Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Vladimir Zelensky, Russian Hero

2023-06-07

During his tenure as president of (what remains of) the Ukraine, Zelensky has wrecked the Ukraine, but has achieved many great things… for Russia. Here are his main achievements in no particular order:

• By being elected with the promise of ending hostilities, then immediately proceeding to escalate the conflict in the east, he thoroughly compromised what was left of Ukrainian democracy. He further demolished the Ukraine’s civic realm by banning all public media except for one government channel, banning all opposition and all Russian news sources and, in effect, establishing a totalitarian dictatorship.

• By relentlessly shelling the civilians in the now Russian Donetsk and Lugansk regions, then, in the spring of 2022, threatening them with a genocidal assault, he provided Russia with an ironclad reason to start the Special Military Operation: to save civilian lives. By so doing, he helped to expand Russian territory by four very valuable provinces (Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson) and set the stage for the eventual addition of, among others, Nikolaev, Odessa, Kharkov, and Kiev regions.

• He squandered $150 billion in foreign aid (much of it by the simple expedient of stealing it), expended a huge amount of military equipment and ammunition with nothing to show for it, and killed off 350 thousand Ukrainian soldiers (many of them Nazi war criminals), with possibly twice as many wounded.

• He shrunk his country’s population by almost half, some of it moving to Russia, becoming Russian citizens and integrating productively into the Russian population while rest went to the European Union, becoming a major burden for the welfare budgets of EU countries.

• By ordering Ukrainian troops to shell schools, kindergartens, hospitals and apartment buildings in universally recognized Russian regions such as Belgorod and by launching drone attacks directly on the Kremlin, he declared his government to be a terrorist organization, foreclosing any possibility of forcing Russia to negotiate a peace that would not be entirely on its own terms.

• He demonstrated the superiority of Russian weapons and military technique over NATO’s, most recently with Russia’s destruction of one of the Patriot missile batteries provided by the US. Almost every bit of equipment the West has been able to provide to the Ukrainians has been shown to be inferior to its Russian counterpart.

• He gave the Russian army ample opportunities to perfect their techniques for defeating NATO forces, venturing into new areas of drone warfare and battlefield surveillance from geostationary satellites. This will no doubt be very useful both in opposing NATO and in boosting future weapons sales to non-Western nations that wish to be free from Western oppression and meddling.

• He sold some of the weapons he received from the US to Mexican drug cartels, leaving US officials with no other choice than closing their eyes and pretending that this did not happen. Perhaps they will also be forced to look the other way as these cartels make use of these weapons to take over more and more of US cities and towns.

• He played host to many high-ranking Western officials, whom, on their to visit to Kiev, he presented with lavish presents such as suitcases of foreign aid money he had laundered, which these officials then brought home in diplomatic baggage, thus collecting blackmail material on all of them.

• He set an example for other Russian Jews whose bad luck had caused them to end up in the Ukraine rather than in Russia by resettling his parents in a posh neighborhood in Israel. But he kept his wife by his side, where she did a good job demoralizing the Ukrainian population by squandering more money on a single European shopping spree than most Ukrainians see in several lifetimes, all paid for by the US taxpayer. She also worked hard to gaslight Western officials by making them accept at face value and repeat ridiculous tales, such as the one about Russian troops being issued viagra, for them to better rape Ukrainian women.

• Zelensky is sometimes incautious; for instance, he got caught appointing operatives from Russia’s Federal Security Service (former KGB) to sensitive posts within the Ukrainian defense establishment, although it is unclear whether what’s left of the Ukrainian judiciary will be capable of prosecuting him.

• One of his greatest achievements was in placing the US and NATO in a zugzwang. This is a chess term for a situation in which a player has a choice of several moves, all of which lead to defeat. The US and NATO can either continue supporting the Ukraine, or they can stop supporting the Ukraine; in either case, they will lose.

• Perhaps his greatest achievement of all was in helping Russia turn away from its hostile neighbors in the West and toward friendly countries in Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America, cutting its economic, financial and cultural ties to the West and freeing itself from Western influences. His unwavering support for Ukrainian Nazis, whose emblems, insignia and slogans are styled after Nazi Germany and whose heroes are Nazi collaborators, coupled with the lavish support they received from the West, whose leaders chose to turn a blind eye toward their fascist proclivities, cemented in view of the Russians the view of the West as their existential enemy: a fascist, racist entity determined to destroy Russia but too weak and cowardly to do the job themselves.

All of this begs a question: Whom does Vladimir Zelensky serve?

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American Lies

2023-06-03

On February 24, 2022, in the midst of launching the Special Military Operation, Putin dropped a truth bomb:

«Сами американские политики, политологи и журналисты пишут и говорят о том, что внутри США создана в последние годы настоящая империя лжи. Трудно с этим не согласиться, так оно и есть.»

“American politicians, political scientists and journalists themselves write and talk about the fact that a real empire of lies has been created inside the United States in recent years. It’s hard to disagree with that, that’s the way it is.”

The only part of this statement with which I might take issue is “in recent years.” The US has been fed on a steady diet of lies since its inception: that the Plymouth Plantation was created by Pilgrims rather than colonizers; that they celebrated Thanksgiving with the local Algonquians (whose kitchen gardens they looted and who despised them); that the American revolution was anything more than a tax revolt and that the Boston Tea Party was over tea rather than opium; that the American Civil War was over slavery rather than industrialization (British vs. North American); that the Americans rather than the Soviets won World War II; that Americans had been to the moon five times rather than zero… It’s possible to go on in this vein virtually ad infinitum.

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To Kill the American Dream

2023-06-03

Chumps the world over have this stupid idea installed in their brains: that they can move to America, work at a shiny office and get paid for looking busy all day, own a single-family home with a two-car garage, get a wife, two kids, a dog and a cat and live happily ever after. Lots of things are wrong with this plan: the do-nothing job at a shiny new office is highly likely to suddenly go away at some point (because robots are cheaper and better at looking busy) and with it the house (which is mortgaged), the cars (which are leased) and then the wife and the kids would run off in search of someone who isn’t flat broke.

Other parts of this arrangement are highly likely to go wrong: looking busy all day (rather than actually doing something productive), plus the two hours a day spent driving through rush-hour traffic jams, are likely to make you mentally deranged and physically ill. A cold spell could cause the “green energy” whirligigs to seize up and electricity to go off for a fortnight, causing the pipes to freeze and burst, rendering your house (which was hastily knocked together out of sticks and some vinyl and cardboard) unlivable. Your kids might decide to change their genders from masculine to feminine, or vice versa, or neuter, or that of their totem animal, in secret from you, and the school would help them chemically castrate themselves.

Worst of all, you will never be able to break out of this hellish hamster wheel of a life because you owe… you owe… so off to work you go! Yes, there is major trouble in paradise, and yet millions of chumps all around the world are pining after it and striving for it. Worst of all, those who do achieve it are forced to hide their pain from their fellow-countrymen, and even from themselves, because admitting that they are chumps and that they essentially sold themselves into some kind of slavery, would make the pain even worse.

More…https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/72672f28-5e5f-412a-a82d-af76a2d8aa97

Do you want to start a revolution?

2023-05-18

I now live in Russia, a happy country where roughly 90% of the population supports the president and his special operation in the former Ukraine, feels that the country is moving in the right direction and is generally unified and patriotic.

This is quite unlike the US, where I lived before and where roughly half the population absolutely hates the government, making no comparison to Russia even possible. What’s more, the other roughly half of the US population absolutely hates their country, taking pleasure in burning flags and toppling historical monuments. It’s a manic, bipolar sort of country with a touch of schizophrenia.

What makes this situation particularly amusing is that the first, government-hating half includes plenty of both former and acting soldiers, policemen and spooks while the second half is stocked with all sorts of activists, anarchists, would-be terrorists and general misfits and malcontents. Both sides have formed organizations with memberships into the hundreds of thousands of potential torch and pitchfork wielding maniacs seemingly ready to launch into waves of murder and mayhem at a drop of a hat.

So, what keeps this entire moiling fiasco of a country under control?

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No Reason for Peace Talks

2023-05-18

More and more one hears out of the West tentative voices suggesting that perhaps peace talks in the former Ukraine might be a good idea, indicating that some people might be past denial (a few sanctions and Russia will fold up like an umbrella) and anger (throw all your money and weapons at the Kiev regime!) and are approaching the stage of bargaining (let’s let Russia keep Crimea but give back the rest). As with the previous stages, it is based on a very thorough lack of understanding of the current state of affairs. It is not that difficult to explain—to those who are willing to process new information—and so I will give it a try.

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The US is no longer profitable

2023-05-18

https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/98d9814f-9e4a-4f8e-bcba-74d746519c2d

Thank God for the Ukrainians!

2023-04-28

It seems that most people nowadays are apt to complains about the Ukrainians: they are corrupt, thieving, duplicitous, fickle, freeloading… They wouldn’t win no matter how much money and how many weapons the Americans and the Europeans send their way and they wouldn’t surrender no matter how concertedly (yet ever so gently) Russia prods them in that general direction. Their soldiers are either insane, drug-addled berserkers with a heartfelt death wish and a mile-wide sadistic streak or eager deserters that the berserkers have to frog-march toward the front. Most of them would much rather live in Europe or in America, or, failing that, Russia, but certainly not in the Ukraine (what remains of it)! From the Western perspective, they are suspiciously Russian-like, speaking Russian instead of their “official” southern-Russian dialect and suddenly turning Russian and asking for Russian passports (and pensions, and health insurance) the moment Russian tanks roll past. From the Russian perspective, many of them are not Russian enough: sure, they speak the language and know the culture, but do they really love Mother Russia more than even themselves, and aren’t they just angling to get the best deal possible for their own dearly beloved selves, Russia be damned? And then everybody chimes in together that the conflict in the Ukraine is very dangerous and could lead to World War III, nuclear armageddon and a whole weekend ruined any moment now.

But this is wrong — all wrong! We should be grateful to the Ukraine and thank the Ukrainians for their sacrifice on the altar of world peace. More…

The Futility of American Protest

2023-04-10

Recently, the most popular discussion thread on Reddit was “Why don’t people in America protest like they should?

with 27k views and 5k comments. The commenters gave plenty of reasons for not protesting individually in spite of having every reason to do so. But what’s missing is an overall appreciation for the fact that now all protest within both North America and the Western European Peninsula is altogether futile.

There are some surface reasons. On the Western European Peninsula, the most obvious reason is that it’s the wrong place to protest, since the entire place is now run from Washington and the local leaders are now mere placeholders, compliant and disposable. In turn, protest in Washington is futile because the visible public figures against whom one might protest are not the ones in charge: John Kennedy was none too eager to get into a full-on war in Vietnam and got shot; Bill Clinton was none too eager to bomb Yugoslavia into submission and got Lewinskied. Same goes for the Europeans: Dominique Strauss-Kahn had some independent-minded ideas about the euro and got falsely accused and arrested for molesting a hotel maid; eventually, the case was dropped, but by then his reputation and his career were already ruined.

And who is really in charge? Well, you deserve to be punished just for asking the question! Those who know, know. Those who don’t, don’t need to. It was over 40 years ago that I had the following realization: “America is not a country; America is a country club.” Membership has its privileges. Non-members get to pick up lost golf balls or serve martinis or give massages; they certainly don’t get to tell the club management what to do!

None of the reasons for not protesting given by the Reddit readers went as far as identifying the root cause, and I would like to fill that gap.

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The Punctured Bag and the Firehose

2023-03-21

Few people are able to see through the smoke and grasp the sinister machinations of the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury and their affiliate the European Central Bank. It’s possible to endlessly pour over news articles, faithfully read all of the Fed’s reports and maybe even take night classes in macroeconomics and finance, and still not have much of an intuitive grasp of what’s happening. Statistics don’t so much lie as just sit there and let you stare at them blankly without a clue as to what all of it really means.

And yet once in a while a statistic catches my eye that describes the situation quite eloquently. Here is one: 83% of all the US dollars that now exist in the world have been summoned into existence during just the past 22 months; since May 2021, that is. Four out of every five dollars in existence has been conjured up pretty much yesterday in historical terms.

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And so it begins… Financial Crisis of 2023

2023-03-14

Banks are failing, financial markets are swooning and the Fed is once again getting ready to step in and turn on the dollar liquidity firehose. Whereas the previous financial crisis of 2007-2008 was caused by credit risk (subprime mortgages bundled into toxic mortgage-backed securities, remember all that?) and risk of market failure, this one is caused by an interest rate crisis: the Fed tried to reign in inflation caused by its previous crisis management by hiking interest rates faster than it had ever done during the previous 45 years or so. This made various low-yield financial instruments held by banks worth a lot less. This is not necessarily a problem (the banks have various mechanisms to fix cash flow problems)… unless there is a bank run, forcing the banks to sell their not very valuable financial instruments for not enough money, resulting in bankruptcy.

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