Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
February 11, 2024
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-044

Last week’s post on Moon of Alabama:

Middle East:

Ukraine:


Other issues:

Putin Interview:

Empire:

Nordstream:

Pakistan:

China:

> Russia is said to weaponize everything. The position of China is not (yet) seen in military terms. The emphasis is on economic competition. Any undeniable Chinese achievement must be declared to have been a bad investment. The directive thus reads:

“When writing about China’s achievements – question their purported cost.”

The (40+) results:
… <

The Web:

Use as open (not Ukraine or Palestine related) thread …

Comments

Re the interview. Putin spoke as he has done before about the US weaponizing the dollar as a major mistake.
Think of a fortress built on alluvial rather than bedrock. Putin has diverted or changed the flow of currency so it begins undercutting the walls of the fortress. After that it is simply a matter of ensuring the flow continues undercutting the fortress, sitting back and alow the forces of nature to take its course.
Dedollarising is a natural course for any country sanctioned by the US, but rather than simply being reflexive, Putin turns disadvantage to advantage. Armchair generals, armchair presidents – much blah blah from the peanut gallery at times, but we are certainly watching something a little out of the ordinary.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 3:02 utc | 101

My only disagreement with the Strategic Culture essay is the title. Carlson did not commit treason. He was faithful to the Constitution which places the need to know high on the list of citizen rights. There’s a lot I don’t understand, but I understand that.

Posted by: juliania | Feb 12 2024 3:33 utc | 102

@ Moonie | Feb 11 2024 20:07 utc | 35
i like these posts you’ve made and i find them interesting.. don’t be discouraged on the open thread here.. keep posting and sharing your perspective…
@ Patroklos | Feb 11 2024 20:26 utc | 39
i don’t think you need to do that.. i am with peter au in the idea of getting more callouses! so that makes 5 or so of us here at say don’t bother! you are fine just as you are.. ignore the riff raft… they can do the same if they wanted to do the rest of moa a favour..
@ juliania | Feb 11 2024 21:03 utc | 47
thanks for your feedback! what did i say, lol? i said i thought they were a fair assessment! that doesn’t mean i agreed with him.. the way i see it people can say what they think and it still contains a large degree of subjectivity in it all..no one is going to be ‘right’ over something like this as i see it.. people will just have different ideas and some of those perceptions might clash, but i don’t think anything is any one cut and dried thing… it might sound like i am evading responsibility for what i said, but i am not.. i like being forced to consider different perspectives that i might not ordinarily consider or think of… doctorow approaches it from a marketing angle.. he says so too! who is putins audience? putins audience may not be carlsons audience and maybe putin doesn’t care what carlsons audience is!! i really don’t know.. i didn’t have a problem with what putin had to say or his choice of answering carlson the way he did… but, i am open to someone thinking that he answered it all wrong, lol!!
there is a reason someone is an amazing leader of a large and populace country and the other person is a writer/journalist!! now, maybe the roles could be reversed and it would work out, but that is not what fate had in store for putin or doctorow!!! same deal with you and i my friend! lucky us!!!
@ William Gruff | Feb 11 2024 22:09 utc | 61
interesting conjecture.. i am not sure that putin would frame it the same way as you, but perhaps you have a better insight into him then me..either way i see it as all conjecture – and interesting conjecture too.. you force me to think of things differently william and i appreciate that.. thanks..
————
i still think the interview with carlson/putin was a home run for putin/carlson and russia… but i am an optimist!!

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 3:57 utc | 103

Wow. Interesting numbers re the interview viewings. Martynov/Johnson/Simonyan(RT) collated 1 billion views of the full Putin interview on various outlets versus only 32 million views of excepts and commentary about it via ALL MSM outlets combined. Talk about the death of MSM for direct and full reporting sources.

Posted by: Jake.Blanchard | Feb 12 2024 4:01 utc | 104

dang, i guess that site doesn’t link to moa?
fascinating article from 2014 on putin.. i highly recommend it..
The Real Vladimir Putin https://www.winterpatriot.com/node/852

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 4:11 utc | 105

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 3:57 utc | 103
Thank you, james. Please go to the link to the Strategic Culture article that Scorpion gives in the last few posts on the previous page to this one – do not be offput by the title of it; it is very good. This is not about marketing; it is far too important.
This is about an incorrect interpretation of an important interview. I will be happy to spell that out for you by comparing what was said with what Doctorow says was said. His statements are not correct. He may have his reasons; it is just simply so. If you still don’t see what I am saying, I will give the comparisons here tomorrow.

Posted by: juliania | Feb 12 2024 4:16 utc | 106

@ juliania | Feb 12 2024 4:16 utc | 106
i will take a look.. thanks! i didn’t say it was about marketing.. that is how doctorow pitched it! please don’t read into my post too much.. thanks! and, i might not be looking at it in a black and white manner… i hope you understand..
here is a quote from my link @ 105 –
“So why do our leaders and media demean and demonize Putin and Russia???
Like Lady MacBeth, do they protest too much?
Psychologists tell us that people (and countries?) project off on others what they don’t want to face in themselves. Others carry our “shadow”when we refuse to own it. We confer on others the very traits that we are horrified to acknowledge in ourselves.
Could this be why we constantly find fault with Putin and Russia?
Could it be that we project on to Putin the sins of ourselves and our leaders?
Could it be that we condemn Russia’s corruption, acting like the corruption within our corporate world doesn’t exist?
Could it be that we condemn their human rights and LGBT issues, not facing the fact that we haven’t solved our own?
Could it be that we accuse Russia of “reconstituting the USSR”––because of what we do to remain the world’s “hegemon”?
Could it be that we project nationalist behaviors on Russia, because that is what we have become and we don’t want to face it?
Could it be that we project warmongering off on Russia, because of what we have done over the past several administrations?”

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 4:23 utc | 107

james | Feb 12 2024 4:23 utc | 107
There is projection which all msm does, then there is tall poppy syndrome which many here indulge in. And I don’t mean that in relation to the recent kerfuffle here but but simply the syndrome in which all leaders are considered bad ect. I guess tall poppy syndrome by no name keyboard jockeys is my bug bear.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 4:33 utc | 108

Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 11 2024 22:09 utc | 61
No, Putin did not lie, William. He spoke the truth as he saw it. Your statement does not make sense, any more than the headline on the Strategic Culture article Scorpion linked at Posted by: Scorpion | Feb 12 2024 2:21 utc | 98. (I’m aware that sometimes a person other than the author writes the headline for a piece, which may have happened in this case.)

Posted by: juliania | Feb 12 2024 4:33 utc | 109

okay juliania… i read it…
that shit – everyone here at moa has been saying for the past 10 or more years!! yes.. so what? i said a few days ago that i thought this interview was significant and in a positive way… obviously you missed my comment, lol!! everything in that editorial is what we have been saying at moa for at least the past 10 years! we said it about the mh17 plane being downed.. the maiden protest in ukraine in 2014, the skripal poisonings and all the the hype and bullshite the west is constantly fed about russia and putin… anyway – it is hard to jump in midstream and conversations… you are not encouraging me to be silent – i realize that! but i make a passing comment on enjoying the doctorow articles and appreciating his perspective and i hit a nerve, lol.. i am sorry about that… cheers james

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 4:35 utc | 110

@ Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 4:33 utc | 108
thanks peter.. i highly recommend you check out that link @ 105, in particular the part of the long article down a bit in yellow by Sharon Tennison… she nails it and it was written in 2014!! talk about prophetic… 10 years ago and we are still trying to free ourselves from the msm madness that inflicts our fellow citizens on the nature of putin..

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 4:38 utc | 111

Posted by: Patroklos | Feb 11 2024 20:26 utc
While I’m here, I am going to stop posting as ‘Patroklos’ and rename
*************
Hi Patroklos,
Please don’t, and please keep posting profusely. If I was one of those that ‘hectored’ you, I’m sincerely sorry. As a newbie and lurker, I shouldn’t have done that to an erudite and valued longtime contributor… I just thought you were having a go at Sid, whom I perceived as being nothing but helpful in taking the trouble to answer your question — and as someone who’s been in a similar situation as him often, I thought I’d humorously defend him. Sorry if I was one of the offenders.
Regards

Posted by: dumbo | Feb 12 2024 4:41 utc | 112

To Chinese readers…..
FC gave a platform to Jimmy Dores too,
a fat lot of good it does !
jImmy Dores

China isnt gonna invade us, you dumb shit

It didnt seem to register with FC, who looked bewildered, never mind his WS fan base. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAgNJ0Q5li4

Posted by: denk | Feb 12 2024 4:41 utc | 113

that lady – sharon tennison – has a website.. https://ccisf.org/
Bringing Russian and American citizens together in Peace since 1983
some might want to check it out as well..

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 4:42 utc | 114

@ juliania 109
It very much did collapse and Putin sees this as well. Now he spares no feelings wrt western liberalism, either, and that is why what is happening now with Russia and the west is akin to midwifing authentic questioning, or questioning by what authentic means can Russia self-show itself or, for that matter, any other “western” culture.
The internal contradiction of communism in one nation led to an untenable equilibrium with the west that exposed Stalinism to the Thucydides trap of self-identifying itself as other or foil to capitalism. It tried to be the universal, but because it could not control completely the influence of capitalism within itself because it could not completely vanquish it, it had to live next-to-it while desperately attempting to convince its people that it was superior. It was not, but perhaps neither is Americanism superior to Stalinism. This is what Putin seems to be getting at.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Feb 12 2024 4:56 utc | 115

@ denk | Feb 12 2024 4:41 utc | 113
thanks denk.. i like the video!

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 5:12 utc | 116

92, Oriental Voice, your guess is as good as mine, but there’s seems to be evidence that the earth has either flipped poles or at least knocked off it’s axis.

Posted by: Immaculate deception | Feb 12 2024 5:15 utc | 117

Posted by: juliania | Feb 12 2024 3:33 utc | 102
My only disagreement with the Strategic Culture essay is the title. Carlson did not commit treason. He was faithful to the Constitution which places the need to know high on the list of citizen rights. There’s a lot I don’t understand, but I understand that.

The Title:
“Tucker Carlson Committed ‘Treason’ to Interview Russian President Vladimir Putin… and the World Loved It!”
Note the inverted commas indicating that ‘treason’ is how the presstitute class characterized the interview, not the author.
Thanks for your other remarks. I ran into some heavy criticism of Plato recently (and thought of you) in that his Utopian model was behind much of the New World Order thinking promulgated by H.G. Wells, arguably one of the most influential individuals in the early 20th century. The problem with Utopias, or managed societies like Sparta or early communist Russia or Israel, is that they end up becoming totalitarian hells. Ideas like to tie things altogether so that they are pleasing to comprehend as integrated wholes; but reality is always multi-leveled with interlacing internal and external harmony and discord, ever chopping and changing. Like flowing water: there may be a steady, discernible direction of flow, as with a river, but particular movements in any given area are continuously changing, improvising, with never the same thing twice, just like no momentary situation ever repeats. It seems that even the very best ideas, no matter how well-intentioned initially, usually end up doing more harm than good when followed as fixed doctrine.
Civilization, it seems, is the ultimate, multi-generational collective art form ideally involving unchanging, bedrock principles, not snazzily fashioned ideological talking points hovering around surface chatter levels. Perhaps this is why a Russian voice is now pointing the way forward given how famous they are for possessing serious depth of soul and such….

Posted by: Scorpion | Feb 12 2024 5:26 utc | 118

Peter AU 1 @ 87:
I saw what you said there … that’s hilarious.

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Feb 12 2024 5:41 utc | 119

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 5:12 utc | 116
—————————–
hello James
I normally prefer text.
When I do vid, its always short and sharp, to the point.
Meaning Must See
Jimmy Dores highlight two very basic facts…
Only a nincompoop or psycho would entertain the thought of a Chinese invasion
The problem with USAss, in fact the entire [FIVE liars] clique is firstly the MIC, secondly the MIC, thirdly the MIC.
all these hue and cry about Russia/China threat, Jews/Israel’s wars are nefarious diversion agiprop.
The scary part is, it works !

Posted by: denk | Feb 12 2024 5:55 utc | 120

Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 11 2024 22:09 utc | 61
Thanks for that. Putin’s bashing of Lenin is a an interesting topic, imo.
I have some immediate things to do but will post this now and be back to give source, etc. in an
hour or so, but maybe some in the US West will catch it before nodding off.

“Putin, in his explanation of why they were historically justified in going into Ukraine, attacks Lenin.
Putin blames Lenin for the creation of an independent or semi-independent socialist republic of Ukraine. Putin argues that if Ukraine, which had always been part of Russia, did not have the right to secede or the right to become independent it wouldn’t have become independent, and thus NATO could not be taking advantage of it. This situation is Lenin’s fault according to Putin.
But the war in Ukraine is not to be blamed on Russia. It is U.S. imperialism which deliberately calculatingly, provocatively created a situation which was untenable for Russia and Russia took military action which was essentially a defensive operation to prevent NATO from using Ukraine as a staging ground.
That’s why it’s important to be a Leninist – It’s OK to take that position against imperialism but retain your political independence.
Who’s right, Putin or Lenin?
Lenin is right.

The right of oppressed non-Russian nationalities, who were indeed not Russian and had been oppressed by the Tsarist ruling class, by providing the right of self-determination (right to secede) does not create division but provides the basis for communist unity – meaning the unity based on equality. Lenin is an opponent of Great Russian chauvinism (analogous to white supremacy in America) The Great Russian Empire dominated over all the other non-Russian nationalities. “This is the prison-house of nations”- Lenin. He was disgusted by it. The non-Russian people were treated badly, treated with racist caricaturing and stereotyping. But he said we can build unity based on workers unity if we have a socialist republic
-right to a job
-right to education
-right to affordable housing
-and the right to separate – meaning if we, i.e., the Great Russian nation, treat you badly, you can separate and have your own republic,
On the basis of this formula of right of self-determination there was no war between 1922 and 1991, only natural tensions. After all they were different peoples. But there was no fighting. It was an integrated, coordinated planned socialist economy (e.g. Azerbaijan oil for Ukraine grain)
that brought people together. Lenin’s position of the right of self-determination was not the genesis of division it was the genesis of unity.
In the Soviet system there was the Supreme Soviet and the Soviet of Nationalities. To become law a proposal had to pass both bodies, thus giving the Soviet of Nationalities effective veto power. That meant great measure of equality.
Lenin’s whole policy was affirmative action. (read on the National and Colonial Question) In order to have equality there has to be some degree of inequality to make up for past inequalities. These principles were a rejection of western/white supremacist orientation that had been dominate.
This is a hallmark of Lenin. So it’s understandable why the Russians invaded Ukraine –NATO/US- and we don’t have to agree with Putin’s explanations which are essentially anti-communist and anti-Leninist in order to sustain a principled anti-imperialist position.”

Posted by: waynorinorway | Feb 12 2024 6:21 utc | 121

@ denk | Feb 12 2024 5:55 utc | 120
thanks denk.. i too like transcripts and generally don’t watch videos.. i make exceptions.. that one you shared was only 2 minutes and i liked what jimmy dore said.. he basically summarized my own viewpoint on all of that.. i wish more people could see that.. i guess that is what you call it – diversionary agiprop… so much propaganda in the world – too much in fact.. up past my bedtime.. had a friend call from toronto and was on the phone and still not reading my books!

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 6:45 utc | 122

@ waynorinorway | Feb 12 2024 6:21 utc | 121
thanks for bringing greater clarity on the topic and views that william shared @ 61… i like your reasoning waynorinorway…

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 6:47 utc | 123


It like saying Damascus swords could only be made with modern equipment.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 11 2024 20:08 utc | 36 and subsequent

10/10 for lucid and logical fact-based explanations.
Outstanding!

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Feb 12 2024 6:50 utc | 124

@Posted by: Scorpion | Feb 11 2024 23:24 utc | 78
Explain how to transport multiple 70-ton precision cut granite blocks from Aswan, 700 km away. Any theory must address the most difficult aspects (not saying this is the most difficult aspect).

Posted by: Norwegian | Feb 12 2024 6:52 utc | 125

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 6:45 utc | 122
—————-
Good nite !

Posted by: denk | Feb 12 2024 6:53 utc | 126

@persiflo | Feb 11 2024 23:26 utc | 79
You are engaged in hand-waving. Rather than expressing belief, look into the matter.

Posted by: Norwegian | Feb 12 2024 6:55 utc | 127

I read the RADHIKA DESAI/MICHAEL HUDSON Pathways to Solutions discussion and have some observations.
Back in my ALMOST nakedcapitalism days, over a decade ago I believe, I was negative in comments about Michael Hudson for not being as critical of global private finance as he is now. While I support what they said in the discussion , I still think that there is no place for private finance in successful forms of social organization. I say this because I believe that the state should be the final arbiter of all financial/social risk management…..AI, Robots, Loans, R&D, etc.
I wish they had included in their monetary policy discussion some mention of potential personal saving/investment vehicles (interest on savings pegged to ??? for short term holdings and then still real estate lease and ??? for long term investment/savings. Will there still be private equity markets?
Under the redesign of taxation part Michael said it well

So the failure to tax economic rent, the failure to tax land rent and bank financial gains is you let a class develop whose economic interests are in fighting against the economy as a whole and turning the economy into getting wealth by unearned income, getting wealth by financial maneuvering and by rent-seeking, as economists say, not by actually producing labor and raising living standards, not by industry and improvements in productivity, but essentially not reinvesting in long-term development, research, and the kind of investment that the countries that are actually growing.

Again this supports my contention that private banking needs to go away entirely because the overhead of regulation is worse than the government oversight need.
For financial regulation Michael had goods words that I am going to rearrange to summarize his points

Every economy is a market. The question is, do you want an oligarchic market, a democratic market, a productive market, an industrial market, or a financialized market, what’s the relation between prices and the cost of production, and who gets the income? Labor, capital, landlord?

I hope they continue with more discussions like this.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Feb 12 2024 8:10 utc | 128

Posted by: waynorinorway | Feb 12 2024 6:21 utc | 121
The blockquote I posted there is a transcription from a lecture series about Lenin given by Brian Becker
a month or two ago. Becker is a director of the ANSWER coalition in NYC. I posted links a few weeks ago.*
That is from the 3rd one at about !:42:45. Becker on Lenin
*https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/01/the-moa-week-in-review-ot-2024-022.html
Posted by: waynorinorway | Jan 21 2024 19:29 utc | 28

Posted by: waynorinorway | Feb 12 2024 8:18 utc | 129

Posted by: denk | Feb 12 2024 4:41 utc | 113
fwiw,
Jimmy Dore has to ditch that idiot sidekick Kurt Metzger before I can watch again.
He’s not funny, he interrupts too often and cannot complete a sentence or a simple thought.
I’ve rarely run across a more inarticulate person. Anywhere! Besides that he dresses like Zelensky.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Feb 12 2024 8:27 utc | 130

As an aside, if you watch the jet streams on earth.nullschool.net you’ll notice the jet streams on most days over Siberia are pretty stable. Also if you look at the ice extent maps, there is slight increase in the Arctic, especially along the Siberian coast.
In my feeble little brain, this is pretty interesting.
Posted by: Michael.j |
Posted by: Michael.j | Feb 12 2024 1:36 utc | 93
ice extent is not ice mass though.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Feb 12 2024 8:33 utc | 131

@84 DunGroanin | Feb 12 2024 0:17 utc | 84
Michael.j | Feb 12 2024 1:36 utc | 93
Aleph_Null | Feb 11 2024 20:24 utc | 38
Exile | Feb 11 2024 19:03 utc | 28
tim rourke | Feb 11 2024 18:51 utc | 27
@23 Norwegian | Feb 11 2024 17:54
from 2020 one the better reviews I have ever seen …
Geological Society of London Scientific Statement: what the
geological record tells us about our present and future climate
https://www.lyellcollection.org/doi/pdf/10.1144/jgs2020-239
Just because the proposed solutions are crazy (nay ludicrously flawed), cannot work, and won’t be done, doesn’t mean the problem and the science and the reality isn’t real.
But go on fight about it. 🙂

Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Feb 12 2024 9:07 utc | 132

going by his region of troubles in the nether region, he must have spent some time in the Netherlands.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 0:40 utc | 87
Cinco contra uno?

Posted by: waynorinorway | Feb 12 2024 9:18 utc | 133

“Russians dumb down their speeches at the UN to avoid miscommunication, deputy representative Dmitry Polyansky has said”
https://www.rt.com/russia/592298-polyansky-western-diplomacy-primitive/
This only a few days after Putin opens his most anticipated interview EVER, with the most cooperative interviewer he will find in the WEST ever, at a time when war with the West is the worst EVER, with a boring 30 minute history lecture that will go straight over 90% of viewers heads and make many viewers stop watching??? Even i was bored and nearly stopped watching. Talk about lacking clarity and good good judgement, and wasting a golden opportunity.
I agree 100% with Doctorow’s analysis, and once again expose all the Russia simps like Ritter et al. failing to see the woods from the trees and understanding how the average viewer would have seen this. Russia really needs to look at how it communicates with the West and lift its game.

Posted by: Rubiconned | Feb 12 2024 9:54 utc | 134

Thank you, james | Feb 12 2024 4:11 utc | 105, for that link to Sharon Tennison’s 2014 piece.
The Winter Patriot Blog (james’ blog – any relation?) continued the narrative from the end of Sharon’s article. I found it very interesting WRT a persuasive narrative about the 2008 financial ‘crisis’ and subsequent events involving the ongoing conflict between State banks and private banks. Where the state banks of China and Russia appear to be the champions of freedom and independence and the private banks – whose ownership also dominates the control of the M$M – who seem to be the movers and shakers for a universal digital currency to supercede national currencies.

The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 was engineered by the bankers and set in train years before on the assumption that the bankers would control the oil sales of both Russia and Iran by the time the worlds economies collapsed in what was to be known as the GFC of 2008. The bankers planned to use this occasion to completely collapse the $US and replace it with their OWC….
… Since then, things have only gotten worse for the bankers. Russia and China and control own their own central banks and are therefore beyond the direct control of the western international bankers….
…Russia and China are in the process of setting up a world development bank as an alternative to the IMF thus further reducing the power of the international bankers, taking away more international demand for $US and adding even further to the inflationary pressure on the US dollar….
… The US will no longer be able to buy goods from around the globe and pay for them simply by printing money;..

Worth reading the rest IMO. Probably old news to many, but it does put the west’s – sorry WASTE’s – vitriolic propaganda vis-a-vis China and Russia.
Finally, WRT Tucker interview/conversation with President Putin, I thought it was pitched perfectly. Tucker represented ‘every man’, or woman, in terms of his questioning and reactions to the format as evolved – Putin did clarify whether it was a ‘talk show’ or ‘conversation’ before he relaxed into it – and Tucker gradually acclimatised to the Russian President’s style. It appears to have become fashionable to write about falling asleep during the ‘history lesson’, which surprised me when it came from contributers who normallyy demonstrate lots of energy opinionating – that icludes Mr Doctorow.

Posted by: Lantern Dude | Feb 12 2024 9:59 utc | 135

Lantern Dude | Feb 12 2024 9:59 utc | 135
I need to spend more effort editing.

Posted by: Lantern Dude | Feb 12 2024 10:02 utc | 136

Another perspective
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/key-points-from-tucker-carlson–interview-with-putin

Posted by: Lantern Dude | Feb 12 2024 10:13 utc | 137

When it comes to the intransigence in accepting that Lenin was as much a villain to Russian Civilisation as opposed to hero of Oppression for the wider world – much of it oppressed by the Imperialism of Anglo Europeans for many centuries btw – it helps to consider the actuality of thinking in these distant times as well as now.
What did the Russias Greats make of their Human Condition?
What did they make of European ‘civilisation’ and Russias position?
What did Dostoevsky write about it for example?
What did contemporary Russia then make of Dostoevsky?
What did Lenin think of his writings?
What about Putin ? How about Dugin? And contemporary Russians now?
Why is it that Lenin is viewed by our kaleidoscope vision as somehow a saint from a distance of a century whilst Putin is considered to be no match?
Anyway rather than take up acres of screen today try these:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30129713
“ When Fyodor Dostoyevsky described in his novels how ideas have the power to change human lives, he knew something of what he was writing about..”
&
https://fdostoevsky.livejournal.com/31097.html?
‘ In 1913, after attending a staging of Devils at the Moscow State Theater, Gorky criticized Dostoevsky and those who staged his works as “playing the hand of governmental reaction.” On being subsequently rebuked for criticizing Dostoevsky’s ideology without paying proper regard to the writer’s talent, Gorky gave a damning description of his peers’ attitude towards Dostoevsky:
“This is the opinion of the literati, as I understand them: although Dostoevsky is a reactionary, and one of the founders of the zoological nationalism which is strangling us today, although he denigrated Granovsky and Belinsky and is an enemy of that very West by whose works and ideas we live, although he is a rabid chauvinist, an anti-Semite, a preacher of submission and patience – despite all this his artistic genius is so great that it outweighs all his sins against the concepts of justice which the best leaders of mankind have tried to work out. And, therefore, society has no right to protest against Dostoevsky’s tendencies and, in general, against any artist, whatever his preachment may be” (Slonim, 1951).
Gorky’s critique caused some controversy at the time and set the tone Lenin’s opinions on Dostoevsky. Lenin’s published correspondence reveals that he followed the controversy surrounding staging Devils in 1913 and wrote Gorky a letter supporting his view on the matter (Seduro 1975). Similarly, a third-hand account of Lenin’s opinion, given in Meetings with Lenin, relates that Lenin said of Devils “[it is] a nasty, thoroughly reactionary work…and I have absolutely no inclination to waste my time on it” (ibid). The philosophical opposition of Lenin and Dostoevsky is also revealed in their two very different responses to the philosophy of Nikolai Chernyshevsky, revolutionary democrat, materialist, and utopian socialist. Lenin was influenced heavily by Chernyshevsky’s philosophy. The title of Lenin’s political tract What is to be Done is an homage to Chernyshevsky’s utopian socialist novel of the same name. Dostoevsky on the other hand wrote Notes from the Underground as a reaction against Chernyshevsky’s philosophy, and particularly against a passage from What is to be Done, in which the revolutionary hero of the novel states, “Yes, I will always do what I want. I will never sacrifice anything, not even a whim, for the sake of something I do not desire. What I want, with all my heart, is to make people happy. In this lies my happiness. Mine! Can you hear that, you, in your underground hole?” Dostoevsky’s famous Underground Man came into being in response to Chernyshevsky’s challenge (Dostoevsky 1993). ‘
Anyhow – How and why can anyone dismiss the President of Russia , who supposedly mourns the death of the USSR blaming the leadership of the time but equally finds it inexplicable that Lenin and others created the Frankenstein Monster that is Ukraine which is an abomination that has caused the mincing of the familial Russio peoples of the borderlands. Again and again through the centuries as if there were some Great Attractor to that land and its Seas!
I’ll leave it at that.
Now how am I going to slap down the fascists today?
Maybe by focusing on the little Frankenstein elfin princess monster that was birthed by the WEF. To be the ‘child catcher’, the green goddess to be worshipped, that will like all the current Greens be just neo-Nazi, Leaderine of a Fortress Europe?
With her saviour religion of a Green New Deal and Stopping Oil – which miraculously will be. Because the nextgen tech has been around for many decades anyway.
Maybe she will change her name to Lenina? And grow a beard?
Just like the transhumanist religion that is being moulded for our smug supremacists Collective Waste. And Wokism as it’s commandments.
Not. Buying. Not sorry.

Posted by: DunGroanin | Feb 12 2024 10:20 utc | 138

What did the Russias Greats make of their Human Condition?
What did they make of European ‘civilisation’ and Russias position?
What did Dostoevsky write about it for example?
What did contemporary Russia then make of Dostoevsky?
What did Lenin think of his writings?
What about Putin ? How about Dugin? And contemporary Russians now?
Posted by: DunGroanin | Feb 12 2024 10:20 utc | 138
You first.
Show your work.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Feb 12 2024 12:12 utc | 139

Why is it that Lenin is viewed by our kaleidoscope vision as somehow a saint from a distance of a century whilst Putin is considered to be no match?
Posted by: DunGroanin | Feb 12 2024 10:20 utc | 138
My answer is that the century since Lenin has been ample to examine what Lenin did.
Putin is still making his legacy. It’s not a fair comparison for either.
The question is likely to come from someone who has read or studied little of
Lenin’s work, someone who relies on other pundits to form an opinion.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Feb 12 2024 12:22 utc | 140

Anybody that hasn’t watched Defamation – The Movie [2009] by an Israeli journalist, it is a must watch to get an inside track on the antisemitism industry – https://youtu.be/CTAjc1OSrmY He got access to the top hierarchy of the ADL in the US and got extremely candid comments from many.

Posted by: NotEinstein | Feb 12 2024 12:41 utc | 141

Posted by: Norwegian | Feb 12 2024 6:52 utc | 125
@Posted by: Scorpion | Feb 11 2024 23:24 utc | 78
Explain how to transport multiple 70-ton precision cut granite blocks from Aswan, 700 km away. Any theory must address the most difficult aspects (not saying this is the most difficult aspect).

If a barge can float 70-tons for 10 minutes it can go 70 kms.
Needed:
a) ability to build a barge with 80 ton displacement. Given the sophistication of pyramids…
b) ability to support the carved-in-place block from underneath by columns (stone or concrete) so that barge can be constructed underneath
c) ability to channel water into contained docking area around the block so that the barge will first float up to and then lift block above the level of the supporting columns
d) the barge is now floated directly into canal then rowed and/or towed 70km into the pyramid
e) pyramid’s internal passages manage ingress and egress of water so that the barge with block could be floated up and fixed in place after which water and barge are floated down.
f) after which most of the water passages are filled in
g) if you can do this one time you can do it hundreds of times.
The only part of the theory – I think – that is questionable is whether or not the size of the barge and block were so large that there was no way to have a passage large enough to accommodate them during the lifting operation.
How big are those 70 ton blocks?
I only went to psychic twice but one told me that in one past life I helped build the roads to the pyramids. Maybe those roads were canals!

Posted by: Scorpion | Feb 12 2024 13:49 utc | 142

DunGroanin @138
Thank you for providing the BBC view on some of the various perspectives during the lead-up to the Russian Revolution. Likewise, thank you for reminding me of Dostoevsky, whose works are like extraordinarily well written scripts for the American soap opera Dynasty. Imagine had videotape technology been available in the middle of the 19th century what true masterpieces of daytime direct-to-video serial entertainment we’d have today! Dostoevsky was such a master at contrasting the narcissistic emo angst of the rich and powerful against the petty jealousies of the poor and dispossessed. I cannot attest to how much of the “human condition” such work might actually illuminate, but it is certainly effective at distracting bored housewives from their arduous toil.
I quite enjoyed the part of the excerpt from the Brutish Bullshit Corporation tract where the author tried to imply by association that Lenin was a Utopian idealist. I’m confident the author felt that to be quite clever, and it might even have fooled some people who were fools to begin with.
As for Putin, he mourns the demise of stalinism, not Marxist/Leninism. Stalinism was the bathwater thrown out in the 1990s, while Marxist/Leninism was the baby. Many in Russia, including Putin, are desperately trying to recover the discarded bathwater while kicking the neglected baby away.
And yet it is the legacy of that baby Putin turns his back on that allows the Russian Federation to stand against the lunacy of the Collective West… lunacy Putin would gladly embrace if only Russia’s “partners” in the West would play nice.
That last point exposes the true danger of a Trump win in the fall. The real problem with Trump is not ridiculous shrill hysteria of the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” victims bleating about his imagined racism and misogyny, it is the fact Trump understands the Russian leadership desperately wants to sit at the “mean girls'” table at “The Garden” Middle School. The Russian leadership would happily hand over to the Empire whatever is left of the Soviet legacy if only they could be part of the Empire Club too; something Trump completely understands. If the Empire’s “Deep State” lets Trump get away with it, he will invite Russia into NATO, and Putin will gleefully take a seat on Uncle Trump’s lap.
This, of course, would be catastrophe for China and global multipolarity. Fortunately, the aggregate cognitive decline of the “Collective West” is just as advanced as President Biden’s, so the Empire of Delusions won’t pursue this easy win over China. Still, it is a danger.

Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 12 2024 14:41 utc | 143

Engineering of the past. We tend to recognize the Romans as great engineers – much written evidence, many pragmatic and practical building projects still standing to this day.
When looking at the great building projects of the past, the older ones are purely for ceremonial/spiritual purposes. Pyramid type structures that are mostly solid within and serve no practical purpose. At some point this moved to buildings that served practical purposes, great halls, palaces ect.
Persia comes to mind as among the first. Darius? I forget the name of the place but the floor and foundation remain have been perfectly preserved under sand for centuries.
Many mysteries of the past could no doubt be understood if the great libraries of MENA survived to this day day. Many oral histories and oral records would have been put down in writing and would have been in those libraries.
People with high level engineering/mathematical type minds would have always existed regardless of when writing was first developed and constantly expanding accumulated knowledge.
The main requirement that I can see is a sufficient length of time with required food prosperity to feed the man hours involved in building great, totally impractical projects.
The great buildings along the Nile – what was the climate in those eras? 6000 years ago the Sahara was savanna. That past now under shifting sands, sometimes reappearing in places only to be covered again.
One thing of note in the video channel Moonie original linked to – the great granite boxes in tunnels and so forth. One of interest that he pointed out was unfinished and showed chisel marks. That implies the use of steel, yet the only steel that is in pyramid relics is meteorite steel.
As for moving large blocks of stone, obviously some method was developed using technology of the day. From all evidence all or much of the early stuff was built purely with manpower. No horse power, no ox power, no donkey power.
Someone mentioned the nodules that are seen on the sides of some stone blocks. These too appear both in the Americas and in the Med region. Thought to be something to do with handling the blocks. Somebody worked out a method of walking the stone statues of Easter Island and demonstrated that it (the theory) worked.
Overall though, I tend wonder what is was, in what to me looks to be a wide spread early culture, that drove men to put uncounted hours into building great, but totally useless objects of stone.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 14:42 utc | 144

a comment from a poster at UNZ
I will just drop it here in its entirity
Anonymous[185] • Disclaimer says:
February 12, 2024 at 10:07 am GMT • 4.6 hours ago • very recent • 1,800 Words ↑ ↑
When Cortes took Mexico City he was shocked to see his native allies running from house to house, pulling women and children out into the streets and slaughtering them. The Spanish, while happy to have native allies, didn’t expect this degree of hatred and vengeance by them against the Aztecs. Given how brutally the Aztecs treated surrounding populations, though, it’s not surprising.
After the Fall of Tenochtitlan the remaining Aztec warriors and civilians fled the city as the Spanish allies, primarily the Tlaxcalans, continued to attack even after the surrender, slaughtering thousands of the remaining civilians and looting the city. The Tlaxcalans did not spare women or children: they entered houses, stealing all precious things they found, raping and then killing women, stabbing children. […] some sources such as Israel Charney, John C. Cox, and Norman Naimark have likened the siege to a genocide.
Of course, such atrocities are not uncommon in history especially when one group which has long dominated another loses the upper hand and “falls off the tiger”, if you will. Notably, nobody cries for the Aztecs today even though they were subject genocide (or something tantamount to it) and no longer exist.
Nor does anybody cry for the the French slave owners in Haiti who were massacred and genocided – men, women and children – by their black slaves.
Nor does anybody cry for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette or other victims of the French Revolution.
Nor does anybody cry for the millions of Germans who were murdered and ethnically cleansed from Central and Eastern Europe at the end of WWII – the greatest ethnic cleansing in human history to that date and which most people have never heard of in contrast to the extensive coverage given to the mainstream Holocaust narrative which took place in the same conflict.
Why do people not cry for these people? Well, for one: All of these people are seen as having been some combination of malevolent or incompetent rulers/aggressors who “got what they deserved.” You might object: “Did all the women and children deserve it too?” “No.” you’ll hear. “But that’s just what happens in war.” Or: “You sow the wind you reap the whirlwind.”
But when it comes to the Jews – and the hundreds if not thousands of times in history that they’ve been subjected to expulsion or “pogrom” or “genocide” – the framing is completely different. We’re taught that the Jews never ever did anything wrong and, thus, we must cry for them and feel guilty for what our ancestors did to these totally innocent people. We’re taught that the Jews in Spain did nothing at all to provoke their expulsion in 1492. We’re taught that the Jews in Germany were entirely innocent and powerless victims who did nothing to provoke the hatred of the Germans during WWII. We’re taught that the Jews in Israel today are entirely innocent victims of an unprovoked attack on Oct 7. We’re told that the Jews in America today are entirely innocent and powerless people and that all hatred directed at them by “anti-Semites” is entirely irrational and based in “baseless canards and conspiracy theories” such as the “Great Replacement”.
Of course, who tells us these things? The Jews themselves do – either directly, through the Jewtube/Idiotboxes which Jews control the programming of, or indirectly through the people around us – friends/family/acquaintances – who repeat to us what they heard said on their Jewtube/Idiotbox. (And who then get most nervous and grumpy if you dare question it.)
Is this framing of Jewish innocence and powerlessness correct? (Notably, it’s a childish, Disney-esque, good-and-evil story, like Hobbiton & Mordor or Dumbledore & Voldemort. Is history ever so childish and black and white? When it comes to the Jews we are supposed to believe that it is. This couldn’t be because the Jews narrate the story, could it?) Or is the more accurate framing, in each of these instances, something like the relationship between the Aztecs and the Tlaxcalans, or the French in Haiti and their black slaves, or Marie Antoinette and the French peasants – where the Jews are the rich and powerful oppressor and the gentiles are the poor and oppressed masses?[1]
Because if the correct framing is the latter then the Holocaust is just another instance of a group (the Jews) sowing the wind (against the Germans) and reaping the whirlwind – as did the Aztecs, the French slaver owners and criminally negligent monarchs who’ve been overthrown – and decapitated – throughout history.
Moreover, were the Jews in Weimar Germany guilty of what the Nazis accused them of? Were the Jewish communists in the USSR guilty of murdering millions in Eastern Europe and would Jewish communists have done the same in Central Europe if given the chance, as Hitler warned?
[Hide MORE]
Are the Jews in America and Europe guilty today of the Great Replacement program which will ultimately result in the extinction of white Christian peoples and their civilization and culture with them? (Elon Musk himself, in agreeing with the above tweet which got him into so much trouble, seems to think that they are.)
Have the Jews in the West architected a system of economic and political privileges which effectively guarantee their status as an unaccountable ruling class and caste? Do Jews not rule what are, effectively, fake and fraudulent “democracies” through a combination of media control, candidate pre-selection and the bribery/financial puppeteering of all major political parties? Have Jews not hacked Western “democracies” such that they control both sides of every political contest? Have the Jews not created a totally unaccountable and oligarchic political system which puts them on top no matter how the public votes or who is elected – and where anyone who dares point this fact out is defenestrated – thereby neutralizing the normal, peaceful, liberal mechanism for correcting this situation: free speech?
Are the Jews not misruling their white Christian subjects/hosts? Kim Jong Un, for all his faults, is not engaged in a program of demographically dispossessing his own people – the Korean people – in their own historic homeland. Xi Jinping, for all his faults and illiberalism, is not demographically dispossessing the Han Chinese in China. Perhaps this is because KJU is Korean and Xi is Han Chinese? Only a malevolent and unaccountable alien ruling class would do something so despicable and evil as to demographically dispossess their “own” people – the people over whom they rule. Not even Kim Jong Un is *that* evil. Only Westerners are ruled by people that evil and that powerful and unaccountable.
Furthermore, Xi and KJU don’t force their subjects to pretend that they have no real power in an attempt to skirt all responsibility and blowback for any and all of their failures (e.g., the Iraq War). They own up to the fact that they’re in charge and this keeps them, to at least some degree, accountable to their subjects – unlike the totally unaccountable alien rulers in the West who never suffer consequences for any of their catastrophic policies.
The Jews have, it seems, after being subject to countless expulsions and “pogroms” for misruling other hosts in other times and places, evolved a new mechanism to ensure that this doesn’t happen again: prevent the host from acknowledging their power. After all, if the tiger is inebriated or lobotomized into falsely believing itself riderless and free then why would he bother to buck the parasitic rider off his back (and then maul him to death for good measure)?
The “keep them inebriated” solution is the short term solution, however. After all, it only worked for so long in Germany and ended with the rise of Hitler. The long term solution is the “Great Replacement”. Why are the Jews perpetrating the Great Replacement?[2] One reason is simple revenge but another, and perhaps the primary reason, is because they’re terraforming their host to make it maximally safe and comfortable for themselves to continue to parasitize off of long-term without fear that the host’s immune system will kick in again and give rise to another Hitler. They want a maximally diverse West – a West where the white Christian populations are rendered helpless minorities (or, perhaps ideally, completely dispensed with) – and thus easy to divide and rule. They want a West where whites are deprived of all effective control over their own “democracies” as that’s the best prophylactic against another mustache man.
Of course, if you’re committing such a horrible crime against a people you might reasonably fear that, should that people wake up to your villainy, that they’d elect a leader who would thwart your plans and punish you for your crimes, right? Which raises the question: Were the Jews doing the same things in Weimar Germany that they’re doing in America and the West more broadly today? Because if so, it casts Hitler in a totally different light – not as a villain but as a hero and savior whom useful idiots, like the Americans and Brits, fought against and killed. It wouldn’t be the first time that the gentiles murdered their own savior – and at the behest of the same tribe.
Notably, Jews feel the pressing need to complete the Great Replacement fast, as seen in “son of Holocaust survivors” Mayorkas’ complete opening of the floodgates, less their host/victim wake up, thwart their plans and punish the perpetrators. This is also why they’re so over the top in their denials that this is their design: They know that they’re guilty and are terrified that the public should catch on to their schemes before they’re too advanced to be stopped.
[1] Theodor Herzl himself wrote, in The Jewish State arguing for Zionism and separation from gentiles: “When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat, the subordinate officers of a revolutionary party; when we rise, there rises also our terrible power of the purse.” But, this is “hate speech” according to the ADL. You can’t describe Jews as a politically corrosive force, or as having ever been rich and powerful, or as exploiting their wealth to misrule other peoples.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/25282/pg25282-images.html
[2] Their cover story is typically that it’s about “love, tolerance and multiculturalism” – things that they don’t practice in their own supremacist ethnostate – Israel – a state which is what we’re told Nazi Germany was in every way, except on steroids. So that’s not the real reason.

Posted by: ld | Feb 12 2024 15:00 utc | 145

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 14:42 utc | 144
… When looking at the great building projects of the past, the older ones are purely for ceremonial/spiritual purposes. Pyramid type structures that are mostly solid within and serve no practical purpose. At some point this moved to buildings that served practical purposes, great halls, palaces ect……
Overall though, I tend wonder what is was, in what to me looks to be a wide spread early culture, that drove men to put uncounted hours into building great, but totally useless objects of stone.

With respect, many assumptions.
That large structures were only for ceremonial purposes or useless:
For example, the large pyramids can be clearly seen from space. Also, the capstones in some are missing. Did the pyramids contain technology (hydrogen electrolysis, monatomic gold?) that could beam light through those capstones to better illuminate the way for extraterrestrials? Also, they line up very well with other pyramids long distances away for reasons unknown. I don’t necessarily subscribe to this theory, but it’s an example of a purpose not immediately apparent to us today.
Another purpose might be similar to post-economic crash jobs programs: Rather than war and warring, let’s have these 20,000 workers build something and in so doing learn about how to scale, manage, achieve goals, or they had to come up with something to keep a recently captured people busy lest they revolt.
In any case, I VERY much doubt they served no purpose. We just can’t tell what it was.

Posted by: Scorpion | Feb 12 2024 15:25 utc | 146

bots can be bought, so why does anyone believe any kind of internet gathered viewing numbers?

Posted by: anon y’mouse | Feb 12 2024 15:37 utc | 147

Are the Aztecs really gone? Their language, Nahuatl, survives and is spoken by 1 1/2 million people in Mexico.

Posted by: Lysias | Feb 12 2024 15:38 utc | 148

@Scorpion | Feb 12 2024 15:25 utc | 146

In any case, I VERY much doubt they served no purpose. We just can’t tell what it was.

Busy today, so short.
The claim that the pyramids serve no purpose, are “ceremonial” or are burial monuments are assertions without any backing at all.
The great pyramid at Giza is strictly aligned north/south/east/west within a fraction of a degree (1/60 degree unless my memory fail me). It has 8 sides, not 4. There are no hieroglyphs at all inside, and no king was ever found there. This huge construction is entirely functional, we just don’t know what the function was.
As for the 70ton granite block sizes, granite density is 2.75 g/cm3 , so you can work it out. And Aswan is 700 km away, not 70km.
1100 ton Unfinished Obelisk at Aswan

Posted by: Norwegian | Feb 12 2024 15:41 utc | 149

@ld | Feb 12 2024 15:00 utc | 145
That kind of reasoning is quite dangerous and, while holding some, even many, truths, is quite misleading.
The Holocaust under Nazi Germany was never, until quite recently, regarded as some exceptional event. After all the Turks, and particularly the Young Turks, perpetrated a well known and brutal genocide only a few years before. What was exceptional about the Holocaust was the fact that it was perpetrated by a civilized people (the Germans) upon another civilized people (European Jews).
The issue of the motives behind the Holocaust was well addressed by Slavoj Žižek (even though he was citing someone else): even if what the Nazis were accusing the Jews of were true, that would not have been a justification for their actions. And that is the whole point of the issue. While many Jews are part of the neoliberal/neocon establishment, many are not, and far from all the neoliberals/neocons are Jews. So singling them out on that issue is as dangerous as attacking Jews and Communists in Germany in the 30s.

As for the Egyptian stuff. There are Egyptian obelisks in Rome weighing hundreds of tons, that were brought from Egypt to Italy in ancient times. Moving huge stones around was never a problem back then.

Posted by: SG | Feb 12 2024 15:47 utc | 150

What did the Russias Greats make of their Human Condition?
What did they make of European ‘civilisation’ and Russias position?
What did Dostoevsky write about it for example?
What did contemporary Russia then make of Dostoevsky?
What did Lenin think of his writings?
What about Putin ? How about Dugin? And contemporary Russians now?
Posted by: DunGroanin | Feb 12 2024 10:20 utc | 138

From the Author
Starting out on the biography of my hero, Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, I find myself in some perplexity. Namely, that while I do call Alexei Fyodorovich my hero, still, I myself know that he is by no means a great man, so that I can foresee the inevitable questions, such as: ‘What is notable about your Alexei Fyodorovich that you should choose him for your hero? What has he really done? To whom is he known, and for what? Why should I, the reader, spend my time studying the facts of his life?
This last question is the most fateful one, for I can only reply: perhaps you will see from the novel. But suppose they read the novel and do not see, do not agree with the noteworthiness of my Alexei Fyodorovich? I say this because, to my sorrow,
I foresee it. To me he is noteworthy but I decidedly doubt that I shall succeed in proving it to the reader…

[beginning of Dostoievski’s preface to ‘The Brothers Karamazov, Pevear and Volkonsky translation]
[My bolds, my italics]
Note from one reader, myself: Alexei Fyodorovich is not only the name of the main character in the novel; it is the name of Dostoievski’s three year old son, who had died before the novel was written. From which it also follows that Fyodor, the name of the disreputable father in the work is the author’s own name.
Now read. Carefully.

Posted by: juliania | Feb 12 2024 15:50 utc | 151

Norwegian | Feb 12 2024 15:41 utc | 149
I look at functional in the terms of is it required for the basis of survival. Food production, food security, shelter from the elements ect. Roads were functional infrastructure as a bridges aqueducts and so forth. Great halls were people can gather even the arenas and that sort of thing were functional.
All early peoples were astronomers. The importance of that is related both to navigation and seasons. Yet like many things, nihilist cults can also form around that.
That is also a common renominated around the globe that makes me think it all originated from one culture very early is that these great works all or mostly all have astronomy related alignment. Mathematics – as old as astronomy.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 16:00 utc | 152

This is a fine, if leisurely, analysis of Putin interview from a M-Leninist perspective.
https://youtu.be/watch?v=4pwyfCk1dX8
The host argues that Putin represents a ‘Kremlin consensus’. The consensus appeases different factions inside the Kremlin – nationalists, tsarists, communists, liberals, etc. Hence Putin’s sometimes contradictory words, or contradictions between words & action.
e.g. although Putin criticizes Soviet nationality policy, he does not promote Russification & continues the old Soviet ‘inclusive’ patriotism.
The host cites the following book:
The Putin Paradox – Richard Sakwa

Posted by: Browser | Feb 12 2024 16:02 utc | 153

What was exceptional about the Holocaust was the fact that it was perpetrated by a civilized people (the Germans) upon another civilized people (European Jews)
____
SG: Kindly define “civilized”, and preferably in a way that doesn’t entail an assumption of Western cultural/moral superiority.
Include in your response an account of how much of the German intelligentsia, including such liberals as Thomas Mann, contrasted countries like France with their decadent “civilization” with the Germans and their superior “culture”.

Posted by: malenkov | Feb 12 2024 16:08 utc | 154

renominated… denominator

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 16:10 utc | 155

The aboriginal people of Australia, according to genetic tracing are thought to be the surviving peoples out of the first group of people to come out of Africa. Later technologies like the bow and arrow, common amongst hunter gatherers around the world bypassed them as did the culture of putting countless thousands of man hours into moving and stacking whopping great lumps of stone. That seems to be something in the culture of the later, lighter skinned early peoples.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 16:15 utc | 156

William Gruff | Feb 12 2024 14:41 utc | 143
*** That last point exposes the true danger of a Trump win in the fall. The real problem with Trump is not ridiculous shrill hysteria of the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” victims bleating about his imagined racism and misogyny, it is the fact Trump understands the Russian leadership desperately wants to sit at the “mean girls'” table at “The Garden” Middle School. The Russian leadership would happily hand over to the Empire whatever is left of the Soviet legacy if only they could be part of the Empire Club too; something Trump completely understands. If the Empire’s “Deep State” lets Trump get away with it, he will invite Russia into NATO, and Putin will gleefully take a seat on Uncle Trump’s lap.***
Absolutely 100% correct.
It is why — though recognising that he is considerably better than any of the garbage administering NATO countries — I am not a fan of Putin. I don’t really trust him on economics (too liberal/neoliberal) longer term geopolitical intent (WEF, WHO, NATO, NWO etc.) and certainly not on the “Jewish” question (particularly with regard to Ukraine and Lubo /other Zionist interests in that place).

Posted by: Cynic | Feb 12 2024 16:22 utc | 157

SG: Kindly define “civilized”, and preferably in a way that doesn’t entail an assumption of Western cultural/moral superiority.
Posted by: malenkov | Feb 12 2024 16:08 utc | 154
Civilization – the PC term for having sufficient leisure time to engage in pastime activities like war and destruction 🙂 The history of so called civilization is the history of war.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 16:23 utc | 158

Scorpion | Feb 12 2024 15:25 utc | 146
Did the pyramids contain technology (hydrogen electrolysis, monatomic gold?) that could beam light through those capstones to better illuminate the way for extraterrestrials
Well, regarding the Serapeum of Saqqara, which are nearby the great pyramids, one plausible theory is that they served as batteries.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/serapeum-sarcophagi-021992

Posted by: john | Feb 12 2024 16:24 utc | 159

Patroklos | Feb 12 2024 1:50 utc | 95
Yes! Like other friends, I was going ask that. Much respect.

Posted by: SlowDL | Feb 12 2024 16:33 utc | 160

@malenkov | Feb 12 2024 16:08 utc | 154
@Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 16:23 utc | 158
Of course, you missed the point. The idea of the exceptionality of the Holocaust is extremely Eurocentric. You cannot single out the Holocaust in the history of humankind, if not through the idea that some peoples must be held to some higher standard than others. Without the idea of a European moral superiority, to which Europeans can and must adhere, the whole idea of the Holocaust is just another accident of history.
The reverse of the medal here is the fact that all the discourses about the agreement incapable West, about the moral standing of the Global South etc. are only going to blow up in the face of those doing them, as the Gaza crisis will show.

Posted by: SG | Feb 12 2024 16:57 utc | 161

SG | Feb 12 2024 16:57 utc | 161
I have not missed any point. Our current bullshit is just a flyspeck on the pages of history.
Holocaust, holodomor…Made in anglostan. The culture of the holy roman empire – Borrells garden…

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 17:02 utc | 162

@ Lantern Dude | Feb 12 2024 9:59 utc | 135
thanks! yes, i agree with those observations around the financial collapse of 2008 and trying to move towards a one world currency owc – on the part of the bankers. it hasn’t worked out, if that was the plan.. as for the history lesson from putin – i was fine with that ,but doctorow wasn’t because he felt it didn’t directly address the american audience.. the other way of considering this is that for those who are sincerely interested in understanding russia – that history lesson is very helpful.. for those who can only process small nanosecond sound bites ( we are being collectively conditioned this way for obvious reasons ) they will have a much more difficult time with it.. cheers!

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 17:05 utc | 163

SG: What Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 17:02 utc | 162 said.

Posted by: malenkov | Feb 12 2024 17:12 utc | 164

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Feb 12 2024 4:56 utc | 115
“…what is happening now with Russia and the west is akin to midwifing authentic questioning…”
I like very much this phrase, NemesisCalling. It partners the two, and questioning is an attribute the west has by its nature.
Posted by: Scorpion | Feb 12 2024 5:26 utc | 118
Thanks, Scorpion. But Plato does not have a utopian model for society. He is talking about the soul. His model is ‘know thyself’from Socrates, his hero. He uses the conversational tricks of the sophists of his time to get his message across. He wants us to argue and to think, as we do here. That’s the whole purpose of the dialogue form in his writings.

Posted by: juliania | Feb 12 2024 17:18 utc | 165

@ ld | Feb 12 2024 15:00 utc | 145
it is an interesting comment id… thanks for sharing! they forgot to mention the number of russians who died in the wars too.. the numbers are very high relative to the jewish.. why is it that is always overlooked or forgotten on the part of the west? why something is emphasized and something else is omitted is always an interesting question for others to ask..

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 17:19 utc | 166

james | Feb 12 2024 17:05 utc | 163
What Putin said in that interview takes a bit of processing. Like Bhadrakumar said, he is a sophisticated thinker. Putin, Russia had obviously accepted the interview because they knew Carlson did not pump the western propaganda narrative. Unlike the propaganda promoters, he only interrupted a few times as he was unsure as to what or why at times. A few have had what could be termed objective criticism of Carlson though I don’t agree with that, though I lost it a bit with one clown on the open thread that had a nasty small man tall poppy problem.
Going by Carlson’s after the interview video, it may well take him several years to fully process everything Putin said in that interview but I feel it is something he will think about for some time. Like with many Americans, America is the center of the Universe. With that interview, Carlson got a look into another world.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 17:25 utc | 167

Posted by: waynorinorway | Feb 12 2024 8:27 utc | 130
——————————-
Dont know much about JImmy Dores .
Important is what he told FC, which is common sense, no fucking rocket science.
FC is a gawd damned WS, period.
Here’s the scary part….he’s a national hero !

Posted by: denk | Feb 12 2024 17:33 utc | 168

jImmy Dores

China isnt gonna invade us, you dumb shit

Jimmy didnt reckon with the power of CIA’s wurlitzer, anyway with ws like FC, who needs the WUrlitzer ?
————————————-
To Chinese readers….
Dont get misled, there aint no Jew’s war on Chinese.
———————————–
Clive Hamilton

Chinese 5th column lying low in Oz, ready to rise up during a Chinese invasion.

Detective 101…
Motive ?
Capability ?
Track record ?

This nonsense fail it all. !!!
Yet it works. !
Wait a min, where did I hear that one before ?
1965 Indon genocide. !
tHEY used the exact agiprop….

Chinese 5th column armed by Beijing, ready for an impending coup, Chinese supplied arms cache uncovered.

Worked like a charm !
You aint seen nuthin yet.….
MOA resident pop

Bombshell !
Communist China is supplying full auto AR-15 “mods” to Black Lives Matter militants in America, and a shipment was recently interdicted by Customer and Border Protection (CBP).
California Gov. Newsom is involved in a trillion-dollar money laundering operation with communist China to keep him in power. He’s funneling taxpayer money to China, and they are laundering it and funneling money back to him. (See Los Angeles Times link below.)
Using the laundered money, Gov. Newsom is stockpiling automatic weapons, ammunition and gold in the underground storage complex at 1616 Capitol Ave. in Sacramento, the East End Complex building – block 174. (Sourced from a former employee who worked there.)
Gov. Newsom is plotting with China to have communist troops invade America (via California and other states) and to overrun and occupy the United States, turning it over to communist Chinese rule.
China’s EMP weapons, developed using technology stolen from the USA, are planned to be the first wave “Pearl Harbor” event that sets it all off. (Official report to the White House, see link below, or visit https://emptaskforce.us ).
Obama helped set up a civilian military force using Operation Fast and Furious gun smuggling to arm the narcos. (Full timeline link below.)
Those same narcos are now trained by communist Chinese military instructors and are prepared to invade America with the aid of heavy weapons. (DHS sources via Hodges, link below.)
The civil war America is facing won’t be lightly-armed “soy boys,” but rather heavily armed, full-auto wielding Black Lives Matter militants, Mexican narco gangs and communist Chinese troops operating under the protection of Gov. Newsom.

OMFG
AR15, EMF weapon…no less
The Jakarta template ver3
Run for your life, crazies are running loose in our midst !!!

Posted by: denk | Feb 12 2024 17:37 utc | 169

Posted by: Scorpion | Feb 12 2024 5:26 utc | 118
Forgot to say extra thanks for pointing out the quotation marks around the ‘treason’ in the headline — makes all the difference, sorry that I flubbed that comment.
And james, I am sorry to have upset you. Of course, you are entitled to your opinion. I was directing my ire at Doctorow, (and hopefully he couldn’t care less on that, silly old woman me.) Just me and my quirky ways. Apologies to all.
And hopefully Patro’klos — [son of Menoitios, henchman and close friend of ‘Achilleus’, killed by Hektor, (as Lattimore quaintly spells it)] — will take heart from all my own foibles and carry on as we know and love him.
Mea culpa.

Posted by: juliania | Feb 12 2024 17:42 utc | 170

THE LATEST CHINA GLOOM: DEFLATION DOOM.. LOL
https://nitter.net/thesiriusreport/status/1757046951076352259#m
The Sirius Report
@thesiriusreport
3h
Now you can see clearly why this makes sense in China.
Chinese consumption grew
7.2% in 2023 despite the fact we saw deflation.
As we said Chinese people have more money to spend due to deflation.
According to ‘Western experts’, deflation in China is a ‘death sentence’ for their economy.
However if you produce real things and prices are lower, rather than shuffling worthless bits of electronic paper and calling it economic growth, then your population will have more disposal income and that will help stimulate more economic growth, because cheaper goods and services means you can buy more of them.
Cheaper asset prices in the world of worthless electronic paper is a disaster, because your have asset impairment and you balance sheet is then wrecked, so bankruptcy and default beckons because our entire economy and financial system depends on rising asset prices to create the illusion of economic prosperity.
The symplistic western mindset also believes that lower prices (deflation) equate to lower demand and higher prices (inflation) equate to higher demand. Have they learnt nothing about the causes of recent inflation in the west?
What about when deflation is caused by access to cheaper energy and raw materials, which is good for an economy, improvement in productivity, which is also good for an economy and trading in local currencies, which is good for the economy, etc etc
Deflation is bad for zombie economies and financial systems, dependent on debt fuelled fictious asset bubbles.
Ultimately a healthy economy depends on the profitability / margins you make, not on the price you sell your goods and services at.
So we always come back to the mythical aggregate GDP as being a barometer of economic strength which of course is utter nonsense.

Posted by: MD | Feb 12 2024 17:49 utc | 171

Canuk from your post 363 in the open thread.
The Inca walls. Depends which part. In many walls, there appears to be two different stages, two different cultures, or at east two levels of skills. From what I can make of it, earlier cultures in a number of area worked to much closer tolerances than later builders. What is noticeable in many parts of the world is that the cultures that were expert in working stone seem to have disappeared. We seem many of the Roman building are built on pre existing foundations of monolithic stone. There is a site in Greese, the base of the building is polygonal stonework. One site on Easter island, the retaining walls for the platform some statues stand is older polygonal. A feature of polygonal stone work is that from what I can see, is mostly used as retaining walls. I think these were rough boulders finely fitted together the faces receiving final trimming after the wall is built and then back filled on the unfinished side of the wall.
I have also seen other walls made from squared blocks that may have received final facing after the stones were fitted, particularly where radius is seen on inside corners.
Those H blocks – nobody knows who carved them yet the carved key slots show that they were made no earlier than the beginnings of copper smelting in the Americas. I think the earliest furnaces/slag remains found so far in the Americas only date back to about 1500 BC

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 18:18 utc | 172

@ Peter AU1 | Feb 12 2024 17:25 utc | 167
well said peter.. thanks.. i concur…
@ juliania | Feb 12 2024 17:42 utc | 170
thanks juliania.. i knew you meant no harm! all good.. go get em – doctorow!

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 19:02 utc | 173

quote from another article i am reading that was written in 2014 – great article..
“Internationally, something of the same dynamic of support for an enemy’s enemy is apparent. NATO is hostile to Russia, therefore, for some, there is a reason to support NATO. But on what bases do NATO and Russia disagree?
 First, Russia weakly or strongly opposed NATO’s interventions in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Which was right depends on your attitude towards those interventions, but if one desires peace rather than war – civil or otherwise – then Russia rather than NATO should be judged to have acted better.
Second, NATO has behaved with much greater hostility towards Russia than Russia towards it. In 1990 both the EU and NATO promised Russia they would not expand Eastwards. Since then they have done that relentlessly. Russia has done almost nothing in response. It did, however, protest loudly and understandably against the planned deployment of US ballistic missile interceptors in Poland and Romania. The US would certainly not tolerate Russia basing similar systems in Cuba or Venezuela.”
Deconstructing Russophobia

Posted by: james | Feb 12 2024 20:12 utc | 174

ld | Feb 12 2024 15:00 utc | 145

History is amoral. But lying about it is immoral.
That very long and racist comment by a poster at UNZ, which was posted here (ld | Feb 12 2024 15:00 utc | 145) contains quite a few lies. One is a complex lie of omission and false analogy to construct a rather elaborate argument about the supposed guilt of a “group” that “falls off the tiger”, conflating the Aztecs, French slave owners in Haiti, Louis XVI, and the German people, … and forgets the Japanese and others, and their “justified” massacring by the invaders and their “native allies”, the Haitian slaves, the French revolutionaries, and US/UK militaries (and the US alone in the case of the Japanese), respectively.
These different histories are brought up in order to protest that “we’re taught that the Jews never ever did anything wrong”, clearly implying two things: 1) the Jews are guilty of things/crimes similar to the things/crimes of Aztecs, etc. and 2) therefore, they deserve (“no, but…” and “we must cry for them…”; not) the crimes that were committed against them, in Europe (they “provoke the hatred of the Germans during WWII”) etc… This is clearly promoting anti-Jewish hatred.
He then gets closer to home. “Jews in Israel” and “Jews in America”, “Jewtube/Idiotbox” and nervous friends. Then the deeply intellectual question that is posed by the UNZ poster of that diatribe without a trace of irony: “Is history ever so childish and black and white?” No, apparently, history is a series of reprisals that fit the racist views of a liar.
I say the UNZ poster is engaged in professional defamation that serves only the racists, including the Zionists. As a Palestinian who grew up under the Baathist rule (before and after Assad the father), I find racist anti-Jewish views of people who were never subjected to Zionist aggression and genocide to be particularly jarring. I fully understand my brothers in Palestine referring to the Zionists as “Jews”, because for a century practically all the Jews they know are Zionists and vice versa, and this is what the Zionists aimed for and achieved in Palestine. But in Syria, the prevailing term to label all things Zionist is exactly “Zionist” and “Zionism”; I struggle to recall any reference to Jews in any political context, by anyone!
it is notable that aside from the Zionist/imperialist genocide against our people, there is not a single crime cited by the UNZ poster and attributed to the “Jews”. No, to paraphrase the first half of his post “people are punished for crimes, and the Jews were punished, so they have committed crimes, and they are committing crimes now that they will be punished for”, which punishment must be, according to his logic, by killing them off. The poster’s racist views are dangerous because they bolster the racist, Zionist narrative that Jews are particularly victimized and that they are indeed special! Not perversely, and while we live under the imperialist yoke, such racist views actually promote the genocide of the Palestinian and other Arabs. Such anti-Jewish racist views also become harder to reject the more they are allowed to “explain” the Zionists’ war and their claim to be the exclusive representatives of Jews, and only that. The Zionist anti-Arab and Islamophobic ideology actually feeds on anti-Jewish ideology expounded by the UNZ poster, so winning any Arab/Muslim to the latter is a big bonus to the former.
The UNZ poster then jumps into an open promotion of Nazi, anti-communist ideology, which flows quite logically from his racist views. That he lumps communists with Jews is, I am sure, a familiar Nazi trope, as I am sure he would elsewhere lump communists with the Nazis when it suits the context.
The questions that he rhetorically poses about Jews and their control of the “democracies” are answered with a simple “no, you Nazi scum!” I won’t bother to do more than that. But the last he asks “Are the Jews not misruling their white Christian subjects/hosts?” and<,/i> “Were the Jews doing the same things in Weimar Germany that they’re doing in America and the West more broadly today?” and his suggested answers are clear justification of the genocide against the Jews. The finer points of language aside, they should be considered agitation and incitement to commit genocide against Jews (“maul him to death for good measure”), and by extension, against any group that the imperialist, white supremacist “mustache man” find expedient to massacre.

Posted by: SlowDL | Feb 12 2024 21:05 utc | 175

WSWS’ latest MUST READ:
Long Suppressed Report Sheds Light on Canada’s ‘Open Door Policy’ For Nazi War Criminals
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/12/diwv-f12.html
“…Canadian state collaborations with outright fascist forces continue to this day.”

Posted by: John Gilberts | Feb 12 2024 21:11 utc | 176

Biden is clearly unfit to be president of the US:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmxbzpFysDk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evTAGm4hKCU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNbboFfR9ko

Posted by: WMG | Feb 12 2024 21:17 utc | 177

thanks b
for the consistancy and the high level of reporting.
made my donation today for the days that are all grunt work
that go into making the site shine.
just a thought
make it a bit easier to donate
put your donate button on the front page
thanx again

Posted by: lurker | Feb 12 2024 22:05 utc | 178

Posted by: juliania | Feb 12 2024 17:18 utc | 165
Thanks, Scorpion. But Plato does not have a utopian model for society. He is talking about the soul. His model is ‘know thyself’from Socrates, his hero. He uses the conversational tricks of the sophists of his time to get his message across. He wants us to argue and to think, as we do here. That’s the whole purpose of the dialogue form in his writings.
When in doubt (and in a hurry), go to Wikipedia [search for Plato’s Political Philosophy]:

The ideal form of governance
In the Republic, the character of Socrates outlines an ideal city-state which he calls ‘Kallipolis’.
Classes in ideal society
Plato lists three classes in his ideal society.
Producers or Workers: The laborers who make the goods and services in society.
Auxiliaries: Soldiers.
Guardians/Soldiers: Those who keep order in the society and protect it from invaders. From them is chosen the Philosopher King/Queen.
Philosopher-kings/Guardians
Plato’s ideal rulers are philosopher-kings. Not only are they the most wise, but they are also virtuous and selfless. To combat corruption, Plato’s Socrates suggests that the rulers would live simply and communally. Contrary to societal values at the time, Socrates suggests that sex should not be a factor in deciding who should rule, so women as well as men can rule. Socrates proposes that the Guardians should mate and reproduce, and that the children will be raised communally rather than by their biological parents. The children’s biological parents will never be known to them, so that no Guardian will prefer his or her own offspring over the common good. The children of the guardian class will be tested, and only the most wise and virtuous will become rulers.[3]

That above description is a highly controlled society very much akin to a Utopia. This vision was often cited in many of the New World Order movements in the early 20th century, including communism and also Israel with kibbutzes etc. The whole vision is a left wing wet dream. Remember that fascism can be as much left as right though I might be wrong: I can’t make heads or tails out of either word any more!
Now, maybe Plato’s conceptions are far more sophisticated, but how some have applied or interpret them is another thing. I think any sort of overly controlled society is a one-way ticket to totalitarian hell, no matter how well-intentioned it starts off.
Does Plato have a thorough theory about corruption and how to deal with it?

Posted by: Scorpion | Feb 12 2024 22:32 utc | 179

Posted by: Scorpion | Feb 12 2024 22:32 utc | 179
I have a different ‘take’ on Plato, Scorpion, which is much as Bernard Suzanne describes on his site: plato-dialogues.org. Here is the argument he makes, much as I have given above:

…these pages don’t intend to make you a Plato scholar, a specialist of his thoughts and “theories”, for the simple reason that one of the most ingrained convictions of the author of these pages is that, if Plato wrote dialogues rather than philosophy treatises, and, what’s more, dialogues in which he never stages himself as a participant, it is because his purpose was not to tell his readers what he himself thought, what were the answers he himself had given to the most fundamental questions in life about what it means to be a (wo)man, but to teach them to think by themselves so that they could find their own answers to those questions, because he knew that, in such matters, neither he nor we would ever get ultimate, “scientifically” demonstrable, answers, and that each one of us has to build one’s own life and live it (and that, no one can do for someone else) based upon hypotheses that had to be the most “reasonable” that was possible, as what defines man is his being an animal endowed with logos (a Greek word meaning both “speech” and “reason”, among many other meanings), but that would nonetheless remain till the end “indemonstrable” assumptions. In short, he only wanted to help his readers practice for themselves the motto that was engraved above the main entrance of the temple at Delphi, and which his “master”, Socrates, had made his own:
“Know thyself ”

[My bold]
Wikipedia is entitled to its opinion. I have mine, based on the actual texts.

Posted by: juliania | Feb 13 2024 1:41 utc | 180

More CO2 in the atmosphere is not an unprecedented experiment with an
unpredictable outcome. The Earth has done the experiment many times in the
geological past. Life flourished abundantly on land and in the oceans at much larger
CO2 levels than those today…

canuck | Feb 11 2024 21:23 utc | 53
Oh sure, Earth would survive, maybe even thrive.
But let’s not forget the tiny fact that most of today’s large animals (including humans) would go extinct.
You have every right to say ‘I don’t care’, but kindly accept that many people *do* care.

Posted by: smuks | Feb 13 2024 1:43 utc | 181

Scorpion, I must point out that my words in what you have posted at
Posted by: Scorpion | Feb 12 2024 22:32 utc | 179
are only those of your first paragraph – not what follows: (‘When in doubt etc.) Kindly separate them in future.

Posted by: juliania | Feb 13 2024 1:45 utc | 182

The Duran had another short conversation with Jeffrey Sachs about the Putin interview today:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDuran

Posted by: juliania | Feb 13 2024 2:22 utc | 183

smuks | Feb 13 2024 1:43 utc | 181
Humans can live and thrive everywhere from the hottest deserts to the poles. Predicted change is small compared to past compared to past climate events.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 13 2024 2:35 utc | 184

The Palestinians are also a civilized people. They are well educated.

Posted by: Lysias | Feb 13 2024 2:49 utc | 185

Good morning from London, I feel a need to explain and extrapolate on my statements earlier without directly engaging with each subject now. Which I will in due course as time permits. I don’t know how long this will be. Sorry.
I am not a trained historian like some obviously are.
I didn’t even do history as a basic qualification amongst my 10 or so examined specialist subjects by the time of going into further education at 16.
Almost all the history I know I have learned through literature and some historical books.
I have made no further claim on my history expertise than that I am an amateur , learning and being guided by where the path leads me – which is definitely not the formal route which is how academia leads the the naive youths to accepted certitudes of many subjects. Such as Economics.
I do have sufficient skill sets and life experiences- as many genuine commentators bring here – though nowhere near the esteemed b, that sets daily standards with his analytic skills.
I dare say if some devoted a few years with his methodology they too may approach his high levels of ability to address a wide range of subjects.
What my understanding of the Human Condition is based on is actual working knowledge of the world after 60 years and mostly on the last decade or so of having sufficient leisure time to cast off the daily Propaganda dressed as mindless Entertainment, as News and ‘documentary’, almost all of it aimed at keeping the Human Condition as it has been for almost ever.
A status quo. A slave world with very few kings and aristos at the top with occasional arrivistes who have become rich enough and powerful enough to join them at the top table!
Their main function to get and stay at the Top whilst the rest of humanity is an ever increasing pyramid or mountain or iceberg below the minuscule peak.
Their only purpose in life to keep the rest of humanity down by whatever means necessary. By whatever fairytale of Religion or Economics or Pseudoscience .
Using brute force of authority and violence. To keep the majority as slaves, because otherwise … the Top would not be the top anymore, it would be more like an endless plateau !
There would be no obedient servants and arse lickers to do all the work whilst the human gods live their endlesss dynastic lives.
When a billion people , the poorest are raised from poverty as has been successfully done by free education, health care, housing, infrastructure and welfare – socialism whilst allowing the able to innovate and capitalise their skills to improve peoples lives and hence benefit from their added zeal for riches such as in China within two generations; as has been done in Russia with its not so many with its planning whilst under constant attack over generations. As is happening in Venezuela ,Iran and other such parts where the Top has been toppled and the bottom allowed to share in the resources they have , especially the now destroyed Libya.
It is obvious that the only reason there has been mass poverty in all aspects of necessities listed above especially throughout exploited Africa and Asia was because of deprivations contrived by their satraps – the Top keeping all else down as no more than slaves or animals as the current zio fascists name their occupied natives.
This was done for many centuries through straight forward Slavery and a few useful idiot traitor satraps.
Then by Religion and It’s genius of mental chains.
Than by the genius of Money and its fairytales.
Then by Philosophy and Politics of keeping the slaves fighting between themselves by splitting humanity along a spectrum of tribalism on a two dimensional scale of Left and Right!
A genius tool of Fascism !
Which is the name and definition of the Top- Bottom structure. It used to be simply Slave Owners and their Slaves.
If it wasn’t for the Entertainment Industrial Complex of the Anglo Europeans and its supposed Law and controlled Justice system. The whole charade would have come crashing down by the middle of the last century. As it is now in slow motion – but it isn’t as the mountains crumble and the world flattens up!
As populations grew and became harder to control because that is what Life is – a progressive real growth in humanity by the generation, made easier for the children we have!
As that happened – the grand scheme of capitalism and anti-capitalism was invented and perfected as a means of controlling tension on that imaginary Left-Right Scale.
Collectivisation was only about removing any ownership of real wealth from the Peoples that actually create it with their own hands by Bolshevism Just as Capitalism and Debt was the other ideology to do the same in the Imperialist Nation States.
Hence :
I don’t believe that the Bolsheviks plan under Lenin and Trotsky was emancipation of the Russian serf/slaves handing to them their resources. I believe it was a planned balkanisation there; And a spreading of that ideology to the other massive populations of the World that were going to become to hard to manage by the willing house servants and soldiers of the fascist imperialism.
I further believe had Lenin lived, Russia as the largest Federation that existed would have ceased and been balkanised a century ago! He would have had Stalin killed. There would have been no need for a ww2.
Except perhaps to do to China had it emerged from its slumber and dereliction and hadn’t fallen prey to the ‘Leninism Religion’.
I do think Stalin saved Russia from its planned dissection and industrialised fast enough to withstand and crush the fascist forces by keeping the heart of Russia together.
By keeping his enemies closer!
I believe Mao and his ‘communists’ achieved as much.
And I have no doubt that in my lifetime and certainly within the last generation Putin and Xi and their like minded cadres have achieved the now unstoppable emancipation and changed Human Condition for greater good of the Many.
Of course that means the Few can Go Fuck Themselves like the late stage petty Caesars of that old old slave empire. Which is the fate also of us all in the Collective Waste if we don’t give up delusions of grandeur and smugness because we are part and parcel of the ‘house slaves’ believing all the nonsense daily from birth. Including the latest iterations of new religions that have been invented and imposed upon us from high!
Climate Control, Transhumanism, Woke, apocalyptic disease etc , propoganda – aimed directly at our children. Whilst we daily reinforce the policeman in our minds through daily mindless entertainment and supposed history.
Have a good day – think of Palestinians hourly and the world turning for the better coming to their rescue. And Assange as he goes through the farcical western judiciary making up Rules as they go along ignoring any Laws they claim to live by.

Posted by: DunGroanin | Feb 13 2024 7:35 utc | 186

I am copying a comment from the Ukraine thread over here because it needs broader exposure and discussion about it is probably more appropriate in an Open Thread

Tucker Carlson’s First Discussion Since Putin Interview | World Government Summit 2024 Full Panel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMXikZM_O80
Posted by: Fuki | Feb 13 2024 7:00 utc | 247

Go watch the interview and grow in your respect for Tucker Carlson like I did.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Feb 13 2024 7:48 utc | 187

I am not trying to put Tucker on any pedestal but I like the “role” he is playing in this movie we are living.
I don’t know if/when Tucker comes to his “Its all about the Benjamins” moment but I will hope its soon and he broaches the public/private finance silence in public discourse.
Many of us barflies are saying, why doesn’t Tucker know this perspective already? Maybe his role is to launch a public discussion about the God Of Mammon cult behind Biden/Trump….play the Ah shucks, I didn’t know….lines.
Interesting times, eh?

Posted by: psychohistorian | Feb 13 2024 8:01 utc | 188

I’ve been attempting to shoot a message to SputnikGlobe. Unfortunately, every time I try to do so on their website, it says it has encountered an error.
The message in question concerns the site’s comments section. I try to obey the comments policy, but every single time, my comments get deleted and I am given a warning (and lo and behold, three warnings means my account is suspended for 12 hours) while comments that apparently violate the policy get off scot-free.
What is with SputnikGlobe? Is the administration all AI these days, or are there still humans here and there?

Posted by: joey_n | Feb 13 2024 9:12 utc | 189

Coming apart at the seams ….
https://t.me/ZandVchannel/99981

🇫🇷 A step of huge significance for Africa and potentially for Russia:
Niger announced its abandonment of the West African franc issued by Paris – France’s last and most powerful lever of pressure on its former colonies.
Following Niamey, others will obviously begin to do this, because the Sahel Alliance must have a common currency, despite the fact that the association is military.

https://t.me/ZandVchannel/100004

🇻🇪✈️💥🇺🇸🏴‍☠️🇦🇷 The Venezuelan government accused the United States of stealing, with the complicity of the Argentine authorities, the Boeing 747-300 aircraft of the Aerocargos del Sur (Emtrasur) transport airline and said it would take all measures to return the airliner.
This is stated in a statement by the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry posted on the page of the head of this department, Ivan Gil Pinto, on the social network X.

Posted by: anon2020 | Feb 13 2024 9:36 utc | 190

Tucker Carlson’s First Discussion Since Putin Interview | World Government Summit 2024 Full Panel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMXikZM_O80
Posted by: Fuki | Feb 13 2024 7:00 utc | 247
Go watch the interview and grow in your respect for Tucker Carlson like I did.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Feb 13 2024 7:48 utc | 187
Now looka here. That’s a great 26 minute video, terrific, excellent, worth watching.
Tucker is no idiot. He’s true values and integrity.
Watch Tucker tear apart 3 decades of US lies, lunacy, evil and dysfunction in a few short minutes.
Seriously, do yourself a favour!

Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Feb 13 2024 10:23 utc | 191

Tucker is no idiot. He’s true values and integrity.
Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Feb 13 2024 10:23 utc | 191

Tucker Carlson is a wind up doll.
Tucker Carlson wasn’t born into the Swanson frozen food empire, but instead became rich at age 10 when his dad married his third wife, the Swanson heiress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conagra_Brands
Someone should ask Tucker about the plight of farmers.

Posted by: too scents | Feb 13 2024 10:32 utc | 192

too scents | Feb 13 2024 10:32 utc | 192
What did Tucker Carlson say or do in that interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMXikZM_O80 that shows him to be “a wind up doll”?
Quote it verbatim ….. and provide a handy time stamp as well.

Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Feb 13 2024 10:59 utc | 193

@ Lavrov’s Dog | Feb 13 2024 10:59 utc | 193
LOL. Enjoy your circus.

Posted by: too scents | Feb 13 2024 11:07 utc | 194

@Posted by: psychohistorian | Feb 13 2024 8:01 utc | 188
Watched it late last night. Interesting that the audience appears to be largely the Arab sheiks. He played the Father of the family card couple of times. Stayed largely within his serious thinker personae. Said that leaders have to kill and so wouldn’t want to be a leader!
From someone who wanted to be in the CIA and its Licence to Kill world – that’s weird.
He said much about the shiityness of his country of which he also said multiple times he is also proud to be member of and prefers the post war idyll and world policeman position as the most powerful Country in the World – and allowed the presenter to quote Killary ‘Mrs Clinton’ calling him a ‘Useful Idiot’ for the Putin interview.
The interesting point that I hadn’t heard before was his claim that he was trying to set up the interview with Putin 3 years ago and was stopped by the CIA intercepting his texts with the Kremlin, intimating that was the reasons. He was ‘fired’ by Murdochs Fox!
Something doesn’t quite fit there, it may come to me , was late night and sleep was banging on the skull… the FT had an interview with Putin. Why couldn’t Tucker?
Did Tucker have an interview with the Russian Ambassador to the U.S or the UN? How about frequent visitor Lavrov? Did he try?
3 years ago? 2020/21 during Covid? There is no way that he hadn’t known about the plans of inducing war with Russia by crossing their red lines. After all it was set for 2021 until the swift deployment of Russian forces forced the cancellation in 2021 ?
I don’t know 🤔 about this TopCat from the Murdoch stable ? When did it change its spots? Can it even? Or does it wear a new skin?
He certainly hasn’t done any harm to his standing with the Arabs with his anecdotal – ‘I’m a father in my 50’s and I run my house along strict patriarchal lines ‘ – which is definitely some form of electioneering isn’t it??
He is certainly never going to be poor and will probably be a billionaire broadcasters like Oprah, by the time he is 60.
He may even allow himself to be pushed into some ‘un-elected office’ against his declared inclinations of ‘never seeking such’ – isn’t that the classic starting gun comment of a politician or someone who definitely ends up in some high office?
TopCat seems to be leveraging his successful Interview to maximum effect. Let’s watch this space – as the host dangled , if it ain’t Biddy or Trumpy then Who? And TC gave the classic ‘I don’t know!’ That it is good to say ‘I don’t know’ – which impressed his audience into applause again.
Cue the tune – “TC , he’s the TC …”

Posted by: DunGroanin | Feb 13 2024 11:25 utc | 195

Posted by: Patroklos | Feb 12 2024 1:50 utc | 95
“@PeterAU: you are right. I love Patroklos (from the Iliad that is) and his name etymologically is significant. I will stick with it and to hell with detractors.”
I’ll add my encouragement to your chosen course of action. I almost always learn something new, or at the very least a new interpretation of the subject of your posts. Carry on.
I chose my moniker based on Peter’s in order to identify the nation I’m posting from. That, and we already have a Jonathan, a Jonathan W, a JMW, and today a jon, all of which would have otherwise sufficed, being a Jonathan MW myself.
Greetings from Brighton le Sands.

Posted by: Jon_in_AU | Feb 13 2024 11:59 utc | 196

@ Lavrov’s Dog | Feb 13 2024 10:59 utc | 193
It’s not important if anyone (here) believes in what Carlson says or believes in. Anymore than if they believe Putin is a hero. What matters is what they both say is a direct reflection of the core reasons why they are both so popular in their own domains.
Tucker Carlson gets tens of millions of views and followers and subscribers because they believe in his values and in what he says. What they hear him representing. And that’s what Putin ‘bought’ when he agreed to the interview …. exposure to that eyes and ears of American base.
check out – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMXikZM_O80 – and why he gets applause in Saudi Arabia as well as everywhere he goes around the world, and in the US too, to give a speech. People resonate with what he says much more than they do with Trump or anyone else in the middle/right or libertarian mold.
———–
I also appreciate what Doctorow says https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/02/10/9441/
I agree with his critique of what Putin did and said in the interview with Tucker. eg
“I continue to believe that Putin’s decision to deliver a 30 minute opening history lecture by way of answer to Carlson’s question of why Russia invaded was a bad decision. It was bad for several reasons. One is that it was boring for the general public. Yes, the interview attracted 140 million ‘hits’ on Carlson’s website, but we are not told how long those viewers stayed tuned. Secondly, Putin is not a professional historian and anything he said would be pulled to pieces by academics in the States, not just by the usual journalistic commentators. Thirdly, the history going back to the 9th century had nothing to do with the decision to invade Ukraine, which was prompted and justified internally in the Kremlin by reasons of Realpolitik, not by what is called Romantic Nationalism. ”
“Putin’s explanation of why he chose to invade should have started with the year 2008, when the U.S. insisted that NATO offer membership to Ukraine. After all, the trigger for the war in February 2022 was the refusal of the United States to negotiate on Russia’s demand that Ukraine remain neutral and that NATO pull back to its 1996 borders. Note that after one hour of the interview Purin himself says this, but I believe it is too late and many who came to Tucker’s platform will not have stayed with it long enough to hear this.”
“In the same vein, Putin never answered Tucker Carlson’s reasonable question as to why, knowing as he did that modern Ukraine is an ‘artificial state’ concocted by Lenin and his associates in 1922 to satisfy their own needs to consolidate power throughout what had been the Russian Empire, knowing as he did that the Russian speakers in the Donbas were being persecuted before 2014 and were being bombed and shelled after 2014, why did he wait so long to move against the regime in Kiev. Fair question, I might add, as I poke back at some readers who insisted that Carlson is just an ignorant clown.”

There’s being a clown and acting the clown for humility’s sake, and keeping one’s feet on the ground. High ratings can go to people’s heads.

Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Feb 13 2024 12:14 utc | 197

Cue the tune – “TC , he’s the TC …”

Posted by: DunGroanin | Feb 13 2024 11:25 utc | 195
Were you perhaps thinking of this?

Posted by: joey_n | Feb 13 2024 12:15 utc | 198

who really knows what anyone “believes”. for some, it changes day by day and most people don’t disclose their beliefs, and when they do it’s usually to score points or leverage with someone for some utilitarian reason.
why should anyone “belief” anyone else’s claims about the beliefs of a third party, a public figure that none of us has ever met or spoken to?
you’re just making up a model of the inside of someone’s head that YOU believe in. it’s totally unverifiable, and suits you to think such-and-so of that person. it’s about YOUR beliefs, not theirs.

Posted by: anon y’mouse | Feb 13 2024 12:42 utc | 199

Super Bowl has a ALL TIME RECORD viewership for a TV show = 128 million eyeballs
Tucker’s interview only YouTube views more than 200 million

Posted by: Exile | Feb 13 2024 13:09 utc | 200