Capitalism in Decay

Poker vs Chess from a Soviet Perspective

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Republished comment.
Ed. Note: How much of this is the Anglo-Saxon perfidious Albion component and how much is Jewish Shylock of The Merchant of Venice? This reminds one of the concept of the “fine print” in any American legal document, whether a user manual, a contract, or any legal agreement. It is always written by the dominant party under the terms of Caveat Emptor (buyer beware). The poor inattentive schmuck can only blame himself if he loses his shirt at the end of the day. He signed it and can’t blame anyone, not even the other party, while the other party can cheerfully and in perfect legalese jargon exult: “I tricked you, ha, ha. Can’t help you. Next time get a lawyer. Ha, ha.”
*************

My father once told me that “Americans play poker, we play Préférence.”

He never did learn how to play Poker, yet he was highly critical of it. I tried to teach him how to play it properly outside of the rules alone, but the very nature of the game was anathema to him. As he said, “the nature of Poker is to bluff”, and this was simply something he could not comprehend nor execute in a game. It was alien to him, perhaps even incomprehensible.

Of course, he taught me to play Chess and we played often, but he would never allow me to win. I defeated him perhaps three times at most from what must have been several hundreds of games. As a fan of board games and family events, I tried to introduce many popular games over the years. He would reject games like “Betrayal at House on the Hill” outright, yet took to “Settlers of Catan” immediately.

The point of all this personal story-telling is that Russians, or perhaps more accurately Soviets, have an entirely different psychological profile than people in the West do. Western games which children play are rooted at core in the ability to deceive and charm. Eastern classics like Chess and Go are openly visible to both players and depend entirely on mental skill. Perhaps “Connect Four” still remains popular as a children’s game in the US at best, when the young ones are not clutching to a Nintendo Gameboy or Switch.

And so we now see the results of this in real-time. American politicians operate on the principle of the “bluff”. It is not that they lie, but that they may be lying or they may not be lying. Imagine how frustrating this must be to a negotiator who does not know how to lie when engaged in diplomacy.

Putin, Xi, Modi, and others communicate with their Western counterparts directly and mathematically, assuming that their opposition will do likewise. Yet the West in turn negotiates by bluffing, and assuming that their counterparts comprehend bluffing and will respond in kind. Perhaps what all parties say is true, perhaps not. It is always ambiguous, formless, and without meaning. Powell can hold up a bottle of white substance at the UN and the US invades Iraq. It was a “bet”, and a “bluff”. He and the US administration were likely very surprised when Russia demanded to actually access that vial.

As such, we are now caught in an exponential feedback loop in which neither party trust the other, and this very lack of understanding and trust feeds the action/reaction chain. American statesmen assume that Russian counterparts think the way they do, and vice versa Russian statesmen assume that their American counterparts do the same.

Yet they are not only speaking different languages but quite literally thinking in different psychological languages.

When one party (Russia) makes its intentions clear, the opposition must ask the question, “is this a bluff or not?” instead of treating it seriously.

Western Hegemony's Collapse

NATO Trained, Afghan Soldiers Join the Russian Army Against Ukraine

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Left without a cause — or a job — and exposed to Taliban retaliation after Kabul’s fall, these fighting men are being recruited into Russia’s war by a network of their peers.

By Ehsanullah Amiri

A former Afghan platoon commander says he was doing manual labour on the Iranian island of Kish when he received a phone call. He says he listened carefully as a former comrade made a proposal: Join a new army and fight for a new cause. 

That army was Russia’s, and the cause was the war against Ukraine.

The offer was for six months of training in Russia, $1,500 to $3,000 (U.S.) a month (three to six times what he’s been making in Iran) and Russian citizenship for him and his immediate family members.

“Yes, why not,” the former commander, Yadgar, says he replied to his friend.

“I am ready anywhere Russia would like to send me to fight.”

As Russian troops lose ground in Ukraine, there are signs that Moscow may be reaching for a new solution: Recruiting NATO-trained Afghanistan commandos and special forces.

Afghanistan’s 300,000-member security forces melted down after the Taliban conquered the country in August 2021, with only a few hundred elite forces,mostlyseniorcommanders,getting evacuated by the U.S. and U.K.

The majority of the rest stayed in Afghanistan, where they now face threats of execution and capture under the Taliban regime. However, thousands escaped to neighbouring countries, including Iran and Pakistan.

Former army generals and midrank commanders have told that Star that 15 to 25 percent of Afghan forces are currently believed to be in Iran, including nearly 5,000 elite troops—commandos and special forces — some of them labouring and some jobless, without legal status entitling them to stay.

Iran is a powerful player in the Middle East and has a long history of using non-Iranians in its proxy wars there, including in Syrian, Iraq and Yemen. Tehran is also a regional ally of Russia against the U.S. and its Western allies, and has acknowledging sending drones in Russia. According to former Afghan army sources in Iran, Tehran plays as a facilitator in recruiting Afghans. 

It’s a recruitment process that has worried former Afghan military leadership, including former general Haibatullah Alizai, who served as the commander of special forces and was appointed d as chief of army staff four days before his boss, the then-president of Afghanistan, fled Kabul. 

Alizai was one of the people the Americans helped leave Afghanistan and now lives in the U.S. He says he has had several meetings with members of the U.S. Senate foreign affairs committee recently warning them about the recruitment, asking them to “find ways to stop it.”

According to him, the recruitment process begins with outreach from a network of former members of commandos. Once approved, these soldiers will be taken to a camp in Mashhad, a holy city in Iran, and then flown to Russia.

Alizai says he is in constant contact with former soldiers in Iran and knows several who went to Russia but cannot confirm if they have made it to the battlefield. He estimates about 1,000 of them have already been recruited, adding that the initial target, at least for now, is about 3,000 personnel.

Afghanistan special forces and commandos were regarded as some of the most experienced, high-skilled and strong units in the region, carrying out sophisticated raids and capturing battlefield from the Taliban.

“Russians have technology, but their military tactics are weak,” says Alizai.“If Russian aerial technology is mixed with the experience of Afghan special forces and commandos, and they will be given accurate co-ordination on the ground, there will certainly be changes in the war (inUkraine) in favour of Russia.”

The U.S. and other NATO countries including Canada trained, equipped and sustained Afghanistan security forces over 20 years of involvement there, spending nearly $90 billion.

Yadgar, who asked that last name not be made public for safety reasons, says he was trained by Americans and Britons. About 30,000 Afghan commandos and special forces received high-quality military training by U.S. Navy SEALs and British Special Air Service. 

Those commandos, in recent years before the fall of Kabul, carried the bulk of the war burden against the Taliban and other insurgent groups.

“In night raids, and other complex operations, American forces were working closely with us,”he says. “I had several American advisers.”

Yadgar says he was a platoon commander in the western Farah province when his is province fell to the Taliban. He says he fled to Iran to avoid execution.

After the recruitment from his former comrade, Yadgar says he ended up going to Tehran to meet the liaison, a former army general with Russian contacts in Iran, to discuss the offer in detail.

“We had rounds of bargaining,” he says of the offer for joining the Russian army.“We agreed to be paid $7,000 US per month while serving in the battlefield.”

Now, as he is waiting for his departure for Russia, Yadgar says he’s now been assigned to lead a group of 400 former Afghan commandos in Iran to help them submit their recruitment papers and co-ordinate for further steps.

“If needed, I would go to Afghanistan to help others to get to Iran for recruitment,”says Yadgar, who adds that he is frustrated by Afghan leaders and western allies’ betrayal. 

“I know the end. It’s either death or new life in Russia.

“Russia gets the benefit of us. We have NATO military skills. We have all fighting skills that a NATO soldier has.”

Another former army soldier, who asked that his name not be used due to safety concerns, his peaceful life in Afghanistan ended eight months ago when the Taliban intelligence identified him at a restaurant where he was working as a servant. He fled to Iran to avoid a possible execution or torture. His home was searched three times after his departure, he says.

In Iran, he says, he was contacted by a former colleague a month ago to check if he would be interested in joining what he and other volunteers call the “Free Russian Army.” 

“I have no choice,” this Afghan ex-soldier tells the Star, adding that including five friends have also registered for recruitment. “We have no visa in Iran or any legal residence permit so, there is a possibility of being deported every minute.”

“If we get deported, the Taliban will kill us all. We have no choice other than accepting this offer from Russians,” he says. “I don’t know what will happen to us but in war, you have a chance of survival if you have a gun.”

After weeks of waiting for further steps, his patience ended last week. He went to the Russian Embassy in Tehran to ask about the credibility of the recruitment. He said that a Russian diplomat gave him a phone number to contact.

According to the ex-soldier, dozens of Afghan immigrants, almost all ofthemformertroops,were lined up in front of the Embassy asking for information.

For both him and for Yadgar, the transition to non-military jobs had been difficult. “I am used to making my living with guns,” the soldier said.

“I love to have a military uniform on me,” commander Yadgar said. “There should be a gun, personnel, commanding, fighting. No matter where it will be.”

Capitalism in Decay

Railway in Siberia? No, Folks It is Cecil, Ohio, USA

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Railway in Siberia?

India?

Africa perhaps?

No folks, this is Ohio, America

Read this:The US ‘Domain Awareness Gap’ Goes Way Beyond Balloons

If a major conflict breaks out with China, America’s once-vaunted defense industrial base will be exposed as a comatose geriatric, not a sleeping giant.

▪️In an essay in Foreign Affairs last year, Michael J. Mazarr summarized a recent RAND Corporation study commissioned by the US Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment on the age-old question, “What Makes a Power Great?”

▪️“The United States ultimately prevailed over the Soviet Union in the Cold War,” Mazarr argued, “because it was more energetic, innovative, productive, and legitimate.” But can the same be said of the United States by comparison with China today?

▪️ Here’s the RAND answer: The United States displays some of the characteristics of a once dominant power that has passed its competitive prime: by some important measures, it is complacent, highly bureaucratized, and seeking short-term gains and rents rather than long-term productive breakthroughs. It is socially and politically divided, cognizant of the need for reforms yet unwilling or unable to make them, and suffering a loss of faith in the shared national project that once animated it.

But, what of China?

▪️China clearly benefits from a potent national will and ambition, both domestically and internationally, and a unified national identity among much of the population. It has an active state that is pouring resources into human capital, research and development, high technology, and infrastructure.

So, what does this mean? 

In his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy laid special emphasis on manufacturing as a source of power, for the simple reason that in time of war there is no substitute for having an economy that can mass-produce weapons. In the 20th century the United States was unrivaled in its industrial capacity. That has ceased to be true in the past 20 years. 

As recently as 2004, US manufacturing value-added was two-and-a-half times larger than China’s. But China overtook the US by this measure in 2010. In 2021 Chinese manufacturing value-added was nearly double that of the US.

This is not 1941. The idea that the United States was a “sleeping giant” on the eve of Pearl Harbor is a myth that understates America’s preparedness for war. The program of construction that gave the US mastery of the sea in World War II began with the Naval Expansion Act of 1938. In our time, by contrast, we have been shrinking our military-industrial base. 

In 2013 the Environmental Protection Agency shut down the 121-year-old Doe Run lead smelting plant in Herculaneum, MO — the last primary lead smelting plant in the country. And that’s just lead. According to a 2021 report from the Department of Energy, “of the 35 mineral commodities identified as critical … the United States lacks domestic production of 14 and is more than 50% import-reliant for 31.” No doubt great from an ESG perspective. But what about the WWIII perspective?

Western Hegemony's Collapse

Kosovo and America’s Imperial Goals

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By Aleksandar Pavic, political analyst

On February 17, 2008, a group of US-backed “democratic leaders” headed by a former Western-sponsored terrorist declared the independence of Serbia’s breakaway province of Kosovo and Metohija (its full legal name under Serbia’s constitution).

It seemed oh so simple and straightforward at the zenith of the “unipolar moment,” and Kosovo Albanians were “confidently awaiting Western recognition for their state despite the anger its secession provoked in Serbia and Russia’s warnings of fresh Balkan unrest,” as a Reuters report drily noted.

Their confidence was more than justified, as 22 of 27 EU and 26 of 30 NATO member states eventually recognized this unilateral act of secession, pulling along many other smaller, mostly Western-dependent countries to follow suit. UN Security Council Resolution 1244, according to which the province is to remain an autonomous province of Serbia pending a mutually agreed final settlement, was ignored, just as the UN and international law were ignored in the spring of 1999, when NATO unilaterally engaged in a 78-day bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, under the familiar pretextof protecting “democracy, human rights and the rule of law.” This resulted in NATO’s military occupation of the province that lasts to this day.

In the case of Kosovo and Metohija, the “rules” were to be tailored to the ambitions of the unipolar hegemon and its vassals. This formed the base of the collective West’s failed attempt to declare this instance sui generis, i.e., unique and incomparable to any other case, in order to prevent others from referring to it as a precedent – South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea, the Donbass, and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, among others, begged to differ. And, no, the original goal of this unique “rule-setting” was not to protect “democracy, human rights and the rule of law” in Serbia’s historic province, which hosts not only the site of the legendary Battle of Kosovo of 1389, the only battle in which an Ottoman sultan was killed, but also hundreds of Serbian Orthodox medieval churches and monasteries. The true US interest was much bigger and less benevolent. And it was revealed in a document memory-holed by Western mainstream media, a May 2000 letter to then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder by Willy Wimmer, a member of the German Bundestag and vice president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE.

Wimmer’s letter contains a description of a security conference that he had attended in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava that was co-organized by the US State Department and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington-based think tank. A list of participants and the agenda could at one time be found on the AEI website but are no longer available at the time of writing. Almost all of the information available nowadays about it comes from Wimmer’s account. According to him, the conference not only exposed the true causes of NATO’s brutal attack on Yugoslavia and subsequent occupation of Kosovo and Metohija, but also the purpose behind NATO’s further enlargement toward the borders of Russia, and, most importantly from the aspect of global security, the US aim of undermining the international legal order as part of its drive for global domination. In essence, Wimmer’s report revealed the criminal plan that has brought the world to the brink of global, possibly nuclear, conflict.

According to senior US officials at the conference as cited by Wimmer, Yugoslavia was bombed “in order to rectify General Eisenhower’s erroneous decision during World War II,” when he failed to station US troops there. Naturally, as Wimmer recorded, no one at the conference disputed the claim that, having engaged in the bombing of a sovereign country, “NATO violated all international rules, and especially all the relevant provisions of international law.”Furthermore, NATO’s unilateral intervention outside its legal domain represented a deliberate “precedent, to be invoked by anyone at any time,” and “many others” in the future.

The ultimate imperial goals were clearly stated: “To restore the territorial situation in the area between the Baltic Sea and Anatolia such as existed during the Roman Empire, at the time of its greatest power and greatest territorial expansion. For this reason, Poland must be flanked to the north and to the south with democratic neighbor states, while Romania and Bulgaria are to secure a land connection with Turkey. Serbia (probably for the purposes of securing an unhindered US military presence) must be permanently excluded from European development. North of Poland, total control over St. Petersburg’s access to the Baltic Sea must be established. In all processes, peoples’ rights to self-determination should be favored over all other provisions or rules of international law.”

In short, the tragedy that is unfolding in Ukraine today can be clearly traced back to NATO’s trampling of international law in the case of Kosovo and the “victorious” West’s building of a new (“rules-based”) order by expanding its military alliance all the way to Russia’s borders. If we were to apply the Nuremberg Principles of International Law formulated under UN General Assembly Resolution 177 on the basis of the post-WW II Nazi war crimes trials, NATO’s decision-makers would stand a very good chance of being found guilty of crimes against peace: “(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances,” and “(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).”

In other words, international law is inconvenient for today’s collective West not just for practical but for legal and moral reasons. Not to speak of the obvious historical parallels with a previous militaristic attempt at forming a “new order” that ended in a Berlin bunker after tens of millions of lives were extinguished. Wimmer’s (almost) forgotten correspondence is an indictment far deeper than the collective West’s current marriage of convenience with Kiev’s neo-Nazielement.

However, even as the Ukraine crisis continues to escalate, the new Battle of Kosovo is far from over. Because, 15 years on, the collective West still hasn’t been able to find a political accomplice in Belgrade ready to grant it retroactive amnesty by recognizing “independent Kosovo” and/or agreeing to its UN membership. That is why, even as they stubbornly press on with the latest Drang nach Osten on the military field, Western powers are also doubling down on their diplomatic pressure on Serbia, which not only refuses to formally recognize its own dismemberment but also to join the illegal sanctions against Russia. The latest ploy, informally called the Franco-German plan, is to try to force Serbia to recognize its province’s statehood in all but name, in return for foggy promises of financial aid and (distant) future EU membership. As a result, the current onslaught of Western diplomats on Belgrade is only slightly less intense than the parallel inflow of Western mercenaries to Kiev.

The problem for the collective West is that, despite its intense, decades-long pressure, substantial investment in the Serbian media and NGO sector, and threats of renewed international isolation, Serbian popular opinion remains stubbornly independent-minded. According to a recent report by the uber hawkish, London-based Henry Jackson Society, 53.3% of Serbian citizens wish their country to remain neutral in the Ukraine conflict (with a further 35.8% supporting an overtly pro-Russian stance), while 78.7% oppose sanctions against Russia and 54.1% think that Serbia should rely on Russia first when it comes to foreign policy (as opposed to 22.6% opting for reliance on the EU). Furthermore, the EU has definitely lost its luster, with 44.3% saying they would “definitely” or “probably” vote against EU membership (as opposed to 38.1% ready to vote for) if a referendum were to be held tomorrow. Finally, according to a recently released independent Serbian poll, 79.2% oppose EU membership as a “reward” for recognizing independence for Kosovo.

It can thus be argued that, much as Hitler’s march into the Rhineland broke the post-WW I world order, NATO’s unprovoked attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 was a deliberate move to destroy the post-Cold War order, while the Western-inspired declaration of Kosovo’s independence 15 years ago was an attempt to legitimize a new, “rules-based” order, which is now reaching its ugly culmination in Ukraine. And, taking the parallels a bit further, just as the attempted new order may meet its military Stalingrad in Ukraine, it might meet its diplomatic Stalingrad in Kosovo, well before the 20th anniversary of that occupied territory’s purported independence.

Cultural/Ideological Divide

To Confiscate or Not to Confiscate?

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Any Western attempts to transfer seized Russian assets to Ukraine would be “barbarism,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed. If necessary, Moscow is ready to impose a tit-for-tat response, she added.

Speaking at a press briefing on Friday, Zakharova noted that EU nations had invested heavily in Russia, meaning a significant amount of European-owned assets remain in the country. Their value is larger than that of the Russian assets seized by foreign nations, the spokeswoman argued.

Zakharova insisted that Russia wants to operate within the law and would give the US and its allies “every last chance” to reconsider any plans to confiscate Russian property. However, she added that Moscow was fully prepared to defend its interests, including through the use of “equal compensatory measures.”

The remarks referred to a new EU working group, established to explore ways to make Russia fund the future reconstruction of Ukraine.

“This must be done in accordance with EU and international law, and there is currently no direct model for this,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said, commenting on the new group. Stockholm currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council.

Western nations have frozen hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Russian sovereign reserves, as well the assets of Russians whom they consider close to the government. Moscow has branded the measures an act of robbery.

Zakharova stressed that property rights should not be subject to the whims and geopolitical needs of a handful of nations, adding that US foreign policy was often prone to wild swings. She claimed that a case in point is Venezuela, where Washington previously referred to Juan Guaido as a legitimate leader with the right to manage the nation’s wealth.

“Now Western delegations visit [Nicolas] Maduro, whom we always considered the legitimate president, as if nothing happened,” Zakharova said. “So everything they say now about Russia, their accusations, threats, and blackmail… can flip-flop in a moment. Mark my words.”

The spokeswoman warned that the international community should oppose the push for the expropriation of Russian property. Countries could otherwise find themselves on the receiving end of the “ostensibly impartial” Western-controlled financial system, Zakharova cautioned.

Saving Europeans from Themselves

Seymore Hersh Interview in the German Newspaper “Berliner Zeitung”

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Excerpts

The pipeline blew up because they were afraid of Germany withdrawing sanctions.

Hersh described new details of the sabotage in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung. According to him, Biden was afraid of Germany’s exit from the sanctions regime and therefore decided to do blow up the gas pipeline. “They were afraid of the coming winter,” Hersh said. “Since the implementation of the Nord Stream 2 project was suspended by Germany itself, and not by international sanctions, the United States was concerned that Germany would lift the sanctions due to winter cold.”

There were major disagreements in Washington over the conduct of the operation, notes the journalist. Many participants in the covert operation, who held “high positions in the secret service”, opposed this plan, “considering it insane

However, Biden would rather see Germany freeze than stop supporting Ukraine, Hersh said. “People who participated in the operation saw that the president was ready to freeze Germany in the name of his momentary political goals, and they were horrified by it.”

According to the reporter, in early February 2022, Biden told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that he would “shut down” the pipeline. “However, he had no such plans at the time,” Hersh said.

Why was the sabotage postponed?

The sabotage was supposed to take place in June 2022, but it was postponed at the very last moment – due to the White House being “nervous”.

“But at the last moment, the White House got nervous. The president said he was afraid to do it. He changed his mind and demanded that the bomb could be detonated remotely at any time,” said the American journalist.

As a result, charges were placed on the gas pipelines in June, during NATO naval exercises in the Baltic Sea, and the decision to detonate was not made until September. Due to the explosives remaining underwater for too long, only six of the eight bombs exploded.

Hersh also explained why Norway decided to participate in the operation. According to him, Oslo wanted to increase gas supplies from Europe rather than Russian gas. Moreover, in Norway, many people in leadership positions feel hostility towards Russia.

How did the United States react to sabotage?

Hersh said many participants in the operation were against it. “Shortly after the attack, after doing as they were ordered, the participants in the operation felt a lot of anger and rejection. That’s one of the reasons I learned so much,” he explained. “It scares me that the president is ready for something like this,” the reporter said. – And the people who carried out this mission believed that the president was aware of what he was doing to the German people, whom he was punishing. And in the long run, it will not only damage his reputation as president, but also cause serious political damage. It will be a stigma for the United States.”

According to Hersh, even within the CIA, many were extremely unhappy with America’s treatment of its ally. “Even this community is horrified that Biden has chosen to expose Europe to the cold in order to support a conflict in which he will not win. For me, it’s disgusting, ”concluded the journalist.

Military Affairs

The French Theatrical Army in their Own Words

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Republished from IntelSlava:

Hello Intel Slava, I am an Armored officer of the French Army. I have been reading your page for some time to get a different view of the conflict in Ukraine. Thank you for what you do.

If I write to you today, it is to tell you exactly what it is like to be an officer in a Western European army in 2023.

In concrete terms, we are constantly being told about “high-intensity warfare” and “the return of modern warfare”. We, specifically, are told about the importance of our role as armored officers, because “tanks will play a major role against our enemies”. We are constantly being fed a pro-war arguments, very anti-Russian, very pro-NATO discourses (no surprise there). In other words, we are in an era like in 1872, when France had just lost against Germany, and the whole country was in propaganda mode to prepare the “revenge” (we call this “revanchisme” in France).

 

That’s kind of the feeling I get (even if I don’t really see the revenge we would have to take on the Russians, Lol).

But this bellicose speech is a facade, like a cat growling at a bear hoping to scare it. In reality our army is in tatters. We are unable to maintain our Leclerc tanks for example: only fifty of them are functional, a shame for “the first army in Europe”… A shame for an armored cavalry officer like me who is from ESM Saint Cyr and Saumur. It is not better in other sectors of the army, we have for example almost no more CAESAR (thanks Ukraine!). In other words, we have neither tanks nor guns. 

The French like to make fun of China, which they say is a “paper tiger”. The paper tiger is us. Our army was unable to eliminate 500 terrorists in Africa, it would not last 2 days in a real modern war.

But the most ridiculous thing is what? It is that our army is wallowing in this mediocrity. Like an old man who contemplates his reflection in the mirror, dreaming of his past glory. I’m thinking of a specific episode that happened recently and that justified my writing to you: an evaluation for my officer class that we just passed consisted in “eating properly” and “knowing how to set a table in a noble way”, to respect the tradition of armored cavalry officers (supposed to be particularly noble)… Funny if it was just some tradition. Except no: it was decisive. Those who misaligned knives and forks got very bad marks, which would be reflected in their career and choice of regiment. The French army breaks the ambitions of young people who have been preparing for 6 years to lead tanks, for a story of forks…

This army is ridiculous, it is only a shadow of its former self. It disgusts all the sincere French patriots: most of my comrades consider leaving the army as soon as they can. For this reason in particular, because the army brings nothing. But also because they do not want, for some of them, to be the minions of NATO while they enlisted to serve France…

TL;DR: you don’t have to worry about Western European countries, our arrogance is theater.

I give you my greetings, take care of yourselves and let’s pray (whatever our obedience) that this conflict will stop and that Europe will find again a peaceful and multipolar balance.

Saving Europeans from Themselves

Is the Unification of Europe with Russia Possible?

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President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko considers Europe’s unification with Russia the best option for Europe. He said this on Thursday at a meeting with representatives of foreign and national media.

“The best option for Europeans is to unite with Russia. Here are resources, there are high technologies. And it would be the main pole of the planet,” the BelTA news agency quotes him as saying.

According to the Belarusian president, “Americans and Chinese <…> would envy this alliance.” “And there would be three powerful points on which our planet would be held – the USA, China and the European continent together with Russia, consider it Eurasian,” Lukashenko explained.

“Perhaps a fourth pole would have formed around India, or India and others would have joined these poles. It would be worthy for the planet,” the Belarusian leader is sure.

Democracy as Mob Rule

Not So Fast

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The more I read about this, the more I return to my original opinion, that this is the deep-state civil war that started during the 2016 “election”. A schism within the Bush/Clinton/Obama zio-neocons that want to take over the entire world all at once, and the slightly more sane zio-neocons fronted by Trump, that wanted to placate Russia, to prevent their alignment with China.

They would then attack China economically, using a hybrid biological war, that had been ongoing for years, attacking China’s pork production through swine flu and poultry production through avian flu. This combined with illegal sanctions, was an attempt to bend China to their will, before turning on the Russians, after China had been subdued.

Now we have Trump saying vote for me and I’ll bring back Guillotines.

That man would do anything to get my vote but it’s not going to work.

Economics/Statistics

The Catastrophic Erosion of Middle-Class Life in America

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via The 2023 Cost-of-Thriving Index

While many economists argue that America’s working families are more prosperous than ever before, families themselves feel that they have come under increasing economic pressure. The families are right.

Economists rely on inflation-based adjustments to compare costs of living over time, but this method measures the cost of buying the same set of things in different eras. Perhaps a family could more easily afford a 1985 quality of life in 2015 than in 1985, but being in the middle class in 2015 means affording a 2015 quality of life.

The Cost-of-Thriving Index (COTI) offers a better way to understand the challenge for working families. It avoids reliance on inflation adjustments by instead focusing on the ratio of nominal costs to nominal wages in each year. The Index measures the number of weeks a typical worker would need to work in a given year to earn enough income to cover the major costs for a family of four in the American middle class in that year: Food, Housing, Health Care, Transportation, and Higher Education.

In 1985, COTI was 39.7. Costs totaled $17,586, while median weekly income for a man aged 25 or older working full-time was $443 ($23,036 per year).

In 2022, COTI was 62.1. Costs totaled $75,732, while median weekly income for a man aged 25 or older working full-time was $1,219 ($63,388 per year).

For exact dollars, for each year, click on the chart.

Flourish logoA Flourish chart

In 1985, a typical American man needed 40 weeks of income to cover his family’s major costs, leaving 20% of his income for other things; in 2022, it was 62 weeks. A man working a comparable full year does not come to close to covering that same set of essentials as in 1985.