Author: VD

The Cost of Broken Neutrality

An influential Swiss businessman points out to the Swiss that their government’s abandonment of their historica neutrality means that they are responsible, in part, for the enemies on the other side that are killed in the war to which Switzerland is now a party.

In the Tages-Anzeiger I read about the tragic fate of bloody young Russian soldiers who died in the Ukraine war.

The title reads: “These teenagers died for Putin on the battlefield”. We suffer through words and pictures as hopeful eighteen- to twenty-year-old boys perished in the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Or, as a data analysis shows, “who gives his life for the Kremlin ruler”.

Their names are Eduard, Maxim, Boris or Chan-Tsaj and they often come from poor areas. And they leave behind grieving parents, siblings, and sometimes even wives and children. We see how a deceased person is honored, for example, at a school memorial service – namely by a “lectern of the hero”. Or a funeral service with relatives and friends walking behind the coffin, military personnel in goose step and a band playing a funeral march.

It goes to the heart and hurts. That many young soldiers die is the truth. On both sides.

But only part of the truth – only half the truth. Because in view of the fallen Russian teenage soldiers, one should also ask the question: Why are they dead? Someone must have killed them.

And that brings us to the other side of the coin: As in any war, two parties are fighting. The young Russian soldiers were killed by Ukrainian soldiers. They, in turn, are armed by the West, mainly by the US, but also by the EU. Even with the support of neutral Switzerland, which broke Swiss neutrality and is thus a party to the war. It helps that bloody young Russian soldiers have to die. For example Eduard, Maxim, Boris or Chan-Tsaj. Why did Switzerland get involved here?

Needless to say, various pro-war media and government figures just about lost their little minds at Blocher’s observation of the undeniable.

Blocher’s piece was met with an angry response by Swiss media and politicians, who blasted him for not saying “who started the war.” “He doesn’t say a word about the fact that Ukraine was attacked by Russia and is defending itself, that Putin started the war,” the Switzerland Times wrote.

Swiss Watson news outlet called Blocher’s column “bizarre” and accused the former minister of “ignoring Russian war crimes.” According to the outlet, Blocher is currently working on an initiative that would compel Bern to not only refrain from participating in conflicts outside of its territory, but avoid imposing economic sanctions in such cases as well.

MP Philipp Matthias Bregy, the head of the Center party’s parliamentary group, accused Blocher of distorting history, and said the former minister himself told a “half-truth” by “ignoring the aggressor.”

Andrea Caroni, the vice president of the Swiss Liberals, claimed Blocher is playing into the hands of the Kremlin. “Putin does not need a propaganda minister anymore,” he told Swiss newspaper Sonntagszeitung. “Blocher does it for free.”

All of this is just meaningless rhetorical posturing thrown out to obfuscate the correct, and vital, point that Blocher has made. It doesn’t matter who started the war. It doesn’t matter who is winning or who is losing. It doesn’t matter who has, or has not, committed war crimes. It doesn’t matter who was the aggressor. Rightly or wrongly, it cannot be denied that Switzerland chose to take a side, that it is now a party to the war, and therefore, it is responsible – and it will be held responsible by its enemies – for what happens to the people and the military forces of those enemies.

There are no shortage of various aspects of the current situation that can be reasonably argued. Did the war start in 2014 or in 2022? Should the people of Crimea and Donbass be permitted democratic self-determination? Was the Crimean referendum legitimate and fair? Are the Ukranians actually winning the war or are they losing it? Are the Russians justified in launching attacks on what President Putin describes as the “decision centers” of the nations waging war against them? Should the Swiss government prioritize the well-being of the Swiss people or its promises to the EU member-states? All of these things can be debated by reasonable observers.

But what cannot be argued – although I expect it will be, to very little avail, in the future – is that the Swiss government broke its historic neutrality and made the uncharacteristic choice to side with the Ukro-NATO alliance in its war against Russia and its allies.

In doing so, Switzerland has foolishly risked far more than one cold and dark winter without Russian natural gas. It also risks its relationships with the vast majority of nations around the world who have clearly taken the side of Russia despite – or in some cases, because of – US pressure to join the NATO sanctions regime.

This is a world war. It will expand to Asia soon. It may expand to the Middle East and South America as well. Does Switzerland really wish to find itself at war with Brazil, China, India, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, as well as Russia? Do the Swiss people really wish to discover what will happen to their economy when it is sanctioned by all of those nations? Because that is exactly what will happen if they does not hasten to extricate themselves from the foolish foreign policy of their existing government.

At this point, the only intelligent move for the Swiss people is for them to pass a referendum restoring their historic neutrality and absolutely forbidding any future Swiss government from similarly putting the nation at risk of both military assault and economic isolation from the majority of the nations of the world by taking one side against another.

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Knowing When to Walk Away

The Forge and Anvil is closing down:

I strongly feel I have to turn away from the religio-political non-fiction writing I’ve been doing for more than a decade. I greatly admire people like Razorfist or Jon Del Arroz, who’ve managed to both work in the creative sphere, but simultaneously provide commentary on the issues. Yet again, I simply do not have the time to do all that. Writing is not my job. And I have a family I’m taking care of.

I very much desire to focus all of my creative talent on the Bovodar stories. (Notice how you still haven’t seen the sequel to Bovodar and the Bears? It’s because I’ve been doing Forge and Anvil. Episode 1 of a two-part sequel is complete, though unedited. It’s called “Bovodar and the Dragons.”) I listen to podcasts about properties like Lord of the Rings or Babylon 5, I watch Deep Space 9 reviews by Razorfist, or I’ll watch something about the Farscape saga, and I say to myself: “I should be doing that. Why am I so behind?”

At this point in my life, I was supposed to have a symphony of books out there. A trilogy of Hobbit-styled books, some adult novels expanding upon my created universe, a “Silmarillion” that described the ancient genesis of the world I’ve been building. Perhaps have a videogame by now. Comics. A cartoon or two? Etc. But I don’t. I’m like George R.R. Martin, who stubbornly refuses to finish A Song of Ice and Fire. I’ve got an entire “Dune trilogy” in my mind that no one but me knows about. And it’s not put out there because I’ve only one life, and I’m only one man. Bilocation is not something I can do.

So I will turn back to what started this whole journey. The fiction. The very fiction I set out to do from the outset. The non-fiction was an interruption and a tangent, but the fiction will have to resume.

I think he’s doing the right thing, and probably at the right time too. Always know when to walk away. I stopped writing syndicated game reviews after seven years, stopped writing political columns after 12 years, and walked away from recording and publishing contracts after two albums. In each case, it was the right decision to do so and I’ve never regretted it.

Even though I walked away from Alpha Game at precisely the moment that the SSH was beginning to break out into the mainstream, it was the right time to shut it down there. I’d explored the subject to the depths of my interest and it was best to leave it to others to delve into the various ancillary elements and applications that interested them.

Don’t ever phone it in. Once you get to the point that you’re just phoning it in, it’s imperative to find something else on which you can focus more enthusiastically.

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Unrest in Europe

If even the wealthy and highly-prepared Swiss are anticipating shortage-related social unrest despite their world-class self-sufficiency, the social order across Europe and in the UK is unlikely to remain intact this winter.

Swiss people may revolt and resort to looting if the Alpine nation is hit by a severe energy crunch this winter, the police chief of one of its cantons told local media on Saturday.

Fredy Fassler, the head of the Security and Justice Department in the canton of St. Gallen, told German-language daily Blick that a blackout would have “far-reaching consequences.”

“Imagine, you can no longer withdraw money at the ATM, you can no longer pay with the card in the store or refuel your tank at the gas station. Heating stops working. It’s cold. Streets go dark. It is conceivable that the population would rebel or that there would be looting,” he said, adding that the country’s authorities should take measures to prepare for such extreme scenarios…

Fassler’s comments come after Swiss authorities said last week that they may place restrictions on energy consumption this coming winter, signaling that “power shortages [are] among the most serious risks” for the landlocked country.

What the police chief doesn’t mention is that the main reason the Swiss would likely be rebelling against their government is that the country produces what should be sufficient electricity for its own winter needs, but it has promised to provide a fair amount of that electricity to the rest of Europe. And the Swiss people are very unlikely to accept the idea that they have to freeze in darkness so that their electricity can be sent to France or Germany due to the outdated ideals of a few globalist Europhiles.

Still, the fact that the Swiss authorities are already talking openly about the situation and at least beginning to try to address the problem is a positive sign. The silence of the EU countries on the subject does not bode quite so well. Of course, the solution for the Europeans is perfectly straightforward: stop participating in the neocon’s proxy war on Russia, end the idiotic sanctions regime, return everything that was seized, and apologize profusely to the Russian government.

Like it or not, no one can deny that it’s a better alternative than famine, freezing, and facing a popular revolt. If they don’t choose wisely, the over/under on EU regime change before this time next year is probably around five and could be considerably higher. And Italy and Hungary will not be the only nations to exit the EU.

Nationalism is inevitable. Nationalism is inevitable because globalist imperialism is constructed on false foundations that we now know to be both evil and impossible.

UPDATE: Notice that the Swiss are on the verge of panic on the basis of an expected 10-percent shortfall. I anticipate the shortfalls in other European nations will be at least 3x that.

The energy shortage is “imminent”, Roger Nordmann from the left-wing Social Democratic party told the SonntagsBlick. “The war in Ukraine is causing acute gas shortages. Half of the nuclear power plants in France are at a standstill. And the drought is putting a strain on hydropower. This combination of drastic factors means that Switzerland could be short of around 15% gas and up to 10% electricity in the coming winter,” he said.

So end your war on Russia, guys. You took sides and you lost. It’s over. This really isn’t that hard.

UPDATE: Now the NHS in the UK is also starting to foresee trouble. Perhaps if the British authorities would stop welcoming “refugees” and start repatriating them to their homelands, they’d possess sufficient resources to prevent a humanitarian crisis among their own people.

The UK could face a “humanitarian crisis” involving ill health, excess deaths and rising inequality if the government does not take urgent action on rising energy bills, the National Health Service (NHS) Confederation warned on Friday. The organization wrote to the chancellor of the exchequer, claiming that failing to act would add more pressure on health services that were already strained.

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Assassination in Moscow

The daughter of influential Russian intellectual Alexander Dugin, Darya Dugina, was killed tonight in what appears to have been a car bombing targeting her father.

Russian media are reporting that a car exploded in Moscow oblast; allegedly, Darya Dugina, Alexander Dugin’s daughter, was driving and that she died on the spot. No official confirmation at this point, also no information on the cause of the explosion.

Unofficial sources who knew her personally are confirming her death – still nothing from the family or official sources. According to sources close to the family, both Darya and her father were returning from the “Tradition” festival at the Pushkin museum in Bolshiye Vyazyomy & Alexander Dugin was supposed to be in the car, but went home in another one.

Some Russian media are reporting, citing local law enforcement sources, that the driver of the car has preliminarily been identified as a woman and that the current theory for the cause of the explosion is an IED.

This is bad. This is potentially VERY bad. It practically reeks of the CIA, and if the history of Soviet/Russian intelligence is any guide, it will serve as a prelude to a ruthless series of reprisals aimed at influential figures supporting the war against Russia.

UPDATE: The mainstream media is now reporting it as a car bombing, while also trying to portray the assassination attempt as somehow justified because the 30-year-old victim’s father, who is not even a government figure, was somehow responsible for the war in Ukraine.

Daughter of Ukraine war mastermind ‘is blown to pieces in Moscow car bomb’: Darya Dugin ‘assassinated in attack meant for her father Alexander’

UPDATE: Both the identification and the fact that it was not an accident have been officially confirmed.

A criminal case has been launched over the death of the daughter of prominent Russian philosopher and political commentator Aleksandr Dugin, the Investigative Committee announced on Sunday morning, adding that a car bomb is suspected as the cause. Darya Platonova Dugina, 30, has been officially confirmed as the victim of the explosion outside the Russian capital, the agency said in a statement.

Moscow car bombing victim officially identified, Russia Today, 21 August 2022

UPDATE: The Russian FSB intelligence service has identified the responsible parties.

The FSB reported on the identification of the customers and perpetrators of the murder of Daria Dugina. The murder was planned by the Ukrainian special services. The direct perpetrator of the murder was a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Vovk, born in 1979, who left Russia for Estonia on August 21. She arrived in Russia on July 23. According to Russian sources, Natalia Vovk is now hiding in Estonia, an EU and NATO member state.

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The Devil’s Wire

It appears Ben Shapiro was instructed to hire Disney executives to lead his fake cultural non-alternative to the Devil Mouse:

To help Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire continue to venture into the entertainment and subscription streaming business. the company has reportedly hired a former Disney executive to serve in the company’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role. The right-leaning media outlet has hired Eric Caballero to be the CMO, who recently worked as a Vice President in Disney’s media and entertainment distribution group, The Hollywood Reporter (THR) first covered.

“While it includes politically focused content from The Daily Wire as well as some other conservative programming, the company is moving further into entertainment, committing $100 million to produce kids and family fare, and expanding into original movies (including a Gina Carano-led offering called ‘Terror on the Prairie’),” THR reported on the scope of Caballero’s work.

Jeremy Boreing, the co-CEO at the Daily Wire, said in a statement that Disney’s audience is sick and tired of the company’s progressive activism and expressed Daily Wire’s intentions to progress deeper into the children’s media space. “Companies like Disney have betrayed their family-friendly and pro-America audiences because of outsize influence from activist shareholders and employees, leaving money and opportunity on the table in the process,” Boering explained.

Caballero hopes to captivate the Daily Wire’s audience in a way similar to his work at Disney. “I studied Disney’s traditions of customer obsession, of multi-generational franchise-building, and of broadening Hollywood’s best talent,” Caballero told THR in a statement.

Earlier this month another Disney exec joined the Daily Wire. Chris Sonnenburg, the showrunner of Disney’s “Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure” was hired to be the Daily Wire’s senior vice president of animation development and production.

Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire Hires Former Disney Exec To Be CMO, 19 August 2022

This is a picture-perfect example of how the media gatekeepers create a false binary in order to present you with an alternative that isn’t actually an alternative at all, in the expectation that you’ll be dumb enough to accept the same thing that you previously rejected because it has a different logo on it.

Arkhaven is a real alternative. Unauthorized is a real alternative. That’s why you never, ever, hear the media – not even the comics media – uttering a single peep about either of them despite the fact that they are already technologically superior in some ways to their mainstream competitors.

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The Canary Died

A Sri Lankan explains his experience in his native land, and why it is likely to be replicated throughout the Western world.

As a Sri Lankan, I find watching international news coverage of my country’s economic and political implosion is like showing up at your own funeral, with everybody speculating on how you died.

The Western media accuses China of luring us into a debt trap. Tucker Carlson says environmental, social and corporate governance programs killed us. Everybody blames the Rajapaksas, the corrupt political dynasty that ruled us until massive protests by angry Sri Lankans chased them out last month.

But from where I’m standing, ultimate blame lies with the Western-dominated neoliberal system that keeps developing countries in a form of debt-fueled colonization. The system is in crisis, its shaky foundations exposed by the tumbling dominoes of the Ukraine war, resulting in food and fuel scarcity, the pandemic and looming insolvency and hunger rippling across the world.

Sri Lanka is Exhibit A. We were once an economic hope, with an educated population and a median income among the highest in South Asia. But it was an illusion. After 450 years of colonialism, 40 years of neoliberalism, and four years of total failure by our politicians, Sri Lanka and its people have been beggared.

The former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa deepened our debt problems, but the economy has been structurally unsound across administrations. We simply import too much, export too little and cover the difference with debt. This unsustainable economy was always going to collapse.

But we are just the canary in the coal mine. The entire world is plugged into this failing system, and the pain will be widespread.

Read the whole thing. And keep in mind that this appeared in The New York Times. Then realize the likelihood that you and your family are likely going to be facing some variant of these challenges over the next 6-18 months due to the ongoing failure of the neoliberal global order and the wickedness of those who preside over it. Therefore, preserve knowledge, prepare supplies, and purchase ammunition.

The first difference is that neither China nor the rest of the BRICSIA nations are going to come to the rescue of the nations whose governments have declared war on them. The second difference is that the Western nations, being more accustomed to wealth and comfort and even more indebted, have considerably further to fall than Sri Lanka did.

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Strategic Anxiety

Global Times clearly recognizes that the erratic behavior of the US and other globalist leaders is derived from the strategic anxiety created by their belated realization of the failure of the liberal world order:

In his press briefing on Wednesday, US State Department Spokesman Ned Price referred to China-Russia relationship as a “burgeoning” one, which is “of concern” because the vision they have for the international order is “starkly at odds to the liberal vision” and “with the underpinnings of the international system that have been in place for some eight decades following the end of the Second World War.”

The US concerns toward China and Russia are also reflected in the latest massive coverage in the Western media about China sending troops to Russia to participate in the “Vostok” exercises, and the hype of the so-called threat from the two countries.

A thief crying “stop thief.” The US’ concerns about the China-Russia relationship are the product of US’ own strategic anxiety. Washington worries that the US-centered international order established after WWII would collapse, and the coordination between China and Russia in the security realm could offset US’ influence in the international order the US has long dominated.

US’ strategic anxiety stems from the fact that the US is declining, said Zhang Tengjun, deputy director of the Department for Asia-Pacific Studies at the China Institute of International Studies. “The US maintains its strategic competition posture with China and Russia simultaneously in the directions of Ukraine and the Asia-Pacific. Under such circumstances, if China and Russia get closer, it will affect US’ deployment of resources in the two directions and hinder its efforts to dominate regional order. But US’ current strength does not allow it to focus on both,” said Zhang.

The mismatch of US’ strength and its mentality of viewing itself as the world’s No.1 is the root cause of the existing division and chaos of the world. Zhang held the view that the crux of the problem is not what China and Russia have done or not done, but whether the US and the West can overcome their fears and anxiety about their own decline.

As the US attempts to sustain hegemony, China, Russia safeguard international order, justice, Global Times, 18 August 2022

The shiny, sexy, secular vision of the World Economic Forum is dead. The world will not be ruled by Davos Man. There will be no neocon empire built on a foundation of American lives and enforced by American guns. The globalists have failed, they know it, and their avowed enemies in China and Russia know it too.

Now it’s time for the nations of the West to recognize it and replace their wicked globalist rulers with nationalist leaders who are willing to put the interests of their nations first. With men like Vladimir Putin and Xi Xinping and Narenda Modi.

The European elites are absolutely terrified of being Sri Lanka’d this winter. And they may well be right to be frightened, because it appears the cold realities of inflation, darkness, and hunger this winter are going to punch right through their web of lies.

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