The New Berlin Wall

An interview with Michael Hudson addressing the economic aspects of the unrestricted war between the Imperial USA and the Sino-Russian alliance.

PS: Let’s say all these European programmes like the REPOWER Programme come into effect, how do you expect the EU standing to be on the stage after that?

MH: Well, the EU standing will be squeezed economically. It was trying to be a powerhouse in the world economy but in the last month the euro has been declining steadily against the dollar and it’s on the way to one dollar per euro. That’s because it’s having to pay much foreign exchange for energy, for food, for weapons. It’s shrinking in terms of other economies.

PS: Where do you think the EU’s standing will be in relation to powerhouses such as China?

MH: Well, it’s obviously out of the game. Instead of putting its own interests first, it’s really putting the US interests first. It’s acting more like a satellite of the United States thank trying to its own destiny. The whole plan of the EU 20 years ago was to get rich by investing in Russia, investing in China and a mutual exchange. And now it’s decided to stop that. The US has absorbed Europe. The war in Ukraine is a war by the US primarily to pull Europe into the US orbit, prevent European transactions with Russia or China. So Western Europe is being left out, while Russia, China and Eurasia are going with the rest of Asia. Europe is simply going to be left behind. It’s losing its export markets, it’s being squeezed and -as you just mentioned- it’s pushed up the retirement age because it’s spending its budget on replenishing American military arms instead of investing in industry as it had been doing since 1945.

PS: You did indeed write that Europe has ceased to be an independent state. You’ve almost mentioned that the United States wanted to sever EU trade ties with Russia and China. How exactly did you get to that conclusion and do you think that this alleged US plan is succeeding?

MH: Well, I simply read the speeches of President Biden and his team. They’ve said that China is America’s number one enemy. If you’re going to call a country your number one existential enemy, you’re not going to be increasing your trade and mutual dependency with it. And it’s already insisted that its allies sanction -meaning boycott- Russian sports not only of oil and agriculture but of titanium, helium and all of the other exports that Russia has been making. Europe is been following US directions not to have contact with Russia and without contact with Russia it’s not going to have contact with China because China sees that Europe is going to do to it exactly what it’s been doing to Russia.

PS: Obviously as a result of this current situation, for many years now, Russia and China have been growing closer diplomatically and economically. How do you see a global shift in power evolving over the next 5, 10 years or so?

MH: The current war is dividing the world into two parts. There’s going to be a US dollar area of the US, Europe and its satellites. And there’ll be a multipolarity; there’ll be a group of Russia, China together and basically they will be making their proposal of a different way of organising the world economic affairs to Africa, Latin America and other Asian countries. And other Asian countries, Latin America and the global south will see that it can get a better deal with Russia and China than it can get with the United States.

PS: On the flip side of that coin, one could argue that the existing situation, world order, has only been cemented by this war. You see NATO more aligned than ever, you see Europe more aligned than ever. You see Finland and Sweden on the brink, perhaps, of joining NATO. What would your response to this be, Michael?

MH: This integration of Europe into the United States sphere is like the new Berlin Wall. It’s isolated the US from the whole rest of the world. So instead of a victory for the United States it’s self-isolated itself because US strategists have realised that they’re losing the economic war with China, Russia and the whole group of emerging nations. All they can try to do is hold on to Europe as their one source of income to exploit from Europe what it can no longer get from any other country.

The Great Bifurcation between the economy of Clown World and the economy of Sovereign World is becoming increasingly obvious to the more intelligent observers. No wonder the smarter globalists such as Henry Kissinger are urging a Ukrainian surrender in order to try to preserve the failing status quo.

DISCUSS ON SG

Unrestricted War on Russia

It appears the rulers of the Imperial USA have come to understand the Chinese principles of Unrestricted Warfare, or as the Russian Foreign Minister calls it, Total War.

The confrontation between Western nations and Russia amounts to “total war,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday during a meeting with the heads of Russian regions. Russian society and major political forces support the government’s decision to face this challenge, he added.

Western nations “are doubling, tripling, and quadrupling their efforts to deter our nation. They use a wide array of tools, from unilateral economic sanctions to totally deceitful propaganda in the global media,” Lavrov said, noting that “low-level Russophobia, which to our deepest regret is promoted by a number of governments, has risen to unprecedented levels.”

“The West has declared total war against us, against the entire Russian world. Nobody even hides this fact now,” Lavrov stated.

Lavrov also noted that the crisis has exposed the true nature of the promises given to Russia 30 years ago, after the collapse of the USSR. “We now see the value of all the talk about universal values and the need to turn Europe into a common home from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” No one should have illusions about the attitude of the US and its allies towards Russia, he added.

I’ve repeatedly pointed out that the Russo-Ukrainian conflict is not merely about Ukraine’s designs on Crimea and the Donbass, or Russia’s designs on Ukraine, anymore than Nazi Germany’s conflict with Czechoslovakia was merely about the Sudentenland. The globalist imperials have been preying on Russia since 1991, and attempting to undermine its government since Putin unexpectedly took power in 2000. Putin and his generals clearly recognize that Ukraine is not the core problem, it is merely the most immediate manifestation of the problem.

Dmitry Trenin, a member of Russia’s Foreign and Defense Policy Council, clearly understands the scale and import of the situation:

The challenge Russia is facing has no equivalents in our history. It’s not just that we have neither allies nor even potential partners left in the West. Frequent comparisons with the Cold War of the mid and late 20th century are inaccurate and rather disorienting. In terms of globalization and new technology, the modern form of confrontation is not only of a larger scale than the previous one, it is also much more intense. Ultimately, the main field of the ongoing battle is located inside the country.

The asymmetry between the opponents is huge, particularly the imbalance between the forces and capabilities available to them. Based on this, the US and its allies have set much more radical goals than the relatively conservative containment and deterrence strategies used toward the Soviet Union. They are in fact striving to exclude Russia from world politics as an independent factor, and to completely destroy the Russian economy.

The success of this strategy would allow the US-led West to finally resolve the “Russia question” and create favorable prospects for victory in the confrontation with China.

Such an attitude on the part of the adversary does not imply room for any serious dialogue, since there is practically no prospect of a compromise, primarily between the United States and Russia, based on a balance of interests. The new dynamic of Russian-Western relations involves a dramatic severance of all ties, and increased Western pressure on Russia (the state, society, economy, science and technology, culture, and so on) on all fronts. This is no longer a source of discord between the opponents of the Cold War period, who then became (unequal) partners. It looks more like the drawing of a clearer dividing line between them, with the West refusing to accept even the perfunctory neutrality of individual countries.

China, India, Iran, and most of the unaligned nations now recognize both the evil nature of the corrupted West and its hostile intentions toward them as well, which is why they are also preparing for war against it. Note: I do not subscribe to what I consider to be the absurdly stupid idea that China is intending to invade the USA; the various numbers listed in the leaked transcript are simply not “too extensive” for an invasion of Taiwan and the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu  islands.

Leaked audio that appears to have originated from a meeting of China’s top war generals [a regional government authority – VD] reveals elaborate plans for a land invasion in the near future, waged by the People’s Liberation Army and augmented with cyber warfare, orbital space weapons and the activation of CCP civilians currently embedded in corporations and governments around the world.

China’s war leader [provincial committee member] makes strong reference to the psychological operations that will be waged by their government to control the population as they wage war against the West:

First, we need to strengthen the protection in political field. Look at the recent several regional wars, especially the Russian-Ukrainian conflict war situation. If you look at the big picture, the United States and the West will try everything to slander us, smear us, in an attempt to confuse right and wrong, to shake our will to win a just and decisive battle. We must give full play to public opinion, legal struggle, psychological war and militia teams to strengthen the guidance of public opinion and psychological protection, and cohesion of patriotic support for the positive energy of the military front.

The fact that the author of the linked article doesn’t even understand that the meeting is of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party Committee for Guangdong Province, not the Chinese military leadership, and that he clearly hasn’t fully read or understood the nature of the transcript, which clearly shows the regional authorities attempting to determine how to go about handling their various supporting roles when the invasion happens, doesn’t take away from the way in which the transcript – which Chinese experts have told me appears to either be genuine or a very convincing and detailed fake – indicates Chinese preparations for a major military effort that will soon open WWIII’s second front by bringing it into direct conflict with the US government and military.

DISCUSS ON SG

Thursday Arktoons

ALT★HERO Episode 57: Can I Drive?

WARMAN Episode 3: More Than Money

SOMETHING BIG Episode 45: On Edge

THE STRANDED Episode 23: When On Earth

A THRONE OF BONES Episode 51: Fire Support

SAVAGE MEMES Episode 125: Device

STONETOSS Episode 90: Class Warfare

VEGFOLK FABLES Episode 89: A Very Humble Abode

EVIL MONKEY MEMES Episode 27: Here Comes the Sun

CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 96: Plaque Attack

CHUCK DIXON PRESENTS: ADVENTURE Episode 44: Case of the Third Hand

ALT★HERO

You Can’t Stop the Smart Boy

I put up a solid meme from SG on Gab, along with a comment.

This meme should make the stupidity of the oft-heard midwit aphorism clear to even the most myopic midwit mind.

Of course, a Smart Boy couldn’t resist the temptation to prove that he’s a midwit.

@voxday that aphorism is true. Its misapplication does not invalidate it, merely demonstrates the intellectual incompetence of the user.

Of course, the aphorism is not true. It may or may not be true, because sometimes correlation equals causation, and other times it does not. A correct form of the aphorism would be: correlation does not necessarily equal causation.

But where is the fun in that sort of actual precision that doesn’t permit the Smart Boy to incorrectly correct others? The irony of the misapplication is that correlation is usually the first step toward proving causation. As a general rule, resorting to tautology in order to refute something that someone hasn’t said is highly indicative of a gamma behavior pattern.

DISCUSS ON SG

Feminism, Transgenderism, and the Devil

The present battle between feminazis and trannies is a red-on-red conflict, as both evil ideologies spring from precisely the same source:

Conceptually, people think of the Devil as masculine. He is the ultimate “bad guy”, double emphasis on the “bad” and the “guy”. Traditionally theologians have largely conceptualized the Devil as a man, or manlike figure, and denoted him with the masculine pronoun, ‘he’.[6] However, as Faxneld notes, not all have agreed with this summation. As the Devil is an angel, this means he does not conform to the gender norms that men and women are formed in. Christian theological tradition does not require that the Devil conforms to a particular sex, indeed it was recognized that demons could take the forms of any gender as they chose.

Anyone who has read the ancient Greek tales will be familiar with the way that the Greek deities could change gender at will, often using this to trick their victims and even at times the heroes of the tale. Minerva in Homer’s Odyssey is one example, but Odin was known to do the same thing, and many others. In fact, it was a consistent theme throughout the pagan pantheons to have gods transgressing all boundaries, including gender boundaries.

From a Christian perspective these beings were neither fake, nor gods. They were a combination of legends and people’s encounters with demonic beings. It is easy to understand why the early Church, and many in the Medieval Church, viewed Satan neither as male nor female, but as a boundary transgressing being, who took on the form that was useful in the moment.

In many medieval and early modern representations of the Devil he is shown to be an “hermaphrodite monster”. Demons were viewed as ontologically unstable creatures that crossed gender and species boundaries. “Gender-bending would then be another sign of the liminal and blasphemously category-defying nature of Lucifer and his demons (figures 2.2 and 2.3).” Faxneld shares with us some abominable examples of how the early modern artists visualized the Devil in figures 1 and 2.

As you can see, it was common for the Devil, and demons, to be visualized as inherently unstable beings that conformed not only to no gender boundaries, but no natural boundaries either. The devil is the ultimate boundary breaking entity, which is really a good description of evil itself. Evil intent consists in the desire and intention to transgress the boundaries laid out by God himself. Indeed, one of the words for sin in the Bible is transgression, which literally means to transgress the boundaries of what the Lord says is good. Evil inherently transgresses all of God’s good boundaries.

But not only was the Devil represented by such boundary transgressing beings, he was also conceptualized or represented as a woman, or a serpent-woman. For instance, in one Christian work “Livre pour l’enseignement de ses filles (‘Book for the Education of his Daughters’, 1371–1372), the author,

“…Geoffrey attempts to instil in his daughters the lesson that women should defer to fathers and husbands in anything but domestic matters and makes his point by retelling how Eve broke this rule when she conversed with the serpent, ‘whiche as the Hystorye sayth hadde a face ryght fayre lyke the face of a woman’.”

It may be strange for us to conceptualize a feminine Satan, because it is more common to view him as masculine, but this was a consistent image throughout Church history.

“…A more straightforwardly female Satan can be seen in the actually very common depictions of the snake in the Garden of Eden with a woman’s head on its serpentine body and sometimes also the breasts of a woman…Exactly when the notion of a female snake was established is difficult to say, but the earliest translation of the Bible into Latin rendered the word as serpens—feminine gender.”

Indeed, according to J. B. Trapp “it was the most frequent way of representing the Edenic serpent from the late twelfth century until the late sixteenth century, when the human features of the creature disappear and it becomes, once more, only reptilian.” This is interesting that the devil would be represented by feminine imagery, but again, note, the Devil is not a man nor a woman, Satan is a fallen spiritual being. The Devil is inherently in a different category. Even if you want to argue the Scriptures lean towards presenting him as male figure, note, the view that he transgressed all boundaries is inherent in his rebellion against God’s good boundaries and in his role as ‘The Evil One’.

The most famous image representing the Devil’s transgender nature is the Baphomet. Baphomet is a hermaphrodite figure, and one of the most recognized symbols of Satan in the last century or so. Baphomet was first visually conceptualized by French occultist Éliphas Lévi “in his book Dogme et rituel de la haute magie (‘Dogma and Ritual of the High Magic’, 1855) and elsewhere.”

Note, we are not seeking here to establish precisely how Scripture describes the gender of the Devil. The point is to establish that a lot of historical Christian theology viewed the Devil as a being that transgresses all boundaries, and early feminists were inspired by this and took this idea and ran with it. They turned this transgender being into a liberator of women.

Notice how evil always inverts. “The Light of the World” became “the Dark Ages”. The revival of satanic darkness became “the Enlightenment”. And the enslavement of women to sin and self-destruction became “Women’s Liberation”.

If you want to discern if something has satanic roots, look for the inversion. Once you spot it, you’ll scent the sulfur soon enough.

DISCUSS ON SG

SFWA Devours Itself

I wish they had actually banned me, instead of simply engaging in public theater about having done so in order to placate the SJW membership. But they did actually ban Mercedes Lackey from the Nebulas.

The Science Fiction Writers of America banned New York Times Bestselling Author Mercedes Lackey from their 2022 Nebula Awards conference for alleged racist remarks.

The Nebula Awards was once considered the second most prestigious award for science fiction writers. In recent years, the awards have become known for controversies over identity politics. Many fans perceive award-winners to be chosen on the basis of race or gender rather than the contents of their work.

Source: Screenshot, Nebula Awards Site

Lackey’s banning comes just a year after she won SFWA’s Grand Master lifetime achievement award, becoming only the 57th person to be given such a title from the organization…. Less than one year later, SFWA banned Mercedes Lackey under Kennedy’s leadership. The organization disavowed her allegedly racially insensitive comments.

SFWA stated, “We learned yesterday that while participating in the ‘Romancing Sci-Fi & Fantasy’ panel, Mercedes used a racial slur.”

The organization’s Board of Directors continued, “First, we apo0logize to our attendees and the other panelists who were subjected to that slur. We’ve disabled access to the panel to avoid any additional harm being caused.”

From there they stated “Second, we are immediately removing Mercedes Lackey from the conference and the additional panels she was scheduled for, in accordance with SFWA’s Moderation Policy.”

“The use of a racial slur violates the instruction to ‘Respect all cultures and communities. Do not make derogatory or offensive statements even as a joke.’ That applies to everyone in a SFWA space, at all levels of their career,” the Board of Directors explained.

Ironically, she’s being banned for calling Samuel K. Delaney “a colored person” and not “a gay black pedophile who writes pornography, badly.”

DISCUSS ON SG

Soros Knows He Failed

The front man for the neo-liberal rules-based world order aka Clown World is aware that his plans for an Open Satanic Society are being rolled back by the still-sovereign nations:

Unless Russia is quickly defeated in Ukraine, the collective West won’t be able to address climate change in time to save civilization, billionaire financier George Soros told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday. He also called Russia and China the greatest threats to his concept of open society.

Russia sending troops into Ukraine “may have been the beginning of the Third World War and our civilization may not survive it,” Soros told the WEF, and even when the fighting there stops, “the situation will never revert to what it was before.”

In his telling, the “invasion” came amid a struggle between “two systems of governance that are diametrically opposed to each other: open society and closed society,” the former embodied by the West and the latter by Russia and China.

Soros, 91, reminisced about the “exciting days” of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, when his wealth increased to the point where he could spend $300 million a year in 1987, and his foundations in Eastern Europe “turned out to be more successful than I expected.”

He argued that the tide began to turn after the 9/11 attacks of 2001, “repressive regimes are now in the ascendant and open societies are under siege,” with China and Russia representing “the greatest threat.”

If China and Russia are “the greatest threat” to Satan’s global rule, then they are currently the greatest material hope for the nations, despite their various cultural idiosyncracies and flaws.

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Checkmate, Putin

The Russian military has no response for the US military’s stunning and brave transwarrior slay queens:

The U.S. Air Force is hosting Drag Queen Story Time at Ramstein Air Base Library in Germany.

“We’re celebrating Pride Month at the Ramstein Library with Drag Queen Storytime! Join us with special guest reader Stacey Teed! Be sure to wear your brightest and most colorful outfits!,” says the Facebook event announcement, which was posted by the Ramstein & Vogelweh Air Force Libraries page.

This suddenly puts all those insane stories from Roman history about Nero and other imperial freaks into perspective, doesn’t it? What future reader would ever believe that in a time of war, when its ally is being badly defeated and when its opponent has demonstrated unstoppable hypersonic weapons technology, the US military’s response was to provide pedophiles dressed as women access to the children on its military bases?

DISCUSS ON SG

National Review is Literally Gay

We always knew conservatism was a fraudulent failure of a pseudo-ideological movement. But lo and behold, it turns out that the conservative movement is literally fake and gay:

Until a few days ago, few people outside the offices of National Review knew that the revered conservative magazine’s publisher is a homosexual, “married” to a man.

“The publisher of the most important conservative magazine of the last 60 years, National Review, is gay-married?” wrote The Stream’s Peter Wolfgang, who broke the story. “Garrett Bewkes, the man overseeing the magazine once edited by William F. Buckley, has a husband.”

“He’s been the publisher for five years. How did this happen? And what does it mean for the conservative movement and the Republican party?” Wolfgang asked.  “I suspect a lot of NR’s long-time readers don’t know this. I wouldn’t have known if a local newspaper hadn’t run an article by Bewkes’ ‘husband’ Bradley.”

Just wait until conservatives learn that their historical opinion leader, William F. Buckley, was gay too, as was conservative icon Malcolm Forbes. This is why one has to be either stupid or ignorant to call oneself a political “conservative” – something you may recall that I have never, ever, done – because conservatism is not only not an ideology, it is an intellectual, political, and moral dead end that couldn’t even conserve the difference between a girl and a boy.

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