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The Temptation of Empire

The War on Russia / War on China crowd constantly engages in psychological projection, insisting that their own dreams of ruling over a global empire is shared by both the Russian and Chinese leaders. But as anyone who has paid any attention to the thoughts of Vladimir Putin and Xi Xinping in this regard knows, both leaders are very well aware of the fatal trap that empire poses to any powerful nation, and both leaders seek to avoid the temptation.

You know what the problem is? I will tell you as a citizen of the former Soviet Union. What is the problem with an empire? They think they are so mighty they can afford minor faults and mistakes. It is okay, we will buy these people and scare other people; we will reach an agreement with still others, give beads to those and threaten others with our warships – problem solved. But problems are piling up, and there comes a time when it is no longer possible to cope with them all. And the United States is firmly and steadily following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union.

Vladimir Putin

Xi Jinping’s thinking is never as transparent or straightforward as the Russian leader’s, being occluded by Communist Party jargon, the customary Chinese ornamentation, and a vast panoply of classical quotes and allusions, but those who are familiar with them don’t have too much trouble interpreting what he’s saying.

“Governing a state with vast territory is a heavy burden; succeeding to the crown is much harder than building an empire.”

Founding a state requires a multitude of talents, while succeeding and strengthening the inheritance of ancestors requires even more. By quoting the sentence, President Xi Jinping indicated that the glorious and resplendent Chinese civilization was founded by large numbers of outstanding people throughout history. Today we are being passed the baton from previous generations and carrying on a great historical mission. Strengthening and rejuvenating the country by cultivating talent has become a priority for the Party and the country. To carry forward Chinese civilization, to build a strong and prosperous country, we must use history as mirror and study and utilize outstanding intellects.

How to Read Confucius and other Chinese Classical Thinkers, Xi Jinping

The point is that neither the Russians nor the Chinese are foolish enough to seek empire because they do not wish to lose control of their national destinies. While both nations have the power required to pursue it, they also have a clear and obvious disinclination to do so, as Hazony recognizes in The Virtue of Nationalism.

The most natural state is, therefore, one nation, an extended family with one national character. This it retains for ages and develops most naturally if the leaders come from the people.… Nothing, therefore, is more manifestly contrary to the purposes of political government than the unnatural enlargement of states, the wild mixing of various races and nationalities under one scepter. A human scepter is far too weak and slender for such incongruous parts to be engrafted upon it. Such states are but patched up contraptions, fragile machines,… and their component parts are connected by mechanical contrivances instead of bonds of sentiment.… It would only be the curse of fate that would condemn to immortality these forced unions, these lifeless monstrosities. But history shows sufficiently that the instruments of human pride are formed of clay, and like all clay, they will dissolve or crumble to pieces.

In this passage, Herder describes the imperial state as nothing other than a “curse” to all involved. According to this point of view, human government is inherently limited in what it can attain, and can be strong and effective only when it relies on the “bonds of sentiment” that unite a single nation in a national state whose leaders are drawn from the people. The “unnatural enlargement of states,” which forces many nations together under a single rule, is not based on such bonds of sentiment. It only increases the burdens and difficulties piled on the state as “incongruous parts” that are not bound together by mutual loyalty are added to it, until eventually it survives only as a “patched up contraption” groaning under the weight of these troubles.

Underlying such an approach is the recognition that the health of a nation is measured not only in terms of its military and economic strength, but also along other dimensions that are no less significant. What Herder describes as a “national character[, which] it retains for ages and develops,” refers to what I have called the internal integrity and cultural inheritance of the nation. And it is these things that tend to be lost as the imperial state expands. This is because conquered nations bring their own aspirations, troubles, and interests into the state. And this growing diversity makes the state more difficult to govern, weakening the mutual loyalties that had held it together, dissipating its attention and resources in the effort to suppress internal conflicts and violence that had previously been unknown to it, and forcing the rulers to adopt oppressive means of maintaining the peace. As this happens, the rulers become absorbed in intrigues and negotiations among distant parties in distant lands. This appeals to their vanity, as it allows them to see themselves as “men of the world.” But in reality, their understanding of the foreign nations they seek to pacify is nearly always limited to externals, to hollowed-out caricatures, so that they tend to do as much harm as good by applying the shallow, supposedly “universal” categories at their disposal to circumstances at the ends of the earth.52 In the meantime, when anyone approaches them with a matter that concerns the health and prosperity of their own nation, they have only scant attention to devote to it, and secretly resent this intrusion of “domestic affairs” when greater things are pressing. In this way, the minds of the rulers turn away, and they become almost as unaware of the concerns of their own people as they are of the interests of the foreign nations they seek to govern.

All of this is regarded with horror by peoples with strong national-state traditions, which tend to scorn the idea that their country’s leaders should lose themselves in efforts for the preservation and government of an empire of foreign nations, rather than strengthening the tribes of their own nation in their own land.

The Virtue of Nationalism, Yoram Hazony

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Was Kenosha a Failed Hit?

AC postulates that Kyle Rittenhouse was supposed to be the victim of a targeted assassination, as was clearly the case in the murder of Aaron Danielson in Portland.

Now suppose the riot was a complex intel operation, being run from an underground command center many miles away, by intel professionals watching events live on their TV screens, like feeds from numerous “streamers” like Gaige who were running around with their phones, streaming the riot. Suppose that command center was giving orders to their operatives on the ground in the riot through hidden earpieces, using bounced signals from locally positioned repeaters brought in by “Antifa” commanders. Imagine the plan for that night was to make an example out of some patriot who was armed, to counter the images of armed patriots in body armor protesting the Cabal, and make those guys look less scary. Suppose that command center picked Kyle out of the video streams during the early moments of the riot, because he was clearly young, out of shape, naive to how things worked, and looked like a Cherry these seasoned Cabal assets could roll over.

In the trial we learned, that at just the wrong moment, whoever was protecting the CarSource suddenly bailed with no explanation as the crowd moved in (the defense said it in closing). Then, one of the “leaders” of the armed patriots asked 17 year old Kyle to go down there to take the position, and at the same moment, Kyle’s “buddy” in the buddy system the patriots were using, who had been assigned to him earlier (a forty something Army vet), suddenly disappeared inexplicably from the side of the 17 year old kid he should have felt responsible for. So Kyle was suddenly alone and could not find him, just as the order to head to CarSource came in. So Kyle went toward the CarSource alone on orders, where Joseph Rosenbaum was hiding behind a car waiting, and where the FBI had just moved its overhead drone and aviation units to that location to record everything that was about to happen.

What Cabal didn’t know was Kyle was under God’s protection, and just happened to be extra-sharp and highly cool under fire as well. So he smokes two Cabal protesters and cripples a third, all clearly in compliance with all legal strictures, before successfully exfiling and getting to safety.

The evidence exposed during the trial does make it appear as if Rittenhouse was selected and set up to be a sacrificial lamb, only he unexpectedly turned out to be a skilled young warrior capable of defeating the antifa ambush team by himself.

And while it is very hard to believe that the USA might have already entered the early stages of a “Bloody Kansas” era, or that Federal agencies are actively targeting young Americans on American soil, unfortunately, that is what the evidence presently suggests.

The real surprise is that some enterprising propagandist hasn’t tried to claim that Kyle Rittenhouse was a secret Spetsnaz agent in an attempt to justify declaring war on Russia.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, Science!

The reason one can’t ever trust the science is because the midwit scientists are always contradicting themselves. Two decades after doing a 180 on the evils of butter, scientists are belatedly admitting that milk, cheese, and yogurt aren’t bad for you either.

Several studies observing large groups of people have failed to find a clear association between higher levels of dairy consumption and increased heart health risks.

There is a theory that this is because the other elements in dairy, such as calcium and certain fatty acids, work together in what is known as the ‘dairy matrix’ to protect our cardiovascular health.

Scientists have not yet been able to establish how this might work. But a 2018 study of more than 135,000 people in 21 different countries, who were monitored for nine years by researchers from McMaster University in Canada, found lower rates of death and cardiovascular disease in people who ate dairy than those who didn’t, with those who ate the highest amounts — two or more servings per day — the most protected.

A study published in September in the journal PLoS Medicine looked at 4,000 60-year-olds in Sweden (where diets are typically high in dairy) and found those who ate high levels were less likely to experience heart attacks, stroke or other cardiovascular problems — and were not any more likely to die than those who ate low levels.

‘A number of published studies suggest that, despite their saturated fat content, some dairy foods such as milk, cheese and yoghurt have a neutral or even positive effect on a person’s risk of heart and circulatory disease,’ says Victoria Taylor, a dietitian with the British Heart Foundation.

‘Studies have suggested that consuming dairy products is linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, both of which are factors that increase the chances of a heart attack or stroke.’

Point this out whenever some vaccinated moron tries to tell you to trust the science. Because the statistics already indicate that a similar, though opposite, reversal is coming soon with regards to the immune-system destroying Covid vaccines.

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Desperate for War

Revenge war with Russia or revenge war with China? It appears the former is preferred, if CDAN is to be believed:

The heads of several cable networks/news organizations from the far left to the far right, all agreed that a war with Russia would be amazing for ratings.

War with either Russia or China – which would mean war with both – would be sheer lunacy, of course, but when has that ever stopped the lunatics before? They’re like gamblers who believe that winning their past bets mean that their next one is a sure thing.

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Winter Heart Attacks

Posted for the record, in anticipation of the media attempting to explain away the unprecedented number of heart attacks this winter as being “in the normal, because people are shoveling snow”.

As winter arrives, it’s worth noting that each year about 11,500 people in the United States are treated in emergency rooms for injuries related to snow shoveling. On average, 100 of those injuries are fatal, generally heart attacks. The data, compiled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and analyzed a few years ago by the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, indicates that soft tissue injuries are the most common (55 percent), followed by lacerations (16 percent), fractures (7 percent) and heart-related injuries (7 percent). In the 17-year span of the data, however, cardiovascular injuries accounted for half of the hospitalizations and 100 percent of the fatalities.

And obviously, the number of fatalities related to snow shoveling should be on the low side, due to all that global warming of which we hear so much.

The Vaccines are the Vector

This is why all of the lockdowns will inevitably fail. Although, to the extent the lockdowns protect anyone, they will protect the unvaccinated who are being locked down, because it is the vaccinated who are now the most susceptible to the virus.

This study is a bit dense — but has been peer-reviewed, and makes clear that indeed, what I hypothesized was true — and had to be, given the circumstances with Diamond Princess and elsewhere, in fact validates by scientific fact.

In summary, RTC regions like polymerase, expressed in the first stage of the viral life cycle, are highly conserved among HCoV and are preferentially targeted by T-cells in pre-pandemic and SN-HCW samples. A subset of T-cells from donors able to abort infection could cross-recognise SARS-CoV-2 and HCoV sequences at individual RTC epitopes, pointing to prior infection with HCoV as one source of pre-existing cross-reactive T-cells.

“SN-HCW” are health-care workers who were repeatedly exposed and while they did not get sick or seroconvert “(SeroNegative)” showed very rapid response to Covid-19 from cross-reaction as a result of other coronavirus exposures.

Remember that Diamond Princess only had about 20% of the population on board that got sick despite all of them being confined together over an extended period, and even more-telling, there were multiple instances where one member of a cabin pair (husband and wife, usually) got seriously ill while the other did not only not get ill they did not test positive either. This also occurred among a couple I know early in the pandemic; one (the husband) was killed by the virus, the other (the wife) never got sick.

What’s even more damning is that by May of this year about 20% of the population, according to a NEJM study that I wrote on, had seroconverted. This strongly implies that statistically everyone who could get Covid-19 and have a serious problem with already had done so.

So how is that we had a “surge” this summer and continue to see infections this fall?

It can’t happen if there are no susceptible people.

But it is.

So there are susceptible people.

How did they become susceptible when they weren’t before in any material size?

We jabbed them.

Natural herd immunity should have been reached by now. Instead, it is the vaccinated whose short-term protection has worn off that are now vulnerable to the virus. This is why it is so important to a) refuse the vaccines if you are unvaccinated, and b) refuse the boosters if you have been vaccinated.

At this point, only the people in the (b) category bear much risk from covid, but their natural immunity will gradually rebuild over time. Taking the booster will provide them with 2-4 months of short term protection, but at the cost of further reducing the strength of their immune systems plus destroying whatever remnants of natural immunity to covid they have built up.

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