Category: Uncategorized

Angels vs Demons

There shouldn’t be any question which side is on the side of the angels and which is most definitely not in what purports to be a war between Russia and Ukraine. One side is openly Christian and is fighting on their own land. The other side is led by an avowedly anti-Christian regime that is funded by Clown World and is literally persecuting priests and closing down churches.

It’s a cold, rainy, damp morning in the deep Donbass countryside, at a secret location close to the Urozhaynoye direction; a nondescript country house, crucially under the fog, which prevents the work of enemy drones.

Father Igor, a military priest, is blessing a group of local contract-signed volunteers to the Archangel Gabriel battalion, ready to go to the front lines of the US vs. Russia proxy war. The man in charge of the battalion is one of the top-ranking officers of Orthodox Christian units in the DPR. A small shrine is set up in the corner of a small, cramped room, decorated with icons. Candles are lit, and three soldiers hold the red flag with the icon of Jesus in the center. After prayers and a small homily, Father Igor blesses each soldier.

This is yet another stop in a sort of itinerant icon road show, started in Kherson, then Zaporozhye and all the way to the myriad DPR front lines, led by my gracious host Andrey Afanasiev, military correspondent for the Spas channel, and later joined in Donetsk by a decorated fighter for the Archangel Michael battalion, an extremely bright and engaging young man codename Pilot.

There are between 28 and 30 Orthodox Christian battalions fighting in Donbass. That’s the power of Orthodox Christianity. To see them at work is to understand the essentials: how the Russian soul is capable of any sacrifice to protect the core values of its civilization.

A fact that has been assiduously avoided by the pro-NATO media is that a significant number of the “Russian” forces, and a disproportionate number of the Russian casualties, are not soldiers of the Russian Army. They are members of the local militias who are residents of the Donbass, the two republics that voted for their independence in 2014 and were formally annexed by Russia in 2022, and many of those soldiers have been fighting the Ukrainian military forces for a decade.

It’s as if Texas declared independence, was invaded and occupied by the US military, which was later driven out by the Texans with the assistance of Mexico. The analogy is imperfect, because Russia has taken, and will continue to take, Ukrainian land outside of the Donbas, but the special military operation is, and has always been, more a war of liberation than a foreign military invasion.

Russia has relied upon the local militias, as well as the Chechens and private military companies, in order to preserve most of its regular troops to fight the US Army. And, of course, the morale of the local militias is incredibly high because they are literally fighting for their land and their own homes.

DISCUSS ON SG

Bambi Sanctions Godzilla

The EU leaders are subjecting their economies to the same savage attrition that the Kiev regime is subjecting all the men of Ukraine. Only Kiev hasn’t been stupid enough to declare war on China as well as Russia.

Beijing rejects “illegal sanctions” and will defend the interests of its companies, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has said following a report that the EU could blacklist some of the country’s firms for allegedly helping Russia to evade the bloc’s restrictions.

The EU is planning to place restrictions on three Chinese businesses and one Indian company as part of its 13th round of sanctions on Russia over its conflict with Ukraine, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

Brussels believes the firms in question are helping Moscow to circumvent existing restrictions, especially through the supply of electronic components that can be repurposed for use in drones and other weapons systems. If the plan is approved by member states, it will see the EU sanction companies from mainland China and India – two of the bloc’s key trading partners – for the first time.

”We are aware of the relevant reports,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. “China firmly opposes illegal sanctions or ‘long-arm jurisdiction’ against China on the grounds of cooperation between China and Russia. Chinese and Russian companies carry out normal exchanges and cooperation and do not target third parties, nor should they be interfered with or influenced by third parties,” the ministry said.

Beijing “will take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises.”

This decision to sanction Chinese companies goes so far beyond stupid as to genuinely raise the question if the Europeans are intentionally destroying their own economies and industrial capabilities at the orders of Washington in order to prevent their companies from being able to compete with the USA once the Great Bifurcation is complete and the West no longer has the ability to trade with Asia, Africa, or Araby.

Every single one of the twelve rounds of Russian sanctions has not only failed, but made the Russian economy stronger. Given that the Chinese economy is much larger, not only than Russia, but also than the combined economies of the European Union, what are the chances that this expansive thirteenth round will be any less disastrous.

It’s never been more clear that the post-WWII occupation of Western Europe by the United States never ended, or that the dirty sixties hippies were essentially correct and the good old conservative Republicans were totally wrong. The USA truly is an empire imposed by military force, it was never an armed force of charitable do-gooders just trying to help everyone by spreading peace and democracy around the world.

In the meantime, the Chinese have just demonstrated what they think of Switzerland’s now-defunct neutrality.

Bloomberg: The Swiss government is going to hold a peace conference for the Ukraine-Russia war soon. Does China have any intention to attend that?

Wang Wenbin: China’s position on the Ukraine crisis is consistent and clear. We have played a constructive role in advocating an end to the fight and a political settlement of the crisis. We will continue to promote peace talks and work for a political settlement of the crisis in our own way.

Bloomberg: Did you say you will use this forum to promote the settlement or you said you’ll use any forum to promote the settlement of the crisis?

Wang Wenbin: We will continue to play a constructive role in promoting the political settlement of the crisis in our own way.

Translation: No, we will not attend, participate, or promote any attempt by a pro-NATO government to play arbiter. You’re not neutral, you took Ukraine’s side, and you’re not fooling anyone. Also, don’t even think about trying to sanction our companies or we will sanction you right back, and you need our market more than we need yours.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Thucydides Trap (Castalia Edition)

Forget great power competition. The real Thucydides Trap is the one that Castalia History has laid for unwary book collectors and armchair historians. If you’d like to see the final stamp design of the first book in the series, you can see it at Castalia Library. It’s scheduled for binding the week of March 8th and it is a behemoth of a book.

With regards to the fourth book in the History series, in the latest selection posted, Sir Charles offers profound observations about the past that reflect directly on our future. Consider how well his description of a transformed political perspective applies to the post-WWII United States and what that implies for the future of its empire.

Two centuries and a half later there was a good example of political perspective being upset for a whole nation, not by catastrophe, but by sudden expansion. I allude to the Greeks, and the result on their view of the world caused by the exploits of Alexander the Great. The Macedonian conquest of the East revolutionized the relations of the active and high-cultured little states of Greece, both with each other and with the outer world. Civic patriotism received a blow, but in return the establishment of the new Macedonian Empire offered many compensations both to the state and to the individual. If a man consented to forget that he was an Athenian or a Corinthian, and merely to remember that he was a Greek, what was more inspiring than to see that the old Hellenic genius for colonization was not extinct; to behold every land from the Aegean to the Indus covered with Greek cities as large and splendid as any that had ever existed in the old motherland…

While the empire of the Eastern world was being won by the Tigris, fights at home between small armies for a strip of plainland or a border fort seemed contemptible and absurd. For the Greeks who had thrown themselves into Alexander’s great adventure the national perspective had suddenly enlarged from a view of the Aegean to a view as far as the Oxus and the Indus. The Hellenic world had been increased twenty-fold. Why discuss constitutions any more, or indulge in petty faction-fights, when the man with a brain and a sword had the universe at his feet? The vision was illusive, and ended in a veneer of Greek civilization imposed on the East for a few centuries, at the cost of the exhaustion and debasement of the civilizer.

DISCUSS ON SG

Trannies are Literally Retarded

It’s becoming abundantly clear that not only is baphometizing minors a particularly evil form of child abuse on the part of the parents and medical professionals, but also a historic crime against humanity by Clown World that is even worse than anything the infamous Dr. Mengele ever conceived:

A world-renowned expert who found puberty-blockers can harm children’s IQ says woke academics initially dismissed her research as ‘biased’. University College London neuropsychologist Professor Sallie Baxendale published a review of the potential impact of the powerful drugs on teens who take them.

Her alarming study highlighted cases where young girls seemingly lost between 7 to 15 IQ points while taking the medications, which halt bodily changes in puberty.

But despite the concerning findings, Professor Baxendale initially struggled to find a publisher for her review. Three separate journals rejected her paper in which she called for ‘urgent’ research into the impact of the drugs on children’s brain functions.

Writing in the now-published article in the peer-reviewed Acta Paediatrica journal, she said: ‘What impact does any delay in cognitive development have on an individual’s educational trajectory and subsequent life opportunities given the critical educational window in which these treatments are typically prescribed? If cognitive development “catches up” following the discontinuation of puberty suppression, how long does this take and is the recovery complete?’

I wonder if virtue-signaling parents who think that their tranny child is a social benefit to them would rethink their wicked plans if they realized that they are not only sterilizing their child, but permanently lowering the child’s IQ by a whole standard deviation? To put it in perspective, that’s the difference between the average white American IQ and the average black American IQ.

Probably not, considering that deviation is their central motivation.

DISCUSS ON SG

Biden’s Replacement

It’s becoming rapidly apparent that Biden is unlikely to make it to the November election in sufficient shape to speak in public. AC suggests that the plan is to replace him with RFK Jr., due to the problems with getting any other Democrat on enough state ballots given the registration rules:

RFK Jr. is the replacement for Biden, they will keep him in place until a replacement is impossible and then send him to hospice so all their voters will gravitate to RFK Jr. and hope he can steal enough centrists and Never Trumpers to win.

The comment is just dead on. If they ran RFK as a democrat, we would all assume he is comped, and opposition would be high. Now they have set him up as the anti-Cabal candidate who democrats and the establishment, and the CIA, and Vaxxies, just hate with a passion, and who they do not want to win since they have opposed him so vociferously. And then Biden gets either dead or 25th-ed, and now Democrats cannot run anyone because all the deadlines ran out, and RFK is there, perfectly positioned. He is like a more charismatic Bernie Sanders to the leftists, and he is almost quasi-Trumpian to the anti-Cabal right, so our resistance is lower than to Biden or an establishment candidate. It even makes sense why Gavin Newsom chose not to run, as did all the other establishment candidates. They all knew the plan – maybe their only chance for survival – was RFK, and everyone will do whatever is needed to support the plan.

I’m very dubious, mostly because it assumes that people who habitually break the election laws, including in the previous election, are going to make plans that are based upon the need to obey the candidate-registration laws. But it would explain both the way the elite media is gradually turning against Biden while going very, very soft on RFK Jr.

Even so, I’d assume that RFK Jr. was a backup plan, at most. If they want Newsom on the ballot, they’ll put him on the ballot, one way or another. And the Republicans will cry, but they won’t actually do anything about it.

As for the conservative obsession with Michelle Obama being a potential candidate… well, conservatives are retarded.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Third Economic Destruction of Germany

The combination of financially backing the EU, supporting NATO’s Russian sanctions, the primitive Green agenda, and the importation of millions of economically net-negative immigrants has finally overwhelmed what was once one of the world’s great economic engines:

One in three German manufacturers is considering moving production to other countries amid economic troubles, double the number recorded in 2022, Bild news outlet reported on Saturday, citing Siegfried Russwurm, the head of the Federation of German Industries (BDI).

According to the report, among the latest firms planning to relocate is household appliance manufacturer Miele, which plans to cut 2,000 jobs in Germany and move 700 positions to its site in Poland. Heating manufacturer Viessmann had already moved 3,000 jobs to Poland.

Volkswagen said last year that it would build a new battery factory in the US, and BASF announced plans to invest €10 billion in a petrochemicals plant in China amid job cuts at its headquarters in Germany. French steel pipe manufacturer Vallourec shut down production in Germany in September last year, while tiremaker Michelin and its US rival Goodyear said they would also close their German plants by the end of 2025.

Russwurm says that a growing number of companies have reported that their “patience with Germany is at an end.” According to him, the slowdown in economic growth and high rates of inflation, especially with regard to energy, have resulted in less investment, and Berlin lacks a strategy to turn the situation around. This in turn leads to a gradual decline in manufacturing, he said, and while existing production lines may continue to operate for a while, “new ones are no longer being built in Germany.”

Many companies point to the high energy prices, which soared after Germany lost access to Russian natural gas in 2022, as one of the major causes of their problems. This was exacerbated by Berlin’s decision to phase out nuclear energy and coal and switch to renewables, which, according to Russwurm, put manufacturers working in Germany at a significant disadvantage compared to other industrialized nations.

The German dirt is no more magic than the American variety. Generations of Turkish gastarbeitern combined with Merkel’s refugee wave means that manufacturers based in Germany are no more guaranteed actual German workers than if they just set their factories up in Turkey or in China.

The biggest lie that the neoliberal economists ever told was that immigration is good for the economy. While immigration can be good for the economy, such as when you’re replacing Native American nomads, African slaves, and Irish indentured servants with hard-working German immigrants, the 20th century movement of peoples has proven, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that replacing Northern Europeans with any other population is very, very bad for the economy in every sense of the term, including by the most basic GDP-per-capita metric.

To say that “immigration is good for GDP” is a literal tautology, because GDP increases with the addition of every single economic actor. Of course, it does with every dollar of debt too, and yet no one is dumb enough – a few professional neo-Keynesians aside – to claim that “debt is good for the economy”. But in both cases, the historical data proves – does not suggest, proves – that mass immigration is reliably very, very bad for an industrial economy.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Textbook Failure

It was a pretty good game last night. However, I’m beginning to conclude that for all his many strengths, Kyle Shanahan simply isn’t a big-game coach. Rather like Denny Green with the Vikings back in the day, he’s capable of putting together a great team and getting them to play very well in the regular season, but he doesn’t have the mental flexibility to win the chess games that is necessary at the championship level.

Some things can’t be controlled. McCaffrey uncharacteristically fumbling in the red zone, Greenlaw getting hurt running onto the field, the punt hitting the leg of the blocker, the extra point being blocked. But I was pretty certain that Shanahan choked when he failed to try to close out the game when the 49ers had the ball in scoring position inside the two-minute warning of a 16-16 game.

There are two ways to play to win in that situation. The best is to burn the clock down to 10 seconds, then score. This is necessary when playing against a top-tier quarterback. You can trust your defense to hold on in many cases, but not against a Brady, a Mahomes, or a Rodgers. The other option is to play for a touchdown. In both cases, you are playing to win the game.

However, the NFL tradition is to always play to put off the final decision. Perhaps this is a league-dictated thing, or perhaps it is the textbook decision because it allows a head coach to avoid the criticism and accountability that comes in the wake of an execution failure that makes what was the right decision at the time look incorrect in hindsight. Shanahan kicked the field goal with too much time on the clock, and was lucky that Kansas City only scored three to send the game to overtime instead of putting the game away with a touchdown inside regular time.

If you don’t play to win, you don’t really deserve to be a champion anyhow.

And who would have thought that Andy Reid – ANDY REID – would win a clock management battle? In the Super Bowl! This is surely a sign of the Apocalypse.

UPDATE: With regards to the entertainment scripting theory, I think the NFL actually wanted SF to win. The one egregious call was the defensive holding call on 3rd and 13 in OT. And the grounding call on Mahomes, while 100-percent legitimate, could have easily been waved off due to the receiver in the vicinity, had the league been favoring the Chiefs.

DISCUSS ON SG