Regime change, from Iran, to Syria, to Iran?

A masterful piece (by a master journalist, Patrick Lawrence) on how western regime change operations since WWII led to the HTS takeover of Syria.  He delineates between earlier surgical Iran Model coups and the later Jakarta Model in which a million deaths from mass violence were acceptable to American planners.  That continued in Chile, then in Afghanistan challenging the Soviet-aligned secular regime.  No one should have been confused by the earlier Syrian civil war (2011-2019) which was straight out of the same playbook, except that the Russians by (actually) bombing ISIS ultimately saved the Syrian government.  But it was premature then to say it was over, obviously it can be said now.  This time neither Russia nor Iran helped (with plenty of reasons on their sides).  But now, clearly, Iran is next.  One would hope this madness would come to an end, but there's no end in sight.

 

Artificial Sweetners

I dislike all artificial sweeteners.  But the supposedly natural ones, like Stevia and the sugar alcohols, are the worst.  They give me gas and bladder irritation which can persist into the next day.

I hate the way the fake health food industry has adopted Stevia as it's current best standard.  (Stuff like Adkins, etc.)  After sampling many of those, I'd decided not to consume the rest of the box.  Perhaps it's just as well I'm not much tempted to buy more of these kinds of foods.  When I see Stevia I run.

Aspertame is awful too.  The bladder effects combined with caffeine like jitters.  It seems to have a potent stimulant effect (which I'm often wondering if I can use positively somehow, but the downsides are always way too much).  I wonder why people don't seem to notice that.  A friend of mine loved it for that reason and called Crystal Light, which originally used only Aspartame, called it Crystal Meth.  Now Crystal Light also uses Splenda and Ace-K and sometimes even (yes) Stevia.

Speaking of which, I'm suspicious of Ace-K and Splenda too, but I don't recall any specific problems with either.  I'm sure I've had Splenda many times without issue.  I still worry that it hasn't been around long enough to know what long term effects are.

I've had saccharine many many times without issue, and I think it's well established now to be safe in humans, it just tastes awful.

I hardly use sugar at all, about a half teaspoon in my protein drink helps it go down.  And I mix about 2oz of fruit juices into a glass with ice and mineral water.  But when I have sodas, which I hardly ever do, I will only drink the regularly sugared kind.

Letter to my representative about Post Office

My neighborhood has postal cluster boxes which were vandalized in September.  Now, 3 months later, they have still not fixed my cluster box.  I need to drive 5 miles to pick up my mail from the local Post Office (4950 E Houston St), which I only have time to do about once a week.  They tell me they will hold mail "forever" from my box so weekly pickup should be fine.  But it does not appear to be reliable.  One time after an entire week they had no mail for me to pick up at all.  I normally receive 20-30 pieces of mail every week.  Today they had only 5 pieces of mail, which I am sure must be wrong.  I ordered a box of chocolates in September via Fedex which got transferred to the Post Office for final delivery.  The tracking information indicates it was received by my local post office in October and should have been received the next day.  The local post office could not find it for 3 weeks until I showed them the tracking number which was complicated to find because it was originally shipped Fedex.

Can I get my cluster box fixed soon?  Can you see about making the post office more reliable in circumstances like these?  Could I have mail delivered to my door (as was done for all of my life prior to moving to San Antonio)?

Syria RIP: Another Pyrrhic Victory for the Empire of Chaos

The greatest breadth is given in the analysis by Simplicius.  I second his views on this too.

MoonOfAlabama has a more succinct list of winners and losers.

Craig Murray proclaimed the loss of an historic secular state as it was happening.  A few days later, the victorious foreign militarily aided and funded terrorists (no doubt coached by Western Intelligence on this) said they would respect Syria's diversity.  This was not in line with their previous actions, though we might hope that they had grown into the situation they were apparently inheriting.

Assad was to the end, apparently, a defender of Syria's territorial integrity.  He wanted all the stolen provinces back, and he wasn't willing to trade them away as others wanted, or accept the refugees from those areas to be settled elsewhere (effectively conceding they had been lost).  Turkey especially tried to get him to move on this, and when he failed to do so, triggered the HTS and other funded militias for a long planned offensive, which turned out to be surprisingly easy so they just kept on going.  Syria is a small poor country, Assad never trained to be the ruler (his brother died) and had poor military judgement, and the whole country was strangulated by sanctions and the theft of its most resource rich area.  Troops in the SAA were very poorly paid, even officers.  The whole country was basically starving.  Prior to US sanctions, there were no people in deep poverty, and decades ago Syria was the most progressive and equal and well run country in the middle east.  It made this mistake of looking eastward for its alliances.

Now, there's no Syrian in Syria who will say anything good about Assad.  Syrians know how this operates.  Anyone who has anything good to say isn't saying it.  A few decades from now, it's certain that Assad will be a hero to some if not most former Syrians, just as Stalin is still a hero to many Russians.

But now it's true, the west owns Syria.  Whatever happens to Syria, it's going to be the fault of the west.

Already, we can be sure Israel is taking an additional chunk.  Is Idlib going to be re-integrated with post-Assad Syria, or permanently separated?

Turkey and Israel are the principal local actors for the West, and Iran and Russia have chosen to be relatively passive.  So whatever happens we can be sure it will be more favorable to Turkey and Israel, at least in the short run.

All of the US "nation building" exercises, have been disasters, before long the old autocrats or their successors are demanded back, if that's even possible.  Libya and Afghanistan are among the latest examples.  When the astronomical cost of rebuilding Syria to something stable again becomes clear, US will probably duck it as usual, leading to the usual results.

Other than an un-earned halo of success, Israel has not gained much from this, and in the end it will probably only add to their undoing as the region becomes even more unstable, and their reputation is further undermined by highly visible actions, such as grabbing more of the Golan.

Geopolitically, this was a trap for Russia and Iran, already embattled by the West, and they wisely chose their limits.  Russia had offered a few things, like training Syrian troops, that Assad had refused, possibly in the interests of independence and sovereignty.  US backed proxies never make that decision.

One thing that might weigh against the historical elevation of Assad is how his regime started embracing neoliberalism in the 1990's, roughly at the same time that Russia under Yeltsin (and his backer USA) did.  This helped to further impoverish Syria and make it more vulnerable to western sanctions and theft, and there was no relief in the form of a strong leader returning and reversing it.  This is one thing that the trotskyites get right.  However it would probably have taken a Messiah to save Syria despite the sanctions and actions of US, Israel, and Turkey.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Michael Tracy, a pundit I follow, published in Newsweek, with views similar to Simplicius (but slightly more negative on Putin).

People's World (American Marxist-Leninist) also has a view similar to all of the above.

A Syrian journalist who barely escaped describes endless Israeli bombing.

More wars , more killings, more violence, more ethnic conflict, millions of more refugees , courtesy of America , Israel and turkey

Here's "Arab Progressive" (looks like CIA/Mossad trained Zionist) attempting to debunk Dan Cohen's article immediately above, as if it existed in a vacuum, that Netanyahu did nothing to help the "rebels" and was actually decrying the defeat of Assad.  According to Arab Progressive,  HTS has transformed "pragmatically" to become the kind of inclusive leadership Syria needs.  (I can hope this will be so while lacking any confidence it will.  We've heard this kind of story so many times before it has become ridiculous.)  I think you can pretty much take every point "Arab Progressive" makes and invert it.  For example, it simply ridicules Cohen (as if he was a lone nut saying this) for claiming that neoconservatives wanted Islamists to take over Damascus (for which there is endless evidence, and in fact the ultimate path of history itself to prove it).  Several of the essays I have linked refer to Wesley Clark's speech in the 90's listing the countries we needed to overthrow.  Nearly ever one of these countries has been upended (except Iran).   This follows a longstanding western intelligence tradition of picking off critics of US empire one by one as if they existed in a vacuum, here's a similar tract on Ukraine (and you can tell this other guy is well funded)  Once again, nearly everything they say can simply be inverted.

Seymour Hersh interviewed Bashir al Assad many times.  The man himself seemed very nice, but in over his head, in the midst of a corrupt family (which he himself conceded and said he had no power over them), and beseiged on all sides by major powers, terrorists, etc.  Hersh's report tends to blame the Russians for not protecting their ally, though he finds this understandable since they were already tied down in Ukraine.*

Other information I have is consonant with Hersh's report on Assad the man, including the analysis from Simplicius.  I have other information saying that the emails of Assad were hacked, and there was simply no dirt to be had, only love letters to his wife.  (Everyone says Assad's wife is outstanding.)

(*Other reports are generally less critical of how the Russians handled this, and lean more on the Iranians, including the new reformist president, who was not willing to commit troops to Syria. The Russian response is that they couldn't give air protection for SAA troops that were already deserting.  Then that response is critiqued on the basis of "what about Russian intelligence?"  But I think it's clear that Russia decided Russia was not up to the heavy losses that continuing to defend Syria would entail, and especially now, with the entire west panting for a big Russian or Iranian response to justify even more ME war.  So Hersh is basically correct, but too dismissive of Russian capabilities.  They *could* do more, but only if Assad did more and if it wasn't clearly a trap to set WW3 into motion.  Finally, the most interesting bit is how in recent days it has been reported that Assad himself had been dangled the carrot of having sanctions lifted by the US, if only he would stop helping Iran with weapons shipments to Hezbollah.  Assad seemed to have been taking this seriously, and was slow in responding to both Russians and Iranians for a few days just before the end.  Then it appears that the follow through Assad was hoping for from the West never arrived.  Assad was set up.  In the end, at least according to these reports, he was willing to entertain being a traitor to his own causes, and be independent from his allies, but in order to save his country.)

Here's another strongly pro-Putin POV describing how Assad failed the Syrian people after the war paused (raised taxes rather than encouraging economic self-sufficiency, failed to reconcile Syrians) and effectively deserved what he got (troops unwilling to fight) despite trying to be a nice guy.  It then praises Putin for having traded a defective Syrian alliance for better relations with Turkey (while leaving Turkey with the damaged goods they've long lusted for, and leaving Israel with a proxy of Turkey on its border), and having previously established new routes to Africa which bypass Syria making it unnecessary for Russia.  These are interesting bits I haven't seen elsewhere but (1) keeping taxes lower would probably not have fixed the economics of Syria (to think they would is Koolaid drinking "supply side" economics), the only plausible solution for the west's total blockade and theft would have been Cuban style communism and it's interesting that Baathism was originally a socialist movement, so the Trotskyites are correct about the devolution of Syria.  Ultimately the Ba'ath party became the kind of nepotistic and kleptocratic party the Ba'ath party was created to eliminate.  It could not have been fixed by Bashar who himself admitted he couldn't even control his own extended family of kleptocrats.  I believe corruption is often overrated as a cause of economic failure, many corrupt countries do quite well and capitalism itself is merely a legalized form of corruption.  But here the situation with sanctions and theft made economic survival of Syria all but impossible--only a charismatic revolutionary figure like Castro could have done it, (2) Russia has important bases in Syria which are simply being ignored in this narrative--though for now the 'rebel' government has promised they will stay (which might have been a sweetener for Russian non-participation, with many skeptics of it being permanent), and (3) it doesn't look good either that Russia abandoned it's ally Syria or broke the transit corridor from Iran to Lebanon for Hezbollah--it makes Russia look weak and not the kind of global power needed to counter or replace the terrible and terrifying US (though I think this "looks weak" argument is overplayed because well informed people see how problematic this situation was for Russia, and the west is often biting off more than it can chew leading to the kinds of disastrous outcomes that Russia is wise not to echo else it never be seen as a better replacement).  I would add "what about Iran" and wasn't Russia's alliance with Iran important, but it appears in the end that Iran was on the same page as Russia on Assad and does not blame Russia for what happened.

The Times (London) recites the usual Western lies about Assad, blaming him for chemical attacks that were actually used by western backed terrorists against him (now well established by independent journalists), and even blaming him for the (foreign created and funded) jihidis in the first place.  The West is unspeakably evil, and still more evil because it then blames its victims for its crimes to justify even more evil.

*****

Of course Syria, like "Israel", is just an idea.  The modern state of Syria was created in 1946 from bits of the Ottoman Empire the victors of World War Two stuck together.  Perhaps the idea was that the relatively more western leaning Alawite area would dominate the rest, simplifying Western control.  Some Alawites wanted their own independent state from the start.  Then the oil weath of the inland became known.  For awhile, Syria was the richest and most progressive Arab state with all the right ingredients.

There's no reason why any state has to be, and not smaller states or bigger ones.  The best questions are how well they preserve rights and wealth and make the most for everyone's lives.  Usually the questions actually asked are more about "what's best for me/my tribe/etc".

Syria under the Assad's became may have become more and more about protecting the rights and wealth of the Alawites, and to some degree just the Assad family.  But this itself was exacerbated by the west first with western ideologies (neoliberalism) and ultimately because the the opposition was armed and "educated" for decades by the west, then completely separated from it, with ultimate conquest that occurred in mind if not presumed to happen so quickly.

Separating a region that has greater resources is not necessarily advantageous even to the people who live(d) in those separated regions (which resulted in 5 million Syrian refugees last time).  There's also something known as the resource curse.  It helps to be connected to a larger society, especially when that society itself is good.  (Syria had been in steep decline, but that was largely because of Western policies which amounted to a total siege and theft.)

Many kinds of blowback can be expected from regime changed and dismembered Syria, starting with a new round of Syrian refugees.

If Israel collapses, as many believe it will, this will be considered a key moment beforehand that led to that collapse.  Overextension.  And so forth.

Whether Syria was a state that deserved existing remains to be seen.  And likewise, for all, it's likely the negative side will be more convincing rhetorically.  But that's only compare to an ideal "good state."  Compared to the alternative of no Syria, (or lesser Syria, Islamic Syria, etc) Syria under Assad may have been a very good idea.

The modern state of Syria was created in 1946.  But the Syrian region and empires in overlapping areas existed for millenia, and the stuff in Syria is some of the oldest on earth, such as Palmyra and even the City of Damascus.  There are considable concerns about the future of many such ancient locations as well as organizations and people under the new regime(s).

If Syria is to remain, there needs to be a reconciliation and unification process.  As of this writing, the opposite seems to be happening, with former enemies of the 'rebels' being hunted down and killed.  There also needs to be the possibility of self-defense.  Currently Israel freely bombs all the remains of Syrian military installations with the hoped for effect of creating a neutered neighbor.   The conflicting aims of neighbors and sponsors doesn't look good for statehood even if the internal situation were good.

Craig Murray reports from the Syrian/Lebanese border.

Jonathan Cook says this was the US plan.

After letting Israel bomb all Syrian military facilities, and grab some extra land that they wanted, the new Syrian government intends to make peace with Israel.  So it's now Syrisrael.

Duran discusses the grim likely future of what was Syria now that the state has been "collapsed".

Electronic Intifada paints this as a tragedy, but expecially for the Syrian people and their sovereignty, the resistance (which Bashar hadn't supported since 10/7) will use other conduits and continue.  In stating that Iran is the principal enemy of Syria, and not Israel and the US, the HTS leader proves he doesn't represent the majority of the Syrian people, but is merely a shill for his US and Israeli backers.

Debunking the "Victims of Communism"

What started as far right crankdom in the Black Book of Communism 10 years ago has gone mainstream, with the allegation that Communism has over 100 million "victims".

This count of victims now includes the (newly estimated at 42 million) Russian deaths defending the Soviet Union from the Nazis.  Those should fairly be assessed as victims of Naziism.  

As is quite often done when assessing deaths in "enemy" countries, declines in birthrate due to things like freer abortion adds to the count of victims.

Noam Chomsky pointed out that applying the same methodology to India would show it had over 100 million "Victims of Capitalism" in just 3 decades, and more since.

Grayzone has a good debunking.

Humans, not Cats, are responsible for nearly all bird extinctions

Humans--the species responsible for widespread species loss so great as to represent an important event in earth's history around the world because of their massive interventions in the world--have a penchant for blaming others for their deeds.

Humans also naturally and often devolve into warring tribes which are prone not to think fairly about the actions of other humans.

Both of these tendencies are on display in various campaigns to blame cats for (1) killing birds and thereby, presumably, (2) resulting in the species loss of birds that has occurred in recent time.

The research behind the second of these claims is remarkably limited and flawed.

It's very clear to me that the studies claiming most cat destructivity are written by cat haters (who quite often refuse to identify as such...claiming they once had cat(s) and so on), and those who would like to divert attention from other sources of bird/wildlife extinction including especially habitat loss. 

Given what we know, I believe it is sensible to believe that human activities are directly responsible for most of the loss of bird biodiversity.  Cats are barely a factor in such extinctions globally.  Cats have only been shown to be a threat to bird species on small islands.

Cats opportunistically prey on eggs, small birds, and weak adult individuals, rarely enough enough to cancel local bird population growth.  One of the studies examined in the above link showed that cats were responsible for fewer than 3% of adult bird deaths.  On the other hand, human activities, such as increasing global CO2 concentrations, and reducing habitat areas for wildlife, have no such limits or selectivity regarding the mass mass extinctions that they are inducing.

Contrary to what is often said, the studies that are responsible for the numbers often quoted against cats themselves show that un-owned (stray and feral) cats are responsible for the vast majority of bird deaths caused by cats.

Many bird species hunted by house cats are not in fact wild bird species, but species who have entered into symbiotic relationships with human settlement, and are thus in excess of what their populations should be anyway.

Studies generally find ratios between birds killed and dragged back home.  Supposedly owned cats who ware well fed still hunt (even better, the cat haters say) but rather than eating their prey bring them back home for respect.

In my own 25 year experience as a guardian of cats with outdoor access,  I have only seen one bird dragged back home, and in that one case it looked like that bird had died from chemical toxicity of recently used arsenic based insecticides (which I quit using after that).  It looked very much to me like the cat was telling me something was wrong--and the cat was right.  The lack of seeing bird kills has not changed since I got a birdbath (which is often said to be unacceptable for people with outdoor cats.

Other people similarly report not seeing many birds among cat kills, which are more predominantly rodents and small amphibians which in most cases are in local excess due to human habitation.

Healthy adult birds are generally too fast and strong for cats.  It's true that cats love to watch any and all birds, but likely they do this instinctively seeking the low hanging fruit.  Medium and large birds can be very threatening to cats (and even people).

 Cats have been around for 80 million years and do not ever seem to have caused mass extinctions, the way that humans have, even when they were the apex predators.

When there are owned cats around, they keep away ferals and strays who would otherwise be predating over the same territories and with a serious purpose other than play/fun.  Therefore, owned cats outdoors help to control the feral cat population by limiting their access to territory.

Also in my experience, owned cats direct the bulk of their aggression not towards wildlife but towards other cats.  Cats spend endless time marking territories, defending them, and seeking and incorporating more territories when they can, much of which involves fighting other cats.  Territorial defense and expansion seems to be cats second largest activity after sleeping (which they do about 20 hours per day).  There isn't even that much time for successful bird predation, let alone extinctionary cat predation.

All this being said, I'm still interested in finding better research into this issue.  I'm fine with both TNR and euthanizing excess feral cats.  Keeping cats indoors is generally preferable but not always possible with domesticated feral cats that may demand outdoor access even to the point of self-immoliation (like one cat I have who refused to urinate inside--to the point of almost dying of urinary failure) let alone other forms of protest.

mRNA Vaccines do not cause "Turbo Cancer"

mRNA vaccines do not cause "Turbo Cancer"

Does the Talmud say Goyim are Donkeys?

Indeed, that illusion is made, in the arguments against marrying a Canaanite maid.

The Talmud also has many many passages insisting on more-than-fair treatment of non-Jews, who are believed to earn eternal salvation along with Jews so long as they obey the Noahide Laws, a vastly reduced set of laws compared with the over 600 laws Jews are supposed to obey.  So non-Jews have it "easy" according to Judaism.  And Jews are commanded to respect the rights of all people, not just Jews.

The Talmud is not a Holy Book, it is a compendium of debates by ancient religious sages, intended to be used to stimulate debate in an educational context (mainly for training young Jews to think expansively and be successful in international businesses) and not as a religious dogma.

Just like nearly every other book associated with a religion (with the exception of the Tao Te Ching, which is about as good as it gets) Talmud is a deeply flawed work.

However, it is not genocidal, and it very explicitly says that Jews are neither to massively resettle in Palestine nor create a Jewish State.

Talmudic Judaism is not Zionism and may well be its antithesis.

Here's a modern debate about what the Talmud actually says about Goyim.

I continue to believe much of the solution to the Zionist Event Horizon will be either Jews reconnecting with what their religious books actually say.  Some humanistic Jews are abandoning or even renouncing Judaism, which is also OK by me, maybe better, except when this equates Judaism with Zionism--thus poisoning the well for those who would prefer to still have their ancient religion.

Though at this point, we should (and I'm including me) be more focussed on re-establishing humanity for Palestinians, and to that end, Zionists need to be defeated and the Zionist Entity dismantled.

Is it necessary to follow Islam for that purpose?  No.  But Islam has provided a social structure that is effective, and possibly most effective, for resisting imperial domination.  Political ideologies have not produced strong societies w/o religion (from the dawn of civilization, social cohesion was outsourced to religion, and political ideologies have failed to fill all the necessary bases--which must include sexual relations--to do it alone).

I would have preferred the resistance be led by Communists or other leftists.  But they made mistakes, and were marginalized by western intelligence which also propped up Islamists to make sure the Communists were defeated.

In the current ME wars, Islamists favored by some Hamas* are attacking Syria (along with US forces who continue to hit Syrian bases instead of the Islamic ones they claim to oppose, just as they did in the 2015-2019 Syrian Civil War) which is allied with Hezbollah and Iran, two key allies of Hamas.

*It appears that the Hamas leadership officially buried the hatchet against Assad in 2022.  There may be some present or former Hamas or supporters of Hamas or fake Hamas who don't share this sentiment, and I've seen some on X, where probably those with more western alignment rise to the top of the US controlled social media.  Hamas had supported the 2011 insurgency against Assad and one of their leaders died in it.  Now Houthis are also declaring support for Assad as a move towards regional alignment against Israel and the US.  However there is some feeling I have seen (on X) that neither Assad nor Iran is doing enough for the Palestinians.  I'm not on that page as it seems to me that Syria and Iran have their own countries to defend against US and Israel as well, when it's getting pretty thick already.

The Universe is Not Infinite

Since we cannot possibly know what is happening/happened beyond 15B light years away, we cannot scientifically determine whether the universe is infinite or not.  You can then understand the finiteness of the universe to be a non-question, a religious question, or a philosophical question.  I advance my following theory as dealing with the philosophical question.

Our systems of reasoning are not entirely tethered to what we can observe.  It seems indeed that powerful analytical systems that are able to reach to the edge of reality must as well reach beyond it just to fully see the edge.  Thus we can create arbitrarily large or small numbers that need not have any association to reality.

And Infinity is a concept that is beyond numbers we can write down and incorporate with our other laws of numbers.  It is a special number to which our ordinary operations do not apply.

It is an abstraction beyond our ordinary abstractions which are already not entirely tethered to observable reality.

Therefore it is very unlikely that The Universe or any other real entity is either infinitely large or infinitely small.

An infinite universe would also have many ideas that are almost inconceivable themselves, such as infinitely many of each of us (which would therefore have to occur in identical cities, planets, etc) as well as every possible thereof.  Say, me with eyebrows that are 1 micrometer longer, 1/2 micrometer longer, 1/4, and so on forever.

If there is no infinity, human individuals are almost certainly unique, as to create an identical one requires circumstances so identical as to produce identical solar systems, planets, asteroids, everything which led to the creation and evolution of life in exactly the same configurations.

Now, this is not to say that there couldn't be planets where apex preditors like us who can grasp things with their hands suddenly became Intelligent in a similar way, leading to agriculture, cities, civilizations, wars, and all the other parts of our modern existence.  That could be a highly likely path once certain preconditions are met, as we now understand is the case with the genesis of life itself.  And it also could, and most likely does given what we see now (no other intelligent life in view), generally wipe itself out, or get annihilated by some other means, before too long after it arises.

Sachs on NATO

Excerpted from this talk by Jeffrey Sachs.

(as reported by Sony Thang on X)

"It's very important to understand that World War II never ended with a treaty, and I think the United States was to blame.

The reason it never ended with a treaty is that the Soviet Union said, 'Germany killed 27 million of our people; we want Germany to be disarmed and neutral.'

Of course, Germany itself was divided into occupation zones at the end of the war in 1945.

The U.S. immediately came to the view, in the summer of 1945, that the next war would be with the Soviet Union.

Rather than making a peace agreement to end World War II, the U.S., along with the British and French occupation zones, merged, formed the Federal Republic of Germany, and rearmed Germany.

By the way, the fact is that they put a lot of former Nazis back in charge of leading armaments industries, and a few years later, Germany joined NATO.

This was, of course, both an affront and a threat for the Soviet Union.

NATO was never viewed as a defensive force.

The Soviet Union saw NATO as the next front in a continuing Western war against it.

There were periods of détente, for example with Nixon, and periods of tension, but there was never an end to World War II on the basis of a treaty.

When Mikhail Gorbachev said, 'I wanted to end the Cold War'—and be sure, he ended the Cold War—he ended it peacefully.

This needs to be remembered: it wasn't an American victory.

Mikhail Gorbachev said, 'I wanted the walls to come down.' Of course, Reagan wanted to do that peacefully together with Gorbachev, but it was Gorbachev's initiative.

I watched a lot of it firsthand, up close, in Central and Eastern Europe, as an economic advisor to the heads of governments involved in this.

Immediately, the question of German reunification arose.

In that context, there needed to be an agreement between the West and the Soviet Union for the legal end of the occupation of Germany.

German reunification was a legal event that was essentially the end of World War II—you needed the Soviet assent.

What did the United States and Germany say to the Soviet Union to get that assent? It was not ambiguous; it was not unclear.

They said, without any equivocation, 'We will have German reunification, and NATO will not move one inch eastward.'

Those were the words used by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III directly to Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990.

Hans-Dietrich Genscher—on a tape you can listen to—said, 'When we say it won't move, we don't just mean within Germany; we mean anywhere to the east.'

It's so clear.

Of course, America cheats. Please understand this: America is a big power. It cheats. It tries to do what it can. It uses media and propaganda to get away with cheating—that's what big powers do, have no question.

A few years later, the United States claimed, 'Oh, we never promised that.' You can just read it in the documentation, which is available online in the National Security Archive of George Washington University.

So, in 1994, under Bill Clinton, the U.S. cheated.

They adopted a plan: NATO would expand eastward. And, by the way, not just eastward by 100 km or 300 km, but keep going east—all the way to Ukraine, all the way to Georgia, remember.

They wanted to go even beyond. I'm sure some crazy person in the United States said, 'Why not Kazakhstan? Why not Uzbekistan? Why not Armenia?'

Their idea in 1990—I know it—was, 'We won!'

Especially in December 1991, when the Soviet Union ended, the American 'strategists'—if you can call them that; it's a kind of euphemism because they are hardly good at strategy—said, 'We're alone. We're the most powerful country in the history of the world. We're more powerful than the Roman Empire. We're the world's sole superpower. We can do whatever we want.'

So that was the mindset, and cheating goes along with that mindset—the arrogance of power.

So, to make a long story short: yes, the United States started to expand.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of these strategists, explained very clearly in 1997, in his book The Grand Chessboard, why Russia would be unable to resist.

In a meticulously laid-out chapter, he asked the question: What if the U.S. pushes NATO? What if Europe keeps expanding eastward, crowds Russia, surrounds Russia—what can Russia do?

Brzezinski asked whether Russia could resist or if it would have to give in, and he concluded that Russia would have no choice.

He reached the conclusion, for example, that Russia would never form an alliance with China. He also concluded that Russia would never form an alliance with Iran.

You know, okay, theorists—this is playing games.

He compared the world to a chessboard.

By the way, the world is not a chessboard; it's not a poker game. It's the real lives of eight billion people.

American strategists are trained in game theory, which, by itself, in its name, gives everything away.

They treat the world as a game—bluff, raise, call—as if it's a poker match.

And you know what? They used other people's lives to do it.

They raised the stakes with Putin: 'We raise you.'

But whose lives were they betting on the table? The Ukrainian lives. Huh, not a good show.

10 years of meddling: Aron Mate's reference article on US in Ukraine

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/04/30/what_10_years_of_us_meddling_in_ukraine_have_wrought_spoiler_alert_it_wasnt_democracy_1027411.html

Boycott the Election?

Jim Kavanaugh argues that the proper response to the awful mainstream choices we have in the 2024 election would be an organized boycott of the election. 

But there is no such boycotting organization, and without it blasting out the corresponding rhetoric, up to 60% participation personal boycotts can simply be dismissed as "apathy."  That is why I have argued in numerous previous posts that the correct response to this election is to vote for one of the 3 or more anti-Genocide Presidential candidates available in your state (Stein, West, De La Cruz, and the SEP which I just learned about).  That sends the specific message you may have if like me much of your rage comes from the Genocide of Palestinians being supported by both mainstream candidates with great exhuberance.  

Generally speaking, however, I think it's better to vote for Democrats in other races, except for the really bad extra pro-Israel ones like Fetterman.

CPUSA supports maximum participation in the election and voting against tyranny and fascism.  By previous statements and implications this seems to mean voting for Democrats.  However, the actual statement only refers to a "united front" and "progressive candidates" and does not specifically mention Democrats or Republicans.  This statement was hammered out at the recent CPUSA convention.  Although I don't think this was the plurality intent, it could be interpreted as a call to vote for any party which opposes fascism, etc., including "third parties."

As if to specifically dispel that notion, another CPUSA article (not a voted resolution) blasting West as someone serving far right interests while campaigning to the left of other candidates.  But this is not a resolution, it is a statement from a CPUSA member which, though enshrined at the organization website, represents only his personal opinion rather than party "guidance."

The failure of CPUSA to adequately critique the Democratic Party is one thing that has been making me rethink my membership in the organization, but I'm sticking with it for now anyway (and NOT joining one of the fake alternatives).

No one has yet explained to me why the CPUSA chose to run Communist Presidential Candidates until 1988, and then started organizing members to support the Democratic Party.  Well, I know why, it was the position taken by the majority of representatives at the CPUSA Convention.  But it was not guided by Marxist-Leninist theory, which didn't suddenly change around 1988.  Either position could be argued to be consistent with Marxist-Leninist theory.

And it probably made a big difference that the CPSU stopped supporting CPUSA around then too.  That support made fielding independent Communist candidates at all levels more possible.

Active third parties are the only form of 'party discipline' available to citizens of USA, since we have top down corporatist parties which basically shill for the candidates most attractive to big donors.  It may still only be worth voting for major parties for the lesser evil, if the even lesser evil hasn't also gone beyond the pale, as now.

Discipline comes precisely from the fact that third parties, if they gain support among people who usually support majority parties, threaten those parties.  That is precisely how FDR was pushed (by competition from Communists, Socialists, and Huey Long) to do the New Deal, otherwise he could have been a fairly conservative President.

Third Parties, or a comparable means of internal party discipline, are an essential part of a Democratic system, especially a winner-take-all system, and especially with corporatist parties who only serve the public as little as they can get away with.

By these "beyond the pale" standards, which Democrats would I have voted for?  It looks like all of them for the first term and none for the second.  Every Democrat since Kennedy did sufficient 'beyond the pale' things as to be not re-electable in my book, starting with Johnson, who created a false-flag attack to justify sending millions of US troops to fight democracy in Vietnam (and I could go on from there).

Until now, when Harris, who was duly recommended by Biden himself, has put no distance between her policies and his with regards to the ongoing genocide and proxy wars, even when demanded to put forward such differences by critical constituents, such as Michigan Muslims, instead silencing them, and "stopping disinformation" (which all too often means stopping valid criticism, and always means limiting freedom of speech) has become a Democratic Party rallying cry.

McCarthyism Eternal

After reading this McCarthyist article, blasting Cornel West for association with anti-imperial and communist groups in a recent antiwar rally, I have decided again to vote for West.  It appears that Green Party did not attend the rally, but West and PSL did, which I think shows more courage.  Meanwhile, Green Party candidate Jill Stein was interviewed on cable TV, and did a respectable job, until she felt compelled to send a note of corrections the next day explicitly condemning Putin and Assad (but also US Presidents).  Many in antiwar circles, including me, found that sort of condemnation of US official enemies to be offensive (though others have often failed to mention that she also condemned US Presidents, which makes it somewhat less so).

So it seems that indeed Cornel West and Claudia De La Cruz (PSL) which both attended the ANSWER Coalition conference with Medea Benjamin, are positioning them to the anti-imperial and anti-war side of the spectrum, which is where I am.

Strategic Uncertainty becomes Strategic Certainty

 US recognized that Taiwan was part of China 50 years ago.

But then created a policy of 'strategic uncertainty' meaning they might protect Taiwan if violence were used for assimilation.

New proposed law would make turn this into strategic certainty, in effect, making Taiwan a defacto NATO member.

This is very much like what was done with Ukraine, and led to war with Russia.  Although, unlike Ukraine, the US recognized (as does the world) that Taiwan is part of China.  So it's even worse.

When empires take great interest in the fate of islands and other features near geopolitical rivals, it's not because of their concern for human rights. 

Taiwan has been used as a base for foreign invaders of China many times before.

https://x.com/DrHK88/status/1845704185544585228

The almost infinite improbability of casting a decisive vote

As far as making a difference on the outcome of an election (let alone policy) the probability, say, for a Texan voting in the Presidential election of 2024, even by the most generous calculation (which I strongly dispute on many grounds), which I'll call Chamberlain & Rothschild 1980) the probability is far less than for being struck by lighting in any particular year (not your lifetime risk, which is many times higher).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022053181900223

This calculation was the leading one suggested by google and this reference, from which the academic publisher will grudgingly let you view and download the first page.  From that first page, we learn that the probability of casting a decisive vote (basically assuming everything is random, no rigidities or tendencies or correlations) is 1 / N, where N is the number of voters.  This sounds too simple, but it actually comes from a very impressive application of probability mathematics (I was a student and practitioner myself and I recognize it as such, with all the usual funny symbols).  About 9 million voters voted for President in Texas in 2016, so to keep it to round numbers we'll say 10 million might be expected to vote in 2024.  That means that your probability of casting a decisive vote in Texas would be estimated as:

1 / 10,000,000

The probability of being struck by lighting in any one year is about 10 times that, or around 1 in 1,000,000

Are odds like that worth sullying your self respect by voting for a (likely or proven) war monger, etc, because he/she's the lesser of two evils? 

I don't think so.  They're not worth getting out of bed.  What is worth getting out of bed is satisfying your soul.  So you might as well just vote your conscience or even your feelings, which will show up in the official results, and suggest to everyone the kinds of things YOU would like to see, and which your votes might be on offer for.  Will that change anything?  Probably not, but it probably wouldn't anyway, and it could make you feel better, and less dissociated, more connected with your real feelings, which is one of the big things we need to fight for today.

Now I personally believe the Chamberlain & Rothschild 1980 estimate is far too generous in cases where there is are strong pre-existing political alignments and correlations.  I personally felt the probability of casting a decisive vote in the Presidential election in Texas to be more like 1 in a quadrillion because of the low probability of the Texas of today going to 50% for a Democrat.  It's not random, it's strongly aligned to Republicans, right now and for the foreseeable future.

I think any useful look at these things has to include the 'prevailing winds' of existing political biases.  So I start from some vote, which could be the vote of 2016 (which didn't follow a pandemic so I think is more representative).  Trump won that election by in Texas by about 800,000 votes out of about 9,000,000 votes cast.

Starting from the final outcome (that final outcome, because we don't have the current one) and working back to a tie vote which you would cast the deciding vote on, 800,000 votes would have to change (assuming they come from otherwise non-voters or 3rd party voters).  For each change of one vote, it could change backwards or forwards.  Requiring it to change in a desired direction therefore happens at about 1/2 the probability of a desired change.  (Technically there are vast possibilities either way, but roughly equal either way too.)  So, requiring 800,000 votes to change in a desired direction would happen at:

1 / (2 ** 800,000)  

Read as 1 over 2 to the 800,000th power.

I can't get anything I have to calculate that number it is so small.  Roughly estimating 3 powers of 2 for each 10, it approximates to 1 / (10 ** 300,000), or 1 in 3000 googols.

Now, I'll freely admit, that estimate is too far out.  I think the truth is somewhere in between the Chamberlain and Rothschild 1980 estimate and mine.  My guess of 1 in a quadrillion still sounds about right to me, given the polarized politics of Texas, etc (and I'd note that it's only a squaring of Chamberlain and Rothschild 1980, which assumes no political tendencies at all).  But the best calculation I've come up that includes the pre-existing polarization suggests it's far smaller than even 1 in a quadrillion

I'm pretty confident I will not be so unlucky as having failed to cast the decisive vote in Texas in 2024, even by the Chamberlain and Rothschild 1980 calculation.

Now, Texas *could* be the 'swing state' if in fact it actually swung towards Democrats.  This is not astronomically improbable  because shit happens, it's just very very unlikely.  But suppose shit happens, and Texas voted for the Democrat.  In such a "shit happening" scenario, most likely many other states would swing towards Democrats also, and then the Texas vote wouldn't be necessary in the final tabulation.  So the greater probability is that even if your vote in the 1/10^7 - 1/18^7 probability were to swing Texas, it still wouldn't be a swing vote in the US Electoral college, because in that case Texas most likely could have gone either way and it still wouldn't make a difference.

(BTW, that Texas would switch most likely along with many other states is a typical example of correlation which is too often assumed to be unimportant in probabilistic analysis.)

To swing the US presidential election, you need to be The Swing Voter (changing it from tie to win) in The Swing State.  When it's astronomically (or at least mega) improbable just to be The Swing Voter in any state!

So the effect of the Electoral College is to make it even more improbable to be a swing voter in the Presidential election than in any state, or if there were a pure popular vote election in the whole country.

So all the rationalistic talk about consequences, etc, of your vote are bollocks (and in many policies, like support of Israel's genocide, it doesn't even matter who is President!).

Voting is primarily a feel good exercise in which you can voice your feelings and group identification.  "I'm with these people." or, "I'm not with any of these people."

It's far more a tool to make people feel they own the policies of government, than for the people to determine the policies of government.  The doctrine that you must vote for the lesser evil party (because consequences) is primarily a prod to push your mind into accepting those policies and downplaying any full throated critique.

Iran: Empire comes back to bite

Iran is one of the world's oldest countries, older even than China.

Iran pioneered monotheism with Zoroastrianism.  When they released Jews from Babylonian captivity was when Judaism also became monotheistic, inspired by Zoroastrianism.  The Hebrew religion(s) had not been monotheistic.  That was editing that occurred during exile, fundamentally reformulating the essence of Judaism, and bringing it into alignment with the Iranian empire it became part of.

Cyrus I was a visionary multicultural emperor.  But he must have also seen releasing the Jews as creating a stronghold of allies in the Levant so that his son, Cyrus II, could conquer Egypt.  So his reason for re-establishing the Temple of Jerusalem with the formerly exiled Hebrew elite now called "Jews" was fundamentally geopolitical.

You could say, Cyrus was a pioneer of creating vassal states, though what Cyrus funded was not a vassal state so much as just...a Temple, centering a region in the Iranian empire.  So it was an empire based on vassal elites though not "states" as such (which weren't really a thing much until modern times).  But it was an approximation to that with the organizations of the time.

Now the tables are turned.  Iran itself is threatened because of what we might call post-Imperial expansion.  Empire, which was a concept Iran once pioneered, is now biting back through descendants from the very movement Iran once enabled for its empire.

In a way, sadly, this seems like the saying no good deed goes unpunished.  Iranians funded the Second Temple, and created the imperial Pax Irani that it peacefully operated under for quite awhile, and now they face terror and worse from the descendants of those they freed and protected.  

Jerusalem and The Second Temple were simply operated by the chief priests, it was a theocracy because the priests knew Jewish history well enough to abhor the idea of kings and all that, not to mention the Iranians didn't want it either, and under their watch the scriptural requirements for a Jewish State were the earthly appearance of Almighty God in "the Messiah."

Things were not so nice under the next empire that replaced the Iranians, and after that was defeated a Jewish State did appear for 80 years under the Maccabees, without the appearance of the Messiah.  It was a terror, when the Maccabees conquered the areas that current Israelis seem to be seeking, they force converted adult males to Judaism with circumcision.  It was so bad that ultimately the priests begged the Romans for something different, and as a result Judea got King Herod under Pax Romana.   As if to make up for the fact that he wasn't actually an ethnic Jew, King Herod built the final incredibly massive version of the Second Temple, but he also bred a lot of dissent in the extended area that was now allocated to Judea.   The Apostle Paul we know was a suitor to the Herodian court.

Finally the Herodian dynasty led to years of revolts. They started as Jew vs Jew, and not long after the assassination of James, the brother of Jesus who may have been christian (though probably not by modern definitions) but was also a Jew as was Jesus.  Finally the Romans came in, and with large loss of troops, they sacked Jerusalem, and tens of thousands of Jews fled, accompanied by more over time as the Romans introduced new laws.  An attempt to restore the Kingdom of Judea by force again was tried by Bar Kochba in 135.  This time, he claimed to be the Messiah.  It failed, and the rabbis then universally claimed he was NOT the Messiah.  The ultimate expression of first millennia Judaism by the rabbis, the Talmud, contains the Three Oaths against creating a Jewish State without the Messiah.

Religious Zionism first appeared when the full text of the Bible was printed by Luther.  It was Christian Zionism.  "Jewish" political Zionism was created by an atheist of Russian Jewish descent, Hertzl, and the first conference was held in 1895.  Most Jews did not become Zionist until the 1960's, when there were popular movies such as Exodus promoting the Zionist cause.  The Holocaust was certainly an inflection point, but German Jews died in death camps after years of turning down opportunities to move to Palestine, because they were committed to living in Germany.  Most Jews in the world wanted to stay where they were and saw Zionism as the work of anti-semites to get them to go somewhere else.  The one and only Jew in the British Cabinet voted against the Balfour Declaration.

As if to repeat the Iranian experience, the US "recognized" the entity that was created in a mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians known as the Nakba.  800,000 Palestinians were driven out of Palestine completely, paving the way for a Jewish majority state with "democracy" (which is oxymoronic under such circumstances).

It had been part of the British plan to both control the middle east through a western proxy, AND to enlist US help in WW1 with Jewish support (Brandeis was a friend of Wilson).  To this day the Zionist Entity continues to operate as a western proxy.  Ever since its creation, it has helped destroy pan-Arabism (and, even worse from US perspective, pan-Arab-Communism).  It creates the instability and anti-democratic forces which help keep corrupt pro-American Arab dictatorships (often hated by most in the country except for their own massive ruling families), who have been continuously kept within the US geopolitical sphere.

But few knowledgeable observers don't see that the era of US global hegemony is ending if not already over.  This super-empire (neo-colonial) was clearly doomed to fail from its beginnings in the aftermath of World War II, when imperialists gained the upper hand in the relatively unscathed USA.  But now it is in its dying phase, lashing out with it's last gasp against competitor Russia in Ukraine, and unleashing the full demonic power of Zionism in the middle east.  The Zionism which was once enabled, as Judaism, by Iran's monotheism, but now simplified (need not wait for messiah, establish no state, not bear false witness, not steal, not murder, not have other gods, love neighbors, heal the world, etc) into pure national supremacism.

Cats have it right.  They've had a behaviorally sustainable system for tens of millions of years.  The human civilization we know has barely persisted for 11,000 years so far.

Cats refuse any help from others in their fights.  It's purely one on one or it doesn't count.  That's sustainable.

Empires, allies, client states, and everything of that kind are doomed to failure.  And when they fail, there may be flailing that results in world war, which looks like what we are seeing now.

Time, Space, Ergodicity, Reducibility, and God

Mind bending memes and analysis (if you're willing).

The 'Library of Babel' is an interesting meme similar to many I've thought of but more accessible than most.

I'll have to think about it some more, but it occurs to me that the infinity of possible symbolic constructions (eg present and future books) is not something "of this world."  If it exists enough to make this meaningful, the Library of Babel is immortal, and therefore every book in it as well.  And then if every book, then every author, every reader, etc, as well, I pondered in a previous essay.

However we do have present books, and they are something of this world.  As long as there are writers, more will be created, and some will be lost.

There's a huge gap between what we understand as 'material world' and structuring principles, numbers, memes, books, and so on, which appear as though they could be immortal.

Following the above essay, that immortality seems to arise precisely from their reducibility, which things in the material world (including us) don't seem to have.

Voting to Save Democracy

If you must vote just one way in order to Save Democracy, then of course you don't presently have the thing you are claiming to try to save, because Democracy involves choices...not just one choice.

Pondering this at long length this year, I've decided to make a break from my previous Marxist-Leninist teleological approach (and you can check out People's World today from my sidebar and see how curiously they support Biden unconditionally yet oppose many of his policies usually without mentioning him).

Though I'd framed myself since 2001 as a loyal Democrat and as such I even worked as a Precinct Captain until the Texas Democratic Caucus Disasters of 2008 and other crapola led me to conclude I'd served my time.  But I continued to attend some Senate District meeting, enough to go to the Texas State Democratic convention in 2016, making the second Convention I'd attended...

All this has led me to believe that political "parties" in the USA are basically fake.  At the bottom they are filled with aparatchiks from every organized special interest, along with rather few concerned but also usually very naive citizens who generally only follow the good news about their "party".  But the whole apparatus is really run from the top, like an unending corporate pep rally the higher you get.  At the State Convention, you can squabble in pretty much ignored special sessions, but then the big wigs put on a media blitz to make you completely numb and uncritically accept the current crop of corporate politicians.

So really it's run by the politicians, who themselves are run by the powers that be, the Plutocrats and Oligarchs.

There's hardly any good reason to participate in such a farce, though I suppose if you have the stomach for endless frustration, you can be a nice Mr Smith as much as you dare and can squeeze in to the dialog, though it will be promptly forgotten.  A few people may hear you briefly.

Electoral Politics isn't really politics at all, it's a vast machine run by the real powers to make people feel good.  And if they can steer you into one of the only potentially winning choices, which are both predetermined to be acceptable to the powers that be, so much the better.  Ultimately it's a mind control system, making you feel like you "own" the mostly horrible decisions the powers that be are making, at least if "your" party got into power this cycle (though in many areas, especially defense and foreign policy which is the federal government's #1 role, little change is on offer and little change is observed).

As many say, if voting made any difference, they'd make it illegal.

What to do under such circumstances?

Some opt for not voting.  For not participating in this sham system.

I see nothing immoral or illogical in that.  But it's indistinguishable from apathy, from not being political at all, for not caring about what society does.  It is not clearly communicating that this system sucks, and how it sucks in particular.  It's an expression of your feelings, but possibly not the most intelligible one.

I've come to the belief that, the best thing to do is to not vote tactically at all, but to simply vote for whoever or whatever you actually believe in.  Whoever best represents your POV.  Isn't that what you are supposed to be able to do in voting?  The results, they hardly matter anyway.  It's a system problem if those feelings aren't properly communicated to the powers that be, not yours.  To your own self be true!

Sadly, once again, those results may not be intelligible if you do not vote for either a listed candidate or a certified write-in.  But that covers a broad spectrum in many cases, far less restricted than the Duopoly.  In Texas I can vote for Jill Stein as a listed candidate, and Cornel West and Claudia De La Cruz as certified write-ins, all of whom are fine people and would not continue the genocide.  Voting my feelings I have a glut of choices.

Voting your true feelings may feel especially correct where there is a large moral dimension involved, such as participating in a mass murder, war crime, or genocide.  Even if the alternative likely-to-win candidate also promises to do so, it is not morally as bad as doing it right now in deontological ethics.

People would readily grasp this if they were asked to vote for someone who just murdered their entire family, in order to "save democracy."

Real politics is changing people's minds.  Real politics is showing people things they did not know.  Real politics is speaking out for positive ends at every opportunity.  Real politics is thinking about and doing something about the future other than trying to get another corporate candidate elected.  It's barely worth voting at all, but when you do, it's fine that it be an accurate representation of what you actually believe, that is to say, real politics.

****

I still do recommend, both tactically and for real merit (in a few cases), voting for Democrats in the Congressional races.  That's where there is some possibility of making a difference, though still not much.  And this is unless you have a particularly outspoken pro-Genocide candidate, like Fetterman.  It's fine to send the worst back to the farm.

Likewise, voters in swing states, where the election might end up being decided by mere hundreds of votes, might upweight the importance of voting tactically for the lesser evil.  There is still no moral or logical reason to need to do so.  You, the voter, are not really wielding the power.  You are registering your thoughts and feelings to the system, which reframes the illusion according to such results.

 

Rheinwiesenlager

Were one million German soldiers killed by Eisenhower in death camps at the end of WWII?

Here's a telling of that version:

https://21stcenturywire.com/2023/12/22/eisenhowers-dirty-wwii-secret/

Wikipedia mentions but does not accept this version, which probably stems from the 1989 book by James Bacque.  Wikipedia lists 3 American Historians who have written against it.  But a more colorful and specific debunking is here which has all the debunking Wikipedia has and more

(Skip past the first paragraphs, which are related to a Youtube documentary, then get to the part where he debunks the book by Bacque).

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3nggi0/comment/cvo0buu/

Well, applying some of the "Moderators" own technique, I'd point out he is hiding behind the name of a long deceased Soviet general.

The low death version often goes along with a storyline about how the US was a model of morality, etc.  However nobody denies that the conditions in the camps were truly deplorable.

If we didn't quite follow it during World War II, we saw much of Eisenhower's "morality" when he became President, including:

1) Death and destruction for North Koreans

2) Coups everywhere Democracy poked up.

3) An unparalleled US military industrial complex, vastly expanded by Eisenhower himself (regardless of his warning about it afterwards, which I see as pure CYA).

I believe his operations in WW2 may well have show a similar ruthlessness.  So no reason to believe he was a moral giant.

But here I'd like to introduce my magical "starting estimate" approach.  We have a low number, 6000 deaths, quoted by Eisenhower apologists, and 1,000,000 deaths, estimated by a Canadian investigator in 1989.

If we guess both are wrong for essentially partisan reasons, the true value lies in between, and a plausible starting guess would be the geometric mean of 6,000 and 1,000,000.  The geometric mean (sqrt(a * b)) is

41,292

Which happens to be pretty close to the 50,000 that Eisenhower quipped he'd like to see.

A close examination of Eyes Wide Shut.

Note that this was written over ten years ago, well before current conspiracy theories like Q-Anon that focus on liberal politicians, etc.  (Those theories may be one small part of the effort to discredit the real stuff, which it appears Stanley Kubrick* was riffing on, examining and/or documenting on many levels in his final film, released after his death.)

https://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/the-hidden-and-not-so-hidden-messages-in-stanley-kubriks-eyes-wide-shut-pt-i/

https://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/the-hidden-and-not-so-hidden-messages-in-stanley-kubricks-eyes-wide-shut-pt-ii/

https://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/the-hidden-and-not-so-hidden-messages-in-stanley-kubricks-eyes-wide-shut-pt-iii/

(*just noticed Kubrick has the same last three letters as Magick.  He probably had a vantage on such things.  He was quickly drummed out of Hollywood after directing Spartacus and made his films from UK, where apparently speech was freer then.)

I take a dim view of secrets, and there's little doubt in my mind that sex is deliberately made less accessible for the masses so it can be weaponized by elites and their commingled secret societies and minions in intelligence.  (Think: Epstein.)

Lies are words told in order to keep secrets.

Perhaps the commandment should be "Thou shalt keep no secrets."

Judaism and Trading and Exploding Pagers

For nearly 3000 years, Hebrews and their Jewish successors have been the most well distributed traders in the world.  Because of successive military defeats, and plain old opportunistic settling, there were more Jews living outside Judea than within by the year 0 CE.  All around the Mediterranean and many other places as well.  Everywhere Jews settled, they set up trading operations (and often banking too).  Often taking the place of Phoenicians, who had blazed this trail first, but who suffered great defeats in their home Canaanite cities and were never restored (as a Temple, not a state) by a friendly power as Jews were under the Iranians (aka Persians) under the ancient multiculturalist Cyrus.  Phoenicia lived on for awhile just as Carthage, only to be sacked by Rome in 146 CE.

In the first millenium BCE, and sometimes later, Judaism was very successful at getting converts, especially marry-ins to successful Jewish families.  Later, Rome levied special taxes on Jews which meant that people tended to convert to Christianity instead (a religion which had originally been created by Jews), and for quite awhile there were Jewish Christians too, a loophole that was closed down when it was de-recognized by both Jews and Christians around 500 CE.

This trading gig was even more true in the first millenium when the Talmud was being written.  Talmudic education was designed to be training for being an international trader.  It attempts to answer the questions of how you can be fair and respected to your customers and clients, and still make a profit too, and also make your family successful in a hostile or indifferent land.

When I grew up in LA, it seemed almost every kind of specialty shop was owned by Jews.  Hifi, Cameras, whatever.  And I remember these Jewish shopkeepers very favorably, they gave me good prices and good advice.  (Later Arabs and Indians took over, but that was after my time in LA.)

Which is one more reason why the exploding pager debacle is so incredibly self-defeating for Jews.

Many people point out we can no longer trust electronics, and that is true, the image of safety has been blown up.

What few realize, is that it adds uncertainty to the 3000 year trust Jews earned in banking and trading.

And not just Jews...any country which is friendly to Israel.

It wasn't just technology, it was technology that passed through the hands of various trading firms in different countries.  That was where the explosives were planted.  (Note: actually, they may have been planted while being held in an extended "customs" in some western allied country, where Mossad in some guise was permitted to "inspect" (modify) them.  So what we may be talking about is not trading but security work.  A lot of what Israelis do these days.  It matters little to the argument I am making as it all relies on trust.)

Defending a state built on and sustained by violence may lead to such things as antisemitism, which is not good for business, which is probably why the Talmudic sages wrote the Three Oaths as coming from God, that no Jewish State can be created before the Messiah comes.  (Sadly, that wasn't strong enough, there have been endless claimants to this Messiah thing, including the ill fated Bar Kochba, and later arguments appeared as to why The Oaths and earlier warnings in the Torah as well no longer applied though no ancient Talmudic Sages or Hebrew Prophets reappeared to say this.)

The only way to start earning back that trust, is completely repudiating Zionism.  No Jewish State in Palestine, not now, not ever.

Another History of US

 An X poster with a long name has an interesting thread of US history.  Even if only part is true...

One thing surely is true, and most in US are never taught this, that Britain was not happy losing its American colony and tried for over a century overtly and covertly to break it up and claw it back.  So for example, the war of 1812.  And Britain was on the side of the Confederacy.  Russia was on the side of Union, another thing we aren't told.  Claim is made that Lincoln's assassination was a British conspiracy, I don't find that in Wikipedia.

Israel's excuses no longer work

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2024-08-08/1948-israel-excuses/

Emigrate to Russia

 Russia is the best place to emigrate to, according to this blogger.  And while the Christianity he touts is not a plus for me, much of what he says sounds true anyway.

(St Petersburg has long been on my 'dream' list along with NYC and Paris.  Though for now I'm fine and happy where I am.)

Mr E.'s Hangout

The substacker Mr E. has an incredible grasp on many things and perhaps some are even important.

I take him to task not on the depth of his knowledge, which is mind boggling, but on his ultimate (but never quite stated) vantage point on them.  It is, in short, reactionary Christian.

So it's not surprising I can go over Mr. E's facts (which many are) and reach essentially the opposite conclusions.  His essays make great raw material for me, simply turned around from his viewpoint to mine.

In his incredibly lengthy two part series on The Taxil Hoax, which started with the above linked article, Mr E concludes that at the bottom of all the evil and corruption in our world is...Canaanites!  Not Jews, not Freemasons (as Taxil had claimed, but only as a hoax*), but the ones their God told Hebrews to avoid and worse...the Canaanites (by whom he means specifically the Phoenecians).

Turning this right around as I now know to do, it's easy to see who this implicates, including the Freemasons.

Though not quite like that.  The reality is that the Phoenician Canaanites, and their polysexuality, were not unique.  That kind of thing was basically the norm, I would think, since before history.  Mr E likes to show that Phoenicians were everywhere (even the Americas) spreading their evil doctrines, but the likelihood is quite the reverse, that the polysexuality Mr E so denigrates was basically everywhere to begin with.

The revolution against that polysexuality actually started in ancient Iran (Persia was what the Greeks called it) with Zoroaster.  Monotheism.

Hence the (myth of?) Abraham, and the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) which preoccupy over half of the world's population, and others who are dominated by them.

Jews picked that up from the Iranians who released them from captivity, and the greater Iranian culture their second temple was built within (and funded by).

In the Jewish version (copied by later Abrahamics) the Jews and their ways were favored by God over the wicked "amoral" (polysexual and polytheistic) Canaanites (actually kind of representative of most peoples...prior to the Abrahamic religions), so the Israelites easily conquered and eliminated them.

That's the tradition Mr E follows in, probably as a reactionary Christian of some kind.

Turning it around, monotheism and rigid (patriarchal) monogamy (elites were allowed a continuation of polygyny only) were the thought virus thrust upon the world by the self described followers of Abraham, which then made their (evil) mark because they aided in the raising of a local militia (by which the Hebrews may have conquered Canaanite cities), then ultimately imperial expansion and control in the west and middle east, ultimately leading to today's problems.  (Actually, a long standing thesis of mine, but also supported by Mr E's facts simply turning his vantage point upside down.)

*There continue to be believers in Taxil's works on Freemasonry.  When he announced that it was all a hoax, the audience was enraged, and police escorted him out.  He moved away from Paris and died a decade later.  It all makes me wonder...was he blackmailed into giving this "confession"?  Why else would he have done it?

The long history of the CIA in Ukraine

https://mronline.org/2022/09/14/ukraine/

CIA support for Chechen Jihad revealed

https://thegrayzone.com/2024/08/05/us-russia-prisoner-swap-cia-chechen-jihad/

No surprise, because US also supported jihad in Afghanistan, Syria, Xinjiang, and many other places where it wished to cause trouble for an "enemy" government.

Palestinian Catastrophes

EOMAR compares the NAZI Holocaust of Jews with Zionist discrimination and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.  Interesting details and maps with references.

 

Abraham was not Indigenous

There are a thousand reasons why the claim that (Zionist by definition) Jews can genocide Palestinians is because Jews are the true indigenous people, who were illegally kicked out by the Romans, and the Palestinians are some kind of squatter (depending on the Zionist story, perhaps only since the first pronoucements of Zionism), is wrong.

Perhaps it's unimporant, but I'd call it Reason 0:  The Foundational Myth Says Otherwise

The foundational myth of Judaism is the story of Abraham, who was a man from the City of Ur in modern Iraq.  According to this story, God promised land to Abraham's descendants.  Some time later the story continues that Hebrews, acting with the power of God, conquered a region in the central Levant and created the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

The foundational myth says clearly that Hebrews were Not Indigenous.  They were invaders who were promised this land (later revoked, btw) and took it with force.

Now, the main problem from a non-religious perspective is that there is no evidence any of this happened.  There is no evidence Canaan was taken by force by a family from Ur, with the original people there wiped out, etc.  The genetic evidence is that Palestinians, Jews, Samaritans, and others are all decended from Canaanites (but Jews much less so...).

I think this pretty much rules out the 'heroic' battles in which the true indigenous people were wiped out.  Those never happened.  

But what could have happened is this: A family from Ur with some peculiar religious ideas settled in the area and largely won over the region with something other than violence, likely including economic and ultimately religious ties.

The're no evidence, but it's not disproven either.  It's not disproveable.  It's not really in the realm of science.  That one family from Ur migrated to the southern central Levant and his descendants "took over" in the Iron Age.  This was the area between the Canaanite Phoenician cities and Egypt.   The Phoenician empire was concentrated in now Lebanese cities, and the southern Levant had many different tribes of different origins, but was largely originally Canaanite also (as was Jerusalem, named for the Canaanite goddess of Night and Peace...Canaanites were polytheistic in a wide way having gods for everything...we actually don't know much about the Hebrew religion except there were a few gods and one specifically for Abraham's decendants...monotheism was cribbed from Zoroastrianism when the Persian King Cyrus freed Jews from Babylonian captivity).

Since most Zionists are religious (Christian or Jewish) it would seem they should accept the existence of Abraham from Ur and that he was not indigenous.*  And even secular Jews should acknowledge it.

*Maybe it wasn't even Ur, but the basic idea was that it was somewhere else, meaning that the spiritual founder was not indigenous.  This is a religion not about being indigenous...it is about social (!!!) conquering.  It should be noted that the remaining Torah and Talmud explicitly oppose the human creation of a Jewish State also.  The Talmud sagely says the human attempt will produce antisemitism.  God alone must do that in the end times.  It takes a lot of bending to get around that (not to mention the violation of many other laws including murder and theft which the creation of a state always requires) and chutzpah that God will be fine with not waiting.  I'm an atheist, but I'd be afraid of all that.  I don't wantonly squash bugs in the yard either.  I don't want to tempt the darkness.  You never know when it's all going to blow back.

We Are the Baddies

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/08/we-are-the-bad-guys/

Metastatic Modernity

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/metastatic-modernity-video-series/

Trump is NOT Anti-War or Anti-Deep-State

A certain segment of US electorate believes Donald Trump, who was long associated with key deep state operators like Roy Cohn, somehow opposes the Deep State and War.

Currently, Trump and Vance are running on a platform of War against Mexico and Iran, among others.

Here are just some things Trump did as President:

Killed top Iranian and Iraqi officials

Expanded Yemen war

Bombed Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan

Occupied Iraq and Syria

armed Ukraine to fight Russia (Obama had refused to send arms)

waged economic war with sanctions on Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and Syria

also sanctions on Russia and China

attempted to coup Venezuela with Juan Guaido

The Sit Down and Shut Up Party

From polls, about the only worse choice Biden could have made was to continue running.  Nearly any of the frequently named competitors would be expected to do better against Trump.

But it all makes perfect sense to me, as I consider the Democratic Party to be not so much Democratic as a kind of controlled opposition which ought to be called the "Sit Down and Shut Up Party."

There was barely anything that qualified as a Primary Season.  Biden was officially running, and no true blue Democrats could say a word against him.  Not even Bernie Sanders, who ran against the party's "leading" candidate twice, but capitulated graciously at the first sign of losing (something his supporters remain angry about) and enthusiastically backed both Clinton and Biden.  Recently he's been among those fiercely defending Biden's running recently.  It's for that reason I think the Party Establishment should see fit to make Bernie the candidate at last.  He's popular, and he's been good to the party, he's not a renegade but a party loyalist after all.  But they won't, they will still see him as a renegade, for ever even challenging the DNC (which should be called the SDASUNC) anointed candidate(s) to any kind of substantive debate on policies, because Sit Down and Shut Up.

I don't even want to get into the shenanigans that was played on both Bernie campaigns by the SDASUNC, but it was clearly another example of Sit Down and Shut Up.

From late last year onwards, with all this pressure from leading politicians and party operators, hardly any candidates even dared to run against Biden.  There were no debates with Biden either, to examine possible issues in Biden policies.  Because Sit Down and Shut Up.

The need to simply fall into line with Biden was reinforced by the Manichean struggle between Good and Evil represented by the contest with the other party (which I would prefer to characterize as the struggle between Evil and Even More Evil).  Never mind that different policy suggestions or ways of moving forwards on them or perceptions of being more committed to them might be key for any Democratic candidate to actually win the election.  Because Sit Down and Shut Up.

So the usual mass market ads paid with by plutocrat money on Super Tuesday made sure even those who dared question Biden policies wouldn't stay in the race any longer.  Because Sit Down and Shut up.

Biden had promised not to even run for a second term.  But after sweeping all the other candidates off the board, he continued to insist on running, despite many stories of his growing senility.  Strangely, a pre-convention debate was scheduled, and while the Biden campaign requested an unprecidented 45 second delay, ABC refused and stuck with the usual 7 second delay.  Media personalities immediately afterwards attacked Biden's performance, and many Party elders and wise men began demanding that Biden step down.  Biden defiantly refused.  Later becoming ill, and stumbling again, Biden finally capitulated on the day before the Convention, annointed his Vice President as successor, and allowed Big Donors to switch their checks.  Leaving the convention with the fait accompli of an anointed new President.  Because Sit Down and Shut Up.

I'm not clairvoyant, but I think the future is pretty clear on what is expected here.  Harris will lose to Trump.  That, too, was part of the Deep State plan to dump responsibility for the old wars and crises and start some new ones to take their place, the reason why the Deep State cycles between parties.  Other reasons are to inflate the economy slightly under Democrats (who have a much better track record on 'the economy'), and then the re-strangulate ordinary people all over again.  Meanwhile, at least until George W, wars generally worked the other way, Democrats would start the big wars (say, LBJ, Truman, Johnson) and Republicans would settle them (Eisenhower, Nixon/Ford). That works now too, because under Biden's watch we've become involved in one giant proxy war in Ukraine and a smaller but more globally contentious war in Israel/Palestine.  Things are not looking good for either one, but as usual the President remains defiant.  So this is the perfect time for the Deep State to make a switch, and they do it by giving us a non-choice between a publicity magnet and a boring keeper of the status quo mantle.  Because Sit Down and Shut Up, but in this case, it's not merely the SDASUNC, it's the entire "Establishment."

I'm going to suspend my fears about civll war over the Trump election (my prediction is that it won't happen, but there will be an endless hue and cry over everything except the President's war policies with Russia being excessive) and roll on to the politics of the next election, 2028, presuming it happens, etc.

In that election, the loss in 2024 will be blamed on leftists (as usual) and people who strayed from the fold to criticize Biden.  Biden/Harris policies will, as usual, not be subject for debate.  Harris will run again, and win, because the deep state will have decided on another cycle after war with China under Trump didn't look so easy, it will be back to war with Russia under Democrats.  Because Sit Down and Shut Up.

Bill Baird, A Hero

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-07-18/you-may-not-know-the-name-but-bill-baird-is-the-father-of-birth-control

Letter to Representative

What people should be talking about today is the violence FROM America.  America should stop projecting its military power around the world for no plausible self-defense reason.  Truly the reason is, and has always been, US dominance of the world through neoimperialism.  Tens of millions of people have died since World War Two because of US proxy wars and coups.  We must end this murderous project of global dominance before it ends us.

There has hardly ever been a neoconservative hard liner more consistent than Joe Biden.  Not surprisingly, since Biden became President, over a million people (including soldiers and civilians) have died in US backed proxy wars in Ukraine and Israel.  Just recently there has been a surge in bombings and killings by Israel in Gaza, adding to the death toll, which has now been estimated to be at least 186,000 civilians by the leading medical journal Lancet.  Other analysts have put the number as high as 500,000.  And that is after Israel crossed numerous "red lines" announced by Biden and many calls for a cease fire or settlement, Biden has continued to send more weapons, even of an increasing capability.

The supposed US objectives in these wars have long been lost.  Ukraine is not going to repatriate Donbas and Crimea, where the vast majority would prefer to stay with Russia, nor is Israel ever going to defeat Hamas (which has only been growing through Israel's historic criminal savagery against civilians).

I am outraged and disgusted, but not surprised, that neither major party in USA offers an alternative to a continuation of this.

Hospital Strike

There is no question that Russia has stepped up attacks all around Ukraine on airfields and weapons depots.  It is responding to new incoming weapons and promises for more.  It has begun doing these attacks in broad daylight, which it did not do before.

The alleged hospital attack doesn't fit this pattern.  Of course, western partisans generally assume that their enemies are pure evil.  "Russia always hits hospitals after all they are monsters."  Actually, it is the US and Israel which operate through endless war crimes with impunity.  Russia does not have that kind of impunity, and generally follows the rules, because it knows all hell would break out when it doesn't, as the hell even starts breaking out otherwise.

But other than this kind of general knowledge, nothing released in the public domain about the missile strike is fully convincing to me.  The grainy (and possibly altered) videos I've seen are ambiguous.  It would seem to me, that if Ukraine had any missile fragments to prove it was a Russian cruise missile, they would produced them by now, and they haven't.

But most of what I've read claims it was an antiaircraft missile.  And yes, there is even the CUI BONO claim that since it would benefit Ukraine at upcoming talks, it was a deliberate friendly fire rather than accidental.