When we titled episode 28 “We’re all living in Eastern Europe” we were thinking more like Eastern Europe of the 1990s – that is to say increased corruption, a good dose of institutional chaos, increased inflation and a decent dose of infrastructure decay. What we weren’t thinking of is Eastern Europe of the 1980s – namely all of the above plus food shortages, electricity shortages and full HONK propaganda. Yet the latter is increasingly more present, particularly in the so-called ‘civilized’ West.
A recession is a foregone conclusion in the US (and by consequence in most of the world) and the only reason this word is not being uttered is because the midterms are coming. Meanwhile, Ohio governor signed the bill to allow teachers to be armed – a step in the right direction. In the background, 10 retiring boomer ‘republican’ senators are joining the far-Left in an attempt to pass an obviously unconstitutional gun bill while California Dems want to weaponize the local IRS against patriotic groups in a bid to prevent California’s slow march towards becoming red again.
In Sweden, Ukrainian refugee children are being beaten up by Arabs who tell them to “go home” – in yet another event showing the deep problem that exists in Sweden as a result of the catastrophic decisions made back in 2015-16.
The European Commission may end up in a spat again with the United Kingdom as the Johnson government is trying to correct a provision of the Brexit agreement which, at the moment, de facto turns Northern Ireland in a third-party state. Meanwhile, Nord Steam 1 is working at a lower capacity as more and more countries in Evropeiski Soyuz are being compelled to embrace nuclear.
But while the problems in Europe and North America are causing some turbulence, they are for sure mild in comparison to the spillover effects on Africa. Even in wealthier space-program operator Nigeria the fuel prices are threatening the domestic flights, public transport is almost entirely paralyzed in Zimbabwe and in Cameroon thousands of truckers spend weeks stranded at highways and border crossings due to lack of diesel which threatens to cause its own local version of supply chain chaos.
Also in Africa, Moscow is trying to get approval to build a military base in Sudan as the transition to democracy is blocked in Khartoum and the negotiations seem to have hit a dead-end.
In Israel the country might get its fifth election in three years as the coalition of Naftali Bennett is now officially a minority government and thus subjected anytime to a successful vote of no confidence given that Benjamin Netanyahu has made no secret that he is vying for a return to power.
Disney has a film banned in UAE for consistent pidar in public; the Yemeni government is slowly progressing in its peace negotiations with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels and while the world is grappling with oil shortages, Idemitsu Kosan, a Japanese oil company is phasing out one of its big refineries as Japan is preparing for an economy with a smaller population.
Meanwhile, the CCP is using the Cough19 QRkodizatsiya programme to prevent protests from taking place against the financial mismanagement of four rural banks which may have lost at least $3bn in depositors’ money; all while Xi Jinping is trying his best to divert attention from all of these issues as he’s preparing for the Congress of the Party in the second half of the year.
The new majority government in Australia is already showing strong 1980s Ceaușescu vibes in terms of its approach to energy; the Australian Reserve Bank makes no promises that the interest rates won’t go to the Moon, while in NZ the country is only now finding out about the principle in commercial law called “abuse of dominant position” all while the country is also trying hard (and for the most part failing) to disarm its population.
These and other news are discussed thoroughly in this long-waited 30th edition of the World Sofa Report. Let’s explore!
While the Wuhan Virus was in some ways a bit different (though not really too different from the other respiratory pathogens we humans encountered in the recent past), the monkeypox is known for over 60 years. And, in fact, the corporate media has been stirring panic over it multiple times over the last 20 years or so.
But before we get to history, please take a quick look at the little document below:
So, the reason both the President of the USA and the skeptic/alternative media are talking about this is because someone’s been nasty in public with the monkeypox yet again (yes, this also happened in the past too). And it’s not just any random somebody – but exactly the Wuhan Virology Institute, you know, kinda sort of the source of the Wuhan Flu which is still being used by various countries (including and especially the People’s Republic of China) to suppress civil liberties.
However, unlike the Wuhan Coronavirus, the monkeypox has decades of literature behind it and also multiple attempts by media or governments (assuming the two entities are separate) to turning it into a panic.
It will not be the first time humans are being stupid in public over monkeypox.
For instance in 2012 the CDC/US Feds quarantined a Delta flight over fears of monkeypox.
It was… bed bugs.
Here’s a 2010 story about monkeypox in Zaire/DR Congo and why the disease didn’t just die off as the eXpErTs had expected:
Just yesterday, in Romania, a doctor that has been making waves over his “warnings” of monkeypox allegedly found at his hospital… had to be taken to the loony bin after he beat up a patient and two nurses, and then tried to drive a garbage truck. You see… viral panics attract the looniest members of society.
Well, similar things happened in Britain in 2018. Most of the tabloid press and other media took it upon themselves to warn the public about the looming danger(s) of the monkeypox. Rumours of “hundreds” of “cases” spread like wildfire (and, just like with Covid or with monkeypox today, no clear definition of what a “case” means was offered). In reality, there had been exactly… two cases. Both discussed at length in this paper: https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2018.23.38.1800509 (please notice the quality and the precision of clinical data – the opposite of what was and still is the case with Covid19)
Here’s a 2016 story of the very serious monkeypox outbreak in DR Congo:
BS stories about monkeypox aren’t a new phenomenon at all. Nor an exclusive purview of the West.
Here’s the health minister in Malaysia in 2019, exasperated by the media’s exaggerations of the monkeypox (which at the time hadn’t even been detected in his country):
The United States suffered through an outbreak of monkeypox 19 years ago, in the year 2003. Here’s how the CDC was describing the situation in the middle of the outbreak:
As of July 8, 2003, a total of 71 cases of monkeypox have been reported to CDC from Wisconsin (39), Indiana (16), Illinois (12), Missouri (two), Kansas (one), and Ohio (one); these include 35 (49%) cases laboratory-confirmed at CDC and 36 (51%) suspect and probable cases under investigation by state and local health departments
Here’s how the 2003 outbreak was described in a paper from 2006 (remember that any outbreak is better analyzed at its end, rather than in the middle of it – because cooler heads can prevail and emotion/panic doesn’t run as high):
In May and June 2003, public health officials identified an outbreak of human monkeypox in the United States. This was the first instance of human monkeypox virus (MPXV) infection detected outside its endemic range in Africa. As of July 30, 2003, a total of 72 human cases had been reported. Thirty-seven (51%) cases were eventually laboratory confirmed, and 35 met the case definition set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Among the 35 patients whose cases were laboratory confirmed before July 11, 2003, 32 (91%) tested positive for MPXV by PCR, culture, immunohistochemical testing, or electron microscopy of skin lesions; 2 tested positive by PCR and/or culture of an oropharyngeal or nasopharyngeal swab; and 1 tested positive by PCR and culture of a lymph node aspirate. To date, no new animal or human cases have been reported.
The outbreak was relatively large compared with most reported events in Africa, but clinical features were milder than typically seen there. No human deaths occurred, although 2 children required intensive care. One patient received a corneal transplant due to chronic ocular infection.
Please notice that PCR tests were a thing then too. Though, unlike 2020/21/22, they weren’t used randomly on the general population – which allowed for a much more precise use. And even so, the PCR test was still rather useless as a diagnostic tool. Back in those days, diseases were counted by clinical diagnosis. The good ol’ days…
Anyway, “your pets are a danger” is also not a new narrative.
There was a time when the mainstream Left was equally skeptical of the public health establishment and Big Pharma as the Right.
Here’s an article about monkeypox in The Guardian from 2003: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jun/12/thisweekssciencequestions -> Notice that the possibility of it spreading wildly through humans is treated with a shrug, precisely because the disease itself is pretty mild (and infection-acquired immunity is lifelong and sterilizing, by the way).
Experiments on and with monkeypox in aerosolized form (in theory more transmissible – tho not necessarily in practice) aren’t new either.
Here’s a paper from 2001 discussing such an experiment: https://www.nature.com/articles/3780373
So… does all of this mean that this time ’round there won’t be a general(ized) panic about the monkeypox even though it’s the third or fourth semi-serious transnational outbreak just this century? Unfortunately, the answer is no.
“People are not stupid, people are fucking stupid” – is a reality that the powers that be know all too well. Additionally, unlike 2001, 2003, 2010 and 2019, people are significantly stupider today. Or, at the very least, the stupidity of the general public is far more evident today than it was at the turn of the century. With this fact in mind, do expect authorities in at least some countries to be supremely stupid in public.
Remember that in 2009, a few countries did go into lockdown over a very mild flu. And highly advanced countries at some point in time were very proud of spreading DDT everywhere in order to fight child paralysis. In fact, they were proud of it:
The point that I’m making is that the ability and willingness of the Trust the Science™ crowd to endorse policies that amount to being supremely stupid in public is not a new phenomenon. It did not start with Covid19 and there is no reason for it not to be manifested during this outbreak of monkeypox.
The purpose of this article is to equip you with the knowledge that this movie has been seen before. Monkeypox experiments (including dubious lab experiments), media panic over it, dubious policies meant to “protect” but in fact did only harm, dubious NPIs being deployed, very fake news spreading like wildfire… all of those happened multiple times just in the last 20 years. And the world didn’t end under a pile of monkeypox rashes. It won’t this time either.
Also, it is true that the smallpox vaccine protects (because, unlike the myocarditis-inducing experimental gene therapy clotshots of 2020, it actually is a vaccine). It is also true that infection-acquired immunity is lifelong and sterilizing.
Also, while it makes for good memes, monkeypox is not like HIV (Gay-related immune deficiency – GRID) in the sense that it’s not an STD per se. It’s still funny though to watch/read concocted double speak like “individuals who self-identify as gay or bi-sexual as well as other communities of men who have sex with other men” – because, you see, “homosexuals” is just not hip enough anymore.
That’s it for now. Don’t panic. Grab popcorn. And enjoy the shitshow.
MPs from Putin’s “United Russia” party filed a proposal in the Duma (Russian parliament) to abolish the age limit for first-time military contractors from abroad (mercenaries), routinely used by the Russian army in operational theaters, including in Ukraine.
Andrey Krasov and Andrey Kartapolov filed the proposal to amend the Military Duty and Service Act in the sens of abolishing the upper age limit until a contractor can serve for the Russian military, according to a document published by the Duma’s electronic database consulted by RIA Novosti (link inaccessible from the European Union).
The MPs explain that Russian citizens can serve under a contract from age 18 up to the age of 40, while foreigners can serve only from age 18 to 30 years of age.
“This bill aims to eliminate the age limit for foreign citizens of working age who are entitled to enter into a contract with the military service,” the proposal states.
Additionally, the set of amendments also set new limits for who can use high precision weapons and who can operate other more sophisticated military equipment. Such tasks are reserved for highly professional specialized personnel that can now serve by age 45.
According to the authors of the initiative, these modifications will make it possible to attract more specialists from the civilian sector in popular roles in the military.
Finally some more visible non-Leftists are willing to do what it takes: namely to compete and go on the offensive – not just occasionally, but all the time.
The last couple of weeks were quite good in this department: There is now a full fledged children’s right-wing entertainment complex that terrifies CNN (the same CNN that flopped CNN+, hehe) and Ron DeSantis imposes the correct policy against globohomo Disney.
Meanwhile, the glowing-in-the-dark case of alleged kidnapping plot of tyrannical governor of Michigan collapsed in court. With a bit of luck and a lot of work, she will collapse in November too.
In Europe, dozens were injured after an Allahu-Ackbar set of riots in Sverigestan. The “new Swedes” were deeply aggrieved that someone exercised his fundamental right to freedom of expression by engaging in a special operation of increasing the temperature of a Qu’ran.
In other news in Europe – the Russian MoD is whining that there are Romanian, Polish, American and Georgian mercs in Ukraine; the VP of Gazprombank got suicided in Moscow; the British government is trying hard to get its civil service back to work and Germany is trying to acquire floating LNG terminals.
But perhaps the most important event in Europe is the upcoming second round of the presidential election in France – where the people have a choice between secular Putinism with a skirt (Marine Le Pen) and pro-Islamic Putinism without a skirt (Emmanuel Macron). With a bonus that the incumbent was the biggest arms supplier of Russia from 2017 and until April 2022 (yes!) and is on record to wanting a Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok (something so extreme that not even the Sberbank lady isn’t keen on saying it out loud). So, of course, we dedicate a longer segment to this event.
Meanwhile, the Saudi Crown Prince is trying to gauge the impact of sanctions against Russia so the Kingdom can then hedge the bets and an incident in Libya creates a bit more panic on the oil market.
In the far-east, the forced labour system in Nepal gets some attention via its victims working in the richer Gulf states; Japan is sending drones to Ukraine and then we take a longer time to discuss the health theatre in Shanghai.
And, finally, in Oceania, the plebs are finding out what we’ve been saying for almost two years: the sanitary fascism was not only useless, but in fact explicitly NOT recommended even by their own “experts” – yet the far-Left China-serving Regime in New Zealand went ahead and implemented anyway. New Zealand is that country whose citizens were better treated by the Taliban than their own government.
Meanwhile, 7 in 10 Aussies live paycheque-to-paycheque with no savings, the construction industry is about to collapse (in part thanks to sanitary fascism), and the regional security framework just took a boot in the teeth after Solomon Island’s security deal with China – negotiated and signed whilst the Australian regime was busy fighting with Novak Đoković.
These and other news are covered in this only episode for April as we work through other projects.
It very rarely happens to find myself somewhat on the side of the establishment. Least of all on an international issue.
Last time I was on the side of the establishment neither the concept nor the disgusting real-life manifestations of luxury beliefs had not reached my country, yet.
Yet here we are, in 2022, as the establishment suddenly finds out that Ukraine exists, that Duginism is real (NPR link because in 2016 NPR readers were trolling me for talking about this) and that Germany is run by Putin’s useful idiots. All of these are topics that us, at Freedom Alternative Network (as well as our partners and friends in Germany, Slovenia, Sweden, the USA and, yes, Ukraine) have covered, shilled, explained and analyzed in great detail for years on end.
Just 56 days ago Facebook was banning me again for discussing Russian violence. Then 10 days later Russian violence commenced on a big scale and then Facebook said its kosher even to engage in sweeping generalizations against all Russians everywhere.
Suffice to say that I have a high interest in this conflict (which I’ve made known for years) in the direction of Ukraine eventually winning (or at least not losing).
With that said, this doesn’t change the fact that the so-called “Western culture” (a shell of its former self) approaches this in a way that not only seems crazy but it IS crazy. Luckily, Russian propaganda is not what it used to be. 2010-tier Russian propaganda would have a field day these weeks by simply repeating and mocking the myriad of absurdities done in or by the West since the commencement of the conflict.
When it’s “cool” to be pro-Ukraine
As it was the case with the pandemic (in which it became “cool” to behave like a fucking lunatic in public), it is now cool to behave, say and do things that no normal person would or should do.
The connection with the pandemic was also made by the establishment – of course, in Canada, the place run by Justin “I like China’s basic dictatorship” Trudeau where “studies have shown” that those who haven’t taken up the myocarditis-inducing experimental gene therapy clotshot are more likely to be putinists.
And then the HONKs just kept on pouring.
Under the eternal “we gotta do something” – a slew of stupidity in public was triggered allover the place.
Take the Waterloo Warbirds from Ontario, Canada. They could have organized an aviation show and donate some money for the accommodation of Ukrainian refugees. Or they could’ve encouraged people to enlist the Ukrainian Foreign Legion since Waterloo Warbirds surely attracts a lot of guys with military and combat experience – which is exactly the kind of people needed today.
What did they choose to do? Vandalize their own museum-worthy airplanes with the markings of the Ukrainian and Polish Air Force. Outstanding!
Surely Putin is going to surrender tonight! Or, at the very least, two Ukrainian refugees will be saved. Virtue signaling saves lives, dontcha know?
Or take Zürich Insurance Group Ltd. (ZURN) who could have made a good insurance offer to Ukrainian farmers (that would actually help not just the farmers, but many countries in the world!) since ZURN is one of the largest and best insurers of farmers in the world.
Or maybe they could’ve donated a sum of money for the relocation of the children evacuated from Mariupol. Or, why not, a sum of money to the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces.
Instead… their contribution is… removing the Z from their logo. I’m sure President Elenski [sic!] is now happier knowing that the whole might of the corporate power wielded by the Swiss insurer is put to the highly important use of purging a letter from their logo… What’s next? Banning the letter Z altogether?
Germany is one of the countries that is at fault for the invasion (in fact I would argue that Germany is indeed equally at fault as Russia is – since German weapons have continued to flow into Russia even after 2014). So in these circumstances they could have sent a lot of weapons to Ukraine (I mean functional ones – not just dumping its expired stockpile inherited from the DDR). Or they could have send some money. There are Polish corporations that contributed financially for Ukraine more than the German government. I’m just saying.
Instead, Germany is busy policing the wrong kinds of Zs in public. Yeah, that will help 👌🏻- I’m sure Putin is drafting his unconditional surrender speech as we speak after he heard that Z is haram in some parts of Germany!
Cluj Napoca, March 26, 2022 The message reads “No warrior” Likely the intention was to write “нет войне” (no war) – the slogan made famous by the Russian protesters in Russia.
Recently-renovated buildings allover Europe are being tagged vandalized with wrongly-written Cyrillic messages because surely the Ukrainian refugees in my hometown need to see wrongly written messages on clean buildings. Otherwise they would’ve never known that we really don’t like Putin.
Cluj-Napoca, March 26, 2022 Text reads: “Romanians are your friends”
The hundreds of volunteers available on the borders 24/7 and the hundreds of thousands of Romanians available in the support groups that offer quite literally anything to the refugees are not a good indication that Romanians are, by and large, being very friendly to our neighbors fleeing the horrors of war.
No, what we needed was graffiti about that!
And then there’s the relentless promotion of Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the point of selling Zelenskyy pillows (I wish I were joking) and turning the guy into a demigod.
Look, I won’t lie: I supported Petro Poroshenko in 2019 and I considered (and in fact I still do) that the Ukrainian people made a mistake voting not just with Zelenskyy, but with Sluha Nardonu party as well (a political party made up almost entirely out of amateurs). However, it is also clear (regardless of my opinion about Zelenskyy) that Volodymyr is living up to his position in a very honorable fashion (much better than anyone – including his own party – had expected).
With that said, the aggressive promotion of the guy everywhere is likely to turn against him at some point. Like all waves of emotion, this one shall pass too. And when it will (and it will!) – what will there be left? Because Zelenskyy needs the credibility and gravitas necessary after the war as well – when he will have to negotiate loans and investments and all sorts of arrangements that will be necessary for the reconstruction effort. But with all of the political capital spent now on needless promotion… this will be tricky.
You will also never convince any skeptic by calling a Putinist everyone who isn’t full of awe with Zelenskyy.
Nobody will be swayed by your Ukrainian flag on your profile either. Least of all if you’re one of those people who demanded that those who don’t subject themselves to experimental medical treatments should have their fundamental rights revoked. And no, pointing out the hypocrisy of the people shouting “freedom for Ukraine” while the same people were shouting “lockdown the unvaccinated” doesn’t make one a Putinist either!
Heck, one of the many reasons I support Ukraine is precisely because it treated the pandemic the way it should’ve been treated: without panic, without mandates and without hysteria. During the pandemic I’ve been to the country four times precisely for this reason. And I will continue to avoid certain countries and intentionally patronize others for many years to come because of their pandemic policies.
Also, the war isn’t ending earlier if you shout “Slava Ukrayini” against anyone who asks questions about Ihor Kolomoyskyi, or is skeptical about some numbers concerning casualties. Heck, you should assume that the numbers thrown around are inaccurate at least because you can’t properly evaluate casualties during an active war scenario but also because wartime disinformation is part and parcel of any war.
Yes, the word disinformation is a loanword from Russian itself. But the practice predates the USSR and the KGB’s black propaganda/active measures department. Heck, the word propaganda comes from the Vatican in the 17th century. Anyone pointing this out isn’t a “putinist” or “a war criminal” or an “anti-western shill” or whatever.
Also, someone pointing out how this crisis is being used to normalize being stupid in public is also not a “putinist”.
Théâtre Orchestre Bienne Soleure from Switzerland banned the performance of Thaikovsky’s Mazeppa “due to the current situation in Ukraine“. Mazeppa is an opera whose plot takes place in Ukraine and is about Ivan Stepanovych Mazeppa, Hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks (kinda like the founder of the modern Ukrainian nation) and Vasyl Leontiyovych Kochubey a very rich Ukrainian nobleman and statesman who bankrolled the school(s) of thought that the Ukrainian nation of today take as reference point.
And then there’s the ban on Russian cats (including Russian breeds that have never been in Russia and have non-Russian owners).
Now look, I love the Ukrainian people. And I have 7 years of content to prove it. But I also have 7 years of public content to prove just how much I love kittens. What did those kittens do? Meowed in Cyrillic?
And then there’s the issue of 16 and 17 year old Russian and Belarussian minors who will be banned from playing hockey in Canada. I’m sorry, these boys were aged 8 and 9 (or some even younger) when the decisions concerning Ukraine were made in the Kremlin. There’s no way you can convince anyone who is not a loon that punishing children has anything whatsoever with #StandWithUkraine.
This is the problem when a legitimate cause becomes a “cool” thing: all sorts of people who until this morning (in historical terms) had no idea where Ukraine is on the map end up making decisions trying to “do something” when nothing was asked from them in the first place, and in the process end up doing more harm than good.
So what’s the problem?
Okay, so many in the West are being stupid in public under the emotional moment – since war in Europe hadn’t happened this century. Well, even that is wrong since Russia has been at war with Ukraine for 8 years, but let’s put that, too, aside for a moment.
The problem, however, is that potentially good energy, as well as resources are being spent on futile endeavors. And in the process many innocents suffer.
This war will not end tomorrow. Maybe even not next month. But it will end at some point. And Ukraine as a country and the Ukrainian people (including and especially the displaced and the refugees) will need a lot of help then too. At this pace, however, by the time the war ends, a significant proportion of Western societies will end up being indifferent or even outright hostile – not because of Russian propaganda/disinformation, but precisely because they’ve been saturated with excessive messaging from their own.
It is not normal to open a news website from a country that is not Ukraine and to find on the first two, three or four pages only news from/about Ukraine or Russia. Just like it wasn’t normal between 2014 and 2021 to open a news website from the West and see NO piece of news from/about Ukraine at all. Some balance is badly needed! But who even has the credibility for that anymore?
During the pandemic multiple institutions (including and especially media institutions) have burned their trust capital by publishing disdainful nonsense and outright lies that now, rightfully so, enough citizens are having a hard time taking the media seriously on anything.
Heck, in Romania, two guys who voluntered to help the refugees were still not convinced that the war is real. So they went all the way to Kyiv to check it out for themselves. Well, they did find out and, to their credit, didn’t freak out either. The bien-pensantsdu jour laughed at them but I didn’t. It’s how I function as well. Heck, in 2020 I went to Sweden to check the mountains of dead bodies that the media guaranteed will be there because Sweden didn’t engage in sanitary fascism like Italy did. Of course, no mountains of dead bodies were found so I deemed the media’s stories to be what they were: utter nonsense.
The problem is that most people can’t and won’t function like that. Few people would risk going to Kyiv just to see whether the war is real. Just like few people in 2020 risked flying to Sweden in the middle of an allegedly deadly pandemic wave. The pandemic wave was real, it’s just that it was nowhere near as deadly as the media claimed.
So now, when the media IS much closer to the truth than it was during the pandemic, les bien pensants are shocked to learn there are people who just don’t believe it.
Yes, I agree it is terrible to see people who deny real suffering provoked by the Kremlin upon people who’ve done nothing wrong to the Kremlin – but we should keep in mind that calling those people “putinists” won’t solve the issue. And the issue is that the West is a shell of its former self. Its leaders are weak, its institutions are not trustworthy and its media has lied so blatantly for so long that it will take years to build back the lost trust. And Ukraine doesn’t have years. Not to mention that almost nobody in the West is even concerned with this issue.
It also doesn’t help that the loudest ones for “the Cause” are those with zero credibility on the topic. Pundits and “stars” with de facto zero knowledge about this now have strong opinions on the geopolitics of this region.
To these people the situation is just another trendy story. The mess will still have to be solved by people with beliefs and values more similar to mine, rather than similar to Patricia Arquette’s.
Yes, Ukraine needs help, and Putin must be defeated. And of course the war is real. And of course some sanctions are warranted.
But if the West doesn’t seriously clean up its room, it will all have been in vain.
The West’s main advantage over the last century has been precisely its ability to engage in open debate and tame the passions of the publics thus preventing mass hysteria from enacting hasted decisions that could bite the society in the ass later on. The West is losing that important advantage (if it hasn’t lost it already). And that vantage point must be recovered.
There is some good news too, though: Ukrainians are not like that. They’re proving it on the battlefield as we speak but it’s easy to see it if you just speak to more than 10 Ukrainians. As a people, they’re built from a different “material”. They just don’t give up.
And the harshness even before the war (and even more so now) has forged a nation that will not look kindly on Western political correctness. In Ukraine, even those with PC/leftist values have been in the trenches against Yanukovich and then against Russia. Multiple times. And still are. Hard times create strong men. The West has had too much good times for way too long. And it shows.
Just before the war the very same Western media, that now calls you a “putinist” for discussing Zelenskyy’s acting career, was itself broadcasting Russian disinformation about Ukraine focusing its attention on political parties that never exceeded 3% but almost never talking about the very real harm caused by the Kremlin continuously since 2014.
Men wiser than me say that time heals everything. Which is true. But sometimes healing comes through disappearance. The Byzantines are a good example.
So instead of turning onto your fellow citizens for failing to say the right things on this crisis (or the next one) – it is much more important to turn to our institutions and “important people” and tell them to either stop being stupid in public or fuck off outright.
That’s it. Now I’m off to prep the trip to Hungary. Lots to cover from there too.
Throughout 2021, Kazakhstan has kept several objectives on the list closed and the last one opened in January 2022. With that said, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have essentially dropped the panic by August 2020 and have been operating as normal ever since.
In the meantime, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have been through profound transformations, as a result of popular uprising and other tectonic shifts in their societies – which makes them even more interesting politically today, than in 2020.
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 Central Asia Tour. The video above (made in 2019) goes into the details about the itinerary and the minimum things we expect to get from the tour. The only thing changed in the plan is the route. There is no direct flight from Hungary to Kazakhstan anymore so I’ll go via Istanbul.
This article is focused on the financial details. Not all expenses are thoroughly detailed – only those funded through the fundraiser. I have updated the prices to account for inflation and other changes that can be documented.
The biggest changes are in transport (fuel prices going up and inflation), in visa costs (now all down to $0) and unexpected expences (pandemic BS, basically – PCR tests etc., which in that area of the world are simply bribes).
Also, to please the donors who voted for this tour in 2020, I have decided to start the fundraising from the amount proportionate to those who voted in that direction back then.
So, without further ado…
For consistency, all expenses are converted in USD at the median exchange rate for the period between March 15 and March 21, 2022. 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. trains in Central Asia) – the maximal option is listed. The list represents the minimum costs.
This number represents the absolute minimum in order for the tour to take place. The total cost will be somewhere in the vicinity of $4500 which will serve as the maximal threshold for this fundraiser.
Given past experience, even in worst case scenarios, the cost goes somewhere between the two extremes. Any excess will be redirected towards fulfilling the wishlist or towards funding another project in 2022 (possibly the Independence March in Poland in November).
Minimums and deadlines
The tour is due to take place sometime between in the month of August and it will last 25 days. This means that plane tickets should be purchased no later than May 15, 2022. Update: This has happened. ✅
As such, if the fundraiser doesn’t reach to at least $1500 by May 10, 2022, the tour is cancelled and all collected funds redirected to other projects.
If the fundraiser doesn’t reach at least $2900 by July 15, 2022, the tour is cancelled and all collected funds redirected to other projects. Of course, if it will be $2790 on July 15, it will be fine. But too much leeway downwards will lead to cancellation – because by July 20, most of the housing should be booked and 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!
Since Putin rolled in the tanks, the world now moved to Eastern Europe. Not just in the sense that everyone has an opinion about Ukraine, but in the sense that suddenly most societies on Earth have to adopt at least one Eastern European feature or defect. And it’s happening at remarkably fast pace. So here’s the news for this episode and in parentheses we’ll put the year and the Eastern European country when this happened in the past.
Over 60% of Americans support limits on K3 lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity (Hungary, 1919) on the backdrop of an American legal system slowly taken over by militant communists (Romania, 1949) and all while Disney announces plans to oppose Texas’ move to criminalize those who mutilate children under the guise of “gender affirming care” (okay, this never happened in Eastern Europe – we were never THAT messed up).
Meanwhile, the US Senate is ready to confirm a SCOTUS judge that is a bit too liberal on sex offenses (she does have a point from time to time but she also goes way too far, too often – kinda like DDR’s approach in the 1980s).
Apparatchiks from “public health” whine that their “work” of curbing everyone’s freedoms isn’t appreciated. In fact, those pesky peasants (formerly known as free citizens) have the audacity to criticize the Stakhanovism of the enforcers of sanitary fascism and want legal measures against the plebs who talk against the apparatchiks (Romania 1952; Poland 1980). On the background, the apparatchiks raid schools to check muzzle compliance on two year olds (Romania 1978).
Energy independence has always been a topic in Eastern Europe – but now suddenly the rest of the world is discovering it too.
Meanwhile in Italy the unions support Russia by sabotaging Italy’s weapons transports to Ukraine; more and more people are proven to have died as a direct result of the myocarditis-inducing clotshot even as the government claims the clotshot is “safe” (all drugs given en-masse in Eastern Europe under communism were subjected to the same policy of censorship, lies, statistics and dismissal of victims).
The reverse is kinda true too. In Eastern Europe discussions are now about gun rights (which only Americans have properly solved), territorial accords (in Bosnia), and mass boycotts and protests against the companies who continue to support the Russian Regime (which is a first in Eastern Europe).
Egypt fixes the price of bread (Eastern Europe 1948-1989), South Korea elects a hawkish anti-feminist president (Poland 2015-present), property developers in China fail to meet their audit (Eastern Europe, 2009), Kazakhstan is bracing for democratic reforms and moving away from a president-centric autocracy (Eastern Europe 1988-1991), Saudi Arabia mulls accepting yuan for its oil and Germany seals a deal for LNG with Qatar.
In Oceania, the Australian government tries to increase its energy output but it’s prevented by eco-Marxist and other far-Left groups (Romania, 2022) and in New Zealand the government denies there is a mental health crisis despite skyrocketing numbers of adolescents on anti-psychotics as a result of the tyrannical Regime over a cough. Also in NZ, the police is being given hell for not being tyrannical enough against the populace that sought its freedom over the past month (kinda like in Romania in 2012 and 2018).
A long, robust episode, properly tagged so you can easily find the topic of interest. Just enough to last for while we’re in Hungary/UAE.
During times of crisis (any crisis – be it war, pandemics, accidents, PR mess, politico-sexual scandals, you name it) the first thing you need to do is to get ahead of the story. Get your version of the story as fast as possible before the enemy gets to deploy a spin on it.
Since Putin rolled in the tanks in Ukraine, the West has done a decent enough job at staying ahead of the story. As cynical as this may sound to some ears, the informational (read: propaganda) aspect of the war is routinely more important or at least equally important to the operational aspect. In other words: the actual victory on the field may not matter at all if you lose the propaganda dispute. The Vietnam War is a prime example on how you can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory because the propaganda was neglected.
Up until about 7 days ago the main lines of attack by the Russian propaganda fell flat outright. Those lines being:
muh Azov battalion
muh oppression of Russians by the Ukrainians
muh Nazis
muh denazification of the Jewish-led Ukrainian government 🤡
Nobody seriously believed any of these. And the first two elements have been pushed by various agents of Russian disinformation for 8 years now. And they convinced roughly nobody. Which goes to show that even Russian propagandists aren’t what they used to be. Basic rules of propaganda say that you have to withdraw a talking point after a while, especially if it’s clearly unsuccessful.
Muh biolabs
But then the russkies came up with a (not exactly) new talking point: The existence of US-assisted biolabs in Ukraine.
Even this talking point isn’t particularly new. Here’s for instance Russian state agency TASS discussing this talking point in April 2020. Here is the Chinese official propaganda tabloid amplifying this in April 2021. Here is Russian state media Rossya24 discussing this in 2018 – except at that time they were also alleging a similar thing about Georgia as well because, hey, the Russian invasion in Georgia had to be justified somehow. In fact, the “biolabs in Georgia” claim was used again in May 2020 in conjunction with the Wuhan Flu panic (and they added Kazakhstan into the mix too for extra credibility).
The point being this: “Muh biolabs” is not a new line of attack by Russian disinformation. It’s been around for at least 4 years and it’s not related to either the war in Ukraine or the CCP virus pandemic.
Why did it work this time ’round?
Having established that none of this is exactly new, it is still clear that this time around the line of attack worked much better than in the previous attempts. The reasons are simple: the West not only has stupider people in its leadership, but also significantly more corrupt people.
In 2018 and 2020, this line of attack was not ignored and countered immediately with on-site interviews, transparent footage and re-publishing of the relevant treaties.
This time ’round, however, the Western establishment chose the worst possible approach – namely to deny the very existence of these labs and call everyone who disagrees a Putinist. Congratulations Western establishment! The real Putinists and their friends are grateful!
Those who wish to promote this talking point (either on behalf of Russia or simply because they despise the current Western establishment) now have all the weapons they need to spin as many conspiracy theories as they please using “the customer’s material” – namely official Western sources.
Leaving aside the fog around Victoria “fuck the EU” Nulland’s speech, the existence of these labs has been public information since at least 2005 when a relevant treaty was signed. Prior to the signing of the treaty, two US Senators – Republican Richard Lugar and Democrat Barack Hussein Obama (remember him?) alongside a team of CDC and other pharma people inspected the sites. And Russia knew about it. In fact, the Russian government (Putin’s government!) officially apologized in 2005 for pulling some shenanigans arouns Lugar and Obama’s plane. None of this is (or ever was) secret. The fricking Chicago Tribune wrote about it for crying out loud!
With these undeniable facts on the table, anyone can concoct any conspiracy theory he or she wants. Sure, most would be implausible for those who haven’t heard about Ukraine this morning. But most people – including most of those who now do performative #StandWithUkraine support on social media – have quite literally heard about Ukraine this morning. That crop of people is easily subvertible and dissuadable by a well-written story starting from the facts laid out even by the establishment’s tools such as Politifact.
And let us not forget the backdrop of all of this: Both Western societies and Russian society are just coming out of a pandemic that was rife with disinformation including, and especially, from the public health establishments and governments. That means both the Russian public and the Western public is primed to believing any story pertaining to the dangers of lab-leaked pathogens – in part because the public has already seen this movie before.
Friendly reminder: The establishment was very quick to deny that the CCP Virus got leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, even though that distinct possibility wasn’t refuted even partially to this day.
So, from a propaganda perspective, thanks to Western incompetence and, yes, corruption, this old line of attack by Russia’s disinformation machine has gotten new and improved teeth.
What does this mean and what can be done?
So for the next several weeks, expect a lot more stories carefully planted in as many newspapers as possible and carefully written in such a way as to keep you in both fear and doubt.
The purpose of this line of attack isn’t to reveal Western corruption (few people even care about that to begin with – Russians included). Nor is it to distract your attention from the mass murder that Russia is committing in Ukraine – even though it may seem like that.
The purpose of this line of attack is to stoke new fears into a [Western and Russian] public already stressed by pandemic fatigue and to make the Western public doubt the USA. The occupant is relying on the fact that the public is already aware of the mountains of lies perpetrated by the so-called “public health” establishment during the pandemic. Of course, nobody will tell you that the Russian “public health” establishment was just as HONK if not even more so as the Canadian, German or Italian one.
What you can do – in addition to always telling the truth – is to recognize that you don’t have to suck Putin’s dick in order to own the libs.
The DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency) is real and it assists laboratories in Ukraine. This is neither a nothingburger nor a catastrophe. Since this is a war, completely trusting an interested source right now is detrimental. Which is why I only presented documents that predate this war. And that’s also what you should do as well if you want to do something.
There will be new “revelations” – must of them bullshit, some of them true. Sifting through them will be a challenge. Just make sure you don’t keep a mind so open that your brains fall over.
With that said, though, we should recognize that this is the first serious blunder of the West on the propaganda front. And it’s a costly blunder. Oh well… 🤷🏻♂️
As per tradition, we took your questions for several days and then selected as many of them as possible to answer to.
Unfortunately, we launched the Q&A challenge just after Putin’s invasion so a lot/most of the questions ended up being about the war in Ukraine in some way, shape or form – from economics, to sanctions and all the way till Russian disinformation and ideological talking points. Well, we tried to answer most of them.
As soon as we were done taping this, we ran towards the Ukrainian border to help someone. And then the operating system drive (an SSD) broke down. So this is why it took so long until this got published.
I was inspired to write this article after a discussion on Telegram regarding some techno-optimist Romanian Youtuber who was apparently anti-China; in fact people from the conversation maintained the idea that this guy was more anti-China than my Sofa associate, Lucian, the one publicly acclaimed by a Romanian boomer “God from the Sofa”. Jokes aside, this is true in the same way that, in the first Star Wars episode, when Obi-Wan and Anakin were in the ocean and attacked by colossal fish – there’s bigger fish out there.
Well, that is me; the one who, if I had a fleet on my hands, I would have blockaded all Chinese access to the Pacific with zero remorse.
Why such a radical statement?
The answer is both simple and complicated; the short answer would be that humanity as a whole has regressed irreversibly due to the addiction based on the world’s cheapo workshop, China; a sample of the consequences of globalisation, as well as the disproportionate addiction to a single industrial power that we observe now and for many years to come is when the entire planet was shoved into the chicken coop in 2020 and a few countries even in 2021; suddenly the logistical model of Just In Time deliveries went у пизду and a lot of supply chains have suddenly grinded to a halt due to component shortages, for example car chips. This is still the peak of the iceberg when it comes to problems and decisions taken at a political level, but the people themselves are not devoid of any fault, because it’s not like the status quo got shoved down their throats; the vast majority has chosen to comply to the system and not bother thinking about the potential future consequences of such choices.
Still, let’s get going with the story.
In the race to build stuff as cheap as possible, we became the slaves of globalisation
Go into any shop and become conscious of the place the products you buy are made in; you’re going to find out very fast that a lot of them are made in China, and plenty who are not directly made in China, use materials sourced from China.
China has became an expert in undermining critical economic sectors, because in the eyes of the CCP they would rather lose money through such stratagems if it came with a win on the geopolitics and economic front to dominate one of these. We’ve seen this recently in Serbia when it was about opening a lithium mine. Aleksandr Vučić being a bridgehead for China in Europe, managed to easily mobilise the plebs in order to not risk his relation to China by not allowing lithium battery factories to appear, whether directly or indirectly controlled by China.
Yes, almost all lithium batteries used in the electronic devices that we all have, from laptops, smartphones, electric cars, cuckmobiles (also known as e-scooters), external batteries…the list goes on. It’s not like you need something special or high-tech to fabricate batteries someplace else; Tesla has proven this pretty clearly, but Tesla is an exception because it is a niche company where the added value of products is very big, and Musk can afford such acts of independence; well, others are not so lucky: if you want batteries, you better make friends with Xi, because only Xi’s country has basically non-existent pollution regulations and artificially cheap and numerous labour force to undermine other Gigafactories like Tesla.
Any sort of smartphone manufacturer that you may be, when you invest tens, if not hundreds of millions in R&D, miniaturise compnents and still make them relatively accessible, it’s all for naught if you don’t have an electricity source to power the entire shebang; you would lose constantly against others who won’t have any problem buying batteries from China just because you want to go against the trend, and the public will punish you by not buying the product, because the public doesn’t care about such things.
OMG, what do you mean that the public doesn’t care?
When my Sofa associate says that people are not stupid, people are fucking stupid, it sounds like cynicism and absurdity, but it really is like that and if I were to gather sufficient evidence, we wouldn’t even end up enumerating, let alone explaining all of them by the end of 2030. Contextually to this article, people don’t care about where the things they own come from, and from that moment on we can’t also talk about the Science Fiction which are the consequences related to this ignorance.
It’s clear that from this point of view we don’t have an audience if we are to organise a campaign of informing people; people will continue to buy things taking into consideration in a great part the price of the product, the price which is kept artificially low; at the same time technologies got cheaper and trickled down naturally to be more affordable for the larger public, good or bad, but especially the ones we need to be observant are the unknown ones.
Undermining national economies
(This part is explained using Romanian examples, as it wasn’t intended initially to be in English, so apologies in advance if you don’t get the context)
Here is where I’m going to lose the appeal from some of you when I will say that from an economic point of view, Ceaușescu’s push towards industrialization was a good idea, but an exaggerated one at that. Where exaggerations occurred was that the inherent inertia from a centrally-planned economy who also wished for autarchy, these were the leading reasons where situations that were impossible to manage appeared, which inevitably led to the economic collapse and Ceaușescu’s self-helicoptering; however, in itself the decision was still good, but after the collapse of Communism that rug was pulled from under everyone’s feet part due to the political decisions, but also part due to the population which didn’t understand what is going on.
This aspect still applies for the current political class (because our politicians still come from the same population), already the global situation is complicated where, in the European Union you are undermined from 4 sides: German mercantilism, straight-up undermining from China, then the strangulation of ever-expanding hyper-regulation from Brussels and from Bucharest (same principle applies for other European nations, btw; look at how idiotic local and national laws are for economic activities); for the first two it’s difficult to do something without a parallel structure that could compete economically (something that the Intermarium Initiative could solve in the future), but for the last two, especially the national regulations, that is why we live in collective misery and we live with the mantra “the one that bows his head, the sword shall not cut him”.
In Bucharest it’s fascinating to walk in all sorts of random shops where, instead of finding garlic from the Giurgiu region, 20-50km South of the capital, you find garlic brought all the way from China. At the same time we haven’t got a national retailer built up from domestic capital anywhere in the top 20 national retailers (on the 21st being Annabella with shops around Dâmbovița and surrounding counties, and further down the Unicam Cooperative which started from Satu Mare and has a few shops around Transilvania and Vaslui).
You can never convince me that a super-state entity like the self-serving Brussels bureaucrats, that function like in the former USSR (that is why we part-joke and part-seriously use the term EUSSR or Европейский Союз) knows better what is the perfect curvature of bananas, how drinking water actually does not hydrate you, or why you should have a tampon tax of 5% just because the Commission decreed so. Let’s not even talk about the monstrous Common Agricultural Policy, this neo-Valev Plan of the European Union. (English source materials about this policy are scarce – like all relevant elements of Soviet policy that might make people reexamine the Европейски съюз)
No, no, hell no, and if you insist, you deserve to be hit with the shovel straight in the head, under the expectation that maybe your synapses will rearrange themselves, in order to not pretend that this EU circlejerk can have an opinion related to domains far away from their realm of understanding even remotely.
No one should mess around with food or other strategic sectors if we are to look at the historical standard of the people, but the economy overall, in sectors critical to the well-functioning of the country, a people undermined from the outside and from the inside will remain on par with the proles described by Orwell in his famous book. Sure, if something will change regarding perception, it’ll happen at a grassroots level, but we got to get rid first of all of this omnipresent mentality of “the State should do this and that”.
Covert colonialism via Belt & Road
Always pay attention to people who speak positively about China, because friendships with China already end up being disastrous for the country that is bewitched by the miracle of “reciprocal economic development and friendship between the people”. We got a considerable list of victims that fell for plenty of reasons, most of the times due to a mix of naivete and corruption, in the trap of modern colonialism:
This list is by no means complete, but you get the idea how venomous Chinese investments are. Things will continue as they are because there are plenty of countries and political structures ripe for exploitation by Chinese imperialism, but at least let’s learn something from the examples provided by these nations to not fall in the same trap, but in particular to boycott a Communist state which transforms entire countries into colonies of debt slaves for their interests. Each country has its own Sinophiles, but there are also threats from the EU itself which is full of Sinophiles, led by the German political class which also threatens security when we talk about relationships with Russia.
Okay, what is there to be done?
Boycott anything of Chinese manufacturing; plenty of times products made locally or in another place close by are just marginally more expensive, but on the longer term more reliable when you factor in the cost, but also its lifespan. This applies to electronics, but also household appliances, clothes, products and the sites that made a business out of selling copies, like Alibaba/Aliexpress.
Undermine Sionphile sympathies; like in the case of avalanches, it’s sufficient just for a few CCP agents or shills for free to enter in political structures, and from that moment on it’ll be much more difficult to uproot the cancer, at a considerable cost as well.
Pay attention and undermine propaganda coming from international Chinese institutions; The Confucious Institute in particular is the main culprit, being a significant institute that initiates naive people in sympathising and shilling for the CCP, by using the rich Chinese culture in baiting people towards them. TikTok is also a significant problem, being used constantly by a humongous population of naive people, especially young people over the age of 13, without them being aware that they play China’s game, when we look at how prevalent pro-China propaganda is on the platform.
