. In any case, producing personal handwritten versions of something drafted by someone else after the fact would be a trivial exercise.
Like this one…
https://www.rockarchive.com/media/3069/bob-dylan-exhibition-02.jpg
Or simply consider that Joni may be right, after all she knew them both very well.

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Sep 16 2022 2:46 utc | 79

@ SeanAU | Sep 16 2022 2:13 utc | 77
I said “they” concocted the Russiagate hoax. I didn’t mean the MSM, although I see how you carried the “they” back to the previous sentence. I am aware of the dominating role of the intelligence/security apparatus in concocting the whole thing.
That said, because we are in it, the details of the inner workings of the deep state are not entirely clear. Is it the superrich who own everything that really run it? Or is it the more compact intelligence/security apparatus? Do any of the politicians have input? What about the unelected bureaucrats? It is really quite complicated, but it is interesting how the stories they circulate using the MSM are so uniform, always using even the same vocabulary, which suggests a united, centralized connivance. They present one lying discourse after another, so we have plenty of examples of this big and small.
As for their propaganda being successful, yes, mostly, because their policies continue to be carried through and do not face obvious major opposition, but rather acquiescence and even support from quite enough people for those policies to stay in place, for now. On the other hand, it is not universally successful, for example with me or anyone like me (few as that may be). But there also is a certain widespread revulsion against the MSM that did not formerly exist and certainly expressed itself in the support for Trump. One of my friends, an inner-city African American Muslim, someone belonging to all the groups that are “supposed” to vote Democrat without question, told me how he went to his union hall, and the leader said, “We all have to get out and vote for Hillary.” His reaction to that was, “I’m not going to do that.” Now, he had never voted and was against the idea of voting because it validated the system, but in this case he said, “I’m going to vote for Trump. I call it the eff-you vote.” And he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 both. When I told that to a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, he was deeply shocked, and I enjoyed the shock value of it.
Bottom line: All is not well in the empire, including in its metropole, even though it still seems ensconced unassailably.

Posted by: Cabe | Sep 16 2022 3:07 utc | 81

Did Leonard Cohen write for Bob Dylan? Perhaps they just collaborated, perhaps Dylan just mimicked his style.
Posted by: Opport Knocks | Sep 16 2022 2:13 utc | 76
He mimicked many different styles over the years. In fact every song echoes many others. Sometimes country, sometimes blues, sometimes rock n roll etc.
Again, I highly recommend Modern Times. Thunder on the Mountain is an incredible composition and there are many more. Only he could have written it.
Also: mmathis is clearly Intelligence too! (maybe!)

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 16 2022 3:18 utc | 83

These are 12/13 of the Vostok 2022 games and integrated trade networks.
CN, IN, LA, MN, NI, DZ, SY (G20, EAS, QUAD, SCO, CELAC, INSTC, UTLC, OPEC, OIC, BRICS, CPEC, LMC)
RU, BY, KZ, KG, TJ (CSTO, EaEU, SCO, INSTC, UTLC)

Posted by: sln2002 | Sep 16 2022 3:39 utc | 85

Margaret are you grieving
Over golden grove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man you
With your fresh thoughts care for can you?
Ah, as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrows springs are the same.
Nor mouth had no nor mind expressed,
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
G.M Hopkins.
Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 15 2022 18:50 utc | 28
Thanks, Scorpion, for this post and for this poem. I had not read it since an exam my sophomore year in college. We were required to ‘analyze’ the poem. I don’t remember what I wrote, but the memory of it, the poem, has stayed.
I don’t believe what I wrote back then in the late ’50s could in any way have touched on the grief people feel in a time of war. Even those not actively involved; it affects us all. There will be losses for everyone.
I have just been reading ‘The Last Farmer’ by Howard Kohn, published in the late ’80s, about his father’s dedication to a farming tradition fast dying out then. Just to recall what we had back then when he was writing and describing his father’s farming techniques, his Lutheran community, even as that farming tradition was dying is almost unbearable. To everything there is a season, as the Good Book says. And as Pasternak wrote in the last chapters of ‘Dr. Zhivago’. We can’t go back, but oh, how we long to!
We can only call it an Apocalypse and pray for it to end. Then this too will become a memory. There will be goodness to find then, and to cherish going forward. As did England’s Queen after her world changed in time of war. It is fitting to honor her. She reminds us of what comes afterwar.

Posted by: juliania | Sep 16 2022 4:53 utc | 87

@Orgel #7
Sweden did have colonies to the east, the lands where Finns live, it also occupied parts of Baltic countries. Sweden still has a colony to the north, where Sami people live. It had also a few forts across the sea, see here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_overseas_colonies

Posted by: die Niemandsfuchs | Sep 16 2022 5:51 utc | 89

Posted by: sln2002 | Sep 16 2022 3:29 utc | 85
As Whitney Webb wrote some months back, CIA’s new masterplan is to link the Swedish – or actually Nordic – “neo-Nazis” (Nordic Resistance Movement) with Russian imperial movement.
https://zero-sum.org/ukraine-and-the-new-al-qaeda-by-whitney-webb/

Posted by: Jonathan W | Sep 16 2022 6:26 utc | 91

Posted by: Cabe | Sep 16 2022 3:07 utc | 82
Ooops I see what I did there. Thx for clarifying, I agree with your comments. cheers

Posted by: SeanAU | Sep 16 2022 6:36 utc | 93

@92 jonathan w
yes, that appears to be the case.
Ironically, you are a neo-nazi if you wish to have detente with Russia.
And, you are a neo-nazi if you are aligned with the globalist west against humanity’s struggle alongside Russia.
Either way, you are going to be labeled a neo-nazi. Best to embrace it and follow your true roots regardless to their source.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Sep 16 2022 7:19 utc | 95

Posted by: Petri Krohn | Sep 15 2022 16:40 utc | 1

I tend to believe the document is authentic. … But actually the report contains nothing, that had not been openly said here on Moon of Alabama by January 2022.

It doesn’t matter if the report is authentic or not, it’s contents are an accurate reflection of the Empire’s actions and intentions to date.
The ‘report’ is merely a rehash of reports Rand Corporation has produced in decades past as well as other reports from American think tanks.
Personally, I think the report itself is a fake even though the information within it is an authentic interpretation of current events.
Perhaps it was produced in order to be proven a fake, thereby discrediting a certain narrative …

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Sep 16 2022 7:32 utc | 97

Anglo policy document like this would never employ such direct language about their “allies”, they would refer to things in a euphemistic manner.
Posted by: Moaobserver | Sep 16 2022 6:49 utc | 95
You really believe what you write ?? !!!
There is no such “Anglo policy document” as a concept whatever foreigners might think. US abuse of the English language is manifest everywhere and their limited vocabulary compared to the educated English is shocking.
You may like to conflate English-speakers into a homogeneity but that is a failing of your perspective. You have no idea what poor English skills are evident in modern government and just how degraded education has become in even “elite” institutions.
There is nothing to say this document is “genuine” or not and it is irrelevant – how many angels dance on your pinhead ? Which end of the egg do you crack ?
The issue s whether the content is believable, and whether it may describe actions which have taken place – and what implications flow from that.

Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Sep 16 2022 8:21 utc | 99