So in keeping with this tradition of gathering knowledge and wisdom and then delivering it to you as stories, we submit to y’all the proposal for a South East Asia Tour dubbed as either ”The Khmer Empire Tour of 2023” in order to avoid algorithmic suppression on social media or, more honestly, the ”Killing Fields Tour 2023” since what we’ll really study is the brutal totalitarian past of Cambodia and Laos.
The video above goes a bit into the itinerary and the minimum things to expect from this tour.
This article is focused on the financial details. Not all expenses are thoroughly detailed – only those funded through the fundraiser.
So, without further ado…
For consistency, all expenses are converted in USD at the median exchange rate for the period between February 1 and February 15, 2023. This is also because all donations are converted to USD as it’s the working currency for almost all operations of this Network.
In places where there is price variation (e.g. flights and trains within Cambodia and Laos) – the maximal option is listed. The rest of the list represents the median/most likely costs.
1. Cluj Napoca – Viena (round trip)
Train: $100
Housing in Vienna: $70 [2 nights]
Food in Vienna: $50
2. Vienna – Phnom Penh
Flight: $1000 (round trip, all fares included)
3. Visa costs
$30 per entry. $90 in total, since one will have to enter Cambodia twice.
4. Housing and transport in Asia
~$20/night on average, no more than 30 nights, no less than 26 nights [to be decided depending on flight availability if the first goal is reached in time]
This number represents the optimal in order for the tour to take place. The total cost may be higher, but not by much. The upper threshold will be placed at $4000.
Any excess will be redirected towards fulfilling the wishlist or towards funding another project in 2024.
Minimums and deadlines
The tour is due to take place sometime between in the month November and December and it will last no more than 35 days [including the 4 days needed to get from Cluj Napoca to Phnom Penh and back]. This means that plane tickets should be purchased no later than July 1, 2022.
As such, if the fundraiser doesn’t reach to at least $1500 by May 25, 2022, the tour is cancelled and all collected funds redirected to other projects.
If the fundraiser doesn’t reach at least $2000 by June 25, 2022, the tour is cancelled and all collected funds redirected to other projects. Of course, if it will be $1890 on June 25, it will be fine. But too much leeway downwards will lead to cancellation – because by June 25, The expensive flights must be paid for already.
Anything beyond $4000, as well as any remaining shekel after the tour, will be redirected towards other projects or to fulfilling the wishlist.
The state of the fundraiser will be updated regularly on the main page of the website and semi-regularly on the Youtube channels.
If this convinces you, head over to the Donate page and pitch in. Every dollar counts!
Following the announcement earlier this month and the subsequent consultation, we continued to implement new changes in the way things are done around here, all with a view to make the workflow easier as our teams grow and the backlog of things to do also grows.
Resources page
Following both practical necessity and strategic demand for increased transparency (to make delegation easier and also to simply keep track on things) we made a few changes around here.
For starters, we added the Resources page which documents the resources available for the public much better and also chronicles the resources developing for the benefit of those who choose to join the Donors’ Circle.
With this occasion we also cleaned up the site’s menu and removed some legacy pages whose relevance was deprecated.
Expanding the News Feed team
The News Feed that we’ve been maintaining on Telegram for over four years now has attracted a more diverse audience than we expected.
Initially, the Feed was made more or less for internal use so we can keep track on what’s going on and maybe pick up links to then use in podcasts/videos. However, it turns out there was a need for a curated news feed for others as well, attracting quite a bit of praise, including from people who generally disagree with us.
While we appreciate the positive feedback, the fact remains that the Feed was largely run by a team of four,… more or less. We are already underway to changing that by expanding the team and also opening up applications for new members.
As such, we published the first version of the guidelines for the Feed, making a step we stayed clear from for years: towards quasi-institutionalization.
We’re hoping to improve the quality of the news feed during 2023 and increase the status of the Feed as a reference point for relevance on politics.
Other less visible technical changes
In the background, we started managing our activities (or at least trying 😅) through a ticketing system that we’ve also made transparent (for the most part) to our donors. The same system will now be used for some internal communications.
The system is not (yet?) ready for public consumption and we’re still unsure on whether such a resource should be public to begin with. The risk of spam is much higher than the potential benefits.
The idea is to remove critical dependency from services we don’t control and we have limited trust in (e.g. Telegram). Social media (including Discord, Telegram, etc.) is great for growth and some coordination, but far from great when it comes to non-public conversations or, even worse, hinging a group’s very existence on one of them. Many good projects died as a result of their group being wiped out from social media.
While we are under no danger of that happening to us anytime soon, it is better to be prepared in advance. Besides, it simply is good practice to own your internal affairs, rather than outsource them on an opaque third party that doesn’t have your best interests in mind.
Also, we moved both torrent folders (for public and DC) on the same server.
Speaking of torrent, we’re still testing webapps for that. If we end up implementing one of them, it will not be announced on the website.
Still no consensus over the forum so the issue will thus be kicked down the road again.
As January draws to an end, so does the talk about change.
Drawing on a previous announcement, we are opening a slightly wider consultation/feedback gathering on expanding a service.
Against the backdrop of our growth, the needs are also shifting. To stay ahead of social media censorship but also social media decline (hence the Balkanization of the Internet), we are starting to need our own in-house tools.
We welcome both technical and non-technical feedback as both are needed to inform the future decision(s).
What we need:
Free (or inexpensive) CRM/ticket system/software [FOSS preferable, but not mandatory]
Forum script
Torrent tracker website/”web-app”
Miscellaneous
CRM/ticket system [priority: very high]
Keeping track on who is doing what has been fairly easy over the last 6 years or so as only a handful of people took tasks upon themselves with a few irregulars here and there.
That has changed lately with more people willing to help and also with a lot more activities we’re involved in.
With that said, we’re still not a huge team, so something fancy and resource hog would be too much. The most highly reviewed solution that kinda fits our primary requirement (it’s free) seems to be UVdesk, but it’s also resource hog. Yes, it looks fancy and has a ton of integration features (that we don’t need and are unlikely to need before 2030).
What we really need is a stripped-down ticketing system that can also serve as an internal forum in order to no longer have 3 or 4 different places where the workflow is distributed. We currently waste precious minutes trying to figure out which on which service and on which app is the thread/workgroup of that task. Be it simple things like meme creation to complex things like pitching in with legalese ideas and anything in between.
Mandatory requirements: Nginx compatible; possibility of self-hosting without any input or telemetry to the provider
In particular we would appreciate feedback from those who worked with the tool(s) recommended to us.
Forum [priority: moderate]
This one is pretty straightforward: We need a forum.
In the past, there would’ve been no debate. We’d just install phpBB and work from there. But times have changed and with them the expectations too. And the technology as well.
For starters, it’s no longer straightforward which script/provider is more seamless. There’s the phpBB versus MyBB discussion. And then there’s Drupal which can serve both as a CMS/CRM and a forum – but it has origins in the far-Left.
Example of subthreads.
One thing we will definitely want is the ability to have sub-threads.
Then we will want whatever is chosen to be customizable enough to be semi-open. In the sense that we’ll want registration only by invite (at least at first) and then user roles so as to keep a portion semi-open, but another one only for our donors. Ideally, a quarantined autism/tech section too 😅
Ideally, the forum should be (either out of the box, or customizable enough in order to become) easy to administer. Which may or may not be an issue with phpBB – which is reliable but it only gets glowing reviews from techies, and a lot less from the other 98%. You know, the people for whom the image at the beginning of the article means nothing.
We don’t intend to create a popular forum – but more like a place to post short announcements, run closed polls and things like that. For instance, this article would’ve fit just fine on that forum. And the need for such communication keeps on growing.
Torrent website [priority: low]
This one is the most difficult. The offer is abysmally low. No paid options and only a few free projects, most of them either not maintained in years or rife with bugs, dependencies incompatibilities or excessively complicated to set up.
The most likely option served is Rivettracker (last update 5 years ago!) which… we so far couldn’t turn on. Perhaps we’re doing something wrong but it’s also likely that it’s simply the result of typical FOSS issue: lack of backwards compatibility.
We don’t need to be the next Pirate Bay or Filelist. We just need a place to host torrent files with our own content, some free software and maybe some archive footage. And, same thing, we need to be able to do it in a semi-open fashion.
For now, we’ve found a workaround that serves our needs quite well. But at some point, this will have to be solved.
Miscellaneous
We also need some minor improvements to the website, but there is internal disagreement on which of them. So this occasion is a just as good as any other to bring in more feedback on the issue.
Other things we’d need feedback on: the opportunity of Youtube Shorts, the opportunity of using CCP Spyware TikTok, free or paid self-hosted appointment software.
Instead of a conclusion
If you think you have some expertise on any of the topics above, head over to the Contact page and let’s have a chat.
Basically, we’re due to expand and we need the backend infrastructure to support that. And we’re looking for the best way to achieve that in a manner that is consistent to our values and way of doing things.
Every year between December 20 and January 15-ish we change some things around. Some changes are recurrent (such as the Christmas hat on our logo in the videos), some changes are not visible (like the behind-the-scenes clean-ups and upkeep) and some changes are on the policy level and on the way we do things. It is this latter category that this short note is about.
Censorship-resistant
To be fair, over the last 8 years, we had minimal troubles on this front – with the exception of Faceberg. Fortunately, Faceberg’s importance in the milieus we’re interested in has been steadily declining for 4 years in a row now so, overall, there was no serious issue. In fact, our effective reach increased after our already-throttled Faceberg page was finally shitcanned.
With that said, one of the reasons we didn’t have big issues is because we stayed ahead (or sometimes behind) the curve by implementing measures meant to absorb potential blows without compromising on what we need to say. Measures such as:
Moving to Telegram in 2017 (the rest of the world learned either in 2020 or in 2022 that moving to Telegram is a good idea).
Implementing our own IRC server for quick discrete chats in 2015
Big shoutout to the Discord moderation team who’ve been running our Discord server diligently and cleanly since 2018, entering in the 5th year without any major incident and keeping a much-needed balance between shitposting and serious chats
Getting a discrete (but consistent) presence on alt-tech [Gab, MeWe, Bitchute, Odysee]
Opening up this website in 2018 [using partners with a proven trackrecord of standing firmly for freedom of expression in the face of great adversity]
Acquiring a parallel physical infrastructure for backups-of-backups to make sure that if we are taken down, we’d be back within 72 hours
Implementing an internal sharing procedure and the Donors’ Circle in 2020
All of these (and others less visible) have made it very difficult to effectively censor us.
Going forward (with the approval of the Donors’ Circle) we are taking another two steps in the direction of both resilience and censorship-resistant infrastructure. As the Internet (re)Balkanizes, the opportunities present themselves.
As of this year, all of our public files and some of the internal ones shall be distributed using the BitTorrent protocol. This may seem like a step backward technologically (and it may indeed be) but the fact remains that distributing 7+GB files in an efficient manner and cross-platform compatible cannot be done more effectively and cheaper than the torrent protocol.
Sometime in the next 18 months (subjected to the Donors’ Circle opinion and technological constraints) we will try our luck with a semi-open forum. Open in the same way our Discord server is open, but also with reserved sections. The experience with the Discord server is encouraging enough to consider such an option – even though there are multiple reservations and concerns (not least in relation to privacy).
A heterodox approach to tech is the way forward and, just like we were right to switch to Telegram years before everyone else, we will very likely be proven right to set up the infrastructure for the rebalkanization of the Internet before it fully happens (mentally, it already happened).
Financially stable
The Network is not meant to turn a profit but activities costs money. And 2022 was a surprisingly good year in this department. So good that we still have a hard time believing it. In 2021 it could’ve been “blamed” on the exceptionally low-expense year of 2020. But last year exceeded the optimistic expectations. For the first time, there were no significant financial concerns.
We intend to work harder in 2023 to build upon this status quo. This will likely involve some legal changes too, though a lot of factors are beyond our control so no ironclad promises can be made in public. Suffice to say though that with a bit of luck, by 2025 we might be looking back at January 2023 as “late dark ages” in terms of the Network’s abilities to sustain itself financially.
Delegation
Throughout 2022 we managed to delegate more and more tasks and activities away from the core without any noticeable difference in quality. We are very proud for that achievement and for the work done by those who were willing to take on the tasks.
Regardless of financial results in the near future, we intend to delegate even more in order to both increase the output from the core (by freeing up time now still spent on activities that can be delegated) and also to strengthen the Freedom Alternative community. More people than we imagined 6 years ago ended up coming for the videos and staying for the community. And we want to reward that.
The decision-making process is intentionally slow, in accordance with our general philosophy and because oftentimes no policy may indeed be better than a rushed/spontaneous/spur-of-the-moment policy or action. That’s why we roll out new things slowly – much to the annoyance of some.
We know we can’t please everyone and we’re okay with that. We also know that we’re all inherently flawed so the best that can be done is to strive to do better whilst keeping in mind that perfect is the enemy of good.
To all those who’ve been with us through various parts of this magnificent journey, we humbly thank you and we hope you stay with us for new heights.
Intrăm în noul an cohăind. Nu chiar în sincron, dar pe-aproape – în linie cu urbea clujeană 😀
La debut de 2023 începe și presa să se întrebe dacă se (mai) face rocada guvernamentală programată pentru finalul lunii mai în timp ce partidele se uită cu groază la sondajele din ultimele luni, sondaje în care aproape toate partidele parlamentare sunt în scădere (în ritm cu încrederea generală a românilor în politicieni). Pe fundal, 6% dintre români au suferit de foame în 2022.
Există însă și vești bune – se fac primii pași concreți în construirea primei centrare pe reactoare nucleare modulare mici iar inflația industrială în sfârșit intră într-o ușoară scădere (chiar dacă mai e mult până la un efect vizibil în buzunare).
Pe fundal, concurs de prostie în public pe subiectul unei satire dintr-o comună băcăoană dar și pe subiectul rezultatelor preliminare ale recensământului de anul trecut.
În segmentul geopolitic discutăm despre Makiivka, discuțiile lui Erdoğan cu Putin, prețurile la petrol și gaze și livările rusești (lipsă) dar și despre schizofrenia Uniunii Europene în ceea ce privește înarmarea precum și standardele duble aplicate Italiei și Ungariei.
Spre final discutăm un pic despre tradițiile germano-franceze de Revelion, tradiții care includ combustia spontană a sute de mașini, combustia spontană a ofițerilor de poliție și remarcăm faptul că acest revelion a venit totuși fără tahharush-jinsi. Între timp Croația pățește ce-au pățit toți nefericiții suficient de proști încât să intre în zona euro, Erdoğan dă drumul la campania electorală iar Bulgaria își vede de integrarea energetică cu vecinii.
Discutăm apoi despre două sondaje incorect politice. Primul din ele arată că tinerii danezi (teoretic cei mai progresiști și globohomo) de fapt nu-și doresc deloc să-și trimită copiii într-o școală în care studiază și imigranți și vasta majoritate nu-și doresc să aibă vecini imigranți sau vreo relație de vreun fel, oricât de mică, cu aceștia.
Cel de-al doilea sondaj e unul și mai incorect politic: Jumătate dintre americani cred că este probabil că serurile cu miocardită au provocat decese neexplicate. Mai mult, proporția este echilibrată între republicani și democrați – subiectul fiind unul deja bipartizan în rândul populației, arătând o deconectare aproape totală de la povestea oficială din presa controlată. Și mai rău, două treimi dintre americani prezumă din start că sunt mințiți măcar parțial de către autorități acest subiect.
La final discutăm puțin și despre pseudo-criza din Camera Reprezentanților, și asta doar pentru că presa a făcut un mare caz dintr-o situație care nu e deloc nemaiîntâlnită sau vreo catastrofă.
Last Friday, November 11, marked the 104th anniversary of the Independence of Poland. As customary for over a decade now, the patriots held the Independence March from Rondo Dmowskiego to the National Stadium in Warsaw.
What made this one special was that it’s one held while war is still going on very close to Polish borders and 4 days later a stray missile was going to hit inside Polish territory.
We expected a tensed situation and so we took a quick trip with some of our younger members, thinking it would be a good opportunity to learn a bit more about the Polish ethos and the lying media, as well as to catch up with some of the older friends of the Sofa. And we hit jackpot on all three.
Rondo Dmowskiego, at the start of the Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022
The lying media
Here’s how Reuters (a source still considered trustworthy by far too many) decided to describe the event:
Thousands of people gathered in Warsaw on Friday for an annual march organised by Poland’s far-right to mark Independence Day, with a handful carrying white supremacist or anti-gay banners and firing off red flares.
Marchers, including families with children as well as representatives of far-right groups, waved white and red Polish flags and chanted “God, Honour, Homeland” as they walked through central Warsaw amid a heavy police presence.
The parts marked in red are, essentially, lies. And, since the authors of the Reuters article are Polish, we will go ahead and say these lies are intentional, premeditated and broadcast in bad faith for a political agenda.
On al. Jerozolimskie, during the Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022
”Thousands”
There were “thousands” of people, alright. After all, 200,000 and 2000 both qualify as “thousands” even though the attendance at the Independence March was much closer to the former, rather than the latter.
This is a consistent pattern with illegitimate media: Normal people’s civic manifestations are downplayed (when they can’t outright be ignored) while the far-Left’s agitation is intentionally overplayed. For example, click this link to see how Reuters covered an equally big protest back in 2020 against a court ruling concerning abortion. Please notice that at the height of the panic porn regarding the Wuhan Flu, suddenly none of that mattered when it was leftists protesting for the right to murder babies abortion. And now please compare how Reuters covered the Independence March that took place less than two weeks after the Leftists’ protest.
”Far right”
Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022
It is a constant smear by Western media to paint anyone to the Right of the unelected, unaccountable and illegitimate Brussels bureaucrats as ‘far right’ – but it is particularly egregious when this is applied to both the organizers and the attendants of the Polish Independence March.
Like every year, the march featured the signage of Polska Walcząca (Poland uprising/Poland Fighting) – which is the oldest antifascist organization in the world. When posh Western liberals were still implementing the exact same policies as the failed Austrian painter turned German dictator, the Polish people were already organizing the resistance. Only to now have the same Western liberals come in to smear them. The fact that Polish people aren’t even harsher against West-Europe in particular is a testament of Poland’s goodwill – albeit unearned when it comes to continental west-Europe.
Like every year, the march was very explicit in its opposition to international-socialism, national-socialism, LGBT-ist ideology, Russian imperialism, Putinism, Islamism and generally all forms of totalitarian ideology. Apparently, this is ‘far right’ every year. Likely its because the Polish people oppose the West’s preferred forms of totalitarianism too, not just those that are fancy to oppose.
Poland doesn’t have genderist grooming scandals in its schools or Islamist attacks on its streets precisely because it is successfully opposing these forms of totalitarianism as well.
Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022 Banner reads: “Kyiv and Warsaw – common cause”
With that said, it is true that a legit far right contingent was present at the march and, just like in previous years, it constituted less than 5% of the overall huge march. After all, when you gather 200,000 people, it is effectively impossible not to also have some more… let’s say colorful elements showing up too.
It is worth noting, though, that the legit far right elements (or at least those willing to openly display far right symbolism) are also in full support of Ukraine – unlike the so-called far-right in the West which is always busy doing inconspicuous Putinist shilling or outright approving, quite openly so, Russia’s imperialist and expansionist agenda.
Say what you want about the ‘far right’ in Poland, but at the very least they’re not cucking for Russia nor are they in the business of being fooled by Dugin’s ramblings. Everyone would be better off if their ‘far right’ would be like this.
As for the ‘far right’ organizing… this is such a bald-faced lie that’s hardly worth debunking. The public is made to believe that the ‘far right’ in Poland is at the same time extremist but also so lovely that children, old people (who’ve seen two or three forms of totalitarianism in their lifetimes) and upper-middle class young people all come in enthusiastically at a far-right event. Yeah… right.
In reality, the Independence March this year was (just like every year) an expression of unity and strength of the Polish people in face of aggression. Even lefties attended the march (at least not the insane ones, who end up writing for Reuters).
It should be noted that on the issue of Ukraine, there was also some diversity of thought. While the overwhelming majority do support the Ukrainian war effort, a few don’t – and made their voices heard at the march as well.
Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022 Banner reads: “Not our war. Stop the Ukrainization of Poland”
While it is not our place to say what Poles should or shouldn’t support, it is worth mentioning that supporting Ukraine in this conflict makes impeccable geopolitical sense for Poland’s strategic national interests – especially considering that the price in human lives low (though unfortunately non-zero).
With that said, one should also expect some backlash, particularly in Poland – a country that not only isn’t a big fan of mass migration, but a country which also spent the most resources in all of Europe to helping Ukrainians fleeing war. At least 3.2 million Ukrainians remain in the country right now (2 million refugees and 1.2 million migrant workers, most of the latter predating the onset of the war). By the end of 2022, Poland will have spent $8.3 billion on housing, health and other services for Ukrainians, the highest in Europe. So in this context (and an inflation rate at about 20%), some grumbling is to be expected.
Americans are furious at an inflation rate of 8% and immigration levels far lower per capita than Poland. So a bit of perspective is in order before classifying anyone fatigued as a Putinist.
Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022, Warsaw Putin hanged symbolically by the Poniatowskiego Bridge
“Amid heavy police presence”
The independence march is, by far, the most peaceful yearly manifestation in its category (150,000 people or more every year) so the adding of the phrase “amid heavy police presence” by the Western media’s reporting is not only a factual lie (see video at the beginning of the video) but also a sneaky trick to paint a different image in the minds of the readers than what reality looked like.
Yes, of course there was some law enforcement – just like at any protest/manifestation anywhere on Earth. But most of it was concentrated in the Old Town, around government buildings (given that both the President and the Prime Minister held public speeches before the march) – while the march itself was, just like in previous years except 2020, free of any interference by law enforcement.
One caveat though: there was heavy police presence on the street that goes to the Russian Embassy that is orthogonal to the main street that the march ran on. Such action by the police is quite understandable, given that the Russian Embassy and Russian diplomats have been constantly under various non-lethal attacks by civilians. If as little as 2% of the crowd decided to take a detour to the Russian Embassy, the situation could’ve ended up quite badly, given the understandable “love” of the Polish people for the Russian State.
Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022, Warsaw. On the Poniatowskiego Bridge with the scary red flares
The whining about the red flares (which is barely mentioned in local media) is part of the wider safetyist anti-fun nanny-statist mentality of the contemporary Left. Anything that’s fun and involves fire is reflexively opposed by the so-called liberals.
To a contemporary leftist, flares should be outright banned or at the very least so heavily regulated that only big corporations that are friends of the Party can afford the monstrous cost of compliance to do anything fun (cost which would, of course, then be passed down to regular people to then be taxed by the State).
To us, it’s a breath of fresh air and, yes, an expression of freedom. We gladly helped the teenagers along the way who asked us to take pictures or video with them doing fun stuff with the flares.
It was also great to witness the disorganized spontaneously-ordered spectacle of fireworks, firecrackers and flares – all fired by regular people (from 10 year olds to 80 year olds) as another facet of the joy to be living in a country that takes its sovereignty seriously.
A word on politics
The media only covered the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (the ruling party in Poland) versus the EU-backed Left angle. But this is not the only angle. And, when it comes to this march and national(ist) politics, it’s not even a relevant angle to begin with.
Tensions between the mainstream Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) and the non-leftist groups that are not part of the ruling coalition have been growing over the last 3 years. And growing faster since the escalation of the war in Ukraine.
The nationalist and other non-leftist groups that traditionally supported PiS or at the very least didn’t oppose PiS have shifted gears a little bit. And some of them quite a lot.
Whether it’s intentional or not, or whether it’s just a cynical power play or they’re Kremlin stooges – the fact remains that a loud minority of self-identified conservatives are no longer busy opposing the sources of Evil in the country (the EU, Russia and the far-Left) but busy opposing PiS while remaining silent on other issues – a phenomenon known as punching right or punching to your immediate left.
Independence March (Marsz Niepodległości). November 11, 2022, Warsaw. On the Poniatowskiego Bridge. Banner by Konfederacja Korony Polskiej (Confederation of the Polish Crown). It reads: “Stop the Ukrainization of Poland”
Perhaps the biggest exponent of this is the KKP (Confederation of the Polish Crown), a far-right party that advocates the abolition of the Republic and a return to Monarchy, in addition to ”shaping the social life based on the principles of Latin civilization.”
The KKP is in an alliance with the more known Konfederacija, namely the libertarian-conservative Konfederacja Odnowy Rzeczypospolitej Wolność i Nadzieja (Confederation for the Renewal of the Republic Liberty and Hope) – routinely abbreviated as KORWiN and founded by… well… Janusz Korwin Mikke.
While Korwin-Mikke himself and the party stayed away from such messaging, the suspicions of him being a Kremlin stooge have only increased in the last 3 years – especially given that both himself and the alliance largely has become more noticeably anti-PiS rather than pro-conservative and anti-Left.
While these tensions were not necessarily visible during the march – as the KKP activists marched side by side with people and groups sporting pro-Ukraine signs, Ukrainian flags or anti-Putin messages – the political tensions in society are on the rise.
Since Poland doesn’t have a two-party system, these tensions don’t necessarily help the Left. There are 14 stand-alone political parties in the Parliament, plus two coalitions (a centrist one of two parties and a right-wing one of 4 parties). But these tensions could lead to a more fragmented Parliament (Bulgaria or Israel-style) come 2023, thus making coalition building much more complicated.
So,… yeah. Poland’s not yet lost. And it is forging its own path to go through this current crisis. Unlike others who talk about resilience, the Polish history is wholly about a resilient people so, if there’s anyone we’d bet to pull this off, it is Poland.
In the last day of October, the far-Left propaganda and Regime shilling outlet The Atlantic published an astonishingly tone-deaf piece titled Let’s declare a pandemic amnesty.
As per the article itself, our response simple: NO. And by that we mean HELL NO!
With that said, however, we are open to discussion about a pandemic amnesty. We have no interest in holding a grudge forever. Unlike the Branch Covidians – who never stopped with their creepy and dystopian talk of “the new normal” – we have no intention of inflicting a revanchard agenda upon them forever.
But, we’re also not interested in unconditional amnsety. Justice needs to be served. Forgiveness can only come after punishment has been doled out, contrition has been shown and apologies have been asked. Not a second earlier.
So here are the Sofa’s conditions for amnesty both at an individual and collective level:
Get fired and don’t work anywhere for 24 months (work for free is an acceptable option) and live on savings. No welfare either. In the case of medical profession, the period must be a minimum of 48 months because of the inherent Evil of that profession
Pay an amount equivalent to 8 months of the Branch Covidian’s current income plus 20% plus all of the bank/transfer fees to a reparations fund
Additionally, pay out of pocket reparations to all those you personally harmed, but no more than the equivalent of 16 months of your current income. Subjected to the private arbitration of a panel of your peers – two normal people and one Branch Covidian
Post public heartfelt apologies and, where applicable, do a TV tour as well
If applicable, publicly denounce your political party’s Covid19 policies and leadership and work hard to remove them from politics altogether
You are automatically signed up as a volunteer for all trials of mRNA-based medical products, in addition to mandatory 4 Moderna shots per year for 10 years
No right to vote for 10 years
Make amends by amplifying those who were right about Covid19 and purposefully making space for them explicitly to the detriment of those who were wrong
If applicable, denounce those above you and collaborate to any investigation that can lead to jailing, firing or fining of those above you (applicable for anyone working in “public health”, education, medicine, multinational corporations, any government agency and other institutions at fault for the situation)
Publicly work, for at least two years, to get “public health” recognized as an illegitimate profession which thus enjoys undue and illegitimate authority
Why is this necessary
Of course, at an individual level, especially with the rank and file, we are open to further negotiations (except for the reparations fund – that’s a must). But without personal punishment equivalent to the harm(s) inflicted, this whole madness will happen again.
You can’t just come out and say “Ooops, my bad!” after two years of being consistently wrong and after two years of demonizing, dehumanizing and abusing those who were correct.
And most certainly you cannot, as Prof. Emily Oster does in The Atlantic, come out and say that those of us who were entirely correct all along were simply “lucky”. No, we weren’t lucky. You can be lucky once. Maybe twice. After the third time in a row of being correct, it’s no longer coincidence or luck.
You also cannot come out and say that despite being entirely wrong about everything, it’s all excusable because it was done with good intentions. Mao Zedong also had good intentions. We’re not interested in your “good intentions”. The policies you supported amounted to illiberal, illegal, useless and immoral abuses against basic civil liberties and human rights. That cannot and will not be forgiven by a simple ”oops!” Nor will it be waved away under the excuse that the abusers had the best intentions in mind. With all due respect, fuck your best intentions! Sideways!
If these policies had been advocated and implemented by a nominally Right Wing elite, you would be asking for public prosecutions. So you will forgive us for asking roughly the same.
You also cannot expect anyone to forgive so easily after your side closed public parks, filled skate parks with sand to prevent teenagers from having fun, called children killers (this happened in Germany, Denmark, Romania and other countries), closed churches, implemented policies that drove children literally insane (who knew that solitary confinement is torture, am I right?) and, perhaps the most unforgivable, advocated for the death through starvation of those who disagree with you (because that’s exactly what “workplace mandates” meant in practice).
It shows a tremendous sense of entitlement (and no contrition whatsoever) to simply expect to be forgiven and granted amnesty after all of this.
Your policies led to inflation, job losses, a spike in unnecessary cardiopathies, loss of careers, suicides, severe deepening of pre-existent mental health problems (in addition to creating new ones), learning losses, crime increases that we’ll all have to grapple with for decades to come (we have no idea how many new serial killers are out there and we’ll only learn the hard way over the years to come) and a whole plethora of social and economic troubles that we can’t even properly assess yet for they are yet to manifest themselves.
And this is in addition to the open celebration of the deaths of those who disagreed with you, the open instigation(s) to genocide against those who disagree with you and the destruction of important events of life (baptism, weddings and funerals).
All of this was for nothing. And you were told, a quintillion times, that you are wrong. You refused to listen. You insisted you know better.
The excuse that you didn’t know better may work for March of 2020. Maybe for April 2020. Some more charitable people (certainly not us!) may even be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for the whole of 2020. But under no circumstances is your side deserving of anything other than punishment and scorn for the brutal insanity you personally helped implement in 2021 and early 2022.
There is no way we will forgive that easily without proper punishment being doled out.
Kathleen Hochul, the presumptive frontrunner for the gubernatorial race in New York outright said she would do the exact same sanitary fascism allover again. Kansas governor stated she has absolutely nothing to apologize for the atrocious, illiberal, illegal and illegitimate way she supposedly ”managed” the Wuhan Flu.
With very, very few exceptions, virtually nobody from your side even apologized. So, under these conditions, we have no intention of discussing amnesty unless it is in the terms we laid out above.
Until an amnesty is reached, as far as we are concerned, we continue to be at war with your side. All out war, to be more precise.
Anything is fair game: Your career, you as a person, your family, your children, your business, your finances, your hobby/ies – anything you hold dear. If it is legal for us to attack, we will attack without any regards on how this makes you feel. Until you yield to our demands. Because our demands are just and rightful and your position is illiberal, illegitimate, morally reprehensible and downright Evil.
There is a time and place for amnesty. That time has not come yet. It is up to you when that happens.
This show survived long enough to catch the commencement of reckoning on several topics.
So… the reckoning is here for all the campus violence flamed by the far-Left and entertained by the Academia. It is here for all those who supported school closures now finding themselves in deep trouble (although not enough trouble in our view). It is here for all the politicians and pundits who supported extremist and anti-scientific policies that led to children being mutilated, mentally impaired and with a myriad of long-term issues that can’t even be assessed, yet.
Reckoning is here for Joe Biden as well – as railroad workers may end up striking, thus b0rking the supply chain even more, an issue entirely under the control of the federal government, and an issue that did not exist under Obama and Trump.
Reckoning is slowly approaching for Putin as well. Dissent was virtually non-existent until 10 days ago. Now it’s elected officials and even federal TV stations. And it’s only going to get worse.
Reckoning is seeping in for Европейски съюз in general and for Germany in particular. Because for all the belly-aching about Poland and other Intermarium countries – the Russophilia in Europe has had its capital in Berlin.
Reckoning is coming in Sweden as well. Much to the mainstream’s shock (but to the shock of exactly nobody who was following the Swedish society) the Sweden Democrats came in second in the election and a new bourgeois government is likely to be formed – and a government that will explicitly adopt immigration and integration policies that were “far right”, censored from discussion and unthinkable merely 10 years ago.
Meanwhile, in France, the underground institutions of the Right are finally yielding results after 18 years of work – showing a way for dissidents in other countries on how to advance.
Reckoning is coming in Armenia as well. Nobody is coming to its aid and the conflict reached a dead-end for Pashinyan – one of the few politicians that was simultaneously the darling of both the West and of the Kremlin. Ooops! Seems like playing both sides has limits.
Meanwhile, theft, corruption and downright stupidity is creating energy woes in Africa – particularly Nigeria and the South African Republic. All while in Ethiopia, the efforts to maintain ceasefires in Tigray continue.
Energy woes is exactly what India and Japan do not want to have. So both countries are pouring enormous amounts of money in nuclear and coal. Indians are a bit more honest while the Japanese still try to sweeten the deal by mentioning the nonsensical “decarbonization” claptrap – all while enhancing coal and setting the stage for SMRs and new big reactors.
Chinese biopharmaceutical stocks took a slump after US sanctions on intellectual property kicked in, all while the citizens in Uyguristan enter their 6th week of lockdown and a biosecurity totalitarian state.
Reckoning is coming in Oceania as well. Even with removing all of the pandemic theater, New Zealand’s children still aren’t coming back to school. The government expects 70% of children to come back to school in the next four years. All while neuropsychiatric issues continue to mount amongst the country’s minors.
Food prices are way up in NZ, even though it’s a country with a top-tier agricultural sector; and in Australia a “mortgage time bomb” is ticking – as the central bank called it.
Reckoning is coming for everyone. For many, it is already here.
These, and other news and sub-threads, are explored in great detail in the longest episode of the series. The music breaks will also bring exclusive footage from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. We thought that we’d go down with a bang since this will also be the last one in this format. We hope you enjoyed this version of traveling through the whole world’s (geo)politics.
Un studiu internațional a relevat că politicienii trăiesc mai mult decât oamenii pe care-i reprezintă. În virtutea echității precum și a îngrijorărilor privind mediul și sănătatea publică, acest lucru ar trebui adresat prin common sense politicians’ age control legislation.
Într-o notă mai serioasă, presa militară începe să scrie despre candidatura lui Geoană pentru Trei Coceni – un subiect discutat aici acum mai bine de doi ani de zile. Tot din știrile vechi, faptul că România are o presă comparabilă mai degrabă cu Rusia (adică miluită și controlată de Regim) a ajuns în sfârșit pe masa Adunării Parlamentare a Consiliului Europei, după ce peste doi ani de zile era conspirație de extremă-dreapta (sau dezinformare rusească, în funcție de focă).
ASF interzice temporar ”investițiile” în private equity ale fondurilor din ”Pilonul II” (lucru pe care l-a mai făcut în trecut, în vreme ce fondurile din PII oricum nu se înghesuiau la private equity); o nouă schimbare în anul școlar (evident, nu în bine, pentru că nimeni nu vrea să admită că învățământul de Stat se poate repara doar prin desființare); BNR a crescut dobânda (deși insuficient) iar Facebook-ul românesc va fi cenzurat în funcție de cheful organizației de extremă-Stânga Funky Citizens – că așa e libertatea de exprimare în Rusia cu smiley face.
În geopolitică: Kazahstan va confisca transporturile rusești dacă acestea conțin mărfuri aflate sub sancțiuni sau mărfuri furate din Ucraina; tot Kazahstan va face permanentă închiderea conductei CPC (lucru care afectează și România); în Uzbekistan 18 oameni au murit, peste 200 au fost răniți și peste 500 arestați într-un rar moment de proteste populare în provincia autonomă Karkalpakstan; Finlanda își trântește gard la frontiera cu Rusia; Lavrov a mers la G20 (prima întâlnire cu miniștri occidentali de la declanșarea agresiunii în Ucraina); linia ferată cu ecartament larg din portul Galați a fost redeschisă după 22 de ani; Boris Johnson a demisionat iar geostrategia spațiului ex-iugoslav se decide în perioada asta.
Tot în segmentul geopolitic discutăm despre falsul zâmbet al Chișinăului care face hore cu românii și pișcoturi cu Bruxelles-ul însă lucrurile care contează – lucrările de infrastructură, privatizările, etc. – le face în continuare direct cu firmele lui Putin. Regimul maMaia Sandu se dovedește fix atât de pro-rus pe cât am zis noi încă de la alegerile din iulie 2021.
În alte știri, Comisia Europeană reduce PNRR-ul Bulgariei pentru că țara o duce prea bine (nu-i glumă – fix așa s-a exprimat Comisia!) și redirecționează banii țărilor foarte sărace precum Germania și Spania. C-așa-i în Evropeiski Soyuz.
Pe fundal, clasa politică putinistă din Austria e tare supărată că energia nucleară va fi în continuare permisă; opoziția din Franța a depus moțiune de cenzură; opinia publică în lumea arabă s-a întors împotriva democrației; fostul premier japonez Shinzo Abe a fost asasinat iar în Macedonia (de Nord) protestele au dus la rănirea a zeci de polițiști după ce guvernul a fost de acord să treacă minoritatea bulgară în Constituție.
Petrecem mai mult timp în știri externe să discutăm despre Țările de Jos. Olanda este apăsată de asasinate în stil mafiot în plină stradă, o corupție endemică tipică oricărui narcostat și paralziată de un Regim hibrid care-și dorește exproprierea și/sau distrugerea sectorului agricol olandez. Un subiect vast de care presa din RSR a fugit cât a putut întrucât e periculos să afle românii că până și în țările pe care (în mod fals) presa i-a făcut pe români să creadă că sunt ”tolerante” și ”liberale” de fapt există opoziție vehementă față de extremismul eurocrat. Vă arătăm și imaginile de la protestele olandeze pe care televiziunile nu vi le vor arăta.
Acestea, dar și alte știri sunt discutate pe larg în ultimul episod de dinainte de pauza lungă pricinuită de deplasările spre documentare în Ungaria și Asia Centrală. Podcastul intră în pauză, dar nu și restul operațiunilor.
