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March 24, 2024
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-087

Last weeks posts on Moon of Alabama:

—
Other issues:

Empire:

Niger:

China:

Censorship:

  • Meet the AI-Censored? Naked Capitalism – Matt Taibbi /Racket News, Mar 23 2024
    Google provides an early, scary test case for mechanized suppression by threatening a popular economics site with demonetization

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

Posted by b on March 24, 2024 at 13:33 UTC | Permalink
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Russian war correspondent Marat Khayrullin on the British trace in the Crocus City Hall attack, Part 1:

Terrorist attack in Moscow: Tajik trace leads to the British
London took out old skeletons from the closet
The monstrous tragedy at Crocus City Hall has very deep roots and far-reaching consequences. We will return to them many times in the future. But today let’s talk about where the attack came from this time. And let’s try to at least approximately trace its genesis and understand the fact that the main enemy is throwing against us if not its last forces, then certainly playing the trump cards that it’s been holding until the end.
Two days after the bloody attack, there is a general opinion in the Russian political and intelligence community that the UK, or rather MI6, is behind the terrorist attack. The modus operandi is just too similar to this organization.
An indisputable fact is that all the largest terrorist attacks in Russia in the post-Soviet period, from Beslan to Dubrovka, had a British trace in one way or another. The terrorist leaders who directed the militants were recruited by MI6. And in some cases (like Basayev and Khattab) they were openly collaborating with MI6.
To counteract this opinion, the UK in its top media threw out an obviously prepared statement: a certain organization Vilayat Khorasan (a branch of the Islamic State operating in Afghanistan) is behind the terrorist attack.
For specialists, such action clearly speaks in favor of the version that in this particular case it is the Englishwoman [the UK — S] who is muddying the waters. Here we must immediately say that the story is not simple, and understanding it from scratch is very difficult, so today we will outline only some of the features.
ISIS, in its heyday, was a collection of tribal gangs united primarily on the basis of funding from the UK. Both the bandit al-Shishani (Batirashvili, a native of Georgia) and his replacement, Khalimov, a Tajik, were direct mercenaries of MI6.
The scope of ISIS’s activities as a proxy for the British eventually became so serious that it began to interfere with the U.S. influence in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the UK had to partially curtail the scale of its operations so as not to anger the hegemon. And for a while, all these terrorists in the service of MI6 went into the shadows, some were even declared dead.
They began to resurface again since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. That’s when that very ISIS from Khorasan appeared on the scene. In reality, a number of Pashtun tribal leaders supported by the British. They are the only ones who agreed to fight the Taliban. This is a key point.
Here we enter the complex geopolitics of Central Asia. Most countries in the region support the Taliban’s efforts to pacify Afghanistan, hoping to thereby ensure their security. All, except Tajikistan. Which cannot find a common agreement with the Taliban due to the fact that under their wing there are a number of organizations that are considered terrorist in Tajikistan. It was precisely this split that the UK played on all these years after the Americans left the region, trying with all their might to prevent the establishment of peace in Asia.
To this end, immediately after the U.S. withdrawal, ethnic Tajik Afghans started to be recruited into the Vilayat Khorasan gangs. That is, they began to demonstrate to President Rahmon, who is very sensitive to this issue and considers the Tajiks to be one of the biggest divided nations in the world, that ISIS of Khorasan is sort of friendly [to Tajiks — S]. And that by joining the support of the Taliban he would betray the interests of the Tajiks.
In other words, by pointing a finger at ISIS of Khorasan, which, I emphasize, at the moment practically does not exist as an organization (there is only a certain community of tribal gangs), the UK is openly trying to drag us into Asian kerfuffle. It’s another attempt by the British after Kazakhstan to impose problems in our rear.
But that’s only one part of the game. The second one is no less interesting and more revelatory.
The political base of that very ISIS leader, Khalimov, a Tajik, has always been the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan. It has been declared a terrorist organization in its homeland, and since the early 2000s, guess where its headquarters are located? You guessed right—in London.

Posted by: S | Mar 24 2024 14:01 utc | 1

if somebody watched the attack in moskwa – on the balkony in that theatre, even from far away you can clearly see that one gun spits fire cone-like around the barrel, in another video too, but here you can see yellow yellow colored blobs on the gun. for my knowledge, it shouldnt be spitting fire so much.

Posted by: gpc | Mar 24 2024 14:02 utc | 2

thanks for the ongoing insights and commentary b and moa community..

Posted by: james | Mar 24 2024 14:18 utc | 3

CIA Intelligence Reframing Terror Into IS Khorasan
Interesting prior posts on topic in article by b:
Media Snippets Related To The Crocus City Hall Attack
Posted by: Multipolar Panda | Mar 24 2024 2:48 utc | 539 495
Posted by: Down South | Mar 24 2024 12:21 utc | 594
In between two by myself

Posted by: Oui | Mar 24 2024 14:19 utc | 4

@ 2 gpc
old stock gun that hadn’t been maintained.. that is what was reported initially.. russian gun sitting in the bushes and picked up for use much later.

Posted by: james | Mar 24 2024 14:20 utc | 5

Part 2:

On the eve of the flight of the Americans from Afghanistan, the British started fussing over the Tajiks and in 2018 used this party [the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan — S] as the basis to create the National Alliance of Tajikistan in Warsaw, into which they tried to push the remnants of all the Tajik thugs who survived after the defeat of ISIS. The alliance was headed by one Kabirov, who walked hand in hand with Khalimov all his life.
The purpose of creating the new organization was simple: the West was losing the war in Syria, and it was necessary to establish the traffic of militants from Tajikistan. The NAT served as a “single window” where the UK contributed money, and Kabirov and Khalimov were engaged in the export of Tajik “meat.”
Here it must be said that nominally Khalimov has been considered dead since 2017, but there is also a second opinion that he was simply “removed” into the shadows after the Americans became angry with ISIS.
However, what does all this have to do with the events at Crocus City Hall? Patience, dear readers. We’re almost there.
In 2022, with the beginning of the Special Military Operation, the so-called Jabhat Al-Shamiya brigade appeared as part of the mercenary corps in the Ukraine. Or rather, one of its detachments operating in the Aleppo region. This detachment is led by a field commander (Tajik by nationality) who is Khalimov’s right hand. All that’s known about him is that his name is Shusha, and he is a history teacher by training.
There is a version that this is one of Khalimov’s many siblings and cousins. I won’t talk now about the combat activites of these Tajik Basmachi in the Ukraine—there is something to talk about there too. Jabhat Al-Shamiya was one of the main recipients of British money allocated through the National Alliance of Tajikistan.
And then (pay attention!), a month after the failure of the Ukrop [Ukrainian — S] counter-offensive (perhaps a little later, at the turn of October and November), Ilya Ponomaryov, the political leader of the new Vlasovites, and Kabirov, the political leader of the Tajik terrorists, met in London. After that, more meetings were detected in Warsaw. This time, at the level of functionaries. There are some interesting details about these meetings, particularly about who was supervising them. But more on that next time.
And now we see a coordinated attack in Belgorod by new Vlasovites, and in Moscow by Tajik militants. I think that the affiliation of the arrested terrorists with the National Alliance of Tajikistan will soon be confirmed one way or another.
Why the NAT specifically? It is known for certain that the recruitment (on the terms of paying for transportation and initial expenses) in Russia is carried out by the National Union of Migrants of Tajikistan, which is part of the alliance and which is also considered an extremist organization in its homeland. And in our country, too.
This very Union ensures the existence of a network of sleeper agents from Tajikistan in Russia. The agents who are primarily in the hands of MI6, because, needless to say, this Union has been created in the 2000s under the direct leadership of the British.
In other words, the UK began to put together a united terrorist front against Russia as soon as it became clear that the counteroffensive had failed and the Ukropia [the Ukraine — S] was doomed. And, moreover, in its traditional manner, it tried to set up or undermine the hegemon. Obviously, the hegemon did not like this, and it tried to warn Moscow. At the same time trying not to hand over its closest ally. Although, to be honest, even in this story it is plain to see that, with such allies, the U.S. doesn’t need any enemies.
But that’s still not all. In our political and intelligence community there is also an opinion that is not as widely discussed, but it exists: the British have demonstrated blatant improvisation [i.e., did something radical without orders from above — S], and now everyone is waiting for a conflict between the allies with bated breath.
And Russia’s first serious reaction to the terrorist attack has already followed (although, perhaps, this is a coincidence): our representative at the UN, Nebenzya, stated that Russia will not recognize Zelenskiy as legitimate after the expiration of his term of office. And since he is nobody in our eyes, it is possible that immediately after Day X, Hitler Zelenskiy will be overtly denationalized. Unless, of course, the British finish him off first.
In anticipation of this glorious event, let’s hope that Budanov (a direct agent of MI6) and Ponomaryov (an even more direct agent) will soon go to God’s judgment. It’s time, it’s time, the devils have clearly been waiting too long for them in hell.

Posted by: S | Mar 24 2024 14:38 utc | 6

I wrote a piece entitled What Is Fascism?, as the Western nations display more and more fascistic attributes – hatred and dehumanization of the Other (Russians, Palestinians, Iranians ..,), war-time levels of censorship, intensified gaslighting and lying by the media and state officials, the state apparatus actively used for political ends, the labelling of domestic opposition as traitors against basic societal norms (anti-semitism, “hate” speech etc.), the open acceptance of genocide.
Simply fascism is what capitalist elites do when the manufacturing of consent under “liberal democracy” no longer works well enough, the populace needs to be disciplined and brain-washed with a more extreme belief system that supports the capitalist elites actions. After Hitler that elite learnt how to do fascism without a fascist party, removing the possibility of their subordination to the fascist party. With Zelensky already cancelling the presidential elections he has already gone fully fascist, the Western claims that he is “defending democracy” are utterly ridiculous.
In the Western nations they are much cleverer, limiting the vote to only candidates that the elites approve of. In the UK the citizens can vote for a Conservative leading the Conservative Party and another Conservative leading the Labour Party. In Canada the same with the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP all fully aligned with the elites. The same in the US, the choice between an oligarch-tool and an oligarch – the only issue being that the latter represents the domestically-oriented oligarchs and not the internationally-oriented oligarchs. In Germany they openly discuss banning the “unacceptable” AfD and in France the renamed National Front are continuously deemed to be “beyond the pale”. Then of course we have the actual fascist Meloni in Italy showing who her party really serves.
The purge of the SA in the “Night of the Long Knives” was Hitler crushing the force that truly believed in his anti-big-capitalist rhetoric, just like Obama dumping the very populist groupings that elected him the day after his election. Obama was the “mythical leader” required to stop the populace taking revenge after 8 years of Bush, and he did more than Bush to enhance the security state, the punishment of whistleblowers, the defeat of single payer, the immiseration of home owners to save the bankers, the destruction of foreign nations (Libya, Syria, Ukraine …), and the murder by drone and secret ops of the Others around the world. And then the brown shirts of “Antifa” and others allowed to terrorize whole towns without state intervention amid massive media gaslighting, with staged “two minutes of hate” (from 1984).
Wolin called it “inverted totalitarianism” where the capitalist elite control the state and implement fascistic policies while politically numbing the population into subservience. But the fist is always there when needed to punch those into subservience when needed, as with Obama’s crushing of Occupy Wall Street. As also there for the allowed-to-happen Capitol “invasion” with the legal book thrown at unarmed protestors, and a full on Congressional show trial with extensive amounts of evidence hidden from view and the defendants; only now seeping out into public view.
After one and a half years the US still “doesn’t know” who blew up Nordstream but it immediately “knows” who carried out the terror attack against Russians, after warning about it in advance? The US is the terror state, Ukraine is simply its vassal. A new fascism stalks the societies of the West.

Posted by: Roger | Mar 24 2024 14:51 utc | 7

Experts speak about the consequences of the bombing of Yugoslavia (RIA Novosti, March 24, 2024 — in Russian)

The bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO forces in March 1999 has dramatically changed the attitude of the Russian leaders towards NATO and launched a chain of destruction of security in Europe, which led to the current events in the Ukraine, experts told RIA Novosti.
Exactly 25 years ago, an armed confrontation between Albanian separatists from the Kosovo Liberation Army and the security forces of Serbia led to the bombing of the FRY (at that time consisting of Serbia and Montenegro) by NATO forces. The military operation was undertaken without the approval of the UN Security Council, based on the assertion of Western countries that the authorities of the FRY were allegedly carrying out ethnic cleansing in the Kosovo autonomy and provoked a humanitarian catastrophe there.
“The bombing of Yugoslavia, which coincided with the first stage of NATO expansion, was a turning point in the perception of the Russian public and political elites. In the West, almost no one realizes this. Why is Russia against NATO expansion? And why is there, all of a sudden, such an armed conflict in the Ukraine because of that? But these are all events in one single chain of European politics, the chain of destruction of European security, which started exactly then. Now it has reached its logical conclusion,” the head of the Center for International Security of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Alexey Arbatov told RIA Novosti.
The President of the Russian Association for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, Tatyana Parkhalina, also agrees that the events in Yugoslavia laid the foundation for the current confrontation between Russia and the West.
“That sphere of alienation that began then, two and a half decades ago, it largely led to what we have now, to the confrontation that we see between Russia and the West during not only the conflict in the Ukraine, but also during other regional conflicts,” the expert noted.
Speaking about the historical importance of events in Yugoslavia, she added that the bombings created a precedent “where not all members of the Security Council agreed,” recalling that Russia did not support the coalition’s actions.
Another precedent, according to Alexey Arbatov, was the use by NATO forces of shells with depleted uranium. He noted that although such projectiles are not used for the purpose of radioactive contamination, studies “that have been carried out for a long time have shown that even such depleted uranium still affects people’s health in terms of radioactive consequences.”
Currently, as Tatyana Parkhalina notes, most Serbs have “gradually overcome the consequences,” and as Belgrade moves forward along the path of European integration, “these events will be washed away more.” At the same time, according to experts, it is not possible to completely erase the memories of the aggression of the Western coalition against Yugoslavia.
“We now see that this is manifested in the fact that Serbia has a completely different attitude towards the events in the Ukraine than most European countries,” Arbatov concluded.
NATO airstrikes continued from March 24 to June 10, 1999.
NATO bombing led to the death of over 2.5 thousand people, including 87 children, and damage of 100 billion dollars; doctors are recording the consequences of the use of depleted uranium, leading to an increase in cancer.

Posted by: S | Mar 24 2024 14:53 utc | 8

Thank you, b. Before I read, I need to return to the previous open forum for two comments. The first, on the penultimate page, by LoveDonbass, was centered on happenings in Africa and ends thusly:

…It is a small mind that can only see conflict as kinetic. Those tiny people cannot perceive the psychological, emotional, and economic.
Military warfare is so wasteful and temporary. Forging bonds of brotherhood by elevating an entire people to independence is cheaper and far more enduring.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Mar 21 2024 0:33 utc | 101

The second was a sequence of short comments by a poster named swiss. They come at the final page of the midweek open forum, and as I’m not able to add them here, I will simply comment, on this day of remembrance in Russia, with an admonition to Saint Paul, from his second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12 verse 9:
“My Grace is sufficient for you,
for My Power is made perfect in weakness.”
Thank you both for these posts.

Posted by: juliania | Mar 24 2024 14:53 utc | 9

The former head of Serbian intelligence spoke about the consequences of the bombing of Yugoslavia (RIA Novosti, March 24, 2024 — in Russian)

…
“The bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia woke up the entire world. It was the peak of the unipolar world. It showed what the world would look like if only one force—the United States—decided for the entire world. It was a clear signal to Russia, China and all free countries about what is awaiting them. That they are next. We were small—a preparation for and a test of what could happen later,” Vulin said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
According to him, at that moment Western countries “didn’t have to explain anything to anyone, didn’t have to justify themselves to anyone.”
…

Posted by: S | Mar 24 2024 15:04 utc | 10

On the Naked Capitalism issue: Yves Smith always wanted to remain within the good graces of the ruling class not for any nefarious reason, but because she hoped during the Obama administration that the power-elite would read her site many of whose commentators were on the lower rungs of the elite (mainly in finance) who shared her views. She strongly weeded out anyone who believed in “conspiracy theories”, i.e., any view that colored outside the lines of the Overton Window. She saw herself as the link between the oligarch class and their minions and the views at the edge of what was allowable. People in the vicinity of power need to understand the edges where honest examination of life can flourish. Taibbi, for example and many others, managed to exist outside the mainstream yet not on the sites or opinions that are outside the edges of what is acceptable. Trump, Putin, COVID changed everything in the US mediascape. Now the Overton Window is a fraction of what it was a decade ago. Smith and others will be penalized. Google is not just another, and more powerful, part of the (real) government, i.e., Deep State. The term “Deep State” was discouraged on the NC site a decade ago while today it is allowed–now she is a victim, it appears. In a way its a form of justice–she definitely banned people for coloring outside the lines and now she is the one coloring outside the lines.
Unless there s a drastic reshuffling of power relations in the USA things will only get wors as the “State” will use AI to penalize people for alternate views even more than they do now because there is no serious push back. We are once, as I predicted back in the 90s, the new USSR (in its post-Stalin days) in the domestic policy sphere and far, far worse in the foreig policy direction. The Soviets hoped that communism would spread and flourish but did not try to do what the US wants which is to conquer mainly through coercion, bribes, assassinations, regime change, and military conquest the entire world. An so it goes.

Posted by: Chris Cosmos | Mar 24 2024 15:51 utc | 11

An update to the Covid story, down to such details as Furin cleavage sites, the role of the Wuhan lab, and Darpa funded versus NIH funded “Gain of Function” research. By Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, who, while he’s not an insider to the scientific community, has nevertheless acquired some insights.

Posted by: grunzt | Mar 24 2024 16:03 utc | 12

Posted by: S | Mar 24 2024 14:01 utc | 1
Posted by: S | Mar 24 2024 14:38 utc | 6
Posted by: S | Mar 24 2024 14:53 utc | 8
Posted by: S | Mar 24 2024 15:04 utc | 10
Great posts

Posted by: anon2020 | Mar 24 2024 16:05 utc | 13

Yes Chris Cosmos. The slow Red Pilling of Naked Capitalism has been interesting to watch indeed. I have always been immediately suspicious of anyone who uses the term “conspiracy theory” because it immediately reveals a framing that conspiracy is unusual or doesn’t happen, and was introduced into common language around the JFK assassination era. The banning or censorship protocol used by NC has evolved. Yves Smith still runs a good site but the irony of some of her sanctimonious interventions in years past is an interesting study.

Posted by: Pym of Nantucket | Mar 24 2024 16:18 utc | 14

Bevin posted this at the end of the last Open Thread (2024-84). It’s too good to just be lost.

All these assertions about the “death toll” under communism are nothing more than indications that those posting them have swallowed capitalist and imperialist propaganda uncritically.
There is simply nothing in the history of communist states run by communist parties to compare with the systematic genocides carried out by imperialists.
Just to remind (and I use the word advisedly since I suspect that most of these anti-communist posters have never devoted a day in their lives to the serious study of history) them of what I am talking about, and taking 1492 as an arbitrary starting line, these genocides begin with the Iberian/Dutch invasions of South, Central America and the Caribbean and continue with the eradication of a multitude of indigenous civilisations, cultures and peoples in north America.
Then there are the genocidal assaults on India and the East Indian archipelago which have to include successive famines caused by the displacement of subsistence farming communities in order to facilitate the production of exportable commodities- largely raw materials for textiles but including opium, tea, coffee and other non food items.
And that is just a beginning- already the death tolls are in the dozens of millions.
There is simply no comparison (despite crude special pleading by racist apologists) with anything else in history. And we have barely scratched the surface of imperialism’s wars- exemplified today by events in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, the DR Congo, Syria and much of the Sahel, where the impact of the attack on Libya are still evident.
As to Communism what is claimed here? I take it we can discount the casualties in the Civil wars in which Communist governments were attacked largely by forces mustered, armed and financed by the imperialists.
That would include the Famine deaths of 1921-2 which wre entirely the product of imperialists, exacerbated by a refusal to sell food to the Soviet government.
As to the famines of the early 1930s to which Scorpion, who is probably unaware of the recent protests by Gareth’s grandchildren at the misuse of his reporting, refers these have been dealt with in considerable detail by several authors who have made clear, firstly that the original narrative was one of Goebbels inventions (and most of us know how sincere was the Nazi sympathy for Russian suffering) developed by Bandera-ite propagandists in cahoots with western intelligence agencies and secondly that they coincided with agricultural reforms modeled-curiously enough- on British enclosures and US mechanisation of the kind that Steinbeck chronicles in his Grapes of Wrath.
As to the charges that Mao was responsible for the famine deaths of millions- this US propaganda was rampant at a time when it was notorious that life expectancy in China had almost doubled between 1949 and the 1970s- by far the most dramatic increase in recorded history in any country. No doubt it would have increased even more had the Communists not been using famine as a means of killing off their enemies!
The truth is that idle minds know that there is no limit to the amount of exagerration that will pass in attacks on socialist government- living in a society dominated by the enemies of socialism (which is what capitalists are and necessarily so) there is no limit to the number of intellectual prostitutes who, over the years, have learned that there is quicker way of earning a buck than by engaging in communist bashing.
Which is why there seems to be no end to the sources of the sort of drivel that assert, contrary to all known facts and every logical expectation that the Russian revolution was financed by (Jewish, of course) bankers and supported by the precise forces which fought against it from 1917 until 1990.
These conspiracy theories constitute a cottage industry underwritten by the capitalists, their intelligence agencies and the vast cultural apparatus with which they sustain their wealth and power.
It is sad that so many who regard themselves as contrarians or critical thinkers swallow the ideology of the oligarchy in its entirety. And in the end preen themselves on ‘thinking for themselves’ or ‘examining all the evidence’ as they fall in with the conclusions of the interests picking their pockets.
Barnum knew the type, but even he would have doubted that Lenin and Trotsky could have been categorised as gulls of The City, tools of Wall street.
Posted by: bevin | Mar 24 2024 3:24 utc | 260

While I’m here, thanks to Constantine, S, PeterAU1 for your efforts. Others too of course who see the things that bevin has pointed out above and make the effort to hold the line against falsehoods.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Mar 24 2024 16:26 utc | 15

Re: the War to Destroy Yugoslavia
Red pilled many of us –

Posted by: Exile | Mar 24 2024 16:35 utc | 16

Posted by: S | Mar 24 2024 15:04 utc | 10
Many thanks for your posts, S. Those happenings were part of a love affair with Sarajevo after the Olympics there, fully covered by western media for captive audiences. It had become unsupportable for many that events so tragically tore that supposedly harmonious and ‘multipolar’ community into warring segments. We ordinary US citizens could not see things clearly, having ourselves in the US at least, been subjected to enormous disharmony in the attempted impeachment of a popular (then) president seeking re-election. That was the last of our propagandized servitude, speaking for myself. We saw as the century ended that we had been fooled, but it was too late. The cameras, I remember, followed Clinton as he left his throne having shown his true colors in his last year of office. We were, at least by then, glad to see him go.
It was indeed a watershed moment. On one side Yugoslavia; on the other side Iraq and everything that followed. You can fool all of the people some of the time …

Posted by: juliania | Mar 24 2024 16:46 utc | 17

https://t.me/belarusian_silovik/31938

China is banning the use of Intel and AMD chips in government computers, FT reports.

Posted by: anon2020 | Mar 24 2024 16:46 utc | 18

That was the last of our propagandized servitude, speaking for myself
It took years for me to finally grasp that our government, journalists, academics, and various analysts are bloodthirsty lieing thieves eargerly commuting the worst atrocities for sport

Posted by: Exile | Mar 24 2024 16:58 utc | 19

Posted by: juliania | Mar 24 2024 14:53 utc | 9
###############
I don’t write for posterity, notoriety, or profit. It’s mostly a cathartic exercise for me.
I’m pleased that something I thought and wrote had value to another human being.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Mar 24 2024 17:01 utc | 20

James Lindsay has become a widely renowned speaker on the “dangers of identity politics” while theorizing its origin and purpose as Marxism. Which btw is not unique to him. But he also claims that Marxism and “wokeness” has its origin in “The Gnostic Heresy.” From Gnostic Gnonsense

Posted by: kana | Mar 24 2024 17:12 utc | 21

China is banning the use of Intel and AMD chips in government computers, FT reports.
Posted by: anon2020 | Mar 24 2024 16:46 utc | 18

Can’t wait for a BRICS operating system. No Microsoft/Apple/Google/shitrael spyware, no demented linux fragmentation and stale coder culture inside jokes and obfuscation. Just a solid, simple operating system.

no end to the sources of the sort of drivel that assert, contrary to all known facts and every logical expectation that the Russian revolution was financed by (Jewish, of course) bankers and supported by the precise forces which fought against it from 1917 until 1990.
Posted by: bevin

bevin, two hundred million people might wrest control from a few shitty jews over the decades and do something that wasn’t foreseen by them. The world isn’t a black and white fantasy where the jew angels are just on one side with perfect plans. They financed the nazis as well and then had a little scuffle later. They set up Hamas and lost control. Let’s not be ridiculously naive.

Posted by: Michael A | Mar 24 2024 17:14 utc | 22

Looks like it certainly is ratcheting up on the escalation ladder…
Posted by: gpc | Mar 24 2024 14:02 utc | 2
An AKM without a flash suppressor will spit large fireballs…very typical.

Posted by: Nathan in WA US | Mar 24 2024 17:22 utc | 23

Posted by: Roger | Mar 24 2024 14:51 utc | 7
Nice summation of the Obama administration, but you left out the half dozen new wars he started after getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Mar 24 2024 17:46 utc | 24

@Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Mar 24 2024 17:46 utc | 24
Too many to list, and it took another 13 years for the US to leave Afghanistan. And Guantanamo Bay is still open … He was the perfect servant of the oligarchs. Never reversed any of the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

Posted by: Roger | Mar 24 2024 18:15 utc | 25

@Posted by: kana | Mar 24 2024 17:12 utc | 21
Yep, another useful idiot to lead everyone down rabbit holes and far away from the truth. Identity politics is a divide and conquer strategy of the ruling class, a derivatives of the non-communist “critical” theory that it worked so hard after WW2 to institutionalize throughout the academy.

Posted by: Roger | Mar 24 2024 18:18 utc | 26

I am a regular on NC…except I’m not allowed to participate.
I had the NERVE to disagree with Lambert/Yves about ‘force the vote’…and was banned.
I guess I’m not smart enough to add value to her blog~
They are ‘my people’ and yet…I will miss them when they are gone.

Posted by: spamned | Mar 24 2024 18:19 utc | 27

Before I made a long-ish comment about updates, this is a test post. I don’t know who all noticed, but yesterday’s Crocus City Hall thread was attacked by an onslaught of name thieving trolls, other trolls and sock puppets. I would not be surprised at all if b has implemented some strict filtering.
Testing testing….123.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 24 2024 18:36 utc | 28

OK, things seem to be back to normal now. Since I’ve started scrolling to the bottom of long comments to see who left them prior to reading, especially in Ukraine and Gaza threads (I think most probably know the few parties to whom I’m referring), I figure I’ll return the favor in case anyone prefers not to read mine as well. This is Tom Q Collins. You’re welcome. 😊
One other note before I say anything else, in regard to yesterday’s SNAFU and an idea posited by Bemildred about PGP keys. Whenever a name thief begins to spam threads and I still want to be able to make comments while some imposter is using my handle, I’ve begun to incorporate ‘special characters’ into my text. That’s all I will say about it so as not to give our bodysnatchers any more clues. I don’t know how PGP would actually work since it seems like they could just copy that as well in a text-only medium like this.
Anyway, on with the show. Regarding the Crocus terrorist attack, having slept on it, and reading b’s links above, here’s my current operating theory.
1. The attackers were hired guns working on behalf of Ukraine’s interests, probably previous MI6 and CIA trained individuals with some ISIS-K ties. ISIS-K seems way too convenient, the MO contradicts previous real ISIS attacks, the USA came out with the “it wasn’t Ukraine it was ISIS” BS way too fast, ISIS-K has known relations with the aforementioned “intel” agencies, and the way the attack was supposedly taken responsibility for is not how it’s being presented on Twitter/X, social or regular corporate media.
To wit on the last part, what actually occurred (and pls. correct me if I’m wrong), was the video was sent “exclusively” to that one outlet known for reporting and promulgating “ISIS-K” messaging who then put it and the alleged claim of responsibility on their Telegram channel with the ‘exclusive’ tag. In addition, either there, under interrogation or both, the attackers claimed they were not affiliated with any known cell/group of “ISIS-K” and were acting alone i.e., as a sort of ‘splinter cell’. Nowhere did “actual ISIS-K” claim responsibility. The alleged MO was “killing Christians” which itself is quite strange and not accurate given Muslim and other victims were killed.
Also, re: MO, they hid their faces in the early photos which Lord Bebo (Twitter/X)_has analyzed and come to the conclusion they aren’t the same people pictured. But then during the attacks they made no attempt to conceal their identities, they didn’t yell anything typical of “ISIS” like groups and they didn’t martyr themselves, instead fleeing toward the Ukraine border in an area they were likely told was not an active combat zone. When caught, they didn’t commit suicide or attempt to engage police/soldiers in any significant fire fight, if at all.
Conclusion to item #1: This was not an “ISIS-K” attack in anything but name and ease and rapidity of attribution for the US and Ukraine. For that reason, any further references to “ISIS-K” will be without the use of quotes – it wasn’t ISIS-K carrying out a revenge, religious, or even logically useful attack; that’s just the name I’ll be using for the US/Ukraine proxy terrorists who happen to be of Tajik origin.
2. Nuland and Budanov are on record making various threats to the effect that Russia will be seeing some “nasty surprises” and shortly after her “resignation” Crocus was attacked. Further, this group seems to only be interested in perpetrating major terror attacks against “official enemies” of the US and Israel, and by extension, Ukraine. I know there has been some action on the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border due to a dispute between this ISIS-K and the Taliban, but what’s that got to do with Russia or Iran? Nothing that I can see. IIRC, MI-6, CIA and Mossad are rumored to be stirring up shit in that area as well and that usually means we’re likely to see whatever ISIS-___ group affiliates pop up in other geostrategic areas and conflicts.
Further, their aim is to stoke fear and division domestically within Russia and the RF. Perhaps a crackdown on the Muslim states in the RF and/or a new Chechnya type operation in the ‘stans’.
3. This terror attack, being immediately blamed on “Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists” serves some additional purposes/narratives. For one, it distracts from Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and for another, rouses Islamophobic currents in the Western media – also convenient to Israel’s (and by extension the US) larger project in the ME. IOW, a major distraction but also a “narrative victory” in the places where those interests converge with Islamophobic sentiments. See: 9/11 and smiling Israelis giving interviews about how bad Islam is, and now the world understands.
4. As far as Ukraine goes, it also serves as a big distraction from the imminent collapse of the UAF, but also they hope that it provokes Russia to do something crazy like launch major attacks on Ukrainian civilian centers or even on NATO interests outside of Ukraine. And even if Russia doesn’t react like that, a false flag can always be carried out to make it look like they did. This also has “benefits” including an excuse to pour more money into the war to keep it going until after the US election. Or to stoke sufficient Russophobic feelings in NATO countries to “justify” policies such as those recently floated by Macaroon. Good luck with that one.
At the end of the day, this wasn’t ISIS. It was paid/handled mercenaries acting on behalf of Ukrainian interests and those of FUKUS/NATO with likely connections to Israel/Mossad. What remains to be seen is how Russia demonstrates this to the RotW and reacts on the battlefield or domestically – if at all.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 24 2024 19:19 utc | 29

While waiting for Tom’s comment- always interesting- readers might wish to divert themselves by considering, as one of history’s more impish ironies, the sound made by saying the weasel-like US Secretary of State’s name aloud. As in
A.Blinken.
A Blinken.

Posted by: bevin | Mar 24 2024 19:23 utc | 30

Posted by: Roger | Mar 24 2024 14:51 utc | 7
I read your piece on fascism at your Substack page and agree with you on almost everything. I shared it with a few people as well.
I’m sure the following will be quite controversial here among some.
One niggle (or request for clarification) re: your comment here is “Antifa.” The way I’d characterize it is that “Antifa” was blown greatly out of proportion in the segments of elite and right-dissident media to serve a purpose. Namely, to ready the population for a coming crackdown on all forms of public protest and to discredit what remains of “left-ish” in the vein of OWS. Inasmuch as Antifa was a real thing, it existed pretty much solely in liberal bourgeoise places like Seattle, Portland, NYC and enclaves like Berkeley or select midwestern cities like Minneapolis. Most of America never caught a single Antifa sighting in real life except for it being blown out of proportion in corporate conservative media and alt-media.
Did Antifa brownshirts really “terrorize” whole cities and towns? Not that I saw, but I suppose down here in Texas there was no activity. The notion of an “Antifa” doing so certainly did, but not with any physical manifestation or actual widespread destruction of property (if any significant property destruction at all, anywhere).

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 24 2024 19:32 utc | 31

S 8 – 10 – Many thanks for the excellent posts on Serbia, where NATO “peacekeepers” still inhabit many parts of Kosovo and Bosnia. One remembers the war crimes committed in Serbia….the airstrikes on RTS HQ in Belgrade, and civilian passenger trains and buses, chemical plants, water and sewer systems, food warehouses and oil tank farms. No one was ever brought forward to the Hague to answer to these attacks. These attacks also marked the end of the US stealth exclusivity, when an F117 Stealth fighter – bomber was downed by the Serb Army 250th AAD Regiment (the crash parts were later sold to Serb friendly nations), the first stealth aircraft to be so downed.
While NATO began the air campaign against Serbia on this day in 1999, they were up to their hips in involvement in the Serb wars since 1994. Their attacks on the Serbian Republic of Krajina in 1995, and the Serb Republic of Bosnia in 1995-99, including the false flag attack on Sarajevo…..are legendary.
Interesting to note that both Toni Blinken and Victoria Nuland played key roles in this effort while working in the Clinton DOS.
Also interesting is that Congress never authorized any offensive action against Serbia, Serbian Bosnia, Serbia Krajina or Kosovo, nor did the UN Security Council, and yet it did in fact occur. The Imperial Presidency exists within the US to this day.
NATO and US actions in the attack on Krajina were in direct support of Nazi elements in Croatia. Flash forward to today, where NATO and the US are actively supporting Nazi elements in Kieve.

Posted by: Tobias Cole | Mar 24 2024 19:37 utc | 32

Posted by: S | Mar 24 2024 14:01 utc | 1
“guess where its headquarters are located? You guessed right—in London.”
Does Marat Khayrullin give (or do You have …) a source for the situation of the HQ in London?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/world/asia/tajikistan-islamic-state-isis.html
(their leader got training also in the US …)
https://excas.net/2015/07/isis/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Renaissance_Party_of_Tajikistan
Is the complain (that Vilayat Khorasan is responsible) a true British info – or do the Britishers only echo the Russian infos (Vilayat Khorasan often in Russia is accused to be behind other plans and attacks, too). Are there true(!) links from Vilayat Khorasan to the captured men – or even to Ukraine?
Thanks!

Posted by: Gerhard | Mar 24 2024 19:37 utc | 33

Last comment from me for a while, so if another Tom_Q_Collins pops up between now and later this evening, it’s a bodysnatcher.
Re: My comment about “antifa” and property damage, I don’t think that is what Roger was alluding to, and of course I know that there was a lot of property damage during the George Floyd protests of 2020. I wasn’t referring to that when speaking of “antifa” – and I do not think there are any stories of “antifa” destroying property let alone taking credit for it, which if we’re going to be consistent in talking about them, we need to acknowledge that if they had done so, they would have taken responsibility. This is in contrast to the so-called accelerationists and infiltrators who always attempt to avoid responsibility or foist it on someone else (see: Autozone Umbrella Man) – and – I do not think I’ve ever seen “antifa” destroying property or stating that they even want to do so.
See y’all later.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 24 2024 19:40 utc | 34

Posted by: Michael A | Mar 24 2024 17:14 utc | 22
let’s not hijack opposing zionism by yoking it to a pro US anti left agenda.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Mar 24 2024 19:41 utc | 35

As I am not a citizen of the UK, there are opinions I can offer that you cannot express.
Britain is being invaded,as with the EU and US. There was a generation that objected to Germans entering UK territory and imposing goose stepping parades (among other things). Yet, today Britain is subject to an unlimited invasion of refugees/immigrants/whatever description is current. Everyone is frightened of the “T” word (uh.. treason) and you are forbidden to send them to Rwanda (both ECHR and House of Lords).
In an alternative universe, a military coup (whatever you have left of a working military) marches the Objectors into the Black Tower. And stops the proxy war with Russia to lower food and energy prices. And makes your votes Actually Mean Something – other than Labour/Tory parties Doing Nothing Really Because Their Hands Are Tied.
The above pretty much applies to the US in principle but you guys seem like a feeble class that are permitted to live in England as if it was a sort of museum for tourists. I honestly wish you well but my imagination at best doesn’t see any change. Godspeed and God Save The Queen.

Posted by: Eighthman | Mar 24 2024 19:42 utc | 36

Forgive me if this has already been addressed but I am going into all of the late winter thaw off, early warming planting and growth of a widely versatile small farm in Oregon. The deep freeze in the teens for days really hacked away at us.
Echo chamber totally misconstrued the debate of Hudson and Bond. Hudson describes what is happening from massive historical and recent perspective. Bond is cherry picking data to support his bias.
Hudson knows more about how money works than just about anyone. Bond has such a narrow perspective that his opinion is almost worthless. Hudson mopped the floor with Bond.

Posted by: jef | Mar 24 2024 19:45 utc | 37

Sorry I know I said last comment for a while above, but I’ll be tracking the Wikispooks page just created for the Moscow terror attacks as I have time.
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/2024_Crocus_City_Hall_attack
Also, ISIS.
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Islamic_State

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 24 2024 19:48 utc | 38

let’s not hijack opposing zionism by yoking it to a pro US anti left agenda.
Posted by: pretzelattack | Mar 24 2024 19:41 utc | 35
Certainly. No pro US or anti left intent from me.

Posted by: Michael A | Mar 24 2024 19:50 utc | 39

After one and a half years the US still “doesn’t know” who blew up Nordstream but it immediately “knows” who carried out the terror attack against Russians, after warning about it in advance? The US is the terror state, Ukraine is simply its vassal. A new fascism stalks the societies of the West.
Posted by: Roger | Mar 24 2024 14:51 utc | 7
………………..
Superlative post.

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 24 2024 19:55 utc | 40

As an Englishman, I am getting tired of the unfounded slander and lies. You got attacked by muslims. And you blame the British?

Posted by: Jack A | Mar 24 2024 20:02 utc | 41

A Russian just fell down the stairs. I bet Mi6 did it.
A Russian just got hit by a bus. Clearly an Mi6 plot.
A Russian lady just got raped by a Muslims. It was an Mi6 false flag.
Don’t you get it? The British are God and the Devil. They control the weather and make the sun rise and fall. If you disagree, you are probably just an Mi6 or 77th shill.

Posted by: Jack A | Mar 24 2024 20:07 utc | 42

@waynorinorway | Mar 24 2024 16:26 utc | 15
I also agree with Bevin about anticommunists exaggerating abuse purportedly comitted by the communists
But reading Bevins comment about the civil war, (presumably) in Russia involving intervening western armies I understand Bevin still thinks they fought the bolsheviks when in reality both the US army and the british aided the reds.
And this was in good agreement with the intentions that were stated in the US parliament in 1918: that they didn not want Russia to be (or rather remain!) a capitalist competitor.
Those wellintended people who defend socialism are simultaneously stymying their minds by being lured to accept the imperial narrative. The western oligarchy wants you to believe it and to go for it again. Thereby they expect you to aid them in weakening the rivals.
And to make investors stay away from such contries.
Britain managed to discourage Rockefeller and the Rothschilds from otherwise profitable win-win deals in Tsar Russia before WWI.
That is why Britain protected Marx: for causing chaos in Russia.
Russia was outcompeting the Rockefellers oil production so it was obviously a rational move to have business in Russia but instead Rockefeller accepted being discouraged and as it turns out opted for massvaccinations for profits.
And that didnt go well.
It has led to the ongoing corruption of medical science.
And a century of fake virology.
Insisting on an entirely false historical narrative that most socialists do is not likely to go well either.
You will be used and abused again.
An oft quoted motto is the truth shall set you free.
But apparently dreaming is better?

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Mar 24 2024 20:16 utc | 43

I’d like to bring up a less techy idea to counter the name snitchers; it doesn’t involve tweaking the platform code. Some of the regular posters might find it helpful. It works like this:
All those who wish to defend themselves against snitchers are emailed a checklist from b, which involves say 100 lists to be assigned to the next 100 MoA threads, and each list contains, say, 100 entries made up of randomly chosen and ordered words. By giving each post a byline from this list, going through it succesively from top down, poster authenticity can be verified by everyone who owns a copy of it.
The downsides are that it’s clumsy and a hassle; also the list might be obtained nefariously. But since b also has a copy, the scheme is principally implemented with the first participant, and might help discourage snitching of specific handles.

Posted by: persiflo | Mar 24 2024 20:23 utc | 44

@Eighthman | Mar 24 2024 19:42 utc | 36
What about the King?

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Mar 24 2024 20:24 utc | 45

I realize that my above suggestion to ward off snitching works just as well without involving b, when another platform is available to disseminate the list. I’d offer the philosopher’s corner substack, and also would write a batch of those lists, if anyone’s interested; though I am not sure it’d help much, for I am not much of a cybersecurity buff to guard the checksum.

Posted by: persiflo | Mar 24 2024 20:38 utc | 46

Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
They don’t know who blew up Nordstream after 1.5 years and they reply to all atrocity accusations towards Israel that an investigation must take place to understand who’s guilty…
…but within less than 24h they know with absolute certainty who’s “solely responsible” for this.
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1771777966743175420

Posted by: Menz | Mar 24 2024 20:45 utc | 47

Posted by: S | Mar 24 2024 14:53 utc | 8:
Thank you for three informative posts, #1, #6, and #8. I learned much from what you wrote. However, I would disagree with your contention that Russian (in general) became leary of NATO intentions at the onset of the Kosovo War.

“The bombing of Yugoslavia, which coincided with the first stage of NATO expansion, was a turning point in the perception of the Russian public and political elites. In the West, almost no one realizes this. Why is Russia against NATO expansion? And why is there, all of a sudden, such an armed conflict in the Ukraine because of that? But these are all events in one single chain of European politics, the chain of destruction of European security, which started exactly then. Now it has reached its logical conclusion,” the head of the Center for International Security of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Alexey Arbatov told RIA Novosti.

The bombing of Belgrade did not awaken Russian. In fact, couple years later Putin himself expressed willingness to join NATO under equal terms. At the start of bombing it was Ukrainians, typified by one young man named Alexander posting from Kiev on the CNN discussion forum, that expressed concern of NATO expansion, calling Yugoslavians fellow Slavic brothers and vowed to fight along their side. Russians were mum and coy, although amongst the masses there were much concerns expressed, especially referring to NATO verbal promises of no eastward expansion. I didn’t know what was on Putin’s mind then, but he was quiet even when NATO started bombing Belgrade infra-structures and hospitals. It wasn’t until the Georgia Rose Revolution, and subsequently the ugly Orange Revolution in Kiev a year later that turned Putin/Medvedev around. I think it was Neocon’s hubris and contempt of Russia that woke Putin-Dubya’s follies and immaturity as a stateman!!!
Thank goodness Putin was ultimate awoke!!!!

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Mar 24 2024 21:12 utc | 48

“Khorasan” terror group is a term/idea made-up by US in 2014 as a marketing ploy aimed at US taxpayers. US needs stream of “even worse” enemies: 9/29/2014 by Justin Raimondo: “They’re Making Up Stuff. “Khorasan”– the nonexistent “new enemy”:”…””Khorasan” is a marketing ploy, and the target is the American people. We’re used to hearing that the Al Qaeda bogeyman is under the bed, which is why we supposedly have to give the government carte blanche to spy on us and, while they’re at it, the whole world. This is the great problem Washington faces: it just isn’t having the same effect anymore. So a new brand name for terror had to be conjured, with new imagery – beheadings instead of falling buildings – to overwhelm our reason and let us forget the history of the past decade or so.
It took them a while, but the Obama administration has now taken on all the worst characteristics of the neocons during the Bush years. This “Khorasan” ploy is far less believable than even the most extravagant effusions of the Weekly Standard crowd during the neocons’ heyday.”…https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/09/28/theyre-making-up-stuff/
……………………………
“The Khorasan Group–a name apparently coined by the US,” BBC, 9/24/2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29350271

Posted by: Susan Mullen | Mar 24 2024 21:17 utc | 49

Posted by: Roger | Mar 24 2024 14:51 utc | 7
Excellent post Roger, thanks. I agree that once you see fascism as a continuum from the 1920s one is able to grasp the way it serves as a powerful de-mobilising agent of class discontent within the capitalist MOP. It is able to co-opt the working class’s status aspirations to stunt the emergence of class consciousness. This worked well in proto-fascistic experiments like the beginnings of the KKK in post-civil-war USA. I would add here ‘carrots’ like deregulated credit in the 1980s which atomised the working class by cultivating intra-class competition at the level of consumption. On this I highly recommend The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition by Maurizio Lazzarato.

Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 24 2024 21:17 utc | 50

Posted by: waynorinorway | Mar 24 2024 16:26 utc | 15
…(ahem) and me. Just sayin.

Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 24 2024 21:29 utc | 51

@Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 24 2024 19:32 utc | 31
“Antifa” or “Black Lives Matter” (some of the leaders of which seemed to have made themselves into millionaires) were just labels for allowed lawlessness. Seattle was a good example. A way of redirecting anger within the masses rather than having it directed against the ruling class, making one part of the people fight the other. Same with “soft” DA’s allowing petty criminals off to reoffend again and again, a destabilized group do not possess solidarity – criminals that will never be allowed into the gated communities. Same with the Capitol “insurrection”. The same with allowing massive numbers of immigrants, whether legal in Canada (The population of Canada increased by 14% in 10 years, 30% in 20 years, all immigration and concentrated in Ontario and BC) or legal and illegal in the US (15% in 20 years, predominantly immigrants, and that is using official data). Immigrants are a wonderful scapegoat with which to create havoc within the working class, as well as providing willing workers at any price.
In New York there are now more illegal migrants housed in migrants centres than the homeless. This could have been easily stopped as local state officials have shown, but it wasn’t.
EXCLUSIVE: See inside the migrant shelter at NYC’s Roosevelt Hotel | NBC New York
It seems that over 300,000 migrants were actually flown into to the US by the US Federal Government
357K migrants have been flown into US under Biden parole program
Then we have “charities” and “NGOs” specifically funded by the state to facilitate illegal immigration
NGOs use American tax dollars to relocate migrants | Morning in America
So instead of sending the illegal migrants back, the authorities hand them over to these independent groups to spread them around the US, making sure that they cannot be easily found and deported.
A great game for the ruling class, destabilize Central and Southern American nations and then take in the hardier souls (the ones that make it to the border) under conditions that will make them willing and cheap labour, and easy to hire for the army or security services as needed. The same way the British used the brutalized Irish to fill the ranks of the imperial army and administrations.
Within the halls of academia such political-economic analysis of migrants is not allowed, deemed to be “racist” etc. It also does appear anywhere on the mainstream liberal media. The ruling class war will not be televised.

Posted by: Roger | Mar 24 2024 21:48 utc | 52

“…That is why Britain protected Marx: for causing chaos in Russia.”
petergrfstrm | Mar 24 2024 20:16 utc | 43
In what respect did Britain protect Marx who was just one of hundreds of political refugees in the country, including, of course, Bakunin, Herzen, Kropotkin and many other Russians. As to Rockefeller what interest could the British have in protecting his oil interests? They had plenty of their own- including their holdings in the Baku fields. The British, heavily invested in Russian industry and mineral exploration, had no interest at all in causing chaos in Russia, not until 1918 anyway.
Still fullmarks for the revelation that the British and US forces in the Civil War were fighting alongside the Reds- I had no idea that this was so. No doubt you have scads of evidence.

Posted by: bevin | Mar 24 2024 21:49 utc | 53

Posted by: Roger | Mar 24 2024 14:51 utc | 7
Thank you for the salient commentary.

Posted by: nwwoods | Mar 24 2024 21:55 utc | 54

@canuck
one of the reasons I come here is to feel surrounded by classy folks, cool folks, that really inspires me.
there are a number of folks I particularly appreciate, like c1ue (welcome back) n Norwegian, n many more.
I address this to you because oftentimes I’m dismayed, reading folks getting all thin-skinned n whiny, n resorting to name-calling and contemptuous attitudes, n i almost wanna puke.
I like how you remain cool, n salute you fellow Canadian👍

Posted by: Featherless | Mar 24 2024 22:05 utc | 55

“no end to the sources of the sort of drivel that assert, contrary to all known facts and every logical expectation that the Russian revolution was financed by (Jewish, of course) bankers and supported by the precise forces which fought against it from 1917 until 1990.
Posted by: bevin”
bevin, two hundred million people might wrest control from a few shitty jews over the decades and do something that wasn’t foreseen by them. The world isn’t a black and white fantasy where the jew angels are just on one side with perfect plans. They financed the nazis as well and then had a little scuffle later. They set up Hamas and lost control. Let’s not be ridiculously naive.
Posted by: Michael A | Mar 24 2024 17:14 utc | 22
I don’t think bevin is naive, I think he is intellectually blinded by his ideology, Marxism, such that he forces square pegs into round holes.
Jacob Schiff, the Jewish Wall Street banker put up his hand over a 100 years ago bragging he put $20 MM (in today money like $600MM) to support the Bosheviks yet bevin cries incoherently, ” contrary to all known facts and every logical expectation that the Russian revolution was financed by (Jewish, of course) bankers and supported by the precise forces which fought against it from 1917 until 1990.”
Wow.
Anyways, bevin compensates for his hmmm, er, ‘misperceptions’ of history by writing excruciating long, meandering posts that remind me of a famous Macbeth quote:
“bevin tells a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.”

Posted by: canuck | Mar 24 2024 22:06 utc | 56

@Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 24 2024 21:17 utc | 50
Thanks for the recommendation. Increasing levels of debt have maintained consumption levels while the real incomes of the working people have been reduced, while also serving as a disciplinary device to remove individuals freedoms. The weight of debt serves to force people to pick more remunerative positions, work hard to keep those conditions (keeping “out of trouble”) and act in ways that commoditize themselves and through competition reduce solidarity. Competing with each other to gain/maintain relative positions within a ruling class defined exploitative game. I will read his work, looks very interesting, thanks.

Posted by: Roger | Mar 24 2024 22:13 utc | 57

Bevin @53
While I mostly agree with you about the way imperialists use extreme propaganda claims about mass death to try to discredit communists and socialists, I think it worth noting that there is nothing inherently implausible or even particularly surprising about the possibility that a few rich Jews in New York over a century ago might have decided to dabble a bit in Russian politics by throwing a little money at what was then a fairly obscure ideological movement like the Bolsheviks. Their possible motives for doing so might have ranged from having heard that there were a few Jews, like Trotsky, among the leadership of the Bolsheviks, to hoping to possibly gain a few benefits if the Bolsheviks won, to simple stirring up trouble in a country they disliked. Even assuming it happened, there is no good reason to infer from it that it had any huge implications, like being a sign that Wall Street “really” controlled the Soviet Union. So rather than argue that it is obviously untrue that the Bolshevik’s could have gotten any support from capitalists in the West who may have had only the slightest idea of who the Bolsheviks were or what they stood for, I think it might be better to just point out that even if it happened, it doesn’t mean very much or in any way undermine the historical significance of the Russian Revolution.

Posted by: The Real Fnord13 | Mar 24 2024 22:29 utc | 58

” On this I highly recommend The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition by Maurizio Lazzarato.”
Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 24 2024 21:17 utc | 50
Here is an excerpt from the book you referred to:
“The debtor-creditor relation, which is at the heart of this book, sharpens mechanisms of exploitation and domination indiscriminately, since, in it, there is no distinction between workers and the unemployed, consumers and producers, working and non-working populations, between retirees and welfare recipients. They are all ‘debtors,’ guilty and responsible in the eyes of capital, which has become the Great, the Universal, Creditor.” (1)
Yes, only a highly educated scholar from a white, ivory tower would classify, “workers, the unemployed, consumers and producers” all in the same camp as ‘debtors’?
But Patroklos and his super educated scholar brethren [but so redundant, and so boring, editor] have just scratched the surface soon they will add to the above category with “birds, snakes, trees and bugs” as they work for the planet ecologically , are exploited victims and we , humans, owe them a debt.
Welcome to the world of Marxism that, just as the medieval Cathodic scholars such as St. Aquinas whom argued about how many ‘angels can dance on the head of the pin; modern ‘educated’ Marxists argue, ‘how can we twist logic around so violently so we can add more exploited victims”.
1.https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781584351153/the-making-of-the-indebted-man/—from The Making of the Indebted Man

Posted by: canuck | Mar 24 2024 22:29 utc | 59

“- Former Pentagon official: “Many more body bags” needed to achieve regime change in Russia – Dan Cohen, Jan 23 2023″
Regime change rarely works out as hoped. If the CIA were tokill Putin, eg, any successor would NOT be submissive to the USA, but as least as independent.

Posted by: lester | Mar 24 2024 22:33 utc | 60

“@canuck
“one of the reasons I come here is to feel surrounded by classy folks, cool folks, that really inspires me.
there are a number of folks I particularly appreciate, like c1ue (welcome back) n Norwegian, n many more.
I address this to you because oftentimes I’m dismayed, reading folks getting all thin-skinned n whiny, n resorting to name-calling and contemptuous attitudes, n i almost wanna puke.
I like how you remain cool, n salute you fellow Canadian👍”
Posted by: Featherless | Mar 24 2024 22:05 utc | 55
Thank you, Featherless. We Canadians do have a reputation as being polite. I’d give you a thumbs up too but I am IT retarded and I don’t know how.
I have lost my cool a few times and I instantly regret it.
I am more interested in the poster’s ideas than the poster himself; if we can divorce the two we can have more intellectually fruitful discussions.
I am from Oakville Ontrio, where are you from?

Posted by: canuck | Mar 24 2024 22:36 utc | 61

Chris Cosmos | Mar 24 2024 15:51 utc | 11
You are absolutely correct. For years truth was less important than conforming to the accepted truth.
Also Yves the a died in the wool hypochondriac and will always cherry pick news that supports her phobia.

Posted by: jef | Mar 24 2024 22:44 utc | 62

S # 1 and 6
Thank you.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 24 2024 22:59 utc | 63

canuck | Mar 24 2024 22:06 utc | 56
There is no evidence apart from the odd boasts of idiots which you take on trust for obvious reasons that Schiff financed the Bolshevik Revolution or that it required financing.
I note that you do not practise the doctrines-regarding ad hominems and the folly of insulting those whose arguments you cannot refute- that you so regularly rehearse.
This inability to live by the rules that you so gaily apply to others extends to your refusal to understand that you are far more the victim of ideology than most posters here: the fact that you don’t realise that swallowing everything that you read and cut and paste from the internet are indications of your enslavement to the ideology of capitalism is something that you ought to think about.
But I suspect that to do so would break the habits of a lifetime of getting by without questioning those in authority and spouting conventional wisdom.
Do everyone a favour and stop pretending to know anything about, for example, Marx or the history of the Soviet Union. In the time you save by posting rather than trolling you can read books on the subjects. You will then be in a position to comment on them.

Posted by: bevin | Mar 24 2024 23:00 utc | 64

Roger | Mar 24 2024 21:48 utc | 52
It also serves to enrage the population against the “invading” peoples making it easier to warrant killing the efuck out of them.

Posted by: jef | Mar 24 2024 23:12 utc | 65

Bevin has the best description of US I’ve seen which is that its objective is always to “produce a Hell on Earth.” Bevin’s comment appears following July 7, 2023 Moon of Alabama post, “Ukraine-Biden again escalates.” Bevin is comment #103, responding to comment #82:
Among comments:
“The underlying cause of the Ukrainian conflict has not yet been identified, yet alone addressed…” [commenter] too scents@82″
[Commenter Bevin, #103, replies to commenter “too scents”]
“The underlying cause of this-and every other conflict of the kind–
is the US government’s commitment to Full Spectrum Dominance.
It really is as simple as that- the US government is the global equivalent of
Organised Crime. And everywhere that it goes,
from south east Asia to Europe, to Africa and Latin America,
it recruits and trains the criminally inclined to work with it and for
its objective which is to produce a Hell on Earth,
in which a small class of exploiters devour the substance which humanity, in harmony with nature, produces.
The war in Ukraine, where victory [by the Russian Federation]
is critical to humanity’s future,
is nevertheless little more than a sideshow
in world wide struggle between imperialism, no longer masked
as anything more than a criminal project,
and life.
Life demands balance, justice and love and abhors
cannibalism
which is the very essence of the criminality of Empire-
a greedy minority
surrounded by the bones and the shortened, blighted lives
of those whom they have devoured.
What Biden is telling us, and those like him have been
telling us with increasing confidence
for eighty years,
is that obvious breaches of law and morality no longer matter
because the domination that the ruling class has over the world
includes control of information and opinion, which means that
the criminals have the ability to re-write the law to ensure that they cannot be identified as breaking it.
The US government has been breaking every rule in the book,
reneging on every agreement it ever made and
betraying both the letter and spirit of every law it runs into-
domestically and internationally-
since people started paying attention to its actions….
But since 1945….
it’s government has been taken over by the CIA, an institution which is
not only out of but beyond control-
it runs all three branches of government,
the entire law enforcement system,
the media,
the internet,
all means of communication and education.
And is rapidly taking over every other government-
it owns the UN for example.
Its agents fill the legislatures across Europe-
they command the armed forces of most of the world’s military, and they are constantly beavering away,
gnawing at the roots of the few power centres that it does not already control.
But there is hope, yet, in those countries which have had, over the centuries
enough of imperialism-
as its colonised objects- to teach them that
there is one imperative in politics today,
one precondition to the solution of mankind’s many problems,
and that is the defeat of the Empire
and the re-education of the millions that it has corrupted.
This last will not be hard- the basis of imperialism is the belief that it is the winning side, once that is dealt with
in the form of a comprehensive defeat,
the Empire will expire with the whimpering of bullies and time servers
learning that might
is not right
and that justice, the foundation of all physics and philosophy,
will triumph or life will end.”…
“Posted by: bevin | Jul 7 2023 18:46 utc | 103″

Posted by: Susan Mullen | Mar 24 2024 23:17 utc | 66

@ S great posts.
@ Posted by: petergrfstrm | Mar 24 2024 20:16 utc | 43
@ Roger
Ditto
Let me reintroduce some history regarding our perfidious Albion which I haven’t seen mentioned.
The pesky English Great Gamers have it in the blood, in-bred as it is over generations, to expect that original pre-greater Ydion dream, the Mackinder World Island conquest as if it is a God Given right.
On the back of feeling ‘let down’ by Langley and WH, these aristo military family types and medieval Crown Servants were unable to conceal, at the betrayal by the BFF cousins in Washington, in the chaotic retreat from Afghanistan – there is truth in why and how this latest set of actions from where us Brits have been for centuries – through the same aristo families!
This is not about Ukraine. Or about Russia resisting Nato. It is not about pointless Pax America bases that are pandemic across the world!
This is abou the last Anglo/French entente – GreenMantle rides forth in the last Gasp of the Great Game
Its a centuries long attempt by the Masters to get hold of their greatest prize – the largest EurAsian country and chew it up and spit it out for their own special brew to sup at their leisure over the next centuries.
Look at the mess they have made of the Oceans, the Americas environment, the mega destruction in Africa and now Australia and Pacific.
Russia China and Asia, still a lot of Africa are relativel pristine in comparison!
Their eyes on Antarctica and Artic and near space should be humanity’s greatest concern to stop.
———————————
While we are here,
@ Posted by: Jack A | Mar 24 2024 20:02 utc | 41
Posted by: Jack A | Mar 24 2024 20:07 utc | 42
Lol. See above.
What I hear you saying is :
‘Harrumph! As a Mad Dog master of the Great Game – how dare you say my black face disguise and beard doesn’t fool you! Bloody cheek..we English are the greatest civilising empire the world ever knew and will always be ! We taught you language , religion and law ..blah blah blah.

Posted by: DunGroanin | Mar 24 2024 23:24 utc | 67

@ bevin | Mar 24 2024 21:49 utc | 53
Marx said he had the best working conditions in his life at the time when he was in Britain and his handler Urquhart was manipulating what literature he accessed.
All radicals on the continent belonged to Britains extensive masonic networks. Britains lord Palmerston secretely became the top dog simultaneously with the Kings death and Victoria inheriting the crown.
His motto was ‘unrest and confusion abroad, peace and stability at home’.
And he really lived up to that.
His networks caused the unrest.
You mention Bakunin. Both he and another of the radicals, Richard Wagner were connected. Bakunin for communism while Wagner became an important inspiration for nazism with the help of Houston Chamberlain and others.
Wagners first success was based on Bulwer Lyttons novel Rienzi. Lytton has been called the High Priest of the Isis Cult. And continued for decades to play a role in Britains encouragement of the Occult that eventually influenced the Thule Society.
Britain massproduced tens of cults.
The British did not want to protect the oil interests for the Rockefellers nor for the Rothschilds. They wanted to discourage the bankers to have any partnership with Britains rivals.
This is still the case that the US/UK never wants the bankers to be international neutral investors, despite all the talk about cosmopolitans.
The foreign support for tatar terrorists killing the staff in the oil businesses 1907 made it difficult to run them.
But the rothschilds divested in 1907 after Edward VII threatened them they wouldnt be welcome in Britain unless they fulfilled his instructions.
The masons had already issued masonic deaththreats in 1888 aimed to the Rothschild clan so this wasnt new.
Nobody said the US/UK were fighting side by side with the reds.
The US fought Japan to save the Transibirian railway on behalf of the bolsheviks.
And evidence is in the NYT from 1920 where the ‘bolsheviks thank their american friends as they left Vladivostok for having saved their movement at a difficult time’
I have previously referred to Nikolai Starikovs ‘The liquidation of Russia who helped the reds to win the civil war’ where it is explained how Britain systematically undermined the white armies.
Lenin and Britain had made a deal. In order for Britain not to give the white armies substantial help Lenin had to have all the heirs to the Tsar title killed and to arrange the sinking of Tsar Russias navy.
The British army held the promise.
All the weapons they sent were faulty.
And in 1919 british military with tanks refused to drive to the front claiming tanks are for scaring the enemy from a distance not for fighting.
A white army general had to threaten to kill them to get them to obey.
The British also bungled deliveries so those white forces who had plenty of ammo got more while those who lacked it didnt get more. The British blamed the railway services. They also blamed strikes in Britain. As if the mighty elites wouldnt be able to force anybody to do whatever those elites had decided. Acting totally independently from the puppets in the parliament. A Deep State for sure.

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Mar 24 2024 23:28 utc | 68

@ Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 24 2024 19:48 utc | 38
I say fake Tom! Do I get prize?
Didn’t spot the secret character 😉

Posted by: DunGroanin | Mar 24 2024 23:46 utc | 69

@bevin | Mar 24 2024 23:00 utc | 64
So Bevin you doubt that the bolshevik revolution needed financing. That means the narrative you have so far trusted is so precious to you that I fear you wont do what you advice others to do, namely to learn something new.
This illustrates that ideology may be like a religion.
The information about financing was revealed in masonic records captured from the nazis by the red army and all the usual countries of the west were involved like now: The US UK France Germany and Italy also. Volpi di Misurata as a representative for the Venetians and the Black Guelph faction of old families played a role.
Odessa was an old Venetian colony since the beginning of Russia. Alexander Helphand (“Parvus”) was promoted by Volpi.
Oleg Platonov mentions 50M dollars but estimates it was twice that.
I dont know if Sweden did more than act as a middleman but they were involved.
There are rumours that Sweden was employed by the western plotters for the biggest money laundering operation ever.
Also Lenin had ancestry in Sweden.
I know that in 1915 the bankers met in Paris and decided the Tsar must go. But by then the angloamerican networks had got the FED and that changed everything.
Further bankers financing revolutions doesnt mean they put their own money at serious risk. It was just imperial business. They got it back later.
Like Orwell said power exists in the form of an oligarchic collective. They are a team. When they pay for a revolution they are not alone.

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Mar 24 2024 23:57 utc | 70

Posted by: bevin | Mar 24 2024 23:00 utc | 64
I simply wouldn’t bother engaging with Canuck. He wears his lack of depth and cereal-box wisdom like a badge of honour. He leaps at the first imagined ‘gotcha!’ moment, declaring political economy ‘Marxist ideology’ without the first clue. Like a maple-leaf shaped Forest Gump he declares “I may not be a smart man but that gives me a simple honesty against you academic types with all your book-learn’ding”. A monkey banging on a garbage-bin lid is not a musician whichever way you try to spin it.

Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 25 2024 0:09 utc | 71

canuk – from the previous Ukraine thread.
Capitalism for the people…. European capitalism/mindset.
Lets see what got us where we are today. Portugese and Spain first began raiding the world in a big way. Those Spanish galleons loaded with gold and silver from the Americas. The tonnage is mind boggling.
Then French and Brits. Germany had a bit of a go. French only now getting booted out of much of Africa and its cheap resources there.
The Brits, sucking the wealth out of more advanced societies, taking the land of those who had no wealth as living space.
I am very aware of this as all my forebears were shipped here on migration schemes for the poor. The Brits offshoring the poor. All my forebears did better here than they ever could have in England. Why couldn’t they. Free land.
One thing to always remember was that peak cold war – peak threat of communism spreading to the western populations – was peak democracy and peak wealth equality in the west. With the thread of communism fading, freedoms and wealth were quickly reeled back in.
Western peasants only received that for a short time to ward off the threat of communism to the western elite.
The big picture of communism that I see – the Russian empire and China started with large populations of poverty stricken illiterate peasants. I think both the Russian leadership and the Chinese leadership of the day had tried to do something to change the situation a bit but it was far too little, far too late.
From I have seen, a very narrow or simple ideology is required to carry people through the turbulence of revolution but that must quickly be broadened into the likes of communism with Chinese characteristics and so forth.
Because the main part of the population is illiterate, first requirement is education and then progress from there. That does not occur overnight.
The ‘American west’ is well known for the lawlessness that occurred there plus the huge opportunity on the free lands – free because they were stolen.
Here in oz, my father one a block of land in a ballot in somewhere around 59. Free land.
But in most places, when people suddenly start acquiring more prosperity, there will also be a criminal element looking for opportunity. All this has to be worked through.
I don’t know what part of Vietnam you were in but there is a large area in that part of the world – northern Indochina, northern Myanmar, the easternmost province of India, southern China – very rough country that various ethnic groups have migrated into over the centuries due to various wars and periods of turbulence so that is a very different part of the world. There is still much lawlessness there or at least the opportunity for it.
Where China has come from since 1949 – there is nothing like it in history as far as I am aware. Communism – communism with Chinese characteristics very much suits the Chinese culture.
Vietnam – when did it finally boot the US out and become an independent country? 76?
That would put it about 25 years behind China in development if it were to progress at the same rate.
The one thing I see about communism is the stable government that allows for long term planning – but it must also fit the culture of a country.
Although, for both external and internal reasons the Soviet Union collapsed, it did greatly change Russia for the better and I think we are seeing that finally emerge now.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 25 2024 0:22 utc | 72

From CROCUS comes Saffron . How does National Resistance Front of Afghanistan fit in with (Special K – ISiS ?) It would be a sad – state of affairs if that string quartet is the convenient narrative . Try this , I can’t figure it out Englishmen ! Ahmad Massoud (jnr ) Shah , Alma Matter Kings College, city of deals , grad of RM.A. SANDHURST ( peace studies !) with a Masters Deg ( Hon ) of INTERNATIONAL POLITICS – City University/ Lowdown London ! Anyone get a Press Release from them , my bank is held in Ransom – any thoughts , on red flags of blood or red saffron ?

Posted by: Paleologos | Mar 25 2024 0:24 utc | 73

To Roger:
Thank you for linking your essay re fascism, very interesting, including comments!
Oh my, another blog worth subscribing.

Posted by: Multipolar Panda | Mar 25 2024 0:27 utc | 74

“Where China has come from since 1949 – there is nothing like it in history as far as I am aware. Communism – communism with Chinese characteristics very much suits the Chinese culture.”
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 25 2024 0:22 utc | 72
A quite comprehensive post, thanks.
I don’t agree with ‘where China came from since 1949″-yes- in the last century it was an economical miracle; however, if one peers into the lens of time the Han Chinese (95% Han) were the biggest economy from 1,000 BC to 1730 when England overtook them.
In the first quarter of 21012 , according to the Economist, China had the largest economy in the world by PPP (Price Purchasing Power); now in PPP in 2023 it exceeds the US by 25%.
So, in my thinking, the period of 1730 to 2012 was the anomaly, not the other way around.

Posted by: canuck | Mar 25 2024 0:38 utc | 75

canuck | Mar 25 2024 0:38 utc | 75
Education and stable government are the big ones. One other thing. In China, corruption by government officials usually carries the death penalty. Many have been caught in the last decade or two.
Nuremberg described aggression as the greatest crime. I have the impression that within China, corruption by those who have sworn to serve the people is the greatest crime.
Here in Australia, and the same in Canada, and NZ, our PM on being sworn in swear allegiance to the monarch of England, not to the people of their countries.
I can see how communism works well for many countries but can also see that it must fit the culture.
Here in the west, there is a different culture – Greeko Roman culture and perhaps more suited to the form of governance we see in current Russia, where there is also a large degree of socialism with government control of natural monopolies and so forth.
Australia used to have something similar but around the eighties began ditching it in favor of American privatization. That is the point at which wealth inequality began to drastically increase.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 25 2024 0:54 utc | 76

If people read nothing else on b’s list this week I suggest they read former Nato officer Alex Vershinin’s excellent The Attritional Art of War: Lessons from the Russian War on Ukraine which provides an excellent account of the differences between attritional warfare and the far more popular in the west manoeuvre warfare that is shortlived, requires less industrial capacity and works well in situations where the force has a technological advantage over their opponents.
It is likely that Fukus/Nato considered manoeuvre warfare to be completed to victory in less than 12 months to be the type of warfare between Ukraine and the Russian Federation likely to occur. Once that proved to be an error, they lacked the reserves & industrial capacity to change horses mid-stream.
However Russia wasn’t so foolish as to fall into that trap and after some initial strategic screw-ups elected to revert to the type of attritional warfare that the Soviet Red Army had intended to fight if war had ever broken out between Warsaw Pact nations and Nato.
This blueprint for attritional warfare Vershinin outlines is pretty much a blueprint for the war Russia has conducted since the failure of the Turkiye sponsored peace agreement. IMO if any of the alleged naysayers who claim they support Russia but it just isn’t moving fast enough or conducting the war in the correct way are genuine, then this paper is a must read for them to understand that the Russian side isn’t conducting “Putin’s War” but rather is a military driven strategy seeking to win in a winnable manner. Here is an excerpt from some of the conclusion to the paper, the bold type is mine:

“The conduct of attritional wars is vastly different from wars of manoeuvre. They last longer and end up testing a country’s industrial capacity. Victory is assured by careful planning, industrial base development and development of mobilisation infrastructure in times of peace, and even more careful management of resources in wartime.
Victory is attainable by carefully analysing one’s own and the enemy’s political objectives. The key is recognising the strengths and weaknesses of competing economic models and identifying the economic strategies that are most likely to generate maximum resources. These resources can then be utilised to build a massive army using the high/low force and weapons mixture. The military conduct of war is driven by overall political strategic objectives, military realities and economic limitations. Combat operations are shallow and focus on destroying enemy resources, not on gaining terrain. Propaganda is used to support military operations, not the other way around. With patience and careful planning, a war can be won.”

The paper contains footnotes in the form of links to important evidence verifying statements made. One of the more interesting one is a report generated in 2018 concerning amerika’s woeful industrial base and the disastrous effect it would have on a war with a peer opponent. The report was shelved post the 2020 change in administration. It is possible to sledge the Trump administration for many things but they did have their eyes on the ball re military challenges unlike what came next.
Link to :
2018 government interagency report on US industrial capacity
There is much more in this paper making it well worth the read, so I won’t repeat them all here, better those interested in such matters peruse the document in its entirety.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Mar 25 2024 1:44 utc | 77

“Posted by: bevin | Mar 24 2024 23:00 utc | 64
I simply wouldn’t bother engaging with Canuck. He wears his lack of depth and cereal-box wisdom like a badge of honour. He leaps at the first imagined ‘gotcha!’ moment, declaring political economy ‘Marxist ideology’ without the first clue. Like a maple-leaf shaped Forest Gump he declares “I may not be a smart man but that gives me a simple honesty against you academic types with all your book-learn’ding”. A monkey banging on a garbage-bin lid is not a musician whichever way you try to spin it.”
Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 25 2024 0:09 utc | 71
I like to think I use Occam’s Razor to keep unnecessary verbiage and rhetoric down; yet ,’a monkey banging on a garbage-bin lid is not a musician’ I find it hard to fathom but thanks Patroklos for the attention-which is paradoxical as you advise ‘not to engage with canuk”;then you engage yourself; interesting..
“Don’t engage with canuk”, is also a form of censorship which fits snugly into the Marxist playbook.
Anyways, Patroklos have a good evening.

Posted by: canuck | Mar 25 2024 1:51 utc | 78

Patroklos @ 50:
Thanks for recommending Maurizio Lazzarato’s book “The Making of the Indebted Man”.
I just discovered that Lazzarato also wrote “Governing by Debt” which forms a pair with “The Making …”, in that if “The Making …” examines the implications of the creditor / debtor relationship for the general public (the debtors) and the culture and society created by debtors, then “Governing …” focuses on the role of the State and private corporations in that relationship. Another one on my reading list!

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Mar 25 2024 2:13 utc | 79

I wrote a post yesterday, outlining some known steps the ISKP took during the last years. You can find it here:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/03/media-snippets-related-to-the-crocus-city-hall-attack.html?cid=6a00d8341c640e53ef02c8d3aea9d7200d#comment-6a00d8341c640e53ef02c8d3aea9d7200d
In my opinion, this is just a re-orientation of the tool IS to the new theater: Russia, China, Iran.
Here’s another good indication of the dynamics: at the end of 2023, an Afghan Taliban group released several statements worth listening to:

In the second half of September, the group published a statement titled “Rahmonov [sic], the Motivator of ISIS”, branding him “a communist” and accusing him of creating domestic conditions wherein “Salafi-minded” and “deceived and empty-minded youth of Tajikistan” have “fallen prey to the propaganda of ISIS” and these foreign nationals have launched attacks inside Afghanistan, against its neighbors in Iran, and are abundant in the Taliban’s prisons. It concludes by encouraging Rahmon to cease being a “puppet of imperialism” and to stop sowing “seeds of discord between the brotherly nations of Afghanistan and Tajikistan.”
In late August, al-Mersaad published its most comprehensive video entirely focused on Tajikistan’s nationals who are members of ISKP and who have been either captured or have carried out operations in Afghanistan in the recent past. The video became a potent tool of propaganda devised by the Taliban with the aim of portraying ISKP as a movement which is not native of Afghanistan but rather exclusively driven by foreign intelligence agencies with the aim of undermining the Afghan interim government.

The same accusations as foreign intelligence assets as in 2020 when TTP split off.
10 years ago, when ISKP popped out of nowhere, it was perfectly timed for US Anti-Syrian operations:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/how-khorasan-went-from-nowhere-to-the-biggest-threat-to-the
But now, oh what a coincidence, it has a new target:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/05/09/islamic-state-afghanistan-khorasan-propaganda-russia-ukraine-war/
Notice how in the last two articles the name Khorasan gets explained by the experts:
2014: “has particular eschatological meanings related to jihadist views of the end times.”
2024: “named after a historical region that encompassed northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan”
The latter one being correct, and that was already known in 2014, just look at the comments of the article, they know more than the „experts“ but at that time would have shown that something is amiss.
Also notice the original links to Al-Nusra, the US friends of Timber Sycamore fame.

Posted by: Multipolar Panda | Mar 25 2024 2:22 utc | 80

I find it hard to fathom
Posted by: canuck | Mar 25 2024 1:51 utc | 78
Your honesty wins through at last.

Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 25 2024 2:38 utc | 81

Like Orwell said power exists in the form of an oligarchic collective. They are a team. When they pay for a revolution they are not alone.
Posted by: petergrfstrm | Mar 24 2024 23:57 utc | 70
……………………………
Do you have one or two books you could kindly recommend going over the unusual historical layers you often skim over here in rapid fire?
My main personal take is this crazy old world spins round and round following game-like rules operating on infinite level of intertangled separate skeins. No level can understand all others, though some; also people who view things X way cannot understand those who see it Y way. Many layers and levels.
One of the many problems we encounter individually and collectively is being convinced that our perspective is the only correct one making any which differ highly suspect and thus probably dishonorable and essentially enemies.
On this board, for example, some with strong opinions holding a particular historical or geopolitical position find those with differing views worthy of contempt. This is a small, relatively unimportant collective in disembodied cyber space but the way it is so hard for people with common interests to commune meaningfully is a good example of why history is mainly mayhem and murder. Hatred and ignorance are the preferred coin of the modernist secular realms be they of the capitalist, fascist, communist or socialist ilk, all different facets of the same underlying materialist fallacies.
Philosophically, I think Dugin might be trying to chart a better course forward. Or he could be just another nationalist fascist intellectual. Either way, Russia tried an extensive materialist top to bottom do over last century to make a perfect world but for whatever reason it featured the early deaths of millions (which partisan leftists simply deny if course) and finally petering out in the 90s (perhaps). Now they are dramatically rebuilding but a major factor contributing to clear and present rising greatness is their seeming success in reviving deep-rooted Russian-ness, indeed the non-material quintessence of collective Russian character and spirit which, not coincidentally, is precisely that which secular materialists can neither understand nor, therefore, control.
This is perhaps the huge glaring irony of our age, one which is of stupendous import but not to be found in historical records or preferred secular ideologies.
PS Of course one can catalog the ills of so many non-Russian civilizations, esp. the current Angli-Zionist hegemon etc, but the latter is past its due date whereas Russia is ostensibly leading us, with China, into a brave new multipolar world. Hence her recent history is perhaps worthy of more study and scrutiny.

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 25 2024 2:39 utc | 82

Larry Johnson:
– US state department: “Ukraine didn’t do it” (it = attack in Moscow). State department seems to be scared to be associated with the attack because State knew. (because of retaliation by Russia ??). But State didn’t pass this information on to the russians. The attacks were executed with weapons provided by the US.

Posted by: WMG | Mar 25 2024 2:40 utc | 83

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Mar 25 2024 2:13 utc | 79
Excellent, yes ML’s work is very cogent and timely. You rightly see the two as a complementary pair. I believe Library Genesis provides access to both as PDFs.
I’d add only that L follows Nietzsche’s first essay from Genealogy of Morals, where N. points out the entanglement of debt and guilt in the German word Schuld. The vast moral psychology of indebtedness and shame provides a powerful form of self-censorship among the aspirational poor. Not only are the population compelled to surrender surplus labour in interest, they are grateful to those who extract it. Truly diabolical.

Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 25 2024 2:44 utc | 84

Posted by: DunGroanin | Mar 24 2024 23:46 utc | 69
Nah that was me. 🙂
I may not have been super clear, but I only start using the “special character” once one of the bodysnatchers has made the first TQC post in a given thread.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 25 2024 2:45 utc | 85

Posted by: Roger | Mar 24 2024 21:48 utc | 52
I understand about BLM the “corporate influencer” version, for sure. More on migrants in a bit.
And to add to, or clarify, something I said earlier (really quite surprised it didn’t ignite a firestorm – but MoA seems to have a massive influx of new patrons during rough periods in the US social fabric, so same people aren’t around today) about property damage.
In fact, “Antifa” or “antifa” has damaged property before but only when you count the anarchists and/or “black bloc” which is a highly infiltrated segment of the greater antifascist movement. Further, the US antifascist movement has morphed almost entirely to a racial justice message, since the WTO thing in Seattle (and barring the crazy highly disorganized protests against both Trump and Biden’s election in Portland and Seattle). So I can think of literally 2 separate incidents where “Antifa” or the “black bloc” actually set out to destroy property and both were in Portland, one directed almost solely at the US federal building.
Any thoughts on this take? Because I tend to agree with it.
https://eu.eot.su/2021/06/08/antifa-or-antifascists-the-american-experience/
And to the point on infiltration, I’d argue that US “antifa” or “Antifa” is exactly what you say, and this is one of the proof points.
https://popularresistance.org/infiltrating-antifa-the-feds-and-their-long-history-of-subversion/
Re: Migrants – I have a tough time caring too much about what happens in the US mainland when we’re talking about people migrating here in flight from brutal economic repression (read: warfare) being conducted on them by the US government.
A further nuance – I empathize greatly with Europeans who have seen their countries’ demographics changed dramatically due to the influx of ME and Africans fleeing NATO and US wars. They never got to vote on it, they didn’t support the wars (even protested them far more than Americans did), and it’s not fair for them to have to deal with radically different cultures being foisted on them. I have a little less sympathy for those Europeans in long-time colonialist powers like Belgium, UK, Holland and France, but just a little since those policies are also not voted on democratically.
That said, if you’re an American bitching about illegals and actually SUPPORTING the draconian and frankly, evil, economic sabotage and illegal sanctions on Venezuela or other Latin American countries because they are “socialists” or whatever? Go fuck yourselves and enjoy the fruits of the policies that you actively support. If you can see that those policies are actually evil and actively vote against them or make your representatives know you are deeply opposed, then you have my ear and sympathy even though I know that no wall, including Israeli-style surveillance wall, will ever work if you don’t address the root cause. So, having talked here to people like Nemesis Calling about it in the past, I think he’s reasonably on the same page as me when it comes to just leaving countries like VZ, Cuba, and others alone because it will dramatically reduce the number of people trying to come here. I think I’m also in agreement with him that if we can do that, and the numbers drop significantly (as well as certain other metrics like people who just come to work vs. those who plan to live here, even illegally), then a much more modest border and wall infrastructure system will work – again, because the numbers are going to be a lot lower.
But right now I can’t think of a single Republican or centrist Democrat who actually wants to address the root cause, and both “progressives” and “conservatives” are being played like a fiddle over the downstream cause that’ll never change without abandoning certain/most Monroe Doctrine or imperialist foreign and foreign economic policy in favor among both Democrats and Republicans, including Trump – the architect of the most brutal sanctions on Venezuela for the crime of being socialist in this hemisphere.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 25 2024 3:01 utc | 86

Oh my, another blog worth subscribing.
Posted by: Multipolar Panda | Mar 25 2024 0:27 utc | 74
Roger’s blog at Substack is awesome. I subscribed a long time ago and he’s taught me a lot – especially about the history of UK labour and worker rights; having today no legitimate representative party in government with the complete abdication of duty (and stated mission) among UK Labour’s leadership. Same thing applies here with the Democrats, except I’d argue they started to shift to the corporate/financial right even earlier than UK Labour.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 25 2024 3:06 utc | 87

Posted by: persiflo | Mar 24 2024 20:23 utc | 44
Consider me interested. Could you please elaborate?

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 25 2024 3:08 utc | 88

An excellent article on relations between Indigenous peooles and European settlers by Steven Schwartzberg.
Highly recommended.
“…The greatest political divide in our world today is the divide between those who believe that benevolent authority (however variously defined) is necessary to the establishment, maintenance, and improvement of any worthwhile community, and its conduct of relations with any and all other communities, and those who think that at the most inclusive level the beloved community already exists (that it is constituted by the spiritual fact that all living beings are our kith and kin) and that our responsibility is to maintain balance and harmony with and within this beloved community without domination. Those on the pro-“benevolent authority” side of this divide tend to seek security through control and manipulation. Those on the other side understand that the whole cannot be dominated and that harmony and balance with and within it must be sought instead. Such balance and harmony is not a human creation, still less an expression of some “political will.” On the contrary, it is a gift of creation, and especially of our grandmother Earth, and we are all obliged to respect this gift…”
https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/03/reimagining-nationalism-and-democracy-with-the-view-from-the-shore/#more-149137

Posted by: bevin | Mar 25 2024 3:16 utc | 89

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Mar 24 2024 20:16 utc | 43
The US army was in Russia to fight alongside the White Russians, not the Bolsheviks. When you start with such an easily disproven statement, it makes the rest hard to get all too concerned about addressing.
The US’s own propaganda agents acknowledge this openly.
https://www.rferl.org/a/when-american-soldiers-fought-a-war-in-russia/30410353.html
https://peacehistory-usfp.org/ww1-russia/
Of course, as with everything a colonial/neo-colonial power does, there was a (prior to being coined) “realpolitik” or “enemy of my enemy” element to it, as well as the wrinkle that US soldiers fell under British command.
But to say the USA fought with the “commies” is ahistorical AF and brings into question anything else you might say on the matter.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 25 2024 3:19 utc | 90

It has been open secret that ISIS = CIA
https://tinyurl.com/5xr38acr

Posted by: denk | Mar 25 2024 3:23 utc | 91

Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 25 2024 3:01 utc | 86
Quite a bit in that post Tom, though I,more or less skimmed through to get the gist of it.
When we look at non west nations, many have a true leadership of very intelligent people rather than political ladder climbing animals in position of leadership.
Those countries with actual leadership tend to be able to hone in on root cause of a problem then map out the best way to rectify it.
In the west, the owners of the politicians mostly look at quarterly returns/ short term returns on monetary investment. US set itself up to become a major power with massive infrastructure investment, the sort of thing that may not bring immediate returns, but build the infrastructure and the economy will follow. That sort of thinking, or what was left of it disappeared, I believe, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But that mass migration into US and previously EU – All part of the massive collapse internally of the west. The destruction and rape of many countries simply because we could, the massive promotion of everything but the family, …..
The US takes the lead in all this stuff but everything needs to be looked aqt as a whole rather than focusing on separate aspects in the hope of resolving this or that aspect.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 25 2024 3:30 utc | 92

Posted by: Debsisdead | Mar 25 2024 1:44 utc | 77
Thanks for the reminder.

Posted by: Forest | Mar 25 2024 3:59 utc | 93

I followed the link to Taibbi’s Racket News only to see nothing has changed since I pulled the pin on my subscription last year.
Tabbi & Kirns harp on about net censorship incessantly. Yet somehow they always fail to remember that it was the zionists who first agitated for net censorship as they could see the writing on the wall, that an internet which permitted freedom of speech would include videos of exactly what the zionist occupation of Palestine looked like, particularly the cruel violence of oppressing Palestinian human rights.
So it was in 2010 that the senator J Lieberman introduced the ‘Internet Kill Switch” bill.
See this article by libertarian Thomas Knapp in 2020 which reminds amerikans of the long term deleterious effects of the failed bill.
It has been zionist pressure through their political lobby which has driven many politicians into so many breaches of the 1st amendment yet Taibbi deliberately ignores this issue even when raised by many racket news subscribers.
It is zionism which invented much in the censors ‘toolkit’ including so-called ‘fact checking’ and the use of astroturfers and bots to flood sites whose opinions differ from what hasbara considers ‘allowable’.
We all pulled our subscriptions so now Taibbi has to “hawk his fork” regularly around those few independent media sites ignorant or content to pretend to be, of his avowed zionism as he is still considered to be persona non grata in the mainstream media Taibbi longs to rejoin.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Mar 25 2024 4:45 utc | 94

canuck | Mar 25 2024 1:51 utc | 78
I write about it a bit here at times, but that bit of time with the aboriginal community in NW Australia did greatly change how I view other cultures.
Most could have the same experience, but either stay woke racist or good old fashioned white racist.
It difficult to explain. A people… different culture different language different history. A lot of distrust of whitey. The whites there told me how I should treat the blacks. Dogooder woke were the opposite but didn’t have a fycking clue. The aboriginal people were not woke.
I’m not a woke dogooder but I couldn’t treat them like other whites said I should. Could get any to work for me the first year, next year a few called me and we put in the season. At the end of that year, all the young blokes from the communities (two in that area) were asking me for a job. They wanted me to teach the how to repair vehicles, weld, steel fabrication and so forth.
Same as anyone, they wanted a job where they had a sense of pride in their work, in doing a job well, they wanted to have paying work that would let them by the crap and nicnacs any moderately prosperous society does.
But… they wanted to live according to their culture and live and work on the land of their people.
But in this Greeco Roman world, that will never happen. They will all end up fringe dwellers as the majority, are and through succeeding generations, develop a fringe dweller culture.
The racism I see there, coming from left and right as we watch the continued genocide of the Australian aboriginal people and crap on about the US genocide of the Uighurs – I can say with utter certainty the the Australian aboriginal people would have been far better off under Chinese communism.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 25 2024 4:47 utc | 95

Posted by: Debsisdead | Mar 25 2024 4:45 utc | 94
So much truth in that. Too much to unpack at midnight with a workday looming, but I agree. And they teamed with original “Cancel Culture” (Zion-related) Bari fuckin’ Weiss in their Twitter Files which was when I pulled my sub.
Matt and Walter are rich now. Good for them. Whatever. They don’t need my $5/month.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 25 2024 5:22 utc | 96

…(ahem) and me. Just sayin.
Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 24 2024 21:29 utc | 51
You Patroklos? You? Fer sure you! That’s a given, certainly no slight intended.
It’s such a noisy bar now but your voice always comes through loud & clear.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Mar 25 2024 5:42 utc | 97

Posted by: waynorinorway | Mar 25 2024 5:42 utc | 97
Thanks dude, I was kinda kidding, but appreciate it. Don’t forget yourself too, a tireless comrade ✊

Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 25 2024 6:22 utc | 98

31 Tom_Q_Collins, 7 Roger. Cornell West said Antifa protected him and other counter protestors marching against ‘Unite the Right’ in Charlottesville, VA in 2017.

Posted by: Lavieja | Mar 25 2024 7:56 utc | 99

@ Scorpion | Mar 25 2024 2:39 utc | 82
Three books by Nikolai Starikov are informative ‘The liquidation of Russia – who helped the reds to win the civil war’
‘Rouble Nationalisation the way to Russias freedom’
‘Who set Hitler against Stalin’
Unfortunately he hasnt had his other books about Stalin translated.
Oleg Platonov [in Russian ie not translated but today there is plenty of software available for that] Russia’s Crown of Thorns: The Secret History of Freemasonry 1731-1996 (Moscow, 1996)
Available in digital form on the web from a russian library last time I sought it.
Platonov is so called antisemitic and if one is bothered about that one may simply disregard that part of his thinking and absorb the rest of the factual.
My personal take on that matter is that people should be aware about the jews being a weak group who get to handle the finances for the strong as a carrot while in return they have to make everybody hate them as a wip to fulfil their task.
(Whether or not they understand this.)
They are not free. They are not just hovering above the rest like a mysterious power seemingly allowed priviledges. They have made a pact with the devil and the current devil is the west.
The feature the devil seeks is that the financiers need protection and are not able to go it alone
The US UK almost follow the devil’s Venetian template but I wont bring up Venice more this time.
Lyndon Larouche et al has written many articles seemingly explaining the part of history avoided by all court historians. Larouche’s focus was a little different in 1976 than in the 1980’s when he aimed to influence Reagans Star Wars etc.
(To close friends he said he knew the man who founded the CIA. I dont know if he meant Harry Truman but it indicates that he was connected. Since Larouche was a Grandmaster of Grand Orient this may have had some impact on how he dug up lot’s of unfamiliar material.)
Anyway his views about the USSR are very different in the 80s. Nevertheless I just now read his article
The myth of Marxian communism
The wife of a legendary rabbi of Prague
https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1988/eirv15n44-19881104/eirv15n44-19881104_026-the_myth_of_marxian_communism-lar.pdf
I mention it because you get a flavour of his vast familiarity with an historical background unfamiliar for most of us and I think that part merits attention
I am fully aware that the typical leftist will detest some of my choices here however to the openminded it does widen your horizons.
The habit of canceling opponents is a weakness of the leftists. If they get past that obstacle they will be stronger although also less categorical.

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Mar 25 2024 8:33 utc | 100

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