Fridges, economics and artifice

I’m learning so much with the Donbass war! And I want to share with my readers three of the most groundbreaking pieces of knowledge I’m acquiring thanks to the Western approach to that conflict.

The first one is connected with kitchen appliances. Quite recently, we’ve read in some news outlets that, according to Ukrainian sources, Russians are using electronic chips from dishwashers and refrigerators for their military equipment. Allegedly, due to the economic sanctions imposed on their country by the collective West, they’re running short of semiconductors and other electronic parts, thus needing to resort to any and every such component they can get hold of, including domestic appliances, in order to build or repair their weaponry.

I knew Russians had a name for low-cost making things out of scrap, but assembling arms with household junk is definitely quite a feat. I can envision their military searching civilians’ homes, tearing washing machines open, grabbing the chips and shipping them over to the missile factories so their army can hit the Ukrainians. This is amazing. I no longer wonder how the USSR, despite its meagre means, was able to lead the space race for some time.

The second one involves economics. Continue reading

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Nazism is unrepeatable

(Image from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-mi5-medals-duped-british-nazis-bj6v3rzcm)

As far as I understand, Nazism was the unique combination of a who, a where and a when: Adolf Hitler and the post-WWI Germany. One person, one country and one time. Outside of those three elements there can be neither Nazis nor Nazism. None at all. The way this term is described on the Brittanica leaves no room but to conclude that Nazism is unrepeatable: it died alongside its leader and the disappearance of the precise historical circumstances under which it aroused. Not even in Germany can ‘linger’ any Nazism, since Hitler and the 1930’s are very long gone. Therefore, talking about today’s Nazis is as silly as talking about today’s Aztecs, Huns or Vikings.

Now; someone could argue: “But Marxism was also the fruit of one person, country and time, yet it still exists.” Well, I don’t think so. First, because Marxism wasn’t as intimately espoused to Marx as Nazism was to Hitler. Second, because it was basically an economic theory meant not just for Russia, but susceptible of (and aspiring to) be exported to many other nations in due time, whereas Nazism was by definition limited to a particular country and race. Third, because in the world of today, even in China or North Korea, real Marxism is outdated and totally unfeasible (supposing it was ever feasible at all). Contemporary citizens who call themselves Marxists don’t probably know what they’re talking about.

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Whites move and… win?


On a recent talk show I heard, participants were talking about an issue I’ve been thinking myself of for a few weeks now: What’s Putin’s plan if and after Russia attains its military goals in Ukraine? Seen Biden & Associates’ resolute will to keep fueling the conflict until the last Ukrainian soldier, when and how can the Kremlin put an end to the hostilities? How do they extricate themselves from this war?

This seems like a difficult dilemma, and those guys at the talk show were elaborating on the very same reasons and arguments I had been considering. Of course, noone in the West knows what’s on Putin’s head. Maybe we can have an idea of what were his goals when the special operation on the Donbass was launched: liberate the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics, secure those territories as a Russian-friendly “buffer zone” and, somehow, force Kiev’s government to agree on Ukraine never becoming a NATO ally. But things, apparently, are not going that way. Perhaps -and only perhaps– Putin, underestimating his enemies’ drive, counted on a faster occupation of LPR and DPR, and on a reasonably early capitulation of the Ukrainian troops; perhaps, too, the folks at the Kremlin miscalculated USEurope’s staunch, unwavering and unlimited support -military and economical- of Zelenski’s regime. Whatever it be, in view of how the warlike events are unfolding, it’s reasonable to assume that, along the past weeks, there must have been changes in Russia’s schemes; but we can only wild-guess about them.

To this end, let’s put ourselves in a relatively pushy scenario: Continue reading

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The legal right to murder

During a psychology course I attended some decades ago, the lecturer asked us to answer -anonymously- the following question: Would you be able to kill someone if you knew for sure you weren’t going to be found responsible or suspect, nor otherwise penalized in any way? A not negligible part of the students (me among them, if you care to know) answered ‘yes’.

Along our lives, a whole lot of people eventually get to wish someone else’s death, and many of them would besides be ready to personally cause that death were they sure they wouldn’t be discovered guilty.

Wishing to get rid of John or Jane Doe is something quite natural. Eventually, we always come across someone who causes us severe or tough to bear affliction or pain, physical or emotional: that loud insufferable neighbour, the embittering boss, some humiliating and aggresive bully, the intimidating borough gantster, the extorting mobster, our nation’s cruel and vile opressor, that terrorist who slaughtered our father, the swine who’s raped our wife… The casuistry is infinite, and one can’t be blamed for wishing our tormentors’ death, or even for feeling the impulse of personally killing them. But the criminal code is there, heavily punishing homicide to dissuade us from commiting it; and, some way or other, we all understand that it’s how it should be, even though this abiding by the law forces us to curb our protection, justice or vengeance instincts. It seems sort of unnice to go around slaying people who get in our way.

However, among the uncountable number of instances in which we might like to get rid of another human being, there is a special case, one only exception on which -without us fully understanding why- most societies seem to agree. Continue reading

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The healthiest country on Earth


When I heard that Netflix was going to stop broadcasting in Russia, my first thought was: “Oh!, but was Netflix allowed in Russia at all? How imprudent!”

I mean: I’m a freedom enthusiast, and generally am not in the least for banning anything. I believe in free market and, in principle, support people’s possibility to access whatever services and goods they want or need of their own will, even though most person’s ability to choose what’s best for them leaves much to be desired: ideally, in my opinion, choice should come alongside education… But I’m drifting towards a too complicated debate here. For the moment, suffice to say that — well, if someone wants to watch whichever channel or online content, then let them do it.

However, when it comes to Netflix (or HBO, Amazon Video, Disney Channel, DW, etc.), I confess that my belief in liberty wavers quite a bit, and no longer know if I’m pro freedom of choice above all other considerations. And this is so because… well, Netflix and the like are such powerful indoctrinating tools that might even be labelled and treated like toxic: the same as governments regulate and restrict to the average layman the intake of certain drugs, least he poisons himself, so should perhaps be done with the venomous contents fed to uneducated or unprepared societies by those media platforms. Indeed, all of their video productions are manufactured to subtly –yet very efficiently– shape, when not manipulate, people’s minds in order for all of us to think in very much the same way, share identical values and have matching opinions: gender ideology, femin(az)ism, multiculturalism, identity politics, LGBTIQism, climate change, veganism, abortion, animalism, euthanasia, indigenism, welcome refugees, open borders… you name it! Such ready-made ideas are been seeded on most of the world’s population by –though not only– the mentioned platforms. Therefore, Continue reading

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I hope the Americans love their children too

In view of Russian military forces’ huge superiority over Ukrainian ones, it comes quite clear that, no matter how many weapons and mercenaries the latter receive from NATO, Vladimir Putin’s victory over Volodimir Zelenski -aka Joseph Biden- seems inevitable unless the Athlantic armies take direct part in the conflict. Otherwise, there’s no use for the Ukrainian troops -particularly their Azov philo-nazi regiment- in taking their own civilians hostage -by preventing them from reaching safety via the humanitary corridors- and using them as human shields anti Russian soldiers, who fight handicapped by strict orders to absolutely minimize civilian casualties; and there’s no use, either -except for increasing the suffering and deaths of their own people by absurdly prolonging this war-, in keep receiving the ongoing ammunition and armament loads so hypocritically sento to them by Europe (and not for free, by the way), not really for Ukrainian nationalists to stand a chance of winning over their enemy, but for them to hold fast for as long as possible in the hope that the Russian people, who are the ones who -very unfairly, by the way- suffer and endure the US-imposed embargo, finally get tired and arise against their government in claim for a regime change; which is the hegemonic agenda’s real goal in this fight.

But the eventual Russian victory would mean, in fact, nothing less than Continue reading

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Cui prodest bellum


Whatever the end of the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine be, we can be sure of this: Europe countries’ electorates will have been persuaded about NATO’s essential existence, and -neglecting any possible initiative to dissolve an organization which, in truth, lost its theoretical purpose more than three decades ago- will grant their leaders a carte blanche to engage in enormous increases of their respective defense budgets. With the excuse of a peremptory protection from the Russian bear, NATO’s European members will spend fabulous amounts of extra money on weapons – defrayed, of course, off the taxpayers’ pockets. Chancelor Shcolz has already anounced upping Germany’s military expense in 100 billion euros next year, the rest of NATO countries this side of the ocean to follow suit in some degree, plus other non-NATO nations as well. How much total? A few hunded billions?

And a huge proportion of these expenses in armament, technology and war equipment will likely engross the profit of US military industry, which is by a landslide the world’s top arms exporter. Ineffable delight for the Deep State; the same powers, by the way, who fostered the coup d’etat in Kiev 2014 (disguised as an spontaneous popular revolt called Euromaidan) to oust the by then Ukraine’s democratically elected president and sit, in its place, puppets like the actual Volodimir Zelenski, obedient to Washington’s guidelines.

There is, besides, a second outcome we should also take for granted: gas and petroleum futures (determining actual prices) will remain in historical highs for many months to come (though, paradoxically, the present global demand of such commodities is lower than in the recent past), which makes profitable for US fracking companies to turn on again -they’re already doing it- the expensive and polluting shell industry for hydrocarbons extraction, and whose production will be bought by silly Europeans twice as costly as what we’d pay to Russian suppliers. Cunningly enough, the very US buys hydrocarbons from Russia at a lower cost than it fracks them. But, as Ursula von der Leyen has recently said, “The sacrifice for the liberty of our Ukrainian brothers has also a price for Europeans, and we must be ready to pay that price”. In short, more market and profits for the United States.

Thus being things, if we now apply political analysis’ rule #1, “qui prodest?“, to the armed conflict in Ukraine, it comes as obvious that its main economic profiteer is the USA; therefore, it turns out as quite likely that, contrary to what West governments and their media payroll try to make us believe, this situation has been brewed, or at least favoured, by the said beneficiary. Gas, oil and weapons (besides other globalist, strategic and hegemonic goals, too obscure -yet unquestionable- for me to analyze) are mighty enough reasons for the White House to turn a deaf ear on the legitimate and reasonable security claims the Kremlin has been making these past years on Ukraine’s neutrality, and for the dubiously elected president Biden -another Deep State crippled puppet- to keep pushing his Russian counterpart towards the reckless step he’s ultimately taken. Which step, by the way, is nothing but a self-fulfilled prophecy: first we pester the bear and, and once he finally thrusts his pow, then we justify the pestering… and the assassination, if possible. But probably Russia, for the past decades, did not entail more of a threat to the West than that created by the same West when keeping alive the NATO and expanding it eastwards.

Gas, oil and weapons are also mighty reasons to help prolong this war much longer than necessary, and thus we’re witnessing such absurdity as, instead of stepping in between two contenders in order to stop the quarrel, o even -if we dared- boldly intervening in support of the part we perceive as weaker/righter, what NATO does is selling arms by the loads to Zelenski, and “morally” backing him up with sanctions to Russia, so that our protegé won’t stop fighting or save its lives, but rather slowly bleed out for as long as possible; not because Europe doesn’t care, but because it all goes for the superior cause of God blessed Uncle Sam’s profit.

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Three Poplars at Plyuschikha

Another little gem of Soviet cinema is Tri Topolya na Plyuschikhe, year 1968, directed by Tatyana Lioznova and written by long-lived dramatist Alexander Borshagovski. It’s an unassumig story, visually simple yet very touching, that through a brief episode in the life of a villager portrays to us – with great narrative and interpretative skills – a number of genuine and well defined characters, while sets forth several exquisitely chosen sides of rural and urban lives in mid-20th-century Russia.

In barely 75 minutes runtime the creators of this rather unknown work manage to present to us the longings and joys, hardships, problems, hopes and concerns of a few human types belonging to the country at the time: the rude frankness of peasants, the diverse attitudes – often ambiguous from a personal point of view – towards the bolshevik government, its goods and bads; the old shepherd whose wisdom and experience we’re only hinted at; a philantropist local courier, a good-natured war crippled, who endures the best he can his bad tempered wife; an uncouth and dry man, unpopular because of his nondrinkenness, part time poacher, who tries to keep himself and his family free and independent, to some extent, from the omnipresent kolkhozy (collective farms in the Soviet Union, based on joint property of the produced goods, featuring an excessively rigid and bureaucratic administration); a fat grumpy woman, quite a character, who fully supports ‘the system’; the typically rustic way -almost devoid of sophism and artifice- in which friendships and relations arise; the child who listens to Edith Piaf’s Non, je ne regrette rien on a small radio without barely understanding the lyrics; and among them all, Nurka, a woman native to a neighbouring village who, with unhinhibited resignation, Continue reading

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