I just finished watching the Grand Final of Eurovision 2025, held in Basel, Switzerland. I can’t write about politics today because the Romanian law says you can’t campaign in the day of the vote. But since Romania did not attend this year’s Eurovision (Mashallah we never do ever again 🙏🏻), I can tell you about how bad Eurovision was, obviously, with no connection to the election going on right now.

So, the “competition” took place in Switzerland because this guy won last year. If you are a normal person, you probably have no idea what that flag is. And that’s a good thing. The trouble is that the European Commission really wants you to know.

Why does this matter? Well, because if you live in a country of Europe, it is very likely that your taxpayer money funded this crap.

For decades, this was acceptable because it wasn’t too expensive and it scratched several itches. It kept a part of the culture busy, it allowed for friendly multiculturalism, it provided a good yearly proxy to grok the geopolitical mood of the establishment in each country and, occasionally, gave prominence to either a good song or some comedic or epic moment.

Since 2004, however, with the advent of Youtube, things have started to change while ESC, like any pan-European state bureaucracy, was slow to adapt, to put it mildly.

The model is passée

ESC is organized by something called the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which unites all of the State broadcasters from Europe, including transcontinental countries like Türkiye, Azerbaijan, russia or Armenia (but not Qazaqstan!) plus three non-European countries – Morocco, Israel and Australia.

All of this may have been a good idea in 1950 when broadcasting was a highly expensive affair, but in 2025 technological change and (geo)politics are slowly, but surely, rendering the model obsolete. And not just when it comes to ESC, but generally, the very idea of EBU is very much passée.

You see, because it’s organized by what is effectively a State organization, the “competition” has to follow a centrally-decided model that is also at the same time compliant with all of the national rules and regulations of TV broadcasting in all of the 57 member countries (or 53, or 54, depending which week we’re talking about). Again, this was possible in 1950, but in 2025 it’s increasingly untenable.

And since 2014, when the “bearded woman” “won” the “competition” – this became self-evident for more and more people. One by one, countries started withdrawing from this because, again, if it’s State funded then it also means it’s accountable to normal politics and, ultimately, to the taxpayers.

Here’s a nice little table for you:

Country	Last participation	Reasons
Andorra	2009	Financial
Belarus	2019	Political
Bosnia	2016	Political and financial
Bulgaria	2022	Political and financial
Hungary	2019	Political
Monaco	2006	Political and financial
Montenegro	2025	Did not participate in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Morocco	1980	Political
North Macedonia	2022	Financial
Romania	2023	Political and financial (missed several in the 2010s as well)
russia	2021	Political
Slovakia	2021	Political and financial
Türkiye	2012	Political

As you can see, the list has gotten pretty long in the last 5 years. And it’s very likely next year will be even longer than that.

And it’s not just the agenda driven nonsense (more on that later), but the model itself is now outside reality. Almost every year the most popular song does not win (2025 is the exception). Every single year (no exception at all), the final hierarchy is heavily influenced by nameless and faceless weirdos. And while that fact was well hidden in 2005, it’s impossible to keep it hidden in 2025.

It also doesn’t help that due to technological change, the most popular artists don’t need ESC, thus further deepening the crisis of the model itself. In 2025 it is simply weird to think that a bunch of has-beens from the 1980s (or even older!) can have a reasonable opinion on what is popular and good in terms of music for a diverse continent like Europe in 2025. Ain’t no-one buying that!

Nobody is watching it

All of the above would’ve been excusable if the line went up. Any line, really. The show is not profitable, it has declining audience numbers (even as EBU fudges with the statistics), and it’s increasingly too expensive even for richer countries.

In 2022, 2023 and 2024 it barely cracked 160 million viewers and in 2025 I’d be honestly surprised if it surpasses 150 million viewers. And this is with EBU’s way of counting which effectively adds up all of the viewers “across all ESC content leading up to and over the event weeks”. So, in reality, there’s barely 30 million people that watch this.

Romania not only didn’t attend, but didn’t even broadcast the thing in 2025. So I watched it on Youtube. At the peak there were 1.4 million people watching live. That’s slightly more than the total number of people watching a Turkish TV show last night just in Romania alone. The difference being that zero taxpayer money are being spent on that.

Meanwhile, organizing this thing costs around €50 million – and that’s just the contribution of the organizing broadcaster (the host country) and the city hall of the city (Basel in the case of 2025). Add to that the lodging costs of all delegations (paid by each individual member organization – which is also taxpayers’ money), plus the cost of organizing a “national selection” (also taxpayer dough) and you’re climbing really fast to over €100 million in taxpayers’ money for this thing.

Sure, €100 million across 37 countries may not seem much, but €100 million means almost the cost of a brand new stadium, or the operating costs for several big hospitals for a year, or even the construction of a brand new smaller hospital (no, I’m not joking – there’s a public bidding right now for a €70 million contract to build a new hospital from scratch). €100 million is a lot of money given the negative value that ESC now offers.

There is no core audience anymore

Until 2019 (at the latest) the core audiences were nostalgic boomers and people tuning in for the cringe. But, in the last 6 years, ESC managed to alienate those as well.

The “no politics” rule means the Israeli competitor doesn’t get to talk about how she survived October 7 by literally hiding under corpses, but that suddenly doesn’t apply to the endless stream of LGBT-ist propaganda. Why? Because in Europe, LGBT-ist propaganda is legally not a political point of view (even though it absolutely is), but “human rights law” (as if “human rights” isn’t in itself a mere opinion like all others).

By tradition, the last year’s winner is invited to perform. This is how he showed up. This doesn’t break the “no nudity and sexual innuendo” guidelines, according to EBU. Neither is his celebration of Hamas break the “no politics” rule, apparently.

In an attempt to please everybody, EBU is in fact pleasing nobody and thus sealing the fate of the whole project. And it’s unlikely that this will be turned around under the current constraints.

What can be done

After watching yet another dogshit show, I sincerely believe the Romanian and Hungarian strategy is the best for all countries: Cite financial reasons and get the fuck out of this shitshow.

It’s not salvageable. The institutional resistance to reform is too great and no coherent argument is going to persuade them. We tried. The very idea of getting private partners on board and improve the management and the finances was received with shock and horror by the BBC, the Swiss broadcaster, France Médias Monde or TVE – and these guys’ opinion matters the most. I say: “Fine. Have at it and leave us alone.”

If the westoids don’t want to fix this money sink, then let them pay for it without the rest of us.

The most likely countries where you can have some success in the following years, politically speaking, to get them out are: The United Kingdom (if Reform wins), Poland, France (if Bardella wins), Italy (traditionally Italy stayed out more than it stayed in – so it’s worth a shot again), the ex-Yugoslav countries (especially Croatia after it was done to them in 2024), Cyprus (for financial reasons) and Albania (for their constant mistreatment over the last decade because they’re never gay).

Meanwhile, those in countries like Slovakia, Romania, Hungary or Bulgaria should continue to hold the line.

This beast needs to be starved. And again, since funding it is a political decision, don’t be shy to use hardline politics to push for its defunding.

Heck, I’m thinking we should get some MEPs on this as well.

If we’re paying for this, we want to have a say in how it’s run. It really is that simple.

Ideally, we take over it and turn it into a festival for the Europe of nations. But, in order for that to happen, the current crop of management has to go. And the fastest way to do that is to defund it, country by country.

You may not think this is important enough to be worth the energy, but please do keep in mind that ILGA-Europe (the main pusher of LGBT-ism in Europe) has a budget of just €5m/year these days. Down from tripple-digits a decade ago. They themselves are complaining.

LGBT-ism exists as long as there’s funding for it. Eurovision is just one giant LGBT-ist operation at this point. A €100m/year operation, to be more precise. Taking it down (or taking it over, if possible) would be a huge win for subsidiary purposes. The cultural relevance of Eurovision is gone, but the resources it still redistributes to LGBT causes are still immense and continue to have negative consequences on our cultures and our societies. And if you don’t control those resources, then by definition the enemy does.

Call your MP. See who you know inside the public broadcaster. You’d be surprised how easy it can be in most countries to gather the critical institutional support for a reduction or withdrawal from this shitshow.

Let the lefties fund it with their own dough if they want to continue this. Get your tax shekalim out of this mess!

And if you’re in Poland or Romania, please do think about this today as you head out for a vote 🙂

 

I’m writing this before the results of the German general elections are known. This needs to be mentioned because the tendency these days is to always assume that any argument is made with electoral purposes in mind, or to justify (positively or negatively) the results of an election. That is not the intention here.

Whether AfD gets 51% or 5% in the general election this Sunday, the following lines do apply. This will get lengthy (by today’s low-attention span standards) so grab a cup of coffee.

Alright so, as you might know, the Vice President of the United States of America, His Excellency James David Vance was invited as a keynote speaker at the annual security conference in München six days ago. All of the “good people” expected the same boring speech about russia and China and maybe the 50th reiteration of the standard US plea to European NATO members to increase their defense spending.

For those for whom history started on January 21st, it is necessary to remind everyone that this discussion is not new. George W. Bush, Hussein Obama, Trump 1.0 and Hussein Obama 3.0 the Biden Administration have consistently asked European NATO members to increase their defense spending. This discussion started in 2006 (or 2004, or 2008 – depends on who you ask). It’s been around 20 years (give or take) since this very legitimate demand has been on the agenda. Of course, nothing happened. Au contraire, European NATO members continued to decrease their defense spending all throughout this period.

So in 2025, a week ago, Vice President Vance decided to flip the script and, in doing so, unleashing a preference cascade in Europe that will ultimately do a lot of good – even though the transition period is clearly very bumpy. You really should watch the whole speech if you haven’t done so already. It’s just under 20 minutes long.

The reactions to his speech are precisely those that people like me have been waiting (and some of us planning) for about 15 years. It would’ve been great to have this conversation in 2019, rather than in the tumultuous geopolitical context of February 2025 but, ultimately, no moment is perfect and the conversation(s) must happen at all costs, no matter how inconvenient it is for one side or another.

What do we defend? What is “the free world”?

Vice President Vance effectively questioned whether (most of) Europe is still part of the free world. And, in doing so, forced the Pavlovian reaction from the usual suspects who, much to nobody’s surprise, rushed to answer. And the answer is simple: NO.

You may not like the answer, you may think the answer is being misinterpreted or you may be one of those people who think JD Vance is correct but, even so, he shouldn’t have said it or, he should’ve been more polite or just wait for the right context – but none of that changes the reality.

In Europe the peoples are simply not free. And the difference between russia and a worryingly high number of countries of Europe is now negligible. Take Germany and russia for instance. Both:

• want Nordstream in defiance of the strategic interest of most of NATO
• jail people for political reasons
• rig elections both at home and abroad (see Germany’s huge propaganda budget into the medias of countries like Poland and Romania)
• lack basic freedoms
• have a laughably biased judicial system
• instrumentalize mass migration to harm other countries (both targeting Poland the most)

Other than the umlaut, the difference between russia and Germany is hard to assess because there isn’t much. Older people may say there isn’t much left, thus insinuating that once upon a time this was the case. I’m from JD Vance’s generation so I’ll be skeptical of this.

Throughout the entirety of my lifetime Germany has just been the other russia not just when it comes to geopolitics, but general philosophy too. Always out to ban, regulate and control things. Always, without exception, against the liberties and freedoms of my people.

When the Soviet Union did this shit to my people, they were called Sov-Rom which were effectively an exploitation scheme by which russia extracted resources from here for the benefit of russia.

Present-day OMV in Austria in those years was called Sowjetische Mineralölverwaltung (the Soviet Mineral Oil Administration) and it was basically the same thing.

Everyone recognizes today that that was bad. But almost everyone loses their shit when one points out that that’s exactly what Germany is doing right now to almost all of Europe.

Vice President Vance rightly called the members of the EU executive by their proper name: Commissars. And reminded everyone that justifying censorship or cancelling elections by “combating disinformation” is itself a Soviet tactic and even the word disinformation is a Soviet one. That’s when all of the euro-fanatics lost their shit. Because no contemporary commie likes it when you show them the mirror.

The so-called transatlantic link always relied on both economic and ideological common interests. These two pillars meant that sometimes one yield in favor of the other depending on over-arching (geo)political interests. But what happens when both of these pillars are weakened? Because that’s where we are now!

At the introduction of the €uro, the USA and Europe were effectively peers in terms of economics. But it’s been 15 years since Europe has been lagging behind and routinely just straight up going backwards.

So… increasingly fewer common values and increasingly fewer common economic interests. Both of the pillars underpinning the transatlantic link have been weakened. And, overwhelmingly, the fault for this lies with the commissars and the overwhelmingly leftist governments of most of Europe. These facts are inescapable. There is no way around them and that’s what’s driving the eurocrats crazy. They can cry “populism” and “fascism” until they’re blue in the face. They can try to stall via election shenanigans or try to double down on the censorship but, ultimately, the jig is up.

The normative materialism that the managerial class cultivated has come back to bite them. For years, they were able to shove down social concerns (on immigration, free speech, Islam, genderism, etc.) under the excuse that at least the line goes up. Well, tough, now it’s time for the bluff to be called. Not even the line goes up now!

For over a decade (since 2013 in my case) we have been warning to whoever would listen and could change things that you can’t keep importing the third world, have neighborhoods that run on a parallel and foreign legal system (Sharia), demonize the natives (especially the young men) and pay no (geo)political consequences for this.

The response, from 2013 until December 2024 was always the same: “You’re imagining things. It can’t be that bad. Look, the line goes up. Nobody’s gonna sacrifice their standard of living just to fight transgender propaganda in schools. And, ultimately, what’s so bad about that anyway? Are you some kind of a Nazi?” – or… words to that effect.

In vain I (and people much smarter than me) tried to explain to these loons that this is not how this works. The camel’s back is not endlessly resilient and that it will break, eventually. Whether it takes 5 or 10 years, but it will happen. You can’t go after people’s children and expect no consequences. Well… eventually,… it did happen.

The cat is out of the bag. The paste is out of the tube. Pick your metaphor.

None of this is JD Vance’s fault (or the Americans’ at large). Heck, the Americans have had to hold this fight on their own soil as well, starting even earlier than Europe.

It just so happened that JD Vance’s drop ended up spilling the glass. It could’ve been the Brexit vote. Or the election of Giorgia Meloni. Or the first election of Donald Trump. Or the illiberal, illegitimate, immoral and useless abuses during the Pandemic Project. Or Javier Milei saying roughly the same things last month at the World Economic Forum. Or the wholly illegitimate annulment of the presidential election in Romania (more on that soon). There were multiple moments – large and small – that could’ve spilled the glass. It was bound to happen.

The critical mass is here. And the discussion must take place and it will take place, regardless of whether that’s convenient for you or not.

Now that doesn’t mean that my and most of this esteemed audience’s favorite side of the argument will win, mind you. But it does mean that the suppression of the argument is over. Truly over.

JD Vance happened to be the right man at the right place and at the right time. But then again, that’s how (geo)politics and the great (and not-so-great) deeds of the great men of history tend to happen. It’s a lot of random and chance involved.

Now what?

Well, now it’s time to see who is who. The temptation to enjoy the schadenfreude (now there’s an interesting German word!) is immense. But, the fight is not over. In a way, the struggle so far was to actually start having the fight to begin with.

Until now, the “fight” was mostly by convincing normies one by one and sowing the seeds of doubt. A very important fight, as we can all witness these days, but for over decade it appeared hopeless. Now we know for sure it wasn’t hopeless but we should also know that the war is not over either, even if the tides have truly turned in our favor.

The Enemy is regrouping and trying hard to flood the zone (to borrow a phrase from Steve Banon). In case you haven’t noticed, the media space in Europe is choke full of discussions about Ukraine and as much irrelevant nonsense as possible. As I’m writing these lines, this is the 3rd most prominent news story on Reuters. Water conservation in Greece. Veeeery important topic, I’m sure. All 10 people living in Nafplion definitely appreciate it.

The reason the Enemy is doing this is self-evident: Damage control. You don’t want the plebs or the chattering class(es) to think too much at JD Vance’s speech, outside of the approved framework of Orange man bad.

The more people think at what JD Vance said, the higher the preference cascade to the disadvantage of the Regime in Europe. So it is therefore preferable (from the Enemy’s perspective) that the plebs talk more about vladimir putin, water conservation in Greece, Coca Cola’s sponsorhisp programs (4th most prominent news story on the frontpage of Reuters when I write this) and really anything except for the fact that the “free world” in Europe is indeed in remission and that the basic liberties of the peoples of Europe are starting to resemble russia a lot more than it’s comfortable for almost everyone to admit.

The more people talk about the content of JD Vance’s speech, the more people will inevitably see the legitimacy of the question. Which, again, is this: “What exactly are we defending?”

For far too many years we’ve been busy defining the enemy. And that’s important too, don’t get me wrong! But to capture the imagination and the passions of the public, you need a positive vision as well.

In 2014, the positive vision was still (somewhat) evident. But in 2025 it simply isn’t. And no amount of screeching can change that.

If the proposal is to fight for Greta Thunberg (energy poverty), Digital Services Act (technological poverty), GDPR (insanity), Green New Deal (more energy poverty), the Migration Pact (read mass Islamic immigration into East-Europe to relieve Germany) and leadership by illegitimate Germans such as Ursula von der Leyen then, with respect, the only correct answer is this: Go fuck yourselves! Yes, all of you.

It’s hilarious (but also infuriating) to see people like von der Leyen or NGO grifters talk back at JD Vance about democracy when, in reality, Vice President Vance has more votes on his name than the entirety of the EU leadership combined. And the plebs may be ignorant and routinely foolish, but they’re not all retarded.

You are not going to capture the imagination (least of all the admiration) of the people you spent 12-13 years calling them Nazis, xenophobes, Islamophobes (as if that’s a bad thing), sexists (as if that’s a bad thing) and a whole plethora of -phobes and -ists whose legitimacy nobody voted for and approximately nobody agreed upon.

And since in Europe there is no mechanism like in the US to repudiate these things at the ballot box (at least not a direct and effective one), we’ll have to make do with the imperfect ones – the soap box all the time, the ballot box wherever possible, the lobby box (as informal as it is) and, hopefully, we won’t need the cartridge box.

One side point for our American friends: While second amendment rights are rare in Europe, historically, when we decide to chimp out, we do it in ways that make the overwhelming majority of American chimp outs look like gay pride parades in comparison. The regular striking season in France (that takes place every month of May since the 1960s) makes the BLM riots genuinely look mostly peaceful. The riots in Amsterdam, Rome, Madrid, Prague or Belgrade during the Pandemic Project were far more serious than all protests in the US combined in the last 30 years.

Point being: NOW is the time to strike at the Regime in our countries. They’ve never been weaker and more scared since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Bury them in lawsuits, bury them in physical protests, vote out of spite with anyone but not them, convince others to do the same, purposefully increase the tension in society unidirectionally against them – the establishmentarians.

These people must lose. At all costs.

Will there be consequences for this approach? Yes, of course! And some of them may not be pretty at all! But, by the same token, there is simply no room left to fix anything with this current leadership. Not after the Pandemic Project and the multitude of exaggerations and straight up evil in the years prior to 2020. There is such thing as enough is enough.

And all of this must happen before any policy discussion.

Yes, of course most European countries should increase their defense spending. Yes, of course most European countries should get a DOGE of their own. Yes, of course most European countries are socialist shitholes that must go through an active process of transition to capitalism the way Eastern Europe had in the 1990s.

But, before any of that, the first step is physical replacement. We have to do all of the above (and more) but not with the current pseudoelite.

There’s an old Romanian say: When the brothel ain’t working anymore, it’s time to change the whores. And we’re at that moment.

Weren’t these whores super-duper happy at the Great Reset project just 5 years ago? Well, turns out that the idea wasn’t entirely wrong. Let’s have a Great Reset of them.

JD Vance’s good for Romania

In the last 40 years, there have been exactly three American officials who have done good for my country not by accident, but intentionally so: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and JD Vance. In this order.

For a quick background on Romanian politics see this video from three weeks ago.

By mentioning the annulment of the Presidential election in Romania, JD Vance did two things here:

• gave permission to the 70% of the populace who also agrees that the annulment was a bad idea
• put the Regime on notice that they crossed a red line

This led to hilarious reactions from the usual suspects. Perhaps the most notable being the one shown above (the headline has since been changed).

The shutting down (really just a suspension) of USAID and the Vicepresident’s speech triggered a preference cascade the likes of which I haven’t witnessed since 2004 – at the previous serious regime change in Romania. And it’s glorious to see in and of itself.

It was even funnier to see the editors rushing to edit history as it dawned on them that their cushy wages are also American, generally speaking. The author of the above screenshot has been on the payroll of the US Embassy until two minutes ago, basically. This unconstrained public chimp out from such people (here I would also include Adrian Papahagi, Cătălin Tolontan, the grifters from Recorder and a whole plethora of local public speakers who effectively confirmed what we’ve all been suspecting: that they’re all grifters) – well,… this chimp out from them blew away the last shred of legitimacy they might’ve had.

Even some of them are now acknowledging it. Not in these words, but they do so when they acknowledge that the current establishmentarian officials in Romania are treated with contempt anywhere it is relevant (see Andrei Caramitru). Which, by the way, that is a very good thing.

The majority of Romanians (again, around 70%) treat the current Romanian officials with hostility and contempt as the default. And about 40% with straight up hatred.

Prior to 2020, even the most avid haters of the Romanian political class (such as yours truly) would assume they’re all liars and grifters for political gain. Which translated into always double-checking what they say.

After 2020, however, around 40% of us simply don’t care. An official from PSD/PNL/USR/UDMR could claim that water is wet and our reaction would be somewhere between “no, it isn’t – you’re a liar” and “who the fuck cares? You’re illegitimate. Go fuck yourself!”

Of course, this isn’t specific to Romania. Germany is in a similar situation. So is France. And soon more countries will join the club, whether they like it or not.

The reason is simple: While multi-party democracies can ensure a more lasting tenure in power for the establishment, there still does come a point when all possible combinations have been tried already. And when that moment comes (like it did in Romania), there’s no way to go but out.

And, you see, that’s an existential crisis for the current political class in Romania. Most of these people have never held a proper job in the entirety of their lives. They are, to put it simply, useless leeches. Most of them eligible for some jail time as well. And they know it! That’s why they fight so hard and so dirty to stay in power. Because once they’re truly out of power, there be dragons… for them.

On top of this, one also should bear in mind that since 1995 the political class has always been low-key subservient to the US. It was a very good bargain. The US (until 2013) had no ideological demands, was willing to support a fast-paced transition to democracy and a fast-paced economic transition (with the local currency becoming convertible in 1998 largely with US support and for great benefit to our people). In return the US asked for some military support and high(er) military spending on a modernized army formed by professionals rather than conscripts. All of this was popular with the general populace as well.

So the political class from 1995 onwards found itself in a golden age: having to sometimes serve an empire (the USA) whose demands were anyway very popular locally. You can’t get more of a perfect grift than this one!

But… over time… things changed. The country joined the EU in 2007. And after 2012 the EU itself started transforming into something that is deeply unpopular and downright harmful and evil. The local political class survived through a fine balancing act between US and EU (read: German) interests, also benefiting from the fact that the most angry people with them simply left.

And then 2020 came. Which not only brought exaggerations and evil policies, but also brought back a lot of people from abroad. This trend had started prior to that (as it did in Poland too) but got heavily accelerated with the Pandemic Project which saw several countries going full insane over a cough with 99.999% survival rate of everyone under 70 and a statistically zero IFR among children. The upending of the entirety of social and economic life so that grandma lives till age 88 and 4 months instead of 87 and 11 months initially shocked people but the shock turned to anger and slowly to resentment and spite. And for good reason!

The Pandemic Project hit hard on the prime exponent of the post-2004 Regime, that is PNL (blue on the graph above) without a perfect corresponding upswing for the other big systemic gang that is PSD (red on the graph above).

Long story short, by 2024, the systemic parties found themselves increasingly on the wrong side of the public. Here at the Sofa we’ve been warning and detailing how and why this will happen but few have heeded the warning. From the Regime’s perspective, all of this happened suddenly and unexpectedly. And although that’s not true, they act as if it is because that’s their sincere belief. And, in these matters, perception is reality.

From their perspective, everything was going smoothly as late as the summer of 2024 when the Regime alliance (PSD+PNL) got almost 50% of the vote and, combined with the Westoid Left’s 8% (mainly USR) and the Hungarian Minority Party’s 6%, it seemed that the establishment is doing great – especially since the Alliance for the Unification of Romanians had under-performed (only 15%, coming second) and SOS barely made the threshold at 5.03%.

Then came the parliamentary/general elections on December 1, 2024, in which, again, the establishment performed worse than expected but still good enough – now able to rule, albeit with a very slim majority. But also with almost 40% of the new Parliament comprised from rock-through-the-glass parties and with the Westoid Left (USR) caught in the middle and in fast decrease.

And then came the unmitigated disaster of the annulment of the Presidential election. And the suspension of USAID and JD Vance’s speech. This is almost the perfect storm. All we need is a terrorist attack from a blue-haired westoid leftist against a “sovereignist” and the whole situation mismanaged by the Police. Not that I’m hoping for that – I like my country without terrorism, thank you very much – but, truly, that would make this a perfect storm.

Still, JD Vance’s speech made violence a lot less likely now. The 40% haters have no reason whatsoever to chimp out violently. They had very few even in December, but now it would be counter-productive since the Trump Administration signaled that it agrees with us.

Meanwhile, the Regime suddenly can’t engage in too much violence either. It tried in the first weeks after the annulment but that didn’t quite work out because the idjits went after random TikTokers who are young and therefore simply unimpressed by the State’s authority. Effectively, the Regime tried to manage the situation using Boomer politics in a political moment that is very much explicitly against Boomer politics.

So what’s left is the Regime (and its army of shills) fighting for their own survival now.

And they’re losing too. Mostly because they’re stuck in a project that nobody cares about. Încremeniți în proiect as Romanian wisdom tells us.

In 2025 they try to counteract the threat to their privileges and power through methods that are straight up laughable: like having university professors write long screeches on Faceberg or in Regime newspapers that are read by approximately zero people.

Meanwhile, VP Vance replies to anons on X with very detailed policy explanation. Of course, the user to whom he replies to is not a random anon, but also a policy wonk from Germany. But the fact remains: the discussion is no longer taking place in the Regime’s terms and on the Regime’s turf.

VP Vance will not find time to offer detailed policy analysis to CNN or to Deutsche Welle. But he has plenty of time for @eugyppius1 on X, on CPAC or on Joe Rogan’s podcast. The very notion of what constitutes mainstream and legitimate is (finally! thank God 🙏🏻) suffering a profound reset.

The same phenomenon is happening in Romania as well. Regime-aligned websites routinely get fewer readers than this website. Regime-aligned expensive TV shows gather fewer views even than the Sofa. And that’s despite the multiple algorithmic restrictions that the Sofa still is under while the Regime-aligned shows benefit from an implicit algorithmic boost (at least on Youtube – though not anymore on Faceberg).

And the response that it’s all amplified by russia/CCP simply doesn’t work anymore. It’s not that such amplification doesn’t happen (it sure does happen, at least sometimes), but it’s not the russians that make Regime-aligned content be effectively marginal on the Internet. It’s not the russians that are upset for the election annulment – quite the opposite: they’re very happy that this happened – and they tell you that openly. Here’s a russian politician about it. Here’s vladimir putin about it. Sorry for the russian links but this is also something that is usually exploited: Most people can’t read russian so the Regime relied heavily on this fact and assumed everyone would believe them about what russian propaganda says. This worked well when the Regime claims were somewhat in the same ballpark with reality – but that’s not the case anymore.

Of course, this holds true for the vatniks as well. The running joke these days is that even our vatniks are westernized. Most pro-russian shills in Romania are just as fluent in the russian language as most pro-EU/westoid shills – which is to say fuck all.

All in all, JD Vance opened the floodgates. He may not have intended to (although given his subsequent behavior I have many reasons to assume he did), but the outcome is what it is. The masks are off.

What we do (both in Romania and in Europe in general) with this political moment is still unclear.

But, in the case of Romania, I will insist: No matter the outcome, JD Vance’s tirade was undoubtedly a very good thing he did for my country and my people. Even if my favorite side of the argument ends up losing this war, it will still have been an uncontested good for Romania that these people, the establishmentarians, get a gigantic kick in the teeth alongside ALL of their inconspicuous (paid!) shills. All of these people must lose. And they deserve to lose. The country will be inherently better off once all of these people will have lost.

Then we’ll have plenty of time to deal with the consequences. And yes, some of the consequences won’t be pleasant. The line might go down (oh no!) and the most irresponsible people in society – those who have debts – might have to pay a higher interest (oh no!), but, overall, that’s a cost that is totally worth it.

Some things are worth more than their monetary value. For yours truly and most of this esteemed audience, freedom of speech simply matters more. So much more that I’m perfectly happy – heck, exhilarated indeed – to trade even a long recession in return to a complete restoration of freedom of speech not to 2013 levels, but to 1991 levels! Everything must be permitted in public and in full. Yes, including the most unsavory and fucked up things that disgust me.

Because, ultimately, that’s what freedom of speech is for. For the things that we hate the most.

Downstream from this, yes, of course I also want revenge. For the Pandemic Project in particular. But also generally for the arrogance of the current establishment – and not just in Romania. These people must lose.

We tried the nice way. I certainly did. For over a decade. The patience has simply ran out. I’m out of fucks to give. And so are about 40% of my fellow countrymen.

It’s politically irrelevant (realistically speaking) who the next president of Romania is. But, since the Boomers in the Regime have signaled that it’s highly important for them, then it is incumbent on me and on us, the (at least) 40% to make sure the next president is whomever they hate the most.

But even more important is for the next president to be someone NOT from the current regime. So definitely not Crin Antonescu, Ponta, Bolojan, Ciolacu, Lasconi, Moșteanu… or anyone from PNL, PSD or USR. At this point I’d vote for Satan if it means these people lose and are humiliated. Cruelty must become the point. Their ideals must be openly held in contempt and stomped upon. Politically speaking, of course. As I said: I’m not a big fan of violence and that’s precisely why I was the happiest person in Romania for JD Vance’s speech. He just made violence utterly unnecessary. Which is great. It means we can fix this in a civilized manner.

Not a conclusion

The current EU-sponsored hybrid and panic porn attack on Romania shall also pass. In a month nobody will even remember it. That’s why, unlike my fellow dissidents, I’m unmoved by the relentless panic porn that the Regime media unleashed following JD Vance’s speech.

The elections will be in May. A looooot of things can happen until then. Very likely by then we’ll have a different prime minister. And very likely a wholly different governmental majority. If not by May, certainly by autumn. That will be my focus (and hopefully our people’s focus too) – to help to the best of our abilities that the next governing majority favors as many of our policy positions as possible while also necessarily holds in contempt as many of their policy positions as well.

I hope (and I’d pray too if I believed in that) that our people can hold the eyes on the ball for the next several months. The most important part of Romanian politics is the Parliament. Who moves things there matters the most. Who is President is a lot less important for the day-to-day lives of our people.

However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take the election seriously. It just means we gotta keep doing what we’ve been doing – actively undermine the Regime joyfully and calmly. Let them be angry and seething. Nothing brings more votes for the institution of the Extremist Candidate™ than Tapalagă or col. Dogioiu seething in the pages of their increasingly marginal blogs.

We’ll probably have fragmentation as well. The Regime will attempt a form of malicious compliance in this form: The Strategic Partner said we should observe democracy? Great, then everyone can run – including Ponta, Șoșoacă, CG and maybe two or three more ”sovereignists”. It’s a tactic that has routinely worked in favor of the Regime. It failed in December 2024, but that doesn’t mean it will necessarily fail again.

But… that’s a story for another time.

For now, this would be the shortest 😂 assessment for our foreign friends.

The ball is in play (“se joacă!”) as we routinely say on the stadia. It’s 1-1 at half time after 0-0 in the first leg. We haven’t won anything yet.

Eyes on the ball, my friends!

See ya on the Podcast! 👌🏻

Whether you call it Rule 34, educational content or, as in past times when Broadway was more honest – The Internet is for Porn – the fact remains that sex sells and sex-related trade is a driver of most new technologies. How that makes you feel is a separate conversation for some other time.

Short history

The oldest ever video was shot in 1874 and it’s something really autistic – the passing of the planet Venus over the Sun. The second oldest is from 1888 and it’s a random scene from someone’s backyard/garden. Third oldest is Lumière’s now famous 1895 shot of workers leaving the factory. The scene is now relatively famous because more people look up on the Internet “oldest continuous/smooth video”. But at the time, that scene had an audience of 10. Not ten thousand, but 10 people.

Just a few months later, in 1896, the first two erotic movies are made – one in France and one in the United States. That is the moment when “motion pictures” became an industry. Sure, the two films from 1896 wouldn’t be considered “erotic” today – but they were in their time. It’s also unsurprising that they happened in France (then just as today one of the most sex-positive countries and home of the invention of cinema) and in the US (the place where permitless innovation was the norm and daring investments a routine practice).

If you know what Betamax is, you’re either very old (and from a rich Western background) or someone who worked with anything that could be acquired in the post-communist chaos of early 1990s (like me).

If you don’t know what Betamax is, you’re either younger than 20 or you already know what VHS cassettes are. Betamax was the other format of cassettes, produced by Sony, as opposed to VHS cassettes produced by JVC.

In fact, Betamax cassettes were slightly better (and smaller in size) and they were the first video cassettes to be produced. A huge intra-Japanese war ensued with the Japanese government trying to force all manufacturers to adopt Betamax (because it was the first).

But the war was swiftly won by VHS. Why? Logistics and porn. But especially porn. The porn producers’ decision to adopt VHS as the medium of distribution for their production ended up making VHS the standard for everyone regardless of how they wanted to use their recorders/devices. This got expanded to cameras/camcoders too – which initially had a VHS cassette and later on a mini-VHS for regular people, while professional studios maintained the bigger ones (I filmed with one of those as late as 2004).

Betamax cassettes were produced until March of 2016 (!!) and VHS cassettes are still being produced today, though not by big mainstream manufacturers.

DVDs? Same story. They became widespread when pornographers decided they’re great for distributing higher-quality video. Then came mainstream movies and music. The reason pornographers adopted the DVD so fast was simple: Finally they could offer their end-users the ability to jump to the… ahem… preferred scene and do so seamlessly and without risking ruining the medium – as it had been the case with VHS cassettes. Anyone who digitalized VHS cassettes knows what I’m talking about – the most watched scenes tend to be the hardest to recover from an old tape.

Pay-per-view TV? Yeap, that’s pornographers’ work as well. And it was the same incentive: How to deliver content to clients in the most private way possible and as on-demand as possible while also charging money. Pioneered first in hotels and then in digital networks, pay-per-view TV became mainstream in early 2000s after the pornographers had perfected the model in the 1990s. In fact, the same pornographers then became consultants in tech and sale for mainstream content distributors later on.
The best example is Danni Ashe, the first big name in Internet pornography in 1994. Her career as a pornographer was, naturally, short. But her experience made her a sought-after consultant for every single big media corporation. She’s just the most famous example, but many others have been in the same position.

E-commerce? Yeah, that’s porn too. Long before anyone knew what e-commerce is, pornographers were already doing that as early as 1993. For the next 15 years, e-commerce meant porn. And then when it was perfected, industry insiders offered consultancy (for hefty fees) to everyone else on how to do it.

Likely the smartphone would’ve never become ubiquitous without the incentive for porn. In fact, the investments into 3G and 4G were only green-lit after consulting with the porn industry. It was (correctly) assumed that without the ability to distribute porn, the adoption of “smart” phones would be sluggish or simply won’t happen at all and thus investments would never be recovered.

By the way, this moment (around 2002 when 3G started to become a thing) is when you see a sharp rise in women consuming porn. A fact of life that anti-porn crussaders of 2024 have yet to integrate in their narrative(s), in part due to the women-are-wonderful effect.

Fast increase in bandwidth? Piracy and porn. Netflix came much later, when the market had “matured”. Netflix would’ve never happened without ThePirateBay and Porn.

From glorified tape recorder to useful technology

Michio Kaku calls present-day “AI” a glorified tape recorder. And he’s not wrong. As opposed to nearly every other take on “AI” on the Internet which competes in the “who can be the most wrong” Olympics.

But in order for “AI” (really just LLMs and 50 year old technology with bigger hard drives) to really become relevant, it will have to pass some tests. And the testing ground will be porn – regardless of what you and I think about that.

Just two days ago the first “AI” beauty pageant was announced. Well, sort of. It’s not exactly the first and the whole thing is not exactly new. But propaganda marketing matters because it creates perception. And in the world of propaganda, perception is reality.

But what will make or break this not-exactly-new-but-better-marketed technology will be “AI girlfriends” – which is a nicer way of saying porn. For now, there’s quite a bit of talk about how much that would be worth. But so far it’s only limited to chatbots.

May I remind you that chatbots for lonely people is not exactly something new. ELIZA is almost 60 years old.

Also, by “AI girlfriend” I don’t necessarily mean sex-bot androids with a language processor either – though that would certainly be a huge improvement. It will be enough if someone manages to create an advanced enough bot that can simulate a videochat-like conversation. That is to say… interactive porn by prompt.

By the way, interactive angle-changing for sport events that was the big thing in mid 2000s had been a thing in porn for over a decade prior. And the first interactive sports broadcasts paid for proprietary software to porn studios.

Similarly, the one who will be able to create interactive porn by prompt will get to set the standard for its “mainstream” offshoot (think realistic news anchors, entire sections of a featured movie and so on) and make big bucks out of it too.

There have already been some attempts at this, but they’re nowhere near close to good enough. And the only way they get good enough is through porn.

That’s when “media creators” should start worry. When the first company makes the first billion in revenue (VC investment doesn’t count) from selling access to PornGPT. That’s when we will also see the first really big REEEEE about porn in the 21st century, not dissimilar to the one from 1896 at the projection of (one of the) first erotic movies in a theater.

Or, alternatively, this doesn’t happen at all (or doesn’t happen in the next 50 years) because it’s too complicated without quantum computing – in which case “AI” goes where it deserves: A cute gimmick with niche applications – such as a glorified Grammarly to be used by kids to save time on bullshit assignments by bullshit professors/teachers in the bullshit institutions we still force them to attend because our societies are ruled by crazy people with bullshit ideas.

We’ll see what happens. But porn will be make or break.

The Florida House just passed a bill with bipartisan support that purports to ban social media use for teenagers under the age of 16. A bit over a month ago the Swedish government called for a review of school policies with a view to make school grounds mobile-free, and further changes in policy to “emphasize the real world” are in the bag as well during the coalition talks. In Spain, three regions have already banned all mobile phone usage in schools and there is increasing push to make the ban nationwide and even tighter. Just yesterday, the State School Council in Spain published its first proposal draft in public consultation.

France has banned mobile phones in schools 5 years ago and a week ago president Emmanuel Macron announced a strategic guidance to his government to come up with a policy to “take back control” of youth screen use.

Now, sure, all of the above-cited policies have various issues – from legality, enforcement or morality. But one thing is certain: The notion of regulating smartphones is no longer a fantasy – but a growing trend. So the debate is no longer whether smartphone use should be regulated, but rather how should this be done in such a way that doesn’t violate fundamental rights but at the same time addresses the issues that arose from excessive smartphone usage.

The issues

Jonathan Haidt, who is hardly a right-wing reactionary bigot, wrote in 2021 about the smartphone trap.

In a paper we just published in The Journal of Adolescence, we report that in 36 out of 37 countries, loneliness at school has increased since 2012. We grouped the 37 countries into four geographic and cultural regions, and we found the same pattern in all regions: Teenage loneliness was relatively stable between 2000 and 2012, with fewer than 18 percent reporting high levels of loneliness. But in the six years after 2012, rates increased dramatically. They roughly doubled in Europe, Latin America and the English-speaking countries, and rose by about 50 percent in the East Asian countries.

From 2012 onwards, and especially after 2015 (when smartphones became very cheap), mental health issues skyrocketed among teenagers in ways not seen in two or even three decades prior to the advent of smartphones.

The biggest issue is attention span. Nobody today denies that attention span in social media addicted societies has visibly decreased. Between 2000 and 2015, the median attention spans of Americans shrank by a whopping 25%. In 2000, the median attention span was 12 seconds. Fifteen years later, it’s shrunk significantly to 8.25 seconds. That’s less than goldfish, whose attention span runs for 9 full seconds.

Then there’s the bullying issue. I personally have very little sympathy in that department but, nevertheless, since this is a political issue, the rules of politics and propaganda apply, rather than reason. And in propaganda, perception is reality. Cyberbullying may or may not be a big issue but, if enough people believe it is, then it is an issue.

And then there are the sex-based effects. Both boys and girls are affected by social media use – it’s just that they’re affected differently and at different moments in their development. Puberty is a very hard period for nearly all teens. Social media use makes that far worse.

Instagram had particularly strong effects on girls and young women, inviting them to “compare and despair” as they scrolled through posts from friends and strangers showing faces, bodies and lives that had been edited and re-edited until many were closer to perfection than to reality.

On boys, the effects on self esteem are similar to those felt by girls for similar reasons: the building of an unrealistic image of others. What’s different is the age. Boys are negatively affected by social media after the age of 14, while girls are affected from the ages of 11-12. One main difference is that boys overcome it harder, later and slower than girls. To make things worse, not only the issue is rarely being studied (money from Samsung and Apple make sure this stays under-studied), but when it is studied, the specific impact on boys is ignored due to generalized gynocentrism in the Academia. But that’s a story for another day.

Then there’s the issue of social media being a black box. X/Twitter published its recommendation algorithm. A step in the right direction but far from good enough.

We still have no idea what (and why) is recommended by Meta products and by TikTok. Experiments show that using a Chinese IP address will yield a very different type of recommendations than using an American address. There is increased awareness that TikTok is essentially the CCP’s spyware program.

But all of this ignores the obvious issue: Smartphones themselves. It would be easier to manage all of these without or with less smartphone usage.

”Oh, but I can’t” is the language of addicts. Which is also coopted by vested interests and, of course, naive people with limited imagination.

What vested interests? The smartphone global market was over half a trillion dollars in 2021 and poised to grow to almost one trillion dollars ($947 billion) by 2030. That’s a lot of money. The mobile app market was another $230 billion in 2023. And that’s before including video games for smartphones which is another $140 billion. That’s a lot of money. The GDP of Switzerland is slightly smaller than the current market worth of the smartphone and smartphone-dependent industries. The GDP of oil-rich Norway plus Sweden combined will soon be (if they aren’t already) smaller than the vested interests in smartphones.

So the opposition will be fierce and very well funded. Not to mention the limitless armies of social media zombies who will gladly be the useful idiots of Big Tech like all good junkies. And this is why I think the regulation has to be better thought-out.

Schools are a no-brainer

Long lauded as the most progressive country in the world because of its embrace of digitalization, Sweden is also the first to openly say that it’s been a disaster. Swedish kids can’t write anymore. So the Education Ministry is slowly phasing out tablets and all other digital assets from the classroom. Who knew? Those backward peasants of the past had a point. Education works best on paper, they say. The Karolinska Institute goes even further and asserts what we’ve been telling you on the Sofa for years: Digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning.

Seven years ago the Dutch have noticed that about a third of primary school kids had severe difficulties in learning to write. Some have placed this on the fact that there are more and more kids in Dutch schools with a migrant background. But the figure is much higher than the proportion of kids with a migrant background. It’s not just immigrants. It’s quite a lot of kids who are, for all intends and purposes, illiterate.

As it turns out, knowing how to use TikTok isn’t really digital skills even though that’s exactly what the progressive boomers who introduced digital tools in schools sincerely believed. And, as usual for boomers, they were wrong.

In practicality, the easiest way to get a majority to support a restrictive policy is to phrase it like this: No devices that can connect to the Internet are permissible on school grounds. Yes to dumbphones, no to smartphones.

It’s imperfect, but it’s a step ahead. And, in fact, it’s merely a return to the status quo of 2010 – when a majority of students had a dumbphone.

Smartphone-free spaces

There is increased demand for them anyway, as more and more are starting to realize the danger and the trade-offs, but there is still not enough courage to start promoting it openly.

Just like there are places that have a dress code, there can and should be places that don’t allow smartphone usage at all. Preferably with a jammer installed too.

There is such thing as a “digital Sabbath” which, quite frankly, should be encouraged but, in my estimation, it’s a low-return practice.

Much more interesting is the sudden and spectacular rise in nearly every country of the so-called “unplugged summer camps” for children and adults. Some are organized by NGOs, but a lot of them are organized by for-profit corporations. Nothing wrong with that, mind you. But they sure need more promotion.

And this is where the State can have a say: If a road trip with schoolchildren is organized using school resources even partially, then it is only approved if it’s a smartphone-free environment. This isn’t hard to implement and would run into very little opposition. Basically, treat smartphones like alcohol. There is a drinking age that usually is lower than 18 – but school premises have to be 100% dry. Well, same logic can and should apply to smartphones too: while smartphones aren’t (yet) forbidden to minors, that doesn’t mean they can be or should be used anywhere.

Regulation at the point of sale

Most countries don’t allow the sale of alcohol or antipsychotics to minors. Or they do, but only in special cases and with various controls. Why exactly shouldn’t smartphones be treated the same?

At the end of the day, and the evidence is increasingly clear on that, smartphones are a tool of mass psychosis. Its side effects on minors through extended use are very similar to the use of various psychotropics. As such, there is an argument to be made that they should be treated similarly.

While the argument is very difficult to make when it comes to adults (and I’m not even sure it’s worth trying), it is in fact very easy to make and implement when it comes to minors.

You have to prove you’re 18 to buy a gun, buy a bottle of vodka, a pack of cigarettes (even 21 in some places) or to check into a hotel. But for some reason we’re supposed to believe this can’t be done with smartphones? Gimme a break!

Yes, such a regulation is imperfect (like all regulations) and there are workarounds, granted. However, it sets a different tone of conversations in the family. It sends the message that the expectation is children don’t use smartphones at all.

Currently, too many parents aware of the negative effects are put in the situation of actively fighting to opt out of the de facto mandatory smartphone for their children. Such a regulation would move the focus once again where it’s natural: You have to purposefully choose to opt-in and physically show up with your kid to get him one.

Just like a gun purchased online isn’t directly shipped to you, the same can be done for smartphones. An adult has to show up in person to pick it up. This isn’t hard. And whoever tells you otherwise is either an addict himself or acting on behalf of the aforementioned vested interests.

Right to log off

Belgium, France and Kenya so far have already enacted legislation (France did so 8 years ago!) that explicitly states the right of employees to go fully offline outside of their work.

There’s a EU Parliament resolution on that too from 2021, though it will probably go nowhere for reasons that are worth discussing some other day. Still, the idea behind it is sound, albeit poorly articulated in some places.

The fact is that so many people feel pressured to always be online. Whether the pressure is real or not is another discussion. In many cases it is real. And few people are like yours truly to have rudeness necessary to answer with “go fuck yourself, I ain’t your personal ChatGPT” to angry e-mails or messages complaining that it’s been over 24 hours since they wrote to me and I haven’t replied. Most people want to be nice. And they strive to be nice until they drive themselves crazy. And when they snap, everyone pretends to be shocked and insists they have no idea how this could’ve happened.

Such legislation should not apply just in work relations, but more generally. Just like the anti-censorship legislation in many jurisdictions which punishes attempts to censor someone else in public, the right to log off could be framed similarly: with punishments for those who pressure others into usage of digital tools.

You may think that what I just wrote is fantasy, but it’s already happening. Sweden and Ireland are getting ready to punish stores that refuse cash. “Digital exclusion” is increasingly discussed in the circles of power as a crime in and of itself.

Now, of course, this will be a difficult argument to make because the tech grifts are going to fight this tooth and nail (like they did in France). Why? Because “digital transformation” is in itself an $800+ billion grift. A lot of that money already goes on propaganda to convince people and businesses to surrender their privacy and mental health to tech grifters who promise to make our lives more convenient.

Of course, the fact that they absolutely don’t make our lives better is immaterial. With enough propaganda you can convince tens of millions of people to act against their best interests. Take self-check-out for instance. It’s an abject failure. Who pays for that failure? YOU, my dear reader. Where do you think those stores will recoup their investment from?

The tech grifters got their money and moved on to the next “digital transformation” grift.

This is the extent to which “the right to log off” should ideally go: Codify into law the assumption that digitalization is bad and move the onus on the proponent to prove otherwise. Again, this will be hard to achieve because those hundreds of billions spent on propaganda will be used to fight tooth and nail any measure that protects regular people against the predatory practices of Big Tech.

Miscellaneous policy changes

Just like uber-digitalized Sweden was able to roll back the “progress” (and continues to do so), it stands to reason that this is possible elsewhere as well. Special interests be damned.

There are many ridiculous policies in so many countries that de facto force people to have a smartphone. Under the umbrella of “combating digital exclusion” – a lot of those policies can be abolished or amended.

I’m still upset I didn’t get to test this in court during the pandemic project when the Romanian government was stupid enough to try to impose the so-called “passenger location form” which could’ve only be filled in electronically. You see, because Ceaușescu didn’t let us travel, traveling now is an unalienable right in our Constitution. I would’ve loved to take the case to the Constitutional Court. Unfortunately, someone else was smart enough to advise the government to abolish that ASAP. And so they did before I needed to travel abroad and get the chance to violate that policy and then challenge it in court.

But oftentimes it doesn’t require complicated challenges in court. Oftentimes it requires very basic discussions. Like, for instance, when cities remove the option to pay for public transport in cash. At any hint of pushback, the vast majority of such measures are thrown away. I have a long list of cities where this happened.

What’s important when lobbying against such policies or for various normal-friendly amendments is to avoid coming off entirely against technology. Not only is that politically dangerous, but you also lose allies. A good chunk of smartphone addicts are victims as well and they’re not in favor of digital exclusion necessarily.

A change of attitude and lead by example

The most meaningful and impactful change, however, will be brought by regular people and private businesses with enough cojones.

Every year I, personally, convince two people to either ditch their smartphones entirely or to reduce their usage to less than a tenth of their previous habits. How do I do that? By simply existing.

You see, given that I made (and still make, to a certain extent) my living in data centers and other tech-related activities, I’m fully aware of the limitations of technology. And especially about how brutally unsafe your data really is. Once you explain that to people, free of the self-interested shilling that nearly all techbros practice (oftentimes without even realizing it), a lot of people start thinking. It becomes even easier if you’re able to explain that in proper language rather than using wooden language rife with jargon that no reasonable human being will ever learn.

But this is hard. Most of those who oppose the over-extension of technology into our lives do so under an impulse. They sense that something’s really wrong, but have little idea on how to describe it, let alone to explain it or propose meaningful change. This aspect is mercilessly exploited by both Big Tech and tech grifters, aided by the hordes of zombie addicts who feel personally attacked when you start discussing their habits in the proper negative light.

Nearly all of those who peddle techno-optimistic baloney online and offline do so not out of a sincere belief in technology, but out of personal financial interest. And they will fight tooth and nail to defend their grift. First and foremost to prevent YOU from understanding that what they’re doing is not progress, but a grift.

Nevertheless, we must persist. We will not change the world over night, but the world does change one person at a time.

Last week a father contacted me to thank me for mocking his concerns about what would happen if he continues to “fail” to buy his 4th grade(!!!) daughter a smartphone a few years ago. She’s now 16, still doesn’t have one and, as a result, blows her peers out of the water because she possesses the valuable skill of being able to talk to people (something which her generation seriously lacks) and the valuable skill of being able to focus a bit more than 10 seconds on something.

She took an apprenticeship at a carpenter’s store last summer and this summer wants to go to an outdoor camp organized by some church where they’ll learn to cook, set up a tent and things of that nature. She is, in my book, a normal teenager who is experimenting. Unfortunately, by the standards of her generation, she is abnormal and exceptional. Her peers are getting ready for the college scam and later on join the ranks of overly entitled know-nothings. Hopefully she’ll be able to withstand the peer pressure because her path is objectively better.

Instead of conclusions

Unfortunately, we were all too dumb or too lethargic to have this discussion when it would’ve made a bigger difference: say in 2005. Before 2005, smartphones were marketed nearly exclusively to the enterprise market one which, arguably, needs it more. The discussion on whether to allow extending this to the civilian market, and especially to children, would’ve been better suited in 2005. But we didn’t. Because reasons. No point dwelling on the past now.

But this leaves us in a reactive situation. This mess will have to be cleaned up. And the way to do that is under debate.

There is no single answer. There is no single policy, or even package of policies that can be adopted and everything will be fixed. This will be a long and messy process. And, for now, with a lot of trial and error until the discussion reaches pleb level. And it will take a while because bypassing Big Tech’s wall of censorship isn’t cheap or easy. It’s doable, but don’t expect huge leaps so early on in the game.

But the first, and arguably the most important step, is this: The discussion should no longer be accepted under the terms of “should smartphones be regulated”. Reject the very notion. That debate is over. It is clear that smartphones (and the wide Big Tech grift) must necessarily be regulated. The debate is now how should that be done in such a way that has the least amount of trade-offs. It’s not an easy balance. And all sides will make mistakes for sure. But that is the legitimate debate.

Or, alternatively, you can do nothing and guarantee a generation of zombies who will, for sure, make life far worse for nearly everyone else. In fact, such a scenario would be explicitly in my own financial interest, even though I’d hate its toll on my mental health 🤷🏻‍♂️

That’s it, for now.

If you had told me on February 24, 2015, when I created the Freedom Alternative channel that almost nine years later I will still be writing scripts for new videos, I would’ve said that it’s likely, though not highly likely.

But if you had told me nearly 9 years ago that I’d be managing a workflow that involves work on 3 continents, a small team, and attendance to high-end meetings that shape the geopolitics of Europe and all of that under the banner of Freedom Alternative Network, I would’ve said you’re being too optimistic.

Make no mistake: I did this before and I was expecting to do it again. It’s just that I didn’t expect to be able to do it again as legit independent. And so soon!

As I’m writing these lines, I’m slowly wrapping up an episode on Kyrgyzstan from Kyrgyzstan in which I present the post-communist history of the country in a way that not even the darling of the Kyrgyz intelligentsia would dare (even though he believes it). Because he would risk being kicked out of the university if he says it like it is.

Nine years ago, being able to do this required the endorsement of a big studio and a certain narrative script had to be followed. Even the more independent-minded studios still expected you to use some tired clichés when presenting. Oh… and time limits. Everything had to fit in a segment.

I remember 11 years ago when one of the few reporters that I can respect even when I disagree with him made a segment on North Korea. A very good one, mind you. But… too short. He then struggled to tell the rest of the story in various other shows in other places, plus a book – The country with a single fat man. Only in the book he was able to go a bit more honest (and that’s because this is Romania. In the PC-driven West of 2013 he would’ve been in hot waters for fat shaming or who knows what else).

The fact that I, a bona fide nobody, can afford to do something like that is an honour, a privilege and a responsibility as well. And for that I have to remain grateful to the donors who keep this whole thing going and evolving in a way that I couldn’t have predicted (which means the enemy couldn’t have predicted either).

Every year around Christmas and the first three weeks of January we take a look around the operation on a technical and procedural level. This means backups, corrections, add of new pages/features, cleanup of things that are no longer necessary, archiving stuff (raw footage over the years means dozens upon dozens of terabytes) and other tinkering under the hood. It is the less pleasant and the less visible but equally necessary kind of work. Without it, not only you wouldn’t be reading these lines, but we would’ve achieved even less overall.

So, ever since I came back from Asia, my allotted time for Freedom Alternative time has been divided between making new videos and tinkering in the background alongside a few other people in order to fulfill even more of the wishes expressed in last year’s article on resilience.

A full announcement will be published when the period allotted for this will be over later on this month but, if you want a sneak peak, check out the Services server. It is not yet fully ready for public consumption but that’s the place where (most of) these writings will be moved going forward. It remains to be seen how the final form and procedure will look like.

At this point, even if I trusted someone enough to be my communications manager (and I might have to find such a person this year), the communications overall are overwhelming. There’s no way I can manage all of that without either going insane or start ignoring people I shouldn’t or waste time on and with people I should be ignoring. There is no solution, of course – but one acceptable trade-off is profesionalization via procedures and layers.

And that’s what the partial opening up of the internal system is for. Since I can’t convince everyone of consequence to be in the relevant Telegram group(s), then what I can do is have everyone submit communications on the same URL. How to do that without spam and how to mitigate other risks is still under testing. But one thing is certain: In order to have a fruitful 2024 and beyond, direct communication between yours truly and most people reading this will have to be winded down.

So, through a combination of a FAQ page, ticketing system and, hopefully soon enough, delegation of most of the answers… next time I reset passwords on the paywalled content, I will have to answer fewer e-mails and even fewer Telegram messages. Same with requests: I will shamelessly ignore any request that is not in the Internal System™. There will be complaints and I will try to mitigate the most reasonable ones but, overall, this has to be done. The alternative is worse. Manually managing 6 categories of contacts is no longer feasible.

Also soon enough I will add paywalled articles as well. They will look something like this. But, again, needs more testing. Especially considering that I have no intention on collecting data (by making any of you create accounts) because that’d be another headache for me and for y’all. So a method of a relatively universal credential will have to be found. I don’t know yet how that will happen, but it will. Eventually.

So, yeah, that’s basically what’s been going on in the early days of 2024. Oh, and I’m also researching for the Latin American tour. And scheduling payments and soooo… much more. No pressure 😂

And with that said, see y’all soon. I got some pages to fix, create, link and synchronize.

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?

Well, akchually, don’t underestimate Europe’s ability to be stupid in public. Two Bundesländer in Germany and Lithuania are doing just that: Banning Z in public. At least Lithuania is being consistent – since also displaying communist symbols in general is haram in Lithuania. But in Germany, Bolshevism is legal and praised. Heck, the president of the European Commission opens exhibitions dedicated to Marx in Germany, statues of Marx made by the CCP are unveiled in Germany and statues of Lenin are being unveiled as well. That’s just in the last 5 years. But somehow Z is the problem.

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!

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.

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-pensants du 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.

One of the reasons half of our recommended reading list is about language and framing is because it is the most important tool of politics of any kind. The way an issue is framed and the language used to frame it gives the operative the most important clue about the bigger picture.

This is true regardless of whether you are defending the status quo (let’s say you’re Pfizer or Associated Press), engaging in counter-revolutionary activities (classical liberalism, old conservative, etc.) or in outright revolutionary ones (progressives, neoliberal leftism, etc.).

In the first 8 days of 2022 several important developments occurred in this department.

First, dr. Robert Malone framed the issue of “mass formation psychosis” as it applies to the hysteria around the Wuhan Flu. Then that issue got seen by at least 100,000,000 people. Then it became a common talking point.

These firs three elements are not new. It happened before with “Let’s go Brandon” or “Make America Great Again” or “Yes, we can!” (to also give a left-wing example).

What distinguishes “mass formation psychosis” from other recent examples is its subsequent route. Immediately after it was uttered, the establishment (particularly Google) tried to censor it. When that failed, it tried to bury it under intentional disinformation disguised as “fact-check”.

Then the establishment tried to dismiss it as a conspiracy theory. As if stress-induced hysteria is something new and not a widely studied phenomenon that has been observed for centuries already. Since calling it a conspiracy theory is obviously failing too, now the establishment is calling it an “unfounded theory“.

The argument is now not that the phenomenon is unreal, but that the specific terminology used by dr. Malone is inappropriate and that it doesn’t have enough academic support.

In other words, the establishment is whining that we are using language outside of their control. And we’re doing it effectively and it’s starting to be a serious stressor for those who lick the boot of the Regime. After all, nobody likes to be called delusional – so if you can effectively emphasize and prove to a neutral audience that those who support mandatory experimental myocarditis-inducing gene therapy clotshots for a cold are indeed delusional, that’s a big problem for the Regime.

It is beyond obvious that mass hysteria exists. The NIH itself was discussing mass hysteria in the context of the Wuhan Flu as late as February 2021. So nobody seriously argues that this isn’t a real phenomenon. If you see someone arguing against that, assume that someone is a paid shill or an idiot.

The problem for the Regime, however, is that the sidelines (or the opposition) have been able to set a narrative point. Random normies that have nothing whatsoever to do with this information war (because that’s exactly what the pandemic is at this point) are now refusing to give a damn about what the Regime has to say and they routinely successfully dismiss the Regime’s “measures” with just one syntagm: Mass formation psychosis.

The next step of the Regime will be to double down on the bullshit. Sure, it won’t work, but it will buy time for the Regime. It’s the best they can do.

At this point, there is no retreat or “peace treaty” as an option. It’s either us (normal, outside of the crippling fear of a cold and outside of the special interests driving this lunacy) or them (the Regime). There is no middle ground and there will be no middle ground. Claiming otherwise is wishful thinking.

So, what’s next?

Well, we just have to keep on pressing. There is no silver bullet, but there are thousands of highly efficient bullets.

For now, we must continue to increase the personal cost of those who support the Regime. Infiltrate their circle of friends, ruin their credibility, cut them from their support network(s), ruin their careers (political or otherwise), go through the tedious (but highly rewarding) process of demoralizing them (Alinsky’s 13th rule) and, of course, never stop ridiculing them (Alinsky’s 5th rule).

Make it personally costly for any footsoldier of the Regime to continue to be one. Just next week, for instance, a police officer is due to pay me half of his wage (under court order) for having had the audacity to fine me for not wearing facial underwear on the street a year ago. Now is that police officer more likely or less likely to bother normal people on the street in the future?

The point is to remain intransigent. NONE of the points made by the Regime are legitimate. And never have been. Do not allow anyone around you to start from any other premise than the inherent illegitimacy of the Regime. In other words, language matters. The way you frame things is what drives the thought process.

Also, you should continue to look at things locally first because not all countries or regions are at the same point on the narrative curve. Some have longer inertia (e.g. Israel), some are relatively in sync with the English-language bubble and some have already finished or are close to finishing the curve (e.g. Sweden, FL, TX, etc.).

Oh, and more thing: Do not forget to keep lists of all of those who collaborated with the Regime. These people must be punished in every imaginable way within the confines of the law. And you’d be surprised just how wide the confines of the law are if you have enough imagination.

That’s it for now. Keep pushing!

When I’m writing this, the controversy related to Novak Đoković being held in the Melbourne airport is yet to be resolved. So many of you will already know the result by the time you’ll be reading this.

Nevertheless, regardless of how this controversy will be resolved (Nole being deported, Nole being allowed in or Nole sent to one of Australia’s concentration camps remote quarantine facilities for a few days) – the event itself has the potential to be a turning point in ways I am sure the Australian “authorities” did not foresee.

Something clicked

From the moment it became public knowledge that the Serbian athlete will be allowed to compete without having to take the myocarditis-inducing experimental serum, something clicked both in the minds of those ignorant about the inherently political nature of the “pandemic” and in the minds of those who have been judiciously supporting the Regime so far.

It became clear that his participation could be similar to the one of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know – it’s an unfair comparison but… is it really?

The Reich denied that black athletes can be excellent. Australia denies that normal people should be able to conduct their business without taking bloodclots-inducing experimental serums.

The Reich claimed to control everything – including reality itself. Jesse Owens showed that to be horse manure. The “pandemic” Regime in Australia claimed to control the border and rigorously enforce the “vaccine” on everyone and made millions of people to believe there is no escape.  Here comes Novak Đoković with the potential to prove otherwise.

Just like the Reich, Australia also has camps where it sends the people who disagree with the Regime. And, just like the Reich, the Regime is capable of getting positive propaganda for this atrocious policy into the New York Times.

There are plenty of semblances between the two Regimes. Much more than the useful idiots and the paid shills of the Regime would want you to ponder upon.

Sure, Australia doesn’t (yet) gas people who disagree with the Regime and doesn’t (yet) build ghettos to dehumanize them. But make no mistake: that will come too if this tinpot third-world shithole is not stopped. And it’s coming to Europe too. Just today, Emmanuel Macron outright said that those who refuse the clotshot aren’t citizens.

But then again, it doesn’t have to be identical with the Third Reich of 1940 in order for the analogy to be appropriate. Australia today is closer to the Reich of 1936 than the powers-that-be would want you to consider.

However, unlike 1936, the plebs can now read for themselves (sometimes – even when Alphabet/Faceberg/Twitter censor things) and make the connections themselves.

And this leads us to the core issue: The plebs don’t like it.

Those who licked the boot of the Regime (and observed every single stupid “rule” that has nothing whatsoever to do with health – but everything to do with Control) are either asking for Nole to be forced to be as stupid as they are or… they’re starting to have doubts.

Timidly, sometimes quietly, sometimes not so quietly, more and more Australians (and not just Australians) are asking the obvious: Hold on a sec, are we the baddies here?

If Nole can have an exemption from the clotshot, then maybe the whole blanket mandate is a bunch of horse manure? If Nole can be just fine without taking the clotshot, then maybe, just maybe, the shot itself is at the very least useless for young and fit people? (hint: it is)

Australia has already seen violent protests against sanitary fascism – but those, as necessary as they were, came from people like me: people who smelled the BS right from the getgo and took the Wuhan Cough as what it is: a semi-serious respiratory virus used as an excuse for the installation of a dictatorship.

But what Australia hasn’t seen yet is a mass questioning of the Regime itself. Don’t be fooled by Twitter bubbles. Just as we speak there are millions of conversations taking place allover Australia about the Regime.

Sure, many will still end up agreeing that Novak Đoković is killing grandma or whatever bullshit the Regime is still selling to the plebs as an excuse to curb their freedoms. But a lot more won’t. Many of them will not voice it publicly, necessarily. But the seed of doubt will have been firmly planted.

And, as time goes on, that seed will start to flourish. And they will end up resenting the Regime. And that resentment will turn to anger. And, some of them will end up turning that resentment into action. Some of them foolishly – like the chap who self-immolated over the vaccine mandate (instead of taking a few members of the Regime with him) – but, surely, some of them will turn to much more effective action: political.

Of course, we can’t know now how many. But, the slave mentality of the Penal Colony notwithstanding, it’s impossible not to see a rise in dissidence Down Under after this incident.

This cannot and should not be forgiven

The biggest mistake those who oppose the Regime can make is to forgive. None of this should be forgiven. Ever. And every single apparatchik of the Regime will necessarily have to be punished in any way possible.

One thing is certain, though: Nobody can, in good faith, argue against the point that Australia is, at best, an autocratic illiberal Regime. In fact, Australia is no better than Mugabe’s Zimbabwe – a third world tinpot dictatorship in which arbitrary nonsense is the norm.

Taking Nole’s phone and effectively jailing him for the crime of being healthy without clotshots is something that cannot ever be forgiven. Even the Third Reich treated politically incorrect foreign athletes better in 1936.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m insulting the victims of fascism or whatever cope will be thrown at me this time around from the bien pensants du jour. In reality I am doing the opposite: I’m honoring the memory of the victims of fascism by speaking out in order to prevent that tragedy from happening again. You know, I kinda take #NeverAgain seriously.

And remember: Australia has apartheid, remote camps for dissidents, non-stop surveillance that would make STASI or the KGB envious, massive censorship apparatus and you can’t leave the country. There is no significant moral difference between the current Australian “pandemic” Regime and the Chinese Communist Party. Scott Morrison may indeed be genuinely anti-China (and good for him, and some of his actions on that front are commendable) but Australia, at this point, is just the People’s Republic of China with a smiley face.

The rest of the so-called “free world” isn’t too much behind.

We, as citizens, can change that and prevent that from happening. But, I suspect enough countries won’t. Western Europe is lost already and it’s basically an open-air concentration camp in which you get thrown down the pavement (including grandmas, women and children) for disagreeing with the Regime (it’s happening as a matter of routine in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany already). In Australia they outright shoot you.

But don’t forget: Novak Đoković is a Serb. And Serbians have a tendency of not going down easily. In fact, the foundational myth of the Serbian people is based on a resounding defeat in which the Serbs refused to lose until they took the enemy with them – making the victory incredibly expensive for the enemy.

Or… perhaps this will be a nothingburger. Perhaps the Australian psyche is so blasé from the Regime’s military-style propaganda that this incident will not wake them up from the psychosis too many of them are into. I guess we’ll see in a few months 🤷🏻‍♂️