Russia doesn’t care about sanctions

Having conducted an interview with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Tucker Carlson has done recently the same with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. In this eighty-minute talk the interlocutors covered all the current political problems, focusing on Ukraine. Minister Sergei Lavrov enumerated major events leading up to the current war, facts that the Western man in the street is either ignorant of because the Western media choose not to present them, or facts that the Western man in the street is familiar with, but has been provided with an entirely different interpretation. We are not going to repeat all the points that were mentioned during the Carlson-Lavrov talk. What we are going to do is to call the reader’s attention to the following passage from the interview.

Tucker Carlson asked Sergei Lavrov about conditions the fulfilment of which would induce Russia to discontinue the military operation. The Russian foreign minister repeated the three principal demands:

[1] Ukraine must not be a member of NATO or indeed of any alliance nor even be allowed to conduct military exercises on its territory with the participation of foreign troops;

[2] the territorial changes must be accepted: that is, not only the incorporation of Crimea into Russia, but also the fact that the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson have now constitutionally become parts of Russia by the will of the people living there;

[3] the basic human rights as they are stipulated in the UN Charter about freedom of religious belief, preservation of the native language (in this case Russian) and the like must be abided by in Ukraine.

As Minister Lavrov finished the enumeration of Russia’s demands, Tucker Carlson – probably thinking that Sergei Lavrov forgot about one more point – asked whether Russia wouldn’t like to have the sanctions lifted. To this, Sergei Lavrov replied that sanctions were of little or no importance to Russia because

[1] Russia has learnt to live with them;

[2] Russia has become stronger because of them; and because

[3] Russia has learnt that autarky (economic self-sufficiency) is the best guarantor of independence.

This really should not come as a surprise to anyone. Iran, which is a much smaller country than Russia, has lived under sanctions for over forty years now; Cuba, a very small country, has coped with sanctions for a much longer period. Both these countries continue to survive and to challenge the United States. Russia has all the natural resources that an economy needs, and Russia has really learnt to rely on itself, or – to be more precise – Russia has learnt not to rely on the West, and not to trust the West, which was also what Minister Lavrov said.

Which of the Western Christian religious leaders would even dare to think?

On November 28 this year, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church (roughly an equivalent of the head of the Church of England), gave a speech at the 26th World Russian People’s Council. Here are the points that he addressed:

War in Ukraine. Patriarch Kirill views the conflict as the hostilities between two fraternal nations, hostilities that are fuelled by the managers of the world who pursue the policy of divide and rule. One of the goals of the war is to instil fear in people so as to make them obedient and compliant. Christians, said Patriarch Kirill, are, however, not afraid of the end of the world because Christians are awaiting the end of the world and the final judgment, the victory of good over evil.
Neo-paganism. A phenomenon that is taking root in Russia and although it is as yet a marginal trend, it nonetheless poses a threat to the existence of the nation. It is not merely Russia but also Ukraine, which are fraught with neo-pagans who – in the case of Ukraine – are so strong as to form their own military units. Their ideology or set of beliefs is very similar to Nazism.
Russophobia, a phenomenon that is produced in many universities. Patriarch Kirill posed a question why universities paid by the whole Russian nation produce so many individuals who dislike, despise or hate Russia. Similarly, he posed a question why there are so many books for children and adolescents that disseminate ideas that target the family, morality and all traditional values.
Abortion. Patriarch Kirill repeated as many times before that pregnancy termination was evil and that it ought to be forbidden by law. He praised the many local initiatives acting against abortion.
Excessive alcohol consumption. A problem that Russia has been beset with and continues to be so. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church called on taking up measures to curb this pernicious phenomenon.
Immigration. Patriarch Kirill said that too large a number of non-Russian, non-Orthodox immigrants with a different cultural code was a threat to the very existence of the Russian nation and Russian or orthodox civilization. He also exposed proponents of immigration as individuals who do not care about people from outside Russia but want to enrich themselves employing cheap labour.

Which of the Western Christian religious leaders would as much as think about saying anything against immigration? Against abortion? Against schools and universities that produce people who dislike, despise or hate their own national heritage?

Trump nemesis

Overjoyed because of his election win Donald Trump said that God had a reason when he had saved his life during the almost successful assassination. The spectacular victory in the presidential race is almost as miraculous as miraculous was his survival when milimeters decided about his fate. The assassination was designed as a desperate act to remove Donald Trump as a candidate, since all other measures had failed. Instead, the attempted assassination enhanced his stature. Shots with Trump shouting Fight! Fight! Fight! and his defiant posture will come down in history just as shots showing American soldiers raising the American flag on Iwo Jima. In fact, these two images have already been put side by side. The resemblance is striking.

The left-leaning democrats with artists and intellectuals of all sorts in attendance called Donald Trump names, set legal traps for him, gave him bad press, fear-mongered about a new Hitler being about to take control over the United States, and what not. All this misfired and backlashed in direct proportion to the amount of effort put into smearing him and dragging his name through the mud. As the biblical adage goes: He who digs a pit will fall into it. They dug, and they fell in. Miserably.

It is not that Donald Trump is an ideal president. Far from it. Yet, in comparison with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and all the rest he is like one of the common Americans. True, he is a billionaire, not a man in the street, but the way he talks, the way he behaves, the way he mingles with people make him look like one of the many millions of ordinary Americans who in their heart of hearts are fed up with the leftist newspeak about the many genders, about inclusiveness and diversity, about open borders and the perniciousness of patriarchy, about all that ideological crap.

The attempt on the part of the democrats to split society into warring factions along the lines of sex or gender, race and moral laxity turned out not to be sufficient. Sure, the left have made headway in their direction: after all only a little less than half of the American society cast their votes for Harris, that is for racial and gender wars to be continued, for open borders to be even more open, for the de-funded police to be even more de-funded, for moral laxity that sells the murder of infants under the guise of human – nay, women – rights and health protection.

Think about it for a moment. Think about a political rally one of the main topics of which is to guarantee termination of pregnancy. Picture to yourself all those rabidly mad women who feel entitled not only to be free to terminate the life of the little ones, but also to have it financed by the state, that is also by those for whom such practices are anathema. Think about such rallies taking place fifty, eighty or a hundred years ago. Very few participants would have approved; rather, the overwhelming majority would have been shocked. Nobody is shocked today. That’s where we are.

Vote for the candidate who guarantees termination of pregnancy! Vote for the candidate who guarantees ‘marriage’ to be contracted between same-sex individuals. Vote for the candidate who will guarantee that same-sex couples will have the right to adopt children. Above all, cast your vote for a candidate who is of colour – a newspeak phrase – and a woman. Never mind the candidate’s intellectual qualities, never mind the candidate’s experience, never mind the candidate’s track record of achievements, never mind the character of the candidate: all you are expected to mind is that the candidate is a she and that this she is of colour.

You haven’t voted for Kamala Harris? You must be a misogynist and a racist. You have voted for Donald Trump? You must be a fascist and an advocate of patriarchy. It’s as simple as that.

This is, notice, the democracy that the entirety of the globe should look up to and copy. This is the political system that Americans want to have replicated not only in Europe, but also in Afghanistan or Venezuela, in Syria and North Korea, in Ukraine and in Belarus. A political system that divides society like a sharp knife into parts whose members hate each other intensely; a political system that produces election campaigns with physical (murder, attempted murder) and character assassinations (the political opponent is an incarnation of Hitler). The rest of the world ought to adopt the American system because it is oh so wonderful!

Donald Trump has won and soon he will have to deal with Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Olaf Scholz and Ursula von der Leyen who despise him, who hate him, who scorn him. He will have to deal with the American civil servants most of whom sabotaged his first term in office. He will have to deal with all the mainstream media that are not going to evaporate, but, rather, undermine his presidency at every turn.

Donald Trump will have learnt his lesson from the four years of the first term. Has he learnt enough?

If only a few believe the journalists…

…then there will probably be a coup soon, because if the people do not believe the rulers and their mouthpieces, the end of the rulers will come soon. The situation is comfortable for the functioning of the so-called democracy when there is one party or ruling group that rules and is in total conflict with the other, opposition party or with the group that aspires to power. At that time, the leading domestic media are usually on the side of the “right”, on the side of those in power, while the alternative or challenging media are on the side of the opposition. The situation is comfortable (perhaps at present in Georgia or Venezuela) for the voters/citizens, because they themselves choose who is right, i.e. where the truth is. The current situation in the USA is different: fewer and fewer people trust the media at all, regardless of whether it is the leading or alternative (independent?) media.

Source: Tippinsights

The reason for this is most likely the glaring discrepancies seen in the Democratic and Republican narratives. According to a study by the Watchdog Media Research Center, coverage of Kamala Harris was 84% positive, while that of Trump was 89% negative (statistics include CBS, NBC and ABC). The Democratic candidate also received 66% more airtime.

What is the reason for these disparities? The big corporations that are part of the current establishment want to maintain the status quo, which means, among other things, continued Democratic rule. It also means the impoverishment of the middle class, the division of society through wars of ideas, the destabilization caused by the migrant crisis, the chaos caused by tolerating riots and shoplifting while cutting funding for the police. Disunited and confused communities are much easier to control – changing such a state of affairs would not benefit the establishment.

Then there is the main tool of the leading media: the polls. The average voter has only limited access to information. What can voters use as a guide when deciding who to vote for? The polls! From a psychological point of view, people want to belong to the group of winners. This is why the power of published election polls is so great. How can we defend ourselves against this, i.e. check the reliability of these media? For example, by confronting them with the bookmakers’ bets. This business is based on pure statistics – if the bookmaker’s odds do not correspond to reality, he automatically has to incur heavy losses. If we look at today’s ABC NEWS poll results (as of 01.11.24), we see that Harris is in the lead.

Source: ABC News

Quite the opposite is the data coming in from various bookmaker sites, according to which Trump is the favorite. The chart below shows that the Republican candidate can count on an average of over 60% support, while his opponent can count on barely 40% (as at 01.11.24).

Source: Realclearpolling.com

Polls have been wrong in predicting the winner of presidential elections in the past. In 2016, during the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the polls pointed to the Democratic Party candidate – while it was the right wing that won. One reason for this “surprising” turn of events could have been the electoral system in the US, which creates the possibility that the candidate who received fewer votes from citizens, but more electoral votes, which are decisive, wins.

After examining the methodology used to create the polls disseminated by the ABC, one can conclude that the results are created in an unclear and complicated manner, despite the claim of transparency. The support beam presented to us is not an answer to the basic question “Who do you want to vote for in the presidential election?”, but to a series of questions inserted in different polls. The results are then analyzed and processed. This creates a lot of room for abuse and freedom of interpretation.

Today’s leading (media) are not free from influences and dictates. But if you believe Google’s results, take a look at the following graphic as the punchline of this article:

Theft of the evidence of the senses in broad daylight

Theft of the common sense, theft of the evidence of that your senses provide your brain with, theft of you faculties of reasoning, theft in broad daylight. What do we mean? The fact that the media’s bias is absolutely out of their own control. A simple example. The media tell you about the polls concerning the two candidates running for president, and they inform you credibly that the vote for either candidate is shared roughly fifty-fifty. Yet, in the same breath, the same media will show you a street poll in which they will ask, say, ten people about who their favourite candidate is, and all of them will turn out to be in favour of the candidate that a particular media endorse. Weird, isn’t it?

Why are the media people incapable of controlling themselves? Why are they incapable of being consistent? Is it dictated by the intense hatred of the other candidate? Is it dictated by a very low esteem that they hold their readership or their audiences in? Surely, there are a lot of the readers or viewers or listeners who will not notice this glaring bias. Surely there are a lot of the listeners or viewers who will fail to see this discrepancy. Surely, some of the viewers or readers will, but then they share the same intense hate towards one of the candidates and so they just cannot but indulge in this one-sided narrative. For all that, however, there are some media savvies who will be repelled by that kind of unfairness. There are some among the readers, the listeners, the viewers who have a capacity for reasoning, for remembering, for comparing. If they spot recurrent discrepancies, they will become sceptical about the information that they are fed by the media. There will also be some who will challenge the warped presentation of reality and they may pass their scepticism and criticism of the media onto others, thus slowly spreading the seeds of doubt, disbelief, and eventually total rejection of the official sources of information, a process that currently seems to be in full swing across the Western world.

A media outlet exercises an enormous power over the consumers of the information. It is not easy for an average man to catch them lying. It is the media that have access to sources of information and it is the media that have all those technological gadgets with which to put news pieces together in such a way as to create the narrative that is desired by the owners of the media. Yet, from time to time, they will get lost in their own invented narrative, they will eventually expose themselves for what they really are: tools for the manipulation of public opinion. One thing that can easily throw media credibility into doubt is the internal discrepancy or the internal contradiction contained in the messages, or – in plain English – the lie that they give to themselves.

Again: why say that roughly half the country is for, while the other half is against a given candidate and then ‘corroborate’ the stats with a street query in which all or almost all pollees voice their support for one of the candidates only? One wonders what’s the intellectual framework of such journalists or those who have those journalists do their job. Can’t they control themselves? Is it that they lack basic mental faculties or is it that they hold the entirety of the consumers of information in utter contempt? They certainly regard themselves as custodians of the political and moral backbone of the citizens; they certainly assume that the vast majority of the consumers of information do not have the capacity for working out answers, for doing thorough research, for grappling with huge amounts of data. That’s understandable. One is tempted to use it and… abuse it. But why provide the readers, listeners, viewers with evident discrepancies and contradictions?

American journalism has taken a nose-dive into a bottomless pit of mendacity

Donald Trump held a big rally the other day in Madison Square Garden, the usual venue for such events. The American left scared out of their wits at the ever more real perspective of having Trump back in the White House pulled off – courtesy MSNBC – a journalistic-cum-propaganda stunt that was surreal and absurd at the same time. The shots from the rally that MSNBC presented were intertwined with the 1939 shots of a rally that had taken place in the same venue and was held by American followers of German national socialism. The message on the part of MSNBS was more than clear, primitive though it was. Still, the American left really views Americans as primitive imbeciles so they saw it fit to tell the audience how to interpret the Madison Square Garden rally with the intertwined shots from 1939 in that the telecaster invited a Ruth Ben-Ghiat and writer Anne Applebaum, whose task it was to stain Trump and to drag him through as much mud and dirt and shit and… as one could within a couple of minutes. So, Donald Trump and his followers were conflated with Nazis, racists, Hitler and Mussolini, while the two guests assured the audience again and again that the Madison Square Garden was chosen by Trump consciously and all the rhetoric and symbolism was an intentional copy of the German national-socialist rallies from the previous century.

It was all sickening. It all echoed the worst propaganda stunts from the 1920s and 1930s, of which both historian! Ruth Ben-Ghiat and author Anne Applebaum should have known. It was in the Soviet Union that political opponents were necessarily framed as fascists and foreign agents. It was in the Soviet Union that political opponents were presented to the masses of gullible and rather simple-minded people as monsters and murderers. Such things happened in the Soviet Union during the few first decades of its existence, but in later decades even the communist propagandists saw how primitive and hence ineffective such propaganda measures were, let alone what bad press about the Soviet Union they caused abroad. Sadly, present-day United States of America is copying Soviet Union from the latter’s worst years in this respect.

Let me make a guess: a stunt like this one is a nail in the coffin of the Democrats. Now even people who were not followers or advocates of Trump feel disgusted and repelled by the like s Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, by the likes of Ruth Ben-Ghiat and author Anne Applebaum. The YouTube comments prove my point. Here are some of them:

– It blows my mind that this is the state of the mainstream media now.

– How are they allowed to say complete non sense like this????

– I actually can’t believe MSNBC ran with this. Many people predicted they would, and I thought it was a joke. I am genuinely shocked they weren’t kidding. United States mainstream media is pathetic.

– MSNBC…you people have really gone off the deep end. What an embarrassment you have become to journalism.

– This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard

– Right before Halloween, the real monsters have removed their masks, and let themselves be seen.

– Didn’t Bill Clinton and Al Gore have a presidential rally in MSG in 1992?

– The Democratic Party has had 2 conventions at Madison square garden so what does that mean?

– ’m actually shocked that they posted such a horrible shocking video this is really disgusting and the mainstream media just really goes to a lower level

– Hearing MSNBC speak like this I am starting the think Trump may of won the last Election.

Are you gone completely off rail? What? Not a single american will have this nonsense. You just secured Trumps victory.

– Interesting… I guess you forgot to mention that those that attended the 1939 rally… “WERE ALL DEMOCRATS!!!”

– What a load of garbage. This is why I don’t watch mainstream media.

– Disgusting reporting. These people are despicable.

– I love to see msdnc and the rest of MSM continue to destroy any creditability they may have left. Thank you guys for speeding up your own downfall as more and more people around the world tune in to podcasts like Joe Rogan to get their news.

The BBC asks, Putin replies

At the close of the BRICS summit, held this year, October 22-24, in Kazan, Russia, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, as is his habit, took questions from journalists. One of them was asked by a BBC correspondent. The BBC journalist asked the Russian leader whether he did not see a discrepancy between what Russia aims at – which is its own and international security and stability and justice – and what Russia reaps as a result of its policies – which is having Ukrainian drones over its own territory or having Russian towns shelled by Ukrainian artillery. The same journalist also asked whether Vladimir Putin could confirm that the British secret services report that the Kremlin was behind social unrest in the United Kingdom. Putin’s reply was manifold and exhaustive:

① Yes, Russia was not shelled prior to 2022, but before that date Russia had experienced something much worse. Russia was ignored by the West, which attempted to assign to Russia a status of a semi-independent country, a mere provider of resources. Prior to 2022 Russia was doomed to become the West’s dependency. Obviously, under such circumstances the country could not hope to prosper, to develop, to even exist in the long run. The West did not respect Russia’s interests, Russia’s tradition, anything Russian.

② As for justice, continued Russia’s president, the West does all in its power to exploit the world under various pretexts. One of them was the time of the pandemic during which both the United States and the European Union printed billions of their respective currencies with which they bought up huge amounts of foodstuffs and caused worldwide inflation. By flooding the world’s markets with billions of additional dollars and euros, the West was in a position to consume much more than it produced, much more than the rest of the world. The other pretext is of course ecology. The West demands that energy produced on fossil fuels be reduced, which is done in the name of protecting the planet’s climate. That might be a noble purpose, but the point is that African and some Asian countries cannot afford to do away with fossil fuels. To do so, that is, to use modern technologies of energy production, they would need to get credit, which the West only offers with very high interest. For all practical purposes such an approach on the part of the West is turning former African colonies into modern-type colonies. Is that justice that the BBC journalist meant?

Was it just not to respect Russia’s demand that Ukraine not become a NATO member? Was it just on the part of the West to enter into agreements with Russia with the intention of breaking them? Was it just not only to turn Russia’s underbelly – Ukraine – into anti-Russia, but to even build military bases there? Was it just to carry out the coup d’etat in Ukraine? These are glaring acts of injustice and Russia wants to and will change them.

③ As for the claim of the British secret services that Russia allegedly sows discord in British society and is behind street unrest, President Putin said that the social upheaval observed in the West is a direct result of the policies of Western governments which deteriorated economic conditions in their countries due to sanctions and giving up on Russia’s cheap resources. What does Russia have to do with all this, asked the Russian leader.

Interesting points were raised. It may well be that Russians are instigating unrest in Western societies. Does that come as a surprise? One would be flabbergasted if Russia did not try to pay the West in kind. Indeed, the retaliation might be even more painful.

As for the inflation and robbing the globe of its produce and resources by printing money: well, that’s precisely why BRICS countries cooperate and are trying to create a parallel financial system. They have long been victims of financial machinations, and they have long realized the mechanism of being robbed by inflation brought about by foreign powers. If India’s or Brazil’s central banks issue much more money than warranted, the resultant inflation hits them directly, some other countries indirectly, and still some others not at all. If, however. The United States generates far more dollars than is reasonable, the resultant inflation hits the whole globe instantaneously and directly simply because the dollar is the global international currency. Thus, the United States solves its economic problems and burdens the rest of the world in the process. This is, by the way, the point that President Putin has raised many times during his speeches or interviews.