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Thursday, April 21, 2022

2022-04-21

*** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)

Economic and Market Fare:

Real Yield Surge Above Zero Looks Unlikely To Hold Out

The win percentage shows in how many instances the real yield was even higher three, six, and 12 months out after surging 50 bps or more over the previous month’s close. The low win percentage in all three cases shows that in the overwhelming number of cases, the real yield was lower in these time frames.
 
Similar insights can be drawn when looking at the 14-month RSI and the 12-month z-score for the same date range. Notice that the current RSI reading has some room left for it to head into its past “topping area.” The z-score has already crossed above the 2.5 standard deviation threshold, which historically has led to some sort of a stall or pullback. ...


It remains to be seen whether investors will now prefer bonds relative to more risky assets such as stocks and credit as real yields turn positive. With aggressive rate hikes by the Fed now completely priced in, it will take something completely unexpected for real yields to continue marching higher, even after the current, near vertical surge.


Shedlock: Forget About A Soft Landing, What's The Shape Of The Hard Landing?
A recession and hard landing is on the way. What will it look like?

... I believe the soft landing proponents at the Fed and Goldman Sachs are in Fantasyland. So does Danielle DiMartino Booth, founder of Quill Intelligence.



Concern is growing that the spread of COVID cases and city lockdowns in China will have massive downstream effects for global supply chains that could dwarf previous disruptions since the start of the pandemic.


A forgotten aspect of the New Deal is that it took place amid inflation and rising prices. Contemporary debates over inflation and whether corporate greed has a role in driving price hikes echo similar debates during Roosevelt’s second term, as enforcers attempted to push against rising prices by curbing monopoly power while maintaining purchasing power.
"There is real danger of runaway prices … Then, unless firm action is taken, will come the race between purchasing power and inflated prices – a losing race since purchasing power can not keep up.”

“Many of these prices are being deliberately raised by monopolistic devices.”

“Some of the price rises are due to monopolistic practices, and some are due to shortages of supplies.”
The above quotes may appear to have come out of this year’s debates over inflation, as many Americans are finding their paychecks in a losing race against price increases. There is debate and uncertainty about the causes. Some argue that this inflation is driven by overheating and increased purchasing power. Others argue it is supply chain disruptions from Covid-19, and yet others maintain that corporate greed is driving unjustified price hikes. The comments above were written, however, in 1937, by an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as the United States found itself in a very similar situation. As Covid has today, the Great Depression of the 1930s created one of the largest economic disruptions of supply, employment, and output in the nation’s history. In both cases, millions were put out of work, supply-chain shocks and shortages limited recovery, and massive government spending propped up key sectors of the economy. ...

..... Real as they were before, now these price increases are less subtle. As the recovery from Covid-19 runs into inflation, price increases reflect a combination of genuine supply shocks as well as obvious price hikes from powerful firms with a history of price-fixing. Taking advantage of both their bargaining position and consumers’ ignorance about the true scale of cost increases, major firms have been increasing prices well beyond their cost increases, bragging loudly about it on earnings calls, and explaining that their market power allows them to do this, whether in industries like beverages, meatpacking, or even PPE critical for Covid mitigation.

... Having decided that market power is not responsible for inflation, or that antitrust would take too long, the conclusion appears to be instead to do nothing: since it is just supply and demand, leave it be. However, inaction leaves the policy response to inflation in the hands of the independent Federal Reserve, whose one policy lever is to raise interest rates to control inflation by reducing workers’ bargaining power and wage gains, based on the theory that inflation is driven by excess purchasing power. It should be noted that wage gains cannot be driving inflation, as prices are rising faster than wages, but on the basis of this logic the Federal Reserve raised rates on March 16 nonetheless.



Here’s the thing: Double-digit inflation is now guaranteed and it will be long-lasting.





Other Charts: 
1:




MMT Fare:


Theories are explanations of what we see, and MMT describes money creation and destruction. Hence, MMT cannot be and is not a political manifesto. In contrast to most other theories of money, MMT is falsifiable in its core statements, which are based on a balance sheet approach to macroeconomics.

....

MMT is, first and foremost, a balance sheet approach to macroeconomics. At its very core lie reserve accounting, then deposit accounting, and then sectoral balances accounting. There is very little behaviour in any of this. Equilibrium rules as all balances balance – in both flows and stocks – and there are no assumptions apart from the existence of a central bank, a Treasury, a banking system and some households and firms. MMT can only be learned by mastering its balance sheet approach. It can only be engaged by discussing the balance sheet operations it puts forward. It is here where value is added …

First of all, the main insight of MMT is that the mainstream has the sequence wrong. Whereas they assume that government expenditure is financed by taxes, MMT assumes that government spending is financed by money creation. MMT stresses that the central bank, empowered by the law and serving the state, is the monopoly issuer of currency …



At: May 14 2013 07:41:14

Consider the following thought experiment. These are the scenarios:
  • A. The Treasury decides that it will fund itself 30% more in Overnight Bills and reduce issuance across the curve.
  • B. The Fed announces it will increase QE by 30% (it will remit the net income of this activity back to the Treasury like taxes)
  • C. Congress announces a new tax on all passive income from USTs, to holders both at home and abroad (ie Central Banks), for all new-issue USTs
  • D. Lew pre-announces that we will ‘selectively default’ and apply a haircut of on all future Treasury coupon payments of new issues.
Here’s what’s funny. Most intelligent market participants will say things like:
  • A. Stocks down a few percent on fear of downgrade. Economy slightly weaker or unchanged.
  • B. Stocks up 5-10% and economy grows another 1% for 1-2yrs; monetary stimulus.
  • C. Stocks down 5-10% on tax hike (like last year) that maybe corrects. Economy slows 1-2% for a year or so because it’s a tax hike (ie fiscal consolidation).
  • D. Stocks down 80% and we go into a great depression on steroids. All investment dollars flee the US. I can’t tell you what happens next because my Bloomberg account gets shut down. They might even declare an Internet Holiday.
Here’s what’s craziest: THESE ARE ALL THE SAME THING. The name and the process is different, the OPTICS is different, but the net is the same. 

There’s the government and there’s everyone else. The government either pays more out – in interest payments or transfer payments or vendor payments, or it takes back more in taxes or default or interest ‘savings.’ Everything the government net gets in ‘revenue’ the rest of the world loses in income. Everything the government dissaves (deficits) the rest of the world saves. Equal and opposite.



(not just) for the ESG crowd:

Graphite is made in blazing-hot furnaces powered by dirty energy. Until recently, there has been no good tally of the carbon emissions.


Between rising electricity rates and soaring climate costs, cryptomining is taking its toll on communities.


Companies want to build pipelines to capture and store carbon, but a new report warns that regulators aren’t prepared.








KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • Arthur Schopenhauer believed that solitude was an opportunity for introspection, imagination, and contemplation with yourself. 
  • Research shows that solitude of this kind allows us to be more creative. But, in a the busy world of today, do we ever let ourselves be solitary? 
  • Loneliness is different from solitude. For many people, being alone is a scary and dangerous place. That's why knowing the difference between solitude and loneliness is important.


Tweet Vids of the Week:

today i learned that skunks sound like muppets and this video will live forever in my heart




Contrarian Perspectives

Extra [i.e. Controversial] Fare:

*** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Regular Fare:

I can't think of a single major story, political or social, that does not at its root contain this single fact.

We seem to live in a world where the messages, at least the political ones, are few, repetitious, and have no effect.

Take, for example, Robert Reich's complaint below. There are several proximate causes for today's inflation, but the greatest — and least pointed out by the mainstream press — is simple greed.






Unsustainability Fare:

***** From Rachel Carson to Monsanto: The Silence of Spring



If you want to do super big picture macrohistory, humans have really had three eras:
  1. Hunting/gathering
  2. Agriculture
  3. Industrial.
....... We know the industrial era, because we live in it, but I want to invite you take the long view: imagine it’s a 1,000 years from now. Or 5,000.

What the industrial age looks like when you zoom out is “the petrochemical age”. We figured out how to harness coal, gas and oil, added in a few other sources of energy, and became clever at hooking machines up to our power sources.

The problem is that in a period of less than 300 years we’ve burned up so many petrochems that we’re overheating the planet thru the mechanism of climate changes gases, and our population is well over the planet’s carrying capacity, leading to a crush in ecosystem diversity and the absolute number of animals, plants and insects.

Since ecosystems + climate are what make the planet habitable for humans, from the long point of view, all the industrial/petrochem era looks like is a massive orgy: a predator species which has overshot the world’s carrying capacity.

If we can’t transition to a technological way of supporting ourselves which doesn’t destroy the world’s carrying capacity, then all this period will be looked back on as is a blip: a brief period of species-wide stupidity, where we exploited technologies and powers we were too foolish and stupid to control the consequences of.

Progress isn’t automatic, and it isn’t one way.  ....

... In theory we could probably still fix this. The technology either exists or is with in sprint to do so, but it’s about more than technology: we’d have to change how we live. ...

... 
Our technology was a test: we were given (or gave ourselves) great power, and our task was to use it to benefit ourselves in a way which was beneficial, or at least not catastrophic, for the rest of life on Earth (our ecosystem) and to not destroy a climate which is the only one human civilization has ever known.

We failed in this task, and so the Petrochemical Age is likely to just look like a blip. Perhaps a new technological civilization will arise from our ashes: but if it is to survive and prosper it will  have to do what we didn’t and give at least as much back to nature as it takes out (and rather more, to fix the damage.)

As for us, it seems unlikely most of our civilization will make it. Doubtless hi-tech enclaves will continue to exist, but ecosystem collapse, water shortages and climate change make it unlikely our civilization as a whole will survive another century. It may not even make it 50 years. ...



Today, I’m taking you back to the year 1896. A Swedish man by the name of Svante Arrhenius asks himself: “What could be the cause of the cycle of ice ages?” He came up with a new theory: Maybe it’s caused by a lack of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

And then he began to think to himself: “Well, we’re burning a lot of coal right now, for the industrial revolution. If we keep doing this, we’ll end up killing ourselves off thousands of years from now, because we’ll warm up the planet too much.”

He was not very worried however. In fact, he  thought the warming would be pretty nice initially, it would gradually green the Earth, expanding the regions that humans can use for agriculture. He was mostly right in this assumption. During the 20th century, human food production increased massively. In part, this is because we increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which made plants lose less water to moisture and gave us warmer weather, particularly at night and during winter.

But as with any nutrition, too much of a good thing eventually stops being good. ... What Arrhenius did not anticipate, is how much the human population would grow and how much coal and other fossil fuels those people would end up using: ...

... But still, there was not a lot of worry. After all, there was another issue to consider too: Burning all these fossil fuels produces massive amounts of dust. This dust blocks the sun and so the warming effect was largely offset by the decrease in sunlight, an effect called global dimming. That’s why a number of people thought the blockade of sunlight would exceed the warming from carbon dioxide, leading to global cooling.

However, global dimming is largely coming to an end, because human beings don’t like to die from air pollution. ...

... And so as time went on and we dealt with the air pollution, we ran into a new problem. Long before any of your politicians had any clue what was going on, the American oil companies were worried. From the 1970’s onwards, Exxon was busy studying how its business would affect our climate. They rapidly figured out that the carbon dioxide they were producing would have long term effects and would make our planet warmer.

And by 1982, they were pretty massively worried. They released a memo to upper management, that was “not to be distributed externally”. ...

... But they had a glass-half full kind of conclusion: It’s not as a bad as nuclear war and we’ll have to deal with it somehow: ...

........... Well I have a very simple challenge for you, you will love this one:

Find a previous period in geological history, when concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere doubled in a period of less than 200 years.
You get bonus points, if you can show that there was no global chaos back then: No mass extinctions, no sudden massive droughts, or any other sort of misery that involves mass death.

Because I have looked at this and let me tell you: I can’t find it. Whenever something remotely similar to what we’re doing now happened, the world went to shit. What we’re doing right now, is very unusual.

.... My recommendation is really to just figure out that you have been duped by a bunch of billionaires, who have known about this problem now for at least forty years.

And what happens, when Americans don’t figure it out? ...

... And while we’re at it, do you think this is going to get any better, anytime soon? The warming we face is going to continue to get worse, as long as we’re burning fossil fuels. If every country on the planet somehow reduced its fossil fuel use by 50% today, that wouldn’t mean the warming stops. Rather, the warming will still continue to get worse, but the speed at which it gets worse goes down.

I think we’re going to reduce our fossil fuel use in the years ahead, but not voluntarily. Rather, we’re going to reduce our fossil fuel use, because all of the problems we face are just going to escalate further. War, disease, famines, these are not going to go away. This is now the new normal. ....



Back in the real world, it behooves us to have a Plan A, Plan B and Plan C.

I have often suggested a simple formula for methodically planning a range of responses ahead of time so we’re ready when and if our circumstances change: Plans A, B and C.

Plan A is our response should our circumstances change while the socio-economic system remains pretty much the same. 

An example might be unexpectedly losing your job due to a sudden downturn and being unable to find a replacement job in the same field at the same wage.

Plan B is our response should our circumstances change while the socio-economic system is unraveling. 

An example might be we no longer feel safe in our neighborhood due to rising crime and a dysfunctional, bankrupt local government.

Plan C is our response should the socio-economic system completely break down. 

An example might be supply chains fail and gas stations no longer have fuel and grocery store shelves are empty.


Related Tweets:

EcoWarriors: Current economic growth system is incompatible with maintaining life on Earth
15 billion trees logged every year
The oceans are polluted with plastic
Marine life is dying 
Ice caps are disappearing
We need a new economic system that prioritizes growing nature not its destruction


COVID Fare:

I've continued to come across too much excellent COVID-related content (with contrarian evidence-based points-of-view!!) to link to it all
Read everything by eugyppius; el gato malo; Mathew Crawford; Steve Kirsch; Jessica Rose!
Paul Alexander, Berenson, Chudov, Lyons-Weiler, Toby Rogers are also go-to mainstays; a list to which I have added Andreas Oehler, Joey Smalley (aka Metatron) and, Julius Ruechel; Denninger worth staying on top of too for his insights, and especially his colorful language; and Norman Fenton; new addition: Marc Girardot; plus Walter Chesnut on twitter; I will of course continue to post links to key Peter McCullough material, and Geert Vanden Bossche, and Robert Malone, and Martin Kulldorff, and Jay Bhattacharya, and Sucharit Bhakdi, and Pierre Kory, and Harvey Risch, and Michael Yeadon, and John Ioannidis, and Paul Marik, and Tess Lawrie, and Zelenko, and Dolores Cahill, and [local prof] Byram Bridle, and Ryan Cole, and…
but going forward, my linking to material by those mainstays mentioned above will be reduced to key excerpts and/or essential posts

Analysis:

Girardot: Poking Holes in the Brain-Blood Barrier. Is that such a good idea?
Vaccine Safety Myth - Current Covid vaccines inevitably stimulate immune attacks against the BBB, risking neurodegenerative illnesses like Alzheimer Disease

For over a year now, the concern about Covid vaccines adverse effects on our vascular system has been haunting me.

On Team Reality, many of my biologist friends took a very different route of investigation than mine. They all dove into arcane science - well beyond my reach, I admit - trying to explain the extremely wide diversity of pathologies - strokes, myocarditis, thrombosis, neurological disorders, feet blister, tinnitus … - through a rich spectrum of microbiological processes. And indeed it is quite mind stretching to grasp what - and how - the same nanoparticles would trigger such distinct pathologies.

However, most scientists have ignored three very fundamental, numerically significant and factual traits about these vaccines: .....

In the next few lines, I will highlight why I believe:

These vaccines have the potential to create a wave of neurodegenerative diseases, adding a new urgency to stop the vaccine dystopia. .....

…it is utterly unacceptable that vaccine manufacturers and public health authorities did not consider the potential damage to the BBB and the atrocious consequences over the lives of millions who will ultimately suffer of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer, Parkinson and epilepsy. ....

The more sophisticated our healthcare, the more neurodegenerative diseases surround us.

It is quite obvious to me that we need to overhaul entirely our public health view of vaccines technologies - and their delivery - to avoid further collective damage, notably via damage to the brain-blood barrier.

The question that inevitably comes to mind is:

Have past vaccines been the cause behind the explosion1 of neurodegenerative diseases these past decades? It sure is an hypothesis worth investigating.
Have we now made things much worse by precipitating the vaccination of the entire world? Unfortunately, it’s very likely…


Commentary:

And it is highly uncertain, whether it will ever do much of anything ever again.

..... Our primary obligations must be to the truth, and right now, the truth is this: The vaccinated suffer some degree of immune imprinting, and Omicron replicates preferentially in their lungs. That is not great, but we’re not seeing higher levels of death, hospitalisation or sickness right now. Corona has become a bad cold, and the default assumption must be that it stays that way. We don’t lose sleep over the possibility that some terrifying new hCoV-OC43 variant will emerge to bring back the mortality of 1889. The murky laboratory origins of SARS-2, and the limited evidence of tinkering that its genome bears, aren’t enough to support eternal predictions of death and doom.


Scientist James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., calls for building the future with science, logic, reason, compassion, empathy and in the right spirit.


We Overcame the Most Sophisticated Forms of Manipulation

.......... The Asch Experiment

“All experts agree that the vaccine is safe and effective.”

That was enough to get most people vaccinated. Except that anyone could ask two questions:
  • How can I know that all experts agree, if those disagreeing are not allowed to speak up?
  • How can anyone know that “Covid vaccine” is safe and effective, if no time actually passed to ensure that?
Finally, someone with just a bit of knowledge could also ask a question, “are you sure that it is safe and effective, if no coronavirus vaccine ever worked, and no mRNA product was ever approved”?

The Asch Experiment, conducted by Solomon Asch, found out that most people, when seeing a “consensus” of participants agreeing on something that is fairly obviously false, actually ends up agreeing with those false opinions just because everyone else seems to think so. .....


Just two pieces of data are needed: the risk-benefit calculation by age where VAERS was used for the death data, and show us the autopsy results where the proper tests were made to rule out causality.

We think the COVID “vaccines” shouldn’t be used by anyone.

But we are very open to being proven we got it wrong and that all the deaths of our friends that happened after vaccination were just really “bad luck.”

We just need two documents:

The risk-benefit analysis stratified by age that was done by the CDC using VAERS death data after the vaccine was rolled out. My analysis showed more deaths at all age levels that the number of lives saved. Why aren’t we allowed to see the CDC’s analysis? Why are we not allowed to see the analysis that the members of the CDC and FDA outside committees made? Why are these kept secret?

The autopsy results that showed that the proper tests were done that ruled out the vaccine being a proximate cause of death for the 21 people in the treatment arm of the Pfizer Phase 3 clinical trial who died in the pre-unblinding phase. These would be tests comparable to or superior to what Dr. Peter Schirmacher and Sucharit Bhakdi did in their studies where they were able to connect the vaccines with huge numbers of deaths. The FDA must have these documents because they would have been required to get EUA approval, but we can’t figure out why they aren’t showing them to us. Why are these kept secret?

Are these two documents too much to ask for?

It’s beyond frustrating that nobody is willing to show us either document.

The mainstream medical community has low standards. They blindly trust the CDC and the drug companies. They are easily convinced.
I would have expected the medical community to demand both documents, but they don’t do science anymore. All they do is blindly trust the CDC and FDA and don’t demand to see the underlying data. ...



... These sociopathic characteristics include superficial charm, untruthfulness, absence of neurosis or anxiety, poverty of emotion, and a lack of remorse or shame. 


Charts:




Tweets & Quotes of the Week:

Fenton: It was clear I think from the start that most of the data that governments put out — not just the UK government, but most governments around the world … were kind of misleading because it was based on very easily manipulated statistics.  There was an immediate rush to draw conclusions, which were sort of based on over-simplistic data on case numbers and deaths… the problem was that that data was very easily used by influencers and decision-makers to fit particular narratives that exaggerated the scale of the crisis.


Rose: As far as I am concerned, this is clear and mounting evidence that many data sources are seriously flawed, compromised or intentionally being botched to obscure or de-mean data. And guess what? They shouldn’t be. They are DATA SOURCES. To me, that means something. You are my source of data! Stop being corrupt!


Czerniawski: US, Can, EU, Aus, all showing this 40% increased all-cause non-COVID mortality. Some age cohorts report higher - Ed Dowd shows 84%+ for millennials.
Average rate of dying for the human species: 60m annual.
If 40%+ holds internationally, 24m *more* died.

and: I really need people to understand this. All people.
The average rate of dying for the entire human species... has been 𝘢𝘥𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥.
The war is to distract us, and they'll happily give us more. 
Article came out on Feb 23rd; war began on Feb 24th.



CO-VIDs of the Week:

Naomi Wolf: Ex-Blackrock Manager Edward Dowd Says Wall Street Now Paying Attention to 'Trust the Science' Fraud



Anecdotal Fare:

769 Athletes Collapse from Cardiac Arrest Since Covid Vax Rollout





Back to Non-Pandemic Fare:


The world rotated one more time since the last report on China.

So, what do we know?

China is rock-solid behind Russia in all of Russia’s objectives, and in some instances, up ahead.

It almost seems as if an agreement was, if not stated, then understood. Russia will do the shootin’ for now, and China will keep the economic boat afloat. We see consistent commenting such as China is a consistent stabilizing force in a changing world

Overall NATO is feeling the pressure and ‘resetting’ and trying to clone itself as Aukus in the east while trying to strengthen itself in the west. We have Stoltenberg announcing: “What we see now is a new reality, a new normal for European security. Therefore, we have now asked our military commanders to provide options for what we call a reset, a more longer-term adaptation of NATO.”. In this speech, he announced that plans are being worked up to transform NATO into a major force capable of taking on an invading army and states that NATO deepens partnerships in Asia in response to a rising “security challenge” from China.

Yet, in the east, the Quad is one less, given India’s refusal to follow the U.S. regarding Russia.

Japan has been asked to join Aukus as a Japan, US, Australia, UK alliance intending to project a strong regional balance of power against China, Russia (and maybe India then?) in Asia. .... 



While it’s impossible to predict how the war in Ukraine, which is now undeniably a proxy war between the US/NATO and Russia, will wind up, some boundary conditions for both the military and economic battle are emerging. And their implications do not look too good for the West.

Let’s make a couple of overarching observations:

Russia has to and will win the immediate military contest. Russia cannot tolerate an armed and hostile bordering country any more than the US would accept China sending troops and weapons to Canada. Russia wants a neutral Ukraine. If the only way the West will accept that is by prostrating Ukraine, so be it. Note that Russia launched its invasion with clearly stated objectives of demilitarizaton and denazification which most assuredly did not amount to conquering or occupying Ukraine. Putin also said something to the effect of “We won’t stay where we aren’t wanted” which did signal a willingness to entertain Crimea-type referenda, using the precedent the US set in Kosovo.

The US and many European countries have taken such extreme positions about the Russian invasion that it’s hard to see how they back down if [when] Russia wins. Had they not turned the dial up to 11, they would have had an easy out in depicting the Russian “failure” to take the western part of Ukraine, which Russia seems highly unlikely to attempt, as a Russian loss and a way for the US and Europe to save face.

But by having bought their own propaganda about the fundamental evil of Putin and all things Russian, including cats and Russia losing the war, the US and NATO will have no where to go when the Ukraine military collapses, which is inevitable. The Western press, by virtue of laziness and/or capture, keeps projecting a US style approach onto Russia, when by now they should know better. Russia is prosecuting a methodical grinding up of Ukraine’s military capacity and by quite a lot of measures is doing very well. Looking at territorial acquisition was and is the wrong way to assess progress

.......................................... The bigger point is that Europe has another economic plate spinning on the top of a pole that is in danger of crashing. And the cure will cause damage of its own.

In other words, the US and Europe may still be able to muddle through the fall into the winter, but their economic course is more fraught than most experts and pols appear to recognize.



“Why are you pro Putin?” This was how a woman responded to me on Twitter when I provided some historical context to the current war between Russia and Ukraine, though nothing I had said implied what I thought about Putin either way. It’s a common tactic in media and social media. When someone tries to present a contextual history of the conflict that is inconvenient to the overly simplistic Marvel comic book depiction that is constantly pounded home by most establishment media in the US, they and what they say are equated with being pro-Putin or a Russian propagandist.

It’s a convenient way to avoid engaging with the substance of the argument being made. Indeed, it often is a way to avoid facts the person employing this device doesn’t like. And that represents a disturbing trend highlighted by this conflict – the increasing tendency for people to decide whether to acknowledge facts based on whether they like them or not. Even more disturbing is that this anti-intellectual line of thinking is often being practiced by people who consider themselves to be liberals. ...

...... It’s hard to understand how this childish level of discourse helps anything. I’m guessing that it makes people feel good on an emotional level to disregard what anyone has to say that might cause the slightest bit of cognitive dissonance. ...

... The bottom line is that if one is interested in figuring out how to end this terrible conflict without a dangerous escalation, then one needs to understand how we got here.  That means understanding the complex contextual background of it and that includes discussing the less-than-innocent role of our own government. Anything else strikes me as empty sloganeering and virtue signaling.


As hopes for a diplomatic off-ramp fade, the war in Ukraine is poised to roil the European continent—and further destabilize the international system—with no end in sight.

..... A majority coalition of Western governments appears to be working not to facilitate a negotiated settlement to end the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Ukraine, but to draw the Kremlin into a years-long quagmire that would make the Afghan mujahideen pale by comparison. Kiev is being encouraged by its Western benefactors not to consider pragmatic, creative solutions aimed at swiftly ending the bloodshed, but to pursue a maximalist agenda on the battlefield and the negotiating table. ....



Everyone wishes to argue “Article 5” of the NATO treaty, which is the mutual-defense pact. You get attacked and we all get attacked. Ok. What does Article I say? “The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” Shipping arms into an area where armed conflict is either occurring or threatening to occur, where the destination is NOT a NATO member and thus is NOT subject to NATO’s mutual defense obligations is a clear violation of Article I. It is escalatory, it is a threat to use force or enables the actual use of force, and thus is a clear violation of Article I.

... How about Article 8? 

... How about Article 11?

... For the United States to engage in the elements of a proxy war, which it did at Maidan and now through the provision of arms without a declaration of said war by Congress is a direct violation of the US Constitution and thus a violation of the treaty. 



...... So much for easy questions that go unasked, let alone unanswered by Western media, by Russian media or by both.  Now I will raise a different question just to demonstrate how the news and analysis flow on  this ‘special military operation’  or war, if you will, runs in a narrow rut.  The net result is that we have very limited ability to understand what is going on and where we are all headed. ......



... Last night, we heard from yet another mood swing.  I bring it to the attention of readers, because it has great relevance to the current complete passivity of our general public in the face of some very peculiar policy decisions with respect to Russia being made at the highest levels in the USA and in Europe, with zero public consultation so far.

To be specific, Shakhnazarov expressed amazement and deep worry that Western leaders have literally ‘lost their minds’ by pursuing measures to destabilize Russia in the hope of precipitating the overthrow of Vladimir Putin and maybe even the disintegration of Russia in a way similar to the dissolution of the USSR in late 1991.  Shakhnazarov remarked that total absence of common or any other sense in Joe Biden is to be expected because of his health (read: senility). But his jaw dropped when he heard that the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, declared a couple of days ago that “Russia must not be allowed to win this war!”    Where are his brains? Shakhnazarov asked rhetorically.

The point of Shakhnazarov’s reasoning is as follows:   Russia is the world’s leading power in terms of nuclear arms. An overthrow of Putin would lead to chaos, and very likely to genuine radicals assuming power.  Their aggressive inclinations for policy to the West would be underpinned by the vast majority of the Russian population, which, in Shakhnazarov’s view, is now overcome with pure hatred for the West brought on by the sanctions, by the rampant Russophobia that is now public policy in Europe and the USA. If the conflict should escalate to use of tactical nuclear missiles and beyond, then Russia would no longer limit its strikes to military installations but will happily target all capitals and population centers in Europe and, we may assume, in North America.   In a word, Shakhnazarov equates destabilization of Russia with nuclear Armageddon.

I repeat, these are the fears of a highly responsible and publicly visible Russian general manager in the arts.  Is anybody in the West with comparable standing even beginning to imagine the coming catastrophe let alone speak out about it?



The war in Ukraine will indeed be a bonanza for the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. First of all, there will be the contracts to resupply weapons like Raytheon’s Stinger anti-aircraft missile and the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin-produced Javelin anti-tank missile that Washington has already provided to Ukraine by the thousands. The bigger stream of profits, however, will come from assured post-conflict increases in national-security spending here and in Europe justified, at least in part, by the Russian invasion and the disaster that’s followed. Indeed, direct arms transfers to Ukraine already reflect only part of the extra money going to U.S. military contractors. This fiscal year alone, they are guaranteed to also reap significant benefits from the Pentagon’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) and the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, both of which finance the acquisition of American weaponry and other equipment, as well as military training.



Four years ago, I wrote an article for this site, my first, because of how bad I felt about how our western governments had been acting, especially in the middle east, and with regards to Syria in particular. There are a lot of my own emotions and frustrations buried in it. As you can probably tell.

I used a comedy sketch by Mitchell and Webb as a starting point, because of how obvious it was that in the second world war, the nazis were the bad guys (a sketch also referred to by Graham Phillips in his interview with British mercenary Aiden Aslin). Or at least, I thought it was so obvious. And yet here we are. Four years later. And the west is cheerleading, and quite openly too, for the side with the genuine nazis. I had assumed that nazis are bad guys by definition, but much, and maybe even most, of western society would seem to disagree with me.....

................. For the Germans during and before world war two a similar association took hold. They felt they had been wronged in many ways after the first world war, and that as the victims of that war they were only trying to make right those wrongs. So to them, the moral authority obviously belonged to them, no matter what they (their institutions/government) did. They saw themselves as the good guys. Period. At most they recognised some rough edges, but not enough to question the moral authority of what they (their institutions/government) were doing. Latch on to one belief of absolute moral authority and the gates to mass-murder and atrocities are wide open. Machiavelli’s best known observation is the mechanism of ‘the goal justifies the means’ as a political tool. This also applies to morality. If people are convinced of their own moral superiority they stop questioning their actions. Any action is allowed. But moral authority never rests with just belief or creed or conviction. It is not absolute. It is not unquestionable. One’s morality is determined by one’s actions and by one’s inactions, not by belief itself. Remember, looking away in order not to be confronted by unpleasant realities, is not a valid excuse to claim innocence. Not acting is a moral choice too. Not questioning your assumptions is also a moral choice. ‘God is on our side’, or its equivalent, has been uttered by just about every side in a war at some point, even when the warring sides were of the exact same religion. Now, looking back, that looks as absurd as two members of the SS wondering if they are the bad guys. But when you don’t question moral authority, when you simply assume it, then both of these make complete sense.

Which begs the question, how will people in the future look back at us, and our historical era? I am a citizen of one of the western countries that thinks of itself as free, democratic and based on Judaeo-Christian moral authority. My fellow countrymen and women consider themselves to be the good guys. It’s so ingrained into the national consciousness, it’s like a super-dogma. By implication, they consider what their government does, especially internationally, morally good. ‘They are us, and since we are good, so too must they be’, the thinking, if any, goes. And yet domestically, they denounce individual politicians and political parties in large numbers as corrupt, self-serving and elitist. The traditional political parties in most western countries are taking a beating in the polls, as they are seen to represent not the people, but their own pockets and supranational interests. Voters flock en masse to the so-called populist parties, on both the left and right of the political spectrum. We denounce the European Union as completely undemocratic and ruled by technocrats who are at the beck-and-call of big business. Fewer and fewer of us consider ourselves to be christians, and even if we do, it’s a vague sort of watered down version without much substance or clear morality. The popular narrative in fact, is to be inclusive of ‘the other’ and their convictions. All creeds and convictions are supposedly equal. Tell that to the Kali-worshippers. And although we question and discard the very foundations of our own freedoms, our own democracy, and our own christian-based morality domestically, we still believe that our national and supranational governments, and their attached institutions, somehow represent freedom, democracy and moral authority. We still think we, both individually and collectively, are the good guys. We seem to be unable to separate the moral self-image of the individual from the morality of the state. And yet it stares us in the face.

The number of people who died in Iraq since the western aggression against that country started in 1990, has been estimated at several million. The economic sanctions imposed by the west between the first and second gulf war have cost an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi lives, of which about 500.000 were children. When confronted with these numbers, former US representative at the UN Madeline Albright stated that ‘it was worth it’. Hillary Clinton had a similar comment. I know of no western leader who, back then, condemned or denounced this, and who acknowledged our actions as immoral and wrong. I could go on with numerous examples of how our western policies have resulted in mass casualties of civilians, including children, over the last few decades. If this one by itself does not start you to question (our supposed) morality nothing will. So, if you’re not questioning it now, maybe you should wonder why not, and take some time to contemplate the matter. .....


*************** Morris: Are Ukrainians Nazis?

.......................................... So yes, I think it’s reasonable for Putin to call the Ukrainian government a Nazi-occupied organization, and since the violence of those Nazis is directed against ethnic Russians, it seems to me to provide at least some level of casus belli for the war (although whether the magnitude of the war is justified is another question entirely). To be clear, it’s not Azov’s runes, or their pagan sensibilities, or even their goofy 1488 tattoos that bring me to this conclusion — it’s their support for militant, ethnic violence, and their veneration of a literal Nazi-collaborating terrorist whose actions they apparently seek to emulate in Donbass. I can overlook people having racist attitudes, getting off on Hitler memorabilia, or any number of other “level 4” ideologies — but when you pick up a gun or a baseball bat and decide to start hurting people for dumb reasons, you lose me. These guys suck, and to the degree that the Ukrainian government endorsed them and armed them, it’s equally culpable and frankly is getting what it deserves. Moreover, the fact that the Ukrainian regime thinks it can gloss over this stuff makes me mistrust every thing they say, including all the reports of supposed Russian atrocities — in fact, the more shocking the atrocity, the less I believe it actually happened. At least the Russians aren’t sending literal Nazis to the front lines, my dude.

What I find absolutely bewildering, though, is that the American left is willing to overlook Level 5 Nazi shit from the Ukrainians ...


Blumenthal and Krishnaswamy: “One less traitor”: Zelensky oversees campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture of political opposition


"Collaboration can be costly" says news site Visegràd 24, Twitter jubilates over killed journalists, as Lira remains missing




Ukraine is the Obama-Biden team's second major proxy war against Russia. The first was Syria, where US support for the insurgency helped create an Al Qaeda safe haven.




Related Tweets:

Prof. John Mearsheimer - interesting...


Kim Dotcom: Russia's latest ICBM can carry up to 10 heavy nuclear warheads on hypersonic glide vehicles. Impossible to intercept. Each one of these can wipe out millions of people and reach any target globally. The US playing war games with Russia is maximum stupidity.


- "Azov" * go into the basements and shoot people. And how they raped the girls!
- I don’t understand for whom the Armed Forces of Ukraine are fighting, even if the government abandoned them?
“How can we explain to people later that the Ukrainians themselves are shooting at us?


Billy1: The true story is that the neo-Nazi Azov battalion took Mariupol civilians as human shields since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, and retreated to Azovstal as a last stand.
Billy2: Here is the Commander of the Azov Battalion, Denis Prokopenko, admitting it publicly
Billy3: Here is a video of the civilians: "Appeals from people living in Azovstal bunkers in blockaded Mariupol"
Russia gave Azov Battalion their final offer to surrender over the weekend but it was rejected: "We will not surrender and will fight to the end"
Billy4: "Fighting to the end" in this case means sacrificing civilians so the Zelensky regime can emotionally blackmail the West into putting boots on the ground and starting World War III.
Billy5: #Nazi #Azov forces refusing to give up civilian human shields (March 5th 2022)
In order to save as many civilians as possible, Russia offered the Azov regiment to let them leave Mariupol via secure corridors, so that they would stop using the inhabitants as human shields


TT: In Mariupol, the Ukrainian army sealed the civilians in the basement w cement, refused to let them go. If the Russian army bombed them with missiles, the civilians would be buried with them. This video shows the Russian army smashing the cement board saving the civilians.


Chebureki Vibes: Let's talk about Lvov, possibly the Nдzi capital of the world.  I'm not going to include the city's immense history, you can look that up on your own, let's start around WWII.... a 🧵 .......................................

in response:
Reinholdt:  Thank you for sharing this information. The Trident always made me cringe: it's a slightly redesigned symbol of OUN from 1922. It's a sign of mass nationalistic brutalities that took place in Ukraine a century ago.


Aerial images show former Pakistani PM Imran Khan's supporters rallying in Karachi.

AZ Military News: ‼️THE VIDEO THAT WE WILL NOT SEE ON THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA‼️ ✊IMRAN KHAN SPEECH IN KARACHI 2 DAYS AGO


Orwellian (or Huxleyian?) Fare:

******* Lawrence: The Great Acquiescence — Glory to Ukraine
Americans don’t merely acquiesce to the imperium’s wars, interventions, collective punishments and assorted other deprivations. They actively embrace them.

.... And there along the streets and avenues as I arrived were what I had anticipated: Ukrainian flags hanging off front porches, in shop windows, on flagpoles just below the Stars and Stripes. Somebody has painted the bit of board displaying their house number in the blue and yellow we all now recognize. Father, forgive them, I thought, for they know not what blood-soaked horrors and hate-filled killers they enthusiastically endorse.

Not in my lifetime have Americans, purporting to be thoughtful, intelligent people, been so wide-eyed, so stupefied as those who are pretending to lead them and to inform them by seeking to bury them in ignorance.

...... Since the Russiagate farrago overcame liberal America in 2016, there has been much debate as to whether our McCarthyesque circumstances are as bad as, similar to, or not as bad as things got during the Cold War decades.

This no longer seems to me the useful question. In various important ways we have passed beyond even the worst of the Cold War’s many dreadful features.

Our better reference is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, wherein the English novelist pictured a society of incubated beings — programmed from birth, hooked on a happiness-inducing drug called soma, devoid of everything we now consider human, wholly incapable of connection, of responsibility, and, indeed, desiring neither. Infantile gratification is all that matters to those populating the World State Huxley imagined — such as anything matters.

We are not there yet, let’s not exaggerate. But we ought to honor Huxley for his prescience, for we are heading in the direction of his unlivable world of mind-deprived children watched over by a small, chosen, diabolic elite.

I am not surprised that it is Ukraine that brings us to what I consider a collective psychological crisis. After 30 years of post–Cold War triumphalism, Washington has decided to use Ukraine and its people in a go-for-broke attempt finally to subvert Russia. Stepping back for a better look, this is the decisive event in the imperium’s confrontation with the 21st century — its grand roll of the dice, its now-or-never moment. ....

... Whoever wins the war in Ukraine, the non–West will win. Whoever wins, the 21st century will win, burying the mostly awful 20th at last. As for Americans, we have already lost. ....

... Most of us have forgotten all that. Younger people never shared that consciousness in the first place. Very few of us have any memory or experience of living under anything other than pervasive corporate domination and a government, in its profound corruption, that serves corporate capital and does as little as it can otherwise. ...

... Mass acquiescence largely leads us to an explanation of the preposterous support most Americans have for the criminal regime in Kiev.  ...


The Importance of Ignorance in Info Wars

The first thing to keep in mind is that information warfare is war. War by other means, but war nonetheless. The object is to win. To defeat your opponent. Information Warfare, as it is now called but known as propaganda earlier, has been around in rudimentary form from the beginning of humanity, evolving over millennia largely by the advancement of technology, political systems and the education of populations.

.....

There is fertile ground to wage information warfare in the U.S. on Ukraine. In all of America’s wars, ignorance of foreign affairs plays a big role. Americans’ lack of knowledge of other countries is compounded by the fact that the U.S. has never been invaded, except briefly by the British in 1812, and that the U.S. itself began as an invasion by Europeans in which they wiped out the indigenous population, and then later invaded Mexico and then Spanish possessions and frankly, have never stopped invading other nations. 

The lack of knowledge of this history makes Americans vulnerable to propaganda cloaking American expansionism. In the context of the Ukraine war this ignorance plays an important part in the susceptibility of the American public to war propaganda.

Americans generally don’t understand the psyche of Russia, which was invaded numerous times, particularly by the biggest European powers in the 19th and 20th centuries. They generally do not know, because they are never told, that the Soviet Union destroyed 80 percent of the Wehrmacht in WWII. They do not know what a revival of Nazism means to the Russian people or even that there is a revival of Nazism in Ukraine because it is whitewashed out of the corporate media story. 

Under the guise of respectability and objectivity, the news media of the U.S. and Europe, which is closely aligned with their governments, has played an important role in the information war by deliberately omitting three crucial facts from their Ukraine war narrative, which completely changes the picture.

Media is leaving out the role of U.S. in the 2014 coup in Kiev; that an 8-year civil war has been fought in the eastern Donbass region against Russian-speaking Ukrainians who resisted the coup (Russia’s help at the time was falsely portrayed as an invasion); and that Neo-Nazi fighters, now incorporated into the Ukrainian state military, played a big role in the coup, in the civil war and in the current fighting in the Russian invasion. 

There is abundant evidence that the U.S. was behind the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically-elected president in 2014, especially a leaked phone conversation between a high-ranking State Dept. official and the American ambassador in Kiev discussing weeks before the coup who would make up the new government. There is more than abundant evidence about the influence of neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

There was also little emphasis in the media’s information war on diplomatic moves that could have prevented the Russian invasion: namely the seven-year-old Minsk accords that could have ended the civil war .. 

Also deemphasized were the draft treaty proposals Russia presented to the U.S. and NATO last December that would have rolled back NATO troops from Eastern Europe (where NATO broke its promise not to expand) and removed missiles from there to create a new arrangement in Europe taking Russia’s security interests into account. Russia threatened a “technical/military” response if the treaties were rejected. They were and Russia invaded.

By ignoring diplomacy, the U.S. appears to have wanted the invasion in order to unleash their information and economic war against Russia, with the aim of overthrowing Vladimir Putin, which Joe Biden admitted to. By leaving all this out of the Ukraine story, the West has portrayed Putin as simply a cartoon character madman.

..... Ukraine and the West say Russia is deliberately killing civilians, while Russia says it is deliberately avoiding targeting civilians and only returns fire to attacks coming from civilian areas. So far the U.N. reports as of Monday only 2,072 civilian deaths since the Feb. 24 invasion, seven weeks ago, .. Very rarely a dissenting voice comes through. A Pentagon official told Newsweek magazine that Russia had frankly not killed many civilians and could have killed many more if it wanted too. ......




Six companies control 90% of what you read, watch, and hear. Here's why that's dangerous.


Hedges: American Commissars

The ruling class, made up of the traditional elites that run the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, is employing draconian forms of censorship on its right-wing and left-wing critics in a desperate effort to cling to power. 

The traditional elites were discredited for pushing through a series of corporate assaults on workers, from deindustrialization to trade deals. They were unable to stem rising inflation, the looming economic crisis and the ecological emergency. 

They were incapable of carrying out significant social and political reform to ameliorate widespread suffering and refused to accept responsibility for two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East. 

And now they have launched a new and sophisticated McCarthyism. Character assassination. Algorithms. Shadow banning. De-platforming. ...



Noam Chomsky did an interview about Ukraine with Current Affairs lately, and the response was swift and enraged.

The meltdown over Chomsky’s innocuous comments is an indication of a broader, profoundly creepy culture of enforced consensus on this issue. There’s immense bipartisan agreement in favor of helping Ukraine resist the Russian advance, both among politicians and within the media, and yet even this near-unanimity is not enough for many people, who seemingly want literal unanimity. Nonpartisan media is festooned with pro-Ukraine coverage, and yet the rare bit of skepticism that squeaks through provokes outrage. On social media, dissenters are regularly called traitors and fifth columnists. “You’re either with us or you’re with the enemy” is the dominant creed, right now. I haven’t seen an insistence on groupthink like this since the post-9/11 world. And what’s particularly dark for me is that people who define themselves by championing dissent and free speech - this whole constellation of anti-social-justice-hegemony dissident opinion publications and personalities - have been no less likely to demand that everyone get onboard with the dominant narrative. (And a lot of people who regularly mock Instagram-bio politics have put up Ukrainian flags in theirs.)

.............. I think supporting Ukraine in 2022 has become like supporting the troops in 2002 because people are desperate for a morally simplistic contest in which the Goodies will nobly defeat the dastardly Baddies. Americans grow up surrounded by World War II nostalgia and feel denied their birthright of ethically uncomplicated and heroic wars. 



CaitOz Fare:


You were born in the middle of the most sophisticated and expansive mass-scale perception management operation that has ever taken place.

The news media is propaganda and schooling is designed to condition us to accept that propaganda.

Public understanding of what a normal moderate position looks like and what a radical extremist position looks like has been warped to the most insane extent possible.

Noam Chomsky is not a radical and is in fact far too aligned with establishment power on far too many issues.

The difference between an AOC Democrat and a true anti-imperialist socialist is greater than the difference between an AOC Democrat and a Republican. 

The difference between the mainstream media narrative about the world and actual reality is greater than the difference between the mainstream media narrative about the world and literally any work of fiction.

You’ve been lied to your entire life about your nation, your government, your nation’s official enemies, your society, and your very self.

Your brain and your senses were evolved to keep your evolutionary ancestors alive, not to tell you true things about the nature of reality. .....


The news man tells me the CIA’s “Queen of Torture” now runs a life and beauty coaching business which helps midlife women “look good, feel good, and do good.”

... And I can only sit here and wonder, twiddling my pockmarked heart in my hands, how one is meant to react to such information?

Does one fall to one’s knees and weep hot tears for her victims, whose screams still haunt soulless fluorescent echoing corridors and whose hurts will never heal?

Does one fall to one’s knees and weep hot tears for our children, whose inheritance is a culture made of wetiko virus and psyops and a world we are clearcutting to make billboards?


Other Quotes of the Week:

Keppler: Most people are merely mindlessly repeating the words and actions of others, echoing the propaganda of their given country or society, very much like a walking flesh and bone tape recorder.

Keppler2: Mainstream people I talk to admit offhand that they don't bother studying the issues, since they're content with holding a mainstream view. Mainstream views are the right views because they're mainstream, in their eyes. Can such people be said to be conscious at all???

Astore: The U.S. government continues to denounce Putin for “genocidal” war crimes yet continues to persecute journalist Julian Assange for revealing war crimes. Contradiction? Julian Assange’s persecution really isn’t about Assange anymore. It’s about intimidating other journalists and whistleblowers who’d dare to reveal the crimes of empire committed by the United States.

Helmer: Russians blame Americans, not Ukrainians, for the war, according to a new countrywide poll – and not Americans personally, but the US Government and US officials. Race hatred of Russians of the kind broadcast by the Anglo-American, European and Ukrainian media, is not reciprocated by the Russians towards their accusers. Russian anger at the US is rising sharply, with no evidence that western media allegations of Russian crimes against humanity and war atrocities are believed by the growing majority of the Russian audience. The reverse appears to be happening – the more virulent the western media, the more disbelieving the Russian reaction.

Kunstler: We are lately in thrall to the melodrama in Ukraine, largely engineered by figures and forces in our own government and for their own ends, which look suspiciously at odds with the nation’s actual interests (the nation being us, its people). Perhaps this illustrates the widening gulf between the slouching beast government has become and the people trying to operate their lives and destinies under it. No food for you, no fertilizers for future food for you, no spare parts for you, no free speech for you, no social or economic role for you, no health for you, and (watch it, now!) soon no life for you. Collectively going crazy has been a luxury we can’t afford anymore. You fell for RussiaGate and it kept you in thrall for years. You fell for the Adam Schiff orchestrated Ukraine phone call impeachment gambit. You fell for the Covid scare and the dangerously defective vaccines forced on you. You fell for the fraud-drenched election of the empty vessel known as “Joe Biden.” Don’t fall for the invitation to World War Three.

St. Clair: The US hasn't won a major war since dropping nukes on Japan. It's lost two: Vietnam & Afghanistan & fought to bloody stalemates in 2 others: Iraq & Korea. But winning wars is not the point, prolonging them is–that's where the money's made & what the fog of war is meant to obscure
This goes for proxy wars too, which is bad news for Ukrainians, who would benefit from a negotiated settlement of the war but will be pushed by western politicians & their financial backers in the weapons industry to fight until the last check for javelin missiles bounces...


  • The man that exposed our war crimes was kidnapped, tortured and in Belmarsh prison
  • The man that exposed our drones killed 90% civilians was sentenced to 45 months in prison
  • The man who exposed the NSA illegally spying on us was forced to flee to Russia
  • The criminals are free

911bot: I am a "conspiracy theorist". I believe men and women of wealth and power conspire. If you don't think so, then you are what is called "an idiot". If you believe stuff but fear the label, you are what is called "a coward".


Public Citizen: Percent of workers paid less than $15/hr:
  • Dollar General: 92%
  • McDonald’s: 89%
  • Wendy’s: 87%
  • Wyndham: 87%
  • Sonic: 85%
  • Burger King: 83%
  • Big Lots: 80%
  • Subway: 78%
  • Kohl’s: 78%
  • Pizza Hut: 75%
  • Gap: 72%
It’s not a labor shortage. It’s a shortage of jobs that pay a living wage.


EclecticRadical: The only way you’re going to see democracy is if you do something about capitalism first. It’s the capitalist in the way of a democratic society.



Long Reads / Big Dangerous Thoughts:

el gato malo: back to the future: recovering from the aggrievement age
once upon a time our differences were fun and funny. reclaiming this state of the world and seeking commonality is how we restore our civilization.

we fear to express opinion outside of insular groups we know to be likeminded with us. we devolve into tribes and “safe spaces” where one may speak with freedom and absent fear of attack and cancelation. such spaces become increasingly needed and desirable precisely because the general agora of the society itself has becomes so unsafe. ...

this is utterly unsustainable for a society that would remain whole. this splintering and fractionalization into warring tribes is a not viable system.

.... polish jokes abounded. so too did jokes about me. if you were not getting razzed, you’d fear that people did not like or respect you. so what if you’re different, in the end, you’re one of the gang. no one coveted fragility, we preferred self-possession. this was not some conscious choice we made, no one had to. it just happened.

... if it’s not class, it’s race. if it’s not race, it’s gender. if it’s not gender, it’s sexuality. if it’s not sexuality, it’s covid or politics or social class. this goes on and on forever rarifying prisons of the mind.

... there was a time when there were some civil rights wars that needed waging. the abolition of jim crow laws and legal bans on homosexuality and miscegenation were real fights. important fights. and many brave people stood up to serious threats to life and limb in pursuit of them. but much of the honor and honesty of these movements have been lost.

... worse, we’ve dismissed this notion of character over color, termed such ideas flat out racist, and are now seeking to ensure that every child is judged precisely by their skin tone and professed gender identify.

... we inhabit a world so absurd that a highly educated woman seeking supreme court appointment is too terrified to even opine on the definition of simple gender terms.



The year is 2029 and you are a recent college graduate. You are 85k in debt and pay $2,700 a month to sleep on a futon in some guy’s garage. 

All Android and iOS devices come pre-loaded with an undeleteable app called Tattlr, which can be used to report any instances in which others make you feel unsafe or display unpatriotic sentiments. A person whose Tattlr score falls too low will find themself unable to board an airplane, travel out of state, access job applications, or make cashless payments. The only way to raise your score is to report the misdeeds of others. 

You start a job as a biology teacher. It’s an easy gig, consisting of little more than taking attendance playing and pausing videos provided to you by Pearson. You’re technically supposed to screen the videos to ensure they won’t cause any hurt or spread any misinformation, but it’s been years since all electronic media was purged of offensive terms such as “lame,” “evolution,” and “women.” A few weeks pass and you start slagging off a bit.

That’s a mistake. One of the videos contains the phrase sexual dimorphism. You don’t even notice it, but the utterance is enough to cause a student who self-identifies as a seahorse (xe/seahorseself) to storm out of class. Xe swallows four ibuprofen in an attempt to commit suicide and you are fired immediately. 

Seahorseself’s parents sue and you fall an additional 50k in debt, which means your Tattlr score is now too low for you to attempt post a video asking for GoFundMe donations–a shame, since GoFundMe is now the nation’s only remaining health insurer. 

A man named Kennesaw Mountain Landis VI reads of your story on PatriotNews.biz. He takes pity and offers you a job at his Jeep dealership. The place has bad vibes–you worry about the Tattlr effects of taking a job at a place whose workforce is nearly 30% white–but you have no other options.

A week in, things seem to be going fine. But then a customer who thinks all disease is caused by not eating enough red meat sees you using hand sanitizer. He posts a video of the incident and you are fired immediately. Your Tattlr score is now in the negative teens which means you’re not even allowed access to food banks.

With no other options, you turn to sex work. And, ahh crap, you shouldn’t have said you “turned to” sex work since sex work is as good and valid as any other form of work. Your Tattlr score is now -27 and your parents can’t mention your name. 

Anyhow, the sex work–you were a little worried at first, remembering something a professor said about how syphilis is now fatal again since antibiotics stopped working in 2025. But you checked the WikiHow page for Sex Work (which, weirdly, is hosted by Tattlr) and are assured that the STI’s are actually a myth, a construct of white western society, a homophobic lie, and also germ theory ain’t never truly been proven. Man… maybe that guy at the Jeep dealership had a point? ...


Crispin-Miller: Some reasons to suspect that subway shooting didn't really happen
There's actually NO reason to believe a single thing "our free press" tells us

A friend has written up his observations on the subway shooting said to have occurred in New York City on Tuesday morning. Here’s the video that he analyzes (the segment starting at 35:40):

I’m sure there are some readers who will reflexively laugh off these perceptions, or try to, as so much “conspiracy theory”—as if, by now, what with all the whoppers we’ve been force-fed just these last two years, from “the coronavirus” set to wipe out millions of us, to the “insurrection” in the Capitol, to the many fake atrocities committed (not) by the Russians in Ukraine, we have any reason to believe a single story pumped out by the Western press; and all those recent Big Lies were devised, and all too many people swallowed them, because so many other Big Lies had been put across successfully throughout the prior half- century, at least.

Until our schools start teaching propaganda study, along with history (taught properly) and other necessary subjects in (what we once called) the liberal arts, so that “our free press” must tell the truth about what’s going on, there won’t be any reason not to question everything they tell us, on the wholly rational assumption that their purpose isn’t to inform us but to keep us in the dark.

In any case, I think these observations on that seeming shooting are worth studying, and sharing. .....



Big Thoughts:


Most people are wrong about most things. This is especially true of the people who are brought to your attention by newspapers and television. It doesn’t matter how smart they are, or how well-read, or how thoroughly educated. There aren’t very many fields of endeavour where you can get ahead on the sheer strength of being right. Our expert classes succeed instead by cultivating the correct allies, publishing the right papers in the right journals, working on the right problems, winning the right grant funding, and making the right friends. People who enjoy these trivialities are precisely the people for whom being right is not a priority.

Above all, experts prefer to work within and propagate safe, consensus positions. This is because they have primarily careerist goals, which are best pursued secure from the criticism of colleagues. Being wrong is not nearly so important as seeming wrong, which can cost you promotion. Once you realise that experts are little more than consensus-establishing and -propagating professionals, statements about what the science says or what the literature shows acquire a totally new meaning.

Forget, then, about expert opinion. There is no substitute for doing your own research. In everything that matters to you, you must consider the actual theories that are presented to you for yourself.



Yes, I know that bullets are flying and bombs falling in Ukraine as I type these words. Plenty of people are catching the latest variants of Covid-19; curiously enough, people who got vaccinated for that virus are catching it at a much higher rate than those that didn’t get the jab, but we don’t have to talk about that now. Shortages of food, fertilizer, and a hundred other things are putting lives and livelihoods at risk, drought tightens its grip on the western half of North America, and equally unwelcome climate shifts hit other parts of the world. We live in interesting times and there’s no reason to think that they’ll get less interesting any time soon.

.... If you want to understand why something is happening, insisting angrily that there can be no possible reason for it to happen is not a useful way to start. This is why the catastrophic failure of imagination among the Western world’s comfortable classes I’ve discussed in earlier posts has to be addressed if we are to have any hope of extracting ourselves from the present mess.  It’s because so many of the people tasked with making decisions in today’s world literally can’t imagine the possibility that they might be wrong, that people might reasonably disagree with them, and that events might not go the way they want, that they’ve blundered from one self-inflicted disaster to the next, without learning the obvious lessons of their failures or even noticing that there are lessons to be learned.

With this in mind, I want to circle back to the post three months ago in which I started talking about the role of imagination in the creation of the future. ...

..... This, in turn, is what has to be done with the products of the imagination in order to keep them from leading you into stupidity. There are at least three ways to use Goethe’s method on the world of the imagination, and all three of them are crucial. The first of these is to make sure that you can imagine the world in more than one way.

...... The imagination, again, is not self-correcting.  It falls all too easily into the rigor mortis that William Blake called “single vision,” in which the world is obsessively interpreted according to a single narrative and all other possibilities are ruled out in advance. It’s crucial to stretch beyond those suffocating limits, to recognize that there are many different ways to imagine the world, and that the ones we may not want to think about can still guide the actions of other people and reflect realities from which too many people these days are trying to hide.

That’s important at any point in history, but it’s especially important right now. It’s five o’clock in the morning of the long dark night of the soul, and the future is standing on top of us, exhaling its fetid breath into our faces, jabbing us with a very hard paw and making increasingly loud noises to wake us up. It’s not going to let us roll over and go back to sleep, either, because there’s much more than an empty food dish at stake.


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