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The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-128
Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:
> Over the 36 hours he spent in brutal house-to-house combat in the eastern Ukrainian city, 11 of the 16 men from Malkovskiy’s group of draftees were either killed or captured, according to surviving soldiers and relatives of the missing. <
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Other issues:
Anglo meddling:
U.S. labs in east Europe:
Of interest:
Use as open (not Ukraine related) thread …
Re: Posted by: just somebody | May 28 2023 14:39 utc | 5
Makow’s site makes me nervous, if for no other reason than that he pokes various taboos in the eye. Could be good thing; could be deliberate provocation.
That said, there is something compelling about the narrative portrayed in the article, namely that the West-Bad versus East-good narrative is being deliberately engendered so that at some point Good-East can rescue the world from the evil capitalist West and we can all submit to a more equitable and multi-polar NWO free from the evils of private property, personal responsibility, common law, individual and collective sovereignty / self-government and all the rest of it.
But THAT said, there was a good comment following the article:
Paul S said (April 22, 2019):
I don’t think this is an issue of “two” NWOs, East and West. I think it’s rather an issue between (a) an ancient, Eurasian transcontinental “Silk Road” model of commerce, which this article calls the “East”; and (b) a more modern sea-faring model of commerce which has been dominated by the “Island Nations” of the US and UK for the past 500 years or so, which this article calls the “West”.
Until the development of large-scale railway systems in the late 19th century, the “Island Nation” model of commerce remained relatively safe, but starting in the early 20th century, the “Island Nations” began to compete directly w/ Eurasian countries — principally Russia and China — for dominance in the commercial trade routes connecting Western Europe and the Far East owing to the expansion of railroads throughout Eurasia. This concept was first formalized by Halford MacKinder and is known as the MacKinder Principle, or the Eurasian Heartland Model.
The Eurasian Heartland Theory was probably the principle geopolitical driver for most events that occurred in the 20th century, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. For instance, WWI can be seen as an expression of this conflict, with one of the principle flash points that ignited WWI being the British desire to disrupt completion of the Baghdad-Berlin Railway, an early attempt to resurrect the Silk Road. Today, these attempts to resurrect the Silk Road and bypass the Island Nations is gaining traction with projects like China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
I don’t think the “Synagogue” is scripting things to “invert” East and West, I think instead — and predictably — the “Synagogue” simply backs whoever it thinks it can make the most money off of, with the other guy being the “bad” guy.
For a long time, the Western “Island Nations” had this backing and enjoyed the good publicity that went with it. As the Silk Road model becomes more economically viable, I would expect this backing and publicity to gradually invert.
The resistance to merging “East” and “West” doesn’t necessarily originate just with the Western view of themselves as being “morally superior” .. the Chinese see nothing whatsoever that is desirable about being gay, or transgender, or running a “democracy” the way Americans have done, nor do they see anything “morally superior” about any of this.
One Chinese gentleman I know recently told me that when translated into Chinese, the U.S. Constitution reads more like a serial killer’s manifesto than a model for responsible governance — the only way to translate concepts like “individual liberty” into Chinese is to use terms associated w/ criminal misconduct.
Slavic peoples as well have an ancient enmity, and an ancient hatred against the Western nations grounded in their hatred of the Latin Church, and which dates back in time literally to the Etruscans and the Founding of Rome.
Westerners have long since forgotten this history, but in the East they’re no doubt watching the collapse of Western Europe with no small amount of Schadenfreude — and possibly even plotting to retake territory that was lost to Western nations in the distant past. These are far bigger, and far more insurmountable “barriers to merging” then “Western morality” — which is largely non-existent, and is easily changed and easily purchased (for a cheap price) where it does exist.
The Western, especially American, model of “morality” is grounded on an Enlightenment view that it’s OK to separate Church and State. While it’s great to permit private citizens to worship however they please, the State itself needs to have some moral guidance over and above what a bunch of attorneys think is “good and right”.
Had America kept itself on a more-or-less Christian course, things might be different today, but this is no longer possible and the self-destruction of American is today a given, regardless of what any ‘Synagogue” is doing or scripting.
It certainly appears that Western elites are hell-bent on bringing the West down for whatever reason, so they are steadily undermining it on multiple fronts – moral, political, social, economic, military, religious, self-demonizing and so forth, all of which is clearly the result of planning and organized implementation. The article’s East-good West-bad NWO theory better explains it than the more popular ‘they are all stupid’ explanation (which is no doubt generally true as well, but discounts very smart elements, ultimately deluded and stupid they still may be from a wiser perspective). I personally do not buy the current dominant narrative that East and West are two opposing forces; there seems to be a global force as well working within both sides towards some sort of end involving global regime change.
Posted by: Scorpion | May 28 2023 15:15 utc | 9
Posted by: just somebody | May 28 2023 17:48 utc | 29, 31, 38, 39
My point was merely that what Klaus Schwab was advocating there was most definitely not communism or anything like it. He’s pushing for an (AI and app based) hyper-capitalist rentier model for the future economy. It’s already happening, as I noted.
I also don’t really care to get into debates on what alleged communist countries have and haven’t done right in part because not even the USSR had Marxian style communism. It has been referred to as a placeholder for when the workers would fully assume control of their own government, or something along those lines (from a Chomsky speech I saw). I’m not a studied hard core Marxist; rather I’m a rather moderate left-socialist who would like to see a new New Deal here in the USA and to claw back control of our government from Wall Street, billionaires and the Military Industrial Surveillance Police Complex. I’m of the opinion that worker rights in the US, after a couple of decades in ascendance, began to erode precisely according to the timeline of the downfall of the USSR.
Re: your other comments, especially the part about social credit and the like. I posted this to the penultimate Ukraine thread. You think when this comes to the USA that it will be used to enact communism? That’s laughable. They’re aiming for digital information totalitarianism, quasi-apartheid and full control and surveillance of our lives, for profit and so that the undesirables can be contained, silenced or eliminated via whatever means TPTB have at their disposal. If we want to get all conspiratorial, something like a new pandemic for example.
Anyway, here it is. What they are hoping to implement in Ukraine is already being talked about for ‘domestic’ use. The UK I believe has the most CCTV cameras and facial recognition technology in the world. This isn’t about “east” and “west” though, it’s about finance-as-a-service rentier capitalists eliminating the last barriers to their complete penetration into every part of every market, using all the new fangled technologies. IOW, you’re wasting your time worrying about China and who “looks bad” when comparing civilizational models.
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-may-ba6
I recommend reading the whole (very long) conversation, but here’s a relevant excerpt.
Matt Taibbi: This is a video that comes to us by way of The Grayzone and Max Blumenthal, Aaron Maté, and Anya Parampil. There was an event in Washington and Anya describes it as this way, “It was key officials and Samantha Power from USAID, were in Washington, celebrating how the Ukraine war kicked off “a new age” of “e-governance,” alongside the executive chairman of Visa, they were openly describing the sacrifice of Ukrainian civilians on the altar of Western finance and tech. The event is dedicated to promoting DIIA, Ukraine’s state in a smartphone, that digitizes med records, banking, biometric data, and all aspects of life into a singular app.” And DIIA by the way, is the Ukrainian word for, to be, or being, it’s conceived as an everything app.
Walter Kirn: So they aimed high with this title. It’s the human existence app.
[….] Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV0VfYcWR3s [….]
Matt Taibbi: The Grayzone folks describe being at this conference and they keep talking about how the American officials are so excited by the proof of concept of DIIA. And remember, DIIA is a hybrid creation of USAID, Visa, and Google. There’s a joke in there that somebody, one of the speakers uses as a joke to warm up the crowd, the idea that AI is going to destroy humanity. Then there’s a revelation that similar e-gov apps are being launched in other countries, like Estonia, Zanzibar and Colombia. Samantha Power excitedly says, “Something remarkable is happening in Ukraine as we speak.” Then they play a video about the DIIA app: what it sounds like, and what it looks like. Obviously this is in English, there’s a Ukrainian analog… I went and looked at it later. But this English language video, the piece of it, just by itself, there’s so much to get into here-
Walter Kirn: Firstly, what’s the audience for this presentation?
Matt Taibbi: Visa executives, the Vice Prime Minister for innovation, Mykhailo Fedorov from Ukraine, Kara Swisher was there. Again, Samantha Power.
Walter Kirn: These are a combination of aspiring developers and Ukrainian officials and American diplomats.
Matt Taibbi: With USAID, you always have to give an asterisk, like Barry Bonds’s home runs. But yeah, so they roll this video and man, if this doesn’t remind you of a certain sci-fi movie, I don’t know what to do. But let’s take a listen.
DIIAA narration, a woman’s voice: Aimed at rebuilding the liberated and soon to be occupied Ukrainian cities. State mortgage, military, medics, teachers, and scientists can apply for the state mortgage right in the app. E-Enemy, a chatbot that helps any citizen safely transfer info about the location of Russian troops, names of collaborators, and enemy movements to the armed forces. Numerous attacks of Russian army destroyed a number of TV towers. To provide Ukrainians with uninterrupted access to information, we launched DIIA Radio and DIIA TV, so that even under blackouts, millions could feel present, and added the in-app army of drones game to help Ukrainians both distract and donate to the common purpose. Has the enemy launched cyber-attacks on Ukraine? Of course, they have, and they failed.
Even when the world is falling apart, our main task is to protect the people. Together we can build a stronger one.
Matt Taibbi: So, DIIA is a snitching app. They have E-Enemy in there.
Matt Taibbi: On this “State-in-a-smartphone” concept. This happened in stages. The prior president, Petro Poroshenko, introduced something called ProZorro, between 2014-2016, this was designed to be a .gov app that centralized contracting and some other things, improving transparency. And then it was Zelensky who came along and created this concept of the “Ministry of Digital Transformation” in 2019, and that’s when they coined the phrase, “A digital state in the smartphone,” where you could fight corruption and manage complex administrative hurdles, “with one click.” This became possible thanks to the DIIAA app, meaning “action” in Ukrainian. It goes into how in addition to all the civilian uses of this, they began to develop, after the war started, some other features for this app. This is from an agency called GlobSec:
Therefore, in the first days of the war, the Ukrainian government launched the chatbot E-Enemy, a called E-Enemy, designed for Ukrainian citizens to report the Russian military and its equipment’s movements, and inform the Ukrainian government about the collaborator’s activities. The chatbot activity gained over 370,000 visits, most revealing hostile groups. Moreover, the DIIA application offered the option to donate to the Ukrainian Army, a financial assistance program for businesses affected by the war… for damaged properties, a migrant card, assistance, consultations for displaced people, and an e-document for those crossing the border without documents, quickly became available in the application, and this way, a mobile phone could confirm people’s identity even when the physical copy of the document was lost.
So, it’s your whole life in the phone, and it’s a way to report on those who are enemies to the cause in Russia… I don’t know, Walter, this reminded me of the “Would you like to know more?” commercials in Starship Troopers.
Matt Taibbi: Also, it’s a little bit like the DHS program that we talked about just a couple of weeks ago, where obviously, they have more cause to do it in Ukraine, but creating an app… And they talked about the intersection with cybersecurity agencies and developing this stuff. You just start to wonder about the possibilities of this technology.
Walter Kirn: Luckily, we’re never going to have anything like this in America…
Matt Taibbi: (laughs)
Walter Kirn: That makes me feel good. Just because we developed it, and just because it has the convenience of putting an entire state in a smartphone, doesn’t mean we will ever be subjected to it. And I feel great for the Ukrainians, that they’re in this fashion ahead of us. E-Enemy, first of all, I think of that as the opposite of Tinder. If Tinder, the thing that we have in America, allows us to identify potential mates or friends, intimate friends, this allows us to find adversaries everywhere and report them. Maybe have them disappear from view, I don’t know what happens to your E-Enemy after you’ve registered them. I don’t know if it’s a-
Matt Taibbi: I think some reporting needs to be done on that. Yeah.
Walter Kirn: Is it a three strikes thing? Do three people have to identify you as an enemy before the drone comes or does only one person? So, let’s look at the other things. The attempt to get people into looking for troops and enemy aircraft and so on, I guess is just a modern version of the spotting that we were asked to do in America in World War II.
In a lot of ways this app, though sinister, only concentrates things that populations at war seek to do all the time, which is spot threats, identify traitors, loose lips sink ships, maybe call out people who are talking too much about state secrets. But it also, what was interesting, has all of these domestic everyday capabilities. So you apply for a mortgage on the same platform that you turn in traitors and spies. And that is, I think, the innovation here. In this banality of evil fashion, make a financial app, PayPal or Venmo or e-trade, absolutely adjacent to your militarized side of things.
So, it really integrates the civilian soldier and the aspiring middle-class homeowner into one piece of software. I imagine that if you lose your phone, only death could be more disturbing. Because they talk, in this, about how this thing replaces other documents and allows you to go on as an identified individual, should you lose papers and so on. And it seems that what you’ve got is a surrogate soul, really, surrogate body, and a surrogate identifier, besides your own face…..CONTINUES
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | May 28 2023 21:37 utc | 46
Posted by: karlof1 | May 29 2023 2:07 utc | 71
Thanks very much for that interesting link with additional thoughtful contributions from Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson. They begin by discussing the quandary that the USA is in by virtue of requiring an input of resources and finding themselves in the position, as Dunford says, of having had a credit card for so long with no limit and no repayment date, but which is now being spurned largely owing to reckless thefts of assets from various unfavoured nations.
Dunford gets going on China at 30 minutes in. He states that China has initiated three postwar phases, one obviously in 1949, then reform and opening in the 1970s of which I am well aware because I now live near the spot where it actually kicked off, which was the district of Shekou close to Hong Kong in Shenzhen, when China Merchants negotiated a couple of acres for factory development in 1978. But then he goes on to say that a new third era began in 2017.
What does this era consist of and aim to achieve? It is a rejection of neo-liberalism and the introduction of a new development path which is a people-centred, not a capital-centred economy. China is still, he says, a middle income country but collective prosperity is the ultimate goal. The quality of life is to be improved by sustainable and green development, and technological self-reliance in the face of increasing coercive tendencies among other nations. While not seeking to impose its philosophy on other nations it seeks to set an example towards a multipolar world.
Well so much for what they said, you heard all that, what I suspect is that you want me to comment on is what is it actually like, being here? Let me turn the clock back first to the 1950s when I was growing up in south Wales. With each passing year my father earned a little more, we acquired for the first time domestic equipment such as a washing machine, a television set, a ruin of a second hand car, and eventually in 1960 a brand new car. The UK then had world class industries: nuclear, aircraft, motor and motor cycles…
I first came to China in 2007. My company in England had started to receive supply enquiries from China and I was curious. They were all coming from this place called Shenzhen which I had never heard of. I had to look it up on a map. I went there and visited a few companies. Their manufacture was of poor quality and they depended upon low tech components. I gained a few contracts. Meanwhile, the surrounding area looked a bit seedy and run down. Many of the local people seemed badly dressed. Nevertheless I sensed the need to be involved, founded a local subsidiary and up to 2020 I returned about 50 times, and watched the explosive growth of the city into a metropolis of about 18 million people with each time, or so it seemed, extensive new developments which had not been there the time before, and an echo of the UK all those years ago as people became more wealthy as evidenced, for example, by their dress, a proliferation of car ownership and upmarket stores and malls.
And the green, sustainable, people-centred aspect? I shot a lot of video and stills over the years so the contrast is demonstrably palpable. In many of the scenes there was heavy pollution: all gone now. The air is much cleaner as all the buses and taxis are electric, as increasingly are the private cars, some Teslas but mainly BYD and others of Chinese manufacture, and there seems to be a new make on the road every week. There are no petrol driven motorcycles, only electric (which carelessly ridden in huge numbers are actually a menace to pedestrians). There are more than a thousand parks in Shenzhen, again with seemingly a new one each week. But perhaps it is the health aspect that best invites comparison.
There is no doubt that China got it absolutely right on the Covid issues. Clamping down in Wuhan at the outset when death rates were high gave a couple of years’ breathing space in which it was to all intents and purposes absent and non-mRNA vaccines were readied. When it came back albeit in a less lethal but more infectious form we had to put up with localized lockdowns at the expense of productivity and frequent testing, which was efficiently organized to waste minimal time. Then finally it was judged safe to let it rip, everyone who hadn’t had it (which was almost everyone) got it last December with minimal effect to my immediate knowledge, and now it is no longer an issue. China’s death rate overall per million was 4 compared to the west’s typically in excess of 2,000. QED.
Finally on health, a personal note. In 2017 at home in UK I started to get shaking fits and the NHS told me it was a bladder infection. I was prescribed antibiotics and on a few repeat experiences, further medication. On I think the fourth occasion I was in Shenzhen. I went to the local people’s hospital to ask for medication but within 40 minutes I was talking to a urologist. I was run through various tests that morning, and at 2 pm that day I was told that it was virtually certain that I had prostate cancer. This was confirmed back in the UK and after a wait of almost year I had radiography there, but that failed in 2021 and I am now as a permanent resident on constant medication in China which has kept me cancer free to this day.
Well I’ve taken up enough space today, but just one more observation. In the embryo industry I visited in 2007, China is now the world leader by volume of production, and it is our company’s main market amounting to some 70% of turnover.
Posted by: Walt | May 29 2023 5:17 utc | 80
@ Tom_Q_Collins | 82
First, thank you for the courtesy of the answer.
Second, this:
…you seem to be arguing from a nasty position of “because this guy is an odious scumbag in that he disagrees with me on one thing, he deserves even the most inhumane treatment he can get so fuck him (and by extension anyone like him in either capacity)” with which I completely disagree.
I have quite literally stated that I hope he isn’t being tortured, I hope he is still alive, and that I sincerely believe that he’s only being detained by people who are allies of the patriarchs of the family he married into.
But let’s switch that around: should I give two shits about the fate of a person who, at the hands of people I despise, may well be tortured or murdered–and let us not forget this this is a guy who goes around promoting Hitler, Holocaust Denial, and argues that every person born in Africa or with “rather dark skin” is a sub-human animal? A guy who literally moved to Ukraine because he and his wife embraced its Neo-Nazi values? A guy who is CLEARLY an opportunist who will sell out his adopted family and “political audience” to make the quick buck?
Unless I’m in a position to swoop in like some superhero and rescue that guy/gal from that fate–and then edumacate the idiot about his transgressions–then I do sincerely argue: no. I am under no moral, ethical, nor even the most complex rules of social etiquette obliged to worry over that person’s fate. Moreover, I think that anyone fretting themselves over Lira’s fate, right now, is mostly doing so because he fraudulently portrayed himself (as he has done in so many other areas) as an “enemy of Ukraine’s Nazis”, whereas I STRONGLY suspect that he was working as a “limited hangout” with his operation intended to recruit more people into the Nazi cause and to support Ukraine.
Just think: he had Judge Napolitano, Larry Johnson (the guy who was literally the first website to float the “Obama was born in Indonesia and isn’t a real American” bit), and how many others using him as a source to share knowledge of the “situation in Ukraine”. As a limited hangout, he was wildly successful in his work right up until he was “captured”–which, IMHO, was likely also staged.
I mean, you go back a few months in this guy’s Twitter feed and you see openly Nazi stuff posted about ethnic Africans, other dark-skinned peoples, religions other than Christianity, homosexuals–you name it, this guy had the Bigot Button pressed down hard. More to-the-point: Lira made his game on 4-Chan–notorious for being a Nazi hideout, and has made his entire career as an “Internet Celebrity” based off of his followers, who mostly come from that Nazi background.
But let me not stop there. There is also this:
But if he was truly unable to leave Ukraine and stayed there as a result, even if he continued his rather mild criticism, then he has all my sympathy and…[here I fully, morally, ethically agree with you]. Don’t get me wrong. I see the poetic irony/justice in someone who cheerled Pinochet from a safe geographic and historical distance getting swept up themselves in a similar totalitarian erasure. I just can’t be happy about it on a human level.
I have literally come out on multiple posts where I said:
A) I hope he’s not being tortured
B) I hope he’s not dead
C) I hope his family’s safe
and also–most importantly–
D) I think he’s a fraud, and
E) I don’t think he nor his family are in any danger.
I sincerely believe Lira has been “working for the Nazis” this entire time.
For instance, the post where he turned against Ritter was one where Ritter pointed out that no, in fact the NATO weapons systems being provided the Ukraine were actually killing Russians.
Lira had posted a video telling his followers that all those systems were being destroyed by Russian long-range missiles.
Would it not have been a great coup for the Ukrainian government if it had repelled the Russian onslaught without the use of Western equipment?
That’s something a True Believer would think, if they were handling Lira as an asset.
Would it not be detrimental to “The Message” if Ritter came online and started critiquing Lira from an evidence-informed perspective?
That’s something a True Believer would think, if they were handling Lira as an asset.
Would Judge Napolitano and Larry Johnson not be attracted by Gonzalo’s Twitter and other (i.e.: 4-chan) followers?
I’m sure neither of those guys have any idea what sort of filth resides on 4-Chan.
Long-story-short: Gonzalo Lira is an open Nazi who has been masquerading as an honest journalist, these last 10 months.
I despise liars and narcissists. I do not feel any need to apologize for despising Gonzalo Lira.
Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | May 29 2023 13:52 utc | 99
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