Another excellent recap which saves me from bothering to listen to Mercouris drag on every day, which I used to do.
"Russel (Texas) Bentley" - I never liked him. Someone at MoA reported to him a comment I made about the war (I forget what it was) and he didn't like it.
"It seems that tanks will need to undergo some considerable development to avoid being made redundant on the battlefield."
See Andrei Martyanov's comment here on the sidelining of US Abrams tanks by Ukraine because too many have been destroyed:
"I mean evolution of the technical requirements for armored forces which far from getting obsolete, as many fanboys from media rushed to conclude, are getting a serious upgrade and are not going anywhere. You just need to make them good enough for modern warfare, which no Western tank, even their super-duper versions are."
"This shows how inadequate rights based arguments are." As I argue, "rights" are meaningless concepts that don't exist. There are no "civil rights" that everyone keeps talking about. One has no "right" to anything. You either have whatever the requirement is or you don't. You either have the power to get it or you don't. Max Stirner laid all this out in his book "The Ego and Its Own" available for free here:
As for "culture", I dismiss it. It's another word that really means nothing except as an aggregate of a country's history of society - which has usually changed massively over the centuries. No one's culture is any better than any other, so why be "proud" of it? What even is "pride" except "peacocking"?
Good catch on the North Korean visit. The Duran guys explained yesterday that North Korea is the country that showed Iran how to dig in its nuclear and military assets so it can't be bombed. They also suggested that North Korea is very interested in getting the data from the Iran attack on Israel because the Israeli air defenses are similar to the ones Japan and South Korea use.
This is important as I commented to someone on my Substack today. He suggested that the alleged shoot down of a nuclear-armed Israeli F-35 reported by Pepe Escobar was a "message" being sent by Israel to Iran to counter Iran's "message" to Israel that Iran can hit Israel's nuclear arsenal. I pointed out that if the incident did occur that it was also a "message" from Russia to Israel that Russia won't tolerate an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran. I also pointed out that Iran is well aware of Israel's nuclear arsenal and clearly isn't afraid of it. So it's unclear whose "message" was an ultimatum - perhaps both were.
You raise some good points Richard - read Stirner many years ago (was he the one who thought the seas would turn to lemonade when socialism was achieved?). I don't agree with your views on culture though. People who are proud of their culture do not necessarily believe it is better than that of other societies: they may simply be proud of it because its theirs. Also, I don't find your arguments for dismissing culture convincing. Furthermore, pride does not have to mean 'peacocking'. However, I also have problems with the concept of 'pride' for various reasons which I wish I had time to discuss.
I kinda doubt Stirner ever believed that! :-) I can't remember off the top of my head if he ever said anything about socialism but his being an extreme individualist I rather doubt he thought much of it, much like Nietzsche didn't, either.
As for culture, why some people may not feel their culture is better than others, I can pretty much guarantee that the majority do - unless for some reason they hate their own culture. Myself, I simply accept that I was born here, grew up here, know what here is and what it's about, so I don't have much of a choice but to accept it no matter how much I may dislike many elements of it. Thus I'm not interested in most other cultures. Which is not to say I'm not very interested in certain aspects of many other cultures, especially Japan and China.
There was a line in "Big Trouble In Little China" where the old Chinese sorceror said something to the effect, "It's like your salad bar: take what you want and leave the rest." That's how I approach cultures.
Same thing with pride It doesn't "have to" mean peacocking -- but most of the time it does. This because everything - literally everything - humans do involves dominance-submission on some level to some degree. Hard-wired primate hierarchical behavior.
Agree about Stirner: extreme individualism does not fit with socialism and Nietzsche hated it. William Godwin was so individualistic he didn't believe that people should get together to play music - if memory serves me well. I'm not sure about the extent to which people feel a sense of cultural superiority. You'd have to do some surveys to establish that - the same applies to peacocking. I can't say that I'm proud of either my Scottish or Welsh cultures - but then I have a problem with pride. I suppose I feel a sense of belonging to some aspects of my cultures - such as the tartan, the music, the history, the poetry and so on - but I can't say that I am proud of these things. There are many concepts of pride but I can't see that any of them fits this situation neatly.
I was reading an old parish account for my Perthshire village and it made the reference to Highlanders coming into the county. It basically described them as foreigners; brethern of the Irish but not the lowlanders. I think it must have been the old argument that the lowland Scots were Germanic the Highlanders Celtic. Anyway, we have now flipped the other way and deny that whilst accepting Scotland might be mainly Celtic it also is a significant part of the Germanic speaking world. I was trying to advance the argument that preservation of the Scottish language also preserves a piece of English identity and culture so it shouldn't appear exclusionary. It didnt work.
In the borders we've had a mix of different groups living here. The Anglo-Saxons built a hall in our local village and further west the Scots, the Picts, the Celts and the Romans lived around the Eildon Hills. Alastair Moffat writes about it in a number of books. In fact, I don't think I have lived anywhere with such a rich history. I cover some of the history in my Preface to Philosophising in a Phoney World (11th September 2023).
I have recently discovered this site and I want to say how great it is - very well done!
It is amazing how democracy only seems to be for the wealthy and powerful, but when the poor or powerless want to be part of running a country it is often called communist or revolutionary and anti-democratic. The recent police violence against student protest of Israel's holocaust against the Palestinians is a demonstration of how much the rich and powerful [NB: mostly men] believe in democracy and free speech.
Sorry im just reading my way through things but had to comment about the statues. Its really intriguing that the parts of Ukraine that are actually the least Ukrainian are the most nationalistic. The areas with the most Bandera statues are the old Polish lands. Opens questions about identity and imagined community etc. I suspect that a lot of its identitying not so much what you are but what you aren't. In this case irs not so much the western Ukrainians are Ukrainians but they aren't Russian. The rest of Ukraine as shown by the map doesn't appear to share the level of hatred. I can't say its the wests Polish roots that manifest the hatred because the nationlists killed the Poles and Jews.
Ukraine is an odd country and could never really be considered united even under Soviet times due to the hotchpotch of areas,, cultures and ideologies in its make up..
There was a US operation to plant spies and political agitators into Ukraine in the 50s to exploit this during the cold war
I have met a few Ukrainians over time and the animosity and aggression levels between different groups.-especially around 2014 and Maidan events surprised me.
In the UK I remember Ukrainians fighting in the street with each other, intimidating races and other Ukrainians who were just derogatory of Kiev.
Strange mindset and how they have lasted this long in the war I don't know.
It is 100% fact that the nationalists have driven the country into ruin and many from the East to their deaths.
This was always going to happen due to Galician influences and Nazi leaning ideologies, statue lovers etc
Throw in the Western NWO interest in the yuzivska gas field and Donbass resources etc and the ethnic cleansing of Eastern Slavic/ Russo peoples becomes more apparent.
The Boundaries in Eastern Europe are unravelling. I can see ghe Poles, Hungarians etc making a move on western Ukraine once Ukraine starts to collapse. Would be quite interesting to see the German reaction if the Poles take back post WW1 eastern Poland. After WW2 Poland had lost about 20 percent of her land and Germany 24 percent. They both agreed a new border treaty in 1990 and Germany gave up claims beyond the Oder Neisse line. This includes Konigsberg now part of Russia. But if the Poles start: begs the question...
Watching Judging Freedom this morning and they mentioned the new missiles provided to Ukraine by Biden that can hit deeper into Russia. I find it the height of irresponsibility. The US commentators state that it can be a declaration of war but im thinking on a more practical level. Doesn't it incentivise the Russians to head further West so the Ukrainians lack the territory to hit Russia from? Utter madness from the Ukrainian government. I find it less likely now the Russians will not go beyond the Dneiper. Enjoy the week, thanks for your hard work.
Yes - I think it does incentivise them to go further West. What's more annoying about this is that people like Stoltenberg are trying to justify long range attacks on civilians - which constitute war crimes. Enjoy your week also.
Thanks Rob , there was a lot there that I had missed. Another excellent exposition. We are really approaching a turning point.
With regards to Frank Zappa, he nailed the depravity and hypocrisy of the West (ie US) in the sixties.
He has always been an outlier, never in the mainstream. US culture is Micky Mouse, Marvel, Star Wars and other plastic Hollywood dross, a triumphalist banal nothing that cloaks the evil intent of the progenitors and their funders. The US imagined that they were the Rebellion but the rest of the world knew that they were the Empire all to keen to unleash the Death Star. And so it goes...
i see the UA is becoming more Hitler like in its decision making by refusing to cede ground and leaving troops and positions about all over the place..
A bit like the fighting around Falaise in WW2 or Dniepr and Dniestr areas on the Eastern front.
In my opinion the collapse is right around the corner and I wouldn't be surprised if the RF build up north of Kharkov is a decoy to fool Nazis like the horrible Kuleba.
It appears that things are on the verge of collapse but I have no idea when it will come or what shape the Russian offensive will take. Good to see people enjoying the Update - cheers.
Speaking of Wales when you check the political voting map its frightening the correlation between the Unionist parties and the English speaking settlement of the periphery around the March areas etc. I suspect the Anglo Normans didn't go native as they did in Scotland and Ireland.
Another excellent recap which saves me from bothering to listen to Mercouris drag on every day, which I used to do.
"Russel (Texas) Bentley" - I never liked him. Someone at MoA reported to him a comment I made about the war (I forget what it was) and he didn't like it.
"It seems that tanks will need to undergo some considerable development to avoid being made redundant on the battlefield."
See Andrei Martyanov's comment here on the sidelining of US Abrams tanks by Ukraine because too many have been destroyed:
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/04/and-what-did-they-expect.html
"I mean evolution of the technical requirements for armored forces which far from getting obsolete, as many fanboys from media rushed to conclude, are getting a serious upgrade and are not going anywhere. You just need to make them good enough for modern warfare, which no Western tank, even their super-duper versions are."
"This shows how inadequate rights based arguments are." As I argue, "rights" are meaningless concepts that don't exist. There are no "civil rights" that everyone keeps talking about. One has no "right" to anything. You either have whatever the requirement is or you don't. You either have the power to get it or you don't. Max Stirner laid all this out in his book "The Ego and Its Own" available for free here:
https://annas-archive.org/md5/749e02fcc1821d6bd77ee7f4e8b7c91a
As for "culture", I dismiss it. It's another word that really means nothing except as an aggregate of a country's history of society - which has usually changed massively over the centuries. No one's culture is any better than any other, so why be "proud" of it? What even is "pride" except "peacocking"?
Good catch on the North Korean visit. The Duran guys explained yesterday that North Korea is the country that showed Iran how to dig in its nuclear and military assets so it can't be bombed. They also suggested that North Korea is very interested in getting the data from the Iran attack on Israel because the Israeli air defenses are similar to the ones Japan and South Korea use.
This is important as I commented to someone on my Substack today. He suggested that the alleged shoot down of a nuclear-armed Israeli F-35 reported by Pepe Escobar was a "message" being sent by Israel to Iran to counter Iran's "message" to Israel that Iran can hit Israel's nuclear arsenal. I pointed out that if the incident did occur that it was also a "message" from Russia to Israel that Russia won't tolerate an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran. I also pointed out that Iran is well aware of Israel's nuclear arsenal and clearly isn't afraid of it. So it's unclear whose "message" was an ultimatum - perhaps both were.
You raise some good points Richard - read Stirner many years ago (was he the one who thought the seas would turn to lemonade when socialism was achieved?). I don't agree with your views on culture though. People who are proud of their culture do not necessarily believe it is better than that of other societies: they may simply be proud of it because its theirs. Also, I don't find your arguments for dismissing culture convincing. Furthermore, pride does not have to mean 'peacocking'. However, I also have problems with the concept of 'pride' for various reasons which I wish I had time to discuss.
I kinda doubt Stirner ever believed that! :-) I can't remember off the top of my head if he ever said anything about socialism but his being an extreme individualist I rather doubt he thought much of it, much like Nietzsche didn't, either.
As for culture, why some people may not feel their culture is better than others, I can pretty much guarantee that the majority do - unless for some reason they hate their own culture. Myself, I simply accept that I was born here, grew up here, know what here is and what it's about, so I don't have much of a choice but to accept it no matter how much I may dislike many elements of it. Thus I'm not interested in most other cultures. Which is not to say I'm not very interested in certain aspects of many other cultures, especially Japan and China.
There was a line in "Big Trouble In Little China" where the old Chinese sorceror said something to the effect, "It's like your salad bar: take what you want and leave the rest." That's how I approach cultures.
Same thing with pride It doesn't "have to" mean peacocking -- but most of the time it does. This because everything - literally everything - humans do involves dominance-submission on some level to some degree. Hard-wired primate hierarchical behavior.
Later...
Agree about Stirner: extreme individualism does not fit with socialism and Nietzsche hated it. William Godwin was so individualistic he didn't believe that people should get together to play music - if memory serves me well. I'm not sure about the extent to which people feel a sense of cultural superiority. You'd have to do some surveys to establish that - the same applies to peacocking. I can't say that I'm proud of either my Scottish or Welsh cultures - but then I have a problem with pride. I suppose I feel a sense of belonging to some aspects of my cultures - such as the tartan, the music, the history, the poetry and so on - but I can't say that I am proud of these things. There are many concepts of pride but I can't see that any of them fits this situation neatly.
I was reading an old parish account for my Perthshire village and it made the reference to Highlanders coming into the county. It basically described them as foreigners; brethern of the Irish but not the lowlanders. I think it must have been the old argument that the lowland Scots were Germanic the Highlanders Celtic. Anyway, we have now flipped the other way and deny that whilst accepting Scotland might be mainly Celtic it also is a significant part of the Germanic speaking world. I was trying to advance the argument that preservation of the Scottish language also preserves a piece of English identity and culture so it shouldn't appear exclusionary. It didnt work.
In the borders we've had a mix of different groups living here. The Anglo-Saxons built a hall in our local village and further west the Scots, the Picts, the Celts and the Romans lived around the Eildon Hills. Alastair Moffat writes about it in a number of books. In fact, I don't think I have lived anywhere with such a rich history. I cover some of the history in my Preface to Philosophising in a Phoney World (11th September 2023).
It was Charles Fourier on lemonade seas, not Stirner - just googled it.
Thanks!
I have recently discovered this site and I want to say how great it is - very well done!
It is amazing how democracy only seems to be for the wealthy and powerful, but when the poor or powerless want to be part of running a country it is often called communist or revolutionary and anti-democratic. The recent police violence against student protest of Israel's holocaust against the Palestinians is a demonstration of how much the rich and powerful [NB: mostly men] believe in democracy and free speech.
Sorry im just reading my way through things but had to comment about the statues. Its really intriguing that the parts of Ukraine that are actually the least Ukrainian are the most nationalistic. The areas with the most Bandera statues are the old Polish lands. Opens questions about identity and imagined community etc. I suspect that a lot of its identitying not so much what you are but what you aren't. In this case irs not so much the western Ukrainians are Ukrainians but they aren't Russian. The rest of Ukraine as shown by the map doesn't appear to share the level of hatred. I can't say its the wests Polish roots that manifest the hatred because the nationlists killed the Poles and Jews.
Good posts.
Ukraine is an odd country and could never really be considered united even under Soviet times due to the hotchpotch of areas,, cultures and ideologies in its make up..
There was a US operation to plant spies and political agitators into Ukraine in the 50s to exploit this during the cold war
I have met a few Ukrainians over time and the animosity and aggression levels between different groups.-especially around 2014 and Maidan events surprised me.
In the UK I remember Ukrainians fighting in the street with each other, intimidating races and other Ukrainians who were just derogatory of Kiev.
Strange mindset and how they have lasted this long in the war I don't know.
It is 100% fact that the nationalists have driven the country into ruin and many from the East to their deaths.
This was always going to happen due to Galician influences and Nazi leaning ideologies, statue lovers etc
Throw in the Western NWO interest in the yuzivska gas field and Donbass resources etc and the ethnic cleansing of Eastern Slavic/ Russo peoples becomes more apparent.
The Boundaries in Eastern Europe are unravelling. I can see ghe Poles, Hungarians etc making a move on western Ukraine once Ukraine starts to collapse. Would be quite interesting to see the German reaction if the Poles take back post WW1 eastern Poland. After WW2 Poland had lost about 20 percent of her land and Germany 24 percent. They both agreed a new border treaty in 1990 and Germany gave up claims beyond the Oder Neisse line. This includes Konigsberg now part of Russia. But if the Poles start: begs the question...
It's all going to get very messy.
It's messy now.
Watching Judging Freedom this morning and they mentioned the new missiles provided to Ukraine by Biden that can hit deeper into Russia. I find it the height of irresponsibility. The US commentators state that it can be a declaration of war but im thinking on a more practical level. Doesn't it incentivise the Russians to head further West so the Ukrainians lack the territory to hit Russia from? Utter madness from the Ukrainian government. I find it less likely now the Russians will not go beyond the Dneiper. Enjoy the week, thanks for your hard work.
Yes - I think it does incentivise them to go further West. What's more annoying about this is that people like Stoltenberg are trying to justify long range attacks on civilians - which constitute war crimes. Enjoy your week also.
Hi Rob,
Thanks very much for your updates. I'm travelling at the moment and really appreciate the succinct summary.
Cheers - safe journey.
Thanks Rob , there was a lot there that I had missed. Another excellent exposition. We are really approaching a turning point.
With regards to Frank Zappa, he nailed the depravity and hypocrisy of the West (ie US) in the sixties.
He has always been an outlier, never in the mainstream. US culture is Micky Mouse, Marvel, Star Wars and other plastic Hollywood dross, a triumphalist banal nothing that cloaks the evil intent of the progenitors and their funders. The US imagined that they were the Rebellion but the rest of the world knew that they were the Empire all to keen to unleash the Death Star. And so it goes...
Hi Chris,
I imagine there's stuff that I've missed also but I can't put it all in anyway.
Thanks for the great update Rob.
i see the UA is becoming more Hitler like in its decision making by refusing to cede ground and leaving troops and positions about all over the place..
A bit like the fighting around Falaise in WW2 or Dniepr and Dniestr areas on the Eastern front.
In my opinion the collapse is right around the corner and I wouldn't be surprised if the RF build up north of Kharkov is a decoy to fool Nazis like the horrible Kuleba.
It appears that things are on the verge of collapse but I have no idea when it will come or what shape the Russian offensive will take. Good to see people enjoying the Update - cheers.
Speaking of Wales when you check the political voting map its frightening the correlation between the Unionist parties and the English speaking settlement of the periphery around the March areas etc. I suspect the Anglo Normans didn't go native as they did in Scotland and Ireland.