The Tesla Implosion

 Fairly straight up version from a marketing guy.

"Autopsy" from a sustainability guy.

From about 2011-2017 I was sure a Tesla was going to be my next car.  Then the Model 3 (on which I had purchased a "reservation") was very disappointing to me.  No dashboard, back window too high, and too wide for my garage.  By then I was becoming more and more disappointed that Tesla was not ushering in a new era of EV's, like a Henry Ford, but only making increasingly cranky statement pieces for whitewashing the unsustainable lifestyles of the rich people who buy them.

Back in 2009, I was impressed that Musk had done what others had long said was impossible: and EV with a range similar to a gasoline powered car.  It wasn't really that it was impossible, but there weren't enough moneybags to invest in it.  Somehow Elon got that done, so I respected him a lot.

Now I've lost all respect.  Elon Musk is Ayn Rand in drag and Hitler with a chainsaw.  Other people had actually designed the Tesla, all the ideas (and in all his other companies) were nothing new, Musk was simply able to sell them better to the corrupt and stupid capitalists of the western world.

And EV's aren't The Answer anyway, perhaps not even a help if not employed to actually reduce overall environmental destruction.  So what if one's car doesn't produce greenhouse gasses but the new infrastructure to build them toasts the planet?

The key point of being sustainable is to give up everything excessive.  And Teslas are full of excessive.

  

Pivoting to China and World War 3

 A decade ago, Professor John Mearsheimer was calling for greater peace with Russia and preparing for war with China instead.

Going back even further, around 1969 Gore Vidal also called the US fixation on fighting Russia stupid.  He argued for allying with Russia to keep China from taking over.  China was clearly going to have the top position eventually, and other major powers needed to ally ensure they wouldn't dominate.

About three decades ago for a brief moment we had something like peace (and lots of trade) with both Russia and China.  That started disappearing as soon as the Clinton Administration started reneging on the previous administration's promises not to expand NATO...  Then NATO sponsored wars in the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine.  The US sponsored Color Revolutions in many countries--including 2 in Ukraine because the first didn't run as intended--to oust Russian-friendly governments in Russia's backyards and replace them with highly dependent, corrupt, sold-out, and mostly unpopular western client states.  And here we are, at the precipice of WW3. 

 Brian Berletic argues the Trump Administration is not making the change (a reset with Russia) that it advertised and many of its fans believe (and that Maga Blue Democrats wrongly deplore).  Instead, he shows what the Trump Administration is doing is really just a continuation of previous policies.  They are unloading and outsourcing the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to Europe, in order to free resources for war (and Berletic emphasizes that the moves make it clear that US has hot war in mind, not just economic war or cold war) with China.

So, yes, WW3.

The West's Moral Authority to Disparage Putin

None whatsoever, according to former UK diplomat Craig Murray.

I agree completely.  Craig states the basic case:

The plain truth is that the Western powers interfere far more in other countries than Russia does, through massive sponsorship of NGOs, journalists and politicians, much of which is open and some of which is covert.

I would have also explicitly mentioned the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, and the sanctions the US levies and enforces on many countries.  In the last 30 years alone, many millions of people have died as a result of US foreign wars, weapons, and sanctions.  (I've seen one believable estimate of 10 million.)  Nothing Russia or China have done in this epoch has come close, and this pattern holds all the way back to the end of WWII when US fought big wars in Korea, Vietnam and other countries, and funded 80 deadly coups also responsible for the deaths of millions.  US has been #1 in deaths from war, sanctions, and coups for some time now.

Craig also rejects a claim many of my friends nearly always make:

There is simply no evidence of Putin having territorial goals beyond Ukraine and the tiny enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It is perfectly fair to characterise Putin’s territorial expansion over two decades as limited to the reincorporation of threatened Russian-speaking minority districts in ex-Soviet states.

That it is worth a world war and unlimited dead over who should be mayor of the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking city of Lugansk is not entirely plain to me.

The notion that Putin is about to attack Poland or Finland is utter nonsense. The idea that the Russian army, which has struggled to subdue small and corrupt, if Western-backed, Ukraine, has the ability to attack Western Europe itself is plainly impractical.

Then, Craig points to the obvious inconsistency between how Russia is disparaged and Israel is defended:

Strangely, the same “logic” is not applied to Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not argued by neoliberals that his annexations of Gaza, the West Bank and Southern Lebanon mean he must have further territorial ambitions. In fact, they even fail to note Netanyahu’s aggressions at all, or portray them as “defensive” – the same argument advanced much more credibly by Putin in Ukraine, but which neoliberals there outright reject.

Many Zionists including members of current Israeli government have recently made aspirational visions of a Greater Israel which not only includes Gaza and other parts of Palestine, but Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and beyond.  Craig doesn't venture that far in this post.

Then Craig states how the current European chest thumping looks in Russia:

The economies of Western Europe are being realigned onto a war footing, led by the utterly transformed European Union. The enthusiastic proponents of genocide in Gaza who head the EU now are channelling an atavistic hereditary hatred of Russia.

The foreign policy of the EU is propelled by Kaja Kallas and Ursula von der Leyen. The fanatical Russophobia these two are spreading, and their undisguised desire to escalate the war in Ukraine, cannot help but remind Russians that they come from nations which were fanatically Nazi.

To Russians this feels a lot like 1941. With Europe in the grip of full-on anti-Russian propaganda, the background to Trump’s attempt to broker a peace deal is troubled and Russia is understandably wary.

Then he states the basic case where we concur:

But Putin is not Hitler. It is only through the blinkers of patriotism that Putin appears to be a worse person than the Western leaders behind massive invasion and death all around the globe, who now seek to extend war with Russia.

First Amendment Rights

While most legal experts I follow are adamant that the Constitution explicitly (and with many Precedents) applies to all People in the USA--not just Citizens--and that includes the Bill of Rights*, it seems that the Trump Administration is not the first to test this.

 (*I love how Judge Nap's eyes grow very big when he emphasizes this point.)

It was the Biden Administration which argued that Julian Assange did not have First Ammendment rights to free speech.  When UK judges questioned if this wouldn't violate the principle of non-discrimination in international human rights agreements, in 2015, the Biden administration quickly settled the Assange case rather than answer the question.

But many wonder why Khalil was chosen when there were surely much better cases around where protestors had actually been accused or convicted of a crime.  I guessed that it was because Khalil was "one of ours" who was politicized (aka radicalized) by the Genocide in Gaza.  It turns out, I was right.  Khalil worked for the British government in toppling Assad (as shown in Craig Murray's article linked immediately above).  He wasn't a spy but an asset used by British Intelligence because of his local knowledge and connections.  He was likely apolitical and on the track to a much better economic life for himself in the West.  Murray lays out two other possibilities, including that he might have been a double agent all along, but finds the idea that he was politicized by the Gaza Genocide to be the most credible.

Nihilism

 Some might consider me a nihilist.  After all, I consider the grand extinction of humanity to be very likely resulting from the growth economy we have now, and a massive human die-off of more than 50% (and probably more like 90%) inevitable in the next century or so.  We've already seen an age-defining extinction and decimation of non-human species, which will only get worse the longer the human "experiment" continues.  And I don't hold out any hope for the endless stream of techno hyperbole that crosses our screens: "Singularity.  AI.  Quantum Computers.  Crpto Anything.  Mars."  The age of tech actually making things "better" is long over, and even if it did, it would only bring on overinflation and collapse of the growth economy sooner.  Look at the server farms being built for Crypto and AI.  Look at the globally expanding manufacturing and mining of toxic metals.  Now tech is intended to build a more comprehensive overlord, while holding up feel good promises.

Only a no-growth society can make sensible choices.  As long as human society is programmed for growth and not sustainability tech will always be an amplifier of destruction, not a savior.

Given that such horrific outcomes are near inevitable anyway, what's the point in doing anything?

That is where I break in many ways from nihilists.  Firstly, I don't consider anything to be inevitable.  Everything that happens is the result of vast numbers of causual "contribution."  To get right down to it, everthing that happens is influenced by everything within a time-space lightcone.

So what I just did moments ago, contributes to the global reality in some tiny measure within seconds, and perhaps more than that later, etc.

So the future is not some determinate thing, it is something I contribute to, along with everyone I know, and know of--including those whose "contributions" I might well hate.

People like me are contributing less to the political outcomes of the world at this moment than many others.  I'm no Trump, Biden, or Netanyahu.

(But my hope remains, like Hari Seldon, people will be reading my words to form their understanding of this time and since.  And so in some form, my contribution may be much greater in the future.  I am also hoping that future starts while I am still alive and not too far from now.)

And regardless of the likelihood of success, I am fully responsible for my contribution and should am for it being a good one, at least overall. Perhaps the best I can make it, but within balance of my life as a while, not 'sacrificing' myself (for something unlikely anyway, the prevention of human and animal suffering and extinction, etc).

I may have little choice, for example, but continue to do business with corporations that violate my ethical ideals.  But I can try to reverse that effect with other measures including contributions, purchases, donations, protests, organizing, and speaking.

What we need is an ecologically rebuilding communist society to clean up from the collapse of the growth economy.

So, anyway, it was with that in mind that I read this description of Soviet Nihilism, which I'm not sure about.

Update from Greenstein

Long one of my favorite bloggers, Jewish Anti-Zionist Tony Greenstein has written recently about his interviews with Katie Halper and Rania Khalek which went deep into the thickets of history.

Here are my favorite sections:

Orthodox Jews in particular opposed Zionism. Agudat Yisrael was founded as a specifically anti-Zionist organisation. This gives the lie to the claims of Britain’s racist Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis that Zionism and Judaism have been intertwined for 3,000 years.

I also went into the content of my book in some depth explaining that for the Zionists building a ‘Jewish’ state was the first priority in the holocaust and that Ben-Gurion is notorious for saying that if there was a choice to be made between rescuing and saving Jews and building their bastard state, the latter comes first. 

When Britain offered to take 10,000 Jewish children in the wake of Kristallnacht the Zionists were outraged that they weren’t going to Palestine. In a speech to Mapai’s (Israeli Labor Party) Central Committee Ben-Gurion said:

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.

I also described the Kasztner Affair and the resulting trial in Israel from 1954-8 when the leader of Hungarian Zionism, a senior official and candidate in Mapai (the Israeli Labor Party) for the next elections, Rudolf Kasztner, sued for libel when he was accused of being a Nazi collaborator. He lost when it transpired that he had spent his time post-war at Nuremberg testifying in favour of Nazi war criminals.

Kasztner had concluded a deal with Eichmann that if the Nazis agreed to a train out of Hungary for the select few (Zionists, bourgeois and a few rabbis) he would not inform Hungarian Jews of the Auschwitz Protocols which two escapees from Auschwitz had written detailing where they would go if they boarded a deportation train. Up till then no one knew that Auschwitz was an extermination camp. Kasztner went so far as to misinform those who were deported that they were travelling to a fictious resettlement camp, Kenyermeze.

With Rania I gave an outline of the development of Zionist historiography of the holocaust and how it had been distorted to accord with Zionist myths of Jewish resistance. Zionism has rewritten the letters and memoirs of the Zionist resistance fighters in the Warsaw ghetto eliminating their criticisms of the Zionist movement.  This was in order that their writings should accord with the Zionist narrative that they led the resistance and were heroes rather than sordid collaborators.

The Zionist historians had also erased entirely the role of Jewish anti-Zionists, in particular the Jewish anti-Zionist Bund and its leader, the last Commander of the Resistance, Marek Edelman.

With Rania I first discussed Trump’s ethnic cleansing plans. I was sceptical that they would succeed but I am less so now as all the indications are that Israel is looking for an excuse to resume the genocide.

We discussed the reaction of Israeli Jews to the plan. 80% support it and just 3% think its amoral. Which means that 97% of Israelis are not only amoral bastards but genocidaires too.  The other 17% either can’t make their mind up about it or think it’s not practical.

I imagine some Nazis also thought the extermination of Jews, Poles, Gays, Roma etc. was not practical. This is the morality of Israelis and that’s why I find it hard to explain why in a democratic, secular state  Israeli Jews would have the right to national rights as Jews. It is difficult explaining why Palestinians should be forced to live side by side with genocidal would be murderers.

And

I also explained that Hitler didn’t start out with a plan to genocide the Jews. His plan, like the Zionists was ethnic cleansing.  It was only when that failed that genocide became his only option if he wanted to be rid of the Jews. The same ‘dilemma’ faces the Zionists.  If it can’t be expulsion it must be holocaust.

I went into how the very history of the holocaust had been rewritten by the Zionists to emphasise Jewish resistance, despite it being very low apart from the Warsaw Ghetto and a few others such as at Bialystock which went off at half cock, Lachwa and Minsk.

We discussed the situation of Arab Jews in Israel and how Israel deliberately set out to destabilise their position in 1948. In Iraq it is well documented that they planted bombs in synagogues and other places Jews frequented in order to stimulate flight. Avi Shlaim, an Emeritus Professor at Oxford University in his book Three Worlds has recently come up with further proof of Zionist involvement in the bombings.

When the Zionist underground threw a grenade into the courtyard of the Masudo Shemtov synagogue in Baghdad, killing 2 people, they stimulated a mass emigration of the oldest Jewish community in the world.  Out of 135,000 Jews only 10,000 remained after 1951.

I also told how when they arrived in Israel Iraq’s Jews were treated like animals and were sprayed with DDT. Three Worlds also explains how a rich cultured community were turned into poor labourers in Israel, forced to sleep in tents and how they were deArabised.

I described how Holocaust Worship today leads to the creation of holocaust museums (but not for Black slaves or the Native Indians) such as the United States  Holocaust Museum where history has been rewritten.  When I went there Pastor Niemoller’s saying ‘First they came for ...’ was hanging above the entrance except it had been changed. The first category was ‘First they came for the communists’ but that wouldn’t do in cold war America so it was omitted.

I also showed how two-thirds of the members of the Judenrate, the Nazi Councils that the Nazis established to help implement the Final Solution, were Zionist. It was the Judenrate and not the Nazis who rounded up Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Rania observed that the Palestinian Authority was the Palestinian equivalent of the Judenrate!

I quoted Hannah Arendt who said in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem that

Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this leadership, almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another, for one reason or another, with the Nazis. The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had really been unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and a half and six million people.[1]

I told how the Warsaw ghetto resistance’s first task was to execute Jewish [[Zionist]] collaborators. They couldn’t have organised a rebellion with the collaborators operating. [[...]]

Whatever happened to the Phoenicians?

 It have wondered for some time why one of the greatest empires in world history, the Phoenician Empire, is nearly scrubbed from western history.  These were also the smart people who also invented the alphabet.  Instead, we learn a lot of made up details about a nearby backwater tribe of no such grand distinctions who made themselves famous for male genital mutilation and recasting religious stories largely invented elsewhere.  That the pseudo-history of this tribe (regarded as God's Truth by many) barely mentions the concurrent activities of the adjacent Phoenician Empire has always made me very suspicious.

The grand conspiracy theorist Miles Mathis has written a grand essay on this.  First he notices that the era of the Phoencians greatest success, 1200-800 BCE, which is called a "Dark Age" in western history, wasn't so dark after all.  Mathis shows that it was deliberately blacked out, to hide the success of the Phoenicians.

In our academic (as opposed to biblical) history, the Phoenicians were first defeated by the Persians.  But Mathis shows that this supposed defeat never happened.  Instead, what seems to have happened is that Phoenicians married into the royal lines of Persia, and eventually took them over.  So Persia and Phoenicia became the same thing.  And then this happened again with Greece, with Alexander (who was probably more Phoenician than Greek).  And through Alexander, the next was Egypt.

And then Mathis shows the Pheoenicians followed that model the world over.  All the royal European lines are basically Phoenicians who wormed their way in.

In Mathis' telling, once the Phoenicians had mastered trade, they decided that wasn't good enough.  They wanted to directly ingest the wealth of their partners with a straight pipe, and this is how they did it.  Largely with marriage, secrets, and clandestine activities.  We are still ruled by Phoenicians today (and we wish they'd do a better job).

Then what about the Jews?  They are of course Phoenicians too.  Both are semitic (despite some attempt by Victorian scholars to recast Phoenicians as Aryan).  Possibly one in the same.  They have a folk history in the Holy Bible to confuse people, conveniently owning all "Abrahamic Religion" sides.

I'm not saying this far out conspiracy theory that Phoenicians still run the world is true.  But after reading Mathis, it's clear that most of what we think we know is lies, lies meant to hide inconvenient truths about our past so we don't fully understand the present.

And it also underlines a point I keep trying to make against racial supremacists: We are all more closely related than you think.

So I can state with very high probability than indeed I am descended from both Cyrus and Darian, and yes Abraham and David (if they even existed) and James the Brother of Jesus (if not Jesus himself, if he existed and has surviving ancestors).  Over 2000 years, the probability of any descent you could think of is over 80% and over 3000 years it's over 90%.

So, basically, we are all Phoenicians now.  (They REALLY got around, too.)

Though it's possible there's an inner Phoenician elite most of us are not part of.  Well, that may be at least partly the elite we know.  Not many who could choose would choose to live in ordinary circumstances (or worse) as disguise.