These tweets by Scott Ritter should probably exclude him from ever being considered an expert on Ukraine:

https://twitter.com/keepinitciviI/status/1511724283252330496?s=20&t=IpDEv8QCFjpIoFIgo6ZmMQ

He is not a pedophile as claimed, but rather someone who was convicted for two separate crimes involving teenagers: of trying to arrange sex with a 16 year old and exposing himself to a 15 year old (fortunately both victims were undercover cops).

He highlights the fact that there seems to be something fundamentally off with Westerners taking the Russian side in this invasion (Anglin is another such character). More normal contrarian types who had previously been backing Russia seem to have backed away, but not people like the deluded Ritter.

Hey Ron, I don’t think that you or anybody else has the writing skills to try and deflect the blame for this senseless war crime on “Ukrainians Nazis”?

At Least 39 Dead In Russian Rocket Attack On Ukrainian Rail Station

Ukraine’s state railway company said two Russian rockets struck the station on April 8 in Kramatorsk, which was being used to evacuate civilians from areas that are expected to come under heavy attack as Moscow redirects its war efforts to focus on eastern areas where the separatists it has backed since 2014 have been fighting Ukrainian troops.

https://www.rferl.org/a/31792658.html

It’s fascinating to watch this pocket of Ukrainian troops and the civilians they are tasked to protect get basted to atoms and see the basic appeal to humanitarianism when they do fail to protect their citizens and refugees. And then Onlookers have to swallow the claim they are winning. I get the idea that Ukrainians are looking for allies and sympathy. On the other hand are Ukrainian troops defending their people or failing to protect them? I can’t quite reconcile the dueling narrative of Strong ukies and the panhandling for weapons in every capital. This isn’t Ukraine winning it is the failure of the Ukraine army.

It seems evident enough to me that things in Ukraine have not exactly gone swimmingly for Russia, though perhaps not as disastrously as some would make ti out. It seems like the Russian maximalists on the thread have gone a bit quiet, and even AK doesn’t seem to be talking about the war on Twitter in nearly the fevered and triumphant tones he was here at the outset. He sounds more realistic now from my quick perusal of his Twitter.

Are there any reliable numbers on Ukrainian losses so far? One keeps hearing about bad Russian losses, much of which seems fairly credible but not much about the proportionality.

While I cannot make the world less grim…

I can offer up some 😁 Open Thread Humor😂

Open [MORE] to see bad helicopter planning … Bad, bad, planning,……

PEACE 😇

You really think you can pass that “Chicago field trip” (more like urban safari) meme off as “Dems are the real racists”? I take it that is the intention, since a good little anti-racist like you wouldn’t dream of drawing attention to negrofuxxation per se.

Are there any reliable numbers on Ukrainian losses so far?

There is no reliable number on anything. With one itsy-bitsy-teeny-tiny exception. If you personally know somebody you trust on the ground there they can reliably inform you what is happening in the neighborhood of their house/apartment/&c.

The rest is all programming.

https://www.businessinsider.com/zelenskyy-case-study-brave-crisis-management-leadership-ceo-lessons-2022-4

The Dances with Bears guy had a great piece that they put up on Naked Capitalism that Zelensky isn’t even in Ukraine, the meeting with the Poland top guy did not happen in Ukraine. The commenters ripped him to pieces. He promised a follow-up answer to all the rips. If that ever happened I missed it.

The whole thing was entertaining to watch as internet flame war. Participating in internet flame wars is almost always a waste of time.

AP, this is a continuation of our dialogue from the previous open thread.
Your reply to me was:

Has Spain banned the Catalan language and even the word Catalan as Russia proposes to do in Ukraine? How many thousands of Catalan people did Spain kill this century? A silly comparison.

My reply to that is:

How many thousands of Catalan people did Spain kill this century?

Precisely my point. How many Ukrainians would Russia have killed had the Ukrainian resistance equaled in intensity and nature the one Catalans offered (i.e. a few street demonstrations)?

Has Spain banned the Catalan language and even the word Catalan as Russia proposes to do in Ukraine?

Do you really think it is for anyone but the Catalan people to decide what is and is not banned in their own region? I will carry your reasoning back to Ukraine and ask you: should Putin annex Ukraine (incidentally something he did not propose to do), would that be OK as long as he allowed the Ukrainian language and the word “Ukrainian” (incidentally when did he openly vow to ban those)?

the fact that there seems to be something fundamentally off with Westerners taking the Russian side in this invasion

Terms like “Westerners” is problematic. Which ones?

The Biden family connection to Ukraine via Burisma is well known. Look at the other names from those events: (1)

Here is the relevant timeline parts that deserve explaining:

February 14, 2014, VP Joe Biden named by President Obama to be the point man on all things Ukraine.

February 21, 2014, George Soros’ ‘Open Society’ publishes an anti-corruption strategy for Ukraine

April 13, 2014, Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings announces the hiring of Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer who also served as a senior advisor to Secretary-of-State John Kerry. Archer was also the college roommate of CJ Heinz, Kerry’s stepson.

April 15, 2014, Burisma Holdings sends two payments to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer’s Morgan Stanley account of their Rosemont Seneca Bohai (RSB) Investment fund. This business was greatly enhanced through a loan from the Bank of China in November 2013 when Hunter traveled on air Force II with the vice president who had a scheduled meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

How much did the Clinton Foundation receive from Ukraine while she was Secretary of State?

There are large numbers of innocent people suffering on both sides. The best solution would have been heading off this mess before it started.

Alas, the WEF Elites (bold above) tricked Zelensky with unachievable hopes & dreams. In a very real sense, both Russia and Ukraine are victims of outside manipulation.
____

I know few here believe me….. However, there is only one side “winning” this conflict.

The WEF Globalists of Davos are getting what they want most. The war they engineered is providing cover for massive numbers of MENA origin illegals.

The decrease in Ukrainian grain output foreshadows the next EU Elite scam. Open European Borders for a flood of suspiciously well fed “starving” African refugees.

PEACE 😇
__________

(1) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/10/exclusive-timeline-ties-bidens-soros-even-barack-obama-ukrainian-affairs-starting-2014/

Precisely my point. How many Ukrainians would Russia have killed had the Ukrainian resistance equaled in intensity and nature the one Catalans offered (i.e. a few street demonstrations)?

Catalans were not in an independent country with its own army so it’s a false comparison. Though I support their right to independence.

That having been said Russia had a huge amount of armed police and detention wagons coming in, so at the very least it was planning mass arrests in case of an easy conquest.

should Putin annex Ukraine (incidentally something he did not propose to do), would that be OK as long as he allowed the Ukrainian language and the word “Ukrainian” (incidentally when did he openly vow to ban those)?

Russian state media recently released an op-Ed stating that Ukrainian = Nazi and that therefore DeNazification requires erasure of “Ukrainian” and mass killing of Ukrainian elites, who by their nature cannot be cured.

It was intended as humour. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The fact that you went where you did…. That says a great deal about you.

PEACE 😇

Was using a Russian TTS app called “BalaBolka” the site said this means chatterer.
BalaBolda means same thing in Punjabi. 🙂

TTS apps have been a life-saver for long readings.
Just let it read out, follow along on screen & take notes in separate window. 🙂

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

Most Ukrainian Americans voted for Trump because the Obama administration had been horrible to Ukraine, refusing to sell lethal weapons for years. One of Biden’s first acts as president had been to appease the Germans by ending the sanctions on Nordstream that Trump had put into place. This really made this invasion much more likely.

Russia’s actions have prompted anyone with at least a basic level of decency* (even Biden, and even Germany though barely) to change course and provide aid to Ukraine but the idea that he has been working on Ukraine’s behalf is silly.

* and opportunism, Russia’s colossal blunder in invading is a golden opportunity to wear down its military and bring its economy down

Russia recognised the DPR and LPR, after signing a mutual defence treaty they requested Russian assistance, seems fair enough to me, especially as Ukrainians attacks were accelerating as documented by the OSCE. Silly pretending this war started a few weeks ago, it has been ongoing since 2014, Russia is just ending it after the failure to implement Minsk.

More importantly can Le Pen do it, perhaps a bit too soon for the full economic effect of Macron’s foreign policy choices to be felt, but still there are three weeks after the first round.

I agree and have pretty much stayed out of the flame war myself. It just seem unproductive, even by the low productivity standards of internet chatter!

From your comment in the last thread…

Thanks for the book recommendation. I looked up the title “Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture” as well as the author Wouter Hanegraaff. He actually looks to be a legit scholar so the book may be a worthwhile read. Have you read it, or just heard the author on the podcast?

I tend to be wary of anything that gets into the occult/ esoteric knowledge, not because I think it’s necessarily BS, but because there is so much absolute garbage out there concerning any of it.

The last such book that was recommended to me was the improbably named “Secret History of the World”.

It was exceptionally bad as a coherent narrative and “scholarship” although I suppose it was entertaining enough as a laugh. I didn’t finish it, as I couldn’t give it that much of my time, in the end.

Wouter Hanegraaff looks potentially interesting though. The title you mentioned is a rather pricey buy at $60+ but I may look it up in one of the college libraries, or see if any of his other books are more moderately priced.

Thanks again for the recommendation!

Catalans were not in an independent country with its own army so it’s a false comparison.

It is precisely that disparity that allows the comparison to be effective. I suppose you are saying that it rendered Catalan resistance beyond a few demonstrations impossible. I say that in the case of the Ukrainians it is possible but probably futile insofar as their interests are concerned.

That having been said Russia had a huge amount of armed police and detention wagons coming in, so at the very least it was planning mass arrests in case of an easy conquest.

Your assuming that they were meant for the “case of an easy conquest” is a matter of speculation, isn’t it? I will possibly change my views about the case for surrender if you provide a reliable and convincing — i.e. strongly argued and/or backed by hard facts — source showing that this was really in Putin’s plans. (I know about his intention of dismantling nationalist armed units. That would not change my views. I don’t think their existence conflates with the interests of the Ukrainian people.)

Russian state media recently released an op-Ed stating that Ukrainian = Nazi and that therefore DeNazification requires erasure of “Ukrainian” and mass killing of Ukrainian elites, who by their nature cannot be cured.

Well, you addressed my incidental remark, and not the fulcrum of the paragraph. My only observation is that your account is somewhat at odds with other statements by someone from Russia (Lavrov, I think) to the effect that they had no intention of replacing Zelensky as the leader of Ukraine.

Tochka U is only used by one side, and only one side would want to prevent the evacuation of civilians to keep them as human shields.

So “German_reader” has quit in a rage after being provoked one too many times by “Eastern Europeans”, and he singled out Russians as the worst. Though one did get the impression that utu was the one whom he hated most of all.

While I only rarely agreed with him on any issue, I always appreciated his contributions since he often made me reflect even when I disagreed. He was typically civil to a fault and he came across as a learned and well-read man. For this reason, his more recent outbursts were uncharacteristic, and in hindsight probably an early sign of what was about to happen. To my mind, his exit is a loss for this community.

GR seemed to be of a spirit from another age. A man with conservative instincts yet trapped in a hard-left field (Western humanities) – the worst of all combinations. No wonder he suffers so much. It’s sad to see him struggle with unemployment given that he can read Latin and Italian fluently. Not just a tragic waste of human talent but perhaps even more so a condemnation of our materialist and shallow society.

I don’t have anywhere close to the intellectual and historical knowledge of GR. I am certainly not as well-read. By sheer luck and coincidence, I just happen to be good at things which are remunerated handsomely. This hit-or-miss incentive structure is a problem.

I’ve expressed dismay in the past that too many intellectual activities are looked down upon because they do not pay well. I believe that we as a society need to start subsidising arts and humanities scholars to a much greater extent – including those outside the formal university system – even if there is no real financial return. In fact, especially if there is no financial return. It could mean providing them with cheap housing in attractive locations and covering all their book purchasing costs, among other things.

I do not agree with those who castigate and belittle the humanities. Just because Western sociology departments are a joke does not mean that philosophy and literature are invalid or “lesser” fields. A world in which only STEM and finance rules is a crippled existence, devoid of any meaning; a robotic, sterile environment where humanity goes to perish.

As for GR, I sincerely hope he changes his mind. If too many gentle souls leave us, only the nastiest will be a left: a race to the bottom in which there will be no winners.

It looks like a comment I made yesterday in the previous thread was sadly prophetical and this blog of AK renegades who didn’t join his call for a barbaric war has now suffered a new split with our best commenter German_reader seemingly leaving the forum.

Thank you utu and your clapping chorus of Ukrainian yihadists for bringing the level of this blog to the Saker’s or Giraldi’s: your level. Note that GR blamed all of you for his departure.

Eight years ago I had the audacity of posting my opinions on the killing of Donbass civilians with my full name on a Ukrainian forum. It was a respectful and reasoned opinion based on purely humanitarian arguments but I received personal death threats. I realized then that there was something toxic in Ukrainian nationalism, all the more so because I could easily recognize it from my own homeland: “join my fight or shut up and don’t dare criticize me or I’ll kill you too”. I’m sure peaceful citizens of Ulster would also have recognized the attitude. Or people living in mafia territories, which is what Kiev was when I visited it in the 90s.

Silly pretending this war started a few weeks ago, it has been ongoing since 2014

Yes, this became a war when in 2014 Russia poured in military equipment and volunteers including the leader Girkin into another country. Bombing and murdering thousands of people in places far from Donbas such as in Kharkiv or Kiev’s outskirts was just taking this to a new level.

We live in a world dominated by left hemisphere thinking, where logic and reason are considered the sole means of knowledge, the world of scientism.

It has gotten significantly worse around 2010 when there was a concerted effort to elevate STEM to not just a position of dominance – but to a position of absolute and exclusive value, where all other systems of value were radically downgraded.

At the time, I myself did not realize we were taking a radical step forward in the direction Western culture had been travelling in. In hindsight it feels like a milestone.

I am convinced the excellent German Reader will be back! He has left before, and probably just needs a break.

A society that cannot provide a valuable position to someone like German Reader is one that cannot last long.

Thanks for an interesting post. Agree with the sentiment, German_Reader’s level-headed objectivity and erudition will be missed. Perhaps GR will use his spare time to write a scholarly book on Roman history or something of the like.

The average 320-400 page non-fiction books contains 80,000 to 100,000 words. If you look at the number of words written by long-time commenters of this blog, they range from 200,000 to 1,200,000 million words, with the average being somewhere around 300-400 thousand. That’s 3 times worth of books that could’ve been written had their efforts been directed to it instead of commenting on Unz (obviously it takes more effort to write a scholarly book than blog comments, but you get the picture).

Try this –

http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Wouter+Hanegraaff&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=def

I generally prefer paper books anyways, but if I do download a book on that site that I read and find worthwhile and valuable, I will then buy the book from Amazon or make a financial contribution to the author in some other way, which is only fair, sometimes later when I can more easily afford it.

Poor writing skills and even poorer thinking skills.

The Russians are just as capable of using civilians as human shields as are the Ukrainians.

Have you ever considered that the Russians don’t want the Donbas civilians to leave in mass for several reasons? They’re there presumably to help protect the denizens there from being overtaken by the “Nazis”. How might it look if they continue to hold on to these areas but yet the majority of its inhabitants have left, mostly to Western Ukraine and further West? It seems that the only story that Kremlinoids have let is to blame every single massacre on the Ukrainian side. If the photos aren’t enough proof of what’s been going on, you only have to listen to the eye witness accounts of those involved to really find out what happened.

if a passenger train did get hit, it’s not hard to explain. RUS units are taking out the railroads now. this is something i wondered why they weren’t doing a month ago. but they’re getting around to it. and it’s not hard to believe that one of the missiles out of dozens launched at railroads has accidentally hit civilians and caused a bunch of collateral damage.

indeed, trying to mostly avoid this exact thing could explain why RUS units didn’t just blow up all the railroads in the first couple weeks. they were deliberately not doing that, to allow ukranians all the around the country to leave the area on trains.

so i’d say totally possible a train got blown up, but that’s a normal part of a big war. extremely low chance it was on purpose, very high chance it was just collateral damage. RUS is moving now to limit UKR ability to move units around the country, and US and NATO allies will continue to deliberately force the conflict to get worse by sending equipment into ukraine on railroads. so more of this stuff is likely. next they’ll be sneaking in equipment on trucks or disguised as aid shipments traveling on roads.

I recall Donetsk in 2012 when the Soccer was hosted there. A bunch of Black players were writing articles about how Racist Ukraine was and how the England team ought not to play there. I’ll have to dig out the sol Campbell article to see if it had MI6 paw prints on it. David Aronovitch was wrong about the color revolutions there as far back as 2004. Imagine your country being turned into a Zhid playground and a player for bleg sportsmen and blaming the Muscovites for it. That’s Azov and the Ultra Nationalists.

Od guess this is good old American Gulf War style shock n Awe now. Kramatorsk is the rail hub for the entire remainder of the Ukrainian presence in Donbas. I’d be heading West of the Dnieper if this strike is anything to go by.

I mentioned Drogheda and Alesia some weeks back. I see nothing to change that reference. There won’t be anything left of Kramatorsk once the Czar is done.

…in 2014 Russia poured in military equipment and volunteers

“poured?” a poetic verb, Makes one wonder what word would you use for others doing the same. It is standard Western modus operandi to send weapons, private trainers and hired mercs all over the world. Are they also “pouring” oil on fire? Hey, they are doing right now in Ukraine…why is only one side allowed to do it?

I agree that we are at a new dangerous level and it is accelerating. All sides allowed an unsustainable mess to fester for 8 years. The world could perish because it was non-negotiable to get Kiev into NATO, even if only as a “principle” and not in reality.

“Are there any reliable numbers on Ukrainian losses so far?”
there’s no talk about that on this thread, because this isn’t a serious war thread.

“One keeps hearing about bad Russian losses, much of which seems fairly credible but not much about the proportionality.”
no, that’s just western media bias, who are totally, 100% in the tank on this thing for Washington DC and the US State Department. in their world, democrats never lie, cheat, or steal. and UKR units are never destroyed, and have unlimited fuel and ammunition,

for weeks on here there wasn’t even any talk about the actual numbers involved. but the actual numbers are, UKR had about 600,000 defenders, and russian leadership decided that about 200,000 attackers was sufficient to engage them and accomplish their objectives. whether they were correct, we’ll see.

normally this would be a huge advantage for the defenders. but that’s mostly not what’s happening here. UKR units are getting pulverized. if this wasn’t the case, we’d still be seeing those videos of RUS units being destroyed. but that slowed down to a trickle after the first 2 weeks. the reverse is the case – the zelensky government has now made it illegal for ukrainians to record and post internet videos of UKR units getting destroyed. which is mostly what’s happening. note i’m not saying there aren’t lots of videos of UKR units being destroyed every day. there are. just that it’s illegal for ukrainian citizens to post these, for propaganda reasons.

“There is no reliable number on anything.”
i’d say that’s normally good advice. but not really the case here. this is the first major war during the social media, cell phone, internet era, and it’s not that hard to get a general sense of what’s going on, by spending a few hours every day piecing together accounts from a few dozen sources.

UKR forces are mostly reduced to being an army at this point. they still have 1000 armor units in the battle, artillery, and hundreds of thousands of infantry. they have almost no aircraft left (might actually in fact have 0 helicopters now) and not enough jets to do any counterattacking. they effectively have no navy now (not that they had a big one to start). their soviet era AA units, which had been moderately effective, have mostly been destroyed. RUS is now starting in on destroying their oil infrastructure to take their fuel away, and destroying their railroads, so those daily US and NATO resupply missions will be getting harder and more dangerous.

ukraine has no domestic oil production. they have the same issue the Axis had in the 1940s. not much oil, while Russia produces 12 million barrels per day. you can only fight a modern war while the oil supply keeps flowing. they won’t have much gasoline or diesel soon. or jet fuel, not that that matters now. oil pipelines in, or oil deliveries on rail coming in, can also be cut or blown up with missiles, and will be, if RUS decides to.

this war would already be over, if NATO wasn’t dumping their entire inventory into UKR. UKR would have run out of ammunition weeks ago. we’re talking about a REALLY unusual situation here. with various NATO forces dumping several YEARS worth of their own missile and ammunition production into UKR units. an unsustainable situation. “Javelin missiles mean that tanks are obsolete!” maybe, if you can dump literally YEARS of missile production from several countries, into a 2 month battle, and equip every other INFANTRY guy with a $100,000 missile. but you can’t do that normally. that’s a one shot deal. NATO put every javelin, AT-4, LAW, stinger, and other infantry missile they had into UKR. not sure they sent any carl gustav stuff though.

plenty of known, verifiable numbers in this post. known, pre-war numbers for military inventory and oil production, freely available on the internet, and so on. numbers, numbers, numbers, something this thread had very little of, because it’s not a serious thread.

The title you mentioned is a rather pricey buy at $60+ but I may look it up in one of the college libraries, or see if any of his other books are more moderately priced.

Even if you prefer reading physical books (as I do), I recommend getting an e-reader. If you don’t mind getting one secondhand, you can pick one up for what I consider dirt cheap: $20-25.

It’s not a perfect experience, and has its deficiencies, but, in some ways, it is really great. IMO, it is definitely better than reading on a computer. Easier on the eyes. Easy to travel with, and works in direct sunlight. You can load rare books that are impossible to find and out of copyright from Project Gutenburg. Or, if you are willing to hoist the Jolly Roger, there is libgen.

Starvation signals in an Ukr POW. His ribs can be counted.

https://twitter.com/AZmilitary1/status/1512504856333979657?cxt=HHwWksC4refJv_0pAAAA

I don´t think this poor Ukronazi will be useful as slave manpower to rebuild Donbass as proposed by Russel “Texas” Bentley. After all, a slave should be able to work.

Bentley – a career small time criminal who moved from USA to Donbas and supports Russia. Another example, like convicted sex offender Ritter or the career swindler Gonzalo of a morally corrupt Westerner supporting Russia.

I used that book because it was the first thing that came to mind to illustrate my point–there are establishment academics doing first class work even though the average contemporary academic seems dreadful.

It isn’t for everybody. I happen to have it at hand so will give a short example. One of my favorite notations is on page 121. A paragraph-long small print quotation, Paul Arnold, quoting Tertulian, quoting Saint Paul.

I don’t even know the word for one step beyond a thrice nested quotation. Call it four-nested.

See that no one beguile you with philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men.
Col 2:8

(My usual translation (RSV) doesn’t put it like that exactly.)

poured?” a poetic verb, Makes one wonder what word would you use for others doing the same

First military commander (Girkin), first PM of Donetsk (Borodai) and one of two deputy PMs were Russian people from Russia, neither Donbas locals nor even people from elsewhere in Ukraine. The warlord “Motorola” was another one. Turning what had been some civil unrest into a civil war lasting for years was a Russian project. There is no analogue in Ukraine’s case.

Russia made it possible in 2014 and has accelerated it in 2022.

I don´t know him and your claims (after you claimed that a Russian corvette was sank by a MLRS salvo) are not trustworthy anymore. Anyway, the point here is another one: POWs like this one will not be usable as slaves. Donbass authorities will need to feed them in order to restore their adequate physical fit if they want to use them as slave manpower.

“English” soccer player talks about Ukraine and Poland in 2012

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-18192375

“Stay away you could come back in a Coffin”…

Lol. How right he was for all the wrong reasons. The Sieg Heil was alll about razzing Russia.

They have been hit rail transit points at night, Kramatorsk isn’t a transit point and it was widely known it was packed with civilians leaving.

https://twitter.com/morphonios/status/1512432902021210114?s=20&t=B_eXUFb3CQfDQc1MH9UwVg

That mistake was a lot less ridiculous than the several statements by Ritter.

Are you pro-Russia at this point also?

You are trying the good old character assassination. Anyway, “il messaggero non e importante”. The message is.

Thanks for your well stated post. I’m in full agreement and am also hoping that GR will be back after he cools down.

It’s also a very good point on the humanities. They are becoming a sadly distorted and truncated field, but they should have their proper place as the pursuits which make us intellectually and socially rich and which gives depth to our lives.

It’s a stupid society which can’t find a useful place for a man like GR to exercise his gifts, but elevates idiotic pop stars.

Anti-Eastern European bigotry. Ironically those games (in Poland and Ukraine) had much less violence than ones in Western Europe that featured Russian hooligans running amuck assaulting people.

I asked a question about whether you are pro-Russia at this point but it’s good that you accept that being so is associated with bad character.

the idea that [Biden] has been working on Ukraine’s behalf is silly.

Not-The-President Biden is a puppet for WEF Elites. Anyone who believes that there is influence coming from this guy is not paying attention. At best he is a tool. And, not a particularly useful one.

WEF Elites also managed the more difficult task of manipulating Zelensky. They encouraged the Ukrainian government to be provocative and inflammatory. At thevsame time, they “leaked” information to Beijing about their intent to expand the Globallist footprint in Ukraine. This information was relayed to Moscow. They pushed both sides, and managed to start a war that benefits neither Russia nor Ukraine.

The Primary goal of the exercise, from their point of view, is Open Borders. Large populations are on the move and MENA illegals are routing through Ukraine to enter the EU. Secondary goals include enriching the MIC and weakening V4 cohesiveness. The Multiculturalist EU leadership wants to keep this conflict going as long as possible. Look for them to provide enough munitions for Ukraine to *fight*, but insufficient support to *win*.

The smartest possible move for Russia and Ukraine is to end the LOSE-LOSE conflict with some sort of armistice:

— Why is the Fake Stream Media exaggerating “war crimes” by both sides?
— Are they Poisoning The Well to make an deal impossible?

PEACE 😇

That’s why I pretty much restrict my online commenting to this thread. Too much time investment for anything more. I even find the amount that I comment to be a stretch and don’t know how the more prolific pull it off.

Perhaps the entire internet is a massive psy-ops to keep us all occupied and out of trouble, heh! I’m sure it’s much easier to manage populations who have a convenient release valve and get to feel that they are doing something of consequence in the world by posting. This doesn’t apply to us so much, since I think we’re all pretty comfortable with the fact that our posts affect ziltch outside of the participants in the thread, but it certainly applies to the larger social media world.

You are constantly changing the discussion axis. I repeat you: “il messaggero non e importante”. By suggesting that Ritter is a pedo, that Bentley is a criminal and that Lira is a swindler you are trying “character assassination” on them just because they say things that doesn’t fit your narrative. I don’t personally know their curriculums, although Ritter seems to have a very god one (that’s from the net). You just can say that they are wrong but you insistence in defamation seems quite weird.
But let’s go to the root message: starved POWs are not fit for slave manpower and this POW seems starved. I just say that I don’t know the current situation (in terms of levels of ammo, fuel and food) of all Ukrainian soldiers in the Western Donbass cauldron. Anyway I bet not all Ukrainian soldiers are in such a deplorable condtion. The “%” is a big unknown.

The fact that you went where you did…. That says a great deal about you.

Yes, it says I take race seriously. I haven’t exactly been hiding that.

That you’d turn tail and run from your “gaff” so quickly also says something about you, cuck boy.

Much more about the BBC taking some other narrative forward that they don’t want to follow for the moment. You really think those antitank missiles are going to come free? The Poles and Ukies will be niggarded to death as a result of taking the consignments. Sol Campbell was a big dumb Dindu.

Another example, like convicted sex offender Ritter or the career swindler Gonzalo of a morally corrupt Westerner supporting Russia.

Ukraine would not benefit from being judged by the same standard.

Have you ever considered that the Russians don’t want the Donbas civilians to leave in mass for several reasons?

The Russians do want the civilians to leave, in mass. That would make it much easier for them to capture the town, and free the region of Ukrainian forces. Kramatorsk belongs to the Donetsk Republic.

And Tochka-U is a Ukrainian missile. This is not the first time Ukrainians hit a civilian area with it. Just a couple of weeks ago one of these landed in the center of Donetsk.

Yes, it says I take race seriously.

I see Gugna Din hasn’t meaningfully altered your worldview.

In a war all is fair, people don’t want to know the truth, they want to win. The war started out relatively small, very tentative and symbolic. It is no longer small, spring and summer are good seasons for fighting.

I wonder what could stop it at this point, but I suspect words won’t do it. All the ad hominem attacks by AP and others are not accomplishing anything.

O’d say the war has been going since 1648.

By suggesting that Ritter is a pedo, that Bentley is a criminal and that Lira is a swindler

I am not suggesting: Ritter has been convicted twice of sexual offences involving underage girls and Bentley is a convicted drug dealer from Minneapolis (I wonder if he knew George Floyd?). Something is really wrong with these people. It is a pattern which is remarkable and interesting which is why I commented on it.

I don’t personally know their curriculums, although Ritter seems to have a very god one

Ritter’s comments about Ukraine that I posted tell us that he is useless on that topic.

And Tochka-U is a Ukrainian missile.

https://defence-blog.com/russian-tochka-u-ballistic-missiles-return-to-service-amid-ukraine-war/

Russian Tochka-U ballistic missiles return to service amid Ukraine war

The Russian military forces’ Tochka-U ( NATO reporting name is SS-21 Scarab-B) tactical ballistic missiles are operational again, according to open-source-intelligence analysts who scrutinize photos and videos on social media.

Belarus-based analyst released Wednesday video footage reportedly showing a column of Russian military vehicles with “V” marks, which was moving from Rechitsa towards Gomel along the M10 highway.

“There were at least 8 Tochka-U, several BTR-82a, about 9 KamAZ trucks, some of which are carrying Tochka-U missiles, communication vehicle and a crane,” the MotolkoHelp said in a Twitter post.

The Tochka-U short-range ballistic missile system was officially withdrawn from Russian Army service in 2019 (actually in 2021), but apparently, military necessity forced it to be returned to service again.

Ukraine did not have 600,000 called up defenders. That was the size of the reserve whcih is still far from completely called up due to lack of equipment. Ukraine had about 120,000 regulars with 60,000 in the Donbas, Territorial Defence Units were up and running. Russian attacked Kiev with 70,000 troops of whom 35,000 got back as effective. Losses were due to death, injury, surrender, desertion and poor hygeine/equipment (frostbite, trenchfoot, typhus). Hygeine being the biggest single problem. The 40 mile ocnvoy was stopped by 30 men on quad bikes acting opportunistically, a lucky (NATO strategy preparedness) break for Ukraine. By the time Russia tried other supply routes Ukraine forces were ready.

Ukraine farms have full supplies for diesel ready for spring sowing. Every farm is a supply point.

I thought Rudyard Kipling was a racialist.

Anyway, that is the message I choose to take from Kim.

Was Romney voting for Ketanji Brown symptomatic of the way that Mormonism has transformed itself in the wake of the “civil rights” movement? Or is it just that he comes from a political family, and is some special breed of sell-out?

You are still going on with ad hominem attacks. What Bentley said is that captured ukronazis should be used as slave manpower to rebuild Donetsk and it seems many people from Donetsk agree with him. This is the message.
With respect to Lira and Ritter, you are going on with ad hominem attacks because what they said obfuscate you.

Well, I think Kipling was a racialist in the grand old British Imperial tradition, but he was also more than capable of a top of the hat to a “worthy darkie”.
I would say that he probably held the British to be a pinnacle of humanity, but this didn’t prohibit him from seeing and admiring those worthy others.

It is no longer small, spring and summer are good seasons for fighting.

It can go way bigger. What surprise me is that Tu-22M3 have not seen action. The Russians can smultaneously send a couple of dozen of them with around 15-20 tons of thermobaric bombs per bomber to annihilate those “Maginot lines” in Western Donbass. Why they didn´t do it? I don’t know.

Once, when I was a boy, I opened my front door at night to find a monstrous hissing possum on the stoop.

They are fascinating creatures. Not the least reason being that they are not susceptible to rabies. As I see it, the single American (as in US) marsupial is a validation of the idea that we should be trying to bring back the great, extinct megafauna of Australia, as well as smaller beasts, such as the Tasmanian tiger.

Believe he mentioned Gaelic-speaking blacks in Nova Scotia in Captains Courageous – a subject that I would have rather he skipped over.

“Hey, Tom Platt! Come t’ supper to-night?” said the Henry Clay; and so questions and answers flew back and forth. Men had met one another before, dory-fishing in the fog, and there is no place for gossip like the Bank fleet. They all seemed to know about Harvey’s rescue, and asked if he were worth his salt yet. The young bloods jested with Dan, who had a lively tongue of his own, and inquired after their health by the town-nicknames they least liked. Manuel’s countrymen jabbered at him in their own language; and even the silent cook was seen riding the jib-boom and shouting Gaelic to a friend as black as himself.

Well, it’s a vague word. Kiplings views were much more nuanced than the caricature than the rather throwaway work of his ‘White Man’s Burden’ eventually painted him into. One of his most recently relevant quotes: ‘making mock of the uniforms that guard you whilst you sleep’.

Traditional Commonsense Racialism =/= autistic HBDist pathological obsession with ‘haplogroups’ and worship of IQ tests.

I don’t think one even has to be conservative, or have ill-will towards foreigners, to see correlation with crime and black population, or the importation of millions of Muslims to Europe was a terrible idea.

Believe he mentioned Gaelic-speaking blacks in Nova Scotia in Captains Courageous – a subject that I would have rather he skipped over.

Lol, does the very idea of that offend you or what? Although I suppose imagining them wroughting the level of violence to Gaelic as they have done to English is curious. I wonder how Haitian sounds to French-speaker, I suppose its drifted quite a bit further than Jamaican Patois has.

That’s why I pretty much restrict my online commenting to this thread. Too much time investment for anything more. I even find the amount that I comment to be a stretch and don’t know how the more prolific pull it off.

Go to any of Steve Sailers threads and see the minds at work there and you’ll stop definitely see no reason to complain about the comment quality at this site-appendix.

Excellent source. An American blogger, making claims based on a blurred photograph, sent to him – no doubt – from Belarus. On March 31, 2022. Just in time!

And here is an official statement from November 22, 2019.

https://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12263177@egNews

The transfer of this complex completes the rearmament of the existing missile units of the Land Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

Tochka-U missiles not in service in Russian Armed Forces — mission to UN

https://tass.com/politics/1423317

Given the proven record of the Kiev regime promoting false allegations and fake evidence, it should be noted that Tochka-U tactical missiles are not in service in the Russian Armed Forces.

I wasn’t complaining about the quality at all. If I thought it wasn’t high quality I wouldn’t bother. The combination of Ron’s commenting platform par excellence along with such an eclectic group of intelligent individuals makes for a great experience.

Lol, does the very idea of that offend you or what?

Partly, I’m trying to make a joke against the way the woke have presented him.

But partly I am serious.

Am sure you haven’t read any of the books by the Blasket Islanders, but, in one of them, a man relates, that when he was a boy in the 1800s, a group of sailors came to the island, (now abandoned and conceptually once seen as one of the last tiny holdouts of traditional culture) which included a black, who didn’t speak the language, but he was just like any other man.

Even though these are old, I recognize them for what they are: instances of color-signaling. As I see it, a deep moral failing and special susceptibility among Europeans, with runaway potential for endless evils. It is very disturbing to see that people were susceptible to it back then. But more than that, these sort of things are small footholds for deconstruction. Props for people to pretend that Canada or Ireland were always multicult. And, frankly, I think they somewhat ruin the experience of escapism, by highlighting a proto-globalism.

But I don’t think that of every instance. I quite liked the old book Mr. Hack recommended A Vagabond Journey Around the World, though it mentioned blacks in a French port, because I felt it had healthy skepticism of radical universalism, and an appreciation for the differences among people and places.

I think living in a Minotaurs maze sounds fun

Not practical. But for one plus, it would have the defensive value in the medieval times.

You can try to navigate in a traditional city, imagine the confusion for invading soldiers https://www.google.com/maps/@37.389448,-5.9900259,3a,75y,24.04h,85.07t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sOuDF1nrDRA6xx3M-nl7eMQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

Tokyo is downright bland and ugly architecturally! But manages to achieve – especially at night as you say

They moved most of the aspects of the traditional Japanese life into the square office buildings, at least at nightime. It has something like the villages of the Miyazaki anime “Spirited Away”.

Upon reflection, I think you have convinced me regarding a grid design 🙂

I didn’t understand your dislike of Haussmann’s Paris. It’s an example where the rebuilding of the city, didn’t result exactly in elimination of a traditional active street life.

Because the Russian government claims are a reliable source.

I actually just re-read Captains Courageous a few months ago and enjoyed it thoroughly. Picked it off the kid’s shelf for a quick read as I’m sometimes prone to do.

I didn’t have any issue with the black Gaelic speakers. It’s not like he made it up as some piece of woke revisionism.

Seeing as a great many Irish were sold into slavery to work in the New World (being sold for far cheaper prices than Africans I might add) there is actually a fair bit of crossover here between blacks and Irish. This sometimes led to oddities like Kipling’s black Gaelic speaking cook.

There’s a little bit of most anything for most anybody that can be found within that book. Among other things, I enjoyed finding out how vagabonds of that time could find financial and life support assistance from various organizations like the Red Cross and governmental handouts from local ambassadorial offices and embassies etc. I remember one scene where several fellow travelers were enjoying some sunshine on the lawn in front of one of these places, sharing tobacco to be smoked within pipes, exchanging information that only these world travelers probably knew about. Even travel tickets to the next port of call…..the trip through Southeast Asia was quite colorful, as I remember. 🙂

I think living in a Minotaurs maze sounds fun

This reminds me that there was an ancient coin from Crete which had the Minotaur’s maze on it.

To me, it is such a brilliant design because it is evocative of so many things. The difficulties to be solved in business and in navigating the right price. “Buyer beware!” And the moral quandaries that money and materialism can create. The potential for runaway greed, or losing sight of what is important.

There were at least a hundred and one great designs like that rooted in history and with moral resonance that the Euro currency could have borrowed. Instead, they chose very sterile designs, intentionally without any people on them. Designs that, I would argue, were evil, and which often replaced better designs, even without needing to delve deeply into the past.

Not practical. But for one plus, it would have the defensive value in the medieval times.

Yes, in fact I was reading that traditional Tokyo was designed as a system of confusing and meandering streets rather than a grid precisely to confound invaders, and that the house numbering and street name system was made deliberately non-logical, so that visiting foreigners had a hard time finding addresses and cabbies had to have specialized local knowledge.

I for one am perfectly willing to trade practicality for aesthetic charm, and I think such an impractical street system would create endless opportunities for fascinating walks and interesting discoveries and also force me to learn my local neighborhood in depth.

I didn’t understand your dislike of Haussmann’s Paris. It’s an example where the rebuilding of the city, didn’t result exactly in elimination of a traditional active street life.

I don’t hate Paris and do acknowledge that it has some charm. However, it seemed like altogether too modern and orderly a city to me, and to not reflect the pre-modern Old European mentality that as an American I had come to seek out.

Americans who come from an urban landscape that reflects the ideals of modern rationality and efficiency at the expense of aesthetic charm or spiritual values, crave contact with the pre-modern mentality when they visit Europe.

I found London to be by far the more fascinating and beautiful city, and I couldn’t understand why Paris was celebrated since the 19th century as the Great Beauty of Europe.

But I think the clue lies in the City of Lights moniker – it is precisely the modern character of Paris that so impressed the 19th century, the open and wide grands boulevards that replaced the winding and dark medieval streets, and the bright street lights that Paris excelled in that banished any lingering medieval mystery.

That was what the modernizing 19th century wanted – modernity, bright lights, wide open streets, not medieval mystery and traditional charm.

And yet the most important and interesting experiences of life lie in the shadows, and a City of Lights may be superficial and dull…

The Japanese writer Tanizaki iirc wrote an extraordinary treatise on traditional Japanese aesthetics called “In Praise of Shadows” that is well worth reading as it describes a sensibility utterly foreign to modernity, as Tanizaki was very aware of.

The Japanese also love rainy days, mist shrouded mountains, and sadness, things also under the ban of the bright shining lights of rational modernity…

I actually just re-read Captains Courageous a few months ago and enjoyed it thoroughly.

My favorite work of Kipling.

I am actually kind of surprised that it isn’t also Aaron B’s favorite (as I recall he likes Kim, though I am not sure if he has read CC), but I suppose part of the pleasure of experiencing anything is having your own tastes.

I’m such a stick in the mud about these things.

Are you sure this “i-wiki-reader” demon of which you speak won’t steal my soul while I’m reading?

But in all seriousness, the e-reader does sound like it has some very convenient access advantages. On the other hand, I can’t even get to all the books I already own so it’s not like I’m really starved for reading material.

On technology I like to make somewhat arbitrary lines in the sand which I don’t cross since I feel that otherwise it will creep in everywhere, inexorably, like the Blob!

My flip phone is one such line in the sand and I suspect the e-reader will be as well. Thanks to you (and AaronB) for the good suggestions. It would probably be prudent and sensible for me to follow your advice, but I’m not sure it’s my style.

I would say that he probably held the British to be a pinnacle of humanity, but this didn’t prohibit him from seeing and admiring those worthy others.

Kipling was very inconsistent in the way he thought of the British; while he probably generally thought of them this way he was also quite ready to call them flannelled fools at the wicket, or muddied oafs at the goals if it served the particular message he was trying to convey at the moment.

My wife liked your open thread humor. You may be giving her ideas for our home school curriculum with the second one. Hmmmm.

I think the Maze can be a great spiritual symbol – it suggests complexity, unknowability, a journey and pilgrimage through complicated and challenging terrain, the circular character of life and existence, and the navigation of difficulties before one emerges into freedom and light.

Importantly, it isn’t a linear straight line – the symbol of logic. Straight lines don’t exist in nature.

You shouldn’t guess others’ motives. I was clear in stating that it was interesting to me that there is a pattern of people taking a pro-Russian side also being morally bankrupt. The fact that Ritter is a sexual offender whop preys on underage teenage girls doesn’t invalidate his points about Ukraine: his previous statements about Ukraine do that.

Disgraceful cuckery. Just disgraceful. Murkowski too; hopefully she’s done for this year. Susan Collins, well, Maine, not much you can when you’re forced to impress a pack of demshit voters. But fucking Romney, argh. Pure vanity, nothing more. Da First Black Woman on da Supreme Court – only an anesthetic could stop them jubilantly repeating that phrase. Yeah, racial oblivion may be forever, but that is nothing – nothing – compared to the moral glow of racial righteousness. This alone, no Jewish batteries required, will bury the white man.

Many Eastern Europeans are saying, “Send Starstreaks, send Javelins, send fighter jets, killer drones, and tanks. Send everything including the kitchen sink, set up a NFZ, and risk WW3, and you are a villain or a coward, if you don’t.”

But what have they sent us, in the West? What “bravery” and what “help” have they demonstrated in our existential fight?

They saved you from the Turks in the 17th century and from the Bolsheviks in the early 20th.

But many Eastern Europeans are laughing at us, and saying “Good riddance!” and “You deserve it!” And pretending that they are immune to it, when all the signs point to “not so much.”

Islam in Europe:

Eastern Europe is the last reservoir of pure Europeans, with a largely traditional culture. It ought to be protected. Putin has sent Asian Buryats and Muslim Chechens to brutalize a piece of it.

https://twitter.com/Kharagket/status/1480223475746971656

If Zelensky were truly an honorable man with the heart of a warrior, then I suppose, when he had all those eyes on him, he could have cut half a minute, from his endless speeches in order to say something like “Oh, and there may be Africans and Indians, or other people, falsely claiming to be Ukrainians. But don’t let them in, because we don’t look like that, and it hurts both of us, when you let them exploit your generosity and let them prey on you.”

But he didn’t. Even though, at the very least there seem to be tens of thousands of them, and more likely hundreds of thousands. He couldn’t take half a minute. Probably because he doesn’t care, and because he knows that it would hurt his potential for personal grift.

Instead, he was using WW2 to try to guilt the Germans (on the whole, I’ve never seen such a woefully-degraded and abused people – thought they aren’t all that way) into gibs and using MLK to build up blacks to Americans, as the ultimate in aspirational power. And trying to extract weapons from Ireland, as though it is a military power, or even the smallest country needs to have a bloody hand in the conflict, and can’t limit itself to humanitarian aide.

So you are willing to allow the reduction of untouched Europe because blacks?

And no there are not 100,000s of Africans with fake Ukrainian passports lol.

Because Russian Ministry of Defence had no reason to lie about that. Years ago.

Because Ukraine has no other missiles, and has a reason to perpetrate a false flag attack and blame it on Russia. Ukraine has a reason to not let people flee the town, and Russia has no reason to attack a train station.

Russia might need to hit the railroad, but not the street in front of it, full of people. Even if Russia indeed tried to hit the railroad, but missed it, the choice of a cluster munition is inappropriate for the task.

And Russia has better missiles to use for it.

So you are willing to allow the reduction of untouched Europe because blacks?

It is not in my power to allow or disallow, though I would not categorize the place as “untouched.” In my living memory, most of Western Europe was better. To me, it looks as though it has been touched by globohomo with a heavy and aggressive hand. I saw one of Zelensky’s skits with a black at the supermarket.

And no there are not 100,000s of Africans with fake Ukrainian passports lol.

From what I’ve seen, the number of “fake Ukrainians” is about 30%. And that might be an undercount, as tales of success spread, and inflation and trade disruptions take hold, to increase pressure. That’s easily hundreds of thousands, when all is said and done. It could even potentially be millions – that was the number with Syria, and it was not really a white country, for the most part.

I’m sure that they don’t all have Ukrainian passports, but they don’t need them. All they need to do is to get on the same buses and trains and say they are Ukrainians. That is our ridiculous reality. It is an ideology, driven from above.

I didn’t even know that possums could hiss – can they really? And I have an even harder time imagining a “monstrous” possum. Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?

Regarding extinction and the Tasmanian tiger, it hit me a bit hard when, back in 3rd grade, I learned that that animal had gone extinct. Unlike the dinosaurs, whose extinction had occurred eons ago (but knowledge of which also left me wistful), this poor creature had met that sad fate in our own day, which somehow made it seem “more real” (perhaps more threatening) to me.

I probably didn’t use these words to myself back then, but the thought, in one form or another, that “nature can be cruel” did occur to me. And nowadays I’d add that nature may be beautiful pines and glistening lakes, but it’s also blood and guts, muck and ooze, broken limbs, horrific disease, paralyzing fear, pain and more pain, all before the awesome finality of death. Not altogether a pretty picture, if you ask me.

“Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed,” said Francis Bacon (AaaronB recoiling!). Nature must thus continue to be investigated, using the most precise tools of investigation at our disposal; we must never allow it to be sacralized by obscurantists and anti-humanists. To take a page from Thulean Fiend’s book, we must either bend that bitch to our will or heroically perish in the attempt. There is no other way.

Straight lines don’t exist in nature.

So what are they then, supernatural? I guess humans may indeed be gods after all.

Yeah, this could go bigger. Maybe one concern is that vaporizing the “Maginot lines” would also vaporize a lot of civilians. And maybe they are still hoping that many units will surrender.

It is hard to tell, but it is shaping up as a total disaster for Ukraine. The others involved, Russia, EU, will get hurt but will get over it with time. Kiev is behaving as if they didn’t have any long term plans, as if it was all about now, about emotional drama – in effect they are being nihilists. An interesting art genre, but not a good way to run a modern country. This one is not just for the history books, this will be studied by psychiatrists.

I didn’t even know that possums could hiss – can they really?

Yes, and more impressively than cats, especially with their bigger fangs.

Though it only scared me in the sense of a jump scare, and because I did not know about the rabies thing back then. I closed the door for a minute, and it was gone, and I also went on my way, out into the night.

Was thinking recently about cities.

How NW Europe did not really have big ones until recently. And how in other places they may have been hemmed in by walls.

I consider that street-widening commissions were an early attempt to deal with the fact that cities are unnatural places, antithetical to our spiritual well-being. But it seems obvious that they failed.

Perhaps, in the future there will be new analogues, where people try to iron out the deficiencies of modern cities with new, grand plans. Perhaps, they will solve some of the problems, while not solving, or even creating others. I think it will be a while before we work out all the kinks, if we ever do.

Silvio, your concern here is to avoid pain and death, and I get that. But what if fighting nature is precisely what invites pain and death?

Your beautiful quote, that one must obey nature to command her, does not suggest a fight, and does not suggest domination, but mutual cooperation, humility, and respect. This quote also shows that the law of non contradiction doesn’t work when it comes to deep truths, as I said 🙂

Your sorrow at the death of dinosaurs and tasmanian devils makes very clear that you instinctively regard nature as sacred, and her destruction as killing something inside you 🙂

And that is to your credit.

Your decision to view nature as an enemy – and an object – can only come from a radical failure to see the “larger picture”, the whole, that is a feature of thinking too much and too long in terms of logic and analysis, which is the disease all of us moderns suffer from.

I don’t blame you at all.

I’m currently reading about how the concept of “two minds” manifests in certain traditions like Buddhism and Taoism – Buddhism used to call them original mind and ordinary mind.

Ordinary mind is the intellect, which alienates us from reality by placing a map in place of the real thing, and keeps us trapped in reactive emotion by losing sight of the larger context.

Original mind is direct awareness of reality unmediated by concepts.- spiritual practice is to situate ordinary mind, with it’s narrow focus, back into the larger context of this more expansive awareness.

As a civilization, we have become completely trapped in ordinary mind, with it’s narrow focus and anxieties, panics, and fears.

The way back is to cultivate an awareness of reality that is non conceptual – or rather, to situate concepts in a larger context, so we are no longer trapped in them.

Everything is more impressive, when you are young and small, especially when you are not expecting to see it.

Oh I see. For some reason I thought this happened recently lol.

I have had very limited contact with wildlife, but to the extent that I have, I think I was less scared or grossed out when I was a kid. For example, I can remember two instances of snakes that slithered past near by without it even raising my heart rate. And for a short time I had this fascination with capturing spiders in jars (I didn’t realize you needed to feed them, so they died pretty quickly lol). Nowadays, any snake I spotted in the wild would totally freak me out, and as for spiders, curse the twisted demiurge that created that most vile of species.

Last jump scare I had, there is track by the river near me that I like to go for runs/walks along, often in the dead of night. For a stretch of that track, there are these tall straws between the river and the track, and on a few occasions this small kangaroo, or maybe wallaby (I can’t tell the diff), has gone hopping through them as I’m near by. It’s happened a few times, and made me jump each time. This is quite close to the city center, not on the fringes of urban settlement, and I never would have thought I’d come across a kanga there.

The Russian Federation sits atop 1/4 to 1/3 of the world’s resources. Real wealth like bauxite, oil, nat gas, palladium, potash…..not fake wealth like the stuff found in office desk drawers and compuker memories like annuities, reverse mortgages, insurance, stock and bond swindles. The globo-homo empire thought they had Russia’s resources lock up back in 1991 to 1993 when they parachuted in Jeff Sachs and his IMF jewboys to install a chit system and loot the place. An ex-KGB colonel moonlighting as a cab driver ejected the looters. The globo-homo empire has been pissed ever since, and still trying to bust up Russia and loot its vast resources……without starting a nuke war. Looks like the globo-homos will just have to be satisfied with looting two lesser resource states, Canada and Australia.

Original mind is direct awareness of reality unmediated by concepts.- spiritual practice is to situate ordinary mind, with it’s narrow focus, back into the larger context of this more expansive awareness.

Relating to this I had an interesting experience today.

I don’t work Fridays, as increasingly fewer Americans do (one of the few positive trends).

I was feeling a bit tired today and lay down in bed and just relaxed, doing nothing much, and just had the spontaneous idea to pray to God – I don’t subscribe to any particular religion – but just to take prayer seriously for once and actually focus on praying to an “Other” – a mysterious God that I could not know or understand.

I felt my mind gradually emptying of all concepts and disturbances and the room becoming very vivid and clear, and drifting off into a deep sleep.

I woke up about an hour later and decided to walk to the grocery store to buy some avocados and bananas – I just got another shipment of raw cream for the bananas 🙂

As I stepped outside everything seemed remarkably vivid, clear, and luminous – as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. It was a warm day and the air was incredibly soft and pleasant and the sunlight impossibly clear and luminous.

Everything seemed completely different even though it was exactly the same, and for once the incessant chatter in my mind was stilled – in fact I couldn’t think of anything to think about and wasn’t forming any concepts – an extreme rarity for someone like me who lives way too much in his head 🙂

I walked for about ten minutes in this vivid new reality with everything seeming so much alive and with a great sense of peace and relaxation.

Is this a small taste – but a taste – of what happens when you don’t approach Reality through the mediation of concepts – a map – but apprehend it directly?

I’m sure peaceful citizens of Ulster would also have recognized the attitude.

This was the first thing that jumped to my mind. There is truly a night and day difference in temperament between Sinn Fein types and just regular Catholics in Northern Ireland, even though regular Catholics also strongly support a united Ireland.

Maybe Ukrainians are just the Irish of Eastern Europe. Except a lot grouchier and with even worse food, if such a thing is even possible.

Just to drop you a note: I made a start on McGilchrist’s “The Matter With Things” today. He had come to my attention through youtube recommends last year, and I listened to a couple of his talks before bed (trying to put myself to sleep, which is one way I deal with periodic bouts of insomnia). They were interesting and – dare I say – rational enough for me that I decided to give them a closer listen during my walks. He definitely got my attention, let’s just say.

So your recent posts about his work served as a reminder to me to read him. I decided on The Matter With Things rather than his earlier work because, frankly, neuroscience-y talk bores the pants off me. I am much more interested in the implications of findings about the brain’s operations than in understanding the workings themselves. I’m barely past the introduction, and so far, I have to say, I don’t much like what I am reading and I fear it’s only going to get worse. But I shall persevere – for fear of not following through on a public commitment, if no other reason.

Poor writing skills and even poorer thinking skills.

The Russians are just as capable of using civilians as human shields as are the Ukrainians.

Have you ever considered that the Russians don’t want the Donbas civilians to leave in mass for several reasons? They’re there presumably to help protect the denizens there from being overtaken by the “Nazis”. How might it look if they continue to hold on to these areas but yet the majority of its inhabitants have left, mostly to Western Ukraine and further West? It seems that the only story that Kremlinoids have let is to blame every single massacre on the Ukrainian side. If the photos aren’t enough proof of what’s been going on, you only have to listen to the eye witness accounts of those involved to really find out what happened.

The numerous Kiev regime lies get covered up. Prior to the Russian military action, up to one million Donbass refugees went to Russia, with another million from other parts of Ukraine doing likewise. This most recent strike wasn’t in a Russian/rebel held area. Kiev regime encourages people to either stay or go west.

The April 8 ABC Evening News telecast saw David Muir and the network matter of fact say that Russia launched a deadly missile strike, blatantly omitting the counter claim particulars. Let’s see how this one plays out.

https://www.rt.com/russia/553533-kramatorsk-missile-strike-origin/

Given that cities are unnatural and unhealthy, at least as permanent residences – I believe some hunter-gatherers would coalesce into these vast and festive cities on a seasonal basis – I think winding narrow streets stick much more to natural patterns and are more intrinsically satisfying.

The winding narrow streets of European cities attract countless nostalgic tourists, while Dallas TX is a byword for urban soullessness.

I believe the wide boulevards were part of the modern drive to make cities efficient and practical. Modernity is also associated with a vast inhuman scale that is in stark contrast to the pleasantly human scale of older cities, as it’s the age of the Machine.

As for cities, I think the hunter gatherers got it right – in small doses, these great agglomerations of humanity can be awesomely fun, exciting, and festive, and can add to the experience of human life (of course provided they are chaotic traditional cities brimming with life and not antiseptic modern cities that are tightly sanitized and controlled).

But fairly soon, one must return to the leave and beauty of nature.

ilviosilver – nothing in nature exhibits straight lines, except perhaps the horizon – but that too is a curve upon closer inspection 🙂

I don’t know about them but I think all those defending the Ukraine are morally bankrupt and all the talk about the Ukraine defending its sovereignty and independence is bunkum. Once the Ukraine started hosting US bioweapons WMD labs with an intent of attacking Russia you can throw all those arguments out of the window. There has been extensive research done on what those biolabs were up to and they probably did do some test releases. Ron Unz has shown that US attacked PR China and Iran with a bioweapon WMD and others have shown that bioweapons have been used by USA on the Chinese agricultural sector. The Ukrainian bioweapons WMDs are part of this global network of US WMD biolabs so Russia was completely justified to enter the country and destroy them. This is no aggression but legitimate self defence against illegal WMDs by any international legal or moral standards. No doubts about it. In fact Russia would be totally justified in responding with gas WMD against a country that developed and used bioweapon WMDs, and gas can be contained to the target zones and would not spread far and wide unlike with the US’s bioweapon WMD attack on China and Iran. I know it sounds reprehensible to justify WMD use but US and all its allies who hosted those labs started it. In fact if Russia doesn’t have the capacity to occupy all of the Ukraine I would not object to it turning the Ukraine into a kind of huge Gaza strip that it will enforce a no fly zone over, lob missiles against any sign of military and WMD development and carry out military incursions to destroy any congregations of Nazis and mercenaries and generally keep the Ukrainians from rising again to threaten Russia’s security, lives, and well being. To Hell with such a Ukraine!

Not like the hate mongering neo-Nazi bigots including ambassador Melnyk and the undemocratically appointed neo-Nazi Filatov in Dnipro.

Another Kiev regime mayor was featured on a PBS NewsHour segment with Nick Schifrin, who is a vile anti-Russian propagandist. This particular segment included a blurred by PBS wall photo of Bandera in that mayor’s office as e referred to Russians as cockroaches. Likewise when no context given whenever the Banderite black and red flag is shown in Western mass media. Kiev regime-controlled Ukraine formally honors Bandera. Neo-Nazi is appropriate.

An American has an opinion about cooking. Certainly Ukrainian cuisine is better than Irish, imao.

West Ukrainian academic Serhiy Kudelia, who is clearly not pro-Russian/pro-Donbass rebel nevertheless acknowledges the obvious about the majority of Donbass rebels being from Donbass, followed by other parts of the former Ukrainian SSR.

American revolutionaries greatly benefited from French support and the help of foreign mercenaries. Much if not most of the American Revolutionary War was fought among the American colonists.

NATOization of Ukraine has been ongoing.

https://www.eurasiareview.com/04042022-handicapping-ukraine-and-russia-west-differences-oped/

https://www.eurasiareview.com/11032022-what-russia-desires-oped/

Ron Unz calls for escuadrones de la muerte to save peace and help peace loving Putin.

https://www.unz.com/isteve/bucha-more-like-the-ss-or-the-lapd/#comment-5281121
For twenty years I’ve been saying that if we’d simply rounded up and summarily butchered all the Neocons together with their wives and children, we’d have a lot more peace and quiet in America. But nobody took my sensible advice, so here we are now…

Mikel should take a notice that killing some children can save his 7 years old daughter from a nuclear war. Perhaps Mikel should volunteer for the butchering of “wives and children” part.

Just as US invasion of Iraq is illegitimate so is Russia’s in Ukraine.

I think one of the problems is that a lot of ‘problematic’ opinions and perspectives from continental Europe are filtered out by the Anglophone media and with its particular ideological/cultural lenses. Unless you know the local languages or have some kind of long term contact with the countries it is harder to get a sense of this.

Like in Ukraine, it seems fairly clear that this is a war between two competing nations and national ideas, and something like the following view of national identity still seems quite pervasive in the region (even if it is held implicitly):

The national community, the motherland, the state, are not associations stemming from the personal choice of members, but the handiwork of nature and necessity.

The unity of a nation, furthermore, is not the product of a certain number of individuals living at one given moment and having in common certain ideas, certain passing fancies, but of a certain number of families reaching out from age to age and having certain permanent interests; the land to be defended, the continuity of the race to be assured, a fund of moral and economic capital to be developed.

Imo Ukrainians (and Russians) are too involved in the immediate struggle and don’t have the depth of knowledge of Western/Anglo culture to know how to present this angle, and a lot of the big Western institutional supporters of Ukraine don’t want it presented either; their spin on the conflict is more that it is Ukraine’s attempt to break with any ethnic and historical influences and adopt the globalist version of liberal democracy they promote.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6Onsr1FzHK/

Absolutely not. Any country hosting WMD biowarfare labs has no legitimacy and its borders should not be respected just like the bioweapons released from those labs respect no borders. Even some Pacific islander could get sick and die from the products of such WMD bioweapons labs as has resulted from the USA WMD bioweapons Covid-19 attack on PR China and Iran, but would be quite safe from a retaliatory gas or nuclear WMD attack on the country hosting such WMD bioweapons labs as is Ukraine. In fact bioweapons are the dirtiest and worst WMDs as they have no limits in space or time since they can result in never-ending global pandemics while gas and nuclear attacks are mostly limited to the target area. So I wouldn’t bat an eyelid if Russia gassed or nuked the Ukraine as the UkroNazis were hosting these most despicable and evil WMD bioweapons labs and probably already used them in some pilot/test attacks. I’d feel sorry for the innocent civilians even though these WMD bioweapons labs may have been secret but what can I do about it? They should have got informed and pressured their governments to close all such labs otherwise incoming gas and nuke missiles are perfectly justified. And if you are informed about such labs, as obviously you are by reading the UR, and still backing the Ukraine which was armed with WMD bioweapons as has been proven with even Nuland confessing to it then you are pure evil yourself.

One as Many; Many as One.
vs
Reject the Many for One.

[MORE]

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

The sales pitch to the Western European’s with the real heavy weaponry by the Impoverished Slav’s of Warsaw and Kiev and Bucharest is that “we are the last pure Europeans” soooo er um….”defend us!”

The chutzpah AP, the Chutzpah of you people.

You are arguing with two accounts who operate in bad faith.

There are no consistent humanitarian principles that the west operates under. Ukraine is probably as bad as Russia if not worse historically.

My over riding concern is the immanent pauperisation of Germany over these illogical energy policies. Why can’t they be allowed to buy gas directly from Russia so that their industries and workers can do what they do best? No British American or Ukrainian has given a sufficiently convincing explanation.

The genocide handbook explains that the Russian policy of “denazification” is not directed against Nazis in the sense that the word is normally used. The handbook grants, with no hesitation, that there is no evidence that Nazism, as generally understood, is important in Ukraine. It operates within the special Russian definition of “Nazi”: a Nazi is a Ukrainian who refuses to admit being a Russian.

On this absurd definition, where Nazis have to be Ukrainians and Ukrainians have to be Nazis, Russia cannot be fascist, no matter what Russians do. This is very convenient. If “Nazi” has been assigned the meaning “Ukrainian who refuses to be Russian” then it follows that no Russian can be a Nazi. Since for the Kremlin being a Nazi has nothing to do with fascist ideology, swastika-like symbols, big lies, rallies, rhetoric of cleansings, aggressive wars, abductions of elites, mass deportations, and the mass killing of civilians, Russians can do all of these things without ever having to ask if they themselves on the wrong side of the historical ledger. And so we find Russians implementing fascist policies in the name of “denazification.”

https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-genocide-handbook?s=r

utu, first off, a reply to a comment you wrote on the previous Open Thread (https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-183-russia-ukraine/#comment-5268103).
You wrote:

Actually Ron Unz says pretty much the same that if Ukraine did not resist there would be no suffering. I wonder how he would respond to home invasion? How would he know that unresisted home invasion would not be followed with invasion of his body?

Metaphors have a vey limited usefulness when one is seeking a comprehension of complex events and processes. On the other hand, they are very effective in terms of emotional persuasion, and that is why I will try to dilute the effect of your comment by proposing alternative instrumentalizations of figurative speech.
The image you use — home invasion followed by rape — implies a use-and-discard situation. That is not the case here, so a slightly different metaphor is required: that of forced marriage. The role of EU and NATO would in this case be comparable to that of a young man whom the young maiden has chosen as a husband. This fellow has courted the young lady but in this time of danger he has not fully committed himself.
For fairness’ sake, I shall provide a different metaphor which suits the pro-Russia side. Suppose that a man has a sister (or daughter) who has rebellious tendencies. She has been hanging with bad elements and has become addicted to drugs. He invades the place where she is living and tries to drag her by force to a rehab center. She puts up a fight. She asks her drug dealer friend for help. He can only do so much, etc.
———————-
Now for your present comment.
Aside from your objections, which I endorse, Ron Unz’s considerations are very silly because he wouldn’t know who his targets were. Would the Trump supporters be included? What about John Mearsheimer? His theory of “offensive realism” is hawkish and he is anti-China. Would Ron Unz have him “butchered” eventually?

Let me guess: you think Ukraine shot down the Malaysian plane.

A historic change just happened. As of today, a majority of Sweden’s parliament is in favor of joining NATO. The final holdouts on the right, the Sweden Democrats, changed their position from opposition to now supporting NATO membership.

A minor complication is that we have a minority government led by the center-left, and our current prime minister is decidedly more cool on the prospect. Will her views matter? Only in the short run.

The elephant in the room is Finland. Their entry into NATO now looks not only possible but outright probable. Our national security is deeply enmeshed with that of our eastern neighbors, going back centuries. Indeed, Sweden’s neutrality was in large part upheld thanks to our eastern flank, most notably during WWII and Stalin’s invasion.

The Finns will make their decision in the coming weeks and months ahead. If they decide to join, I suspect the chances of us following them are very high.

Sweden has been officially neutral for over 200 years and it’s a policy that has served us well, but the circumstances have changed. If Finland becomes part of NATO then we would be only Scandinavian country outside of it, which wouldn’t make much sense.

Of course, as members of the EU we already have a security commitment to our fellow EU states but this would deepen our involvement even further. Putin appears to have significantly miscalculated how effective his show of force would be in deterring any further entrants into the alliance.

I am in favor of disbanding NATO and replacing it with a pan-European superstructure, but that ought to be a longer-term goal. NATO membership is an acceptable intermediate step. Germany’s recent decision to boost their military spending by ~100 billion euros is the right path and many other countries are now following suit. It’s time to militarise Europe once more, and unite it under a massive security umbrella.

Okay, there is another category of pro-Russians, in addition to criminals and sexual perverts: crazy people with paranoid delusions. This group at least is less morally culpable I suppose.

You do realize that Russia is the world’s leading country in terms of bio weapon programs and that anything Ukraine allegedly does was inherited from Soviet times and is a shadow of Russia’s programs (kind of like Ukraine’s string missile programs are junior versions of Russia’s).

By your logic, Russia should also get nuked. And maybe the USA too because you claim that it directs these programs.

Putin appears to have significantly miscalculated how effective his show of force would be in deterring any further entrants into the alliance.

This is a “polite” way of saying that yet again, Russia’s actions have pushed states near Russia to join defensive alliances protective against Russia.

Now Russians are histrionically shrieking about Finland’s “destruction,” which makes them a nation that reminds us all what true derangement looks like. Yes, transgenderism is eccentric and allowing mass immigration is overly kind, but these are bizarre luxuries from strength, while Russia’s antisocial and generally nutcase behaviour against much stronger forces is only compounding their many flaws.

A rich man with many friends may dress as a woman on Saturday nights and invite refugees into his house and he will likely be ok, but a poor isolated headcase cannot go around making obscene threats to everyone and invading and killing their neighbours.

Tinpot third world countries must realise what they are and not get wasted on their own progaganda which affects to thinking that America is the true tinpot third world country. People get too lost in their own ego-boosting rhetoric and prognostications. Sometimes, they need to remember to just look at the very basics of how the world actually is. Oil countries with GDPs less than Spain are not world powers. End of.

If COVID is an American bioweapon, Chinese Zero COVID policy that locks down all production is economic counter-warfare against America the manufacturing importer.

If you find the early science parts a little dry and boring, it may help to read the more exciting later parts that describes the significance of it all, and return to the science – I have been doing a lot of that kind of skipping around.

The science becomes more interesting once you realize where it is all leading.

The legacy of the USSR’s weapons programs. Ukrainian arms dealers like the Dual Israeli citizen Leonid Minin for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Minin

The Russians per se have not exported chemical, biological weapons. As Communists and post Soviet Ukrainians like Minin have dodged much of the blame.

This is a little evasive but it’s interesting.

Sweden fought a battle with Peter The Great in Poltava, a stones throw away from the current battles in Donbas. After the Russians defeated the Swedes there, an unexpected win by Peter, the Swedish king had to flee to Istanbul and became a pseudo-hostage of the Ottomans. The Swedes then decided to stop being an imperium. After the chastening result of the battle Sweden gradually reduced its claims to the Eastern Baltic.

Sweden has a long and hostile relationship with the Russians. Russia turned Sweden into a post imperial neutral in Poltava.

But they also grow their own food, unlike the Saudis. They also build their own weapons, unlike the Venezuelans, they grow their own luxuries like Tobacco, Cocaine, opium and distil their own alcohol. In addition to petroleum, natural gas and coal. Kursk has the best iron ore, it’s why Hughes built his factory in Donetsk…it’s endlessly endowed with everything but a few warm weather ports. The Anglo American strategy is to prevent them from having these ports. That’s all we should be concerned with. We can keep them out of the oceans. We can limit them to the inland seas. But that’s all we should stick our necks out for.

The winding narrow streets of European cities attract countless nostalgic tourists, while Dallas TX is a byword for urban soullessness.

Dallas has some of the nicest places to live on earth.

They’re all out of my price range unfortunately. If I could afford to I would not hestitate to live there.

I think this picture may show the maze coin that you were thinking of. At their high point, ancient Greek coinage is really perhaps unsurpassed in it’s elegance and design. The relief is quite high as well which is notable too, giving their coinage a real depth and sculptural quality.

I was an avid coin collector as a kid, and had a fair number of Roman bronze coins since they are fairly inexpensive. Unfortunately, Greek coinage was far outside my pay grade. There is some Roman coinage in the higher denominations which comes pretty close to the Greek in technical ability, but overall the Roman coinage is far cruder and less artistically interesting. It is all political signalling, where the Greeks had an incredible variety of themes.

I completely agree on modern coinage. It’s completely graceless and ugly. An eyesore like the rest of the modern project.

Sure – but it’s not city living 🙂

As a city, Dallas sucks.

Although honestly, suburbs are pretty but soulles.

interesting to me that there is a pattern of people taking a pro-Russian side also being morally bankrupt.

Are you saying that Ukraine supporters are paragons of morality? That would make Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden avatars of superior virtue.

Sadly, the world is full of corruption. Imperfect humans are found on all sides of the conflict.

Eastern Europe is the last reservoir of pure Europeans, with a largely traditional culture. It ought to be protected. Putin has sent Asian Buryats and Muslim Chechens to brutalize a piece of it.

Rashida Tlaib, a key voice for SJW Islam, supports Ukraine: (1)

Regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which loomed large in Biden’s speech, Tlaib said, “Over the past few days, we have all watched in horror as Russia launched an illegal and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine. We stand with the people of Ukraine.”
…
We must welcome Ukrainian refugees from all walks of life to the United States.”

All Infidels (Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, etc.) need to be free of Muslim threats. George IslamoSoros and his Open [Muslim] Society Foundation exist to make Europe more SJW Islamic. Multiculturalist Jihadi invaders need to be expelled from all Christian lands. Not just Eastern Europe.

The obvious first step towards saving Christianity — End the fighting between Christian Russia and Christian Ukraine.

PEACE 😇
__________

(1) https://www.foxnews.com/politics/squad-member-rashida-tlaib-delivers-progressive-response-to-bidens-state-of-the-union

An old villager once told me: ‘I like the Anglos, they are very nice people, but they like to plunder‘. This is a problem for the rest of the world: some join in as second-tier plunderers, some resist, but most see it as an un-mutable reality until the smiling Western thieves show up. Everybody knows that at its core the West has mostly pretty words and weapons.

Russia’s resources are a real dilemma because the West desperately wants them but cannot accept that the locals would benefit. Something about a mental pecking order in the Western mind – we see it even here on a relatively smart forum all the time: the fast descend into hatred, lying and double-standards. It shows the Western deep unhappiness that it has turned out this way: Russians having it and the West wanting it. It drives them into hysteria. Deep inside they think it is unfair – as the witch-bomber once said publicly.

Anybody who thinks that this war is fought over who sets the language policy in Kiev, or how many tons of bee-droppings will EU import from Ukraine, is a simpleton. This is it: the assault on the eastern resources. It either works or the West will enter a slow decline – costs will go up and the reputation (‘soft power’) will inevitably follow. They may choose not to take a loss as an answer – and that’s where the danger lies.

It’s been three decades since the fall of the USSR so the Ukraine had plenty of time to close them down and destroy the bioweapons. Anyway, evidence has come to light that these WMD bioweapons labs are being funded by USA and the Pentagon and that the foreigners working in them have been given diplomatic status. Obviously nuking a nuclear power presents a problem of escalation which then could threaten everybody’s lives, even some Pacific islander, but a limited strike on a non-nuclear country wouldn’t threaten life on earth. Of course there are possibilities that USA has been funding similar research even in rival countries, such as say Wuhan in PR China, but has that really been conclusively proven? Has Ron Unz’s research shown that Covid-19 actually originated in that lab?

As an independent observer my main concern is about threats of bioweapons from such labs to all of us. Otherwise I still think Russia’s arguments for attacking seem more valid, and I wish it hadn’t come to this but I can’t see how it could have been avoided given the politics of Ukraine’s leadership of choosing to be on the side of NATO and USA in a world where clear lines are being drawn.

Perhaps Mikel should volunteer for the butchering of “wives and children” part.

Probably german_reader’s decision is the right one. I’m going to take a break too. I get more than enough moronic takes everyday when I read the MSM with the difference that I’m not incited to debate them.

I may just see if AaronB or Barbarossa bring up more agreeable topics of conversation while you and your mariachis take this forum to the same level as the rest of the site.

I have heard that in the minds of some Hindus that monotheism and polytheism are not really exclusive. The multitude of divinities in polytheism can be regarded as the innumerable facets in a great gem, each throwing their own distinctive light, yet still representing an unified totality.

Perhaps that is what you mean?

One as Many; Many as One.

I would think that Sikhism is much more strongly geared toward this interpretation than Hinduism broadly. I’m not exactly an expert on Eastern religions though so perhaps you can clarify based on your own understanding.

Nazism means not just hatred toward Judaism. When Putin claim “denazification” he likely refers to those ones brainwashed by rabid Rusophobia. They are not just specimens like this starved tattooed fool I previously showed. There are many more variations of the sickness. For example the “journalist” that openly claimed that there is a necessity to kill 1.5 million of people of Donbass and expulse the rest to depopulate Donbass. The combination of extreme corruption seen in Ukraine, constant brainwashing and some sense of self-inflicted misery lead to such a kind of rotten specimens. Ukraine is plenty of them, and the Baltustans too. I think the “denazification” is hardly achievable because these rotten specimens are as a sort of metastasis.
What Russians can achieve at most is the deletion of such specimens from Donbass. I repeat: if the captured ukronazis are starved fools like the one that I showed, they are even not usable as slave manpower. A shot in their heads is probably the most economical way to deal with them because they are beyond redemption.

Hey, we’ve got possums, Kipling, Greek coinage, and mono/ polytheism going on over here!

I honestly just ignore most of the Ukraine stuff on here since after the first couple weeks it is the just the same stance on repeat. I’ll be interested in seeing how it all plays out in the long term for all players involved, but there is precious little illumination going on here right now.

Spontaneous detonation of an ambulance. LOL.

Correct me if I am wrong but that explosion looks to have happened inside the ambulance. https://t.co/5wpWXTC4xJ

— The Sirius Report (@thesiriusreport) April 9, 2022

I repeat: if the captured ukronazis are starved fools like the one that I showed, they are even not usable as slave manpower. A shot in their heads is probably the most economical way to deal with them because they are beyond redemption.

You could have been promoted very fast as a ruling head of some soviet war prisoner open air camp in eastern Lebensraum circa 1941 with such useful utilitarian philosophy, despite calling yourself “antinazi” here 😉

but just to take prayer seriously for once and actually focus on praying to an “Other” – a mysterious God that I could not know or understand.

The God of the Trinity has opened a door for you to come in and get closer in spirit to him. He sees what a truly sincere seeker of the truth you’ve become and wants you to experience his being in a totally personal manner. Don’t let this experience go to waste, but try to continue to reestablish it as often as you can, right now. Waiting, or putting off your efforts in this vein may prevent you from further experiencing this wonderful visionary reality. I’d recommend immediately immersing yourself in the Gospel of St. John, fast a bit, and by all means continue your newfound prayer life. Regarding the “Mysterious God” that you’ve encountered, you’ll see him more clearly by reading the gospel that I’ve suggested. Also, consider these two passages to help you on your new journey, and to help answer some of your questions:

Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father
John 14:9

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
Revelation 3:20

Be strong and do not doubt the visions that await you! This is great news!

Here comes LePen factor though – her victory is not sure ofc, but certainly realistic&possible option. Electionary current rhetorics is not that much different from traditionalist, but in fact she is still nothing more than variation of current Gerhard Shroeder in drag, so most likely Finland NATO bid will be veotoed by France in case of Macron loss.

I actually haven’t read Captains Courageous – but I am now inspired to!

Kim is not just my favorite Kipling book, but one of my favorite novels of all time. I think I may have to reread it.

But then I find India infinitely colorful and fascinating.

Btw, songbird, Kipling said the only two places he ever wanted to live his life out in were Vermont and Bombay – and he wasn’t able to settle down live in either. He lived for a while in Vermont and fell in love with the place.

Kipling certainly believed in the white man’s burden and the superiority of Western civilization, but was deeply in love with the fascination of India and loved it’s culture and people – he would have happily lived out his days in Bombay. So he wasn’t quite the racist you think 🙂

I sometimes envy people who got to experience 19th century India – all the color and paegentry, with a much smaller population, and none of the ugliness that came later when the population exploded and modern industry and products began fouling up the place.

When I first started travelling to Asia my own attitude was similar to Kipling’s – I had a very innocent and unquestioned sense of my own superiority as a Westerner, and completely looked down on the “natives”, while all the while finding their cultures and lifestyles deeply fascinating.

Mt attitude was, in retrospect, amusingly “colonial” in an uncomplicated and innocent way that would be impossible today. But something about the region kept drawing me back.

It was only after many years of returning to Asia again and again – India, SEA, Japan, etc – and spending extended periods of time there that gradually the disquieting feeling arose that in many ways they may actually know how to live much, much better than us, and may in important ways be superior to our “rational” civilization.

I was later to discover that in this I was not in the least unusual – the diaries and letters of colonial administrators and various travelers are full of descriptions of how Asia led them to gradually question industrial civilization and the modern West, despite starting out with an uncomplicated conviction of Western superiority.

I agree with some of your sentiments that you express here, however, I challenge you to see very similar forces at work within Russia too, unfortunately including Putin too. Ukrainophobia? The necessity to bomb and kill civilian enclaves? Extreme corruption? Constant brainwashing? Denazification/Demoskalization? It’s there on both sides, a very lethal mixture…

Well, I just jumped on the bandwagon and picked up a copy of McGilchrist’s “The Master and His Emissary” so we’ll see.

What specifically didn’t you like about “The Matter With Things” so far?

Churchill’s cliche about future fascists calling themselves antifascists is true.

It looks to have hit right outside and afterwards the door opened.

The sales pitch to the Western European’s with the real heavy weaponry by the Impoverished Slav’s of Warsaw and Kiev and Bucharest is that “we are the last pure Europeans” soooo er um….”defend us!”

Where have you seen this argument being made? Certainly you haven’t seen it in mainstream debate. Even on these pages, where such an argument would not only be permitted but perhaps even expected, its absence is notable.

Okay, you are a Nazi (not by the real definition but by your own definition, which seems to be – a murderous freak). Good to know. No wonder you were evasive when I mentioned the morality of pro-Russian figures, you fit into that category.

Nazism means not just hatred toward Judaism.

That is an essential and inseparable part of it. Nazis were a political party with a specific program. Jews were central to their program. You are playing the leftist game of changing language, redefining words, to suit your ideology and personal hang-ups.

For example the “journalist” that openly claimed that there is a necessity to kill 1.5 million of people of Donbass and expulse the rest to depopulate Donbass

And also the Russian journalist on state TV who said it was necessary to liquidate Ukraine’s elites and to bring death and destruction to the general Ukrainian population as atonement for their “Nazism?”

combination of extreme corruption

What does corruption have to do with Nazism? Nazis seemed to have been less corrupt than either Ukrainians or Russians.

constant brainwashing

Russian attitudes towards Ukraine and towards the war is a better example of brainwashing.

Ukraine is plenty of them, and the Baltustans too.

I’ve seen more swastikas in Moscow than in either Kiev or Lviv. They weren’t common in any of those three cities but they were certainly more common in Moscow among the three. Saw a guy wearing one on a t-shirt right on the main street, Tverskaya. Saw lots of graffiti with swastikas (accompanied by messages such as Azeris out). Saw skinheads hunting down an African on a subway. I didn’t have to search for this stuff on youtube, I only had to spend time in Moscow.

You can mention Azov but on the other had there is Wagner whose leader sports Nazi Tattoos. There is also Rogozin, a Russian government minister and head of their space program. Here he is giving a Nazi salute:

And the Chechens while not Nazis are no better than them.

More to the point, while the whole post-Soviet space includes Nazis (or pseudo-Nazis) it is the Russian state that behaves as a fascist one, invading neighbors in aggressive expansionist wars and exterminating civilians while doing so. Your past whining about what was being done in Donbas by Kiev has proven to be disingenuous because you complain far less about much worse that is being done in the rest of Ukraine.

You are in very good company with the sex offender Scott Ritter, criminal Bentley and swindler Gonzalo.

Has Ron Unz’s research shown that Covid-19 actually originated in that lab?

The evidence is top secret. So all we know for a fact is somebody is hiding something. Like the top secret investigation of the passenger airline attack over Ukraine. Ukraine says it was the Russians. Russia says it was the Ukrainians. The Dutch (jet departure) and Malaysians (destination & jet owner) have seen the black box and evidence and they aren’t revealing it. Not by their choice we might probably guess.

You are in very good company with the sex offender Scott Ritter, criminal Bentley and swindler Gonzalo.

That is a low blow and you should stick to arguments.

How about the world’s leading bioweapons expert Francis Boyle? He is convinced that those WMD bioweapons labs in the Ukraine were actually carrying out bioweapons research aimed at Russia and that all who work in them deserve life in prison. So this is on top of Nuland’s confession under oath. I myself do get agitated about this issue like others get agitated about all sorts of other issues because we can all end up being their victims no matter where in the world they may be and therefore I am quite prepared to accept Russian actions, which I would normally consider unacceptable and despicable, against a country hosting these labs, such as the Ukraine. Then on top of those bioweapons WMD labs we have the crimes against humanity by the Azov Nazis and others, the dual national Zionist leader, politicians and oligarchs, talk of developing a nuclear programme and dirty bombs, etc. So the case is closed; no matter how bad the Russians may be the Ukrainians are the greater evil, far greater evil, so I can’t feel much sympathy for them when they get whatever they’ve got coming their way. It’s sad and tragic but unavoidable and in the end well deserved.

Russia appears to believe its survival is at stake so they will not quit. The US will not let Putin get anything he can claim as a victory, so they will not stop helping Ukraine. With Barbarosa it took 4 years to win back what was taken in 4 months. It is going to go on another year I think.

Wonder who of those fully uniformed people on left reincarnated as modern rib counter Aedib?

I think this picture may show the maze coin that you were thinking of.

I think the earliest one has a circular design, which I believe is more elegant. But I am having trouble establishing a chronology.

There is some Roman coinage in the higher denominations which comes pretty close to the Greek in technical ability, but overall the Roman coinage is far cruder and less artistically interesting. It is all political signalling, where the Greeks had an incredible variety of themes.

There seems to be a bit of an historical parallelism here. The Greek city-states were a rich tapestry, with interesting coins, like nation-states. But the coins of the Roman Empire, in a loose way, resembled more the soulless money of the EU. Perhaps, to an extent, also of China (where Mao is on everything) and the US, the other behemoths.

I don’t think that American money was always ugly, but it seems to have gotten uglier on a continuing trajectory.

nothing in nature exhibits straight lines, except perhaps the horizon – but that too is a curve upon closer inspection

Your sorrow at the death of dinosaurs and tasmanian devils makes very clear that you instinctively regard nature as sacred,

Should I assume this conceptual lassitude was brought on by overdosing on holism? 🙂

(a) If nature is defined as “everything that exists” and I draw straight line, how can that straight line possibly not be a part of nature? Do spatial points exist in nature or are they too an illusion? Because if spatial points exist, then a straight line is simply defined as the shortest distance between them.

(b) Suffering and extinction are just as much a part of nature as joy and health, so if you’re to infer from my statements what I – perhaps unbeknownst to my conscience mind – “hold sacred,” surely it be would be life, not nature as a whole. Though even that would be a misreading, since I care zero about the life of, say, mosquitos or bacteria, and certainly not of spiders, every last one of which I would eradicate in a heartbeat if I but had the power (ecological consequences be damned).

@barbarossa

What specifically didn’t you like about “The Matter With Things” so far?

Nothing specific really. Ironically, just the “holistic” feel the introduction gave me; a foreboding that it’s all going to be tenuous guff, lacking any concrete distinctions that I can trust to increase my understanding of reality, and I will regret the time I wasted. But I’m not giving up yet, and I am prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

Busy weekend in UA capital:

Oh great, they’ll be able to live like the 19th Century then.

You probably think that would be great, of course.

Internet wannabe tough guy. Talking about “power is power” as if you have any idea at all about how militaries work. Or how you work. Do you know yourself at all?

And anyway, some Paradox computer game this isn’t. Actual individuals live all throughout Russia, and their third world economy is going down and down. This is sad and will result in stunted lives, but not as sad or stunting as the evil they are unleashing in Ukraine. For both them and the Ukrainians. They should take their soldiers home.

Russia built their credibility and prestige on propaganda and a Potemkin military. They were ok to be poor if they could maintain that prestige and pride. But now the devil is coming to collect his due and Putin’s pact has doomed them. Pride before reality is the path to hell.

The war gets worse for Russia every single day. I said that it would at the beginning. The Russian army shrinks. Russian equipment is destroyed. Russian morale plummets. Meanwhile, Ukraine only gets stronger. There’s nothing Russia can do to get Ukraine to agree to peace, except withdraw. Russia cannot even threaten Kyiv again. They can only defend their skrinking gains, as their army breaks down in the field.

Russians support this, for now, for humans are generally too prideful to admit their errors and grow and change. But the tightening vice of reality will crack their solipsism. It will hurt, but they will at last be free. The only questions are how much it hurts and what they have left when they are freed.

“Power is power” you said, when I told you that Russia was f”cked. You wrote something about “13,000 tanks.” But you have been substituting Russian progaganda for your sanity. Like someone who thinks they’re a winner because their football team looks promising. Now you must surely know that you have no idea what power actually is. And open your mind a little and reflect on how things are, not how you want them to be.

You do not want to still be cheerleading this catastrophe of cruelty in one month’s time. Your own soul is on the line, WokeChoke. Everything you “hate’ is also what you are. Only from the position of seeing something in yourself can you truly understand it. And if you don’t understand what you “oppose” you will always be wrong and you will always lose.

Everything human is also natural. Stop projecting your own sense of soulessness onto the world. Then maybe, and without distraction, you will finally learn the nature of your own soul.

This is a wonderful idea, but one that we probably will not have the resources to implement the way things are going. There will be no surplus to spend rewarding activities that are tangibly productive of drinkable water, food, clothing, medicine, and not much else.

Oh great, they’ll be able to live like the 19th Century then.

Without any irony, they would like to and agree joyfully as long as it would mean the same territorial scope as Tzar empire had then. It’s a powerful mental drug, no much different than physical substances, when your own limbs or veins might be outright rotting, but being high is still more attractive option as warped imagination under the influence does not care about such details.

It’s a well known fact that points don’t exist but are abstractions – and straight lines between points are abstractions too.

These abstractions can help navigate the world, but they don’t exist – and we shouldn’t confuse the map for the territory.

You will not find physical objects describing straight lines in the real world – but you can certainly super-impose a conceptual net on the physical world in order to help you navigate it in certain ways.

But on the higher level of understanding and not power, one must realize the conceptual net isn’t reality.

If you read the fascinating philosophy of Kant, it becomes clear that a significant portion of our concepts are simply super-imposed on the world and do not describe reality.

Quantum mechanics – in which the law of non contradiction does not hold – similarly shows that out conceptual net is super-imposed on reality.

Concepts are highly useful – but when we lose sight of the larger context that they are just approximate maps, we descend into scientism.

As for pain and death being part of nature, absolutely – however, it is still possible that the greatest flourishing if life is only possible by accepting nature and cooperating with it.

For instance, it’s been said that you must lose your life to save it – in other words, being preoccupied with cheating death may cause you to suffer endemic anxiety and lose vitality and engagement with life.

Isn’t the devitalized condition of modern man a result of his preoccupation with cheating death?

Similarly, avoiding pain as a priority interferes with many activities that enhance the feeling of aliveness, and interfere with growth that increases life.

Life itself depends on a process of death and renewal – anyone who favors life may well embrace death 🙂

If you see yourself as part of the larger system of nature, as an expression of it’s energies, death isn’t extinction but simply a transformation.

You are thinking too much with your left hemisphere 🙂

It sounds like some of his other books must be interesting as well.

Wiki: In Wandering in Northern China (1923), he visited Korea, which had been a Japanese colony since 1910. The first thing he noted was that Korea was virtually devoid of trees.[2] The aristocracy had been stripped of their duties but were allowed to wear the unique attire of their rank, although many were living in poverty. Franck reported that the women “displayed to the public gaze exactly that portion of the torso which the women of most nations take pains to conceal.”

Histrionic over reaction to simple humor is counterproductive: (1)

Bill Maher: ‘The War On Jokes Must End

Maher has made a name for himself over the past few years for being willing to cut through the garbage on both sides, and it’s why he’s generated such a large audience. Friday night, he took aim at the morons trying to cancel comedy and jokes in the aftermath of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock.
…
We don’t live in North Korea. This is America, and in this country, we don’t censor or silence comedians. Props to Maher for continuing to keep it real.

SJW’s are grim and lack any sense of humor. You must fit right in with your fellow DNC members.

#LetsGoBrandon 😇
_____________________

(1) https://dailycaller.com/2022/04/09/bill-maher-war-on-jokes-must-end-video-chris-rock-will-smith/

The problem is on the level of first assumptions.

The left hemisphere sees only concrete distinctions, so to the left brain you are a distinct individual with no connection to any larger whole or a larger purpose.

Of course, if that’s your assumption then death will seem like final extinction and pain will see pointless.

However, the nature of the left brain is to have a very narrow focus – so it can’t “zoom out” and see the larger picture. (It’s function is to zoom in – it’s the emissary of the general-master, whose function is to see the larger whole)

It’s stuck.

Problem is, even the logical and analytical side of the left brain can see a serious problem. On the one hand, even logic can tell you that in countless ways humans flourish best when obeying nature and life is promoted following nature’s “laws”.

Yet the left brain view view of concrete distinctions also necessarily creates an inescapable drive to escape nature – “disobey” nature – because it cannot help but see death as extinction and pain as pointless, since we are not connected to any larger whole with a purpose.

So it’s trapped in a paradox that can only be resolved by “widening out” into the larger and more inclusive right hemisphere thinking.

If we fail to do that, we remain trapped in self-defeating paradox, which consistently leads to actions that fail to achieve what we want and undercut our ability to flourish.

We make physical survival a priority – and the result is an epidemic of anxiety and widespread loss of vitality and engagement with life.

But the right hemisphere, which can see the larger picture, can integrate paradox and understand that one ptomotes life and vitality by accepting death.

Donetsk was a Potemkin style project. Welsh metallurgist Yuzovsk or Hughsovsk he even built an Anglican Church for his staff. Later era but same principle. Potemkin was a developer. Flunky for a German Tsarina. Moscow might have even been garrisoned by Anglo saxon emigres after 1066. One of Harold’s grandsons via his daughter with Edith.

Remember tat poll a couple of years ago in which 41% of Ukrainians claimed Russians and Ukrainians were one people? AK was fond of citing it.

Exposure to actual Russians has brought that number down significantly. It’s at 8%.

https://ratinggroup.ua/en/research/ukraine/vosmoy_obschenacionalnyy_opros_ukraina_v_usloviyah_voyny_6_aprelya_2022.html

More highlights:

Over the last month, the share of the respondents who believe that restoring friendly relations between Ukrainians and Russians is impossible has increased 1.5 times (from 42% to 64%). 22% of the respondent believe that this might happen no sooner than in 20 to 30 years. About 10% predict such reconciliation in up to 15 years. Even in the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine, more than half of the respondents do not believe in restoring the friendship between the two nations.

The vast majority of the respondents (90%) support the initiative to deprive the pro-Russian Members of Parliament of their mandates. 86% support a total ban on the activities of these MPs in Ukraine.

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Putin has basically killed the Russian idea in Ukraine. Understandable, given that his soldiers have been murdering and raping people, and destroying cities even in what had once been less anti-Russian places such as Kharkiv.

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For those who claim Ukraine has become a wasteland where no one works anymore:

More and more people are resuming their jobs. Currently, 58% of those who had jobs before the war continue to work (this share was 46% in March). In general, 29% work normally, 26% work part-time or remotely, and 3% started at a new job. 41% lost their jobs during the war (53% did in March). Most of those currently employed are in the western oblasts, while only a third of the residents of the East of Ukraine have a job: other two-thirds have lost their jobs.