Word has it Apple now hire with diversity and equity in mind. Oh well. Scratch another profession.
And that's the end of our IT coverage this time.
What happened to the West?
Hover here a moment. Here's saintly Eva three years ago in a pub in St Pete. Absorb this. Go ahead. This will likely blow your mind. 'We are being gaslit on a global level', says someone in the comments.
Back to the Belly of the European Beast
They have so many languages in Brussels. Terrestrial television is bewildering.
They must really love Ursula.
October Pain
Let's dance!
It's October soon. That means 'cold' in the northern hemisphere. Half a year of cold coming. Talk to us all at the end of March.
It's been quite a few years. Six million plus of us didn't survive. The culprits are still free. A topsy-turvy world.
Biden poked the bear into an all-out nuclear confrontation. What he got instead was a 'special military operation'. The choice of words, it turns out, is significant in Russia. Come this 23 September, and continuing for three days after, four regions of what used to be the slavic badlands will vote on applying for membership in the Russian Federation. Things are likely to go as they did with Crimea - who wants to live with a bunch of foul-smelling Nazis? Weren't we to have eradicated them long before any of us were born?
Oh yeah, that's right. Allen Dulles spared the four deepest pockets of Nazism. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. The latter with the area known as Galicia. Home to one chap named Bandera, another who was security adviser to Jimmy Carter, and to the forefathers of the lady running the European Union, Gertrud Ursula Albrecht, today known as Ursula von der Leyen.
A word about the European Union. The European Union is not the Common Market, or the European Economic Community. That was a brilliant idea, supposedly made by a Frenchie who saw it as a way to stop those drunken fools from constantly waging war on each other, making the European subcontinent the bloodiest battlefield in human history. Yes, the EEC was brilliant.
The EU is not brilliant. Suddenly all member states forfeit their national sovereignty. Suddenly laws passed in some obscure chamber in Belgium override their own laws. Suddenly their own cultures are erased and fading, leaving only a large group of faceless grey people. (Actually they’re more a dark industrial blue, but whatever.)
The EU is not a democratic organisation. Quite the contrary. It is deliberately undemocratic. MEPs can sit in that huge hall and listen to - and often fall asleep to - whoever's at the podium. They can ask for time to speak themselves. But they can do no more. True, they can vote on propositions, but they're not allowed to promote propositions of their own or from their constituencies. They're a peanut gallery and no more.
So who rules in the European Union? The European Commission. So who elects the members of the European Commission? Not the people, that's for sure. The people who made 'Brexit - The Movie' asked people on the street to identify, by photo, members of the European Commission. They couldn't. No one knows who they are. Election turnouts for the EU are also notoriously low. Yet the European Commission - and in particular the head of the European Commission - have nearly complete power over the lives and welfare of 800 million residents.
800 million? Put that in perspective. The largest country right now is China, soon to be surpassed by India. Each have about a billion. The world's biggest military power, Russia, has but 150 million. The US has about 340 million.
But the EU has 800 million, almost as many people as either China or India. That's a lot of people.
The United States has been 'poking the bear' since long before anyone knew there was a bear to poke at. Napoleon tried his best. So did Adolf's Barbarossa. Both failed. Handling things in the West, the US and the UK crushed the Nazis and then waited in Berlin. Handling things in the East, Stalin's USSR pushed the Nazis back to Berlin. Victory for Europe. Then Stalin redirected his forces to the Far East to help Doug and Harry. Then the Nuremberg trials began. And went on for years. Yet Allen Dulles made sure that a handful of key pockets of Nazism got overlooked at the trials. Those four pockets were Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Dulles made sure that the US Department of State took care of them and kept sending them taxpayer money for the next forty-five years.
Truman didn't drop bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war in the Pacific. That war was long over. Stalin's army got the Japanese to surrender a ginormous army of 1.2 million soldiers in less than three weeks. One point two million. US aircraft were fire-bombing Japan incessantly. Emperor Hirohito, who is not supposed to interfere in worldly matters, petitioned Truman four times to help him end the madness. He was ignored. Four times.
Oppenheimer was still putting the final touches on his toy.
The bombs - within a week - destroyed the lives of half a million people. The US wanted to demonstrate that they had a new weapon, so don't mess with them. Their ally, both in Europe and now in the Far East, the Soviet Union, was considered the first possible challenger to their self-proclaimed new world order. Operation Unthinkable went through several revisions. The brass in the US actually had plans to destroy everything in the Soviet Union and everyone in it.
US foreign policy is always about belligerence. Everyone in the US is highly militaristic. They all hang flags outside their front door just in case their neighbours forget what team they're rooting for. It's all a great British tradition. It carries faithfully down through the centuries.
That's not the way the rest of the world works. Not right now. 12% belong to the US/NATO sphere. The other 88% belong to the other group.
Who are they, this 88%? They're Russia. China. India. The Global South.
They're BRICS. They're the SCO.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation just had a big powwow in Samarkand. They already comprise half the humans on this planet - 3.5 billion, and now even more countries want to join. G7? The EU? What are they?
Russia was forced to react in February. Biden was poking the bear. We all saw that, day after day, all autumn long. Many of us had been following for the past ten years. We'd seen what happened. We witnessed the genocide.
The Bandera Nazis - bred on Victoria Nuland-provided tax dollars - were scary even by Waffen-SS standards. They carried out the horrific Babi Yar massacre. And many others. They scared the Germans.
The descendants of these Nazis - in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and now UKRAINE - are still around today. Victoria Nuland took care of them in 'phase two'. She even bragged about how much money she'd given them.
Nazism was supposed to be gone. The United States was supposed to defeat Nazism. Or at least help with the effort. Everyone in the US certainly thought so.
But the US cheated. As with Operation Paperclip. Where US forces shuttled out Nazi Germany's leading scientists before anyone else could get them. Neil Armstrong took a giant step with the help of an organisation - NASA - run by a card-carrying Nazi who thought swastikas were cool.
Hollywood helped out too.
Now Putin crossed the Rubicon on 24 February. On 20-21 September he's scheduled to give a speech. No word yet in the media. Would seem to be about referendums coming in those four regions of eastern Ukraine. And the fact that, should they become part of the RF, any further aggression towards them becomes an act of war against Russia, so Russia can then mobilise in ways heretofore not legally possible. Then Joe Biden will get his war - right in time for the midterms.
The people of the Donbass are suffering. The people of the Ukraine are suffering. But the people of Russia hardly notice. Russia's self-sufficient. And big. Reporters on the streets of Moscow say they can't detect any changes because of that war.
Likewise in the US. Where people are suffering, to be sure, but not because of that war. More because of new woke nonsense, open borders, sanctuary cities, and of course - Martha's Vineyard.
But not likewise with Europe.
Rosie
She's been known since childhood as 'Röschen' - Rosie. Her family lineage isn't exactly blue blood, but it’s close. She married into real blue blood however. She's related to one of South Carolina's most infamous slave traders, and her lineage now stretches back to Galicia in Poland/Ukraine where the infamous Stepan Bandera had such a puzzling childhood.
She was once a practicing gynecologist, found to have plagiarised, in twenty-seven places, in her 'dissertation'. As her blood is blue now, this is glossed over. She even made up stuff on her official government CV when working for Mutti Merkel. But that's no big deal for people with blood that's blue.
One gets a distinct and hauntingly recurring impression of Rosie that truth isn't really that big a deal for her.
Foreign Policy magazine did a huge exposé of her only a year ago. She'd already been the scourge of the German people and earned the nickname 'Zensursula' for that irrepressible aristocratic penchant for shutting down free speech anywhere she can - Rosie wanted censors operating at ISP level, under her direction.
Rosie’s not elected now. Nothing’s really democratic in the EU. But Rosie was twice elected in local politics earlier on - once by a single vote, right before the results got tossed out, right before her father intervened to make sure she won the position anyway. Blue blood stuff.
Then Mutti took Rosie under her wing and put her in charge of some military stuff and Rosie made a total cock-up of it all.
So, following the golden rule that incompetence should always rise to the top, Rosie is now head of the European Commission. Which makes her, essentially and in so many many words, dictator over eight hundred million (people).
The Aristocratic Ineptitude of Ursula Von Der Leyen
How the EU president's family connections explain her rise to power-and failures using it during the pandemic.
FOREIGN POLICY
APRIL 30, 2021, 5:35 AM
Where does the buck stop in the EU? ... Yet much of the blame and anger has deservedly settled on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. To oust her, as former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker recently demanded...
So Juncker wanted to get rid of her? Good thing he didn’t, as she can now be on hand to totally toss the European continent in the trash can.
Here’s Rosie back when she was only Rosie, and not Gertrud. That’s her father ripping off (shredding) on what appears to be a Fender 12. (Sorry, Leo.)
The whole family gathered around, for it was always riotous fun when Daddy started to rock out. (Rosie’s off to the side because she’s sneaking a cigarette.)
Von der Leyen's family tree traces a legacy of power and brutality, incorporating not only some of Germany's most significant Nazis but also some of Britain's largest slave traders and, through marriage, some of the United States' largest slave owners. Von der Leyen is descended directly from James Ladson, who owned more than 200 slaves when the Civil War broke out.
That’s good to know when trying to figure out why Rosie takes to monkeys like Ze.
Rosie enrolled at LSE under the name ‘Rose Ladson’, a tip o’ the hat to her South Carolina slave-trading ancestors.
‘Few people at the time were as conscious of the lingering legacies of slavery as we have now become, but her choice to assume the name of her slave-holding ancestors was an indication nevertheless about her comfort with unchallenged and inherited privilege.’
Oh to be sure.
‘This combination of high political connections and low-brow slander is typical of the family’s political style.’
Things Start Well
Mutti gave Rosie two jobs in two ministries - family and labour - and things went OK. Then Mutti switched Rosie over to defence…
But the managerial challenges of the defence ministry are of an entirely different order. It wasn't just that von der Leyen had never previously shown an interest in security policy...
But if von der Leyen's powerful connections, aristocratic comportment, and media savvy were enough to carry her through stints leading Germany's ministries of family and labour, they failed her in her role as the head of Germany's military.
Can it be any surprise, really, that a person who had neither any previous experience in defence policy or strategy nor substantial experience managing large organisations in the private or public sectors should fail in such a complex and varied role?
No, of course it can’t.
But, nonetheless, Rosie’s back at it again, managing eight hundred million this time, fighting who-knows-what, supporting Real McCoy Nazis…
Because what? Because she’s so clueless? Because she has ethnic roots in the same places? Because Washington DC told her so?
Rosie banned RT and Sputnik in the EU. No vote. No referendum. Those are commercial entities. They had to be taken out of the satellites. Aristocratic Rosie snapped her fingers and it happened. People can’t be allowed to hear someone else’s opinion. (Rosie must also hide the truth from her 800 million inferiors.)
And Rosie’s a great liar. Does so convincingly. Like a John Kerry. Or a Joe Biden. Or any of them.
She’s blue blood, our Rosie.
Bonehead
Sanctions are amongst the most boneheaded things an aristocrat like Rosie can do. They’re vapid virtue-signaling. They do not hurt the target - they only hurt the boneheads inflicting them.
Russia’s made so much money since 24 February. They are rolling in rubles. The ruble itself has experienced a phenomenal comeback.
Russia’s economy is self-supporting. Russia doesn’t need imports. Everyone knows that - except Rosie. And as for exports: Russia had no problems finding new purchasers for their nearly limitless natural resources. Russia is rich in precious stones, minerals, and fossil fuels.
Russians might put De Beers in the poor house: they’re suspected of having unparalleled quantities of diamonds - they’re just not exploited yet.
And GUM might be a grand shopping mall like few others, with shops from Gucci, Dior, all the super brands, but Russians don’t need that. Close their borders, stop all imports across the board, and they’re fine. Anyone with more brains than Rosie knows that.
But Rosie doesn’t know that.
So October Pain will become November Pain, then it will get even worse.
Why? Because Rosie says so.
It does no good to anyone - not even if you share Rosie’s sensitivities about Nazism’s glorious past and (sigh) future.
Below you can see a photo of a section of ‘Power of Siberia’. It’s the pipeline to overshadow and eclipse Nord Stream 2, which was a brilliant German-Russian project to transport fuels directly to Germany and thereafter to Europe - and to completely skip the unnecessary detour to Ukraine.
If there really were a ‘noble cause’ behind it all, then one might theoretically have a case for trying to pull a stunt like Rosie did - provided it actually worked (which of course it doesn’t).
But there is no noble cause in supporting WWII Nazis, the actual descendants of the same monsters that perpetrated those crimes against humanity 75 years ago. There’s nothing noble about Babi Yar where Ukraine Nazis massacred thirty-four thousand Jewish people in the space of just two days. Nothing noble at all. Rosie thinks otherwise, but she’ll never get humanity to agree.
Rosie’s policies, which she is inflicting on an entire subcontinent to the point that people now foresee the total collapse of that continent, make no sense.