Milos Uzelac

Didn't respond to the content of my post or my arguments though. I even bolded the most important aspects of the article so it's readable and can be easily skimmed through and responded to. And yes also: They would not be paying for the free world's defense (as the US is). Is a codeword for U.S. imperialism, white supremacy, and military hegemony across the globe (I wonder if those Palestinians in Israel are free as second-class citizens in an apartheid state that's engaged in the systemic ethnic cleansing of them and their children and with a barbaric bombing campaign in Gaza with the U.S. supplied weapons and military annual budget aid of 4 billion to the Israeli military). 3) It's a joke to call people from the EU or from brain draining other countries as an immigrant burden. It's not an economic inconvenience. You're not special. Almost any USA state doing this would leave the rest of the country behind. This is exactly what the U.S. and other Western countries did up till the end of the original Cold War. ''The term "brain drain" was coined by the Royal Society to describe the emigration of "scientists and technologists" to North America from post-war Europe. The myth of brain drain effects: ''A 2017 study of Mexican immigrant households in the United States found that by virtue of moving to the United States, the households increase their incomes more than fivefold immediately. The study also found that the "average gains accruing to migrants surpass those of even the most successful current programs of economic development.'' ''Research also finds that migration leads to greater trade in goods and services between the sending and receiving countries. Using 130 years of data on historical migrations to the United States, one study finds "that a doubling of the number of residents with ancestry from a given foreign country relative to the mean increases by 4.2 percentage points the probability that at least one local firm invests in that country, and increases by 31% the number of employees at domestic recipients of FDI from that country. The size of these effects increases with the ethnic diversity of the local population, the geographic distance to the origin country, and the ethnolinguistic fractionalization of the origin country." ''A 2019 study in the Journal of Political Economy found that Swedish emigration to the United States during the late 19th and early 20th century strengthened the labor movement and increased left-wing politics and voting trends. The authors argue that the ability to emigrate strengthened the bargaining position of labor, as well as provided exit options for political dissidents who might have been oppressed.'' "A 2017 paper found that the emigration opportunities to the United States for high-skilled Indians provided by the H-1B visa program surprisingly contributed to the growth of the Indian IT sector. A greater number of Indians were induced to enroll in computer science programs in order to move to the United States; however, a large number of these Indians never moved to the United States (due to caps in the H-1B program) or returned to India after the completion of their visas." ''Research also suggests that emigration, remittances, and return migration can have a positive impact on political institutions and democratization in the country of origin. ''Migration leads to lower levels of terrorism. Return migration from countries with liberal gender norms has been associated with the transfer of liberal gender norms to the home country. A 2009 study finds that foreigners educated in democracies foster democracy in their home countries. Studies find that leaders who were educated in the West are significantly more likely to improve their country's prospects of implementing democracy. A 2016 study found that Chinese immigrants exposed to Western media censored in China became more critical of their home government's performance on the issues covered in the media and less trusting in official discourse. A 2014 study found that remittances decreased corruption in democratic states.'' So why is it an inconvenience for non-whites to move to the U.S and Western European countries if they can bring benefits back to their home countries of origin? This is exactly what the U.S. and other Western countries did up till the end of the original Cold War: ''Human capital flight in Europe fits into two distinct trends. The first is an outflow of highly qualified scientists from Western Europe mostly to the United States. The second is a migration of skilled workers from Central and Southeastern Europe into Western Europe, within the EU. While in some countries the trend may be slowing, certain South European countries such as Italy continue to experience extremely high rates of human capital flight. The European Union has noted a net loss of highly skilled workers and introduced a "blue card" policy – much like the American green card – which "seeks to draw an additional 20 million workers from Asia, Africa, and the Americas in the next two decades". Although the EU recognizes a need for extensive immigration to mitigate the effects of an aging population, national populist political parties have gained support in many European countries by calling for stronger laws restricting immigration. Immigrants are perceived both as a burden on the state and the cause of social problems such as increased crime rates and the introduction of major cultural differences.'' and brain-drain trends within the U.S. itself: ''Perhaps the biggest problem afflicting America is its widening geographic divide between the winners and losers of the knowledge economy. A raft of studies has documented the growing divergence between places based on their ability to attract, retain, and cluster highly educated and skilled workers and to develop high-tech startup companies. Talented and skilled Americans are the most likely to move by far. While the overall rate of mobility among Americans has declined over the past decade or so, still, between one-quarter and one-third of U.S. adults have moved within the previous five years, a higher rate of mobility than just about any other country on the globe. But behind this lies a tale of two migrations: the skilled and educated “mobile” on the one hand and the less educated “stuck” on the other.'' ''Over the past 50 years, the United States has experienced major shifts in geographic mobility patterns among its highly-educated citizens. Some states today are keeping and receiving a greater share of these adults than they used to, while many others are both hemorrhaging their homegrown talent and failing to attract out-of-staters who are highly educated. This phenomenon has far-reaching implications for our collective social and political life, extending beyond the economic problems for states that lose highly-educated adults. This report describes what this so-called “brain drain” looks like across the 50 U.S. states. We use data from the 1940 through 2000 decennial censuses and the 2010 and 2017 American Community Surveys to measure brain drain in each state. We define a highly-educated “leaver” as someone in the top third of the national education distribution who resides in a state other than her birth state between the ages of 31 and 40. We then analyze brain drain using two measures: “gross” brain drain and “net” brain drain. Gross brain drain is defined as the share of leavers who are highly educated minus the share of adults who remain in their birth state (“stayers”) who are highly educated. Net brain drain is the share of leavers who are highly educated minus the share of entrants to a state who are highly educated. We find that brain drain (and brain gain) states tend to fall along regional lines, although there are a number of exceptions to this general rule. Overall, dynamic states along the Boston-Washington corridor (Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland), on the West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington), and in other parts of the country (Illinois, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and Hawaii) are the best at retaining and attracting highly-educated adults. Meanwhile, states in northern New England (New Hampshire and Vermont), the Rust Belt (Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Missouri), the Plains (North and South Dakota and Iowa), and the Southeast (West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana), as well as Delaware, fare the worst on both counts. We also find that most of the top-performing, brain gain states experienced improvements in terms of the gross drain, net drain, or both from 1970 to 2017. On the other hand, many brain drain states, especially in the Southeast, have seen declining fortunes on one or both of these measures during this period. Others, including most of the Rust Belt states, have consistently faced high gross drain and net drain over the past half-century. Our report provides evidence that highly-educated adults flowing to dynamic states with major metropolitan areas are, to a significant extent, leaving behind more rural and post-industrial states. This geographic sorting of the nation’s most-educated citizens may be among the factors driving economic stagnation—and declining social capital—in certain areas of the country. If we are connecting less with communities and people who are different than us, we could be more likely to see adversaries among those in whom we might otherwise find a neighbor.'' from: https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019/4/losing-our-minds-brain-drain-across-the-united-states

2. Consider if the citizens only paid taxes to the state government instead of federal income tax. (Claim for EU member states) Data from 2016 for Sweden: Sweden Population 9,851,017 GDP EUR 465,201 mil. GDP per capita EUR 47,224 Share in imports of goods to the EU 2.10 % Net contribution to the EUEUR 2,130.59 mil. Net contribution to the EU in % of GDP 0.46 % Net contribution to the EU per capita 216.28 In 2016 the taxpayers of Sweden contributed to the European Union 216 euros per head over what they received. Since its accession to the EU the country has paid to the European Union EUR 33707 million over what it has received. Select a year in the upper right-hand corner to see details for other years. Note that this breakdown compares fiscal transfers only and does not include other costs and benefits connected with membership in the EU (administrative costs, co-funding of EU projects, effects of EU legislation on domestic prices etc.). Kingdom of Sweden is a member of the European Union since 1995 when it left the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Sweden's Accession Treaty is available here. https://www.money-go-round.eu/Country.aspx?id=SE Data from 2011: "With an annual budget of over €129bn, the EU is an economic power in its own right, more significant than many countries. So, how do those finances break down? This latest detailed data - from 2011 - shows where the hard cash goes - and where it flows from. We wanted to look at how the figures break down. Extracted from the EU budget site, we've gone for the most detailed recent numbers. Most of the EU's money comes from member nation contributions, €103.2bn in 2011. It's not completely straightforward - especially if you use the UK as an example. So, where does the money go? €118.4bn of it is spent inside the EU - the rest goes on aid and development outside the community. These are the official definitions - and what they really mean. • Administration Running the EU in each country • The EU as a global partner International aid, activities outside the EU • Citizenship, freedom, security and justice Asylum, education and culture • Preservation and management of natural resources Common agricultural policy, environment, fishing 2. Nor would they be paying for poor state's social programs just as Scandinavians don't pay • Cohesion for growth and employment Helping poorer regions of Europe • Competitiveness for growth and employment Economic growth grants to small business, science and research Germany, as the biggest economy, is also the biggest contributor, Poland is the biggest receiver. The UK contributes much more than it receives too, about €4.7bn more. Why the gap? The UK is a rich country and the EU points out that although it spends less in the UK than the national contribution, the British economy gains much more from access to European markets and contracts. How much does each country give and receive per person? If you look at national contributions from and spending in each country, Luxembourg is the biggest receiver in Europe. However, those figures are skewed by its tiny population of 502,000 people and the fact that it is home to several EU institutions, including the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Auditors, Eurostat and the Secretariat of the European Parliament. EU total contributions and spending: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/22/eu-budget-spending-contributions-european-union#data Sweden's contribution to the EU as of today: "Sweden's contribution to the EU is approx. SEK 24–44 billion of the central government budget. Sweden gets back approx. SEK 10–13 billion in the form of various kinds of support from the EU." From Wikipedia Sweden's contribution from European Union 2009-2019 Published by Statista Research Department, Jul 23, 2020 "In 2019, the Swedish government received roughly 12.6 billion Swedish kronor from the European Union. That was the second highest amount during the time under consideration. The highest contribution from the EU was made in 2010, reaching nearly 13 billion kronor." https://www.statista.com/statistics/530450/sweden-budget-receipts-from-eu/

What's that percentage-wise in terms of the averages Swede's wealth and in terms of their average income? Besides, the biggest contributors are the EU member state countries that have/had the biggest economies and economic stake in the EU such as Germany and the former U.K. I presuppose there is a difference between a federal government and its spending in the countries like the U.S. and a monetary union with some supranational executive bodies, councils, parliament, and a central bank just managing a sliver of the member countries of those Unions finance and economies and investing also a sliver in some shared public combined projects in terms of all those countries combined economy. I don't think a parallel and an allegory between an EU member state and a federal state in the U.S. is a good comparison to make for example of equating a federal state like Connecticut and an EU member state country like Sweden. I don't think, given the data you yourself supplied that comparison is apt in regards to the relationship between the federal government of the U.S. with U.S. states and the EU as a monetary union and its supranational bodies with an EU member state such as Sweden who has its own independent economy and system in regards to the EU that still uses Swedish krona as it's currency. Sweden is not in NATO first and foremost. ''In 1949 Sweden chose not to join NATO and declared a security policy aiming for non-alignment in peace and neutrality in war. A modified version now qualifies non-alignment in peace for possible neutrality in war. As such, the Swedish government decided not to participate in the membership of NATO because they wanted to remain neutral in a potential war. This position was maintained without much discussion during the Cold War. Since the 1990s however there has been an active debate in Sweden on the question of NATO membership in the post–Cold War world. Sweden joined Partnership for Peace in 1994. These ideological divides were visible again in November 2006 when Sweden could either buy two new transport planes or join NATO's plane pool, and in December 2006, when Sweden was invited to join the NATO Response Force. While the governing parties in Sweden have opposed membership, they have participated in NATO-led missions in Bosnia (IFOR and SFOR), Kosovo (KFOR), Afghanistan (ISAF), and Libya (Operation Unified Protector). The Swedish left bloc, including the Social Democratic party, the Green party, and the Left party have remained in favor of non-alignment. The Alliance, including the Moderate Party, the Centre Party, the conservative Christian Democrats as well as the Liberal party make up the Swedish parties with representation in the parliament today that are in favor of NATO membership. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt stated on 18 September 2007 that Swedish membership in NATO would require a "very wide" majority in Parliament, including the social democrats, and coordination with Finland. Sweden signed in 2014, and ratified in 2016, a host country agreement with NATO allowing for NATO forces to conduct joint training exercises on Swedish soil and for NATO member states' forces to be deployed in Sweden in response to threats to Sweden's national security. In October 2014, an opinion poll found for the first time more Swedes in favor of NATO membership (37%) than opposed (36%). If the situation in and around the Baltic countries were to escalate, Swedish NATO membership, possibly together with Finland, would reduce barriers to NATO intervention in the region. NATO reported in 2015 that Russia simulated a nuclear attack on Sweden in 2013. The Swedish government questioned Sweden's neutral status after the Russian intervention in Ukraine. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov threatened in 2016 to "take necessary measures" to prevent Swedish NATO membership. According to a poll conducted by Sifo in June 2016, more Swedes are against a Swedish NATO membership than in favor of one. A government-sponsored report on the future of Sweden's NATO membership was released in September 2016.'' from Wikipedia Yet it contributes as part of one of six countries (known as 'Enhanced Opportunity Partners'¹ under the Partnership Interoperability Initiative) that make particularly significant contributions to NATO operations and other Alliance objectives. As such, the country has enhanced opportunities for dialogue and cooperation with the Allies: ''Support for NATO-led operations and missions Sweden first contributed to a NATO-led operation in 1995 when it sent a battalion to the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sweden has supported the peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR) since 1999. Swedish personnel worked alongside Allied forces as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan from 2003 to the completion of ISAF's mission in 2014. Sweden is currently supporting the follow-on Resolute Support Mission (RSM) to further train, assist and advise the Afghan security forces and institutions. Sweden has also contributed over USD 13 million to the Afghan National Army Trust Fund. In April 2011, Sweden contributed to Operation Unified Protector (OUP), NATO's military operation in Libya under UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973. Sweden also participates in NATO Mission Iraq (NMI), NATO’s advisory, training and capacity-building mission in Iraq. Wider cooperation Sweden engages with NATO's Civil Emergency Planning Committee and cooperates with Allies on regional assessments, critical infrastructure protection, and providing support in dealing with the consequences of a major accident or disaster in the Euro-Atlantic area. Sweden has participated in numerous NATO crisis management exercises, and Swedish civil resources have been listed with the Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC), including search and rescue teams, medical experts, and protection and decontamination units. Sweden regularly conducts major multifunctional civil-military-police exercises (the Viking exercises), which involve many other nations as well as participants from international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and agencies. Under NATO's Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Programme, Swedish scientists are actively contributing to a number of activities pertaining to counter-terrorism, chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) defense, and environmental security. Notably, experts from Sweden are involved in a top-down project with the primary objective of building long-term capacity for the evaluation of programs to counter violent extremism. Sweden actively supports the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), and since 2012 has hosted the Nordic Centre for Gender in Military Operations at the Swedish Armed Forces International Centre, to make sure that gender perspectives continue to be integrated into military operations. Sweden supports a number of NATO Trust Fund projects in other partner countries, focused on areas such as training and evaluation of military units; medical rehabilitation of injured military personnel; explosive ordnance disposal and countering improvised explosive devices; and professional development of security sector employees.'' from https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_52535.htm That's the issue of the massive military spending by the federal government of your country that goes from the state's taxes to a bloated military budget of over 700 billion dollars that is more than the other large military spending countries at the top of the list combined and that is running a huge deficit on the U.S. as a whole. If the U.S can spend 700 billion dollars on its military and runs a huge deficit on it no surprise it has to contribute more than some other countries combined to the shared military spending in NATO. ''Allies make direct and indirect contributions to the costs of running NATO and implementing its policies and activities. NATO common-funded budgets and programs are funded by direct contributions and equate to only 0.3% of total Allied defense spending, an equivalent of around EUR 2.5 billion to run the entirety of the Organization, its commands, and military infrastructure. Indirect – or national – contributions are the largest and come, for instance, when a member commits capabilities and/or troops to a military operation and bears the costs of the decision to do so. Direct contributions are made to finance the NATO budgets and programs for requirements that serve the interests of all 30 members – and cannot reasonably be borne by any single member – such as NATO-wide air defense or command and control systems. All 30 Allies contribute to the NATO budget on an agreed cost-share formula based on Gross National Income, which represents a small percentage of each member’s defense budget. This is the principle of common funding and demonstrates burden-sharing in action. Common funding arrangements are used to finance NATO’s principal budgets: the civil budget (NATO HQ running costs), the military budget (costs of the integrated Command Structure), and the NATO Security Investment Programme (military infrastructure and certain capabilities). Projects can also be jointly funded, which means that the participating countries can identify the requirements, the priorities, and the funding arrangements, while NATO provides political oversight. NATO’s budget has strong governance and oversight mechanisms, with Allies deciding together what is eligible for common funding, deciding how much is spent each year and setting planning figures for the medium term. The funding process is overseen by the North Atlantic Council, managed by the Resource Policy and Planning Board, and implemented by the Budget Committee and the Investment Committee.'' ''In all cases, NATO (as an organization) does not have its own armed forces, so Allies commit troops and equipment.'' In 2006, NATO Defence Ministers agreed to commit a minimum of 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defense spending to continue to ensure the Alliance’s military readiness. This guideline also serves as an indicator of a country’s political will to contribute to NATO’s common defense efforts since the defense capacity of each member has an impact on the overall perception of the Alliance’s credibility as a politico-military organization. The combined wealth of the non-US Allies, measured in GDP, exceeds that of the United States. However, non-US Allies together spend less than half of what the United States spends on defense. This imbalance has been a constant, with variations, throughout the history of the Alliance and more so since the tragic events of 11 September 2001, after which the United States significantly increased its defense spending. Today, the volume of US defense expenditure represents more than two-thirds of the defense spending of the Alliance as a whole. However, this is not the amount the United States contributes to the operational running of NATO, which is shared with all Allies according to the principle of common funding. Moreover, US defense spending also covers commitments outside the Euro-Atlantic area. It should be noted, nonetheless, that the Alliance relies on the United States for the provision of some essential capabilities, regarding, for instance, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; air-to-air refueling; ballistic missile defense; and airborne electronic warfare. The effects of the 2007-2008 financial crisis and the declining share of resources devoted to defense in many Allied countries, up to 2014, have exacerbated this imbalance and also revealed growing asymmetries in capability among European Allies. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom together represent more than 50% of the non-US Allies' defense spending. At the Wales Summit in 2014, in response to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and the turmoil in the Middle East, NATO Leaders agreed to reverse the trend of declining defense budgets and decided: Allies currently meeting the 2% guideline on defense spending will aim to continue to do so; Allies whose current proportion of GDP spent on defense is below this level will: halt any decline; aim to increase defense expenditure in real terms as GDP grows; and aim to move towards the 2% guideline within a decade with a view to meeting their NATO Capability Targets and filling NATO’s capability shortfalls. While the 2% of GDP guideline alone is no guarantee that money will be spent in the most effective and efficient way to acquire and deploy modern capabilities, it remains, nonetheless, an important indicator of the political resolve of individual Allies to devote to defense a relatively small but still significant level of resources. In 2014, three Allies spent 2% of GDP or more on defense; this went up to 11 Allies in 2020 and a majority of Allies have national plans in place to meet this target by 2024.'' ''At the Wales Summit in 2014, NATO Leaders agreed that, within a decade, Allies who are spending less than 20% of their annual defense spending on major equipment will aim to increase their annual investments to 20% or more of total defense expenditures. In 2021, 24 of the 30 Allies will meet this guideline. All Allies will also ensure that their forces meet NATO-agreed guidelines for deployability and sustainability and other agreed output metrics; and they will see to it that their armed forces can operate together effectively, including through the implementation of agreed NATO standards and doctrines.'' ''NATO has annual budgets and programs worth around EUR 2.5 billion, which inter alia support its permanent military command structure, its current operations, and missions, and provide essential military infrastructure (including air and naval basing facilities, satellite communications, fuel pipelines, and command and control systems). This represents 0.3% of total Allied defense spending. This direct funding comes principally in two forms: common funding and joint funding. It can also come in the form of trust funds, contributions in kind, ad hoc sharing arrangements, and donations. Several factors influence the choice of funding source to address a given priority. These include the required level of integration or interoperability, affordability at the national level, the complexity of the system involved, and the potential for economies of scale. Often, a combination of funding sources is used.'' from: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm $3.1 trillion. The federal government ran a deficit of $3.1 trillion in the fiscal year 2020, more than triple the deficit for the fiscal year 2019. This year's deficit amounted to 15.2% of GDP, the greatest deficit as a share of the economy since 1945. A large part of this deficit is because of the bloated military spending. Guess who also has to pay for that deficit apart from the citizenry and the taxpayer, the central banks of European countries that have to buy U.S. government bonds. So the U.S. is not only paying for Sweden's defense via its NATO contribution, Sweden is also paying for the U.S. military deficit. It seems to me that you think, correct me if I am wrong, that immigrants from neighbouring Central and Latin American countries such as Mexico Guatemala Nicaragua Honduras, etc. aren't obliged to become or even arent Latino-American citizens of the U.S. but are some foreign immigrants that makeup just half the population of the state of Texas. What's wrong with Texas not being a non-majority white population and Sweden having 24% of foreign-born citizens?

1. Take nearly any mostly white US state such as Minnesota. These countries tend to be 90% white since they don't bring in new poor people like the US does. At least they haven't for very long They're selfish. (Claim) "25.9% As of 2020, the percentage inhabitants with a foreign background in Sweden had risen to 25.9%. As of 2010, 1.33 million people or 14.3% of the inhabitants of Sweden were foreign-born. Of these individuals, 859,000 (64.6%) were born outside the European Union and 477,000 (35.4%) were born in another EU member state.[3] Sweden has evolved from a nation of net emigration ending after World War I to a nation of net immigration from World War II onward. In 2013, immigration reached its highest level since records began, with 115,845 people migrating to Sweden while the total population grew by 88,971." In 2020, people with a foreign background accounted for 98.8% (51,073 people) and persons with a Swedish background accounted for only 1.2% (633 persons) of the population increase.[6] The official definition of foreign background (sv:utländsk bakgrund) comprises individuals either born abroad or having both parents born abroad.[7] In 2017, majorities in three municipalities had foreign backgrounds: Botkyrka (58.6%) Södertälje (53.0%) and Haparanda (51.7%).[7] In 2014, 81,300 individuals applied for asylum in Sweden, which was an increase of 50% compared to 2013 and the most since 1992. 47% of them came from Syria, followed by 21% from the Horn of Africa (mostly Eritrea and Somalia). 77% (63,000) requests were approved but it differs greatly between different groups. Nearly two weeks into October 2015, a record figure of 86,223 asylum applications was reached, and in the remaining weeks of the year that figure rose to 162,877. In 2016, 28,939 people applied for asylum,[8] after temporary border ID controls had been initiated and been in effect during 2016.[9] As of 2014, according to Statistics Sweden, there were around 17,000 total asylum immigrants from Syria, 10,000 from Iraq, 4,500 from Eritrea, 1,900 from Afghanistan, and 1,100 from Somalia.[10] In the year 2017, most asylum seekers come from Syria (267), Eritrea (263), Iraq (117), and Georgia (106).[11] According to an official report by the governmental Swedish Pensions Agency, total immigration to Sweden for 2017 was expected to be roughly 180,000 individuals, and thereafter to number 110,000 persons every year.[12][13] Immigrants in Sweden are mostly concentrated in the urban areas of Svealand and Götaland. The largest foreign-born populations residing in Sweden come from Finland, Iraq, formerly Yugoslavian countries, Poland, Iran, and Syria." from Wikipedia

Right, I'll make sure that next time I will have that in mind when we have a convo on this platform.

What can I say I think you are right on all of those points in the factual sense. Yet, for me personally, your presentation and delivery seemed off like it was coming from a place of contempt. My bad if I misjudged and projected onto you my assumptions. I owe you a sincere apology, if that is the case, my duderino as Destiny would say when I remember watching him (though I think I remember he would rarely apologize and only to a few people he ad hominemd heavily after the debate was over).

She is not even referring in a 'spiritual' sense but even in a scientifically materially measurable way: "Humanity is becoming more conscious. It is. This is not a popular thing to say in the more cynical and pessimistic corners of the internet, but it’s true. I’m not referring to anything “out there” or “spiritual” when I make this assertion. I’m talking about a mundane reality that is easily verifiable by casual observation if you just look past all the headlines and narrative chatter to see the big picture as a whole. Humans are becoming more and more aware of what’s going on, both in our world and in ourselves, as our ability to network and share information with each other becomes greater and greater. Because of the ubiquitousness of smartphones and social media, things like police brutality and the abuse of Palestinians are no longer regarded as mere verbal assertions made by their victims but as concrete realities which must be addressed. The most viral posts of the day on apps like Twitter, Reddit, and TikTok are routinely just people making relatable observations about their feelings and psychological tendencies and what it’s like to be human." She concludes about the significance and power of becoming more and raising consciousness about the world and reality itself: "These things matter. Seeing into each other and around our world, all the time like this, in a way we never could before the internet, can’t help but change things. It’s a consistent rule throughout history that every positive change in human behavior has been preceded by an expansion of consciousness, whether it’s becoming collectively conscious of the injustices of racial discrimination or individually conscious of the motives and consequences of our self-destructive behavior. Increasing consciousness is always a movement toward health." Observations of the advancements in consciousness made by the youngest generations of today as a whole in comparison to the older generations of the past prior to the expansion and widespread use of the internet: ''And a movement toward health absolutely is what’s been happening. The young today are the kindest, most sensitive, and most awake generation that has ever lived, no matter what the bitter old farts say about them. My kids are having conversations with their friends that are vastly deeper and more tuned-in than I was having with my own friends at their age. The independent content that people are creating without the authorization of the cultural filters in New York and Hollywood can take your breath away every single day if you know where to look, while the movies from the eighties which once enthralled us are today virtually unwatchable because of how shallow and artless they are compared to what we’re now used to seeing.'' On the inability of the systems and centers of power to do anything to stop to prevent this advancement that is occurring and being carried out by using their own technologies, apparatuses, and systems of communication and information: "It’s happening in a weird, sloppy, awkward way, as an infant learning to walk, but it is clearly happening. It’s happening through an internet whose origins are rooted firmly in the US war machine, it’s happening through billionaire-owned social media platforms with extensive ties to powerful governments, it’s happening through technologies that are the fruits of all the most exploitative tendencies of global capitalism, but it’s happening." "It’s happening in spite of all the best efforts of the corporate powers who control the mass media and the government agencies which collaborate with them in doing so. It’s happening in spite of all the mountains of government secrecy which the powerful use to keep the public from becoming conscious of what they’re up to. It’s happening in spite of an entire globe-spanning empire having a vested interest in the public not becoming conscious of the realities of their world and doing everything they can to keep things distorted and unseen. It’s happening against all odds, but it’s happening anyway." Key insight and a beautiful allegory about cyber systems becoming incredible mediums of amplification and expansion of the 'light of consciousness' into all the pores of mainstream society and culture: "This is very odd, and this is where it does start to look a little “out there”. We know that there are forces in our world that have a vested interest in keeping things hidden and unconscious, yet the light of consciousness keeps expanding. These powerful forces should be able to prevent this, but they aren’t. Even their own infrastructure is used to expand public awareness of their ugly behaviors. The light of consciousness is creeping faster and faster toward them, along wires, they themselves laid out. This means this movement is happening in a way they don’t understand, and that it is much, much bigger than they are." Johnstone's observations about what has the globalization of the internet had had as a result for humanity and for future generations: ''Because of the internet, humanity has probably changed more in the last 25 years than it did in the previous 2500. Practically overnight, we transformed into a completely new species. A species whose brains are networked in real-time around the world to a steadily increasing number of other brains in a steadily increasing number of ways with a steadily increasing amount of intimacy. Outwardly an individual human looks very much like an individual human looked prior to the internet, but as a collective, we’re mentally a completely different kind of animal than we used to be.'' About the strategies and tactics of power to keep the status quo intact: The powerful people who’ve been poisoning our world with ecocide, oppression, exploitation, and war clearly believe they’ll be able to ride this radical transformation and remain in power with the status quo perfectly intact; if they didn’t believe this the internet would’ve been shut down before it even got off the ground. But I don’t see how they can stay in control of this headlong plunge into rapidly expanding consciousness we’re experiencing; harnessing the forces that are at play here would be like trying to surf on a tsunami, like trying to hang glide through a tornado. and why they will fail eventually under that paradigm they themselves envisioned as the only reasonably possible one, stable and unchanging (a glimpse into the transition from mainstream Orange to Green stage level of consciousness in developed nations and around the world): ''There are aspects of humanity which the CIA doesn’t understand, which the plutocrats can’t control, which the manipulators can’t anticipate. Something is brewing here, and we’re almost at the boiling point. I don’t know if it will be enough to save us from all the existential hurdles our species faces in the near future; I just know that we are rapidly becoming a conscious species, and consciousness and dysfunction cannot coexist. We won’t need to wait long to find out which one wins out.'' Keep in mind that Caitlin Johnstone is an investigative and international journalist and an anti-war and progressive activist first and foremost and yet she had this incredible insight into the nature of consciousness and the advancement of consciousness in a systemic and rationally explainable way across the world and detected and intuited the underlying causes and possible consequences of the underlying phenomena. https://thealtworld.com/caitlin_johnston/humanity-is-sloppily-awkwardly-lumbering-toward-consciousness

You sneaky gerontocide enabler ? Have some compassion for the old and the frail and the flies and keep your ageist beliefs hidden under the radar. ? The local meteorologists said here that 24th June was the hottest day since the late 1800s here at 40 degrees celsius during the day. I wonder if also all the air contamination in the city and all the fumes from the heavy industry here had something to do with it. The government here said we wont stop burning coal at our power plants so some workers won't lose their jobs at these state enterprises and won't aim to go coal free like Germany wants to till 2030. Don't want to go green then ready yourself for some basal cell carcinoma.

"When the colonized human questions the colonial world, there it is not about a rational conflicting of opinions and points of view. It is not about the discourse of the universal, but rather a rebellious confirmation of a self generated phenomenona understood absolutely. The colonial world is a manichean world. It is not enough for the colonizer to physically i. e. with the help of the police and gendarmerie, confine the space of the colonized. As if the colonizer wants to demonstrate the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation, the colonizer then goes forward to create from the colonized a kind of quintessentiality of evil. The colonized society is not only described as a society without value. It is not enough for the colonizer to claim how values have disappeared from the colonized world, or, even better, to claim that they have never even been there in the colonized world in the first place. The native is declared impermeable to ethics; he doesn't only represent, for the colonizer, the absence of values but also their negation. The native is, dare we admit, the enemy of values. In that sense, he is the absolute evil. He is the corrosive element, that which destroys anything that approaches him, the element that distorts, that disfigured anything that has to do with aesthetics or with morality; he is the confluence of harmful forces, the unconscious and irreparable instrument of blind forces. Namely, for the colonizer, all values become irreversibly poisoned and infected once they come into contact with the colonized people. The customs of the colonized human, his traditions, his myths - especially his myths - are themselves, for the colonizer, a clear indication of the poverty of spirit and the constitutional perversion of the colonized folk. Because of that one should put on the same level the insecticide that destroys parasites, the carriers of diseases, and the Christian religion that in it's infancy suppresses heresy, instincts and evil. The retreat of the yellow fever and the advancement of Christianity are one in part of the same development. But the triumphalistic declarations of the missions, in fact, inform on the importance of implanting foreign influences in to the essence of the colonized people. We are talking about the Christian religion, nobody has the right to be surprised by this. The Church in the colonies is the Church of the whites, Church of the foreigners. It does not call upon the colonized man to partake on the road towards God, but instead to partake on the road of the whites, the road of the masters, the road of the oppressors. And as we know, in that story they are many called upon and little chosen ones. Sometimes this manicheaism goes to the extreme limits of it's own logic and dehumanizes the colonized man. Or more precisely it animalizes him. When he talks about the colonized man, the language of the colonizer is the de facto language of zoology. He alludes to the reptilian movements of the yellow man, on the stench that spreads from the native settlement, on the horde, on the stench, on the swarming, on the bustle and on the gesticulations. When he wants to honestly describe it and find the right words, the colonizer incessantly calls upon the animal kingdom. The European rarely relies on "picturesque" words. But the colonized man, that knows the way in which the colonizer thinks, knows immediately what he means. That galloping demographic, the hysterical masses, the faces from which the last trace of humanity has dissappeared, those fat bodies that no longer resemble anything, that rabble without a head and a tail, those children which look like they are nobodys, that laziness that's sprawled out on the sun, that rhythm of vegetation, all that belongs to the colonial dictionary. General De Gol talks about the "yellow multitudes", and mister Moriac about the black, brown and yellow masses that will soon swarm everything. The colonized man knows all this and he joyful laughs when he discovers that in the words of others he has become an animal. Because he knows he is not an animal. And right then and there, in the moment in which he discovers his own humanity, he began to sharpen his weapon in order to ensure its victory. " Franc Phanon, Chapter I On Violence, p. 14 and p. 15.

This is a very complex topic with a lot of sub-facets that need to be taken into consideration in a discussion and an analysis. I will get back to you on the topic at hand and the book in question when I start reading it again as soon as I have the time and complete and do some of my procrastinated studying for my upcoming exams. Yes, I agree on one of your first premises that the line between the victimizer and the victimized is razor-thin but I also think it has to be this way for reason in the world given some conditions of survival of different humans in it.

No, I am from a small country called Serbia in Europe. They need to become green first and that would mean dropping and transcending toxic parts of orange that some of those countries have in their policies and relationships towards the world. That would mean, I think, for some countries like the U. S. a contraction of their military might across the globe, influence of their policies in international economic bodies and internally a more equitable society and system that doesn't favor the rich and successful always too much exclusively. This would of course mean sacrifices from the U. S. reducing its military funding and military empire across the globe to starting to redistribute wealth in U. S. society more equatibly and the government elected officials holding accountable the rich and powerful individuals and corporations and have them to contribute their fair share to society via adequate taxation rates for their relative wealth that would go into investing public project works for the benefit of all (infrastructure, education, green technologies investment etc.). I don't know if EU supranational institutions like the European Council, European Bank and other so called EU NMI's (non-majoritarian institutions) are necessarily stage Yellow yet (they seem to me like they have a lot of orange regarding which policies they implement in the Union and foreign policy wise and with some specks of green regarding some policies) Did Leo called them stage Yellow in the video?

This sounds awfully familiar like it came straight out of a NATO Charter or from the mouth of Tony Blair (no hard feelings the association was too hard to resist not to mention). How would you define and would it be an acceptable intervention for every nation to agree on? For that matter what would constitute and would be defined as genocide to get every nation to agree that a military intervention or occupation is necessary. These are very delicate matters. Also what kind of intervention is acceptable? The bombing of critical strategic and military infrastructure? Using experimental weapons to increase the efficiency of an operation - for instance, depleted uranium in some cases in the instance of 1999's bombing of Yugoslavia. A full-on land invasion of troops? This is as well very delicate in order to reduce civilian casualties and the harming of critical infrastructure in order not to cripple the whole country economically and send it backward. For example, NATO obfuscated UN vetoes when it decided to bomb Yugoslavia in 1999, and likewise, the occupation of Iraq in 2003 by Coalition Forces of Western countries was considered illegal under international law. Some argue that Libya wouldn't be intervened by NATO in 2011 had it had nuclear weapons. North Korean leadership uses that argument for the reason why it will never willingly partake away with its nuclear weapons and Iran thought in these terms as to ensure it wouldn't be intervened by others (either by NATO or a coalition led by the U.S.) if the regime there started to crumble. Are you including China and Russia in your reasoning? Since the former would be just global institutions (World Bank, IMF, etc.) led primarily by interests of U.S. economic policy and acting as an extended arm of U.S. foreign policy by extension. On the topic of this subject, I wouldn't use the word global since I associate closely with the economic ideology of globalism developed by neoliberal economists in the West that excludes, rather implicitly, internationalism i.e. international cooperation and consensus among different countries and nations in favor of a set of policies (from economic to legal to political) imposed upon by the world's most developed regions and countries and most powerful institutions on the rest of the world. Left-wing theorists today actually use world internationalism as a world order that's the next in the developmental phase and an order that would transcend the current globalism economic order characterized by the unequal influence and power that the U.S., namely its military and economy, and of the other developed Western nations and international economic bodies that pursue policies in favor of firstly and foremostly of the interests of those nations have in shaping and dictating affairs among and in different nations across the world. World government, in my opinion, in order for it to be truly unbiased and equal in representing the interests of every nation fairly, must not come from a single source or pole (namely Western also Northern in the sphere of economic development) in the world but must first build true internationalism and integrate the other pole (namely the East and the South in this equation which the West has been in conflict and competition with since European colonization and whose current relationships with are built on top of that legacy and can still be understood in that framework), which means true cooperation and aid (To each according to his need, to each according to his abilities) among different nations and not exclusive favoritism if you align with my interests and long-term goals for world domination of my imposed order, on which on top of it can grow and flourish as a truly Planet Earth institution and not fracture into schisms and blocs and/or degenerate into corruption favoring firstly and foremostly the interests of the most developed and powerful nations.

Yup, nice observation, and suggestion. What beautiful, inspiring and heart-warming anthems indeed.

Why God Forgives Devilry and Evil.docx

L'Internationale French Lyrics: Debout, les damnés de la terre Debout, les forçats de la faim La raison tonne en son cratère C'est l'éruption de la fin Du passé faisons table rase Foule esclave, debout, debout Le monde va changer de base Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout Chorus C'est la lutte finale Groupons-nous, et demain L'Internationale Sera le genre humain. Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes Décrétons le salut commun Pour que le voleur rende gorge Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge Battons le fer quand il est chaud. Chorus L'État comprime et la loi triche L'impôt saigne le malheureux Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux C'est assez, languir en tutelle L'égalité veut d'autres lois Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle Égaux, pas de devoirs sans droits. Chorus Hideux dans leur apothéose Les rois de la mine et du rail Ont-ils jamais fait autre chose Que dévaliser le travail ? Dans les coffres-forts de la bande Ce qu'il a créé s'est fondu En décrétant qu'on le lui rende Le peuple ne veut que son dû. Chorus Les rois nous saoulaient de fumées Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans Appliquons la grève aux armées Crosse en l'air, et rompons les rangs S'ils s'obstinent, ces cannibales À faire de nous des héros Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles Sont pour nos propres généraux. Chorus Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes Le grand parti des travailleurs La terre n'appartient qu'aux hommes L'oisif ira loger ailleurs Combien de nos chairs se repaissent Mais si les corbeaux, les vautours Un de ces matins disparaissent Le soleil brillera toujours. Chorus L'Internationale English Lyrics: Arise, wretched of the earth Arise, convicts of hunger Reason thunders in its volcano This is the eruption of the end Of the past let us wipe the slate clean Masses, slaves, arise, arise The world is about to change its foundation We are nothing, let us be all Chorus This is the final struggle Let us gather together, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be the human race There are no supreme saviors Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune. Producers, let us save ourselves Decree on the common welfare That the thief return his plunder, That the spirit be pulled from its prison Let us fan the forge ourselves Strike the iron while it is hot Chorus The state represses and the law cheats The tax bleeds the unfortunate No duty is imposed on the rich "Rights of the poor" is a hollow phrase Enough languishing in custody Equality wants other laws: No rights without obligations, it says, And as well, no obligations without rights Chorus Hideous in their self-glorification Kings of the mine and rail Have they ever done anything other? Than steal work? Into the coffers of that lot, What work creates has melted In demanding that they give it back The people want only its due. Chorus The kings make us drunk with their fumes, Peace among ourselves, war to the tyrants! Let the armies go on strike, Guns in the air, and break ranks If these cannibals insist On making heroes of us, Soon they will know our bullets Are for our own generals Chorus Laborers, peasants, we are The great party of workers The earth belongs only to men The idle will go reside elsewhere How much of our flesh they feed on, But if the ravens and vultures Disappear one of these days The sun will still shine Chorus

"L'international" Lyrics in English: Stand up, damned of the Earth Stand up, damned of the Earth Reason thunders in its volcano This is the eruption of the end! Of the past let us make a clean slate Enslaved masses, stand up, stand up! The world is about to change in its foundation We are nothing, let us be all! Ref: This is the final struggle! Let us group together and tommorow The Internationale Will be the human race This is the final struggle! Let us group together and tommorow The Internationale Will be the human race There are no Supreme saviours! Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune. Producers, let us save ourselves. Decree the common salvation. So that the theif expires, So that the spirit be pulled from its prison, Let us fan our forge ourselves, Strike the iron while it's hot! Ref 2: Ibid. The State oppresses and the law cheats. Tax bleeds the unfortunate. No duty is imposed on the rich; The rights of the poor is an empty phrase! Enough languishing in custody; Equality wants other laws: No rights without duties, she says, Equally no duties without rights! Ref 3: Ibid. Hideous in their apotheosis; The Kings of the mine and of the rail. Have they done ever anything other Than steal work? Inside the safeboxes of the gang What work had created melted. By ordering that they give it back, The people only want their due. Ref 4: Ibid. The kings made us drunk with their fumes, Peace among us, war on the tyrants! Let the armies go on strike, Stocks in the air, and break the ranks! If they insist, the cannibals On making heroes of us, They will know soon that our bullets, Are for our own generals. Ref 5: Ibid. Workers, peasants, we are The great party of labourers! The earth only belongs to men, The idle will go to reside elsewhere. How much of our flesh have they consumed? But if these ravens, these vultures Disappear one of these days The sun will still shine forever Ref 6: This is the final struggle! Let us group together and tommorow The Internationale Will be the human race This is the final struggle Let us group together and tomorrow The Internationale Will be the human race!

"The zone inhabited by the colonized is not complementary to the zone inhabited by the colonists. The two zones are opposed, but not in the name of some higher unity. According to pure Aristotelian logic, they obey the principle of mutual exclusion: reconciliation is not possible, one of the elements is superfluous. The city of the colonist is made of solid material, all made of stone and iron. It is a lighted, asphalted city, in which garbage cans swallow unknown, never seen, not even dreamed remains. The feet of the colonist are never visible, except perhaps in the sea, but never up close. These are feet protected by good shoes, although the streets of their city are clean, smooth, without holes, without stones. The city of the colonist is full, lazy, his stomach is always full of good things. The city of colonists is a city of whites, a city of foreigners. The city of the colonized man, that is, the native city, a black village, is a notorious place inhabited by notorious people. It doesn't matter where someone is born or how they are born, where they die and why they die. He dies anywhere, from anything. It is a world without interspaces, people are piled on top of each other, their sluts are piled on top of each other. The city of the colonized is a hungry city, hungry for bread, meat, shoes, coal, light. The city of the colonized is a stumbled city, a city on its knees, a city rolling in the mud. It is a city of blacks, a city of dirty Arabs [bicots]. The view that a colonized man casts on the colonist's city is lustful and enviable. Dreams of possession. About all possible ways of owning: sitting at the table of the colonist, sleeping in the colonist's bed, with his wife if possible. The colonized man is envious. And the colonist knows this well; when their eyes suddenly met, he asserted indignantly, always on guard: "They want to take our place." That is true, there is no colonized man who does not dream of coming to the place of a colonist at least once a day." "That divided world, that split world in two, is inhabited by different species. The originality of the colonial context lies in the fact that economic realities, inequalities, huge differences in lifestyles, never manage to obscure human realities. When you study the colonial context directly, it is obvious that the real reason for such fragmentation of the world is in the very belonging or non-belonging to a certain species, a certain race. In the colonies, the economic infrastructure is also a superstructure. The cause is a consequence: a man is rich because he is white, a white man because he is rich. That is why Marxist analyzes must always be slightly stretched whenever a colonial problem is approached. Everything must be reconsidered here, including the notion of pre-capitalist society, which Marx studied well. The serf has a different essence from the knight, but it was necessary to invoke the divine right in order to legalize that difference in status. In the colonies, the foreigner imposed himself with the help of his cannons and machines. Despite successful domestication, despite appropriation, the colonist always remains a foreigner. The "ruling class" is not characterized by factories, estates, or a bank account. The ruling species is primarily a species that comes from another place, one that does not look like the indigenous population, they are "others". The violence that ruled in the organization of the colonial world, which tirelessly gave the rhythm of the destruction of indigenous social forms and ruthlessly destroyed the stronghold of economic systems, modes of behavior and clothing, that violence the colonized man will demand and take when the colonized mass, deciding to be the embodiment of history, to forbidden cities. The lifting of the colonial world into the air is now a very clear, completely comprehensible picture of action, and it can be taken over by any individual who belongs to the colonized people. The disintegration of the colonial world does not mean that, after the abolition of borders, a line of communication will be established between the two zones. The destruction of the colonial world means the abolition of one zone, no more and no less, it means burying it as deep as possible in the ground or expelling it from the territory." Franc Phanon Chapter I On Violence p. 12, p. 13 and p. 14.

"The colonized world is a world divided in two. Its dividing line, its border, is marked by barracks and police stations. In the colonies, the official and institutionally recognized interlocutor of the colonized man, the spokesman of the colonist and the oppressive regime, is a gendarme or a soldier. In capitalist-type societies, education, religious or secular, the creation of father-son moral reflexes, the exemplary honesty of workers decorated after fifty years of dedicated and loyal work, love backed by harmony and wisdom, all these aesthetic forms of respect for the existing order create around the exploited. an atmosphere of subordination and inhibition that greatly facilitates the task by the forces of order. In capitalist countries, between the exploited and the power, a multitude of moral preachers, advisers, "confusers" are inserted. In colonial areas, on the contrary, the gendarme and the soldier, with their direct presence, their direct and frequent interventions, maintain contact with the colonized man, and advise him not to move with rifle butts or napalm bombs. As we can see, the mediator of power speaks the language of naked violence. The mediator does not alleviate oppression, does not disguise dominance. He exposes them, manifests them with the pure conscience of the defenders of order. The mediator brings violence into the houses and heads of the colonized." Franc Phanon Chapter I On Violence p. 11 and p. 12

https://thealtworld.com/caitlin_johnston/the-difference-between-totalitarian-regimes-and-free-demo 1. In totalitarian regimes, they have massacres and wars. In free democracies, they have humanitarian interventions. 2. In totalitarian regimes they use torture. In free democracies, they use enhanced interrogation techniques. 3. In totalitarian regimes, they fund terrorist groups to create instability. In free democracies, they fund terrorist groups to create stability. 4. In totalitarian regimes, evil dictators bomb their own people. In free democracies, we do it for them. 5. In totalitarian regimes, a single party upholds and enforces the status quo. In free democracies, two parties uphold and enforce the status quo. 6. In totalitarian regimes, the government controls the press and determines what information the public is allowed to have access to. In free democracies, it is billionaires who do this. 7. In totalitarian regimes, they wage brutally violent crackdowns on protesters to quash dissent. In free democracies, they do this also, but then they kneel while wearing kente cloth. 8. In totalitarian regimes, you know exactly who rules over you. In free democracies, the true rulers hide behind fake puppet governments. 9. In totalitarian regimes, any elections have been rigged, and challengers are hand-picked by the authoritarian rulers. In free democracies, the rulers rig the elections and handpick the candidates, and they do this to other countries as well. 10. In totalitarian regimes, they imprison journalists for revealing inconvenient truths about the powerful. In free democracies, they imprison journalists for revealing inconvenient truths about the powerful, and all the other journalists jump on social media to say they deserved it. 11. In totalitarian regimes, they don’t let political dissidents speak. In free democracies, they just refuse dissidents any influential platforms and use algorithms to keep revolutionary ideas from being heard by a significant number of people. 12. In totalitarian regimes, they circle the planet with military bases, wage endless wars which kill millions and work to destroy any nation which disobeys their government. Whoops, sorry, that’s actually free democracies. 13. In totalitarian regimes, political speech is heavily regulated by the government. In free democracies, political speech is heavily regulated by the government via Silicon Valley. 14. In totalitarian regimes, the citizenry is kept impoverished while the rulers live lavishly with more than they could ever spend. In free democracies, the citizenry is kept impoverished while the rulers live lavishly with more than they could ever spend. 15. In totalitarian regimes, there is a lack. In free democracies, there is artificial lack. 16. In totalitarian regimes, the government spy agency tells the news media what stories to run, and the news media unquestioningly publish it. In free democracies, the government spy agency says “Buddy, have I got a scoop for you!” and the news media unquestioningly publish it. 17. In totalitarian regimes, bands of armed thugs patrol the streets to enforce obedience to authority. In free democracies, bands of armed thugs patrol the streets to enforce obedience to authority and Hollywood makes movies about how heroic they are. 18. In totalitarian regimes, students are taught to mindlessly worship a picture of the evil dictator. In free democracies, students are taught to mindlessly worship the flag. 19. In totalitarian regimes, students are taught never to question authority. In free democracies, students are taught never to question the news reporters. 20. In totalitarian regimes, they commit evil deeds which free democracies could never get away with doing. In free democracies, they have totalitarian regimes commit those evil deeds for them. 21. In totalitarian regimes, the people are kept too brutalized and cowed to rise up against their rulers. In free democracies, the people are kept too propagandized and brainwashed to rise up against their rulers. 22. In totalitarian regimes, the powerful determine what happens regardless of the desire of the people. In free democracies, the powerful determine what the people will desire to happen. 23. In totalitarian regimes, everyone is a slave to the powerful. In free democracies, everyone is a Slave™ to the Powerful™. 24. In totalitarian regimes, you are forced to obey. In free democracies, you are trained to think your obedience was your own idea. 25. In totalitarian regimes, you are not free, and you know it. In free democracies, you are not free, and you don’t know it. https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-difference-between-totalitarian Caitlin Johnstone Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerilla poet. Utopia prepper. Proudly 100 percent reader-funded through Patreon and Paypal. Much work done with assistance from soulmate/brother-in-arms/co-conspirator Tim Foley.

Interview on RT TV Show Going Underground with a Chinese capitalist Eric Li about Chinese capitalists not having real political power to influence the decisions carried out by the Chinese state:

"the root of the English word ‘war’, werra, is Frankish-German, meaning confusion, discord, or strife, and the verb werran meaning to confuse or perplex. War certainly generates confusion, as Clausewitz noted calling it the “fog of war”, but that does not discredit the notion that war is organized to begin with. The student of war needs to be careful in examining definitions of war, for, like any social phenomena, definitions are varied, and often the proposed definition masks a particular political or philosophical stance paraded by the author. Cicero defines war broadly as “a contention by force”; Hugo Grotius adds that “war is the state of contending parties, considered as such”; Thomas Hobbes notes that war is also an attitude: “By war is meant a state of affairs, which may exist even while its operations are not continued;” Denis Diderot comments that war is “a convulsive and violent disease of the body politic;” for Karl von Clausewitz, “war is the continuation of politics by other means”, and so on. Each definition has its strengths and weaknesses, but often is the culmination of the writer’s broader philosophical positions. An alternative definition of war is that it is an all-pervasive phenomenon of the universe. Accordingly, battles are mere symptoms of the underlying belligerent nature of the universe; such a description corresponds with a Heraclitean or Hegelian philosophy in which change (physical, social, political, economical, etc) can only arise out of war or violent conflict. Heraclitus decries that “war is the father of all things,” and Hegel echoes his sentiments. Interestingly, even Voltaire, the embodiment of the Enlightenment, followed this line: “Famine, plague, and war are the three most famous ingredients of this wretched world…All animals are perpetually at war with each other…Air, earth and water are arenas of destruction.” (From Pocket Philosophical Dictionary). Alternatively, the Oxford Dictionary expands the definition to include “any active hostility or struggle between living beings; a conflict between opposing forces or principles.” This avoids the narrowness of a political-rationalist conception by admitting the possibility of metaphorical, non-violent clashes between systems of thought, such as of religious doctrines or of trading companies. This perhaps indicates a too broad definition, for trade is certainly a different kind of activity than war, although trade occurs in war, and trade often motivates wars. The OED definition also seems to echo a Heraclitean metaphysics, in which opposing forces act on each other to generate change and in which war is the product of such a metaphysics. So from two popular and influential dictionaries, we have definitions that connote particular philosophical positions." from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Article the Philosophy of War https://iep.utm.edu/war/

Quote from Mark Fisher Capitalist Realism book, Chapter 7: Capitalist Realism as Dreamwork and Memory Disorder, p. 60 and p. 61: It wouldn't be surprising that profound social and economic instability resulted in a craving for familiar cultural forms, the memory disorder which is correlative of this situation is the condition of theoretically pure anterograde amnesia. Here memories prior to the onset of the condition are left intact, but sufferers are unable to transfer new memory into long-term memory; the new therefore looms up as hostile, fleeting, un-navigable, and the sufferer is drawn back to the security of the old. The inability to make new memories: a succinct formulation of the postmodern impasse... If memory disorder provides a compelling analogy for the glitches in capitalist realism, the model for its smooth functioning would be dreamwork. When we are dreaming, we forget, but immediately forget that we have done so; since the gaps and the lacunae in our memories are Photoshopped out, they do not trouble or torment us. What dreamwork does is to produce a confabulated consistency which covers over anomalies and contradictions, and it is this which Wendy Brown picked up on when she argued that it is precisely dreamwork which provided the best model for understanding contemporary forms of power. In her essay, 'American Nightmare: Neoconservatism, Neoliberalism, and De-democratization', Brown unpicked the alliance between neoconservatism and neoliberalism which constituted the American version of capitalist realism up until 2008. Brown shows that neoconservatism and neoliberalism operated from premises that are not only inconsistent but directly contradictory. 'How', Brown asks, 'does rationality that is expressly amoral at the level of both ends and means (neoliberalism) intersect with one that is expressly moral and regulatory (neoconservatism)? How does a project that empties the world of meaning, that cheapens and deracinates life and openly exploits desire, intersect one centered on fixing and enforcing meanings, conserving certain ways of life, and repressing and regulating desire? How do support for governance modeled on the firm and a normative social fabric of self-interest marry or jostle against support for governance modeled on church authority and a normative social fabric of self-sacrifice and long-term filial loyalty, the very fabric shredded by unbridled capitalism? But incoherence at the level of what Brown calls 'political rationality' does nothing to prevent symbiosis at the level of political subjectivity, and, although they proceeded from very different guiding assumptions, Brown argues that neoliberalism and neoconservatism worked together to undermine the public sphere and democracy, producing a governed citizen who looks to find solutions in products, not political processes. As Brown claims, 'the choosing subject and the governed subject are far from opposites... Frankfurt school intellectuals, and, before them, Plato theorized the open compatibility between individual choice and political domination, and depicted democratic subjects who are available to political tyranny or authoritarianism precisely because they are absorbed in a province of choice and need-satisfaction that they mistake for freedom." Extrapolating a little from Brown's arguments, we might hypothesize that what held the bizarre synthesis of neoconservatism and neoliberalism together was their shared objects of abomination: the so-called Nanny State and its dependents.

The desire for a new future order of things, substantially different from the present, is religious conviction at its core - the awaiting for the eventual coming of the Kingdom of God - in the external outside world rather than the internal personal sphere. Anti-capitalist sentiment, void of a precise and substantiated scientific analysis backed by empirical fact, becomes a religion in itself, a religion of opposition against an imagined external Other cause of evil and suffering seeking to rationalize and explain inner suffering within and caused by the self. It serves, paradoxically, as the opium for explaining to oneself the causes of his or her one's pervasive feeling of alienation from thy self, thy labor, and other's by numbing the actual inner and experiential alienation with a hyper-abstract extrapolation that sees the cause in an imagined imposed order of capitalism, in its perceived and imagined historical, societal and current economic form, while not being aware that it's a system you wilfully participate in everyday life via participation in capitalist exchange - as the author, Mark Fisher poignantly points out: ''accepting our insertion at the level of desire in the remorseless meat-grinder of Capital. What is being disavowed in the abjection of evil and ignorance onto fantasmatic Others is our own complicity in the planetary networks of oppression. What needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper-abstract impersonal structure and that it would be nothing without our cooperation.'' ''The most Gothic description of Capital is also the most accurate. Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie-maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is ours, and the zombies it makes are us." Capitalist realism, as the author Mark Fisher notes, in his book of the same title, is very far from precluding a certain anti-capitalism. As Zizek has provocatively pointed out, anti-capitalism is widely disseminated in capitalism. Far from undermining capitalist realism, this gestural anti-capitalism actually reinforces it. What we have here is a vision of control and communication much as Jean Baudrillard understood it, in which subjugation no longer takes the form of subordination to an extrinsic spectacle, but rather invites us to interact and participate. But this kind of irony feeds rather than challenges capitalist realism. A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called "interpassivity": the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity. "The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief." "Capitalist ideology", in general, Zizek maintains, "consists precisely in the overvaluing of belief - in the sense of the inner subjective attitude - at the expense of the beliefs we exhibit and externalize in our behavior. So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange." According to Zizek, "capitalism, in general, relies on this structure of disavowal." "We believe money is only a meaningless token of no intrinsic worth, yet we act as if it has a holy value. Moreover, this behavior precisely depends upon the prior disavowal - we are able to fetishize money in our actions only because we have already taken an ironic distance towards money in our heads. Corporate anti-capitalism wouldn't matter if it could be differentiated from an authentic anti-capitalist movement. The so-called anti-capitalist movement seemed also to have conceded too much to capitalist realism Since it was unable to posit a coherent alternative political-economic model to capitalism, the suspicion was that the actual aim was not to replace capitalism but to mitigate its worst excesses; and, since the form of its activities tended to be the staging of protests rather than a political organization, there's a sense that the anti-capitalism movement consisted of making a series of hysterical demands which it didn't expect to be met. Protests have formed a kind of carnivalesque background noise to capitalist realism."

Here is an example I thought about since the ICTY trial and ruling of genocide conviction on Bosnian Serbian general Ratko Mladic during the Bosnian War of the '90s is part of the cultural zeitgeist here in this country, which many see as problematic due to setting a bad precedent for the people here of having a people's army being complicit in committing a genocide, not a massacre or war crime, but a full-fledged genocide. The civil war in the instance of the collapse of the former Yugoslavia had a distinct unleashing of repressed antagonisms and judgments about other people's caused in part due to the economic depravity and crisis that the country prior to that went through that was also in large part caused by the refusal of the IMF and the US at its head to give more loans to the country suffering an economic downturn and crisis in the late '80s and early '90s and by the staunch demand of the IMF for the country to start to carry out economic neoliberal policy reforms in order for it to be eligible for more loans and a political system reform demanded by the US. The war was as I see it a result of these held and repressed antagonisms being unleashed once the country went through a severe economic downturn for long enough for people to lose employment and jobs and to find in their repressed residuum of the psyche someone or something to blame for their misgivings and misfortune and for their long-repressed feelings and judgments to be unleashed in some way, destructive and barbaric in this case. For example, the Jewish philosopher Georg Zimmel posited his theory that undeveloped human beings have a natural tendency to form enemies to blame for life's hardships and problems and fight against caused in part by the inherited trauma of psychic wounds from their ancestor's genes that lived in more resource-scarce and unforgiving times that then in civilizations needs from time to time to be unleashed on a massive scale when repressed enough in the collective unconscious residuum of repressed feelings and desires in the form of war, that was his theory I paraphrased at least on some of the causes of WWI. The Italian philosopher Primo Levy called it the atavism carried under the veneer of civilization. As for war or the fear about war being a civilizational drive towards progress, I am not so sure I think it only applies to already well-developed and expansive empires or colonial powers in the past and the great powers of today in their pursuit of hegemony and being the next beacon of civilization and the civilizing process on the earth, which is in itself, very contradictory and often carried out through repressive and barbaric means hidden in the cloak of technological superiority and technical supremacy, nowadays I think.

"The eyes and ears of America is Israel" - U. S. Senator Lindsey Graham