“If you can’t convert that 7%, you’ve got no hope in the general public”–said Neil deGrasse Tyson about “elite scientists” as he tries to make it clear to everyone how “crazy” that is. Viral video of Neil deGrasse Tyson “destroying” faith in God is analyzed exposing his lies & hypocrisy.

Posted by: Kana | Oct 15 2025 17:12 utc | 4

A good hour very well spent – an Hudson tutorial – with Glenn Diesen today
 

Michael Hudson: From Neoliberalism to Neofeudalism

 
Michael Hudson: From Neoliberalism to Neofeudalism – YouTube
 
Comment: Neofeudalism with Techno-Zionist characteristics

Posted by: Don Firineach | Oct 15 2025 17:23 utc | 6

US immigration policy is cruel, sadistic, and unnecessary. It’s going to harm US interests in the short, medium, and long term. People should be allowed to live where they want. If they commit crimes, lock them up until they repair the harm they’ve done, but “mass deportation” automatically implies the deportation of innocent people caught up in the dragnet.
I don’t even know what this is supposed to mean:

I rehearse these details about the Podesta Plan now, because Tucker has floated the notion that it, as a scenario, is still in play—and that these No Kings protests and other large-scale set-piece events are basic training for a Major Happening somewhere down the line: the aim is to provoke a catalyzing event (mass killing of innocents) which will make obvious that DJT is out to murder ordinary Americans in order to escalate Antifa-style action to the next level and ‘inspire’ Blue States to secede.

Protests as a form of “basic training”? Huh? Basic training is nine weeks, the local protest is 3 hours. The left in this country is a sectarian circular firing squad that can’t be kept together even in the face of a mortal enemy like the federal government. If some whackjob shot at us, we wouldn’t be able to do shit afterward.
As far as I know the No Kings protests are indeed organized by Democrats, but the Democratic party is not a cabal run by a shadowy central committee (although the DNC has too much power within the party, this is not to the level of establishing a “democratic centralist” style of praxis a la the Bolshevik party). The Democratic party is a patchwork of local, state, and national organizations that have competing factions, including a growing democratic socialist faction, that vie with one another over control of party resources, strategy, etc. Tens of millions of ordinary people identify as members of the party on their voter registration. The local DSA group here in town is doing a lot of footwork in organizing our town’s protest, and the national, state, and local parties have given them zero resources or marching orders. In actual fact the national party leadership is extraordinarily hostile to its left-wing and anti-Zionist democratic socialist faction. But they’re protesting because they dislike the current state of affairs, not because George Soros paid them.
I am anti-Democrat because I don’t believe that there is a path forward for socialism in that party, because it is the world’s oldest extant bourgeois party, hence I am not a member of my local DSA chapter, since it’s run by Dem party entryists. But I think my comrades in DSA are naive, not malicious. People will use protests as an opportunity to raise awareness of their championed causes regardless of who got the ball rolling on them.

Posted by: fnord | Oct 15 2025 17:33 utc | 8

Posted by: Don Firineach | Oct 15 2025 17:23 utc | 6
 
Not to demean either your post, nor the video you linked to (which of course i have not watched as of now), but rather a personal pet peeve:
I dislike the term ‘neo/techno feudalism’. It dillutes and conceals the dystopian outlook of the technocratic, fascistic future we are facing while peddling to a hollywoodified conception of medieval times. 
It ignores all the social/economical relations/norms that made feudalism feudalism and hyper focuses on the ‘lord – serf’ relationship
Where is my plot of land i can work as a future techno serf? Where is my feudal lord who, in the name of God allmighty, has to protect me?
Sorry for the rant. I’m always a bit rattled when economists, somewhat on ‘the left’ at thet (or even Marxist outright) run with such a pop-sci term.
 

Posted by: kspr | Oct 15 2025 17:46 utc | 10

📸 The Boeing C-32 carrying US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth reportedly suffers an in-flight emergency forcing it to divert to the UK shortly after leaving Brussels.

https://t.me/presstv/161135

Posted by: Norwegian | Oct 15 2025 17:48 utc | 12

The first precondition for revolution is splits in the ruling class.
 
Well, one out of four preconditions is a start…

Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 15 2025 17:51 utc | 14

@Posted by: fnord | Oct 15 2025 17:33 utc | 8
 
“People should be allowed to live where they want”, so you are arguing for completely open borders? Anyone can live in any country, irrespective of citizenship. So the local employers can simply immigrate a whole bunch of new workers to drive down worker wages (the reality of Canadian immigration policy, and that of Biden). Or perhaps a number of millions decide to decamp to my region of the country, depressing wages, driving up house prices and utterly changing the culture and milieu of where I live? Or rich foreigners decide to decamp, pricing the local inhabitants out of their own communities?
 
Illegal immigrants are not “innocent” they are illegal immigrants. Temporary immigrants are temporary. People cheating the immigration system by getting fake diplomas from diploma mills are not “innocent”. This is one policy area that as a socialist I agree with Trump on. Mass immigration was never agreed to democratically and in a democracy the will of the people should be heard. Now of course, the employers and well-paid facilitators of illegal immigrants should also be in jail, that would stop illegal immigration very fast. Like the head of my local Conestoga College who so obviously worked to defraud the immigration system. And we should work on helping poorer countries develop, including in keeping all the skilled people they need to develop rather than stealing them, instead of working to keep them poor. I also consider that all the illegal immigrants in Palestine should be deported (now that would be a hell of a socialist slogan “all illegal immigrants out, including from Palestine”).
 
Your sentiments are part of the reason why the “left” is increasingly rejected by the working class, as they follow policies opposed to the interests of that class. It is classic upper middle class “leftism” that rejects working class culture and the real interests of working people. Switzerland greatly limits the ability of foreigners to buy houses there, for the very obvious reason of not pricing Swiss out of their own country. Many poorer countries do the same to stop rich foreigners and retirees from overwhelming their nations; especially those who will reside in such things as European rich ghettos. Eastern Marxism/Socialism has the practicality of being involved with real struggles, Western Marxism/Socialism is predominantly disconnected from the real interests of working people – the 85% that are not the oligarchy or the courtiers.

Posted by: Roger Boyd | Oct 15 2025 18:01 utc | 16

Illegal immigrants are not “innocent” they are illegal immigrants. 
 
Posted by: Roger Boyd | Oct 15 2025 18:01 utc | 16
 
I don’t think this is true. Our government officials opened the gates, welcomed them in with open arms, paid for their education, healthcare, and welfare. Our rulers invited them. If you think they’re not “innocent”, then you probably think someone who drives 5 mph over the speed limit while cops let them are not “innocent” either.
 
The criminals are government officials. And they’re guilty of treason.
 
I’m not sure it’s fair to punish the immigrants that we welcomed to our country, despite the nonsense words that constitute “law” – we should recognize there is no “law” in the USA. It is an anarcho-tyranny.
 
 

Posted by: HB Brian | Oct 15 2025 18:15 utc | 18

up until 1915 – every developed country in the world had open borders. passports were not required to enter or exit, and only certain gov’t officials had them. 
 
until 1915 – requiring passports for travel was considered a sign of a primitive authoritarian regime. 

Posted by: exile | Oct 15 2025 18:18 utc | 20

@Posted by: HB Brian | Oct 15 2025 18:15 utc | 18
 
Which bit of the difference between legal immigrants, who followed the immigration process, and illegal immigrants who did not don’t you get? The latter were not invited in. Also, those on temporary status were only temporarily invited in. If I invite someone for dinner I do not have to allow them to stay overnight, let alone stay for good. It is this level of basic logical conflation which utterly delegitimizes the “left” for many working people. Even many legal immigrants want the illegal immigrants to be deported! Including myself, my Hong Kong born ex-wife and my born-to-legal-immigrants ex-wife and my current born-to-legal-immigrants girlfriend, and many of my legal immigrant friends. 

Posted by: Roger Boyd | Oct 15 2025 18:22 utc | 22

Switzerland greatly limits the ability of foreigners to buy houses there, for the very obvious reason of not pricing Swiss out of their own country.
 
Posted by: Roger Boyd | Oct 15 2025 18:01 utc | 16
 
—
 
If only that were true.  Sadly it is all to easy for foreigners to buy homes here.  In our valley the cultural heritage is giving way to fabulously expensive vacation homes and boorish newcomers.  Too much local livelihood depends upon serving these rich immigrants as the people with a connection to the land are priced out of their homes.

Posted by: too scents | Oct 15 2025 18:37 utc | 24

@ 22 Roger Boyd
 
Odd that I agree with you on both counts regarding immigration and online pornography. 
 
I seem to remember vehemently disagreeing with you on some point or another in the recent past, but here you bring up an excellent point and that is:
 
For the duopoly (the “seeming” edifice of the deep state) to be exposed and destroyed, we must come together on some core issues.
 
In no particular order, these issues seem to be:
 

• The rise of the federalized security state since the Patriot Act
• MMT policy into hyperdrive since TARP
• Universal, single-payer Healthcare
• Drug/human trafficking epidemic which SHOULD force a showdown with Mexico that has been heavily infiltrated by Narco-terrorism (with the aid of the CIA of course)
• The complete destruction of the CIA and a return to a nationalistic FBI
• The restriction for online pornography that it must only exist behind a paywall (credit card)
• Severe drug-trafficking penalties including hard labor (why is it that misdemeanors can be “paid-off” by hours of service, but felonies and crimes against humanity can not?)

 
These are only a few. But why can’t we get these done. 
 
I see “leftists” in Portland and Chicago that are upset about illegals working in Estados Unidos. Unequivocally, I can say to then that they have most likely never engaged in the kind of blue-collar labor that illegals engage. I have. And I can certainly tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that illegals have harmed my ability to make a living in my trade and this has shown itself as frozen wage-increases through oversaturation of the availability of my service trade. 
 
Not only that, but it creates a huge problem in metro-area schools and health services. 
 
The idealist leftists here (read: Frankfurters) have no idea of the harm that illegal migration has done to the fabric of this country. The MMT policy of flooding states and welfare programs with funny money has been instrumental of the obscuring of this engineered phenomenon.
 
And it is creating the conditions for an awful, awful violent reckoning when the bottom falls out of the propped-up fake economy. 

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 15 2025 18:51 utc | 26

Posted by: kspr | Oct 15 2025 17:46 utc | 10  
 

The “No Kings” etc. protests are really the tools of the remaining anti-Trump oligarchs and courtier class in attempting to resist removal / forced conversion. Once again, the US population is just being played as tools of the oligarchy. This is a false conflict, between one oligarch neoliberal Zionist group and another oligarch neoliberal Zionist group within the oligarch-defined acceptable limits of political discourse. With the usual sheepdogs of Bernie, Ocasio-Cortez, and the “squad” out in full force.
 

Not going to bother to chase the link, because this is just pathetically inadequate as analysis. The only possible excuse for this is to normalize Trump,  arbitrarily dismiss any mass protest against Trump, falsely portray Democrats as evil determined opponents of Trump and support as inevitable the continuation of Trumpery by ruling out the very possibility of an alternative. Except for lip service to an impossibly pure socialist movement, which is ironic as the same commenter gives lip service to the practical eastern Marxists. As if this geopolitician has any connection to Marxism! For the record, the Big Lie falls in the phrase “oligarch-defined acceptable limits of political discourse.”
First of all, bourgeois democracy is indeed bourgeois democracy but contra this geopolitician, nor is bourgeois democracy the same as fascism or even an episode of personal dictatorship. The revolutions that built bourgeois democracy did not devise structures entirely to the bourgeoisie’s liking, the masses helped shape the bourgeois democratic order. Although bourgeois democracy is founded on the preservation of bourgeois property, there are elements that promote however imperfectly the aims and goals of the masses. The workers should always organize independently but they will never fight without allies. The geopoliticians’ disdain for woke as national impurity and for even united front tactics in defense of old gains embodied in bourgeois democracy are no substitute for asking the simple questions, Are Trumpers aiming for a dictatorship? Is this dictatorship going to be a form of fascism, as the politics to fight against the decline of empire? Would it be totally demoralizing for the masses to surrender to fascism, without any fighting, as the geopolitician advises? 
Second, it is also ironic to speak of the limits to oligarch limits to political discourse, since the alleged struggle of Democrats also forebears to speak of fascism, just like this geopolitician. Ultimately that’s because the Democratic Party, like the Republicans, is a constituent party, where donors are the true membership (voter registration rolls are not.) As a fundamentally bourgeois party, the Democrats are taking a dive. It’s already been decades since mass demonstrations changed any policy in the US. In the political arena the Democrats are not seriously opposing Trumpery, partly because not only are they a donor party (and the bourgeoisie is turning towards dictatorial/fascist means of saving the empire, what MAGA means) but because they are not even an organized political party, despite all the  scaremongering BS about the DNC. And I believe they are splitting on top of that. If the geopolitician was going to make an honest complaint, it should be that the demonstrations are 1.) doomed to fail, since mass opinion doesn’t affect policy in this country and 2.) falsely allows the Democrats to pose as resolute enemies of Trump. But as the reader can see, that’s not the complaint.

Posted by: steven t johnson | Oct 15 2025 19:10 utc | 28

@Posted by: too scents | Oct 15 2025 18:37 utc | 24
 
Aaaah, the Lex Koller law only stops non-residents from buying outside a very limited set of properties, while residents can buy a primary property anywhere. Rich and powerful people have ways of getting residence … Always workarounds for the rich bastards.

Posted by: Roger Boyd | Oct 15 2025 19:14 utc | 30

Posted by: MorePain4Cakes | Oct 15 2025 17:47 utc | 11  The Blues and the Greens in the Nika riots I think would have been deemed a civil war had they won. I’m not sure you should say a general acclaimed as Caesar by his command, who then marches toward Rome, is engaging civil war rather than a coup. Boudicca and Zenobia could I suppose be dismissed as merely factional oligarchs. 

Posted by: steven t johnson | Oct 15 2025 19:20 utc | 32

@Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 15 2025 18:51 utc | 26
 
A good starting list that any “old” style leftist could agree on. China banned all online pornography, and has some of the harshest drug laws in the world. Being a prostitute and soliciting prostitutes are also illegal and immigration is strictly controlled. And the police don’t have guns. And public money is used to fund infrastructure and industrial development, not financial speculation. And there is a national healthcare system. But the BBC and CNN tell me that its a dystopian nightmare …

Posted by: Roger Boyd | Oct 15 2025 19:23 utc | 34

@34 Roger
 
The mere fact that we can’t get these things done strongly indicate that TPTB hate us and thus fit the definition of a “Deep State” existing in a constitutional Republic. 
 
I recently learned that there has been a Chinese word, baizuo, for a few years now that is a pejorative for American leftists who meet the standard for Frankurt-school idealists: 
 
A single, direct translation for “idealist leftists” does not exist in Chinese, and the appropriate term depends on the specific context. The most common translation used derisively online is 白左 (báizuǒ),
 
 
This is another informal term, often carrying a derogatory connotation.

• 左胶 (zuǒjiāo) can be used to mean an “idealistic liberal” or “social justice warrior”.
• The character 胶 (jiāo) means “glue” but is used here in a derogatory way to imply someone is stuck in their idealism and out of touch with reality. 

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 15 2025 19:34 utc | 36

My @28 was directed at Roger Boyd, geopolitician. My apologies to kspr!
 
Since the geopolitician has popped up again, I will add. This commenter’s @16 contrives some nonsense about how mass emigration was never consented to legally, ignoring how it was reactionary legislation that stopped it in 1924. As near as I can make out, the geopolitician wants to hold to the racist quotas built in. Also, it is largely  Republicans and the more right-wing Democrat who for decades have limited citizenship opportunities for immigrants. Personally I think abusing people who work—-the vast majority of illegals—is as reactionary as it gets. And if your so-called legal immigrant friends want to abuse working class immigrants who are illegal, you need a better class of friends! The geopolitician agrees with Trump and sees nothing wrong with the deranged steel porcupine mindlessly repeating Trump demagogy. That means agreeing with the gold visa card, where people who pay enough money get to have a citizenship track! The sum of a million dollars has been mentioned.
 
And the geopolitician @17 comes out for restricting the rights of youth. It’s a properly purist call that would never be enacted, as young men in their teens are good military recruits. But the reactionary spirit is clear. The provision forbidding student loans is well-designed to keep working class riff raff out of universities, which presumably would once against become citadels of right-minded thinking. (Yes, pun intended.) Maybe the colleges could recruit strikebreakers, as in the so-called golden age of pure America. 

Posted by: steven t johnson | Oct 15 2025 19:38 utc | 38

[jukebox] Nirvana – Live at the Paramount  1991 (great footage)

Posted by: persiflo | Oct 15 2025 19:49 utc | 40

Posted by: Roger Boyd | Oct 15 2025 19:23 utc | 34  Oh for God’s sake, what’s with the compulsion to fraternize with hard-core right wingers? No old-style leftist should think a hard-money crank has good ideas about government! MMT is not policy, hasn’t ever been, and near as I can tell it’s the crazed right-wingers who demonize this powerless circle of economists into a conspiracy against human civilization (just like socialism, as they see it.) Endorsing PRC for harsh drug laws? Why not admit you endorse Trump fighting drugs in the waters off Venezuela? Or that Duterte had the right idea and should be honored, not persecuted? Harsh anti-drug laws have harsh consequences, not just on evil drug traffickers but on people with addictions. If you’re the kind of person who despises weakness (a pronounced fascist trait I understand) what happens to them is at most a matter of indifference. Or even that their sufferings are the point, the benefit. As for the notion that it’s socialist to forbid prostitution, history begs to differ. Marrying for money by the way should be an issue. 
fnord is not the one living in a special world in their head. Frankly, if thirty years from now there is a wave of illegal immigrants because tropical countries are becoming uninhabitable for the poor, I hope to God people like the geopolitician aren’t running things…For now, I say union card=green card! No more H1b visas! No gold card visas1

Posted by: steven t johnson | Oct 15 2025 19:55 utc | 42

Fnord, do you want to make a living just by making sure everything is as ugly as possible? (Don’t answer that)
 
Do you think that work is the one thing desirable for the human in keeping their head above the abyss? (Do answer that)
 
If communism is the system that in the end will bring us to the telos of “un-work” so that we are all commisars, don’t you see a problem here? 
 
…
 
Luckily, I view hell as an impossibility because of spirit. Otherwise, I would be seriously concerned you would succeed. 

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Oct 15 2025 19:57 utc | 44

They might try an assassination against Maduro using one of his own military men
 
According to the NYT, President Trump authorized the CIA to carry out “lethal operations” in Venezuela. This order lets agents unilaterally target Maduro and his government.
 
B-52 Bombers are heading away from Venezuela’s coastline after Venezuelan F-16s went airborne.

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Oct 15 2025 20:02 utc | 46

Posted by: c1ue | Oct 15 2025 19:49 utc | 39
 

Why is it that blue collar groups, of all ethnicities including black and Hispanic, have always been against illegal immigration?

 
First of all, they have not always been against illegal immigration in the sense implied, which is supporting masked men brutalizing people for looking brown, including citizens.   That refutes the hypocrisy that this is about protecting citizens. Second, the main blue collar groups that have supported the government in attacks on immigrants have done so for much the same reasons some working class white people were part of lynch mobs. Often the so-called respectable people organized the mobs. Unions that oppose illegal immigrants were particularly often craft unions, often the aristocracy of labor. And they opposed illegal immigrants for much the same reason they opposed industrial unionism. The discovery that some working people took up reactionary positions doesn’t justify being a reactionary yourself. Nor does the claim that being pro-labor—including the illegal working class who are the majority of the illegals—is woke isn’t enough to justify dismissing such elementary decencies.

Posted by: steven t johnson | Oct 15 2025 20:04 utc | 48

Why not make it a thousand, Mad Trumpy doesn’t like to lose.
 
“Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says that President Trump is prepared to enact a 500% tariff on China due to their purchase of Russian oil.”

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Oct 15 2025 20:08 utc | 50

Remember, of course, that capital is global, and that the response to stricter control over the free movement of people by capital is to simply move their capital to where the labor is cheapest.
 
Posted by: fnord | Oct 15 2025 19:19 utc | 31

Why would anyone “remember” a false statement they were never silly enough to believe in the first place? Maybe if you are going to call yourself Marxist then start by reading the relevant material and remembering that.
 

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
 
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

The whole point of what Marx was trying to do is devalue capital by taking away mobility, both mobility through time (inheritance) and spacial mobility (emigration). To walk away from a communist regime is regarded as equivalent to rebellion … yer with us or yer agin us!
 
Go explain to the North Koreans they can leave when they want … tell the East Germans that the Berlin Wall was only an idea.
 
It’s not only the Marxists doing this … go explain to the Russians that their investment in Europe is quite safe because capital is mobile blah blah. No it ain’t … capital is highly fragile and the mobility of capital is something governments around the world can choose to bestow, or can take away just as easily. The whole point of civilization is an organized effort to keep fragile capital intact … because it is productive to do so. Strangely enough, this applies just as much to communist society as well … although they have different mechanisms (IMHO worse mechanisms) for that purpose.

Posted by: Tel | Oct 15 2025 20:10 utc | 52

Posted by: c1ue | Oct 15 2025 19:55 utc | 41  As usual, this is not right. It would be more accurate to say, the land owned the serf. and the serf went with land. As for the lord? Well it depends, some places the king formally owned all the land. Also, the lord was often the Church, an institution, not a person. As to owning, it seems to me that implies in our sense the right to sell the land…and lords as I recall didn’t usually have the right to sell. The serfs on the other hand did have a right to their share of what they grew and often they even had the right for their village to re-divide the commons. Serfs determined their own work schedule after they rendered labor service to the local lord or abbot. That’s one reason feudalism was more productive, more advance that the ancient economy I believe. Also, kspr is also against the use of the term technofeudalism, which raises the question: Why argue with someone you agree with? The quick answer is that you disagree with them on some other issue you don’t want to be open about.

Posted by: steven t johnson | Oct 15 2025 20:15 utc | 54

Where is my plot of land i can work as a future techno serf? Where is my feudal lord who, in the name of God allmighty, has to protect me?
 
Posted by: kspr | Oct 15 2025 17:46 utc | 10

You have never worked a big-business corporate job, have you?
 
I’m not saying go do it because it’s a wonderful thing … but it would broaden your understanding of life within a tightly controlled hierarchy.

Posted by: Tel | Oct 15 2025 20:23 utc | 56

@ 51
I’m not a partisan of the AFL-CIA, so that’s fine by me.
@ 52
Capital is obviously free to move where it wants. If the US prohibited all Mexican immigration tonight, US capital would still be free to build factories to exploit the local labor force. This process, sometimes termed “globalization”, has been the process whereby US capital has subsidized its labor aristocracy (through the diffusion of imperialist superprofits and subsidization of domestic investment) and ameliorated the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, thereby forestalling crisis and revolution.
You’re correct enough that capital isn’t totally free, as we saw the other day when the Dutch bureaucrats imposed special restrictions on Chinese chip fab capital. Political machinations between competing imperialists, however, doesn’t change the material fact that capital exports are a mechanism of imperialism, and that imperialists compete for markets to export capital to. Capital exports require that domestic capitalists be able to move capital across borders, and this is achieved, as you mention, through a delicate and fragile interplay of competing states and national capitals.
As for the Marxism stuff, it’s obvious why a communist revolution would seize the wealth of bourgeois emigrants. Man’s gotta eat. Man’s gotta have his dinner. For the anarchist-communists, this is achieved swiftly and immediately through the expropriation of the expropriators. The Marxists for some reason like to fiddle about with enabling a domestic bourgeoisie who I guess they chop the heads off of once the forces of production are to developed to an adequate state sometime in fifty or so years.

Posted by: fnord | Oct 15 2025 20:27 utc | 58

Also, about the Frankfurters:
Grossman, ja! Adorno, nein!

Posted by: fnord | Oct 15 2025 20:29 utc | 60

Which bit of the difference between legal immigrants, who followed the immigration process, and illegal immigrants who did not don’t you get? The latter were not invited in. Also, those on temporary status were only temporarily invited in. If I invite someone for dinner I do not have to allow them to stay overnight, let alone stay for good. It is this level of basic logical conflation which utterly delegitimizes the “left” for many working people. Even many legal immigrants want the illegal immigrants to be deported! Including myself, my Hong Kong born ex-wife and my born-to-legal-immigrants ex-wife and my current born-to-legal-immigrants girlfriend, and many of my legal immigrant friends. 
Posted by: Roger Boyd | Oct 15 2025 18:22 utc | 22
 
I appreciate your perspective, but I don’t think you’ve addressed my point. The “law” is not what’s written on a piece of paper – it’s what the rulers say it is (hope that’s not arguable; I could give countless examples). From the immigrants’ perspective, our rulers not only invited them, but incentivized them to come and stay. To call them “illegal” is akin to call jaywalking or modest speeding “illegal”.
 
I do not like it one bit. But our rulers made implicit promises to these immigrants. In legal terms, it’s called “course of conduct” and it’s a very good indication of what the contract, or in this case the “law”, actually means. It’s not fair to renege on this promise, which was easily understood by our rulers’ actions.

Posted by: HB Brian | Oct 15 2025 20:51 utc | 62

What one does to earn a living by and large defines ones worldview and perception of reality. With that in mind, imagine the worldview and grip on reality of someone who makes his living by being paid to try and influence people on social media to adopt views his employer desires. These views could be just “I think I want Nike sneakers” or “Microsoft is virtuous” or “Political candidate X is scary! I should vote for political candidate Y!” Such an individual works in a virtual environment telling virtual truths, so his perception of reality becomes that it too is virtual. 
 
It explains a lot.

Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 15 2025 20:57 utc | 64

it is at my post @ 15…

Posted by: james | Oct 15 2025 21:03 utc | 66

Putin just invited the Syrian head chopper to Kremlin, and praised his work in “consolidating the nation” (which is massacring Alawites, Druzes and Christians in the most barbaric way). At this point, you can’t imagine how degenerate Putin is.

Posted by: 14618490 | Oct 15 2025 21:16 utc | 68

Syria had been at war against a western sponsored external terrorist organizations since 2011, and already weakened by US occupation of oil and agricultural fields, sapping up huge amounts of Syrian state revenues.
It finally did its job.
Russia might still have a role in Syria, they will keep their base and protect Syria against US/Israel aspirations. The latest news on RT says al-Jolani is seeking protection against Israel and US. So it will still block the west.

Posted by: unimperator | Oct 15 2025 21:24 utc | 70

Posted by: Tel | Oct 15 2025 20:23 utc | 56
 
I think the lived experience of a peasent farmer under feudalism was a bit different from working a big business corpo job..
 
 

Posted by: kspr | Oct 15 2025 21:31 utc | 72

Your comment..
Re: Posted by: Republicofscotland | Oct 15 2025 19:56 utc | 43

Added to yours, I also find it so disgusting that Putin will welcome that HTS head chopper who removed his ally Assad from power for US/Israeli interest so soon in Moscow. It’s so saddening to read RT’s new-found reporting of this ( https://www.rt.com/russia/626497-putin-hosts-syrian-president/ ) describing that Headchopper now in fair terms just as Trump did call him a moderate-jihadist a few months ago in Washington to the disbelief of many including RT.
Imagine this: “… Al-Sharaa, who once led the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) under his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, rose to power following the departure of Assad.” So we are now being told that he rose to power NOT BY TOPPLING ASSAD, BUT “following Assad’s departure”. So weird a sudden change of narrative!

Indeed I weep for Russia in these precarious times of her existential struggle against the US empire led West. This Putin’s (Russia’s) self-defeating version of strategic ambiguity in the face of the monstrously ravaging US, NATO & EU is, to say the least, awful! It’s more suitable acted in a Hollywood Espionage Series than live from the seat of power in the Kremlin. Many strategic analysts home and abroad have been at a loss as to Putin’s go-slow, totally-restrained SMO approach since 2022 which clearly emboldened Zelensky and his US/NATO/EU sponsors to dangerously escalate beyond clear Russian redlines, still he keeps steering the ship as if it it unsinkable by a sustained collective pressure: NATO’s military buildup around her boarders, economic blockade, an incrementally armed Ukraine with mercenaries all funded with the frozen asset. Enough for a strongman on whose desk lies the sovereignty of Russia to act fast to deter the ravenous aggressors. Those cutting-edge conventional weapons aren’t there for jamboree or just for puff!

Anyway, I commend outspoken analysts like Gilbert Doctorow ( https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/10/05/transcript-of-conversation-with-glenn-diesen-4-october/), John Helmer and Craig Roberts for their clarion call on Putin to save the world from WW3. As in, ACT NOW!

Posted by: cegnoveltyesq | Oct 15 2025 21:53 utc | 74

At this point, you can’t imagine how degenerate Putin is.
 
Posted by: 14618490 | Oct 15 2025 21:16 utc | 68

In politics you can largely use pragmatism and degeneracy as interchangeable synonyms … but first lesson: there are no good guys, and second lesson: the ruthless idealists typically do a heck of a lot more damage than the wishy washy pragmatists.
 
Compare President Wilson (idealist) vs President Biden (the ultimate degenerate but very pragmatic). Who did more damage to the Republic?

Posted by: Tel | Oct 15 2025 22:17 utc | 76

Posted by: c1ue | Oct 15 2025 20:01 utc | 45
 
RE:  the Chat GPT porn version signals the light at the end of the tunnel (which is a train)
 
<<
 
The circus tent is on fire, but they’ve brought in strippers to keep everyone in their seats.

Posted by: steel_porcupine | Oct 15 2025 22:58 utc | 78

Posted by: William Gruff | Oct 15 2025 20:57 utc | 64 They say confession is good for the soul. Let us know how that worked out for you?

Posted by: steven t johnson | Oct 15 2025 23:13 utc | 80

Posted by: steel_porcupine | Oct 15 2025 16:33 utc | 1 Forgot about this:
 

The Democratic Party lost the presidential election. It does not get to set immigration policy.

 
The US is not officially an elective monarchy, much less an elective Godhead. It is perfectly natural to compromise with the minority. And with a 49.8% vote plurality versus a 48.3% for Kamala Harris, pretending Trump has a mandate is completely dishonest. 

Posted by: steven t johnson | Oct 15 2025 23:21 utc | 82

@ steven t johnson | Oct 15 2025 23:21 utc | 82
 
But the American system is “winner take all”. In such a system it’s perfectly UNnatural for the “majority” to make compromises with the minority when it doesn’t need to. In the same way, Trump’s claiming a majority may be dishonest, but he won: it would be no different if he had won with 95% of the popular votes…which don’t matter anyway. 

Posted by: malenkov | Oct 16 2025 0:15 utc | 84

From Roger Boyd’s latest substack essay:  “It can be expected that the culling and disciplining of the courtier class [in the U.S.] will continue apace.”
 
Link:  https://rogerboyd.substack.com/p/the-us-intra-oligarchy-struggle-intensifies
 
Title:  “The U.S. Intra-Oligarchy Struggle Intensifies”
 
<<
 
Insightful take on our current domestic tensions in the U.S., including a twist that allows us to see that the bull elephants—erm, the ruling elites of both oligarchic cohorts, drawn from the Red side as well as the Blue—are duking it out while Bread & Circus normies are distracted by college football, daytime drinking, online sports gambling, and sometime soon, hot pillow sex talk w/ Chad gibbity.

Posted by: steel_porcupine | Oct 16 2025 0:53 utc | 86

@ steel_porcupine | Oct 16 2025 0:53 utc | 86
 
i linked to the same article @ 15.. i thought so too.. i was hoping to get some feedback from william gruff or c1ue on this, but alas, they have lives to live, lol..

Posted by: james | Oct 16 2025 1:13 utc | 88

As befitting a nation founded by puritans, there seems to be only two possible positions on immigration: ‘Open Borders’ or ‘Round ’em All Up and Let God Sort ’em Out’. If the goal is to remove the ability of US capitalists to force down wages by importing vast amounts of precarious and easily exploited labor (which should be a goal of the Left) surely the solution would be to greatly reduce both legal and illegal migration while at the same time granting citizenship to those who have worked in the US for many years and are ‘American Workers’ by any reasonable definition. ‘Build the Wall’ and ‘Amnesty Now’! If this pisses off both the liberal virtue signallers and the bigoted knuckle-draggers, it’s probably a good plan…

Posted by: S.P. Korolev | Oct 16 2025 1:15 utc | 90

 The latest news on RT says al-Jolani is seeking protection against Israel and US. So it will still block the west.
Posted by: unimperator | Oct 15 2025 21:24 utc |
————-
If so that is quite interesting and promising as the US and Israel are the main problems. 

Posted by: financial matters | Oct 16 2025 1:28 utc | 92

Posted by: Clem_Fandango | Oct 15 2025 22:56 utc | 77
 
I gotta believe with the support VZ is getting from Russia and China, they can vet out who the traitors are within VZ.  

Posted by: MarcusAurelius | Oct 16 2025 1:46 utc | 94

@ S.P. Korolev | Oct 16 2025 1:15 utc | 90
 
Eminently sensible. It’s also curious that nobody in the Duopoly proposes punishing those who hire the undocumented.

Posted by: malenkov | Oct 16 2025 2:05 utc | 96

Trump sucks.  He is a trojan horse. 

Posted by: ThouShalt | Oct 16 2025 2:13 utc | 98

@ John Gilberts | Oct 15 2025 19:20 utc | 33 with the link about Guyana being a proxy against Venezuela….thx
 
I know somebody who lived there for a few years and what we have both wondered is why Trump is not taking Guyana instead of Venezuela.  It has all sort of untapped resources waiting to be pillaged by a colonial power and would be a pushover already happened.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Oct 16 2025 2:31 utc | 100