domain:alexberenson.substack.com
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4m ago
However one slices the events at Maidan, they represented mostly an internal event (the impetus for change came from forces in Ukraine moreso than the West) until the invasion of Crimea made it fundamentally a war between nations.
The issue is that Russians aren't Hajnali liberals with their cuck fetish of getting shafted due to the fear of being seen as improper.
If we were to assume it was the West that toppled the Yanuk government, this sentence becomes faintly ironic - what, the West should have accepted getting shafted (ie not have the association agreement signed, Ukraine moving closer to the Russian camp etc.) due to the fear of being seen as improper?
The few AAQCs I have all seem to be among my longest posts, in which I ramble aimlessly. Never the ones I feel were actually best and that managed to make a clear point.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
25m ago
(and "complete subjugation of all ideological opponents" is not achievable)
No, there are paths there. They're just terrible paths that amount to Pyrrhic victory, and which we don't want to take. The obvious one is "nuclear war, half of SJers literally die in a fire, the other half get blamed for weakening the West and thus allowing Beijing/Moscow to challenge us".
OliveTapenade
37m ago
Some people have blamed activist religious groups on aggressively lobbying the payment processors for this crackdown.
Can we look for specifics here? This comes from Collective Shout, which is not a religious organisation, and in their FAQ claim that the accusation that they're "easily offender, prudish, moralisers, or religious fundamentalists" is a deflection tactic used by others in bad faith.
As a prudish religious person myself, I don't think there's anything bad with being one, but the idea that we specifically were behind this seems false.
OliveTapenade
41m ago
I'd argue that media coverage is misleading, though - Collective Shout and Melinda Reist are best understood as feminists. Their own self-description is entirely secular, and their feminism tag suggests some crossover with the movement. I searched their website with the tag 'Christian' and most of what I found was references to the male lead in Fifty Shades of Grey.
I can see no evidence that Collective Shout are a Christian organisation of any kind. Reist herself is a Christian, but that on its own hardly seems like an issue.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
57m ago
Yes but you know perfectly well that I mean 'annexing Greenland like Trump kept talking about' rather than 'keeping a military base that's already there'.
Dean
Flairless
1hr ago
Bernie would not have won regardless of what the DNC did.
Sure, though whether his wing would have won the nomination is besides the point to whether his wing would have won a stronger and more prominent place in the administration that followed. But there's losing a fair contest, and there's losing a rigged contest, and there's losing a contest the managers swear is fair but then get exposed for rigging. @FirmWeird recalls some additional shenanigans I'd forgotten of exposed DNC issues.
The issue isn't mitigated because 'well, the Bernie wing wouldn't have won the nomination anyway.' That's a results-focused paradigm that only cares about the winner. A large part of the point of democratic contests is to persuade the losers of the election of the legitimacy of their defeat, so that they can work together afterwards. A betrayal of trust that doesn't actually change the results is just as bad for the people it disillusions as a betrayal that does change the results, the only difference is the degree or number of people it disillusions.
Whether Sanders would have built momentum after a better super Tuesday is a fair question. But it was a question that could not be answered because of deliberate efforts to prevent it from being asked.
And preventing it from being asked had tangible and visible effects on the trajectory of the Democratic Party, upto and including how rather than increase the leverage and influence of the economic-left/populist wing of the Party (the Bernie wing), the Biden consolidation then led to Biden compromising with the culture-left wing of the party, such as on DEI and trans-issues. This included manning decisions such as his promise to have a woman as his vice president, which followed progressive stack logic which led to Harris, who was a disaster.
I'm not making a claim that if everyone else had stayed in but Warren dipped out for the good of the populist-left then Bernie Sanders might have become Vice President. But the nature of a proportional representation system is that the people with the bigger proportions of the voter base get more influence in forming the next government, and if you want a coalition of people bought into the premise, conspiracies that their efforts are being conspired against don't exactly lead to inter-party trust, and do lead to the sort of inter-party conflict that followed.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1hr ago
His election denial changed that. The idea that the vote is generally fair and sacred was previously a universal of US politics. Sure, candidates would sometimes quibble over individual districts with irregularities and might need the SCOTUS to resolve their differences, but at least once a verdict was in, the losing side would accept the result and concede. Trump was the first candidate whose ego could not admit defeat, and his party mostly backed him in his lies. J6 showed that he was not committed to a peaceful transfer of power.
Well, I guess the question here is "is it really any worse to try to overturn an election, claiming it was fraudulent, than to agree an election was free/fair and then try to overturn it anyway?"
Because, well, after Trump won in 2016 there was a scheme to have the Electoral College throw out the results, and there were riots trying to prevent the inauguration.
It's especially ironic that you mention the phrase "peaceful transfer of power", because I found an interview with one of the organisers of the latter, in which he said:
There has been a lot of talk of peaceful transition of power as being a core element in a democracy and we want to reject that entirely and really undermine the peaceful transition.
Don't get me wrong; J6 was bad. But to claim it was unprecedented is... inaccurate.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
Should I post the recently closed Ukrainian court case about the Maidan snipers?
yes please.
No_one
1hr ago
Toppling a duly elected and acceptable government by force to replace it with a hostile one, to get a strategic edge is an act of war. The issue is that Russians aren't Hajnali liberals with their cuck fetish of getting shafted due to the fear of being seen as improper.
Should I post the recently closed Ukrainian court case about the Maidan snipers? Looks like a lot of people who were shot in the back by right sector guys adding heat to the confrontation did not appreciate their promotion to martyrs yo revolution, and talked.
Well, that statement of mine is purposely simplistic, to kind of try to get at the point.
First, this is closer to what I actually believe (or naturally am inclined to jump to): I'd expand that statement to a belief in a general state of equilibrium when it comes to abusing the power of the government (especially by the Right), such that if actors go too far, then there will be a reaction against those actors whether by checks and balances in the law or by other means (though I'm glad that checks and balances do exist to help along the equilibrium, unlike in the social justice mob case). I definitely don't believe in the automatic axiomatic morality or infallibility of written laws.
Second, I know that overall my general high level belief in this equilibrium is a simplistic belief that probably doesn't hold true all of the time. This is just like my wife's simplistic belief that the power of social justice mobs will never go too far, because she believes in an equilibrium; that if they push the societal norms too far the societal backlash will correct it. Neither of us trusts the other's belief in the equilibrium, but we maintain analogous simplistic beliefs ourselves.
Neutrality as a default.
A schelling fence of "Will process all transactions for legal goods." is more stable than "Will process all transactions for legal goods, except ones I morally dislike.". Yet informal sanctions by payment processors against Japan were met by much more mixed reception in the English speaking communities, that is not wholly negative like restrictions on itch.io and Steam have been. The logic of "First they came for..." was not considered.
To be expected, really. Japanese media has long faced censorship abroad, usually swept under the moniker "localization". Once the logic that consenting a Japanese adult and a consenting American adult must require the consent of every intermediary to communicate, the leap towards foreigners regulating communication between two consenting Japanese adults only requires foreigners thinking their moral code is universally applicable. A very common viewpoint in the era where particularism is disregarded.
Manga Library Z, a website legally hosting out of print manga, who director is the acclaimed manga artist and polician Ken Akamatsu, shut down in late R6 (2024) due to credit company's decision to prevent payments. (The site has since come back up, but without the option to pay with MasterCard or Visa cards). In April of last year, www.dlsite.com, removed the option to pay with the previously two mentioned cards, but also with American Express. Remaining payment option are probably unfamiliar to gaijin. Fantia was on the chopping block next month, but AmEx was still able to be used. (Fantia also supports "Toracoin", but the ways to buy it are the same as for Fantia, so it does not function as a loophole) Visa defended its conduct that was incomptable with being a common carrier on the grounds of "protecting the brand" (1).
This article is a good overview.
(1) MasterCard's 5.12.7, paragraph 2, PDF:
The sale of a product or service, including an image, which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value (such as, by way of example and not limitation, images of nonconsensual sexual behavior, sexual exploitation of a minor, nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part, and bestiality), or any other material that the Corporation deems unacceptable to sell in connection with a Mark.
vs Visa's 1.3.3.4, PDF:
A Member must not use the Visa-Owned Marks:
ln any manner that may bring the Visa-Owned Marks or Visa Inc. or its affiliates into disrepute
ln relation to, or for the purchase or trade of, photographs, video imagery, computer-generated images, cartoons, simulation, or any other media or activities including, but not limited to, any of the following:
– Child sexual abuse materials
– Incest
– Bestiality
– Rape (or any other non-consensual sexual behavior)
– Non-consensual mutilation of a person or body part
These restrictions have nothing to do with the law in Japan, but are a random selection of the worst legal restrictions on speech in the developed world (there are legal restrictions on depictions of mutilation are in Japan, but that part is not used to interfere with commerce outside of Japan by MC/V, while Australian restrictions are used against Japanese merchants) with the added carte blanche "deems unnacceptable" and "bring into disrepute". They of course are too wide to be applied to all, thus the enforcer is given the lattitude to threaten almost any storefront selling media not explicitly for children. And also create a chilling effect. That "reputation of the brand" is something that is explicitly noted in the rules, is why the MasterCard's statement just over a month ago, that MasterCard will process all lawful payment was seen as duplicitous.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1hr ago
Because we live in a progressive-dominated society where these narrative frameworks carry legitimizing weight, if you view yourself in opposition to this machine then opposing these becomes the pragmatic approach regardless of their veracity.
Yes, that's great, let's do that.
Just, please, let's do it without relitigating over and over in how far the exact mechanisms of mass killings in WW2 worked or didn't work. Can we instead just decalre the whole topic a nullity and move on?
What I find always find humorous, are all the progressive attempts to play it cool after getting caught proverbially wetting their pants. Sweeny didn't become anyone's darling, the left flipped out and started screaming "Nazi!", everyone else was just laughing at that. Her conduct, or how many children she will have, has no relevance to the situation.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1hr ago
and if it's legal, then that's how the system is supposed to work. I have faith that our institutions have the checks and balances to deal with any presidential overreach appropriately.
Setting the Trump issue aside, this seems overly naive to me. Laws are exploitable. Many laws are designed to be exploitable. Gerrymandering, lobbying, pork barrel spending, filibustering: these were all created by finding a tiny crack in the wording of a law that was intended for normal common sense behavior and then bending the interpretation and exploiting it towards some obviously unintended but technically legal end. Heck, 90% of the federal governments actions are "constitutional" only on the basis of deliberately misinterpreting the Commerce Clause. As long as they can convince a judge to sign off on it, literally anything could be considered legal on the basis of literally any existing law.
The law is not automatically moral, or just, or well-designed. Broadly speaking we should have respect for it and follow it because that creates a predictable and orderly society. But that's while keeping an eye on it to make sure it leads to good outcomes, and the instant it stops doing that we ought to have an emergency scramble to fix the loophole before people get used to it and think that's normal. Not that that's what they usually do, usually half the politicians are the ones exploiting the loophole and block any attempts to fix it by the other party. But that would be an appropriate response, rather than shrugging and saying "if it's legal it's intended behavior." Politicians are too good at deceitful word games for that to be true.
Botond173
1hr ago
Recently there was Sydney Sweeney, who somehow became a darling of the online right while being famous for getting naked and simulating sex on screen.
What I find most ironic about the whole "good jeans" controversy is that there's a strong possibility that she'll actually end up not passing on her genes i.e. she'll either remain childless or end up adopting.
Thanks as always for asking.
I finished my refactoring, ironed out some early runtime errors, and finally got to see things run and...not work, at all. Unreal really doesn't make code-based procedural generation easy. My meshes aren't visible, the Actor hierarchy completely lacks all subcomponents that I generated, and so obviously nothing can happen.
I need to do some research or go back to the Discord to ask some questions for this. Most likely I'm either doing some small thing wrong, or else I'm doing it all entirely wrong and this kind of runtime proc-gen just isn't meant to happen in Unreal.
Feels like one of the biggest problems Unreal has for me, bigger yet than it using C++ for scripting or its monstrous size, is the fact that so much of it is built around blueprints.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
The establishment probably wouldn't, given how risk-averse most Germans are.
The establishment's far-left Handlangers, though...if they actually had the mythical heart attack gun, I'm perfectly sure they'd find someone willing to pull the trigger. Mid-level AfD candidates being the target doesn't strike me as unlikely either, given that those are both soft targets and highly detested by the left.
But that's assuming such a thing exists and somehow found its way into the hands of very discreet extremists.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
Yup, though mostly having fun. I haven't really looked into it, and I don't know if the German establishment would take things that far.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
Are you referring to those dead AfD people?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
In that case, I'll add a fourth point to what cjet said: globalization sucks so fucking much, man. The fact that a noname group, from a country that lost a war to emus, can pull this off is so ridiculous...
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
Germany must have started stocking up on heart attack guns this early, and there were none left to use on Trump.
odd_primes
2hr ago
Apparently the most recent controversy was sparked by an Australian Christian feminist organization called Collective Shout. They are the anti-porn and anti-prostitution type of feminists though, so left-wing media coverage generally just describes them as "conservative" or "Christian".
wat
I honestly don't understand what you're trying to say there, and I hope there's a rule against this kind of formulation.
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