Insight into the rules-based world order.

The term "rules-based world order" has surfaced in U.S. diplospeak in recent years. Whatever does it mean?

[Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov surveys the results of the recent G7, NATO and US-EU summits prior to Putin-Biden in Geneva:

These meetings were carefully prepared in a way that leaves no doubt that the West wanted to send a clear message: it stands united like never before and will do what it believes to be right in international affairs, while forcing others, primarily Russia and China, to follow its lead. The documents adopted at the Cornwall and Brussels summits cemented the rules-based world order concept as a counterweight to the universal principles of international law with the UN Charter as its primary source. In doing so, the West deliberately shies away from spelling out the rules it purports to follow, just as it refrains from explaining why they are needed.

As he dismisses how Russia and China have been labeled as “authoritarian powers” (or “illiberal”, according to the favorite New York-Paris-London mantra), Lavrov smashes Western hypocrisy:

While proclaiming the ‘right’ to interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries for the sake of promoting democracy as it understands it, the West instantly loses all interest when we raise the prospect of making international relations more democratic, including renouncing arrogant behavior and committing to abide by the universally recognized tenets of international law instead of ‘rules’.^[1]

I'd naively assumed that the term was but a convenient way of referring to international law as expressed in important part in the U.N. Charter and various treaties and conventions. As I've heard the term more and more, I see that it has a certain spongy quality such that it is actually a fig leaf obscuring untrammeled, unilateral, arbitary, discretionary action on the part of the U.S.

The world apparently can be reordered according to these "rules" that only we can decipher. NATO can be expanded into Lithuania and Micronesia, Serbia can be subjected to 30,000 air strikes, Kosovo can be ripped from Serbia and its non-Muslim minorities ejected, the government of Ukraine can be overthrown, and the windows in the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol can be measured for new drapes by an advance party of the U.S. Navy.

Afghanistan can be invaded and reformed by a procession of strutting cockatoos and Iraq can be invaded and upended and its people killed off like flies on a pretext after years of enthusiastic U.S. support for Saddam Hussein so long as he was willing to gas and bomb Iranians. Our exquisite sensibilities regarding chemical weapons had not then yet reached their present peak of volcanic outrage.

Too, Libya can be turned into bandido land and its gold reserves spiritied away to who knows where. To be fair, the Libyan bomb fest had something of a blessing from the U.N. Security Council though with less justification than the WMD threat that supposedly existed in Iraq. More of the "evil ruler who lives to attack his own people" firewater. Sells like hotcakes at a Weight Watchers convention.

Iran can be casually designated as the chief sponsor of terror in the world while the U.S. and certain of its "partners" and "stakeholders" around the Middle East can kill over 500,000 Syrian civilians, displace millions, and lay waste to its cities. Turkey can cart off Syrian factories and flood Syria with troops and the U.S. can send in troops to steal Syrian oil protect Syrian oil fields and it's all good. Apparently, plunder and aggressive war are part of the RBWO. As is attacking the Syrian Arab Army in support of ISIS. The point being here that we are not at war with Syria and it threatens no American interest. But the "rule" is we get to decide who's the bestest ruler for Syria and which elections are Grade F elections and which elections are like American elections. Wait! That didn't come out right.

I'd have less of an urge to take a shower and disinfect my clothes at the mention of the RBWO shliblut if The Sacred Homeland weren't afflicted with (1) a Supreme Court that flees from facing its responsibilities like a virgin at a BLM convention and (2) any number of gutless, traitorous local and state authorities who would rather stab their grandmothers with a Ginzu knife than maintain order and the rule of law.

Honorable mention to all of the state supreme courts and bar associations who seem not to have noticed that the Interstate Commerce Clause has been studiousl not enforced since the 1930s, thereby enabling the expansion of the federal government to its present monstrous, wildly-unconstitutional size.

Gigantic monopolies also seem to have escaped the notice of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission for, oh, the last 50 years. (Lina Khan at the FTC seems to have some salutary heartburn over monopolies. We'll see if that's sincere or if she'll be stalled before she can even zero her Glock.)

But, yeah. We're sticklers for "the rules." And if you're not careful, we'll arrive in force and straighten your asses out.

Notes
^[1] "Escobar: The Long & Winding Multipolar Road." By Pepe Escobar, ZeroHedge, 7/4/21.

Thank you, Jesus.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, eminent scholar, departs the University of North Carolina to delight and inform the journalism students at Howard University.^[1]

Nothing says "scholar" in my book so much as bright red clown hair but that's just me. The quality of her work, however, is beyond dispute. Fact, Jack.

Well, ok. Sincere condolences to those future Howard students who will find that they enrolled in a course on creative writing instead of something remotely connected to the trade of journalism. In an uncharacteristic burst of cynicism, however, I do predict an initial standing ovation from the students.

And sincere condolences to the UNC students she left behind. Their eventual degree will be conferred by an institution that will be forever remembered as being governed by cowards who give new meaning to the word "craven."

Notes
^[1] "1619 Project Creator Nikole Hannah-Jones Rejects UNC Tenure Offer." By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 7/6/21.

Pearls of expression.

Corporations like Warner Music Group, Sony Music Group, and Comcast gave donations of $100 million each to social justice organizations like BLM just this month. I mean, we all know how underrepresented blacks are in the music industry. Apparently, the U.S. music industry had decided that promoting gangster culture, violence, drug use, and objectification of women for decades in rap music hasn’t been quite destructive enough in perverting black culture in America. They needed to do more by donating millions to organizations that literally burn, pillage and loot in poor black communities as well.

"The United States in Crisis: The Politics of Racism And the Coming Storm." By Cato, South Front, 6/24/20.

The F-86 Sabre jet.

This is from an interesting article about air combat in Korea:

As in the [case] of Spitfires during the Battle of Britain, F86s were fighting against heavy odds in Korea. Approximately 800 MiGs were based in Manchuria and China. The Soviet Union had supplied China with more sweptwing fighters than the United States had even produced. It was common to encounter 150 or more MiG-15s twice a day against no more than thirty-two Sabres. The 4th Fighter Wing, with a World War II record of 1,016½ enemy aircraft destroyed, had fought steadily rising odds, eventually reaching as high as ten to one. When the 51st Fighter Wing converted to the F-86, these odds dropped to seven to one.^[1]

Even the Sabre was not a slam dunk superior A/C over the MiG-15, which retained a significant advantage at very high altitudes. The radar gunsight added later to the Sabre changed the odds significantly.

The article also describes the superiority of the F-104 Starfighter, which came after the F-86 though it did not see service in Korea.

Here's a cool cockpit view of the Sabre.

See also my earlier post -- 15 years ago! -- about "Soviet fighter pilots in Korea."

Notes
^[1] "A Fighter Pilot’s Airplane." By James Jabara USAF, Air Force Magazine, 8/1/60.

Now we know.

The fed hasn’t started to end QE yet. In fact, it hasn’t even set a date to start the taper. All the fed’s money printers have done is admit that they have begun to discuss when to think about a time for the start of tapering $120b per month in asset purchases.^[1]

And that's definite.

And then there's that healthy return to normal that's just around the corner:

The simple truth is, asset values and debt levels have grown to become such enormous monstrosities that they prohibit the tightening of monetary policy much at all before the entire fragile and artificial edifice collapses.^[2]

Or not.

Notes
^[1] "Michael Pento: How Central Banks Murdered The Markets." By Michael Pento, ZeroHedge, 6/30/21.
^[2] Id.

True up to a point.

In conclusion, I think it abundantly clear that what we have been told about what took place [involving Sergei and Yulia Skripal] on 4th March in the beautiful city of Salisbury is not, in fact, true. It is clear that something else happened, and much of what we have seen since then has been theatre and an attempt to cover up what actually took place.^[1]

Mr. Helmer is nothing if not meticulous in nailing down every last detail of whatever he's writing about. Quite an understatement let it be said. The events of the day when the Skripals were eventually found on the bench in town, the honking lack of a chain of custody of their blood samples taken at the hospital, the GRU "assassins" loud partying with whores story, the nerve agent in a perfume bottle disposed of in the trash, the extreme goosiness of Her Majesty's coroners respecting the death of Dawn Sturgess, and, last but not least, the ultra-uber weirdness of the case of the vanishing Skripals in whom the U.S. government apparently has an extreme interest have the internal coherence of a Monty Python script about an accountant wanting to become a lion tamer.

The supposed absolute necessity of tearing off the roof of Sergei's house is a major tell that all is not as it is being represented by the U.K. government, as Mr. Helmer points out. I wonder what it was that Skripal might have poisoned himself and his daughter with. If he did, whatever it was it wasn't a novichok agent as it took its sweet time taking effect. The Skripals clearly enjoyed a leisurely drink at a pub with Sergei's former or present MI6 handler, Pablo Miller, and then a meal before collapsing on the bench just as the chief nurse of the British army happened to be passing by. What a stroke of luck that was!

Ok. Moving right along. Maybe what supposedly poisoned the Skripals had nothing to do with the house but had everything to do with what they ate and/or drank in town. That way one doesn't have to explain the long delay between exposure and result and thus the question of the hour is what was actually in Sergei's house that required removal of the roof and extensive renovation?

I have no insight into that. Back in the years after WWII there was a couple who operated as Soviet spies in Britain. It was later discovered that they had rigged a radio antenna inside their attic but that hardly would be necessary in today's world of the internet of things if Sergei were acting as a triple agent all along. So something besides communication gear.

What was going on in Skripal's house is still a mystery to me but it had nothing to do with a nerve agent. Regardless, it was something hugely important to both the U.K. and U.S. governments. It's almost as though there were a connection between Porton Down and some kind of dangerous pathogen. Did Sergei accidentally reveal something about what was going on at Porton Down? I'm not insinuating there was but with the hindsight of 2021 one can understand why questions about biological research in Britain might be inconvenient. He did have to have a tracheostomy IIRC. Because he had breathing problems? I'll have to double check that.

My two cents.

Notes
^[1] "British Government Demolishes Skripal House, Roof Falls In On Theresa May As Evidence Grows That Sergei Skripal Poisoned Himself By Accident." By John Helmer, Dances with Bears, 1/17/19.

Pearls of expression.

On the topic of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace views on equity and antiracism in nuclear policymaking:

So, nuclear power is now racist. Poor [Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Ryabkov, poor [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov--now you understand why Lavrov is a chain smoker? You would become one when you have to deal with woke imbeciles who have nuclear weapons and nuclear power at their disposal--a classic case of a monkey with a grenade. I am sure they need diversity officers on US Navy's SSBNs of Ohio-class and operators of US nuclear power stations should only be judged and allowed to carry out their duties at the controls of nuclear power stations only after they pass Critical Race Theory exam, which, of course, automatically opens many vacancies for "diverse voices". The US is becoming a third world country with an astonishing speed. So, famous Lavrov's meme is perfectly applicable to this situation.

I'm not sure what Mr. Martyanov means by Lavrov's meme. Perhaps he means Putin's assertion that the U.S. is not agreement capable but I suspect Martyanov would not make such a mistake.

I like the Andrei Andreevich Gromyko's "famous dictum that ten years of negotiations is better than one day of war" that is referred to earlier in the post. Personally, I don't enjoy looking at photos or stills of any of the wars of the last century. The suffering, death, and absolute idiocy are unpleasant to contemplate now. But the fools that run this country are twice as reckless and stupid as the men who started WWI. That slaughter means precisely nothing to our morons. Not to mention the unnecessary slaughter of the War for Southern Indpendence.

Notes
^[1] "And So It Starts." By Andrei Martyanov, Reminiscence of the Future..., 6/23/21.

Liberty's last gleaming.

Suffice it to say that when and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America: how a nation that once abided by the rule of law and held the government accountable for its actions has steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided, a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance.^[1]

The quotation above captures the steady, relentless shift from a nation of free people to a people who are becoming ciphers in their own land where liberty, privacy, the rule of law, neutral electoral mechanisms, and simple rationality are all but gone. Corporate money and individual billionaires have inordinate influence in elections and massive media outlets deluge the nation in lies and "narratives" that spring effortlessly into the national "conversation" overnight.

Public policy and legislation are playthings for anybody but ordinary citizens. Agencies make a pretence of soliciting public views on proposed regulations but on important issues insiders will write the final drafts with deft dismissal of inconvenient public views. "We considered the thoughtful views of the XL pipeline workers but the imperatives of forestalling climate change . . . ."

Mobs can dominate the streets in the blink of an eye over manufactured nothings and then we go from a nation of ubiquitous government to one of invisible government.

There's still a veneer of freedom but any of us can be doxxed and find our cars torched, our jobs gone, our credit cards canceled, or our dwelling McCloskeyized. Sources of crowd funding can become instantly unavailable to those too well informed, too patriotic, or too white. Blogs can be canceled by quasi private tech giants doing the government's First Amendment dirty work. Salutary state laws can be ignored by fatuous federal prosecutions for violation of "civil rights" or the vagaries of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. Civil rights, equal protection, and due process are magical concepts that the feds can mine like the Comstock Lode to make BOHICA the replacement for Annuit cœptis" on the Great Seal of the United States.

Even without this, it's a fool's game to think mere schlubs can overcome the money of the uber rich and the media monopolies. The steering wheel has come off in our hands.

Long live populism, devolution, nullification, fully informed juries, closed borders, deportations ad astra, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. And here's to a joyous tar and feathering of corporate CEO who sponsors BLM (Blacks Liberating Merchandise) and every RINO and limp-wristed "conservative" with not a lick of fight in them.

Notes
^[1] "The FBI's Mafia-Style Justice: To Fight Crime, The FBI Sponsors 15 Crimes A Day." By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, ZeroHedge, 6/20/21.

Eternal hostility to legacy Americans.

In the 1960s, African American’s opposed to the Vietnam war adopted the slogan “No Viet Cong ever called me n1g.ger” — the real enemy, they surmised, was white people at home in the United States. Legacy Americans must make a similar realisation: “No Chicom ever called me racist”. The biggest threat today isn’t Russia or China, it’s the permanent regime in Washington. Woke excesses are so often met with eye-rolling, jokes and memes. The last institutional redoubts of the worlds preeminent military power are being captured by woke derangement. That’s of world-historical significance.^[1]

This is an eye-opening piece. It sets out the rot that is at the heart of America today. The woke left is certifiable but -- with the able and enthusiastic assistance of the monopoly treason media -- it is effective, unbelievably malicious, and the enemy of common decency.

Pardon the demure language in the title and the slight edit in the quoted language. It's merely to minimize the chances that it -- or this site -- will mysteriously disappear. Such are our times.

Notes
^[1] "The Intersectional Empire Takes on the World." By Oliver Williams, The Unz Review, 6/18/21.

Who is this toad?

As of September 2020, there were 31 Soros-backed DAs in the United States. That might not sound like a lot, but it includes the DAs of Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, and St. Louis. All told, tens of millions of Americans are now victims of the Soros racket in the form of their local top prosecutor.^[1]

American's seem to be genetically unaware of sedition. Anyone pushing for open borders is guilty of rank treason. An anti-white revolution is underway and whites remain in a stupor. George Soros is second to none in financing everything that is vile and destructive here and in Europe. And he's beloved by the political class.

Notes
^[1] "Godfather of Color Revolutions: Is George Soros the Most Dangerous Man Alive?" By Ammodotcom, ZeroHedge, 6/18/21.