Year: 2023

Success is not Real

At least, not in the entertainment industry. The main reason to follow CDAN is not to keep up on celebrities, but rather, to see through the illusion that is presented to the world by their makers.

February 24, 2023

This one named flash in the pan A/A- list singer is not playing ball like the label and her people are wanting. I think she thinks that she is big enough now to not need them. That is not the way the industry plant thing works. You do as you are told, or your career goes away very very quickly. She was thrust upon the world right before COVID for one reason and she served her purpose.

Lizzo

And now, five months later, the woman’s career is being methodically demolished, precisely as predicted.

The rise and fall of Lizzo: How HAS the pop icon gone from being a champion of body positivity and feminism to the verge of cancellation for sexual harassment and body shaming?

THE DAILY MAIL, 2 August 2023

Anyone who is tempted to take the ticket would do well to reflect upon the observable fact that the success it provides is manufactured, the fame it provides is ephemeral, the money it provides is on loan, and the control that comes with it is absolute.

And in the end, the taker of the ticket is always cast from the high horse, dismissed and disrespected. Look at the likes of Robert de Niro or Jack Nicholsen now, and envy them, if you can.

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The Price of Partiality

Switzerland is beginning to learn that no one will utilize a middleman who takes sides, as the Alpine country runs the risk of missing out on a truly historic opportunity:

The latest 32% monthly fall in commodities trading followed a 27.5% decline in April, 22% in March and double-digit negative figures going back to the start of the year. The latest figures from the Federal Statistical Office show the volume of Swiss commodities trading in freefall as the Ukraine war rages on, destabilising the shipment of grains around the world and redirecting the flow of Russian oil.

Switzerland has established itself a one of the most important global hubs for trading oil, metals and foodstuffs. Swiss-based companies handle 40% of all oil trades and have taken a 60% slice of the metals trading business, 65% in cotton, 55% in coffee and 35% in cocoa, according to the industry association Suissenégoce. The sector employs 35,000 people and contributes some 4% to the Swiss economy.

The real loss to the Swiss economy will be the opportunity cost going forward. With the inevitable bifurcation of the global economy into two unequal halves, the larger BRICS economy and the smaller WEF/SWIFT economy, the neutral Swiss were in the perfect position to serve as the central intersection where the two international economies could meet to trade. What will eventually be seen as a single-digit hit to the economy is actually a much larger loss to what the economy could have, and should have, become.

But the unbelievable myopia of the current set of Swiss politicians combined with external pressure from a Clown World caused them to throw away all of Switzerland’s natural and historic advantages in order to take the losing side in a war that neither Ukraine nor NATO could ever even hoped to have won militarily. Now that Clown World’s desperate bid to win the war with banks in lieu of tanks has failed, Switzerland finds itself categorized as an “unfriendly” state by both Russia and China and is increasingly likely to find itself excluded from consideration as a future central trading hub by all of the countries that are aligning themselves with BRICS.

Even FIFA and the Olympics could find themselves in jeopardy soon if all of the BRICS nations pull out of the global sports associations in solidarity with the banned Russian athletes and teams. Given that the Saudi Sports Agency has already proven that it can leverage its money to swiftly take over an entire sport with its LIV Golf maneuver, both the opportunities to a Sino-Russian-Saudi alliance and the vulnerabilities of the existing organizations are obvious to even a casual and indifferent observer.

The only hope the Swiss have of taking a central place in the future bipolar world economy is a rapid and sincere commitment to an official neutrality that is firmly established in the national constitution. The choice should be obvious given the near failure of UBS, the failure of Credit Suisse, the PGA Tour partnership, the Nigerois war for economic independence from France, the economic contraction of Germany, the coming surrender of NATO and Ukraine, the pivot of the US military toward China, and the ongoing collapse of the European Union.

The existing Atlanticist economic order is simply not going to survive in its current form, so seeking to curry its favor is not only unproductive, but self-destructive. And no redefinitions of what “neutrality” actually is will fool anyone, especially not those nations whose corporations and citizens are subject to material sanctions. Only those whose positions are inherently untenable need to redefine words in order to justify their positions.

The problem is that a generation of politicians who have been accustomed to regard the USA and the EU as the Sun and Moon for three decades are probably incapable of grasping the geostrategic realities of a world in which those two entities combined amount to nothing more than the junior side of the Great Bifurcation.

It is a real pity that the Swiss journalists who daily peruse this blog looking for ammunition to discredit and deplatform me will not quote me on this particular subject, because it is vastly more significant to them, and to those they seek to influence, than anything I have said that violates their precious Narrative.

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How the Devil Mouse Metastasized

One of the core precepts of Corporate Cancer is this: a fully-converged organization is incapable of performing its primary function.

But it’s one thing to understand a principle, another to utilize it as a basis of a successful predictive model, and yet a third to understand exactly how the principle is playing out in the particular instance of a specific converged organization.

The Dark Herald helpfully explains how Disney rendered itself incapable of performing its primary functions.

Continuing employment, opportunities for advancement, bonuses and salary increases were all dependent on showing this “virtue diary” and documenting all the DEI meetings and conferences they attended. In other words, if you wanted to keep your job, you were required to participate in the DEI indoctrination sessions… The whistlebower says that Thon Newton also instituted a policy in which any minority — a member of the DEI coalition — must be seriously considered for any job he or she applied for, even if he lacked the very most basic, essential requirements for the job. Even for highly technical positions, job prerequisites were waved for DEI candidates.

Which tells you right there how Disney has gone so far downhill so fast. Incompetents were being hired left and right. In my experience it usually is 20% of the people doing 80% of the work, consequently, it’s always pretty easy to tolerate some useless mouths to feed. Those drones were tolerable in Don Draper’s day because they were invariably a hot blonde with a gorgeous rack and a taste for low necklines. Now that drone is a screaming purple-haired, sexually unidentifiable schizophrenic who can get you fired if he/she/zhe/zee/IT doesn’t like the way you looked at them.

The 20% who got all the work done at Disney have left the building. Sure they put up with it long enough to pick up another job but they are gone now and it shows.

Comrade Mickey’s Funtime Struggle Session Workbook, Arkhaven Blog, 1 August 2023

The key to success is expanding the percentage of the productive beyond 20 percent. The key to failure is reducing the percentage of the productive even further, which is why convergence is inevitably fatal over time to every organization.

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Past His Sell-By Date

It’s clear that NATO is preparing to jettison Zelensky and blame the Russians for his “assassination”; the neoclown media is openly discussing how Zelensky will be replaced as the head of the Kiev puppet regime in an article that reads as if it was written by Henry II.

“Will no one rid of us this troublesome beggar?”

Given the stakes, and the risk, it is little wonder Ukrainian officials tend to brush off requests to discuss what would happen were Russia to succeed — or they decline to go on the record, worrying the topic appears far too macabre.

And yet, despite the reluctance to publicly engage with the question, there is a plan in place, according to interviews with Ukrainian officials and lawmakers as well as analysts. Indeed, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as much: “The Ukrainians have plans in place — that I’m not going to talk about or get into any details on — to make sure that there is what we would call ‘continuity of government’ one way or another,” he told CBS news last year.

Ukraine’s Parliament chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk | STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images
Formally, under the constitution, the line of succession is clear. “When the president is unable to fulfill his duties, the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine [the Ukrainian parliament] takes over his responsibilities,” said Mykola Knyazhytsky, an opposition lawmaker from the western city of Lviv. “Therefore, there would be no power vacuum.”

The chairman of the Verkhovna Rada — Ruslan Stefanchuk, a member of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party — doesn’t have an especially high trust rating in opinion polls. It is around 40 percent, less than half of Zelenskyy’s. And he’s not popular with opposition lawmakers.

“But I don’t think it matters,” said Adrian Karatnycky, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “There’s a strong leadership team and I think we would see collective government,” he added.

The governing council would most likely consist of Stefanchuk as the figurehead, along with Andrii Yermak, the former movie producer and lawyer who’s the head of the office of the president, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. Valery Zaluzhny would remain as the country’s top general.

Karatnycky said he would hope to see a role for TV personality Serhiy Prytula, who now runs major charitable initiatives and has a sky-high public trust rating.

Ukraine’s plan if Russia assassinates Zelenskyy, POLITICO, 1 August 2023

Zelensky has nothing to fear from Russia. He’s one of the Russian military’s greatest assets, as he successfully convinced NATO to throw away their donated forces in a manner that has done about as little damage to Russia as possible; Faramir’s cavalry charge against the fortified position of Mordor’s archers in the Jackson film was equally well-conceived and did just about as much harm to the defenders.

Simplicius has worked out that Ukraine may be already down to as little as only 100 tanks remaining to its entire armed forces.

The offensive is now about 2 months old and was of a highly elevated intensity. That means it’s not out of the realm of possibility that their losses were double the rate at 150-200 per month, which would put us at 400 after 2 months. Finally, given that we had come to the ~500 number earlier, subtracting the new ~400 losses would mean that the AFU would be at an absolutely dire state of only 100 remaining tanks. Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and say perhaps it’s a bit higher at 200-300 left, this is much less than it sounds given that it represents as little as two weeks’ worth of losses in current high intensity combat levels. If my numbers are even remotely close then that is disastrous. It would mean the AFU is on the verge of collapse.

Which, of course, is why the more hawkish neoclowns have already made the decision to give up on the Russian front. So if they get their way and succeed in forcing NATO to pivot to war with China, Zelensky will be a major liability and embarrassment to the governments of the West. This very public warning shot across Zelensky’s bow may, in fact, be the first sign that the pivot to China is underway and will soon be followed by an announcement about NATO-Russian negotiations.

UPDATE: CNBC confirms the new narrative on Zelensky.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s conduct is a source of annoyance in Washington, CNBC reported on Wednesday. Zelensky angers his American backers by ignoring their orders and issuing ever-greater demands, anonymous officials told the network.

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Banana Republic USA

When the leading opposition candidate is repeatedly charged with made-up crimes, you know a country has neither the rule of law or a legitimate democracy.

Former President Donald Trump’s legal woes deepened after he was hit with federal criminal charges linked to his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election. Trump is facing four counts including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and obstruct the electoral count for trying to overturn the 2020 election. The 45-page indictment says he was ‘determined to remain in power’ despite ‘having lost.’

Special Counsel Jack Smith said in a televised public statement following the release of the indictment that the attack on the Capitol was ‘fueled by lies’ made by Trump ‘targeted at obstructing the bedrock function of the U.S. government – the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.’ He pledged that his office will conduct a ‘speedy’ trial.

The former president has been summoned to appear before U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan – an Obama appointee – on Thursday in Washington, D.C. There are also six unnamed alleged co-conspirators according to the indictment.

Trump and his co-conspirators ‘used knowingly false claims of election fraud’ to try to ‘subvert the legitimate election results and change electoral votes’ for Joe Biden, according to the indictment.

So, the Establishment committed electoral fraud in order to put a fake President into office, then criminalized anyone pointing out that they did what they observably did.

Sounds legit.

The absurd thing is the fact that the only thing the USA really had going for it vis-a-vis the challenges posed by China and Russia was the perception of it holding the moral high ground with regards to “freedom and democracy”. But the perceived moral high ground has now gone the way of its European majority and its industrial capacity.

Enjoy the show. It’s unusual to have the chance to witness a global empire in the process of collapsing.

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Niger Tests Clown World

One of the inevitable consequences of the sanctions war on Russia was the realization by third parties that economic globalization is a trap that provides more external control than internal opportunity. This is why the Sino-Russian turn to Africa, Asia, and South America is significant, as it threatens to exclude the self-styled “global majority” from the greater part of the world’s population. That’s why the USA put so much pressure on African leaders to not attend the second St. Petersburg summit.

Last week’s Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg was a landmark event in Moscow’s foreign policy concept and practice. Not so much because it brought scores of African leaders and senior officials to the country. The first summit, four years ago in Sochi, featured even more African heads of state. Also, it is not solely because its agenda expanded beyond economics and included a humanitarian dimension: this is important, but this isn’t all.

Essentially, the meeting, with the bureaucratic preparation and the wide public coverage it has received within Russia, testifies to a sea change in Moscow’s worldview and international positioning toward the world’s rising non-Western majority, as laid down in the recently adopted Foreign Policy Concept.

St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in the early 18th century as a ‘window to Europe,’ and last week, it served the same purpose for Africa.

Eurocentrism, of course, is still deeply embedded in the Russian elite’s thinking and aspirations. Nevertheless, the failure of Russia’s long travails of Western integration in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union has now exploded into the proxy war against the United States and NATO in Ukraine. This has produced a historic shift in Moscow’s policies, comparable to the time of Peter the Great in its significance, though in a wholly different direction. For the foreseeable future, the universe of Russia’s foreign policy will remain divided in two large parts: the house of foes including Europe, North America, and the rest of the Anglosphere, and the house of friends elsewhere. The dividing line between the two is a country’s position in relation to the sanctions regime against Russia.

Africa, in this regard, is largely on the right side of that divide. 49 nations out of the continent’s 54 were represented in St. Petersburg. True, only 17 of them participated at the top level. No longer a curious and skeptical observer, as during the Sochi summit four years ago, the West this time made a determined effort, advising, cajoling or threatening African leaders against going to Russia and dealing directly with President Putin.

Russia has proven that it is possible for a nation to stand up to the US military, which from Afghanistan to Iraq and Libya, had hitherto crushed every rebellion against the Clown World order. Which, one suspects, is why Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have banded together to protect the new Nigerois regime from Clown World’s regional proxies.

In a move considered a tactical way to protect the recent regime change in Niger, Mali’s military Junta said Monday that they stand to support the coup leaders in Niamey. Mali said that they stand together with Burkina Faso to defend Niger and further warned that any foreign military intervention in Niamey will be considered a declaration of war on both nations with Niger.

“I warn that any military intervention against Niger will be considered as a declaration of war against Burkina Faso and Mali,” announce Col. Abdoulaye Maiga, State Minister for Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, Mali junta.

The announcement was in response to the outcome of a summit by regional bloc ECOWAS that gave a 7-day deadline to Niger’s coup leaders to free detained president Mohamed Barzoum and restore civilian rule or face consequences, with military force an option being considered.

The irony of the appeals to democracy by the USA and the UK, both of which are led by equally unelected heads of state, is unlikely to escape the Russians, the Chinese, and everyone else observing the matter. If the new Nigerois government finds enough support to maintain power, this will be the second significant step toward the complete collapse of the Clown World order.

And since Wagner doesn’t appear to be occupied at the moment, I expect they’ll be willing to accept gold and uranium in lieu of cash.

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