Germany 1976. The Baader-Meinhof Gang was wreaking havoc in the country. I was enjoying being an Air Force Sargent. When I got to the party the average annual exchange rate for the US dollar was approximately 2.5170 Deutsche Marks. Lots of soldiers had to live on the economy because base housing was condemned after the second world war. Oh yeah. Guys were living in the back of bowling alleys and everything else. Meanwhile, as we were all wondering who won the war, my landlord was driving a long wheelbase Mercedes-Benz sedan. He lived in a house that had an apartment for his mother-in-law and a seperate small apartment for my wife and kids and I. I drove a Ford escort that had holes in the floorboard. It rains a lot in Germany and if the pieces of wood plywood weren't in the right place on the floorboards you would definitely get your face wet on road trips.
The powers that be told us to keep our place. We had ration cards for cigarettes and liquor. I collected those ration cards from the guys that didn't drink or smoke and bought all of the stuff I could at the BX and sold it to the Germans. I made 50% and they saved 50%. I lived in a nicer house than the base commander. My landlord had shrunks in the bedrooms because closets were considered rooms and were taxed by the government.
You may wonder where this is headed. Simply put you learn (at an early age hopefully) that laws are passed for the people that benefit from them. Rules are made to make sure that them what has - gets.
I explained to my son years ago that you want to shoot a deer when it is not running and terrified and adrenaline is pumping through its system. It makes the meat taste funny. Do not run through the forest with your gun over your head screaming "I'm going to kill you!" Instead you go to the river where the deer drinks and find a nice spot downwind from where the deer tracks are on the river bank. You wait patiently until it shows up and shoot it in the heart; don't want to damage the rack.
Remember that if you encrypt a file that you should decrypt it to make sure it works. And if it looks like it's working then encrypt the encrypted file. Repeat the same process with a different password. Leave it in a spot where the appropriate group will find it using an appropriate file name and let them spend a long time finding out it's garbage.
Don't put anything on the internet that may be "misunderstood." And remember what you put on the internet will be reviewed by people that have an interest in doing to you what people like you need to have done to them. Whether you understand it or not.
Frank Zappa was credited with saying, "In any contest that is you versus the world always bet on the world." Sage wisdom.
Read "Shogun" by Clavell if you haven't. read "Catch-22" by Heller if you haven't. The main characters in those books are both trying to adapt to circumstances, cultures and situations that are foreign in almost every way to them.
The way we were raised in the USA and our expectations are diametrically opposed to cultures in other countries. I have found that it is important not to get too preachy towards other countries. I am reminded of what a close friend of mine told me when I was in Saudi Arabia. He told me that when we were finished there we could go home.
I am an ardent supporter of America first and let us make America better and let people in other countries run their own countries and solve their own problems.
I am also an ardent supporter of "America First", especially in regards of USAmericans minding their own business and leaving everyone else alone.
Will never happen, as decades of constant and bloody interference in Latin America, South East Asia, the Middle East and other places have proven again and again. You guys just can't.
Oh, we used to care. We cared so much that we spent time, effort, money, to campaign for Brexit. That was ten years ago. See what they - governments, media, admin a.k.a. Whitehall Mandarins and the Supreme Justices - did to us and are still doing. The examples you bring: yeah, well, we saw this ten years ago. Most of us are now tired of banging our heads against that wall.
You know the quote regarding what one is when trying the same thing again and again, hoping for a different outcome. We tried different things - still the same outcome.
Look up the sayings of a certain Jean Claude Juncker, EU President ten years ago, for some of the reasons we wanted out. Nothing has changed. Even: Russia -bad; China - bad, EU - shining 'democracy' worked in those days.
But hey - no worries: it's the footie world cup! That's more important, innit like, and keeps the minds of the populace off troublesome things like what Brussels is doing.
Yeah, I didn't want to expand the UK section. I had a whole list of examples ready like Tatchell & Coskun... But just a simple look across social media gives you a lot of examples where the police could use some better management of their time... You know... Like catching thiefs and murderers or even rapists you know... Just an idea.
Catching thieves or rapists?Far too dangerous ... That particular rot had already set in in the late 1990s, while we were still in the EU. It's become a (police) habit since then: "community cohesion" must be preserved at all cost and the victim, if white, is the guilty party.
I'm now taking the same attitude as a former German King did who was forced to abdicate by communist revolutionaries after WWI and say: 'well, kids, from now on make your own shyte all by yourself' ...
I wrote 'King', not 'Kaiser' ... and the one who said these words was King Frederick Augustus III. One ran away - the other didn't but had to give in to the communists.
When on the phrase "authoritarianism precedes war" DuckDuckGo responds with:
"Authoritarianism can create conditions that lead to war by suppressing dissent and political pluralism, which may result in internal conflict or aggression towards other nations. Authoritarian regimes often use military conflict to distract from domestic issues or consolidate power."
it's obvious what has been prepared long ago (BTW not just Europe).
Some food for thought: A PC can be be more secure than a smart phone. Yet authorities insist on using a smart phone even for banking, and eliminate PC alternatives.
There are secure alternatives to Android, but those require intimate knowledge of how to flash those... Which is... tricky to say the least if you don't want to end up with an expensive paper weight.
I discovered the issue when using Whatsapp on the NOX emulator to contact my bank - something that always has worked. But since last week the app crashed, asked "restart the app?" and after allowing that, the response was "Whatsapp keeps crashing" with "quit app" as only way out. No problem, report to Meta AI which has complete control. Sure enough, it reported that on the NOX emulator, the app could no longer work for the bank - other channels, no problem. Meta didn't find a clue so I visited a branch to settle the issue that no longer could be dealt with via PC (Phone is run by robot running in circles). The official insisted Whatsapp hadn't changed. A few days later I checked and as to no surprise, Whatsapp on NOX no longer works at all: "device not supported" was the message.
This experience suggests that no amount of tinkering with flashing a different phone OS would work, long term. Meta even wrote that yes, corporations are allowed to check a client's device however they like - which apparently was the reason for the crashes.
And I wouldn't be surprised if the choices of "share details etc." buttons despite different texts all default to "yes" underneath.
My experience, summarized, has been "everyone with close family ties can be compromised and will be, when that's profitable enough".
If essential govt-related institutions only use phone and WhatsApp (with the ability to test a device before allowing connection), that leaves no alternative.
Hence my last student (in 1989) was working at a really secure private communication technology: pseudo random noise spread spectrum. Unfortunately I got an eye disease, wound up in "early pension" and the subject matter was too complicated for most so the project wasn't finished.
Nowadays such a project could be possible on PC but requires a dedicated USB device for transmission.
With everything you describe in mind, and given all of the "irregularities" surrounding voting and elections going on these days throughout The West, my working theory on the reason "democracy" is so much in vogue with the Epstein Class is that it is a game they are now confident they can control to achieve their own desired outcomes.
The Left in particular seems fond of the tactic of subjecting a pet proposal to a vote over and over again until they get the desired result. You can lose a dozen times, but you only need to win once.
Sometimes I get the feeling we're now living in a mythic, precivilization time warp. Governments and the various parties there in name only. Who we're actually ruled by are two demigods.
Mars the God of War, and Mammon, the God of Greed.
I need to come clean about something- I did run a Google search on Klaus Schwab outfit in Davos cause crimes against fashion are equal to the crimes against humanity. There are plenty and many. Star trek extravaganza to hide a stomach of consumption covering all Golden Dust (a racist brand of household cleaner) by Unilever back in the days, which female CEO who hasn't eaten carbs in years did lecture the audience a few Davoses back.
And once upon the time in my previous life I did complete a Davos application for the mid-sized Russian oligarch. Don't we all love to be a part of one happy dysfunctional European family, net.
Governance in western nations across the board is at an all-time low. But the eagerness to curtail your freedoms? That's at an all-time high.
Even though western states demonstrably thrived before they had total surveillance capabilities, as soon as technology provided that capability, western governments turned it on their own citizens.
You should pay careful attention to the methodology used in the creation of corruption *perception* index. The last time I looked into it they were doing things like asking business leaders in Denmark how corrupt they thought various other countries were... There have been some critiques of Transparency International's CPI methodology, which you can find if you care to search for them.
P.S. Take a holiday in Russia. You may be pleasantly surprised at how well cities are being run.
P.P.S. The people seem a lot friendlier once you learn some of their language. It is almost as if it helps when you can start to understand each other.
Russia is said to be highly corrupt yet they incentivize their own people to have more kids and do not import other cultures. They do not teach hatred of their own people in their schools, etc. Those should be the top metrics for measuring corruption these days.
As for Trump: Absolutely disgusting displays of Neanderthal mindlessness, vicious bigotry and violent racists like a large number of armed thugs who've just broken out of prisons or asylums. Their families know what kind of deranged and warped lunatics they are with thin or non-existant work histories, broken marriages, tax cheats and scofflaws ever looking for escape from the realities of their bad histories. From DJT who was a thoroughly spoiled son of a crook living off of government projects, running his own businesses into the ground while burning through women, business associates, workers and lawyers with all types of ruses and scams to evade accountability--there never was an honest or upright day in this man's life even has he tries to bring everyone else down through rampantly bad government policies and actions amidst these farcical displays of fake bravado and toughness.
I did some poking around back in 2018 to see if I qualified for immigration to Russia. It was difficult back then, but I would have squeaked through. Today it's much easier as they've drastically changed their immigration policy. If you read the western press they'll tell you it's gotten much harder, which it has if you're a migrant worker from any of the former Asian republics, or anywhere else that's been flooding the EU in recent years. Not so if you come from a western nation and have marketable skills, especially if your reason to move has to do with your "cultural values" which incidentally does not mean you have to be Christian, although it helps. It simple means you share the same traditional values as most Russians, which if you're serious about moving there, you already do.
Don't be put of by the skills requirement. If you can drive a truck, operate heavy machinery, weld, pipe fit, or any number of what we consider trades, you're considered skilled. The reason for this is simple. If you restrict migrant workers, you create a vacuum in some areas that needs to be filled.
It's fairly obvious what they're trying to achieve here. Russia has been in demographic decline since Soviet times, but they don't want to arrest that decline by importing a bunch of people with no cultural affinity and limited (if any) skills. That just puts a burden on already strained resources, the UK, Germany and France being prime examples. In effect, they've noticed a trend of people wanting to escape that trap and have made it easy for them to do so. Whether or not it's enough to offset the decline is another question but it clearly doesn't hurt. Meanwhile, you'll be in a place with far fewer problems and much nicer people than in most of the western world, especially the EU.
One thing that came up in my research though is that "Corruption Index": Russia sits at 22, while Ukraine sits at 36. Compared with at home around the 60.
And yes, I have been contemplating the move, but I have school-going kids, which complicates things to the point of immobility...
I would not seriously think of moving to Russia now, inlessthings in your home country deteriorate badly if you have personal reasons.
There are at least as bad infringements of privacy ongoing in Russia, and corruption is much worse the in the EU.
None of the Russian speaking Latvians we know are thinking of moving to Russia to escape the rabid Latvian nationalists - they want Putin to come save them, remove the Lt
Latvian nationalists - and then leave!
Fat chance of that happening.
I am Russian speaking, have been in various parts of Russia starting in the Soviet era, and even ran a small IT education company in post-sovjet Tashkent for about 2 months in 2005 I think it was until they did the Andizhan massacre, when I realized things were not going to become better and left.
If you do not know the post-soviet culture and mentality - you have been warned.
Post the USSR Russia experienced an economic collapse from which it took a decade to even begin to recover. They're well on their way at this point and the economy has improved vastly in the last 2 decades despite sanctions and non stop NATO aggression. Every country has its problems, but do you want to live in a place that's sliding into economic collapse, or one that's already gone through that and is recovering, and more importantly, has the resources to continue doing so?
It sound like you've been away for a while. Maybe it's time for a second look?
I guess it depends how old your kids are. Children have an amazing capacity for learning languages, especially when younger. Also, there's nothing like facing new challenges at an early age to help build confidence. My younger sister lived in Japan for 10 years as a child. As a result she's fluent in Japanese. Funny as hell when she starts talking like an anime character. If you didn't see her, you'd swear she was a native speaker.
Here's a thought. Ask them what they think of the idea. They might surprise you. Also think about the advantages to them in their adult lives. They won't be kids forever.
"That just puts a burden on already strained resources, the UK, Germany and France being prime examples."
How many migrants have closed schools, hospitals, businesses, shifted the burden of taxation onto the poor? None. I suggest that you're blaming the victims.
Which victims are those? The ones who were stabbed? The girls who were raped, some repeatedly by Pakistani gangs that they're only now just admitting to? Perhaps you're referring to the ones selling drugs on the High Street?
If you're going to talk about victims, you could also mention the migrants that are victimized by their own people, or do you think everyone pays up front for passage across the Channel or the Med? A lot of them end up having to work that off in sweatshops, and again we get to the young women and girls that are forced into prostitution. Those victims?
My ex was a human rights worker in Toronto in the late 70s, assisting political refugees from such places as Chile, Nicaragua and El Salvador. I know what a political refugee looks like. I've seen the scars, both physical and mental. Most of the people arriving in the EU and UK are nothing of the sort. They're economic migrants - well, except for the young men, some of whom are actually fleeing because the radical militias they belonged to such as ISIS and AQ were defeated by Hezbollah, Russia or ironically, the USA.
The UN charter on refugees states that the first safe country of arrival is obliged to provide sanctuary, not to shine them on to their preferred destination. Last time I looked neither Germany, France the UK or Russia for that matter, share a border with Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.
"How many migrants have closed schools, hospitals, businesses, shifted the burden of taxation onto the poor? None. I suggest that you're blaming the victims”
I think I already answered that question but I guess it never occurred to you that having half your students unable to speak the native language puts a burden on a school's ability to teach, which affects the native kids as well. Also there’s the behavioural issues that many migrant children pose. As for hospitals, if you increase the local population you obviously increase the hospital workload and if you don’t hire additional staff at additional cost (if you even can) the service suffers and along with it the native population, typically the poorer end. As for businesses, you should talk to some of the shop owners on the High Street and other shopping districts and ask them what they think of scores of shiftless migrant men loitering about day and night and the effect that has on their business.
You suggested I'm blaming the victims. I suggest you're living in a dream world if you can't see the problem.
That never happened when Britain was supposed only to be white people eh? Dunblane? Lockerbie? Birmingham pub bombings? Bloody Sunday (both)? Do you know that Britain has never been exclusively white? Do you know that it was Liarbour in 1976 that brought back permanent mass unemployment as state policy?
Stick your racist head up your racist arse and fuck off. When you've fucked off, fuck off some more, then keep fucking off until you've fucked off back here and then fuck off again. Racist.
Leap to conclusions much? Racist? Really? Who said anything about white people? It's the culture (or lack of it) that I object to, not the race. You know what, instead of just blowing you off the way you did to me, I'm going to prove that you're wrong. I could start with the fact that my wife is Japanese, which I think I've mentioned here before, but I could just be saying that, so I'm going to offer concrete evidence, which is very easy to do - just look at my Substack.
Most recent program is a feature on a Taiwanese singer I really like. Just below that you'll see a program of Punjabi trucking songs. I listen to those a lot because I worked with those guys for many years and got to know their culture and religion, even learned their language. Further down we have Cafe Del MIR where I feature artists from all over the world, some Japanese, Some Chinese, Brazilian... etc. Further on we have a program featuring traditional Turkish dance music. Are Turks white? I'm not sure.
Continuing on, we come across Light in Babylon, three talented musicians, one a Sephardic Jew from Israel, another a Turk and another a Frenchman. Weird musical tastes for a racist, wouldn't you say? Then of course we have Yarsani beats. Any Idea who they might be? Wait. It gets better.
Scrolling down a bit further, past a bunch of Russian material, we come across a couple of programs on Afghan music, and a bit further down one on Tajik and another on Uzbek music. But wait! What’s this? —>. Insha’Allah? Could that be a celebration of Islamic themed music? Why yes it is! Again, odd musical choices for a racist, wouldn’t you say?
Now don’t you feel silly? You made a false accusation against someone in public, which under some circumstances would be actionable, but I’ll let that go because making a public fool of yourself is probably punishment enough.
You could of course apologize, but I’m not holding my breath because you don’t sound like someone who’s capable of admitting when they’re wrong.
I'm not writing to please you but to expose you, which I think I've done already, but I'll let the readers decide. I don't know what colour you are and I don't really care, but like I said, you don't sound like someone who's capable of admitting when they're wrong, and you just proved my point.
> Those people currently in charge cannot survive their own populations thinking clearly and deciding for themselves.
If the populations thought clearly or decided for themselves, they would agree with me about the imperative need to move beyond money, banks and capitalism (for financial profit - which is money printing - operated economy).
And by the way, none of these rulings, laws, decrees, dictates etc would matter at all if there were not uniformed enforcers willing to enforce anything and everything in exchange for a monthly stipend of some... monetary units. Of which the banks can create arbitrary amounts of fictional yet spendable monetary units.
When disputing with the government, citizens have 4 basic 'boxes':
1. The soap box. Raise awareness and a clamor.
2. The ballot box. Try to get responsive leaders.
3. The jury box. Try to use the courts to enforce the law.
4. The Ammo box. Self explanatory.
Europe has reached box 4. Nothing else is available or will work. It took 75 years for the USSR to fail, and millions of deaths. I don't see your position as being any better.
Here in the States, our government remains a bit wary of the citizenry because we have 11 million snipers and more firearms than people. They are trying the same crap, and we have the same 4 boxes. Many here already believe rebellion is the only solution, and are awaiting a spark.
Germany 1976. The Baader-Meinhof Gang was wreaking havoc in the country. I was enjoying being an Air Force Sargent. When I got to the party the average annual exchange rate for the US dollar was approximately 2.5170 Deutsche Marks. Lots of soldiers had to live on the economy because base housing was condemned after the second world war. Oh yeah. Guys were living in the back of bowling alleys and everything else. Meanwhile, as we were all wondering who won the war, my landlord was driving a long wheelbase Mercedes-Benz sedan. He lived in a house that had an apartment for his mother-in-law and a seperate small apartment for my wife and kids and I. I drove a Ford escort that had holes in the floorboard. It rains a lot in Germany and if the pieces of wood plywood weren't in the right place on the floorboards you would definitely get your face wet on road trips.
The powers that be told us to keep our place. We had ration cards for cigarettes and liquor. I collected those ration cards from the guys that didn't drink or smoke and bought all of the stuff I could at the BX and sold it to the Germans. I made 50% and they saved 50%. I lived in a nicer house than the base commander. My landlord had shrunks in the bedrooms because closets were considered rooms and were taxed by the government.
You may wonder where this is headed. Simply put you learn (at an early age hopefully) that laws are passed for the people that benefit from them. Rules are made to make sure that them what has - gets.
I explained to my son years ago that you want to shoot a deer when it is not running and terrified and adrenaline is pumping through its system. It makes the meat taste funny. Do not run through the forest with your gun over your head screaming "I'm going to kill you!" Instead you go to the river where the deer drinks and find a nice spot downwind from where the deer tracks are on the river bank. You wait patiently until it shows up and shoot it in the heart; don't want to damage the rack.
Remember that if you encrypt a file that you should decrypt it to make sure it works. And if it looks like it's working then encrypt the encrypted file. Repeat the same process with a different password. Leave it in a spot where the appropriate group will find it using an appropriate file name and let them spend a long time finding out it's garbage.
Don't put anything on the internet that may be "misunderstood." And remember what you put on the internet will be reviewed by people that have an interest in doing to you what people like you need to have done to them. Whether you understand it or not.
Frank Zappa was credited with saying, "In any contest that is you versus the world always bet on the world." Sage wisdom.
Read "Shogun" by Clavell if you haven't. read "Catch-22" by Heller if you haven't. The main characters in those books are both trying to adapt to circumstances, cultures and situations that are foreign in almost every way to them.
The way we were raised in the USA and our expectations are diametrically opposed to cultures in other countries. I have found that it is important not to get too preachy towards other countries. I am reminded of what a close friend of mine told me when I was in Saudi Arabia. He told me that when we were finished there we could go home.
I am an ardent supporter of America first and let us make America better and let people in other countries run their own countries and solve their own problems.
Just me ~
🎯
I am also an ardent supporter of "America First", especially in regards of USAmericans minding their own business and leaving everyone else alone.
Will never happen, as decades of constant and bloody interference in Latin America, South East Asia, the Middle East and other places have proven again and again. You guys just can't.
This only ends in blood. Theirs, ours, both, but when the only choices are removed and one is backed into a corner with nothing to lose.
Me, I'm going to miss indoor plumbing.
All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.
- George Orwell
Oh, we used to care. We cared so much that we spent time, effort, money, to campaign for Brexit. That was ten years ago. See what they - governments, media, admin a.k.a. Whitehall Mandarins and the Supreme Justices - did to us and are still doing. The examples you bring: yeah, well, we saw this ten years ago. Most of us are now tired of banging our heads against that wall.
You know the quote regarding what one is when trying the same thing again and again, hoping for a different outcome. We tried different things - still the same outcome.
Look up the sayings of a certain Jean Claude Juncker, EU President ten years ago, for some of the reasons we wanted out. Nothing has changed. Even: Russia -bad; China - bad, EU - shining 'democracy' worked in those days.
But hey - no worries: it's the footie world cup! That's more important, innit like, and keeps the minds of the populace off troublesome things like what Brussels is doing.
Yeah, I didn't want to expand the UK section. I had a whole list of examples ready like Tatchell & Coskun... But just a simple look across social media gives you a lot of examples where the police could use some better management of their time... You know... Like catching thiefs and murderers or even rapists you know... Just an idea.
Catching thieves or rapists?Far too dangerous ... That particular rot had already set in in the late 1990s, while we were still in the EU. It's become a (police) habit since then: "community cohesion" must be preserved at all cost and the victim, if white, is the guilty party.
I'm now taking the same attitude as a former German King did who was forced to abdicate by communist revolutionaries after WWI and say: 'well, kids, from now on make your own shyte all by yourself' ...
Works for me.
Wilhelm was ousted by the boss class to save themselves and the police are a class not a race militia. Colour is a secondary consideration.
I wrote 'King', not 'Kaiser' ... and the one who said these words was King Frederick Augustus III. One ran away - the other didn't but had to give in to the communists.
Thank you for correcting me; which one gave in to the Communists?
That was Frederick Augustus III. Don't judge him: this was in 1919 and everybody knew what had happened in Russia ...
When on the phrase "authoritarianism precedes war" DuckDuckGo responds with:
"Authoritarianism can create conditions that lead to war by suppressing dissent and political pluralism, which may result in internal conflict or aggression towards other nations. Authoritarian regimes often use military conflict to distract from domestic issues or consolidate power."
it's obvious what has been prepared long ago (BTW not just Europe).
Some food for thought: A PC can be be more secure than a smart phone. Yet authorities insist on using a smart phone even for banking, and eliminate PC alternatives.
There are secure alternatives to Android, but those require intimate knowledge of how to flash those... Which is... tricky to say the least if you don't want to end up with an expensive paper weight.
I discovered the issue when using Whatsapp on the NOX emulator to contact my bank - something that always has worked. But since last week the app crashed, asked "restart the app?" and after allowing that, the response was "Whatsapp keeps crashing" with "quit app" as only way out. No problem, report to Meta AI which has complete control. Sure enough, it reported that on the NOX emulator, the app could no longer work for the bank - other channels, no problem. Meta didn't find a clue so I visited a branch to settle the issue that no longer could be dealt with via PC (Phone is run by robot running in circles). The official insisted Whatsapp hadn't changed. A few days later I checked and as to no surprise, Whatsapp on NOX no longer works at all: "device not supported" was the message.
This experience suggests that no amount of tinkering with flashing a different phone OS would work, long term. Meta even wrote that yes, corporations are allowed to check a client's device however they like - which apparently was the reason for the crashes.
And I wouldn't be surprised if the choices of "share details etc." buttons despite different texts all default to "yes" underneath.
I tried a smart phone for a couple of months then went back to my steam-powered mobile. I don't like working for people who're robbing me.
Netguard for a (more) secure Android.
FairEmail for secure mail.
You have to download them from GitHub to get the real thing.
The crave serious technical competence to use.
Telegram is likely more secure than WhatsApp for messaging.
Durov will most certainly fight the EU.
https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail/releases?after=1.1553
https://email.faircode.eu/
https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/releases
https://netguard.me/
My experience, summarized, has been "everyone with close family ties can be compromised and will be, when that's profitable enough".
If essential govt-related institutions only use phone and WhatsApp (with the ability to test a device before allowing connection), that leaves no alternative.
Hence my last student (in 1989) was working at a really secure private communication technology: pseudo random noise spread spectrum. Unfortunately I got an eye disease, wound up in "early pension" and the subject matter was too complicated for most so the project wasn't finished.
Nowadays such a project could be possible on PC but requires a dedicated USB device for transmission.
With everything you describe in mind, and given all of the "irregularities" surrounding voting and elections going on these days throughout The West, my working theory on the reason "democracy" is so much in vogue with the Epstein Class is that it is a game they are now confident they can control to achieve their own desired outcomes.
The Left in particular seems fond of the tactic of subjecting a pet proposal to a vote over and over again until they get the desired result. You can lose a dozen times, but you only need to win once.
🎯
Democracy? Where? Britain isn't and has never been a democracy, it's an oligarchic republic, same as the US.
Hence my scare quotes around "democracy"...
Well done, that bloke. ;O)
Sometimes I get the feeling we're now living in a mythic, precivilization time warp. Governments and the various parties there in name only. Who we're actually ruled by are two demigods.
Mars the God of War, and Mammon, the God of Greed.
Eris, Goddess of Discord rules over all!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP5oHL3zBDg&list=RDXP5oHL3zBDg&start_radio=1
No1 got fired for wrong think.
That's an asset in my job 😜
I've been sacked from my last three jobs so having got a hat trick I retired. The money's shite but the hours are brilliant. ;O)
I need to come clean about something- I did run a Google search on Klaus Schwab outfit in Davos cause crimes against fashion are equal to the crimes against humanity. There are plenty and many. Star trek extravaganza to hide a stomach of consumption covering all Golden Dust (a racist brand of household cleaner) by Unilever back in the days, which female CEO who hasn't eaten carbs in years did lecture the audience a few Davoses back.
And once upon the time in my previous life I did complete a Davos application for the mid-sized Russian oligarch. Don't we all love to be a part of one happy dysfunctional European family, net.
Governance in western nations across the board is at an all-time low. But the eagerness to curtail your freedoms? That's at an all-time high.
Even though western states demonstrably thrived before they had total surveillance capabilities, as soon as technology provided that capability, western governments turned it on their own citizens.
Fascism in the west never truly died.
All states are fascist, the only difference is the lies they tell about the people that they murder.
Hi
You should pay careful attention to the methodology used in the creation of corruption *perception* index. The last time I looked into it they were doing things like asking business leaders in Denmark how corrupt they thought various other countries were... There have been some critiques of Transparency International's CPI methodology, which you can find if you care to search for them.
P.S. Take a holiday in Russia. You may be pleasantly surprised at how well cities are being run.
P.P.S. The people seem a lot friendlier once you learn some of their language. It is almost as if it helps when you can start to understand each other.
Russia is said to be highly corrupt yet they incentivize their own people to have more kids and do not import other cultures. They do not teach hatred of their own people in their schools, etc. Those should be the top metrics for measuring corruption these days.
As for Trump: Absolutely disgusting displays of Neanderthal mindlessness, vicious bigotry and violent racists like a large number of armed thugs who've just broken out of prisons or asylums. Their families know what kind of deranged and warped lunatics they are with thin or non-existant work histories, broken marriages, tax cheats and scofflaws ever looking for escape from the realities of their bad histories. From DJT who was a thoroughly spoiled son of a crook living off of government projects, running his own businesses into the ground while burning through women, business associates, workers and lawyers with all types of ruses and scams to evade accountability--there never was an honest or upright day in this man's life even has he tries to bring everyone else down through rampantly bad government policies and actions amidst these farcical displays of fake bravado and toughness.
I always thought the Euros were cunts. Now I know it for sure. 🤦🏾♂️🤯
Hey hey, don't generalise! 😁
Governments. 😂
Fair enough 😜
I did some poking around back in 2018 to see if I qualified for immigration to Russia. It was difficult back then, but I would have squeaked through. Today it's much easier as they've drastically changed their immigration policy. If you read the western press they'll tell you it's gotten much harder, which it has if you're a migrant worker from any of the former Asian republics, or anywhere else that's been flooding the EU in recent years. Not so if you come from a western nation and have marketable skills, especially if your reason to move has to do with your "cultural values" which incidentally does not mean you have to be Christian, although it helps. It simple means you share the same traditional values as most Russians, which if you're serious about moving there, you already do.
https://movetorussia.com/shared-values-visa/
https://www.visaverge.com/news/russia-announces-3-year-skilled-visa-route-for-residency/
Don't be put of by the skills requirement. If you can drive a truck, operate heavy machinery, weld, pipe fit, or any number of what we consider trades, you're considered skilled. The reason for this is simple. If you restrict migrant workers, you create a vacuum in some areas that needs to be filled.
It's fairly obvious what they're trying to achieve here. Russia has been in demographic decline since Soviet times, but they don't want to arrest that decline by importing a bunch of people with no cultural affinity and limited (if any) skills. That just puts a burden on already strained resources, the UK, Germany and France being prime examples. In effect, they've noticed a trend of people wanting to escape that trap and have made it easy for them to do so. Whether or not it's enough to offset the decline is another question but it clearly doesn't hurt. Meanwhile, you'll be in a place with far fewer problems and much nicer people than in most of the western world, especially the EU.
One thing that came up in my research though is that "Corruption Index": Russia sits at 22, while Ukraine sits at 36. Compared with at home around the 60.
And yes, I have been contemplating the move, but I have school-going kids, which complicates things to the point of immobility...
I would not seriously think of moving to Russia now, inlessthings in your home country deteriorate badly if you have personal reasons.
There are at least as bad infringements of privacy ongoing in Russia, and corruption is much worse the in the EU.
None of the Russian speaking Latvians we know are thinking of moving to Russia to escape the rabid Latvian nationalists - they want Putin to come save them, remove the Lt
Latvian nationalists - and then leave!
Fat chance of that happening.
I am Russian speaking, have been in various parts of Russia starting in the Soviet era, and even ran a small IT education company in post-sovjet Tashkent for about 2 months in 2005 I think it was until they did the Andizhan massacre, when I realized things were not going to become better and left.
If you do not know the post-soviet culture and mentality - you have been warned.
joomans gonna jooman
Post the USSR Russia experienced an economic collapse from which it took a decade to even begin to recover. They're well on their way at this point and the economy has improved vastly in the last 2 decades despite sanctions and non stop NATO aggression. Every country has its problems, but do you want to live in a place that's sliding into economic collapse, or one that's already gone through that and is recovering, and more importantly, has the resources to continue doing so?
It sound like you've been away for a while. Maybe it's time for a second look?
My take is that they stopped opening up and improving already by around 2005-2010, and have gradually degraded back into oligarchic corruption.
DYODD as always.
This doesn't look like degradation to me:
https://ruavia.su/mc-21-program-update-february-2026/
nor does this:
https://frontierindia.com/russia-unveils-kamaz-65956-a-560-hp-heavy-tractor-built-for-extreme-loads/
or this:
https://rosatomnewsletter.com/2023/12/25/grand-presentation-of-russian-smrs/
I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea.
We're talking about different things.
The Chinese are very good at technical innovations theses days.
Do you want to move to China?
Organ harvesting and all . . .
I guess it depends how old your kids are. Children have an amazing capacity for learning languages, especially when younger. Also, there's nothing like facing new challenges at an early age to help build confidence. My younger sister lived in Japan for 10 years as a child. As a result she's fluent in Japanese. Funny as hell when she starts talking like an anime character. If you didn't see her, you'd swear she was a native speaker.
Here's a thought. Ask them what they think of the idea. They might surprise you. Also think about the advantages to them in their adult lives. They won't be kids forever.
"That just puts a burden on already strained resources, the UK, Germany and France being prime examples."
How many migrants have closed schools, hospitals, businesses, shifted the burden of taxation onto the poor? None. I suggest that you're blaming the victims.
Which victims are those? The ones who were stabbed? The girls who were raped, some repeatedly by Pakistani gangs that they're only now just admitting to? Perhaps you're referring to the ones selling drugs on the High Street?
If you're going to talk about victims, you could also mention the migrants that are victimized by their own people, or do you think everyone pays up front for passage across the Channel or the Med? A lot of them end up having to work that off in sweatshops, and again we get to the young women and girls that are forced into prostitution. Those victims?
My ex was a human rights worker in Toronto in the late 70s, assisting political refugees from such places as Chile, Nicaragua and El Salvador. I know what a political refugee looks like. I've seen the scars, both physical and mental. Most of the people arriving in the EU and UK are nothing of the sort. They're economic migrants - well, except for the young men, some of whom are actually fleeing because the radical militias they belonged to such as ISIS and AQ were defeated by Hezbollah, Russia or ironically, the USA.
The UN charter on refugees states that the first safe country of arrival is obliged to provide sanctuary, not to shine them on to their preferred destination. Last time I looked neither Germany, France the UK or Russia for that matter, share a border with Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.
"How many migrants have closed schools, hospitals, businesses, shifted the burden of taxation onto the poor? None. I suggest that you're blaming the victims”
I think I already answered that question but I guess it never occurred to you that having half your students unable to speak the native language puts a burden on a school's ability to teach, which affects the native kids as well. Also there’s the behavioural issues that many migrant children pose. As for hospitals, if you increase the local population you obviously increase the hospital workload and if you don’t hire additional staff at additional cost (if you even can) the service suffers and along with it the native population, typically the poorer end. As for businesses, you should talk to some of the shop owners on the High Street and other shopping districts and ask them what they think of scores of shiftless migrant men loitering about day and night and the effect that has on their business.
You suggested I'm blaming the victims. I suggest you're living in a dream world if you can't see the problem.
That never happened when Britain was supposed only to be white people eh? Dunblane? Lockerbie? Birmingham pub bombings? Bloody Sunday (both)? Do you know that Britain has never been exclusively white? Do you know that it was Liarbour in 1976 that brought back permanent mass unemployment as state policy?
Stick your racist head up your racist arse and fuck off. When you've fucked off, fuck off some more, then keep fucking off until you've fucked off back here and then fuck off again. Racist.
Leap to conclusions much? Racist? Really? Who said anything about white people? It's the culture (or lack of it) that I object to, not the race. You know what, instead of just blowing you off the way you did to me, I'm going to prove that you're wrong. I could start with the fact that my wife is Japanese, which I think I've mentioned here before, but I could just be saying that, so I'm going to offer concrete evidence, which is very easy to do - just look at my Substack.
Most recent program is a feature on a Taiwanese singer I really like. Just below that you'll see a program of Punjabi trucking songs. I listen to those a lot because I worked with those guys for many years and got to know their culture and religion, even learned their language. Further down we have Cafe Del MIR where I feature artists from all over the world, some Japanese, Some Chinese, Brazilian... etc. Further on we have a program featuring traditional Turkish dance music. Are Turks white? I'm not sure.
Continuing on, we come across Light in Babylon, three talented musicians, one a Sephardic Jew from Israel, another a Turk and another a Frenchman. Weird musical tastes for a racist, wouldn't you say? Then of course we have Yarsani beats. Any Idea who they might be? Wait. It gets better.
Scrolling down a bit further, past a bunch of Russian material, we come across a couple of programs on Afghan music, and a bit further down one on Tajik and another on Uzbek music. But wait! What’s this? —>. Insha’Allah? Could that be a celebration of Islamic themed music? Why yes it is! Again, odd musical choices for a racist, wouldn’t you say?
Now don’t you feel silly? You made a false accusation against someone in public, which under some circumstances would be actionable, but I’ll let that go because making a public fool of yourself is probably punishment enough.
You could of course apologize, but I’m not holding my breath because you don’t sound like someone who’s capable of admitting when they’re wrong.
You should stop digging and quit while you're behind, racist filth.
Please no personal attacks. Unless you can prove he is.
Sometimes you just need to stop, you can't change people's mind (and that goes for both of you);
As the saying goes: ""You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.""
Make your arguments, engage in polite discussion, but this kind of attacks I don't want to see here.
Don't worry, I'm not going to remove the shit throwing under here. Everyone is free to express themselves, but I prefer to keep things polite.
I didn't ban anyone (well I banned a LOT of bots) yet. Don't be the first I'd say?
"racist filth"
Ad hominem is the last resort of the person who has no argument.
I'm not writing to please you but to expose you, which I think I've done already, but I'll let the readers decide. I don't know what colour you are and I don't really care, but like I said, you don't sound like someone who's capable of admitting when they're wrong, and you just proved my point.
> Those people currently in charge cannot survive their own populations thinking clearly and deciding for themselves.
If the populations thought clearly or decided for themselves, they would agree with me about the imperative need to move beyond money, banks and capitalism (for financial profit - which is money printing - operated economy).
And by the way, none of these rulings, laws, decrees, dictates etc would matter at all if there were not uniformed enforcers willing to enforce anything and everything in exchange for a monthly stipend of some... monetary units. Of which the banks can create arbitrary amounts of fictional yet spendable monetary units.
Welcome to "The Garden", Franz Kafka (143 years old last Friday)
When disputing with the government, citizens have 4 basic 'boxes':
1. The soap box. Raise awareness and a clamor.
2. The ballot box. Try to get responsive leaders.
3. The jury box. Try to use the courts to enforce the law.
4. The Ammo box. Self explanatory.
Europe has reached box 4. Nothing else is available or will work. It took 75 years for the USSR to fail, and millions of deaths. I don't see your position as being any better.
Here in the States, our government remains a bit wary of the citizenry because we have 11 million snipers and more firearms than people. They are trying the same crap, and we have the same 4 boxes. Many here already believe rebellion is the only solution, and are awaiting a spark.
1. that's what I'm trying to do here
2. I've got a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. Interested?
3. See #2
4. illegal in most of the EU (or heavily regulated)
Pity about #4... I'm always particularly fond of sniper games 😉