Random Rant Thread

[miscmisc]

I've talked a lot about Russia lately in real life too, and the question that I get frequently is: "So, why do you hate democracy so much?"

Well, I'm glad that people say that because that makes it simpler for me to discern idiots to be on my secret block list, so to speak.  They seem incapable of understanding that what annoys me is this idea that liberal democracy is a universal magic wand that is worth forcing on other people under any circumstances, when it just fucking isn't at all.

I don't know where they have been for the past 20 years, but China for instance has irreversibly disproved the notion that free-market economy and liberal democracy are the inseparable combo to create a large middle class in a society.

If I had to choose between, say, autocracy and liberal democracy, I would go with the latter.  It's just that I wouldn't try to force it on someone else just because.  Sure, I would hate to have someone like Putin as my head of state.  However, since I'm not talking about any of the countries that directly affects my life, it's not my choice, but theirs.  And, No, I do care about Russians, to some degree at least.  That's why I'm interested in that country after all.

And I can't ignore the fact that the first West-led liberal democracy experiment in that country spectacularly bombed.  That doesn't mean that it wouldn't work the second time, but does mean that Russians are generally suspicious of the "West" meddling in their affairs.  It infuriates them that they lionized Yeltsin - going so far as to look the other way when he blatantly rigged the election - while demonizing Putin.  Most apolitical Russians think that the latter has been two galaxies better than the former, and the reason is absolutely obvious; Yeltsin is someone who brought the country down to one of the two lowest, most humiliating points in a century (the other one being losing the Russo-Japanese War in 1904), while Putin put the economy back on the track, and managed to politically restore some national pride too.

Russians tend to see the USA's "dirty fingers" everywhere.  Hal of it is indeed based on the reality, but the other half totally on paranoia/fantasies.  Russia changes only when Russians want it.  If they see even a hint of the US involvement in their own affairs, they just double down, even against their own material interest.  They are a proud people, too proud a people in many ways.

I'm just lamenting the total folly of all the attempts by the external forces to put that country in a box.  It's not only hypocritical, but also absolutely moronic and counter-productive.  It just wouldn't end well at all.

The Ukraine parliament is tossing away the country's neutrality status, and officially seeking to join NATO now.  Did those idiots in the "West" seriously analyze what that would do to Russia?  The answer is probably No, unfortunately.

So much hubris everywhere, and no one gives a damn about the ones who will actually suffer the most from the consequences.

[miscmisc]

A happy new year, etc.  2014 was a terrible year - a year of enormous disconnect between the elite class and the rest.  One of my personal highlights was an European elite telling me that the euro crisis was over because "no major newspapers are talking about it anymore."  I asked him to define "the euro crisis", and all he could talk about was the government bond spreads.  Look, even the Portugal bonds are traded at a historic high now!  I guess Japan's economy is booming right now then, with the JGB interest rate literally around zero.

Apparently the public debt is all that mattered to them for some reason.  He even went so far as to say that the stagnation had "nothing to do with the euro".  I have to believe that he genuinely believed that, because it was a private setting.  That personally dispelled the notion that those Europeans were only trying to placate the Germans.  That may have been the case initially, but apparently not anymore.  As the saying goes, the best liars are the ones who actually believe their lies. 

On another occasion where I talked about the folly of so-called globalization, this tanned, good-looking gentleman thought that he refuted my arguments when he said that I "wouldn't have the iPhone" without the globalization.  First of all, I've never owned an iPhone, but that was okay.  The real problem was that grade-school level of logic.  Would I be screwed if someone took my smartphone away from me right now?  You bet.  And that genius thought that proved something.  I was astonished to say the least.  I never thought that I would hear such an idiotic reasoning from an adult, such a juvenile jerking-off to globalization from a European "center-left", let alone from an EU official in Brussels who supposedly received top-notch education from one of the top universities in the Netherlands.

These people literally don't see the struggle on the ground.  They see such facts as the anti-euro Front National leading the polls in France, the anti-austerity left-wing Podemos likewise in Spain, and the majority of Italians believing that the euro (= Frankfurt) fucked their country, as cases of ignorant masses in total hysteria.  They think that Spain's unemployment rates are still so high due to the lack of "reforms".  The Spanish companies all across the board have cut the wages by a quarter or more already, but apparently that's not enough.  They demand "rigorous free-market competitions" inside a currency union.  That's a US libertarian level of sheer craziness, but they steadfastly refuse to be associated with those hard right-wing Americans when you point that out.  In fact, "How dare you!" is the usual response.  They are so proud of being labeled "center-"something politically that any hint of them being actually rather on the extreme side of the spectra drives them mad.  All they've got is the phony identity politics of center-right/center-left.  It's a total farce.

In short, I see no sign of hope in 2015, either.

[miscmisc]

This silly Guardian article kind of gives you an idea as to why Germans often find Brits ridiculously full of themselves:

Before we leave the centenary year of the outbreak of war in 1914 there’s someone we should talk about. Everyone now knows about the famous Christmas truce and football matches. But this was a war that was meant to have been “over by Christmas” 1914, not dragging on for four blood-soaked years. Plenty share blame for that, but one major culprit who seems to have been conspicuous by his absence in 2014 deserves a name check: Otto von Bismarck.

So, Michael White thinks Otto von Bismarck was a main culprit for WWI, and laments the fact that no one even mentions him.

Never mind he retired more than 20 years before the war.  Hell, he died in 1894.

OK, the argument seems to be that he's the one who had stirred up the modern German uber-nationalism, and was in general a gigantic militaristic asshole who spread the resentment against Germany all over Europe.  That's more or less true, but that's mostly because of the way the other major European powers - the UK definitely included - behaved back then.  In fact, the UK was largely the reason.

And if you are allowed to go with that kind of arguments, you could blame about anyone on anything in history.

Moreover, the idea that someone who plainly and condescendingly said - The entire Balkan peninsula is hardly worth the blood of a single Pomeranian grenadier - was responsible for WWI is just fucking absurd.  You can rather reasonably argue that if he had been alive, he would've done his very best to avoid his country diving into a war over none other than Serbia, a quintessential Balkan power.

Of course, it's a mistake to think that all Germans admire Bismarck, but they must be sick of this.  This kind of typically British Germanophobia nonsense seems to never die.

[miscmisc]

A pair of economically illiterate Germans are yapping at Greeks again:

"Greece has fulfilled its obligations in the past. The German government assumes it will continue to fulfil its contractual obligations to the troika," Mr Streiter told reporters.

"Every new government has to abide by the contractual obligations of the previous government."

On Saturday, Der Spiegel cited sources saying that both Mrs Merkel and finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble now believe the eurozone has introduced enough banking reforms and support to withstand a Greek exit.

Now that there is a strong possibility that Greece will go completely leftward and reject austerity and further "loans" from the ECB, Germany is preemptively threatening Greece.  No, the second part quoted above doesn't mean that they "gave up on Greece" or any such thing.

I mean, LOL@"the eurozone has introduced enough banking reforms and support to withstand a Greek exit."  I don't even know what the fuck they mean by "enough banking reforms".  Where, and what?  All they have is bananas, perhaps indeed "enough" to feed their monkeys, but they are not likely to work at all to solve the real issues, are they.

In other words, it's pure posturing. They are scared shitless, because they actually have no clue what would happen if they kicked Greece out of the eurozone. No fucking clue. How could they have any clue? Schaeuble and "clues" don't mix well when it comes to macroeconomics.

Economically speaking, Greece alone shouldn't cause a major catastrophe in Europe given the size of its economy and all else, but I have no doubt in my mind that Berlin, Frankfurt and Brussels would mishandle the "Grexit" yet again so that it would indeed cause one.  That's how every single euro problem has been thus far, after all.

To be fair, though, it's monumentally difficult to effectively control the contagion effect in such case.  So the "Greece alone" assumption above is kind of meaningless.  It would definitely spill over to Spain, Italy and Portugal (which, incidentally, the German government seems to believe has been "rehabilitated" ** canned laughter **) to whatever extent.  And, again, the euro elite excel at making that "extent" as full as possible.

I doubt they have guts to try it.  If they decide to shun all negotiations with the new government (assuming Syriza will win the general election, which is not the surest bet yet) and just let go of Greece, that would mean that they are even bigger idiots than I thought.  Gutsy huge idiots, that is.

[K1power]

Oh man, what the hell happened in France today..

12 killed in shooting at satirical newspaper office in Paris
Masked gunmen storm Charlie Hebdo headquarters; manhunt underway

news.yahoo.com/paris-shooting-je-suis-charlie-hebdo-attack-live-coverage-151842914.html

[h]

woah. not good.

[miscmisc]

Lots of people seem to be wondering why those Islamists did that.  After all, you can reasonably argue that kind of shit would only lead to real Islamophobia in the society, and the French would elect Marine Le Pen in no time to make Muslims' lives absolutely miserable.

Well, the truth is that they don't give a shit.  Or rather, that's almost exactly what they want.

First of all, the Islamic fundamentalist movement is largely driven by young males, or old males who are "young at heart" so to speak.  And young males are stupid.  That's what's glorious about being young.  You don't have to get old to know that.  And they are not only stupid, but dangerous.  Young males are dangerous, partly because they are stupid enough to think that other people are the stupid, not them.  Hell, I wouldn't exclude the possibility that I'm fighting for ISIS in Syria/Iraq right now if I were a frustrated young Muslim male living in Birmingham suburb or wherever else.   The life in Syria as a holy fighter might sound far more exciting than the boring, deadend office/unemployed life in England, especially since the "morality" that the Islamists teaches me totally challenges the accepted norm of my society.  Young males like seeing things "differently", you know?  Sure, I would soon find out the hard way that the cannon fodder's life in the fucking desert is not at all what I anticipated, crying over all the stink, unbearable cold, my elementary Arabic being completely useless in the actual Arab world, my favorite hip-hop banned by my superiors, horrible wi-fi conditions, no toilet papers available and whatnot like a West European weakling that I am, but I'm a sexually frustrated 21-year-old idiot here.  What the hell would I know.  I'm a sloppy type, so I would be dead by now anyway.  I would've been torn into pieces by an A-10 attack.  Or by a fucking drone.  Or by a female Kurdish fighter.  Or I'm so useless in the battle field that they might tell me to focus on making youtube videos.  Native English speakers are "productive assets", as HR guys in your company would call them, mostly for PR purposes.  I might yet survive.

Of course, real me found something far less serious to jerk off to, and probably was not THAT frustrated over life in general.  But I wouldn't laugh away that possibility in that particular parallel world. I understand the sheer excitement of the glory of fighting for the Ultimate Cause and all that.  And their "cause" even justifies enslaving infidel women.  Your dick reacts to that, and your brain moronically approves it too.

And more importantly, a Marine Le Pen is what they want.  Well, maybe not the foot soldiers who actually do all the shit on the ground and get "martyred", but I'm talking about the slightly more mature ones.  They don't quite care about actually "winning" this "war" when it's all said and done.  Or, to be more precise, all religious fanatics in all colors think that they are winning it by default anyway, with their God on their side.  I mean, what could go wrong if you have such a badass on your side?  He may have been no-show for the longest time, but He has His own way of dealing with this shit, right?  So, whether they are actually winning the battles in front of them is kinda besides the point.  They simply want the conflict, the "Clash of Civilizations" scenario.  They want to establish the insurmountable gap between Islam and the rest, which means what European far-rights want and what they want are almost perfectly aligned.  They despise their "fellow Muslims" who got assimilated in the infidel European society, and as far as they are concerned, the Muslims should be alienated and feel uncomfortable living there.  The more uncomfortable they make it for them, the better.

It's not rocket science, really.

Anyway, I hope Charlie Hebdo will also shit on the #JeSuisCharlie pretenders feigning support for political purposes now.  Not just Marine Le Pen, but all of them, from all over the world.  It's a disgusting spectacle.

[miscmisc]

A TV show host posed this question: Did the terrorists succeed in France?  And the guests are actually arguing over whether they did or not.

Where is Captain Obvious when we desperately need him?

Of course they did.  Look at the bunch of disgusting politicians, from all over the world, falling all over themselves to get some camera time to show their "support for the freedom of speech".  Orban, Turkish PM, Egyptian PM, Netanyahu, Samaras, King Abdullah II of Jordan etc, of all people really, in the rally showing their disgusting faces.  And Putin with his hypocritical message.  Or that Nazi-apologist PM Yatsenyuk of Ukraine, who didn't forget to try to equate the "Russian terrorists" with the Charlie Hebdo attackers at the end of his "united we stand" message.  Those people have no shame.

The CH attack was an attention-seeking PR op.  When shit loads of people protested against CH in Pakistan, no one outside cared about that "controversy".  But the terrorists thought that was a good reason to stir up some shit in Europe.  The targets and reasons could've been anything, really, but CH provided a perfect reason for them.  And if you managed to get world leaders to shamelessly fall over themselves like that and delight the Western far-right scumbags who are always looking for a chance to realize the Clash of Civilizations scenario - your secret allies on the other side of the line - well done.  You've got the maximum amount of publicity out of the minimum amount of resources.

CNN informed me that it was the worst terrorist attack in Europe in the last decade.  I suspect that the 77 Norwegian victims at the hands of that delusional Islam-hating far-right mass murderer Anders Breivik - most of whom were left-wing teenagers - and their families have something to say about that.  But of course, you have to be Muslim to be a terrorist.  That's the rule.  No one else, let alone someone who hates Islam, can be a legit terrorist.  The attackers killed much fewer people than Breivik did alone, yet knocked him out unconscious in terms of attention and camera time.

And the same global news organization is basically warning us that it's only the beginning.  Maybe the terrorists are building a massive secret dungeon underneath Hamburg or something.  Maybe they are secretly launching a satellite into the space to scorch Amsterdam with its laser beam any minute.  I don't know, but the guys are telling me that we are fighting a huge scary monster.  We must be scared shitless, those Serious People say.

If you managed to get the mainstream media, with its massive resources, to do all the work for you, for free, well, I don't know.  All I know is that the word "success" is too weak to describe it.  The cost-effectiveness there is simply off the charts.  Such a damn easy business that terrorism thing is.

And like I said, about that "This is bad for Muslims in Europe, so they lost big!" thing, THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT.

I sometimes can't help but think that people are just stupid.  Maybe those Muslim kids do have a legit reason for their contempt at the society.  I guess I'm still young at heart like them.

[miscmisc]

A Dutch cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo said he would "vomit" on the feigned support for them.

"We have a lot of new friends, like the pope, Queen Elizabeth and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. It really makes me laugh," Bernard Holtrop, whose pen name is Willem, told the Dutch centre-left daily Volkskrant.

"Marine Le Pen is delighted when the Islamists start shooting all over the place," said Willem, 73, a longtime Paris resident who also draws for the French leftist daily Liberation.

He added: "We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends."

Good.  That's the spirit.

[miscmisc]

If you casually pick up an issue of Foreign Affairs, and read this article, you might believe what the authors say - namely, the Russian/East European "free-market reforms" back in the '90s were all great success.

The problem, aside from all the cunning bullshit in the article, is that one of the authors is Andrei Shleifer.  He was a renowned Harvard economist.  I said "was" because he isn't anymore.  The reason is simple: he was busted by the US Department of Justice for fraud while he was an adviser for the Russian government under Yeltsin.  He was one of the Harvard economist gang led by Larry Summers on the mission to "reform" the Russian economy.  If he hadn't been so cocky as to leave his fingerprints all over the place, he could've gotten away with it.  He behaved like an untouchable mofo in Russia, which cost him in the end.  Harvard stripped him of all the titles because of that.

These people think that we forget everything in a few days.  I don't.  Of course, the worst part of it is that the Council on Foreign Relations seems to think that it's all good to ask a criminal, the worst kind at that, to opine on the very country where he committed his crime, and praise the very system which enabled him to do so.

I don't mean to depress you or anything, but something is seriously fucked up in our world.

[miscmisc]

So, apparently, our fierce tech warriors Anonymous launched #OpCharlieHebdo.  They DDoS-attacked jihadist websites so that all the jihadist wannabes in the world will be sad pandas.

Yeah, that'll teach them.  Maybe.  Perhaps.

I'm seriously having a headache.  Why are these hacker types almost universally fucking moronic jerk-offs?  If I had to go to a battle field and were allowed to take an army with me, I would choose the jihadists over the Anonymous kids in a heartbeat, even if it's not a physical battle.  They are both stupid young morons, but about anyone is better than those little shits sitting in front of the computers.

[miscmisc]

A funny thing about those "world leaders" attending the rally in Paris is that some of them weren't exactly invited or even welcome.  One of the non-invitees was Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu.  But he came anyway, and the French had to quickly invite Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority leader, for the balance.  That's how those two disgusting men, who are responsible for the misery of Palestinians (and ultimately all Israelis), ended up over there.

And Netanyahu had the nerve to visit the biggest synagogue in Paris and practically urged the Jewish French people gathered there to consider moving to Israel, with a number of French-born Israelis accompanying him to push the agenda on his behalf.  Hollande must be real pissed, but that monstrous asshole Bibi is not one to care about such things. 

That's what they do every time an Islamic terrorist attack occurs somewhere near a place where Jews live, at least on the grassroots level.  They did after 9-11 in the US too.  That's why they ought to actually love these attacks.  They provide great recruiting opportunities for the Aliyah (ascending to Jerusalem) campaign, not to mention nice occasions to demonize Hamas while they are at it.

Yet this is what happened at the synagogue in Paris:

www.nytimes.com/video/multimedia/100000003443029/netanyahu-visits-paris-synagogue-crowd-breaks-into-national-anth.html

Spontaneous singing of La Marseillais by the crowd.  Ouch.  Such a clear "Thanks, but no thanks" from a large number of people even when they should feel very vulnerable.

Their desperate attempt to lure (coerce, I would say) diaspora Jews into the so-called Jewish motherland hasn't been really successful, I'm afraid.  More Israelis move abroad than Jewish people moving to Israel.  That was the trend when I was there, and still is today.  There is clearly a reason for that, and it's kind of obvious.

It just won't work, unless Europe devolves into a total Islamic-terrorism-fest targeting Jews.  Which is highly unlikely, but they ought to pray for that scenario.  Hell, I'm reasonably sure they do actually.

But then, there are always people who help them out, mostly in the media.  This article below is a perfect example.

Fear on Rise, Jews in France Weigh an Exit
www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/world/europe/fear-on-rise-jews-in-france-weigh-an-exit.html?_r=0

This is a typically lazy "trend reporting" as they call it.  Basically they conveniently pick up a few voices, including ones in the business to promote the message to begin with (without clarifying that, of course), and make it sound as if that was the overall trend.  You'd never even imagine people singing La Marseillais into the face of Netanyahu if you only read this article and didn't watch the video above.  Most journalism schools teach that trend reporting is one of the hardest kinds that needs extra care ("You really need hard evidence to back up the trend that you are reporting!  Otherwise you'll get an 'F'!"), but the mainstream media constantly violates that ethical rule.  This is the n-th "Jews in XXXX Weigh an Exit" article in the last decade or two, and the massive exodus that those articles hinted at has never happened.

But of course, the most ridiculous thing of all is that this article and that video above are from the same newspaper.  They really should make up their mind - actual reporting, or public relations work for their "clients".  It's confusing to say the least.

[miscmisc]

This is very important:

Time to lift veil on Saudi Arabia’s hijacking of Islam
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-time-to-lift-veil-on-saudi-arabia-s-hijacking-of-islam-1.2063268

I will never, ever, EVER take seriously those politicians and pundits - hell, ANYONE who condemns Islamic extremism (or Islam as a whole) while remaining dead silent on the absolutely essential, critical role that Saudi Arabia has played, for years and years, in propagating Wahhabism/Salafism.  Something is rotten in Islam for sure, but they never ever mention the real culprit.  You only get to hear the words "Saudi Arabia" on non-influential provincial media outlets like the Irish Times, because everyone else is bought.  Even the Israel lobby is on it to silence everyone, because, even though the Saudis never forget to express their absolutely feigned outrage against Israelis at every opportunity, the two share the same so-called "national interest", mainly against Iran and Co.  The Saudis don't give two shits about Palestinians in reality.  It's a ridiculous kabuki theater.

This is truly one of the most ridiculous, hypocritical, sickening things in the world.

And that's why I usually tell them to go fuck themselves when someone tries to belittle Michael Moore.  His Fahrenheit 9/11 may not be super-accurate, and "theatrically exaggerated", but he posed a right question.  He always does in his documentaries.  Very few other people do.  The fat man deserves all the acclaim for that alone.

[miscmisc]

Okay, I'm disgusted by the way Wilson constantly gets bailed out by fluke plays/pure luck/total meltdowns of opposing D#/etc.  Maybe God does exist, is a man who badly needs to get a life, and does kill time influencing the outcome of an American football game just because a certain QB praises Him non-stop.  Wilson is now a weeping hero just because he threw an okay pass at the very end (with no safety to cover the zone, of course...).  Finest choke job by the Packers.  Naturally, a petty God is the only explanation, because, hell, what else?  Sure, GB#86 was an idiot, but that alone can hardly explain it.  You are fucked in American football if you don't believe enough, obviously.  It's just a scheme to test your faith, disguised as a sport.  Hail Mary literally means that the outcome depends on Mary's mood.  Literally.  Now it's all clear.

Un-fucking-believable, that Wilson guy.

[miscmisc]

Felix Salmon reported that Tom Friedman, a NYT columnist, said this to the wealthy audience at Davos:

The Arab Spring is failing not for lack of bandwidth, but for lack of human understanding that can only be forged when someone is late for breakfast, and you say, "Thank you for being late."

And reportedly, the international guests/participants in the hall applauded.  Loudly.  And spontaneously.

That says everything about the sad state of today's world.  You bet that the people gathered at Davos are filthy rich or politically influential or both enough to actually affect your life, and I mean your life, literally.  And they applauded.  To that.  To that utter gibberish.  Spontaneously.

"Gibberish" is too generous a word to describe it.  I have no fucking idea what Tom is saying there.  No fucking idea.  You know why?  Because even Tom has no fucking idea what he's saying.  That setntence doesn't mean anything that a reasonable human being could ever comprehend.  Maybe a gorilla could, and it could mean that he wants to fuck you all night on a hammock.

But those rich people think that it means something.  Of course they don't know what the hell it is either.  They would like someone to translate that shit into English for them.  I mean, if Tom Friedman says something about the Arab Spring, "bandwidth", "human understanding" that is to be "forged", it's got to mean something, right?  Something related to the "flat world" and "interconnectedness" and "branding" and "horizontality" and other meaningless corporate fucker business consulting buzzwords. If you don't get it, you are not "smart in the 21st century way".  You pretend to get it, and applaud hard to shake off the embarrassment of not getting it.

I think we are at a desperate stage if Tom continues to be considered by truly influential people a deep thinker who represents American liberalism.  And none of the cocksuckers have the sense or intellectual honesty to call out the emperor of idiocy for what he is.  He's still the second most popular columnist at NYT.  I literally don't know anyone rocky-horror-show-stupider than Tom Friedman.  When he was asked about the future of democracy in America, he said this:

We need to do big hard things together. Because all things we have to do are hard and big, and you can only do them together. So when you don’t do big hard things together, what you get are suboptimal responses to every big hard thing, done with no due diligence at the eleventh hour, and that’s basically what our politics has become. So you look at everything that has happened in the last four years, I would argue that they are all suboptimal solutions cobbled together with no due diligence of what world are we in, what would be the right solution done at the eleventh hour, and, um, how long do we remain a great country when everything we do at the national level is suboptimal with no due diligence done at the eleventh hour?

Seriously, need I say more?  Tom "Hard and Big at the Eleventh Hour" Friedman, this total imbecile, gets paid $70,000 minimum / session to throw up this kind of nonsensical string of words at equally imbecilic audience.  You should take your son to the nearest hospital pronto if he started talking like this, but Tom is an "exceptional voice in the 21st century world" as they call him.

Our world is an utter, utter idiot paradise.