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anomiezine-blog · 5 years

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The Cult of the Proletariat

“Because the horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It’s that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great.”

-Slavoj Zizek

‘But as in all cults, what’s central to the Communist Party is the belief system and the elimination of nuance. From there you’re very slowly led down the road to fanaticism and mass murder.’

– Alexei Sayle

I have found a way to tell apart Leninists (otherwise known as Communists or Bolsheviks in the common parlance) from what you might call the reasonable left. It is not the outfits, stained by take-away and Tippex, or their odour, because deodorant is a bourgeois affectation. Instead it is their answer to one rather simple question: ‘Do you trust people to make their own decisions?” I have never met a Leninist that didn’t say No. An addendum to that might be the question: “If you could have your revolution but it would make people poorer and less free, at least in the short term, would you still want it?” Once again I have never met one that didn’t answer in the affirmative. It is the same toxic combination of misanthrope and fanaticism that you can now see in Brexiteers in Britain, and amongst Fascists the world over. It is the belief that you and your tribe alone have received the revealed truth from on-high, and however you see fit to make that a reality is acceptable. It is the language of a cult.

It’s a word that is thrown around a lot and there are even multiple competing definitions, but it is essential to understand what a cult is if we are to understand the toxicity at the heart of Leninist parties of the past and present. What are the obvious signs of a cult? In my opinion, there are 10 unequivocal signs:

1. A small group of people united by a Utopian ideology (or religion) who stand outside normal society.

2. A dominant leader/s that hold complete power over the lives of its members.

3. An all-or-nothing worldview. “Either the Revolution comes or the world will end.”

4. A cadre or administrative class that directs the majority of members.

5. Gaslighting. The changing of facts and reality to suit the party.

6. Mental, physical or sexual abuses (see the SWP in the UK)

7. The policing of language, opinions and the effective creation of secular blasphemy.

8. The welding of the social and the political. The party becomes your only community, sometimes to the detriment to your family and older friends.

9. Those that leave the party become apostates and are to be shunned and demonised.

10. A uniform. In this case conformity of clothing is encouraged through bullying and mocking rather than an order from above.

It is hard to explain to those that have not experienced life in a cult why anyone would willingly join such a toxic entity. Left wing cults, like all cults, don’t look toxic from the outside. In fact, when you first join you are often showered with not only attention, but with a sense of purpose. You feel that finally you are with people that see the problems of the world as you do and are motivated by high ideals of humanism and solidarity. This is described by some psychologists as the lovebombing stage. It is a very powerful indoctrinating tool and often keeps individuals attached to the party long after the toxic nature of the party has become apparent.

In this I can at least speak from personal experience. I was a member of a Trotskyist party, that shall go unnamed, in my youth and I got a firsthand experience of cult tendencies within the left. All the cliches were there; the lovebombing; the close social circle; shadowy General Secretary; the strict hierarchy; the self-censorship of speech; the pandering to party leaders; the Gaslighting; the blasphemy; and the apostates. I have done a large amount of study of what are known as cluster B personality disorders (anti-social, narcissistic and Borderline) since, to try and understand what had happened to me, and I can attest to the presence of these toxic behaviours within all levels of the party structure. I am not the first to notice the cult tendencies within Leninist parties, in fact a cursory google search will present you with ample evidence of how commented upon this is. It really is one of the worst kept secrets on the left. Yet, these parties still persist and in the case of Ireland are the only real alternative to the parties of the Landlord class. As an Anarchist with a sense of history and responsibility this is exceedingly worrying.

This is not to suggest that Anarchist groups can’t become cult like. I spent time in a certain British anarchist group, that again shall not be named. In many ways it functioned along similar lines to the Leninist party I had formerly been part of . While there was a rotating leadership role, the same small group of people swapped the officer positions, and there was the same narrow mindedness to new ideas. Thankfully there is a great deal more individualism amongst Anarchists and this small toxic group were eventually expelled from the organisation. To some extent cult behaviour is a human failing. The legitimate and noble desire to make the world a better place can easily be perverted by disordered people for their own pleasures. You can see this in countless churches, sects, and organisations of every hue. In the case of political groupings, at least, anarchism has an answer and it is in our very DNA. A distrust of authority. Leninists parties can never be reformed from within given their very inspiration was taken from the mind of an authoritarian cult leader, Vladimir Lenin.

If you have the time or inclination to read about the father of 20th century Communism, you will learn many things, none particularly endearing, whether it be his: accepting German Imperial help in 1917; crushing the Soviets, snuffing out workers’ democracy; the invasion of Poland in 1920; the founding of the vile gulags; the rejection of a democratic vote in 1917 that the Bolsheviks lost; the creation of the brutal Checka, etc. The figures vary, but Lenin’s Red Terror is believed to have killed anywhere between 100,000 and 1.3 million people. The fanatic view of the Lenin towards any challenge to the new regime was published within the organs of the party: ‘anyone who dares to spread the slightest rumor against the Soviet regime will be arrested immediately and sent to concentration camp”. By 1921 70,000 were imprisoned in the brutal gulag system. The authoritarian and genocidal views of the Leninists were apparent quite early with Grigory Zinoviev declaring in 1917: ‘To overcome our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia’s population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated”. The fact that so many within the left still celebrate this man is stunning to behold, but then again he had the good fortune to die before the experiment of Leninism reached its apex under his protege Stalin. He would order the deaths of tens of millions of his own people, whether through the repression of the secret police or through man made famines, and after World War II enslave the population of Eastern Europe for half a century. And yet, the failure of the Left to ever really exorcise the ghost of the USSR and Leninism is one of our greatest failings. The supposed unique evil of Josef Stalin is a lazy way to avoid the truth, that the Bolsheviks were totalitarians in their very DNA, due to the teachings of Lenin. The USSR was in its origins a cult of Leninism extended to the entire Russian Empire. The Left need to except that the USSR is ours to own much like the right must accept Fascism as the logical extension of their own ideology. There is little to salvage in this experiment and the left should have long ago acknowledged Leninism as the twin evil of Fascism in the 20th Century. Unfortunately, it has not and we are left in a situation where anarchism remains at the fringes and the Leninist parties remain the only likely alternative to what must soon follow another violent collapse of Capitalism.

Any reasonable look at the enormous debt bubble forming around the world can not help, but lead you to the conclusion that a major global depression is looming. The conservative estimate is that there is 420 trillion dollars of debt worldwide. In Ireland we are one of the most indebted countries in the western world. Our debt to GDP ratio is 170% of GDP with some estimates as high as 210% of GDP. Each Irish citizen owes 42,000 Euro of debt. We will never be able to pay that off. This global debt can be combined with the huge wealth now centred in the hands of a very small cabal of oligarchs. Less than 100 persons now own over half the wealth of the entire globe. A vampiric ruling class long ago tore up the post-war social democratic settlement and could give a shit about the long term cost of their greed. As a result, the middle class’s spending power has shrunk to a fraction of what it once was. (Economics 101: the middle class buy the products of the ruling elite. If they have no money, and cannot borrow anymore, a crisis of capitalism ensues. It is that simple!) This makes a major depression almost inevitable, with some recent estimates saying it will arrive by as early as 2021. A collapse of capitalism will in rather short order unleash not only the demons of Fascism, but also the demons of Leninism. If, as I fear is likely, we are in the midst of another era of capitalist crisis similar to the 1920s and 30s, the corrupt parties of the centre across Europe will fall, and the masses will look for answers and alternatives to croney capitalism. At the moment the working class is bearing the brunt of neoliberalism and are looking to Trump, Brexit and the European Fascist right, the Orban’s and Le Pen’s. In the future there is no reason to suppose that some of remaining middle class will not make the same choice. In such a situation, it will seem wise to align ourselves with the Leninists in hopes of preventing another epoch of Fascist authoritarianism, but I would ask all anarchists to consider the old Bakunin quote: ‘When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called the People’s Stick’. We have been here before and we know what the Leninists will do if they get a whiff of power, therefore ‘What is to be done?’

Well, surprise, surprise, I recommend anarchism, but not in its current form. These days anarchists are a scattered and clicky sect within the left, rightly mocked for both the black block and its disinterested hipster membership alike. We must accept some of the blame for failing to take advantage of the post-Leninist era of the 90s-today. There were even some signs of anarchist ideas permeating the general left in the Seattle demonstrations of 1999, the occupy movement of 2011, the Arab Spring, and the yellow jackets, but these were to come to nothing. Clearly we have not learned from our own mistakes of the 20th century. Here I will perhaps lose some of my audience when I say that our principles held us back in the past. We were firm believers that ‘the Great is not enemy of the Good’. That ‘pragmatism was defeatism’. We, too, believed in an ‘all or nothing revolution’. Either it was complete eradication of the state and class system or it was not worth fighting for. This did us no favours in the past and it will do us little favours in the future. The world is not as we hope it to be, but rather as it is. Who will our allies be in the times to come? Unless we want to repeat our ancestors mistakes in Russia and Spain, it can’t be the Leninists. Rather I suggest the reasonable left I mentioned at the start of this article: Socialists, Left-Communists, Social Democrats, Republicans and even Liberals have all proved in the past to be determined enemies of the cults of Bolshevism and Fascism and capable of pluralism, though not always willing. It is possible to imagine a society of differing political structures coexisting, and of this being a truer reflection of the will of most people than any monolithic authoritarian Leftism can provide. These are our logical allies, some more than others, but to ensure history does not repeat itself we will have to find a way to both defend ourselves and inspire hope for a better future. For such a pluralist society of state socialists, anarchists, and even liberals, must not sap the hope and idealism of a genuinely Libertarian Socialist Revolution. We will have to walk a tightrope between reactionaries, both left wing and liberal. For without going down another rabbit hole, it was not just the Leninists that betrayed the Anarchists of Spain, it was also their republican and liberal allies. It will not be easy and much like our ancestors we will probably fail, but the difference between fighting for a society that allows differing political ideals the chance to bloom and the totalitarian cult of Leninism, seems a worthy trade off.

#anomie #anomiezine #anarchism #anarchy #article #proletariat

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didanawisgi · 5 years

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“The intervention was questionable in the first place, and the reasons for staying are murky.

Donald Trump is looking to make a precipitate exit from Syria. His advisers, most of the leading opinion writers in the country, and all the great and the good of America’s foreign-policy elite are crying out at the blunder they anticipate it will be. The president is handing a gift to Vladimir Putin and Iran. The president is betraying our allies. Disaster.

I don’t think so.

You may remember that the U.S. Congress refused to authorize intervention in Syria in 2013, when President Obama kicked the question to them. They refused to do so because of polls showing that Americans opposed intervention overwhelmingly, roughly 70–30. And support for intervention tends to go down over time. However, U.S. forces had already been active in Syria, and in Syria’s civil war, for at least a year by that point, working with the CIA to arm and train Sunnis fighting the government. Alas, in our scramble to find “moderate rebels,” we often ended up arming Al Nusra, the franchise of al-Qaeda that is native to Syria.

More U.S. forces came into Syria in 2014 and 2015 to combat ISIS, which had formed its burgeoning statelet in the chaos of western Iraq and eastern Syria. They did so under the dubiously reinterpreted congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force from 2001.

As refugees and migrants flowed out of Syria, every great power, regional power, or freelancing wannabe flowed in. The United States, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, most of the Gulf states, Russia, and lately even China have tried to get involved in one or another aspect of the fight. Even the persecuted Uighur minority of western China, improbable as it sounds, has fighters involved in northwest Syria.

In the midst of this, you might ask, what are Americans trying to accomplish in Syria? For laymen, it certainly is confusing. Advocates for staying in Syria are sometimes specific and sometimes vague. One commentator will say we have to stay in order to defeat ISIS, another will say we have to stay to honor and protect the Kurds because their militias helped us defeat ISIS. Another will say that we are there, joined in the struggle to secure a post-war order in Syria. Still others will say that the mission is to prevent Russia from achieving greater influence in the region.

American policymakers have mostly given up on the mission of helping rebels topple the Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad, partly because it would be very difficult to dislodge him. Intervention remains unpopular, and Russia proved willing to intervene dramatically. Of course it did; it naturally wants to protect naval assets hosted by a longtime regional ally, especially at a time when it considers other naval assets in Ukraine to be under pressure.

America turned its fire on the Islamic State and destroyed the burgeoning caliphate. That burgeoning statelet has been annihilated. But there are still thousands of ISIS fighters in the region, mostly in northern Syria, many of them among the rebel forces that occasionally excite American sympathy. This is why the president and experts seem to say that ISIS is defeated in one breath, and ISIS is still a threat in the next. But Syria is not the only place where ISIS can be found. ISIS also has places to operate in western Iraq, which is still barely reconciled to the government in Baghdad. And “affiliate” groups exist throughout much of North Africa.

In the fight against ISIS, we’ve worked closely with left-wing Kurdish militia, who are a thorn in the side of our NATO ally Turkey. Kurdish-controlled zones tend to be more religiously tolerant than neighboring ones, though they are also considered a security threat by Erdogan and Assad. The fights between Kurds and Turks should give readers an idea of how “entangled” our alliances have become in the Middle East.

So in this situation, commentators argue against leaving because it would abandon our Kurdish allies on the ground to the tender mercies of our Turkish allies. This would ruin our credibility when we intervene elsewhere. It would give Putin a “gift” and we would lose leverage in a post-war Syrian settlement.

Much of that is true. There are always costs to abandoning a bad investment. And yet these costs are preferable to an endless, ever-evolving mission that has no popular support or mandate. What critics of withdrawal refuse to do is describe the actual sustainable ends they want to achieve with America’s military in Syria.

What would a post-war Syria that is acceptable to America look like, and how can America bring it about at a cost Americans are willing to accept? We are not told. What are the conditions we hope to achieve before the mission can end? This question is also met with silence.

It is as if the downsides of leaving are cited only because staying keeps American soldiers and matériel near the ongoing disaster in Syria, a disaster that may yet yield an international outrage that will motivate Americans to expand the mission to include regime change. Every few months, as Assad’s government reclaims more territory, media outlets dutifully relay the messages of rebels ahead of their latest evacuations. So far public opinion has refused to satisfy the foreign-policy hawks.

As for Russian prestige, is it so enhanced? As in eastern Ukraine, so in Syria: The United States placed a gamble on a people-powered movement that would have the effect of depriving Russia of an ally that hosts vital Russian naval assets, and Russia eventually scrambled to avoid this major loss. It is not so much a gift as the successful and costly prevention of a theft.

If Russia’s prestige has been enhanced in the Middle East, perhaps it is not so much the fecklessness of American intervention and the resolution of Putin, but that Russia simply had the more viable strategy. Russia has intervened on behalf of traditional state actors, Iran and Syria. The United States, since the Arab Spring, has fitfully allied itself with demotic and even revolutionary Sunni movements. The relationships of these movements to Sunni terrorist movements such as Al Nusra and ISIS has been rather fluid.

In fact, Russia’s reentry into the Middle East has been made much easier by U.S. failures in the region, in the exact same way that increased Iranian influence follows American failure. The Iraq War increased the polarization of Sunni and Shia across the region, and Russia has simply sided with those who have more reason than ever to resent American involvement in the region. Russia could even advert to its own people and to the world that it was returning to its role as a protector of Christian religious minorities. It can make this ruse almost believable, because America’s and Saudi Arabia’s actions support, directly and sometimes indirectly, Sunni movements that are fantastically intolerant. If Syria is a gift to the Russians, let them have it — just as we took the “gift” of Afghanistan, only to discover how unhappy it has made us.

My friend Noah Rothman writes in Commentary, “Political commentators and anti-interventionist ideologues will note that withdrawing America’s modest footprint from Syria is popular with the public. But what would you expect? Precisely no one in the political class is making a case for sustained and substantial American intervention in this conflict zone.”

Are we sure that we have cause and effect in correct order? At the height of anger and outrage at Bashar Assad’s government, most of the press, most of the U.S. Senate, and the president himself were making a case for intervention against Assad. They did so on the limited basis of enforcing norms against the use of chemical weapons, though the war aims would surely be wider, just as a few years earlier the mission in Libya went from protecting human life to decapitating the regime. Americans were against such an intervention in Syria nearly four to one. The Parliament of the United Kingdom opposed it. Then the U.S. Congress dropped it. The wisdom of putting the power of war in the people’s house is that democracies cannot fight successful wars without popular support.

As for credibility with our allies, the Kurds allied with us, as did others, because we are powerful and rich. They are capable of remembering how George H. W. Bush encouraged Iraqis and Kurds to rise up against Saddam in the early 1990s, only to extricate ourselves. They knew the risks. They also know who is president of the United States, and have started talks about guaranteeing a tolerable order with the Syrian government.

When the U.S. embarked on its bid to transform Iraq, it did so while touting a “democratic domino theory.” A free Iraq would be an example that weakens the grip of authoritarians and despots across the Arab and Muslim world. So we were told.

And we did set the dominos in motion. But instead of stable democracies, what spread was chaos, Sunni radicalism, and an intensifying of the Sunni–Shia conflict across the Islamic world. Knocking over Iraq’s government put Baghdad in the grasp of Iran-sympathetic Shia, whose misgovernance encouraged a revolt across Iraq’s Sunni triangle and eventually in Syria. Similar Sunni radicalisms swept over Libya and Egypt. The results have been the destruction of minority religious communities of Christians and Yezidis and an ongoing refugee and migration crisis that has destabilized politics across almost the entirety of Europe.

We were told that we have to fight them over there, so that we do not have to fight them at home. But instead, we went to fight them over there, and find we are fighting them everywhere.

America has been conducting its terrorism fight according to the logic that obtains in imperial orders, where the great power at the center maintains an expansive, world-bestriding reign and tries to pick its fights along the permeable periphery of that order. Christmas markets and major public buildings at the centers of that order are reinforced and protected by concrete barriers.

But the unpopularity of intervention in Syria shows that Americans still have a small-r republican streak. Instead of trying to construct barriers to terrorism around Syria, and around a few important buildings in our cities, they would prefer barriers at the national border. It would be a shame if we ever gave up entirely on this republican spirit. Certainly nothing the hawks promise we’ll find in Syria seems worth sacrificing it.”

MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY — Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

#controversy #syrian civil war #syria #politics #geopolitics #islamic state #isil #trump administration #debate #Al Nusra #al-Qaeda

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Saturday, May 22, 2021

Record heat scorches western Russia and central Canada (Washington Post) It’s only May, and temperatures near the Arctic Circle in northwestern Russia are approaching 90 degrees. In Moscow, temperatures have shattered records on consecutive days. It has also been unusually warm in central Canada, where raging wildfires in Manitoba are sending plumes of smoke across retreating ice in Lake Winnipeg. Summer has yet to begin in the northern hemisphere, but temperatures in high latitudes are already alarmingly warm, portending another brutally hot season while signaling more climate troubles. Since last week, historic warmth has swelled over much of western Russian and bled into eastern Scandinavia. On Thursday, the mercury surged to 87.8 degrees in Naryan-Mar, Russia, a town near the Arctic Ocean.

House narrowly approves $1.9B to fortify Capitol after riot (AP) The House on Thursday narrowly approved $1.9 billion to fortify the Capitol after the Jan. 6 insurrection, as Democrats pushed past Republican opposition to try to harden the complex with retractable fencing and a quick-response force following the most violent domestic attack on Congress in history. The bill’s 213-212 passage came a day after the House approved the formation of an independent commission to investigate the deadly mob siege by President Donald Trump’s supporters. The two measures now face an uncertain outcome in the evenly divided Senate as most Republicans have objected to both. Tensions are running high at the Capitol.

Biden Is Facing an Uneasy Truth: North Korea Isn’t Giving Up Its Nuclear Arsenal (NYT) North Korea’s arsenal of nuclear weapons and its stockpile of fuel have roughly doubled in the past four years, a steady rise that proceeded even as President Donald J. Trump held high-drama meetings with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader. The best unclassified estimates are that the North has at least 45 nuclear weapons, and appears headed to an arsenal roughly the size of Pakistan’s, another nuclear state the United States once demanded must disarm, and now has all but given up that it ever will. For the North, that has always been a model to follow. In private, officials in the Biden administration admit they harbor no illusions that North Korea will ever give up the entirety of its program. Yet, like his predecessors, Mr. Biden has made the decision not to officially acknowledge the North as a nuclear state, aides say. It is a little like pretending that the Yankees do not play baseball. But maintaining the myth has a purpose, for both the United States and South Korea. Any official acknowledgment that the North Korean arsenal is here to stay would revive the long-simmering debates about whether U.S. allies like South Korea and Japan can depend on the American nuclear umbrella—essentially a security net for countries that do not have nuclear weapons of their own.

Young British people want to ditch the monarchy, poll suggests (Reuters) Young people in Britain no longer think the country should keep the monarchy and more now want an elected head of state, with their mood souring over the last couple of years, a poll on Friday showed. The British monarchy traces its history back to William the Conqueror who invaded England in 1066, though royals ruled the patchwork of kingdoms which stretched across what became England, Scotland and Wales for centuries before that. According to the survey by YouGov, 41% of those aged 18 to 24 thought there should now be an elected head of state compared to 31% who wanted a king or queen. That was a reversal of sentiment from two years ago, when 46% preferred the monarchy to 26% who wanted it replaced.

Europe freezes China deal (Foreign Policy) The European Parliament voted on Thursday overwhelmingly in favor of freezing the ratification of a new investment agreement with China. The move was a further tit-for-tat after Beijing sanctioned 10 EU parliamentarians in retaliation for Western sanctions over the treatment of its Uyghur population in Xinjiang.

Greek firefighters battle forest blaze near Athens (Reuters) Greek firefighters battled for a third day on Friday a wind-driven blaze that burned through pine forests about 60 km (37 miles) west of the capital Athens and forced hundreds of people to evacuate from their homes. Firefighters battled overnight to contain the fire that burned homes as black smoke filled the sky above costal villages where police was calling on citizens to leave. More than 10 villages and two monasteries have already been evacuated. The blaze broke out in a forest at a small seaside holiday resort on the Gulf of Corinth on Wednesday and moved eastward into the western Attica province on Thursday, fanned by strong winds.

Spiraling conflict in Myanmar sends thousands fleeing as military targets rebels (Washington Post) The group of men from a quiet, rural town in Myanmar’s hilly northwest often hunted birds and rabbits. But in late April, they turned their rifles on the military, killing more than a dozen soldiers over the ensuing weeks. Retribution came swiftly. The military seized the town of Mindat. Troops arriving in helicopters fired heavy artillery at civilians, according to residents, and cut off the supply of food and water. Soldiers raided homes where they suspected militia fighters were hiding, and shot a 10-year old girl in the neck, local media reported. Most of the 12,000 residents in the urban area fled into the hills, where they forage for food and sleep in makeshift shelters. Almost four months since Myanmar’s military ousted the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, resistance to the coup is intensifying beyond street protests and civil disobedience. Though the cost of fighting back is high—more than 800 have been killed, mostly peaceful protesters and bystanders—militia groups are now taking up arms against the overextended military as the country speeds toward collapse and thousands of refugees pour into India, Thailand and China.

As Olympics loom, Japan health care in turmoil (AP) As she struggled to breathe, Shizue Akita had to wait more than six hours while paramedics searched for a hospital in Osaka that would treat her worsening COVID-19. When she finally got to one that wasn’t overwhelmed with other patients, doctors diagnosed severe pneumonia and organ failure and sedated her. Akita, 87, was dead two weeks later. “Osaka’s medical systems have collapsed,” said her son, Kazuyuki Akita. Hospitals in Osaka, Japan’s third-biggest city and only 2 1/2 hours by bullet train from Summer Olympics host Tokyo, are overflowing with coronavirus patients. About 35,000 people nationwide—twice the number of those in hospitals—must stay at home with the disease, often becoming seriously ill and sometimes dying before they can get medical care. As cases surge in Osaka, medical workers say that every corner of the system has been slowed, stretched and burdened. And it’s happening in other parts of the country, too.

Bathroom break (Foreign Policy) A driver of a Japanese bullet train is facing disciplinary action after he left the controls unattended to take a bathroom break while the train and its 160 passengers were traveling at more than 90 miles per hour. The driver left the cockpit for three minutes in total, as an unqualified train conductor remained behind. According to Central Japan Railway, the trainline’s operator, the driver felt abdominal pain and wanted to avoid delaying the train by having to stop at the next station. The driver may have gotten away with the infraction had the company not noticed an extremely rare occurrence for Japan’s Shinkansen trains: It was running one minute behind schedule.

South Korean bullying (NYT) South Korea is undergoing a reckoning over bullying. Anonymous accusations have surfaced on social media alleging that sports heroes, K-pop stars and actors bullied others when they were teenagers or younger. The wave has started a national conversation about bullying, and some experts ask whether South Korea’s hypercompetitive society may be partly to blame. Han You-kyung, head of the Institute of School Violence Prevention at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said that surveys do not show bullying is more serious in South Korean schools than in other developed countries. But Han called South Korea “a culture that puts achievement at the center” and a system that inflicts weak punishments on bullies.

Palestinians claim victory in Gaza (AP) Palestinians rallied by the thousands early Friday after a cease-fire took effect in the latest Gaza war, with many viewing it as costly but clear victory for the Islamic militant group Hamas over a far more powerful Israel. The 11-day war left more than 200 dead—the vast majority Palestinians—and brought widespread devastation to the already impoverished Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. But the rocket barrages that brought life to a standstill in much of Israel were seen by many Palestinians as a bold response to perceived Israeli abuses in Jerusalem, the emotional heart of the conflict. Thousands took to the streets of Gaza as the cease-fire took hold at 2 a.m. Young men waved Palestinian and Hamas flags, passed out sweets, honked horns and set off fireworks. “Life will return, because this is not the first war, and it will not be the last war,” said shop owner Ashraf Abu Mohammad. “The heart is in pain, there have been disasters, families wiped from the civil registry, and this saddens us. But this is our fate in this land, to remain patient.” (Foreign Policy) The destruction in Gaza will take years to rebuild, according to Matthias Schmele, the Gaza director of UNRWA, the U.N. agency responsible for Palestinian refugees; 16,800 housing units were damaged in the bombings, with 1,000 completely destroyed, according to Gaza’s housing ministry. “The biggest damage out of all of this is trauma,” Schmele told Foreign Policy, adding that mental health support needs to be part of any future investment. “Buildings you can rebuild. But people’s lives, that won’t be easy.”

#headlines #news

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ratherhavetheblues · 5 years

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CLAIRE DENIS’ ‘THE INTRUDER’ “You’ll never pay enough”

One of the only things I don’t like about the endeavor of Ingmar Bergman, is his hatred of the work of Michelangelo Antonioni. On starting upon fathoming Claire Denis’ film, The Intruder (2005), I was more than pleased to realize that we’re both on the same page concerning this important matter.

It wouldn’t be Denis, if the launch-pad were not brimming with explosives of Bergman’s incendiary theatrical dialogue. But, in our film today, easily 95% of the action proceeds wordlessly. The wiring of Bergman’s film, The Seventh Seal(1957), has been expertly switched on. But, instead of honeys of dramatic sophistication, we end up with wilderness and a ticket to ride. Bergman, himself, was well aware that his disclosures would never reach the terminal decadence of normal respectability. This left him with a paradox which his sensibility would not ignite (on the order of rejecting, repeatedly, an exotic organ—a fully operating heart, for instance). Clearly seeing that problematic, Denis essays, in this production, to liberate the vehicles of acrobatics and juggling (stemming from The Seventh Seal) in a bid, endlessly demanding, to find in her art some life on earth which surfaces more than a few forgettable seconds.

Though it might, were such a thing possible, have him spinning in his grave, our adventure today—in full dedication to Bergman—invokes Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960). You’ll recall, that The Seventh Seal reveals a medieval Swedish knight, Antonius Block, obsessed with reaching certitude about his eternal soul. As such, he stages a series of chess board events imagined to be opposing him in the form of a black-garbed, pasty-faced personification of death, who has seemingly promised him to open heaven itself if he can defeat the apparition. Thus distracted, Block falls short of cogent animation. True to form, our protagonist, Louis Trebor, a man of our century with great wealth and a track record of distant travels (Block having come to bear as just returned from one of the crusades), has become obsessed with the technology and accessibility of heart transplants.

But, to add to that business, there is an expansion of Block/ Trebor, along lines of a travelling circus player, Jof, the poet-inventor of the beauties of acrobatics and juggling. Jof passionately looks forward to his baby son becoming a tower of those binary skills. Trebor, on the other hand, had fathered a son in Tahiti many (funky) years ago; and now, he too, has become passionate—but simply about finding and fostering the boy, within a labyrinth of years, regardless of performance. (Adding to the distress, Trebor, now living in the French Jura mountain region, hard by Switzerland, has brought there another son, now adult, and married with two young children; and they hate each other, very seldom meeting.) Jof sees an “impossible” and yet quietly desperate exigency reaching the cosmos itself. What Trebor sees comprises the problematic heart of this film.

Louis, when we first see him in his somewhat Nietzschean bailiwick, seems well inured to the monosyllabic priorities of triple-x rurality. What seems to be his theme song, flaring up long before we see him, and ushering in the title, is a sharply clanging, persistent report from out of the Iron Age, recalling, perhaps, the caged witch, in The Seventh Seal, about to be torched for, very ironically, bringing the plague to an otherwise Triple-A health regime. A nudge, toward the days of black-and-white cinematography, occurs in the introduction to the iron-ore-rich rock-faces of his domain. Overtaking (and not well transcending) those rude pasts, we are faced with the man of the hour, a burly Cro-Magnon—nude, in the sun and looking up, and then turning over to hug one of the two identical Japanese Akita Huskies, near a lake embraced by a fine, green forest. Soon he is in the water, floating on his back like a large rodent. The exquisite, Eastern Hemisphere dogs, far more picturesque, and far more resolved than he, regard him from dry land as a primate, loyal but limited. As he proceeds to swim, he soon experiences pain. He favors his chest and the bid for gratifying motion disappears. Back in his cave-illumination cabin nearby, we have a more extensive view of his physiology. His skin is heavily wrinkled, moles of various description abound and a barely discernible five-inch horizontal scar over his heart indicates a bid to undergo unblocking something. And yet, withal, he sports a managerial mane of hair and patrician visage, perhaps the remnants of plastic surgery. Coinciding with this stressful register, while feeding his dogs they begin to growl and he picks up a shotgun and blazes away at something in his makeshift yard.

To anticipate, for the sake of rounding out this rather complicated take-off of non-Bergmanesque conflict (and yet having Bergman written all over it), we’ll take the license of revealing what that firing-range was about. Perched at a border region, Louis, bedeviled enough by personal cares, would be buffeted by the days, and especially the nights, of will-o’-the-wisp illegal immigrants from ancient and dysfunctional lands. (That they would choose Switzerland, the most insular and unwelcoming spot in Europe as a promised land, would seem to be an instance of Denis doing black comedy. On the other hand, however, there will be evidence that at least some of the renegades are terrorists, taking aim against an exceptionally unyielding, wealthy, influential and small infidel. More to that point, we also have the phenomenon of flagellants, from The Seventh Seal, hurling themselves toward punishments in hopes of a heaven to inhabit forever, just as Block tears himself inside-out in order to find assurance that disappearance will not happen. That Louis would, when younger and bolder, have readily shot down such desperation and distraction, is an important ingredient of this mystery. Where we find him, at the outset of the story, he’s neither renegade nor mundane.) Later that night, the dogs are spot on, and he slits the throat of a young man near his front door, which prompts him to check an unused out-building discovered to be used by a terrorist cell. (Revolutionist trespassing of that sort was to reappear in Denis’ film, White Material [2010].) In his skill with the Russian language (due to his upbringing and the source of his vast wealth stemming from an émigré fortune), he reads on a laptop there, “I opt for the emergency solution. The emergency process is underway. The surcharge is to be paid upon your arrival…” Linking as in a dance of death, we have had in the film’s prologue the deceased’s associate, a young woman, who lights up a cigarette and who gets the show smoking with the home truths of her oracular, witch-like pronouncement: “Your worst enemies are hiding inside…in the shadow…in your heart…”

Terrorist insurrection is, in fact, far down the list of our protagonist’s interests. Since we have to beat him up quite a bit here, let’s give him some credit owing. A narrative aspect looming large is that long-ago trip to Tahiti where he produced a child, only to bugger off. Give him some evidential credit, however, that his rich-boy wondering (from a lineage of ease and glittering appetite, like a hereditary knight) entailed a concern to put it right, however messy, with the world—no small motive, especially where the “respectable” smarts and solicitude constitute a non-stop neutron bombing of intrinsic grossness, middling radiation, in lieu of real intelligence and real love.

Though virtually alienated from his son nearby, Louis frequently communes with atmospheric heights and his almost mystical dogs. (That his home is a grotty shack, speaks volumes about his being overwhelmed by the work at hand. He has a woman friend, who ferries to him his steady doses of heart medicine, she being a pharmacist; and, though lovemaking is a care, impotence rules. She, too, has many black moles on her face and body, whereby the aforementioned plague—so salient, in The Seventh Seal— makes headway.) Trebor has a near-neighbor, a young woman, always dressed in Hermes apparel (presumably some kind of environmentalist), who breeds large, Western Hemisphere, huskies. On the first meeting we see of her, our ailing think-tank addresses her, “My respects to the lovely otter of the valley.” (In this quip, he poses the possibility—driving him crazy, in fact—of being a denizen of two dimensions [land and water]. Her upper front teeth are far apart.) One look at the hate in her eyes, as she laughs off Louis’ mockery, and you know the woods have been intruded with one more poison. She feeds her large pack with top-of-the-line steaks and pork tenderloin, perhaps having overbought viewings of the red queen, in Alice. Slipping into the role of the Mad Hatter, he soon invites her to look after his dogs, while he’s away, permanently away, in fact. Her succinct response gives her a T-bone steak meal, to wit, “No, they’re as crazy as you are!” Showing what he’s made of, at this juncture, Trebor suspends the pet care after that one rejection. (In addition to the setting in relief how our protagonist envisions priorities, the abuse of dogs happens to remarkably galvanize a sizeable constituency of indie/ avant-garde filmmakers, including Denis, who apprenticed with that patron saint of the movement, namely, Jim Jarmusch, whereby, for instance, in his film, Patterson [2016], despite a large majority of effete, Humanities viewers swooning over laughable poems by the protagonist, the neglect of his dog is where the action is. Similarly, with Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy[2008], the future of the abandoned Lucy, the golden lab, is far more to the fore than that of petty Wendy. Note, though, that here the abandoner, not much of an aristocrat, still needs to be watched closely.) That Iron Age chime fills the air, as the Zen siblings haplessly chase his car headed for Geneva and his bulging safety deposit box, with the first point of the agenda being, ironically, an improved heart.

A heresy for Bergman’s engine, but not for Denis’, is the full-scale resort to the lovely and loving surround, making a valuable point without a word. As the dogs, Toti and Sligo (the latter name recalling a Spaghetti Western), follow their dream which has become a nightmare, the greenery along the winding country road in mottled sunlight becomes a blur, a form of strange action, more landscape than Lassie. There is also a trumpet motif, along lines of taps. A cut from them to Trebor, in close-up profile, sees him gloomily peering into the rear-view-mirror. A second cut finds him now in silhouette, falling, by visceral means, into the beginning of an eradicable death trap. Outside the window, there appears a farmer in his pasture, with some cows and a scythe.

Coming to us in a supplementary manner, there is Trebor’s tangential relatives, first glimpsed in the form of his daughter-in-law, on the job as a customs inspector on the Swiss border, with a specialty of deploying a golden retriever to find illicit drugs. “Search! Search!” she calls, as the gentle beast goes to work. “He found it! Good boy!” she sings. She hugs that partner and dances around the car in a victory lap. We subsequently never see such joy within her family. Her stay-at-home-husband attends to the children correctly, but very low-key. On her return from work he seems starved for incorrectness—a sinister spate of Gothic, the context of Block. “You’re in a fir forest. It’s dark… You’re throat is tight. You’re on a hunt… You’re not well. Which is why I’m here. That’s my job. I’m going to count…”As he counts, he undresses her… She cries in pain when he enters from behind. “Search!” it seems, has something to do about transcending a disappointing planet. (And all this comes about without sophisticated theatrical dialogue.)

Someone else who didn’t—for a while, anyway—underestimate hugging his dogs was Louis, finding far more sustained buoyancy in them than ever occurred in long-ago Tahiti. Moreover, the accoutrements, of rich green saplings and hoary tree-trunks in the Jura risk-taking, would constitute a nagging vision about something missing. We see him cycling in the splendid hill country on a chic bike in chic apparel; and there is a remarkable spate of downhill cruising amidst a startling fertility being overtaken by inertia. The plunge of the hard kinetic is, it appears, no match for the ease in abundance.

The layering, in the service of reaching a position which will not rot overnight, might come to a clarification of sorts, by fleshing out the customs lady’s dilemma. Like the son of protagonist Borg, in Wild Strawberries (1957), who has been weighted down by a death-wish, the grown son of Louis, constitutes a range of motion spanning, badly, the universe. Not until our protagonist was about to leave the Jura redoubt for hopeful repairs, do we realize that the joyless first responder had been an adjunct of his father’s safari to a carriage-trade spa. Whereas, in those days, Trebor was open for what he could find, his stringalong son, by all accounts, could not thrive upon Bohemian exigencies. The latter bumps into Louis during his last-minute shopping preparations for leaving France forever. (Louis XVI made it that far; and then he was captured and guillotined.) The estranged son glares at the life-long student/ elite, and declares, “I recognized your car.” “Taking a walk?” the uncomfortable chit-chat runs. “Sure, I have nothing better to do,” the snotty ironist flicks out. This draws from patrician-Louis, “I’m out of cash right now. I can’t help you” [this clearly the only thread remaining between them]. The baby-sitter argues, “I haven’t bugged you too much till now.” “Things are tough for me, too, not just for you,” the imminent exile, recent murderer, and major surgery subject declares. The wife and exponent of “Search!” comes along, and it’s clear the grampa doesn’t even know the gender of the quite recent baby. That the woman’s name surfaces—Antoinetta, in fact—fills out the conflict area of this non-family. (Marie-Antoinette having been Louis XVI’s queen and been also executed for being out of step of a wave of the future.) In the background, there are two shops, easily recognized: a shop of antiquities; and a shop of jewelry. The new baby has been called Louis. “Like you,” the mom, mentions. “Really!” the travelling man exclaims. He touches his namesake’s hand. As a result, Louis changes his tune: “Look, son… Here [comes to light a wad of bills]. Let me hear from you, from time to time’’—that being exactly the phrase used by Borg, in Wild Strawberries, as the trio of hitch hikers, only coming into view that morning, to disappear forever, hit the road. Borg displays resilience, generosity and depths during his saga. Louis evinces an aristocratic imperative; but, like his ancient namesake, he lacks the gravitas to be more than a warning. His final action here is to commandeer a croissant from the busy and fed up couple’s shopping bag. After all, he paid for it! Like the demoralized “magician,” in Bergman’s The Magician (1958), Louis, with hard and self- lacerating eyes, says good-bye. “What a lunatic!” his son growls. (The sneering breeder of the dog pack also regards Trebor as “crazy.” Her closing the film with a team of obliging sleigh-dogs reminds us of Death, leading the knight and his retiring retinue, in The Seventh Seal.)

In the course of fetching a heart transplant—the first step being chic Geneva, where an agency promises to deliver like a Swiss watch—Trebor, parked by the car so ardently invested in, now in a suit and white shirt, shaves as the sunrise itself arrives to do more than Switzerland, if only given a chance. To pass the time he buys an expensive watch. His first choice (rather old-fashioned) is countered by an erudite woman-retailer, who points out, “This is much more contemporary…Dauphin hands…so it has the Geneva Quality Hallmark…With this watch, you can admire the beauty of the movement…” Contemporary movement does not reveal its mysteries to semi-effete softies, those turning away from an alloy of hardness and deftness and joyousness. (The Dauphin touch involving the heir apparent to the French crown.) Just before this discharge of irony, there was a cut to the Jura-border where a military unit was intent on justice. Also in the area were Louis’ dogs, looking in a patch of garbage to find a means of survival, a means of holding on to a justice far more germane, far more contemporary. A series of rifle shots gives them a start—the last we see of them in real-time. A site of acrobatics of various kinds.

After a cordon bleu dinner, Louis, the sputtering king, falls asleep in his palatial hotel. And he dreams. He dreams that two young riders, a woman and a man, gallop across a snowscape, on top-of-the-line horses. After a period of dynamics, more technical than true, we see that they are dragging a figure across that terrain, Louis, in fact. Battered and bloodied, he dies soon after they pause to see how he’s doing. Before he dies, he tells them, as he might have told his rather distant relatives, “I already paid.” The young woman replies, “You’ll never pay enough…” On waking up, he pulls out from the bed table an expensive dagger. He places it under his plush pillow. And in doing so, we have Borg, the protagonist of Wild Strawberries (1957), coming out of a nightmare showing himself in a coffin. In being thus frightened, he opts against a scheduled plane ride. The dagger is Louis’ insurance, as tangled up in the vicissitudes to come. He holds his heart. Skipping from nightmare-to-nightmare, he wakes up in snowy Seoul, Korea, where his new heart (pointedly a young man’s heart) has been installed. He had dreamed of his dogs, scavenging in the snow, and being brought by a young woman (in a huge overcoat carrying a huge shotgun) to Louis’ abandoned cabin. En route, she clears away some snow on the ice of a lake. This reveals Louis’ dead face. Once again, the Bergman coffin comes to bear. And the time-pieces in Geneva recall time-pieces without hands. The Borg who choked, pulled himself back from that weakness and went on to a breathtaking moment of vision. Our protagonist today has reached a moment of irrevocable farce, with no Jof and Marie (from The Seventh Seal) to lift the mood. (The conclusion of the Korean nightmare entails the over-sized young woman smashing her way into Trebor’s redoubt, sensually having a bath with the fireplace licking; and then being seen to have been butchered by two men resenting her contemporaneity and dumping her out in the yard as positioned upon her now-bloody coat. There is a pan shot of a blood-red heart resting on an expanse of ice. One of his hungry dogs begins to eat it. Fear, paranoia and guilt. From here to the end, atmosphere carries the show, theatrical drama recognizing its limit in contemporary movement.)

Even before the nightmares, skittish, soft and threatened Louis, would have begun a dash to the totally (and monied) mundane, in the form of a return to Tahiti to shower riches (and what he could imagine to be love) upon his elusive son (elusive, sort of, like the elusive debutante, in L’Avventura). Shrugging off the less than stellar performance of his new heart—the quality-control nurse being sensitive but blind—he purchases a large freighter at Pusan, Korea, not the bathtub toy he might have provided years ago, but now an inroad to easy street, for the boy; and a pedestal for himself. A trademark of Denis’ mise-en-scene, consists of a naïve painting acting as a logo for an outrage. Here that factor, from a shipping company brochure, deploys the toy-like attraction in a rather wry mode. Cut, then, to the real craft at its christening with the traditional champagne smashing upon the prow. What isn’t traditional is a ragged rendition of the Eisenhower-era pop-song, “There’s No Tomorrow.” (The preamble to the ceremony has included Louis, in a kimono, being on-hand to see, as best he can, a striking passage of black-ink-like waters rippling uncannily. Before that, his kimono was playfully pushed by a sea breeze in brilliant sunshine. What could have been a fine spectacle, a giant globe being exploded and discharging a blizzard of confetti, along with brightly-colored streamers dancing in the wind, fails to soar, for a lack of nuance and pacing. Acrobatics going every which way, due to the absence of a pilot.)

That night, he’s in a bar alone, and a drunk young man comes up to his table and tries to sing the Elvis song, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” This brings from both of them a brief homage to the King. Outside, on a dark street with some neon signs, he’s stalked by the Geneva woman who had kicked things off for the surgery. In return for his anger, she tells him, “Your heart is not sick anymore. It’s just empty.” There is, then, a cut to another predator, the son in France with a family living in an apartment block resembling, from the outside, a jail, who invades Louis’ cabin and reads drafts of letters he had sent ahead to Tahiti. “Beloved, Son, how I’ve missed you. I was absent from your life for so long. You’ll see, I’ll make it up to you… Every day that has kept us apart weighs on my heart like an entire year…” Such maudlin sentiment for a chimera, whereas the flesh and blood means nothing! The terminally depressed dad had failed in Trebor’s own eyes, when the latter could still care about going for broke. As “just empty,” our failed monarch would be no longer looking for substantive quality.

Gaugin came to and stayed in Tahiti for many years, closely pondering the mysteriousness there. Here Denis gives us her sense of what Gaugin was getting at, by way of the camera work and the sound design of her film. Young Trebor, escaping the chilly, grotty and annoyingly egalitarian Russia of his youth, and now leaving a parody of a paradise in the capital city, moves on to the island where he imagines having made an impact. Indigo seas and closely matched skies with lilting progressions, welcome the freighter and its crew and its owner in terms calling out for appropriate response. The prospect, from Louis’ fixer-up of a home, shifts into 1950’s post-card styling (reverting, that is, to the logo). With sensuous resources of real frappe in play, the kitsch is almost as painful as the winding down of our protagonist’s warrantee of Swiss perfection. He is told by many of the residents that he doesn’t belong here, and that the boy is seldom seen; but that doesn’t prevent them from putting on a meat market to find a plausible “son” and then grab the crazy give-away and distribute it to the village. The interviews run in this way: “He looks a bit like a white man…” “Too short… A midget’s bigger than him…” “This one’s a bit too slanty-eyed. He looks Asian…” “Too Short and too fat…”

With ailing Louis first bedridden, and then hospitalized, a guy comes by and asks, “I hear you’re looking for a friend. I think we can do business.” Louis tells him, “Toma, you don’t belong here.” And he hands over to the most recent predator a roll of bills. Cut to Toma, on the street; and along comes a guy with a Santa Claus hat. (In Wild Strawberries, a science-lover shows his hatred of the poetic by making an equivalence between God and Santa.) Back at the hospital, a nurse tells him, “Make an effort. Don’t let yourself go…We’ll wash you up. You’ll be fine. You can’t be seen like this…”

Cut to the Swiss gold-digger—or, more accurately, her silver-grey silky dress, displaying the elegance of the subtle patterning of the design, and its textural fluidity. She may be just another write-off; but her outfit is something else, something not only transcending, “You’ll be fine,” but lighting up the cosmos, susceptible to small attentions and large attentions. The cleaned-up washed-up does, finally, find the long-lost son, on a slab at the local morgue. The latter’s chest shows that he, too, had experienced a failing heart-transplant. (The polished, gun-metal, contiguous grey panels, each containing a corpse, recall the linked, dead souls dancing along with the apparition of Death, in The Seventh Seal.)

There are unimpressive dogs lolling around the precinct of the morgue. Then there is the freighter-guy directing a backhoe carrying a coffin onto the deck. Then, now off-shore, there is another moment of something else. In very dark cloud-cover, the hills and the lost forests of the islands stand motionless. And the sky is a calm riot of greys and blacks and whites of the most fervent engagement toward those who die. There is, once again, the urgent clanging, soon joined by those taps we heard as Louis’ dogs were thrown to the wolves. Then a cut to daylight and the chairman of the fleet lolling on a futon and giving instructions to a young deckhand. The destiny of the second-best; the execution of a minor soul being overshadowed by his betters.

The last note swings back to snowy, hilly France, where Louis’ former neighbor and enemy has put together a well-fed sled-dog team which she might have been cued-up for by way of a glossy magazine. (The instance of Jof and Marie, in The Seventh Seal, and their breakaway, puts to shame this new-age nonsense.) Her single-minded acrobatics shows in the hatred of her eyes while smiling at and cheering the dogs as they thrust through deep snow on a sunny day. (Failing to juggle toward humans being not a prerogative.) She’s dressed for a Hollywood Arctic saga where the snow would be fake. Despite her elaborate silk blouse, carefully exposing her chest, and Parisian bomber jacket, she wildly lacks credibility as a dynamic force obviating a pack of careful bores. She becomes on track to represent yet another factor of Death, whipping along a gullible company.

Antonioni well knew about such dead-ends. And his architect instincts knew where to find a source to deal with them. Within the acrobatics of those knowing about tempering a slide, the upsurge of pristine physicality constitutes a treasure of incomparable stature. Denis, a formidable exponent of the history of cinema, has embedded, within her filmic conundrum a horrific defeat, and a pathway of rich playfulness.

At the outer limits of this transaction she has boldly, first of all, as noted, concluded the dream of the woman-intruder into his place in France being butchered by two of the intruders teeming, presumptuously, at the Swiss/ French border. Later in this back-and-forth, the surly boy/ father—not in a dream—prowling around the interior of Louis’ cabin in hopes of plunder as a respite to baby-sitting, notices a bloody wrist-band which figured in the nightmare of the big-coat/ body-bag; but it would seem, not to be in real time. How did that brutalist-style accessory get back to the mundane residence? Louis’ terminal dream would—wonders never ceasing—touch upon the ground-work of violence whereby nightmare and reality reach a continuity that will never leave us. What else will never leave us is intruders into the fantasy of immortality, more or less unwittingly declaring war.

#claire denis

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libertariantaoist · 7 years

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Oliver Stone’s series of interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin – conducted between July 2015 and February 2017 – has garnered a lot of attention, albeit in most cases not for the right reasons. In a much-noted appearance of Stephen Colbert’s comedy show, the liberal host attacked Stone for not confronting the Russian leader for his alleged crimes – which simply shows that Colbert didn’t bother seeing the interviews, because Stone most certainly did question Putin about this and other related matters. A review in Salon follows a similar pattern: the reviewer apparently did view at least some parts of the interviews, but predictably focused on the most superficial material: Putin loves Judo, he’s not a feminist, and won’t be marching in any Gay Pride events. Shocking!

In the present atmosphere of Russophobic hysteria, no honest account of what is happening in Russia or what Putin is really all about is likely to be taken at face value. What’s astonishing, however, is that this four-part documentary was even made at all– and shown on Showtime, where it is currently playing. Less surprising is the fact that the interviews contain several news-making revelations that the “mainstream” media has so far largely ignored.

It gets interesting right from the beginning when Stone delves into Putin’s early career. As a KGB officer stationed in East Germany, then the German Democratic Republic, he describes the GDR as entirely lacking the “spirit of innovation,” a “society [that] was frozen in the 1950s.” Hardly what one would expect from the caricature of a Soviet apparatchik Western profiles of Putin routinely portray. And also right from the beginning there is a tension between Stone, with his often archetypal liberal-left views, and Putin, whose perspective – if it has any American equivalent – might be called paleoconservative.

When Stone tries to identify Putin with Mikhail Gobachev, the Soviet liberal-reformist leader – “he has a resemblance to you in that he came up through that system. Very humble beginnings” – Putin rejects this outright with laconic disdain: “We all have something in common because we’re human beings.” Gorby, a favorite of American liberals, is seen by Putin as someone who “didn’t know what [he] wanted or know how to achieve what was required.”

Putin is routinely described by Western journalists as someone who wants to restore the old Soviet system, or at least restore the empire that extended over the countries of the Warsaw Pact, but what isn’t recognized is that he opposed the failed coup that sought a Soviet restoration: he resigned from his KGB office when the coup plotters briefly took over. And so Stone asks him, “But in your mind, did you still believe in communism? Did you believe in the system?” Putin answers: “No, certainly not. But at the beginning I believed it … and I wanted to implement it.” So when did he change? “You know, regrettably, my views are not changed when I’m exposed to new ideas, but only when I’m exposed to new circumstances.” Here is Putin the pragmatist, the man of action, who wants results and not theories: “The political system was stagnating,” he says, “it was frozen, it was not capable of any development.” Just like East Germany, which he had recently come from. And therefore he concluded that “the monopoly of one political force, of one party, is pernicious to the country.”

Still, Stone insists that “these are Gorbachev’s ideas, so you were influenced by Gorbachev.” Yet Putin contradicts him: “These are not ideas of Gorbachev,” who was merely trying to reform a system that was rotten at its very core: “The problem is this, this system was not efficient at its roots. And how can you radically change the system while preserving the country? That’s something no one back then knew—including Gorbachev. And they pushed the country towards collapse.”

It was the country versus the system – the latter was destroying the former. So how to preserve the Russian nation in the midst of so much turmoil? That was the problem that Russia faced as the Communist colossus was falling, and it is still the conundrum at the heart of Putin’s concerns. Putin greatly resents Gorbachev because the would-be Soviet reformer was pushing the system toward its ultimate demolition without regard for the consequences.

And why was this a disastrous course in Putin’s view? Not because the old Communist dream was exposed as a nightmare, but due to the fact that the nation – as opposed to the system – was dismembered. “To start with,” says Putin, “the most important thing is that after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, 25 million Russians – in the blink of an eye – found themselves abroad. In another country.”

Imagine waking up one morning and finding that you’re not a citizen of the United States, but instead come under the control of some foreign entity that never existed in your lifetime. That’s what happened in the old Soviet Union. And the consequences of that historic implosion are still reverberating some thirty years later.

A key part of the mythology surrounding Putin is that he’s a power-mad dictator, the reincarnation of Stalin, and yet the facts – little known, of course, and not reported in the Western media – give us quite a different perspective. For example, I’ve never heard a single news story about Putin’s career report the fact that he initially refused President Boris Yeltsin’s first offer to appoint him Prime Minister. He didn’t trust Yeltsin, with good reason, and to underscore the dangers inherent in the office at that point he says: “And there was only one thing I was thinking about back then: Where to hide my children?”

This is not someone who wants power for its own sake. Indeed, Putin comes across as a modest man, driven by a sense of patriotic duty rather than lust for power, prestige, or pelf. He looks askance at praise, such as when Stone says: “You’re credited with doing many fine things in your first term. Privatization was stopped. You built up industries … a real son of Russia – you should be proud. You raised the GDP,” etc. etc. A Stalin type would simply have accepted this adulation, and yet Putin disputed Stone’s key point:

“Well, it’s not exactly like that. I didn’t stop privatization. I just wanted to make it more equitable, more fair. We put an end to some schemes – manipulation schemes – which led to the creation of oligarchs. These schemes that allowed some people to become billionaires in the blink of an eye.”

Here, again, we see the tension between Stone’s left-wing economic views, and Putin’s perspective, a theme played out in the entire course of these interviews: Putin continually insists that he is for private property, and that the “privatization” schemes he denounces were all due to the oligarchs’ connections to the state apparatus, which handed them control of entire industries for pennies on the dollar. The oligarchs were made possible by government control of industry and a rigged system, the exact opposite of a market economy. Putin clearly understands this when, later in the interview, he says:

“Do you know who was not happy with the new laws [which opened up the bidding process for state-owned industries]? Those who were not true businessmen. Those who earned their millions or billions not thanks to their entrepreneurial talents, but thanks to their ability to force good relationships with the government – those people were not happy.”

I said there was some real news buried in these interviews, which has gone unreported for the most part in Western media, and toward the end of the first interview there’s a real shocker when Stone says:

“Five assassination attempts, I’m told. Not as much as Castro whom I interviewed – I think he must have had 50 – but there’s a legitimate five that I’ve heard about.”

Putin doesn’t deny it. Instead, he talks about his discussion with Fidel Castro on the subject, who told him “Do you know why I’m still alive? Because I was always the one to deal with my security personally.” However, Putin doesn’t follow Castro’s example. Apparently he trusts his security people: “I do my job and the security people do theirs.” What’s interesting is that the conversation continues along these lines, in the context of attempts on Castro’s life. Stone is surprised that Putin didn’t take Castro’s advice on the security question, saying “Because always the first mode of assassination, from when the United States went after Castro, you try to get inside the security of the president to perform assassination.” “Yes,” replies Putin, “I know that. Do you know what they say among the Russian people? They say that those who are destined to be hanged are not going to drown.”

While I’m not prepared to interpret this Russian proverb, or its relevance to what is an astounding revelation – five assassination attempts! – Putin’s willingness to contradict or correct Stone, and the absence of any objection to this line of questioning on his part, looks very much like an endorsement of Stone’s contention. To my knowledge, CBS – which owns Showtime — is the only major media outlet in this country (aside from a brief mention in Newsweek ) that reported it, and then only perfunctorily.

So who tried to kill Putin? From the context of this interview, the clear implication is that it was the US, or its agents, but we don’t know that for a fact. Indeed, the whole subject is something Putin – while he doesn’t deny it – doesn’t want to pursue to the end. This is, I think, in large part because – and this will astonish you – he’s very pro-American. This comes out in the beginning of the second interview, the next day [July 3, 2015], when, in the midst of a discussion about US intervention in Iraq in 1991, and Gorbachev’s withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe, a clearly frustrated Stone – who is not getting the expected answers from Putin – explodes:

“Let’s lay it on the line here. I mean, I was in the Vietnam War,. We sent 500,000 troops to Vietnam. That was outrageous and condemned by the whole world. After the détente with Gorbachev, Reagan and the United States put 500,000 troops into Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”

To this, Putin raises his eyebrows — ever so slightly – and says:

“I know that you are very critical of the American government in many dimensions. I do not always share your point of view. Despite the fact that, with regards to the American leadership, we do not always have the relationship we would like to have with them. Sometimes decisions have to be taken which are not entirely approved of in some parts of society.”

After some confusion about what they’re talking about – Putin is referring to the 1991 invasion of Iraq by George Herbert Walker Bush, not the invasion and subsequent occupation by his son – Putin says “President Bush was quite right to do what he did, he was cautious. He responded to aggression and then stopped when the time was right.” The point here is not that Stone is wrong, but that the caricature of Putin as reflexively opposed to everything the United States does is inaccurate. Another indication of where Putin is really coming from is his habit – throughout the entire series of interviews – of referring to the US government as “our partners.” This really sticks in Stone’s craw, until he finally says:

“So stop referring to them as partners – ‘our partners’ – you’ve said that too much. They’re being euphemistic. They’re no longer partners.

“Putin: But dialogue has to be pursued further.”

The Russian President maintains this tone throughout. It’s almost wistful: speaking of “our partner,” Putin exudes the air of a disappointed lover, one baffled by the constant rebuffs, the refusals, the outright disdain coming from the object of his affections. He constantly refers to the mutuality of interests that exists, the common goal of fighting Islamic terrorism, and he simply cannot believe that Washington continues to deny this. He just cannot understand it: why, we could be so happy together!

Indeed, Putin chides Stone more than once for his “anti-Americanism” – a charge Stone comes back to late in the interviews, and heatedly denies – and this underscores my point: here is someone who is not the enemy he is portrayed as being. Despite the coordinated campaign demonizing him in Western circles, despite the relentless eastward advance of NATO, despite the new cold war being waged at home and abroad by American politicians, Putin is stubbornly pro-American. And that is the most surprising aspect of these interviews, one I’ll get into in more depth later as I continue this series.

Editorial note: This is the first part of a multi-part series on Oliver Stone’s “The Putin Interviews.” Future installments will continue throughout the week. Read the entire interviews, including unaired content, by buying the book.

#justin raimondo #antiwar.com #the putin interviews #oliver stone

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arcticdementor · 5 years

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If I had to characterize the current international situation using only one word, the word “chaos” would be a pretty decent choice (albeit not the only one). Chaos in the Ukraine, chaos in Venezuela, chaos everywhere the Empire is involved in any capacity and, of course, chaos inside the US. But you wouldn’t know that listening to the talking heads and other “experts” who serve roughly the same function for the Empire as the orchestra did on the Titanic: to distract from the developing disaster(s) for a long as possible.

I decided to turn to the undisputed expert on social and political collapse, Dmitry Orlov whom I have always admired for his very logical, non-ideological, comparative analyses of the collapse of the USSR and the US. The fact that his detractors have to resort to crude and, frankly, stupid ad hominems further convinces me that Dmitry’s views need to be widely shared. Dmitry very kindly agreed to reply to my questions in some detail, for which I am most grateful. I hope that you will find this interview as interesting as I did.

…

Here I have to digress to explain the difference between a proper empire and the USSR. A proper empire functions as a wealth pump that sucks wealth out of its imperial possessions, be they overseas, as in the case of the British Empire, or part of the periphery, as in the case of the Russian Empire. The latter inherited the traditions of the Mongol Empire that predated it. The Mongol term “tamga” was often used to indicate the annual tribute to be collected from newly conquered tribes as the Russian Empire expanded east. (Many of these tribes were previously Mongol subjects who understood the meaning of the term.)

Here is the key point: the USSR was not a normal empire at all. Instead of functioning as a wealth pump that pumped wealth from the periphery to the imperial center, it functioned as a revolutionary incubator, exploiting the resources of the core (Russia) and exporting them to the periphery to build socialism, with the further goal of fomenting global communist revolution. The various ethnic groups that were grossly overrepresented among the Bolsheviks were all from the periphery—the Jewish Pale, Byelorussia, the Ukraine, the Caucasus and the Baltics—and they thought nothing of sacrificing Mother Russia on the altar of world revolution.

…

Thus, the image of the USSR as a typical empire is simply wrong. The right mental image of the USSR is that of a prostrate, emaciated sow (Russia) being suckled by 14 fat, greedy piglets (the other Soviet Socialist Republics). For all his numerous failings, Boris Yeltsin did one thing right: he dismantled the USSR (although the way he went about it was beyond incompetent and verged on treason).

If you are in need of an explanation for why Russia is now resurgent, increasingly prosperous and able to invest vast sums in hypersonic weapons systems and in modernized infrastructure for its people, this is it: the 14 piglets had been sent off to root for themselves. This bit of perspective, by the way, puts paid to the rank idiocy of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Grand Chessboard”: his theory that Russia wants to be an empire but cannot do so without the Ukraine shatters on contact with the realization that Russia hasn’t been an empire for over a century now and has no need or desire to become one again.

…

After some amount of effort by NATO instructors to train the Ukrainians, the instructors gave up. The Ukrainians simply laughed in their faces because it was clear to them that the instructors did not know how to fight at all. It was then decided that the “road map” for Ukraine’s inclusion in NATO should be set aside because the Ukrainians are just too crazy for sedate and sedentary NATO. The trainers were then replaced with CIA types who simply collected intelligence on how to fight a high-intensity ground war without air support—something that no NATO force would ever consider doing. Under such conditions NATO forces would automatically retreat or, failing that, surrender.

…

Now the fight is between Poroshenko and a comedian named Vladimir Zelensky. The only difference between Poroshenko and Zelensky, or any of the other 30+ people who appeared on the ballot, is that Poroshenko has already stolen his billions while his contestants have not had a chance to do so yet, the only reason to run for president, or any elected office, in the Ukraine, being to put oneself in a position to do some major thieving.

…

The platforms of all the 30+ candidates were identical, but this makes no difference in a country that has surrendered its sovereignty. In terms of foreign relations and strategic considerations, the Ukraine is run from the US embassy in Kiev. In terms of its internal functioning, the main prerogative of everyone in power, the president included, is thievery. Their idea is to get their cut and flee the country before the whole thing blows up.

It remains to be seen whether the second round of elections will also be an outright fraud and what happens as a result. There are many alternatives, but none of them resemble any sort of exercise in democracy. To be sure, what is meant by “democracy” in this case is simply the ability to execute orders issued from Washington; inability to do so would make Ukraine an “authoritarian regime” or a “dictatorship” and subject to “regime change.” But short of that, nothing matters.

…

None of this matters, because we don’t know which of the two is the US State Department’s pick. Depending on which one it is, and regardless of the results of any elections or lawsuits, a giant foot will come out of the sky and stomp on the head of the other one. Of course, it will all be made to look highly democratic for the sake of appearances. The leadership of the EU will oblige with some golf claps while choking back vomit and the world will move on.

…

The Saker: What about the EU and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe? Where is the EU heading in your opinion?

Dmitry Orlov: The EU has a number of major problems. It isn’t fiscally or monetarily healthy. As a whole, or as its constituent nations, it is no longer capable of the exercise of its full sovereignty, having surrendered it to the US. But the US is no longer able to maintain control, because it is internally conflicted to the point of becoming incoherent in its pronouncements. Overall, the structure looks like a matryoshka doll. You have the US, as a sort of cracked outer shell. Inside of it is NATO, which is an occupying force across most of Europe right up to the Russian border. It would be useless against Russia, but it can pose a credible threat of violence against the occupied populations. Inside of NATO is the EU—a political talking shop plus a sprawling bureaucracy that spews forth reams upon reams of rules and regulations.

Since none of this military/political superstructure is actually structural without the key ingredient of US hegemony, we shouldn’t expect it to perform particularly well. It will continue as a talking shop while various national governments attempt to reclaim their sovereignty. British referendum voters have certainly tried to prod their government in that direction, and in response their government has been experimenting with various methods of rolling over and playing dead, but a different government might actually try to execute the will of the people. On the other hand, the governments of Hungary and Italy have made some headway in the direction of reasserting their sovereignty, with public support.

…

What may speed things up is that Europe, along with the US, appear to be heading into a recession/depression. One effect of that will be that all the East European guest workers working in the west will be forced to head back home. Another will be that EU’s subsidies to its recent eastern acquisitions—Poland and the Baltics especially—are likely to be reduced substantially or to go away altogether. The influx of returning economic migrants combined with the lack of financial support are likely to spell the demise of certain national elites which have been feasting on Western largesse in return for a bit of Russophobia.

We can imagine that this swirling tide of humanity, ejected from Western Europe, will head east, slosh against the Great Wall of Russia, and flood back into the west, but now armed with Ukrainian weapons and knowhow and entertaining thoughts of plunder rather than employment. There they will fight it out with newcomers from Middle East and Africa while the natives take to their beds, hope for the best and think good thoughts about gender neutrality and other such worthy causes.

These old European nations are all aging out, not just in terms of demographics but in terms of the maximum age allotted by nature to any given ethnos. Ethnoi (plural of “ethnos”) generally only last about a thousand years, and at the end of their lifecycle they tend to exhibit certain telltale trends: they stop breeding well and they become sexually depraved and generally decadent in their tastes. These trends are on full display already. Here’s a particularly absurd example: French birth certificates no longer contain entries for father and mother but for parent1 and parent2. Perhaps the invading barbarians will see this and die laughing; but what if they don’t?

…

What will spark the next round of Western European ethnogenesis is impossible to predict, but we can be sure that at some point a mutant strain of zealots will arrive on the scene, with a dampened instinct for self-preservation but an unslakable thirst for mayhem, glory and death, and then it will be off to the races again.

…

It is true that there isn’t much debate within Russia about foreign policy. Putin’s popularity has waned somewhat, although he is still far more popular than any national leader in the West. The pension reform did hurt him somewhat, but he recovered by pushing through a raft of measures designed to ease the transition. In particular, all the benefits currently enjoyed by retirees, such as reduced public transit fees and reduced property taxes, will be extended to those nearing retirement age.

It is becoming clear that Putin, although he is still very active in both domestic and international politics, is coasting toward retirement. His major thrust in domestic politics seems to be in maintaining very strict discipline within the government in pushing through his list of priorities. How he intends to effect the transition to the post-Putin era remains a mystery, but what recently took place in Kazakhstan may offer some clues. If so, we should expect a strong emphasis on continuity, with Putin maintaining some measure of control over national politics as a senior statesman.

…

The Saker: You recently wrote an article titled “Is the USS Ship of Fools Taking on Water?” in which you discuss the high level of stupidity in modern US politics? I have a simple question for you: do you think the Empire can survive Trump and, if so, for how long?

Dmitry Orlov: I think that the American empire is very much over already, but it hasn’t been put to any sort of serious stress test yet, and so nobody realizes that this is the case. Some event will come along which will leave the power center utterly humiliated and unable to countenance this humiliation and make adjustments. Things will go downhill from there as everyone in government in media does their best to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist. My hope is that the US military personnel currently scattered throughout the planet will not be simply abandoned once the money runs out, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if that is what happens.

The Saker: Lastly, a similar but fundamentally different question: can the US (as opposed to the Empire) survive Trump and, if so, how? Will there be a civil war? A military coup? Insurrection? Strikes? A US version of the Yellow Vests?

Dmitry Orlov: The US, as some set of institutions that serves the interests of some dwindling number of people, is likely to continue functioning for quite some time. The question is: who is going to be included and who isn’t? There is little doubt that retirees, as a category, have nothing to look forward to from the US: their retirements, whether public or private, have already been spent. There is little doubt that young people, who have already been bled dry by poor job prospects and ridiculous student loans, have nothing to look forward to either.

But, as I’ve said before, the US isn’t so much a country as a country club. Membership has its privileges, and members don’t care at all what life is like for those who are in the country but aren’t members of the club. The recent initiatives to let everyone in and to let non-citizens vote amply demonstrates that US citizenship, by itself, counts for absolutely nothing. The only birthright of a US citizen is to live as a bum on the street, surrounded by other bums, many of them foreigners from what Trump has termed “shithole countries.”

It will be interesting to see how public and government workers, as a group, react to the realization that the retirements they have been promised no longer exist; perhaps that will tip the entire system into a defunct state. And once the fracking bubble is over and another third of the population finds that it can no longer afford to drive, that might force through some sort of reset as well. But then the entire system of militarized police is designed to crush any sort of rebellion, and most people know that. Given the choice between certain death and just sitting on the sidewalk doing drugs, most people will choose the latter.

…

At this rate, when the end of the US finally arrives, most of the people won’t be in a position to notice while the rest won’t be capable of absorbing that sort of upsetting information and will choose to ignore it. Everybody wants to know how the story ends, but that sort of information probably isn’t good for anyone’s sanity. The mental climate in the US is already sick enough; why should we want to make it even sicker?

#unz review #the saker #dmitry orlov #interview #russia #ukraine

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bulgarianmermaid · 5 years

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There are places you know you will miss from the first moment you set your eyes on them. Those places feel like home without you even having thought of visiting them let alone living there before. Deep into the Caucasus Mountains, where Georgia ends and Russia begins, at the top of Cross Pass outside Gudauri, you can still find high mountain peaks, desolate roads, rugged landscape, and unexplored wilderness that make my heart sing. High up there, where >5000m peaks kiss the bright blue sky and most people lose their breath, that is where I get found. The wilderness speaks directly to my soul, it calls my wild heart, it urges me to explore. It calms me down, I sleep without a single worry, nothing matters and all our “modern” concerns seem like “first world problems”.

The real Georgia in winter is cold and snowy, rough around the edges, wild and untamable, high in altitude and strong in liquor content. Just how I like my destinations (and my men) ❤ A few places in the American West had such a profound effect on me, an effect so strong I didn’t want to leave, let alone go back to the city. The Caucasus Mountains remind me of the San Juans in Southwest Colorado high up Red Mountain Pass from Ouray to Silverton – a place where I camped without a tent at 12000ft elevation and that experience was the best birthday present I could have ever asked for ❤

Gudauri is the largest ski resort in Georgia hidden deep in the Caucasus Mountains on Georgia Military Road almost all the way to the Russian border. Gudauri Ski Resort‘s base is at >2000m, its highest chair lift reaches 3200m, so with a vertical drop top to bottom on a ski run 1200m, it will surely make your legs shake 🙂 All 75km of groomed ski runs in Gudauri sit above tree line facing the sun and grant you the view of a lifetime every single chair ride. In terms of snow conditions, terrain quality, lift services and variety of ski runs, Gudauri can rival any ski resort in the Alps and the Rockies. Gudauri just added 4 new chair lifts this season and opened a whole new valley on the back side (Kobi) to off piste skiing and riding. Yet you can still have the whole resort to yourself and ski right behind the snow cat on empty slopes during the week.

Since I was in Gudauri for 2 weeks with IntotheWild.bg, we could choose what to do each day depending on the conditions and we rode off piste every time we got a foot of new snow. On the days when Ullr didn’t deliver overnight freshies, we basked in the sun and rode soft groomers. Because when you go to the Caucasus Mountains you get equally spoiled by fresh snow and freshly groomed slopes! Gudauri Ski Resort offers 3 valleys with lift serviced terrain for off piste skiing/riding. In addition, there are multiple backcountry and ski touring routes if you are willing to take a hike for an hour or two and earn your turns.

PC: @intothewild.bg

PC: Veselin Dochev

On our days off from skiing (2 in total for two weeks), we checked the Russian baths in Gudauri (Tsar Bani) for an authentic experience at the highest steam baths in the world and took a shuttle to the village of Kazbegi to visit Rooms Hotel for its signature view which overlooks Mt Kazbeg and Gergeti Trinity Church from the balcony. Only later did I find that Mt Kazbeg (>5000m = >16000ft) is a dormant volcano, no wonder I fell in love with it at first sight!

In Gudauri I recommend staying at Quadrum Hotel (under $100 for a double room, breakfast with a view included). Brand new and built only with natural materials in simple and modern Scandinavian style, it offers a spa and swimming pool, as well as daily yoga classes to meet all your post-skiing / hiking needs and soothe your sore muscles. There is a bar and restaurant on site as well where you can grab dinner as you’ll be exhausted after a day of skiing and unwilling to look for a place to eat down the road in town at night.

In Kazbegi Rooms Hotel (over $100 for double room, breakfast with a view included) gets my vote for fantastic design, superb amenities, fusion cuisine and incredible service. You’ll notice there are many cheaper options in Georgia but as with every developing country, you get what you pay for, so be careful how excited you get about a budget room, especially if your budget can accommodate a comfier experience 🙂 Remember to book both hotels well in advance as they usually sell out during the main season.

Considering my obsession with high mountain passes, Georgia Military Road deserves its own blogpost but I’ll try to give it enough attention here before I return to explore it further in summer. Georgia Military Road is one of ONLY 2 passes that connect Georgia with Russia over the Caucasus Mountains. Being a major road artery, the pass is usually well cleaned after a snow storm (or completely closed during one) and is quite busy with semi truck traffic. The highest point is Cross pass (Jvari Pass) right outside Gudauri Ski Resort at 2379m (7815ft). In winter the road works only in one direction in 2 hr intervals as the “tunnels” (actually avalanche barriers) are too narrow for two trucks to pass at the same time. There is a separate lane for summer that allows two way traffic but it is closed in winter as it is too dangerous to drive on that sliver of asphalt on the cliffside with no barriers and vertical drops at most places.

The never ending “tunnels” between Gudauri and Kazbegi are probably the most freakish roads I have ever passed (and to think I was considering hitchhiking there…) There is no light inside, no road markings or directions, the tunnels curve and are very narrow (remember…one way traffic). If I told you there would be light at the end of the tunnel (literally), would you follow me high up in the Caucasus Mountains in the middle of a snow storm, on windy one-lane roads through pitch-black avalanche barriers? And if you did the reward would be one of the greatest views of Mt Kazbeg you’ve ever seen (and a cocktail in the swanky bar at the posh Rooms Hotel Kazbegi)

Georgia may seem far and off the beaten path to the weekend traveler, yet there are multiple flights daily from Europe to Tbilisi and Kutaishi. We opted for budget travel and I’m SO glad we did! The bus-shuttle-plane-taxi experience gave our trip such a good and authentic start. Since we were coming from Bulgaria, we took the bus to Turkey (6hrs overnight from Plovdiv to Istambul in the coldest night of the year), schlepped our luggage from the bus station to the airport with a shuttle (which took another 1.5hrs), then jumped on a flight to Tbilisi (2.5hrs of crammed leg space) and finished our trip with a taxi to Gudauri (add 2 more hours where we were so exhausted the taxi driver could have taken us anywhere and I wouldn’t have cared as long as he let me sleep 🙂

The travel was very oriental and interesting, safe, cheap, and by no means difficult. Culture shock abound for my Western friends every step of the way – squat toilets with no paper at the Bulgarian-Turkish border (yes, we had to cross the border on foot at night in the middle of a rainstorm), perfumed alcohol in the bus to disinfect your hands, having to haggle for your bottled water (because you have to haggle for everything in the Middle East), et all. Since we were coming from a place with no snow and going thru a place with no snow, everyone was really interested in us and where we are going with all this snowboarding gear. Some people had never seen snow, most couldn’t even perceive the idea that we were taking a bus to a shuttle to a plane to a taxi to a winter resort in Georgia almost on the border with Russia.

To get from Tbilisi to the mountains you have to experience the famous Georgian driving on steep and windy mountain roads. My recommendation is to hold on tight and not look at what the driver is doing…prayer also helps 🙂 You thought Istambul driving was crazy, wait till you see Georgia. If you don’t abide to above rules, you’ll die of heart attack WAY before you actually crash. Locals drive these roads every day, your shuttle driver is well aware of what he is doing, save him your backseat driver speech 🙂

The capital of Georgia – Tbilisi (aka ТиБилЛиСи in Bulgarian) is also called Tiflis in Turkey where I almost missed my flight not being able to find Tbilisi on the dashboard. And while the US has Facebook and Russia has V Kontakte, Tbilisi has Balcony.ge. People observe and share everything from their balconies 🙂 There is balcony architecture, balcony culture, balcony parties, basically “Welcome to the Land of Balconies!”

Having covered skiing and travel in Georgia, now onto food and wine! What should you try from the famous Georgian cuisine? Basically everything…more than once – Kachapuri (homemade cheese and egg “pastry”), Khinkali (meat or veggie dumplings), Shashlik (meat skewers), breads, yogurt, cheeses, jams, jellies, soups, pickled veggies, spices!!! Based on the cuisines I had tasted before, I found Georgian dishes to resemble a mix of Armenian, Turkish, Russian, and Eastern European flavors but maybe those countries borrowed their spices and intricate preparations from Georgia, who knows…

Georgia produces both red and white wines grown in a special viticultural region. The red is served hot and spiced on the slopes – a must for this apres-ski loving gal! Two other beverages to try are cognac and chacha. Georgia produces some of the best cognac in the world, I recommend the 5 or 8 yrs old aged varieties. And don’t forget to buy some as gifts for home! Chacha is the local name for homemade vodka / raki / moonshine. It is made from different fermented fruits. Drinking chacha is a Georgian tradition – don’t you dare refuse a toast – and resembles tequila tasting in Mexico. You will get drunk, for sure!!! The supermarket varieties go up to 55 proof while home-made chacha can be all the way up to 85 proof. I was super lucky to try a 65 proof persimmon homemade chacha aged in oak barrels on the slopes. You bet I brought some home 🙂

Last but definitely not least, I couldn’t get over was how sweet, kind, and hospitable the locals were, everywhere! Georgia is still very real, rural in places and rough around the edges at times, but that just adds to its local charm. Go visit while it is an up and coming destination, affordable and a developing tourist market and not yet full of foreigners and skiers. There is just SO MUCH to see and explore in Georgia, I only went to Gudauri and the Kazbegi Region but I will definitely be back in summer to hike the Caucasus Mountains, visit the wine region and experience the famous Tbilisi nightlife!

Svaneti in Summer – PC: @zermatterhorn

Gudauri Ski Resort, Georgia – A Gem Hidden Deep in the Caucasus Mountains There are places you know you will miss from the first moment you set your eyes on them.

#Adventure #caucasus #driving #georgia #hot springs #mountain #mountain pass #mountains #ski #ski resorts #skiing #snow #snow bunny #snowboard #snowboarding #snowstorm #Travel

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fughtopia · 7 years

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Alex de Waal, www.transcend.org July 5th, 2017

excerpt

NOTE: Starvation is a tool used throughout history to weaken and destroy opponents. In 1779, General George Washington ordered his troops to wipe out Native Americans in New York, saying, “Destroying not only the men but the settlements and the plantations is very important. All sown fields must be destroyed and new plantations and harvests must be prevented. What lead can not do will be done by hunger and winter.” S. Brian Willson refers to the genocide of Native Americans as the “original holocaust.” Some say it was the original holocaust that was the model for the Jewish Holocaust. I raise this because it is an important history that we need to recognize in the United States. -Margaret Flowers

15 Jun 2017 – In its primary use, the verb ‘to starve’ is transitive: it’s something people do to one another, like torture or murder. Mass starvation as a consequence of the weather has very nearly disappeared: today’s famines are all caused by political decisions, yet journalists still use the phrase ‘man-made famine’ as if such events were unusual.

Over the last half-century, famines have become rarer and less lethal. Last year I came close to thinking that they might have come to an end. But this year, it’s possible that four or five famines will occur simultaneously. ‘We stand at a critical point in history,’ the head of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the former Tory MP Stephen O’Brien, told the Security Council in March, in one of his last statements before stepping down: ‘Already at the beginning of the year we are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the United Nations.’ It’s a ‘critical’ point, I’d argue, not because it is the worst crisis in our lifetime, but because a long decline – lasting seven decades – in mass death from starvation has come to an end; in fact it has been reversed.

O’Brien had no illusions about the causes of the four famines, actual or imminent, that he singled out in north-eastern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. In each case, the main culprits are wars that result in the destruction of farms, livestock herds and markets, and ‘explicit’ decisions by the military to block humanitarian aid.

[...]

The organisation I work for, the World Peace Foundation, has compiled a catalogue of every case of famine or forced mass starvation since 1870 that killed at least 100,000 people. There are 61 entries on the list, responsible for the deaths of at least 105 million people. About two thirds of the famine deaths in this period were in Asia, about 20 per cent in Europe and the USSR, just under 10 per cent in Africa.

The biggest killers were famines that resulted from political decisions, among them the Gilded Age famines, the Great War famines in the Middle East, including the forced starvation of a million Armenians, the Russian Civil War famine, Stalin’s starvation of Ukraine from 1932 until 1934 (now known as the Holodomor), the Nazi ‘hunger plan’ for the Soviet Union, the famines during the Chinese Civil War, the starvation inflicted by the Japanese during the Second World War, and by Mao’s Great Leap Forward of 1958-62, the largest famine on record, which killed at least 25 million.

These political famines seem scarcely to register in our collective imagination. They are strikingly absent too from the books which construct theories of famine and policies for food security. Even Amartya Sen did not take them into account when developing his ‘entitlement theory’ of famine causation in Poverty and Famine (1981), which overturned explanations of famine based exclusively on food shortage. In the WPF’s catalogue of great famines, 72 million deaths occurred when famine was being used as an instrument of genocide or recklessly inflicted by government policy. Ignoring these famines, or ascribing them to natural disasters, is a major error.

Another blind spot is even more remarkable: the neglect of starvation on the part of genocide scholars. It’s striking because the intellectual father of genocide studies, Raphael Lemkin, was keenly interested in the politics of food and famine. In fact, in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944) he devoted more space to starvation and related deprivation than to mass killing.

Elaborating on the physical debilitation of groups as a technique of genocide, he began by describing ‘racial discrimination in feeding’ and detailed Nazi guidelines specifying the portion of basic nutrients allocated to different groups, ranging in the case of carbohydrates from 100 per cent for Germans to 76-77 per cent for Poles, 38 per cent for Greeks and 27 per cent for Jews.

The second mechanism Lemkin described was the endangering of health by overcrowding in ghettos, withholding medicine and heating fuel, and transporting people in cattle trucks and freight cars.

The third was mass killings, which he described in a single paragraph.

When Lemkin began writing his book, starvation was the Nazis’ most effective instrument of mass murder. The rationale for Operation Barbarossa was that the Ukraine and southern Russia were resource-rich lands that would provide Lebensraum for the German people. Central to the planning of Barbarossa was the question of how to feed the Wehrmacht. At the post-Nuremberg trial of senior civil servants in 1947, the prosecution reproduced a document entitled ‘Memorandum on the Result of Today’s Conference with the State Secretaries concerning Barbarossa’, dated 2 May 1941, just a few weeks before the invasion. It begins: ‘1. The war can only be continued if the entire armed forces are fed from Russia during the third year of the war. 2. As a result, there is no doubt that “x” million people [zig Millionen Menschen] will starve to death if we take out from the country whatever we need.’ It was written by Herbert Backe, state secretary of the Reich Ministry for Food and Agriculture. While the memo left the number of victims blank, Backe’s arithmetic suggested that the entire urban population of the European Soviet Union – thirty million ‘surplus eaters’ – should be starved to death.

The Hungerplan, to give it its German proper name, began with the forcible starving of Soviet prisoners of war. Crowded into vast camps without any shelter, 1.3 million died in the four months after the invasion. About 2.5 million had died this way by the end of the war. But the Hungerplan proved impossible to implement fully. Starving people in large numbers is extremely hard work. Stalin’s administration of famine in Ukraine a decade earlier had called on the entire apparatus of the Communist Party, and the German invaders had no such infrastructure. They besieged Leningrad, where a million died. In the occupied cities of Kiev and Kharkov they restricted food supplies and similar numbers perished. But the peasants, who had honed their survival skills in two post-1917 famines, didn’t succumb easily. German soldiers also relied on locally grown food, and so Backe’s office ordered that peasants be permitted to carry on producing crops. The hunger planners fell short of their original target by more than twenty million. [TEN MILLION DIED]

Even at this reduced scale, the Hungerplan was a crime comparable in numerical terms to the Final Solution. Indeed, forced starvation was one of the instruments of the Holocaust. Eighty thousand Jews starved to death in the Warsaw Ghetto. Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz from May 1940 to December 1943, testifying before the Nuremberg Tribunal, estimated that ‘in the camp of Auschwitz alone in that time 2,500,000 persons were exterminated and that a further 500,000 died from disease and starvation.’ In The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food Lizzie Collingham makes the point that the failure to starve ‘useless eaters’ in sufficient numbers, sufficiently quickly, became a rationale for expediting their mass murder by killing squads and gas chambers.

Backe was interrogated but by the time the Ministries Trial began in 1947, he had committed suicide, fearing he would be handed over to the Soviets. His predecessor as minister for food and agriculture, Walther Darré, an ideologue of ‘blood and soil’ and aggressive eastward expansion, was found guilty of plunder and despoliation, and sentenced to seven years in prison but released after two. Though Backe’s memo was produced as evidence, the Hungerplan was not mentioned by name. The Allies were in no hurry to criminalise famine or economic warfare.

[WESTERN CRAP THINKING] The legal difficulties in prosecuting starvation as a crime included the need to determine whether starvation was itself unlawful, and if it was what sort of a crime it might be, and how guilt might be proved. The laws of war did not prohibit starvation in pursuit of a military goal: it was legitimate to starve a besieged city into submission, or to blockade an entire country. In the post-Nuremberg High Command Trial, American prosecutors brought charges against Field Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb for crimes committed during the siege of Leningrad. But there was no legal basis on which to find Leeb guilty of starving the city, or even of sustaining the pressure of hunger on the residents by firing at civilians trying to leave. The judges found Leeb’s orders extreme but not criminal, though they added that they wished the law were otherwise. They cited the Lieber Code – drawn up for the Union army in the American Civil War – which permitted starvation if it hastened military victory. In October 1948, Leeb was sentenced to time served, for transmitting the Barbarossa Jurisdiction Order, and released.

By the time of the war crimes trials, the British navy was already a seasoned exponent of maritime bockade. In 1909 the House of Lords refused to ratify the London Declaration on the laws of naval war, on the grounds that doing so would restrict the navy’s ability to block the flow of foodstuffs to an enemy. Establishing an international court to determine the legality of intercepting ships on the high seas, the Lords felt, would amount to a contravention of British sovereignty. Britain blockaded Germany during the First World War, and about 750,000 German civilians died of hunger. That blockade was kept in place (and tightened) for eight months after the Armistice in order to compel the Germans to sign the Versailles Treaty. In 1942 Churchill came under heavy pressure to lift the blockade on Greece, and only reluctantly and minimally relented – an episode that resulted in the foundation of the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, now known as Oxfam. The following year, the cabinet made feeding the British Isles a higher priority than preventing famine in Bengal, a decision that cost as many as three million lives. Most tellingly, the name chosen for the aerial mining of Japanese harbours in 1945 by the US Air Force was Operation Starvation. [F: white people deaths noted under Churchill]

The Nuremberg Charter didn’t (despite Lemkin’s urging) make genocide an indictable offence, but it did include ‘crimes against humanity’. Starvation-related prosecutions were possible under Article 6, which classed ‘inhumane acts’, ‘extermination’ and ‘persecution’ as ‘crimes against humanity’. There’s a rationale for this: depriving someone of food can be a form of torture, an infliction of suffering pure and simple or with some ulterior goal in mind (such as forcing hungry persons to abandon their villages). Had the drafters of the charter made starvation a crime in its own right, there would have been uncomfortable implications for the Allies, given their own use of blockades. The final judgments at Nuremberg use the term ‘starvation’, but it is ancillary to the wider crimes committed by the Nazi leadership.

There are extraordinary evidentiary problems in prosecuting cases of starvation as murder (or extermination). Only in the case of prisoners, where the victims and their food supplies are entirely controlled by the jailer, can there be proof beyond reasonable doubt that the perpetrator is responsible for the death of the victim. In other instances, the defence could argue that the victim failed to avail himself of opportunities to find food or that he might have survived were it not for other factors over which the defendant had no control, such as crop failures, high food prices, or infectious disease. Yet no charges were brought at Nuremberg for the killing by forced starvation of millions of prisoners of war.

More: Popular Resistance

#starvation #famine #bengal famine #politics #war #crimes against humanity #war crimes #europe #soviet union #germany #nazi germany #britain #winston churchill #amerikkka #saudi arabia

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consolatione · 7 years

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Hegemony of murderers

The West still doesn’t understand the evils that haunts mankind since the emergence of modern ideologies. Although Burke criticised the development in France during the Revolution, we never learned the lessons he wished to teach us. Instead we replaced his wisdom with forgetfulness of the worst atrocities ever faced by mankind.

In the early hours of 17 July, 1918, the Romanov family, three servants and their doctor were herded down into the cellar of the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg. They had been told that they were going to take cover from artillery from the approaching White Army. They put on their clothes and gathered some belongings and the Tsar carried his sickly thirteen-year-old son, Alexei, down the stairs.

They waited in the cellar for a while, before a group of armed men came in and read their sentence. Death. The Tsar was then shot several times in the chest and he fell down dead or dying. For the rest of them the gruesome butchery had just begun. Alexei, Anastasia, Tatiana, Olga and Maria were not killed by the first hail of bullets. Wounded and terrified they cried out in agony before they were executed with bullets, bayonets and the butts of pistols and rifles. One of the murderers recalled that the floor was slippery as ice from brains and blood as they waded in to kill the children. It took 20 minutes before they were all quiet, but as they carried the bodies out it was revealed that two of them were still breathing. The children were then stabbed until dead. The bodies were plundered of valuables and the soldiers cut off the fingers of the Tsaritsa to remove rings. All of them were cut up, put in acid and dumped in a mine shaft and a shallow grave. Thus ended 300 years of Romanov dynasty. But of course, for Russia, the slaughter had just begun. At least 20 million people were killed by the USSR, and communism as a whole is responsible for killing at least 100 million people. It is the single deadliest ideology in the history of mankind.

The left gets away with murder

Here’s a death toll for communism around the world, according to the Black book of communism: 65 million in the People's Republic of China 20 million in the Soviet Union 2 million in Cambodia 2 million in North Korea 1.7 million in Ethiopia 1.5 million in Afghanistan 1 million in the Eastern Bloc 1 million in Vietnam 150,000 in Latin America 10,000 deaths "resulting from actions of the international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power."

The left also has a long history of domestic terrorism in the West. The Red brigades, Red Army Faction, Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army to mention a few. Exempt from scrutiny Unlike followers of revolutionary ideologies on the right, it is quite possible to call yourself a communist without any repercussions in your personal or professional life. It can even help you in your career, especially in Academia. Many famous Swedish people in politics, media, sport, and culture are un-repenting communists. Members of a Marxist-Leninist party even. Many more are just slightly reformed and constantly apologetic, often hiding behind a thin veneer of restraint which is let go as soon as something in society upsets them, and they immediately call for totalitarian and violent measures. The online world has proven a perfect outlet for their urge to purge, as they hound political opponents, engage in mischaracterisation, threats, and calls to violence. Western society has an inexplicable tolerance for these leftist views and ideas, even when it takes violent expressions. It’s easy to think this is just something relating to communism or anarchism, but the above examples often come from liberals too. And they also have a history of getting away with murder. Between 1793 and 1794 the Reign of Terror raged across France. Robespierre and the revolutionaries did what so many revolutionaries would do after them, they killed anyone who they didn’t like. Most famously Robespierre and his thugs killed the aristocracy, but in fact 72% of those executed were peasants and workers who simply disagreed with the regime. In modern day, another example is the Western liberal support of the Arab spring which has been pivotal in crashing the Middle East into yet another violent rampage.

Remains of 20,000 poles murdered by the Soviet Union

We just want change. And kill anyone who opposes it

Revolutionaries kill people. The revolution is in itself almost always responsible for worse atrocities than the regime it seeks to overthrow. Solzjenitsyn claimed that in the 80 years prior to the Russian revolution – a period where one Tsar was assassinated, there were many assassination attempts (one in my own country, Sweden, in fact), and there were widespread revolutionary movements – only about 17 people a year were executed. The Cheka, however, executed without trial more than a thousand people a month in the first years after 1917. He continues to tell us that if you would average the amount of executed a month up until the height of executions by Stalin in 1937-38, about 40,000 people were killed every month. He rightly wonders how the west could make an alliance with such a horrible regime. How was the Soviet Union better than Nazi Germany? In fact, it wasn’t. But the revolutionaries aren’t just to be rejected for their blood lust. If we simply look at the murderous aspect they cannot be understood. The question becomes a simple argument of “how could this happen?”. The really important thing to understand is how mankind can develop and improve society, without destroying itself in the process, and how we can maintain that which serves us even when we have forgotten how it serves us. This is the point of view that Burke argued in the Reflections on the Revolution in France. He meant that the reason that the French Revolution would be so disastrous was that it was founded on abstract concepts that ignored mankind’s complexity, the wisdom which hides within tradition, and the intricacy of human society. It also ignores the weakness of men and our inability to grasp everything, but our willingness to think that we do. Herein lies the hubris of utopian thinking and ideological fight for power of the societies that have grown more organically over the centuries. The left is a living example of the Doning-Kruger effect, if you will. Too stupid to understand that it doesn’t understand. I mentioned the liberal support of the Arab spring previously, and it is a prime example of how overthrowing functioning nation states for abstract ideas can lead to extreme problems. Remembering Burke commenting on the French Revolution, it is easy to see history repeating itself, but this time in the Arab world:

“Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a mad-man, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic knight of the sorrowful countenance.” (Reflections on the French Revolution. The Harvard Classics) Remember who we are. Or perish. The alternative to these modernist ideologies is a state based not around an ideology, but around fair and tested principles of law, and a people and their geographical location. In other words a nation state for each people created around the self interest of that people as a whole, and represented by themselves.

We have not yet managed to free ourselves from abstract utopian thinking. And it is important to remember that it is not just the revolution that kills, that is just an eclipse in the blood lust fed by the urge to kill that which does not fit the revolutionary world view. Man has always killed, but when he kills for abstract ideals there is no limit to the extent of the murder. The breech against the abstract idea can occur at any time, in any generation, and in any person. No one is ever safe.

The limits of man’s wisdom should prevent us from any too radical idea. Anything that changes society greatly in too short a time. Today’s Western society is rife with abstract ideas that are said to improve life for mankind. The ideas of globalism, open border, multicultural societies, the dismantling of the family are obvious abstracts that are major changes to our societies, that history repeatedly tells us could lead to disaster. But beyond those things, we will be facing technological advances that are beyond our current field of vision. We are facing these new challenges without having understood anything from the violence of Modernity and the 20th century. I believe that is a reason for concern and potentially the end of mankind.

#Revolution #Socialism #mass murders #left #Burke #French revolution #Modernity

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jodyedgarus · 5 years

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Pennsylvania Is A Battleground State … In Football

Pennsylvanians went into the 2018 season believing that it might be a banner year for the state’s NFL teams. The Philadelphia Eagles were league champs the season before, and the Pittsburgh Steelers had harbored their own championship aspirations before an upset playoff loss against Jacksonville. Although we’ve never seen a Steelers-Eagles Super Bowl, we’ve come close a few times this century — both teams made the conference championship in 2008-09 (Eagles lost), 2004-05 (Steelers lost) and 2001-02 (both lost). There was reason to think 2018 might bring another chance for a clash between Eastern and Western PA on the game’s biggest stage.

Fourteen weeks later, that’s not looking so hot. The Steelers started strong despite a contract impasse with star running back Le’Veon Bell, but they’ve faltered recently in a three-game losing streak and now are in danger of missing the playoffs. And Pittsburgh is this year’s Pennsylvania success story. The defending-champion Eagles continue to suffer from one of history’s worst Super Bowl hangovers and are down to an 18 percent playoff probability after Sunday’s crushing loss to the Dallas Cowboys.

In the midst of all of that turmoil, though, Pennsylvania will be at the center of the football universe for Week 15 of the NFL season. According to our combination of matchup quality (i.e., the harmonic mean of the teams’ Elo ratings in each game) and game importance (how likely it is to swing every team’s odds of making the playoffs),1 the Steelers’ game against the New England Patriots on Sunday afternoon is the best of the week, while Philly’s Sunday-night clash against the Rams is tied for second-best:

The best matchups of Week 15

Week 15 games by the highest average Elo rating (using the harmonic mean) plus the total potential swing for all NFL teams’ playoff chances based on the result, according to FiveThirtyEight’s NFL predictions

Playoff % Playoff % Team A Current Avg. Chg* Team B Current Avg. Chg* Total Change Game Quality PIT 62.3% +/-23.1 NE 99.3% +/-0.7 47.1 1617 PHI 17.6 14.7 LAR 100.0 0.0 30.8 1604 MIN 56.8 17.9 MIA 20.2 11.3 58.4 1491 CAR 8.9 9.4 NO 100.0 0.0 20.3 1605 IND 27.2 12.3 DAL 99.2 0.9 26.5 1546 BAL 54.6 15.1 TB 0.8 1.1 32.8 1508 TEN 34.5 19.1 NYG 0.5 0.5 40.8 1485 LAC 99.7 0.2 KC 100.0 0.0 4.0 1656 GB 3.2 4.2 CHI 99.9 0.2 10.0 1527 HOU 96.1 4.9 NYJ 0.0 0.0 12.7 1440 WSH 10.5 8.6 JAX 0.0 0.0 19.8 1429 DEN 5.1 3.2 CLE 0.5 0.7 9.0 1445 DET 3.5 3.3 BUF 0.0 0.0 10.1 1431 SEA 99.3 1.1 SF 0.0 0.0 3.3 1481 ATL 0.1 0.0 ARI 0.0 0.0 1.5 1409 CIN 0.4 0.3 OAK 0.0 0.0 2.4 1370

Game quality is the harmonic mean of the Elo ratings for the two teams in a given matchup. Total Change adds up the potential swing in playoff odds for every team in the league (not just the two teams listed).

*Average change is weighted by the likelihood of a win or loss. (Ties are excluded.)

Source: ESPN.com

Despite their mind-blowing last-second loss to the Miami Dolphins — and their generally less-impressive-than-usual season — the Patriots don’t have a huge amount riding on their matchup with Pittsburgh. (Win or lose, our model gives them at least a 99 percent chance to make the playoffs.) But the game does have major implications for the Steelers’ postseason future. Right now, Pittsburgh is one of five AFC teams with between a 20 percent and 65 percent playoff probability, according to our model. If the Steelers win, their number goes from 62 percent to 85 percent; if they lose, it drops to 38 percent.

Gone are the questions about whether the Steelers could maintain their offensive output without Bell. With James Conner carrying the load at RB instead, Pittsburgh’s offense ranks roughly the same in expected points added per game (fifth) as it did a year ago (third) and has improved from 21st to 11th in EPA on the ground. Even without Conner against the Raiders — and with backups Jaylen Samuels and Stevan Ridley combining for just 32 yards on 16 carries — Pittsburgh’s offense exceeded its usual weekly EPA average (although most teams do that against the Raiders). The real issue has been on defense, where the team ranks fourth-to-last in EPA over the past three weeks, including dead last against the pass. When Derek Carr is shredding your D for a 122.4 passer rating, there are some problems that must be addressed by Mike Tomlin and staff.

And Steelers-Patriots has ripple effects that stretch far beyond just Pittsburgh’s chances. The Baltimore Ravens’ odds will go up or down by 13 percentage points depending on who wins in Pittsburgh; Tennessee and Indianapolis will also see their odds shift by multiple percentage points based on the outcome. Three other teams — Miami, Denver and Houston — will get changes of about 1 percentage point apiece. All told, about 47 points of playoff probability will move around on the basis of New England and Pittsburgh’s contest.

For the Eagles, their playoff chances all but evaporated after falling to Dallas. While they were able to beat Washington (which is now also sitting at 6-7, two games back of the Cowboys, and now auditioning quarterbacks who walk in off the street) two weeks ago in the most important game of Week 13, Philly was unable to replicate that feat in overtime Sunday, losing the most crucial matchup of Week 14. There are still scenarios left whereby the Eagles can make the playoffs, most of which involve them winning out — while facing winning teams in the Rams and Texans over their three remaining games — and the Minnesota Vikings and Carolina Panthers losing games down the stretch. But Philadelphia has dug a deep hole for itself with three weeks to go.

As we noted in late October, Carson Wentz and the Eagles’ offense were above average throwing the ball, but that wasn’t enough to offset a suspect running game and a disappointing defense. Since then, Wentz has basically held steady, but the rushing attack has gotten even worse, and the defense has done nothing to turn its season around. After weeks of waiting for the real Eagles to show up and play like champions, it’s probably time to admit that these are the real Eagles — and their hopes of repeating are slim.

A win over L.A. would drag Philadelphia’s playoff chances up to 42 percent, so there is plenty on the line for at least one of the two teams involved Sunday. But with the Rams having locked up their division earlier this month, the game’s second-biggest stakes belong to the Vikings, who would lose 14 points of playoff probability with an Eagles win and gain 6 points if Philly loses. In addition, Washington, Seattle, Detroit, Dallas, Green Bay and Carolina will see at least 1 point of movement to their postseason odds depending on whether the Eagles win or lose.

But most of all, it should be a good game. For all their mediocrity this year, the Eagles are still probably better than their 6-7 record, while the Rams are locked in a fight for the No. 1 seed in the NFC and have something to prove offensively after a weak Sunday-night showing against the Bears in Chicago. The Steelers and Patriots are in similar positions — both teams rank among the best in the AFC yet have a lot of questions to answer. Add it up, and the state of Pennsylvania figures to be a key battleground in the playoff ace, even if its teams aren’t exactly as intimidating as they seemed three months ago.

FiveThirtyEight vs. the readers

Want more playoff probabilities? Check out FiveThirtyEight’s Elo ratings in our NFL prediction interactive, which simulates the rest of the season 100,000 times and tracks every team’s odds. You can also pick against the Elo algorithm in our prediction game. Try your hand and attempt to climb up our giant leaderboard.

Based on data from the prediction contest, here are the matchups in which Elo made its best — and worst — picks against the field of readers last week:

Elo’s dumbest (and smartest) picks of Week 14

Average difference between points won by readers and by Elo in Week 14 matchups in FiveThirtyEight’s NFL prediction game

OUR PREDICTION (ELO) READERS’ PREDICTION PICK WIN PROB. PICK WIN PROB. Result READERS’ NET PTS WSH 69% NYG 51% NYG 40, WSH 16 +21.1

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BUF 70 BUF 63 NYJ 27, BUF 23 +7.6

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CAR 62 CAR 56 CLE 26, CAR 20 +4.8

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ARI 51 DET 55 DET 17, ARI 3 +4.6

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NO 74 NO 79 NO 28, TB 14 +1.0

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GB 53 GB 55 GB 34, ATL 20 -0.1

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HOU 68 HOU 67 IND 24, HOU 21 -0.4

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LAC 84 LAC 85 LAC 26, CIN 21 -1.0

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KC 71 KC 72 KC 27, BAL 24 -1.1

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DAL 59 DAL 58 DAL 29, PHI 23 -3.3

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TEN 66 TEN 63 TEN 30, JAX 9 -4.0

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SEA 62 SEA 60 SEA 21, MIN 7 -4.2

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PIT 78 PIT 81 OAK 24, PIT 21 -6.9

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NE 72 NE 75 MIA 34, NE 33 -7.0

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LAR 56 LAR 62 CHI 15, LAR 6 -8.9

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DEN 63 DEN 68 SF 20, DEN 14 -9.0

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Home teams are in bold.

The scoring system is nonlinear, so readers’ average points don’t necessarily match the number of points that would be given to the average reader prediction.

Elo beat the typical reader again in Week 14, but it was very close: On average, our predictions won the week by only 6.8 points. Relative to readers, Elo was rightly bearish on the Rams and Broncos, but the readers did get a huge victory over the model in the Giants’ 40-16 blowout of Washington. Knowing that the ‘Skins were down to Mark Sanchez at QB (who was later replaced by Josh “No, not that Josh Johnson” Johnson), readers preyed on Elo’s ignorance and picked Eli Manning and company to win. Although it wasn’t enough to win the week, it was the most lopsided single-game victory of the season by either readers over the computer or vice-versa.

Anyway, congrats to Vyascheslav Tolbert (Mike Tolbert’s Russian cousin?), who led all users in Week 14 with 129.5 points, and to Greg Chili Van Hollebeke, who maintained his No. 1 ranking for the season with 963.4 points. Thanks to everyone who has been playing — and if you haven’t, get in on the action before it’s too late! You can make picks now and still try your luck against Elo, even if you haven’t played yet.

Check out our latest NFL predictions.

from News About Sports https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/pennsylvania-is-a-battleground-state-in-football/

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sjohnson24 · 6 years

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Is Trump a Traitor?

In Leningrad in January of 1990 (it didn’t become St. Petersburg again until late that year), Vladimir Putin was still in the KGB. Only the year before he had single-handedly, Gary Cooper style, faced down a mob at a Soviet consulate in East Germany as the Berlin Wall came down.

Unbeknownst to the vast majority of Americans, and deliberately ignored by so-called Russian experts, then president George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State, the Mephistophelian James Baker, had promised Mikhail Gorbachev that if he allowed Germany to re-unify, the United States would not expand NATO beyond the unified German border.

Bush and Baker began breaking that promise, which Gorbi was foolish enough not to get in writing, by May of 1990. Thereafter the expansion of NATO, all the way to the Russian borders, became an infected thorn in the side of the rising political strongman Putin.

Though it sounds absurd now, I had been invited to Moscow and Leningrad just after the Wall came down to help Russians build a democracy and economy as communism was collapsing. The mission of my partners and I in California was to help “our former superpower enemy build an ecologically and ethically sound market.”

Photo credit FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images

We know how that turned out. Both sides failed to seize the opportunity and rise to the challenge. Instead of combining the best with the best, as we had sought, America and Russia have fused the worst with the worst in Putin and Trump.

NATO was formed as a trans-Atlantic military alliance to contain the Soviet Union following World War II. Stalin had gobbled up Eastern Europe, and the USSR was an expansionistic, existential threat to Europe and America.

But when the Cold War ended NATO’s raison d’etre also ended. Yet the idiocy and hubris of ‘the sole remaining superpower’ mentality took hold, and NATO was enlarged into an even more powerful military alliance aligned against a prostrate Russia, expanding to include the Lilliputian Baltic States.

Looked at with even a minimum of Russian perspective, NATO now appeared to be an existential threat, and Putin methodically milked that fear as he rose to dictatorial power. The presidential manifestation of America’s moribundity, Donald Trump, clearly respects, if not idolizes authoritarians, and none more than Putin, whether the Russians have anything on him or not.

The contradictions inherent in NATO’s expansion after the end of the Cold War have now come home to roost. It should have been disbanded or reduced after the Cold War, not inflated to include even the puny Baltic States. Ukraine wanted in on the gravy train too, but Putin wasn’t going to have any of that.

The only time the mutual defense Article 5 was invoked in the 70-year history of NATO was after 9.11, which was a terrorist act, a crime against humanity, not an attack on the United States by another state. That led to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. How has that worked out?

As the Washington Post reported, “After a year of haranguing by President Trump, Western leaders had agreed to his administration’s long-sought priorities on defense spending and counterterrorism — and were prepared to let him take all the credit.”

“For a president who loves declaring victory, the NATO summit here Wednesday could have provided a perfect opportunity.”

But Trump began the day by insulting and attacking NATO members before the cameras at breakfast. Trump literally doubled down, saying NATO members should devote 4% of their GDP to defense spending, instead of the 2% they had agreed upon (the US, with the most massive military in the world by far, spends 3.5%).

That’s what tyrants do, and this is what appeasement looks like.

Trump’s contradictory demand that NATO members increase their defense spending while he coddles up to Putin is diabolical. Why should Europe spend more on arms against a Russian threat when Trump views Russia as simply “a competitor?”

In a global society, the utter waste of resources on preparing for conflict and war should be painfully apparent to everyone, even the experts. But squandering billions of dollars on increasingly sophisticated military technology isn’t even a blip on mainstream commentators radar. It’s a given.

The many who are searching for a strategy, or at least a goal in Trump’s pivots and prickiness are searching in vain. Man’s self-made evil doesn’t work that way. It works through conduits of contradiction to generate chaos, since its ultimate goal is complete control and destruction of the human spirit.

Trump isn’t the source of evil, but like all tyrant wannabes, the darkest forces in human consciousness are pulling his strings.

Chaos doesn’t have to lead only to breakdown, anarchy and darkness however. It can also, if people deeply question and ignite insight together, mean opportunity for a new direction, paradigm and order.

The post-World War II international order is history. World citizens urgently need to start thinking together and preparing a genuine global order, hopefully not from the ashes of the American-built-American-torn-down international order.

Martin LeFevre

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newsnigeria · 6 years

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Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/putin-xi-g61/

Putin & Xi top the G6+1

by Pepe Escobar (cross-posted with the Asia Times by special agreement with the author)

East vs. West: the contrast between the “dueling summits” this weekend was something for the history books.

All hell broke loose at the G6+1, otherwise known as G7, in La Malbaie, Canada, while all focused on divine Eurasian integration at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in China’s Qingdao in Shandong, the home province of Confucius.

US President Donald Trump was the predictable star of the show in Canada. He came late. He left early. He skipped a working breakfast. He disagreed with everybody. He issued a “free trade proclamation”, as in no barriers and tariffs whatsoever, everywhere, after imposing steel and aluminum tariffs on Europe and Canada. He proposed that Russia should be back at the G8 (Putin said he has other priorities). He signed the final communiqué and then he didn’t.

Trump’s “I don’t give a damn” attitude drove the European leaders assembled in Canada crazy. After the official photo shoot, the US president grabbed the arm of new Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and said, in ecstasy, “You’ve had a great electoral victory!”

The Euros were not pleased and forced Conte to abide by the official EU, as in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s, policy: no G8 readmission to Russia as long as Moscow does not respect the Minsk agreements. In fact it is Ukraine that is not respecting the Minsk agreements; Trump and Conte are fully aligned on Russia.

Merkel, in extremis, proposed a “shared evaluation mechanism”, lasting roughly two weeks, to try to defuse rising trade tensions. Yet the Trump administration does not seem to be interested.

“Strategic” game-changer

Meanwhile, over in Qingdao, the stunning takeaway was offered predictably by Chinese President Xi Jinping; “President Putin and I both think that the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership is mature, firm and stable.”

This is a massive game-changer because officially, so far, this was a “comprehensive partnership.” It’s the first time on record that Xi has put the stress on “strategic”. Again, in his own words: “It is the highest-level, most profound and strategically most significant relationship between major countries in the world.”

And if that was not far-reaching enough, it’s also personal. Xi, referring to Putin and perhaps channeling Trump’s bonhomie with leaders he likes, said, “He is my best, most intimate friend.”

Heavy business, as usual, was in order. The Chinese partnered with Russian nuclear energy giant Rosatom to get advanced nuclear technologies and diversify nuclear power contracts beyond its current Western suppliers. That’s the “strategic” energy alliance component of the partnership.

In a trilateral Russia-China-Mongolia meeting, they all vowed to go full steam ahead with the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor – one of the key planks of the New Silk Roads, known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Mongolia once again volunteered to become a transit hub for Russian gas to China, diversifying from Gazprom’s current direct pipelines from Blagoveshchensk, Vladivostok and Altai. According to Putin, the Eastern Route pipeline remains on schedule, as does the US$27 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Yamal being financed by Russian and Chinese companies.

On the Arctic, Putin and Xi went all the way for developing the Northern Sea Route, including crucial modernization of deep-water ports such as Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, and investment in infrastructure. The added geopolitical cachet is self-evident.

Putin had said last week that annual trade between Moscow and Beijing will soon reach US$100 billion. Currently, it stands at US$86 billion. Now Russian businesses venture the possibility of reaching US$200 billion by 2020 as feasible.

All this frenzy of activity is now openly described by Putin as the interconnectivity of BRI and the Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). Not to mention that the SCO itself interconnects with both BRI and the EAEU.

Putin told Chinese TV channel CGTN that though the SCO began as a “low-profile organization” [back in 2001] that sought merely to “solve border issues” between China, Russia and former Soviet countries, it is now evolving into a much bigger global force.

In parallel, according to Yu Jianlong, secretary general of the China Chamber of International Commerce, the SCO has now gathered extra collective strength to harness BRI expansion to increase business across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

So it’s no wonder companies from SCO nations are now being “encouraged” to use their own currencies to seal deals, bypassing the US dollar, as well as building e-commerce platforms, Alibaba-style. So far, Beijing has invested US$84 billion in other SCO members, mostly in energy, minerals, transportation (including, for instance, the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan highway), construction and manufacturing.

Putin also met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the SCO and vowed in no uncertain terms to preserve the Iranian nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.

Iran is a current SCO observer nation. Putin once again reaffirmed he wants Tehran as a full member. The SCO charter determines that “a dialogue partner status can be granted to a country that shares the goals and principles of the SCO and wants to establish relations based on equal and mutually profitable relationship.”

Iran, as an observer, fulfills the commitment. The spanner in the works happens to be tiny Tajikistan.

Enter the trademark convoluted internal politics of the Central Asian stans, in this case revolving around Tajik president Emomali Rahmon accepting Saudi Arabia’s acquisition of a 51% stake in Tajikistan’s largest bank. Nobody else wanted it; Riyadh was just buying influence.

All SCO full members must be approved unanimously. Still, that won’t prevent larger economic integration between Iran, Russia and China. The talk in the SCO corridors was that Chinese companies expect an extra bonanza in the Iranian market after the unilateral Trump pullout of the JCPOA.

Behind closed doors, as diplomats told Asia Times, the SCO also discussed the crucial plan devised by the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group, an Asia-wide peace process with Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan trying to finally solve the decades-long tragedy without Western interference.

So what about a G3?

The “dueling summits” clearly set the scene. The G7 meeting at La Malbaie represented the dysfunctional old order, dilacerated by largely self-inflicted chaos and its apoplexy at the Rise of the East – from the integration of BRI, EAEU, SCO and BRICS, to the yuan-based gold-backed oil futures market.

In contrast to the G7’s full spectrum dominance doctrine of total military superiority, Qingdao represented the new groove. Implacably derided by the old order as autocratic and filled with “democraships” bent on “aggression”, in fact it was a graphic illustration of multi-polarity at work, the intersection of four great civilizations, an Eurasian Café debating that another, non-War Party conducted future is possible.

In parallel, diplomats in Brussels confirmed to Asia Times there are insistent rumbles about Trump possibly dreaming of a G3 composed of just US, Russia and China. Trump, after all, personally admires the leadership qualities of both Putin and Xi, while deriding the Kafkaesque EU bureaucratic maze and its weaklings, currently represented by the M3 (Merkel, Macron, May).

In Europe, no one seems to be listening to informed advice, such as provided by Belgian economist Paul de Grauwe, who’s pleading for Frankfurt and Berlin to manage a common debt, without which the EU won’t survive the sovereign crises of individual members.

Trump, for all his dizzying inconsistencies, seems to have understood that the G7 is a Walking Dead, and the heart of the action revolves around China, Russia and India, which not by accident form the hard node of BRICS.

The problem is the US national security strategy, as well as the national defense strategy, advocate no less than Cold War 2.0 against both China and Russia all across Eurasia. All bets are off, however, on who blinks first.

#Asia

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republicstandard · 6 years

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Explaining The Great Replacement: The Communist Roots of Globalism

As I wrote in a previous piece for Republic Standard, the ultimate purge of the overt Philo-Semitism of the USSR did little to destroy the Bolshevist spirit. As a trans-national ideology propagated by a trans-national people, Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi’s “third epoch of the new times: Socialism” is Rasputin-esque in its difficulty to kill—but, to reference Predator, “If it bleeds, we can kill it!”

When I wrote that the Bolshevist spirit had slipped loose and headed Westward, its chief ideological foes, the “liberal democracies,” are now held in thrall to what is, in essence, the same modus operandi whereas in the Eastern Bloc they are not. It’s a little difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when the old order began to give way because it was not a flash-event like the October Revolution, but even as the Cold War raged, despite the system of communism in place in the USSR and its allies and proxies, it was the West whose psyche had been colonized. The defeat of communism, while a great victory, was not the defeat of Bolshevism. We can see it in action right now in the implementation of the Kalergi Plan and the preeminence of globalism, with power increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small cabal bent on GLOBAL DOMINATION. This cabal, erroneously depicted as the “white male patriarchy” has a similar skin pigmentation, but to quote Kalergi:

The main representatives of the corrupt, as well as the upright brain aristocracy: of capitalism, journalism and the literate, are Jews. The superiority of their spirit predestines them to become a main factor of the future nobility. One look at the history of the Jewish people explains its lead in the struggle over the governance of humanity.

As the Jewish World itself declared: “Fundamentally Judaism is anti-Christian.” So, too, would be the Religion of Peace, whose adherents form the vanguard of the Hijrah to subjugate Christian Europe (or once-Christian Western Europe, more accurately) and its Western cousins. Both Jew and Moslem will, of course, look favorably upon the weakening of Christendom, for its ultimate colonization is each’s aim. The egalitarians, possessed with a similar hatred for the West, will join them advocating for the importation of as many alien peoples as possible, to drown the native populations in groups that simply do not share the same values and thus have no vested interest in protecting them. This is not uniformly true of non-whites, of course, but in poll after poll, example after example, a majority have proven to default to the strongman, the Oriental despot, the emir, or some variant. Liberal democracies or the American system of checks-and-balances and Enlightenment republicanism are of no interest to the average Pakistani or Gambian or Honduran.

Nor is an eight-hundred-year tradition of common law as in the United Kingdom, where the mess of competing ideologies—all trafficking in open borders—are beginning to slam headlong into each other with greater and greater force. Labour appears to be backing the Islamic horse, as our old friend Labour MP Naz Shah posted on Facebook that she had a ‘solution’ to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

"Relocate Israel into the United States…transportation costs will be less than three years of defense spending... problem solved."

And don’t forget about Jeremy Corbyn. Quoting Theodore Dalrymple:

In all the commentary about Corbyn’s anti-Semitism, real or feigned, no one seems to have noticed that anti-Semitism is perfectly logical for someone of Corbyn’s cast of mind. It has often been said that anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools; it would be more accurate to say that socialism is the anti-Semitism of intellectuals (at least in modern conditions). Anti-Semitism and socialism proceed along the same lines, using the same kind of presuppositions and evidence…No one can say for certain whether Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitism is a sincerely held prejudice or merely a matter of electoral calculation… But either way, his failure to condemn anti-Semitism in his own party, his penchant for consorting in friendly fashion with extremist anti-Zionists of genocidal instincts, and his defense of a mural depicting lupine Jewish bankers playing Monopoly on the backs of naked minorities are cause for anxiety among British Jews.

As I wrote in that earlier piece for Republic Standard, Judaism and Bolshevism, from Marx on down, are inextricably intertwined; Dalrymple makes the point that Corbyn’s brand of Leftism is inherently anti-Jewish, reminiscent of Larry David commissioning a symphony to serenade his Gentile wife with Wagner or something. As we saw with Barack Obama’s regime, espousing Leftist ideology doesn’t mean one has to kowtow to The Tribe. Obama (probably a Moslem) was aggressive in his efforts to minimize the reach of Israel. Yet his policies remained tethered to the socialism of Jewish origin. Similarly, Joseph Stalin, himself one-quarter Jewish, retained the system, more or less, that was responsible for so many atrocities against the Soviet population, including the Holodomor—itself twice as deadly as the high-death mark for the Holocaust (12 million versus 6 million), the product of yet another iteration of socialism. For all of his understanding of Judeo-Bolshevism, Hitler clearly wasn’t aware of the irony of using a modified system of it in the Third Reich. Wonders never cease.

Borrowing from Vicomte Leon De Poncins, with the rise of the Bolshevik regime:

The inward thought of Moscow (the Jews) indeed appears to be that for twenty centuries while humanity has been following Christ, it has been on the wrong word. It is now high time to correct this error of direction by creating a new moral code, a new civilization, founded on quite different principles (Talmudic Principles).

As W.E. Curtis wrote,

“The revolutionary leaders nearly all belong to the Jewish race, and the most effective revolutionary agency is the Jewish Bund.”

Half of the members of Lenin’s conference before the October Revolution were Jews, and four of the seven original members of the Politburo were Jews. The Jews were dramatically overrepresented in positions of intelligence gathering, senior roles in the Soviet, interrogators, and many other arms of the state. What’s more, roughly three-quarters of the Cheka were Jewish, and reports inform us that they were very careful to spare their brethren. Borrowing this vital calculation from Mosaisk.com:

If at the times of the Red Terror members of an ethnic group representing 80% of the population (Russians) were responsible for 30% of the terror, and in turn members of a group representing 1.8% of the population (Jews) were responsible for almost 40% of the Terror, then the following relation results:

÷ = 22.2 ÷ 0.375 = 59.26

This means that statistically, the Jews of the Soviet Union bear 59 times as much responsibility for the Red Terror per capita than the Russian population.

The Dutch ambassador to Russia, in 1918, wrote:

Unless Bolshevism is nipped in the bud immediately, it is bound to spread in one form or another over Europe and the whole world as it is organized and worked by Jews who have no nationality, and whose one object is to destroy for their own ends the existing order of things.

Not to continue to paw through the bones of the two World Wars, but it’s vital we understand that the lessons learned have been all the wrong ones. The past century has represented the fallout from Europe’s attempted suicide in the form of World War I, with no real winner other than the Jews, as Austrian ambassador Count Mensdorf gloated:

“Israel won the war (WW I); we made it; we thrived on it; we profited from it. It was our supreme revenge on Christianity.”

Millions of brave young men died for nothing, and the same dreadful march to oblivion was repeated just over two decades later. The peace has been kept since 1945, insofar as peace can be kept, by the United States effectively bankrolling the entire Western world’s defense budget, and that’s largely masked the fragility of our allies. The West bequeathed to the victors’ progeny is run by delusional and opportunistic globalists and frauds, intent, finally, on replacing the entire native European population as penance for all past misdeeds both real (yet exaggerated) and imagined.

The reverberations of World War II especially are still with us; so terrifying is the specter of Nazism, we are commanded to fear nationalism in even the most benign of manifestations—with one glaring exception. In our zeal to never allow the “selectively-remembered” atrocities of that particular war to happen again, we’ve seen vilified all Eurowestern national pride as the first step toward inevitable genocide. Given the prevalence of Cult-Marx post-modernism and deconstructionism in the academy, it’s little surprise the soil for this kind of thinking has proven so fertile. There’s more to it, certainly, but the intellectual groundwork had already been laid for the profoundly corrupting influence of this serpentine, shape-shifting Bolshevism, never allowing itself to be restricted by the borders of the nation-state. Mark Weber writes:

As an expression of its radically anti-nationalist character, the fledgling Soviet government issued a decree a few months after taking power that made anti-Semitism a crime in Russia. The new Communist regime thus became the first in the world to severely punish all expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment. Soviet officials apparently regarded such measures as indispensable. Based on careful observation during a lengthy stay in Russia, American-Jewish scholar Frank Golder reported in 1925 that “because so many of the Soviet leaders are Jews anti-Semitism is gaining [in Russia], particularly in the army [and] among the old and new intelligentsia who are being crowded for positions by the sons of Israel.”

Ideologically, there is no day-light between communism and Judaism, and not just because of the Jewish genesis of communism; as appeared in the Jewish World on February 9th, 1933:

“The great ideal of Judaism is that the whole world shall be imbued with Jewish teachings and that in a Universal Brotherhood of Nations—a greater Judaism in fact—all the separate races and religions shall disappear.”

This Brotherhood with no religion and “nothing to kill and die for” reminds me of both Lennon and Lenin, but Judaism, which is largely atheistic at this point anyway, would be the sole driver of the international super-state, so I guess it wouldn’t be all races and religions, just those that are outside Ashkenazim. As Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi explicitly stated:

The man of the future will be a mongrel…The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future…will replace the diversity of peoples…Russian Bolshevism constitutes a decisive step towards this purpose, where a small group of Communist spiritual aristocrats governs the country…The prominent position held by the Jews these days is owed to their spiritual supremacy…Strength of character paired with sharpness of the mind predestinates the Jews in their most excellent specimen to become the leaders of urbane humanity.

The reason they are so insistent on erasing distinct races and nations is because these are obstacles to the globalist project. The methods and the end-game, just like communism, are the same. As Winston Churchill wrote in 1920, Bolshevism is:

[A] worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality.

He continued:

There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power come from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate, Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd), or of Krassin or Radek—all Jews. In the Soviet institutions, the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combatting Counter-Revolution [the Cheka] has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses.

Leftists and socialists can balk and shout all they want that wealth redistribution and central planning are necessary to furthering equality, but there is absolutely nothing in recorded history that would suggest the stated utopian aims would not be be-deviled by basic human instincts, and this is accepting their claims at face value before considering that there might be ulterior motives, which frankly we know there are. The genealogy of Marxism, including the present Cultural Marxist paradigm, is but one vehicle to exert power and control. It does not, however, need to stay confined to that one particular ideology. Take it away, Vladimir Jabotinsky:

[We have] the power of political pressure. We Jews are the most powerful people on earth, because we have this power, and we know how to apply it.

Where had I heard something like this before? Ah yes, Israeli journalist Arieh Shavit:

We believe with absolute certitude right now, with the White House in our hands, the Senate in our hands, and the New York Times in our hands, the lives of others do not count the same way as our own.

That’s not a very egalitarian outlook—I thought it was virtually criminal for people to pursue the interests and advancement of their own people? The good news for the globalist-minded Jews is that, by playing multiple “games,” they, of course, enhance their chances of winning, but there is also a greater chance of blow-back or of there being unintended consequences.

In the interests of eliminating Christendom’s ability to resist its own colonization and eventual erasure, the importation of millions of Muslims, who are dead-set on subjugating if not destroying both of their long-standing Abrahamic enemies as foot-soldiers, is vital. It’s a significant gamble, however, and anti-Semitic attacks are spiking across Europe. The Muslims have their own designs, and they do not include domination by the Jews. What we have here are several competing ideologies (and we shouldn’t forget the “Chamber of Commerce” hyper-capitalists as another key player) with significant overlap, each trying to use each other, or at least take advantage of the opportunities the others create, and what’s resulted is that they’ve created a winner-take-all set of conditions with the future of the West entirely up for grabs.

Which horse will you back? I shall give you a little “insider baseball” on who I’m “with” (and it’s not Her): Let us not forget our history. A conquering army will always be felled by a people defending their home, no matter how crudely-outfitted and ramshackle because they are fighting for the very survival of all they hold dear. Alexander the Great, the USSR, the United States—none could bring the mighty Pashtun warrior to heel for this very reason.

The entire world is aligned against us, and yet we still have a puncher’s chance. Good thing I like to fight.

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine https://ift.tt/2JiXMXC via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine

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investmart007 · 6 years

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DAMASCUS, Syria | Nadal wary of saying he's fully recovered from thigh injury

New Post has been published on https://goo.gl/zJyyya

DAMASCUS, Syria | Nadal wary of saying he's fully recovered from thigh injury

DAMASCUS, Syria | April 15, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) The leaders of Russia, Iran and the Hezbollah group in Lebanon said Sunday that Western airstrikes on their ally, Syria, have complicated prospects for a political settlement to the country’s seven-year conflict.

A day after the U.S., Britain and France bombarded sites they said were linked to a chemical weapons program, Syrian President Bashar Assad appeared briefly on state TV, seemingly unfazed by the military action — and even reportedly in high spirits.

He told a group of visiting Russian lawmakers that the strikes were accompanied by a campaign of “lies and misinformation” against Syria and Russia in the U.N. Security Council.

Moscow and Damascus are waging the same “battles” against terrorism and “to protect international law based on respect of the sovereignty of countries and the wills of people,” Assad said in comments carried by state media, an apparent jab at the three Western allies.

Russian lawmaker Dmitry Sablin, who met with Assad, said he appeared upbeat and believed the airstrikes would unify the country.

Russia and Iran have called the action a “military crime” and “act of aggression.” The U.N. Security Council rejected a Russian resolution calling for condemnation of the “aggression” by the U.S., France and Britain.

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and they agreed the Western airstrikes were an “illegal action … adversely impacting prospects for political settlement in Syria,” a Kremlin statement said.

Putin said the actions violated the U.N. Charter and if they continue, “it will inevitably entail chaos in international relations,” the statement said.

The official IRNA news agency quoted Rouhani as saying The U.S. and “some Western countries do not want Syria to reach permanent stability.”

Iran and Russia should not allow the “fire of a new tension” to flare up in the region, Rouhani said, adding that the airstrikes were an “invasion” aimed at “emboldening defeated terrorists,” IRNA reported.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group that has hundreds of fighters backing Assad’s forces, said the airstrikes failed to “terrorize or break the spirits” of Syria and its allies.

Instead, he said, the attack bolstered the confidence of the Syrian army and its allies, as well as probably sinking the already-faltering U.N.-backed peace process on Syria in Geneva.

“If the goal was to pressure Syria to expedite a political solution, I think what happened will complicate the political solution and will strain international relations and the Geneva track, if not torpedo Geneva altogether,” Nasrallah told an election rally in Lebanon.

Nasrallah said there is no chemical program in Syria, and he likened the attacks in Syria to the West’s concern over Iran’s nuclear program.

U.S. Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, said the allied airstrikes “took out the heart” of Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal. When pressed, however, he acknowledged that some unspecified portion of Assad’s chemical arms infrastructure was not targeted.

Assad denies he has used chemical weapons, and the U.S. has yet to present evidence of what it says led to the allied action: a chlorine gas attack on civilians in Douma on April 7 that killed more than 40 people. The U.S. says it suspects that sarin gas also was used.

A team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is in Syria to investigate the Douma incident and was expected to visit the town. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad met with members of the watchdog group in their Damascus hotel Sunday.

The government regained full control of Douma on Saturday following a surrender deal with the rebels in the town east of Damascus. It later deployed another 5,000 security forces there.

Russian military police had been deployed in Douma, raising complaints from the Syrian opposition that evidence of chemical weapons use might no longer be found.

Douma was the last rebel holdout in the eastern Ghouta suburbs, the target of a government offensive in February and March that killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands.

France, meanwhile, has reached out to Russia, urging it to join renewed peace efforts.

In an interview published Sunday in the Journal Nadal wary of saying he’s fully recovered from thigh injury By JEROME PUGMIRE, AP Sports Writer

MONACO (AP) — Rafael Nadal is wary of saying he’s fully recovered from a troublesome right thigh injury as he defends his Monte Carlo Masters title.

The top-ranked Spaniard only recently returned to action at the Davis Cup, after a recurrence of the injury forced him out of the Mexico Open and then Masters tournaments at Indian Wells and Miami last month.

Those setbacks followed his crushing disappointment at the Australian Open, where he was forced to retire in the fifth set of the quarterfinal against Marin Cilic.

Nadal had expected to make his comeback in Acapulco, but the injury flared up again during a last practice session with French player Adrian Mannarino. Looking back on it Sunday, the 16-time Grand Slam champion said it was mentally “even harder than what happened in Australia” because he was so convinced he would play.

“I did all the things the right way, practicing one week before, to be ready for the tournament and then it happened,” Nadal told reporters. “You’re in Acapulco, you fly all the way … Then the doctors told me: ‘You will not be able to play in Indian Wells, Miami.’ So that was hard to accept.”

So was the painstakingly dull recovery which followed.

“I was unable to do any physical work because the psoas (muscle) was affecting all the movements I could do,” he said. “It was a boring time because I don’t like to be doing nothing.”

Nadal wasn’t bored last weekend, however, winning both his Davis Cup singles against Germany without dropping a set. Although he appears to have slotted straight back into his clay groove, his Acapulco setback leaves him circumspect about speaking too soon.

“Well it happened twice, so you never know,” he said. “Of course it stays a little bit in your mind.”

Nadal begins his bid for a record-extending 11th Monte Carlo title with a second-round match against either Aljaz Bedene or Mirza Basic. He needs to win the tournament or Roger Federer will reclaim top ranking in their seemingly endless fight for supremacy. They have won the last five Grand Slams, three for FedererBut with 20-time major winner Federer again skipping the clay season, Nadal must wait a while longer to try and avenge a run of five straight defeats to the Swiss star.

He took a swipe, although an amiable one, at Federer.

“He says he will love to play against me again in best of five sets on clay, and I thought he would play Roland Garros,” Nadal said, with a wry smile. “A few days later he says he will not play in one (clay) event, so there’s a little bit of controversy with that.”

Nadal’s victory at Monte Carlo last year made him the first men’s tennis player in the Open era to win the same title 10 times. He then won a 10th French Open.

He feels at home at the picture-postcard tournament with its center court perched over the glittering Mediterranean sea. The Monte Carlo tournament launched his career as a scraggly-haired 16-year-old in 2003, although the sun had long set when he beat defending French Open champion Albert Costa under floodlights in the second round.

“I always feel good when I am here,” Nadal said. “It’s been a love story.”

The only Monte Carlo final that the 31-year-old Nadal has lost was to Novak Djokovic in 2013. Djokovic added another Monte Carlo title in 2015, during his pomp.

But the former top-ranked Serb looks a shadow of the player he was. Hindered by a persistent right elbow injury, his ranking has tumbled to 13.

Earlier this month, Djokovic stopped working with Andre Agassi and Radek Stepanek — the latest in a series of coaching changes for the 12-time major champion.

After significant rest during the second half of last year and a medical procedure in February, Djokovic spoke confidently of being pain-free — at long last.

Then, he lost his first match at the Miami Open in straight sets.

Djokovic used to be the player everyone was chasing. He even beat Nadal during a glorious run of seven straight finals and holds a 26-24 winning record against him.

They have won a record 30 Masters each, but Nadal looks the more likely to get No. 31.

By JEROME PUGMIRE , By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (R.A)

#airstrikes would #Britain #complicated prospects #Damascus #Iranian President #syria #U.N. Security Council #U.S

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stopkingobama · 7 years

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Vladmir Putin is losing...to the Libertarian Party?

The Libertarian Party in Russia is beating Putin’s party on the local level.

Photo: World Economic Forum/Flickr (cc by-nc-sa 2.0)

Last weekend, as Moscow celebrated its 870th anniversary, a futuristic $245 million Zaryadye Park was inaugurated in the heart of the capital — a generous present from Mayor Sergei Sobyanin to his citizens. The 32-acre park includes a ‘floating bridge,’ a piece of tundra, and even an ice cave. The miracle was designed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, creators of the iconic High Line in New York, who describe Zaryadye as a piece of “wild urbanism.”

Moscovian Politics Is Still Outdated

“Wild urbanism” sounds like an ideal description of Sobyanin’s policy. Since he was appointed by Vladimir Putin in 2010, the Moscow mayor was trying to make the Russian capital look like any other modern capital — by flagrantly unmodern, Soviet/USSR-like means. To bring “order to city planning,” he bulldozed hundreds of kiosks overnight, leaving some one thousand citizens unemployed. More recently, he ordered to tear down 10 percent of Moscow’s housing stock and, in a Stalin-like manner, relocate 1.6 million inhabitants against their will.

Last weekend, while Sobyanin was cutting the ribbon of Zaryadye Park, his administration was preparing another “present” for the citizens. Bloggers published a video where the deputy head of a local council in Moscow teaches her colleagues the techniques of election fraud and offers them money for collaboration.

The local elections were scheduled on Sunday and, though many young and independent activists were registered as candidates, there was not much enthusiasm about their chances of succeeding.

But Monday was the real day for Moscow to celebrate; despite election fraud and institutionalized censorship, opposition candidates in ten local councils unexpectedly won the majority of seats. Adding insult to injury, in the district where Putin himself votes, his party lost all its seats to the opposition — along with seven other councils where the ruling party now holds no mandates.

Among the winners was my colleague and friend Dmitriy Maksimov. He joined the Libertarian Party of Russia in 2012, soon after I became the first party member elected into public office. Since then, he’s combined the unrewarding work of the party Secretary with audacious street activism, a remarkably dangerous thing in modern Russia. Once Dmitriy even attended an anti-censorship rally with his lips sealed by a sticker saying just one word: Putin. A picture of him was soon published in Charlie Hebdo. It’s not international publicity, however, that helped him win the race, but the brilliant team he worked with.

Thirty-five km away from Moscow, in a small town of Pushkino, a coalition led by ex-Chairman of the Libertarian Party Andrey Shalnev left the pro-government candidates long behind. Andrey used to be the youngest leader of a political party in Russia — something that requires a lot of courage, given that two years ago the leader of another opposition party, Boris Nemtsov, was shot dead walking distance from the Kremlin.

People like Andrey, Dmitriy, and many more are not easily scared. In the absence of independent media sources, they campaign door to door, organize public meetings and reveal cases of corruption — and manage to win over a much stronger opponent. When thinking globally, they travel from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok spreading the ideas of liberty. When acting locally, they remember that a successful city is not a result of expensive public projects but of voluntary grassroots activity.

The Failures of Russian Government

Why do enormous developments like Zaryadye Park fail to play the role that similar projects play in developed countries, namely the one of revitalizing community life? First of all, beautiful landscapes and fancy buildings do not help people trust each other — social capital does. The government that creates a hipster paradise with one hand and smashes any kind of grassroots activities with another one will never make Moscow resemble New York or Amsterdam. It simply won’t work.

Boosting social capital is the number one thing liberty-loving counselors can do for their cities, both in Russia and elsewhere. To stop relying on the government, citizens should start relying on each other.

Capitalism is unfairly blamed for alienating people and discouraging cooperation, yet post-Communist societies suffer most from a lack of trust. A few short decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, one can still feel the significant difference in the level of social capital between Eastern and Western Germany.

But in Russia specifically, it is important to understand what allowed opposition candidates to shake up Moscow politics, aside from a remarkable amount of courage.

Above all, it was thanks to the poor strategy of Sergey Sobyanin, whose team seems to completely have lost touch with reality. Strange as it sounds, the mayor truly believes that a few beautified streets make the Muscovites turn a blind eye to massive corruption. One after another, Sobyanin’s ambitious projects were rejected by the citizens but his plan to demolish thousands of homes sparked the biggest non-political protest in Moscow history.

But can anything be truly non-political a few months ahead of the presidential elections?

With the ruling United Russia party losing some of Moscow’s districts to the opposition, Putin’s legitimacy as a presidential candidate is questioned, at least in the capital city. It looks like the Muscovites are not at all impressed by his thuggish sabre-rattle, nor by his topless images. More than any vague geopolitical interests, they mind their own property. “Wild urbanism”? Not in my backyard!

Vera Kichanova

Vera Kichanova is the first member of the Russian Libertarian Party to be elected to public office. Currently, she is completing her Masters of Public Policy at the University of Oxford and is preparing to start a PhD in free market urbanism at King’s College.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

#Russian Libertarian Party #Vera Kichanova #Russia

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