Mysteries of cosmic proportions

It was Wednesday, April 12, 1961. What looked like just another boring early-spring day was interrupted by sudden silence emanating from Radio Moscow. After a few minutes, everybody’s ears perked up: they heard the legendary Soviet radio announcer Yuri Levitan’s voice.

This is Moscow speaking, Levitan was saying, all radio stations of the Soviet Union are working! (Govorit Mokva, rabotaiut vsie radiostantsii Sovetskogo Soiuza!)

It sounded like Ed McMahon introducing Johnny Carson (heeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Johnny!), but it did carry more weight.

In a few minutes, Levitan would come to the point: the Soviet Union, he said, has just launched the first man into space, his name (and rank) is Major Yuri Alekseievich Gagarin, and he would stay in orbit for a full 108 minutes, only to land safely somewhere in the steppes of Kazakhstan.

The event would trigger ecstasy all over the world on one hand, and a bout of head-scratching amongst the U.S. policy makers on the other: not again, they would moan. They were still licking their wounds after the Soviets had launched the first artificial Earth satellite that became known as Sputnik 1. Flying in an elliptical low Earth orbit for three weeks, starting Friday, October 4, 1957, it was sending a simple beep-beep radio signal back to Earth until its three silver-zinc batteries depleted. Aerodynamic drag caused Sputnik 1 to fall back into the atmosphere on Saturday, January 4, 1958.

Why recall all of these events more than six decades after they had shook the world?

Because they reverberate even today.

Then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy committed NASA to an impossibly difficult goal: be first to send people to the Moon. Who cares the Soviets sent a machine named Lunokhod. It would be rolling all over the place, sending fuzzy footage back to Earth all the while.

How much more dramatic it would be to see Neil Armstrong climb down off the module in a live broadcast, holding the star-and-stripes flag and saying that this was a simple step for one guy but a huge leap for the world?

It all would happen, except …

Due to military-style secrecy surrounding everything in the former Soviet Union, rumours would begin circulating as soon as the red flag with star, hammer and sickle was lowered to signify the end of the empire. In a country where even telephone directories were part of the state secret system, this would be logical. So: how was it? Was Gagarin really the first one? How about the famous Soviet aircraft designer Ilyushin’s son? Or: how many would-be first ones died as their carrier rockets exploded on take-off? Besides, why was the chief constructor of the Soviet manned flight project always named as chief constructor only, and why it would have to take the fall of the Soviet Union for humanity to find out that his name was Sergei Korolev, and that he did bulk of his work while behind bars in a Gulag concentration camp?

Even Gagarin’s own death in an airplane crash during what was officially announced as regular military jet exercise has been shrouded in mystery till these days.

Many, including Gagarin’s former cosmonaut colleague Alexei Leonov, contradict the official report. The first man in space, Leonov claims, got too big for his britches for the communist poohbahs’ tastes. Gagarin dared criticise what he saw as Soviet political and economic inefficiencies, word got all the way to the top, and word came back down that this has to be stopped no matter the cost.

Thus the staged accident.

The American system of information seemed to be much more open. Why, they would even broadcast accidents on take-off ramps in live broadcast. That’s why the first quiet gossip that no, no American set foot on the moon, was greeted with howls about stupid conspiracy theories. Then came viral videos of people known as citizen-reporters, trying to convince American astronauts to swear on the bible that yes, they had made it all the way to the Moon and back, with the astronauts rejecting such demands with unbecoming anger.

People started asking more questions, intriguing some physicists enough to join the fray by saying such trips were killers: there were zones of deadly radiation between the two celestial bodies and people haven’t yet developed any technology safe and reliable enough to help them get through.

So, the claim these days goes that Apollo astronauts would fly a few hundred miles down range, land, enter a specially built studio and spend the rest of their journey there, commenting on all kinds of trick photography as if it was reality.

These theories do not mention publicly broadcast splash-downs in the ocean, with the astronauts sitting inside their space capsules and waiting to be lifted from the waves and carried into aircraft carrier safety.

On a personal note: in the late 1960s (or was it early 1970s?) I got to interview Frank Borman, commander of Apollo 8 mission that was the first to fly around the Moon.

The toughest part that still sends shivers down his spine, he told me then, was the moment when they lost all contact with their colleagues on the earth: they were hidden behind the Moon and it wouldn’t let any signal through. The silence, Borman said, was overwhelming, and so was the moment when they, all of a sudden, heard Houston calling them.

I believed him, and I had no reason not to. He would have to be an Oscar-winning actor to be lying so convincingly.

So, what should it be?

Here’s a fit of alibism if there ever was one: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy (William Shakespeare, Hamlet).

Who knows who wrote it? Shakespeare or somebody else?

Should we give Yuri Gagarin his due?

Oh yes, the question marks are there on purpose.

Anti-Semitism: the ultimate inferiority complex

The Jews and the bicycle riders are guilty of all that ails the world.

Yes, but why the bicycle riders?

Thus an old German joke: die Juden und die Radfahrer sind schuld daran. Ja, aber warum denn die Radfahrer? It is still making rounds. And not only in Germany.

My good friend Mark Leyderman sent me the following story. Written by a Jewish writer whose name remains hidden, the only thing we are aware of is that the original author is no longer with us.

He called the story thus:

Jews evicted to the Moon

The Jews settled on the Moon in the year 2035, some five years before the culmination of the Islamic Wars in the 2040s, when the Near East (and Israel, naturally) were destroyed by nuclear explosions.

The remaining two million Jews, scattered all over the world, some hundred thousand of whom lived in Muslim countries, got together and purchased the dark side of the Moon that nobody else wished to colonise.

They organised space boats, and all of the world’s Jewry (including those who had anything whatsoever to do with them) gathered and flew to where nobody could blame them for anything.

The remaining earthlings were overjoyed – their planet has, at long last, got rid of the Jews! Great Celebrations were staged in Europe, Africa, Asia, South and North America to mark the occasion. The latter was now known as the Northern Association of Islamic States, following a peaceful coup d’état in the U.S.A., during the 2040 elections that saw a Muslim majority getting elected to Congress. The President, of course, has immediately introduced changes into the country’s law, declaring Islam the main state religion of the U.S.A. – and the rest of the world.

After the last Jew entered the boat (it was David Goldstein, 62, of New York), Hans Ibn-Hitler, Adolf Hitler’s great-great-great-grandson, brought up in Brasil and kept there for this special occasion, declared the planet Judenrein[1].

This wasn’t easy for the Jews but, generally speaking, it didn’t differ much from what they had lived through during their ancient history. Former Israelites (who survived only because they were out of the country during the nuclear bombing of Israel) said that it would be easier for the Jews to settle on the Moon, if for no other reason than because there would be no Islamic fanatics around.

The topic of Jewish colonisation of the Moon’s dark side has naturally created wide-ranging debates among the Jews. Some were of the view that the absence of radical Muslims will make the situation much easier. Other Jews countered by saying that settling in spaces that have no atmosphere and no plant and animal life, either, in temperatures close to absolute zero, will not be easy in and of itself. There were also others who said that quarreling about these subjects makes no sense. But nobody was surprised that, eventually, there was a million synagogues built for two million Jews (where the other million wouldn’t set foot).

It was no surprise, either, that the Jews have created a controlled environment within the next three years that would give them fantastic crops and cattle growth. The space boats (that the Jews called “the Arks”) were used to carry not only people but also a couple of each animal and plant. Thanks to successful cloning and genetic engineering, a number of new plants and animals have appeared, breeding and procreating with unusual speed. Besides, they featured some interesting improvements, such as cows with six udders, hens with four legs, etc. The population started growing quickly and, thanks to scientific and medical minds, most of diseases and aging issues were minimised.

They created a Department for Communications with the Earth, employing former Hollywood producers and directors. They were broadcasting movies about life on the Moon back to Earth. But the community decided, even as they had been travelling to the Moon – based on the 6,000-year-old human history, during which most humans plainly envied the Jews – that they would be sending only negative information, filled with horror, even. The movie industry, run by Jordan Spielberg, succeeded in creating films showing the Jews languishing, having difficulty surviving on the Moon. Cupolas, skilfully created to show desert and abandoned areas to make sure that if earthlings send intelligence vessels to find out what’s really happening on the Moon colonised by the Jews, they would see ruins.

Yet, nobody was sending any interplanetary intelligence vessels from the Earth. Years would go by, decade after decade, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings, brit mills, all of this would be celebrated in the artificial world the Jews had created. It would get so far that some Jewish intellectuals started calling the Lunar camp “Eden 2.”

Naturally, other Jews wouldn’t agree. As is usual, they spent a lot of time arguing and disagreeing. They would even organise discussion contests, but, overall, peace and serenity reigned on the Moon. Anyone who would in any way disturb this peaceful lifestyle would be made to argue with their opponents. The debates would last whole days (and weeks, sometimes), until the disturber would beg for pardon (basically, that’s how punishments worked on the Moon, and that would turn out very effective).

Meanwhile, life on Earth, minus the Jews, started to break down, slowly but surely, returning to the Middle Ages, and only Islam, as we recall, was declared official religion while all the others would be declared more or less heresy, their adherents were oppressed, persecuted and languished. That’s how it went on until religious wars would start breaking out. They would change the situation every few years.

That’s when the most interesting anomaly emerged: anti-Semitism grew to unparalleled heights. Yes, yes! The Jews removed themselves from the surface of the Earth, and yet, anti-Semitism kept only getting stronger. Famous speakers had simple explanations: “I need not have a gun to be afraid that someone would blow my brains out!” The Jewish lightning rod has disappeared, but another tragedy has emerged that had nowhere to splash out. As we remember, earlier evils used to be splashed out on the Jews, as a rule.

(A certain Rabbi on the Moon said that G-d turned to him to tell him that He is getting ready to destroy the Earth because of the multiplied and concentrated evil inhabiting her.

The Rabbi asked G-d to change His mind if there will be a thousand Saints.

G-d told the Rabbi, “Look, I’ve gone through this with Noe and Abraham, and I know the answer already – I’m G-d, after all.”)

People were laughing at the Rabbi but, one beautiful day, as they were minding their own business, they noticed that Earth was shaking from a frightful number of explosions. All Moon inhabitants were watching the fiery balls engulfing the blue planet that used to be their home.

Despite the feelings of ignominy and anger for being forced to leave the Earth, the true Jewish spirit ruled on the Moon – nobody wished anything bad on their old home. An old Jewish tradition bans expressions of joy over a foe’s doom. Even now, when the Jews saw what was happening on Earth, they began to sob and pray, watching what looked like a last broadcast from Earth. The apocalyptic horror was recorded and broadcast until the ionisation caused by the bombs turned all power supplies off. Entire countries were wiped off the Earth’s surface in an instant. And that’s when the final broadcast came in from the country that had started the entire process, it was a voice of despair and hopelessness, through shouts of hundreds dying broadcasters.

… It was a conceited speech, lasting till the end, till darkness fell. Curses on Jewish heads were the final words of the dying civilisation: “The Jews caused all our problems – they left us to solve all that mess that they had left behind. If the Jews hadn’t taken away the best scientists and engineers, we would have defeated our foes. The Jews are our enemies! Kill the kikes! (Бей жидов!)”

After some time, experts figured out what had happened on Earth in her final days. The anti-Semitism, growing like an avalanche since the Jews’ departure, reached its peak. This led the progressive humanity to launch a massive attack on the Moon. The UNO coordinated the attack yet, despite the fact that all missiles had been launched properly, an error happened with their navigation systems which made the rockets strike one another, after which radiation rain of debris and electronic disturbances fell down on the planet’s surface. This triggered an automatic defensive reaction of all countries (that, by the time, all had nuclear weapons and other, just as scary, “toys”). A real Armageddon was the outcome.

The Jews on the Moon fell into deep sorrow. Orthodox Jews tore their clothes off, never stopping their prayers and gatherings. About a week after THAT DAY (as it would be called since then) a body moving towards the Moon was detected. Could it be one of the nuclear missiles? Will the Jews perish no matter what? The government consulted military experts. No, it was not a missile. It was an old space ship, one of those like they used in the 1970s. When it approached closer, laser defence equipment took aim. Debates went on: should it be destroyed or should it be permitted to come close enough to open negotiations.

The ship’s broadcast came just in time: “We’re the last representatives from Earth – two from each country, and we’re coming in peace.” Some Jews were overjoyed that they remained saved. Others demanded that the ship be either isolated or shot down.

The Rabbi who had had the vision about the Earth’s destruction told the leaders that G-d wants to give them a chance, and the ship was permitted to start orbiting the Moon. The ship was told that it would receive a region on the Moon where they could live, but the interplanetary travellers disagreed. They told the Jews they have to admit them among themselves, giving them all privileges. After all, it says in the Jewish religion that newcomers have the same rights as citizens enjoy.

Having heard this, the leaders approached the clairvoyant Rabbi, and he told them to ensure safe landing for the ship. The permission was granted. Except, the ship’s commander did not trust the Rabbi’s instruction, and the ship crashed into one of the lunar craters.

Thus, we have before us the last days of planet Earth’s history, as shared with us by the Jewish colonists of the 453^rd Solar system of the Galaxy M. Despite the fact that Earth remains unpopulated at the moment, the Mars Jewish colony commander says that Venus would be fully colonised by the year 2120, and, should the speed of re-greening the Earth remain as it is, the planet would be capable of receiving the returning Jews from other planets by the year 2136.

An interesting remark: a special package was found among the debris of the Earthlings’ ship after its crash. The following was written in it: “A great planet called the Earth used to exist some time ago. There lived many nations on Earth, and they lived together in peace, except for the Jews. Wherever there were Jews, there were problems. The Jews brought with them filth, death, hatred and squabbles. They were chased away from the planet eventually, but they took away with them inventors, scientists and physicians, leaving the Earth with nothing. In retaliation, we have decided that whatever remains of the insidious race of the Jews has to be destroyed. It didn’t work on the first attempt. This means that our ship represents the last chance to save the Earth. Whoever finds this letter should know – THE JEWS ARE GUILTY OF IT ALL!”

This record has been saved. It is on display in the Museum in memory of planet Earth in the Rivka Crater, for all travellers who hadn’t understood the meaning of these words: “Whoever blesses the Jews will be blessed, whoever curses the Jews shall be cursed.”

---

[1] Judenrein (clear of Jews) was a Nazi description of their Endlosung (final solution) plan that would see all Jews exterminated.

Village idiots control American skies

What does it take to land jobs in U.S. aviation industry these days?

Being kicked out from a closed psychiatric asylum as a hopelessly untreatable clinical moron, that’s what.

At least, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration say so: their own website claims that it is “actively recruiting workers who suffer ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions.” All that is happening under what has become known as diversity and inclusion hiring initiative.

They are not alone in going woke beyond belief: BestBuy, the electronic marketing giant, have announced recently their promotion policies have changed. People of set race (ethnic background is the word these days), or skin colour, put the simplest way, have the best chance to get ahead within BestBuy’s hierarchy. Knowledge? Abilities? Who cares about such secondary criteria? You’d have to really study and analyse the potential candidates. Their birth certificates and skin colours do the job for you in the new system.

It’s somewhat different with the FAA: human lives can be at stake.

So, a plug door on a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight Friday, Jan. 5.

What did FAA do? Why, they grounded all 737 MAX 9 planes after the incident, and are carrying out an “extensive inspection” and maintenance work.

What if some clinical moron just thought there was no need to check the mechanism. He had an electronic game to attend to, after all, and that’s more important.

To make sure everybody knows the real culprit, the FAA said they would increase their oversight of Boeing following the incident, they include auditing Boeing’s 737 Max 9 jetliner production line and companies that supply parts to the airline manufacturer.

Boeing, come to think of it, sits near to Seattle, the real seat of all things going wonky under the guise of progressivism in North America.

Not many were fooled, especially not within social media ranks: an overwhelming number of commenters and public figures have charged that airlines and airline manufacturers’ emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives has made flying less safe.

Just look at this kind of hot air emanating from FAA: “Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring.

“They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”

And all that is supposed to prove that “diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.”

As Elon Musk of X alias Twitter fame put it: “Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety?”

And to make sure to show this was not a rhetorical question, he added: “That is actually happening.”

The so-called progressive civil rights activists call objections to the DEI hiring policies “abhorrent,” forgetting that air travellers have a right to get to their destinations safely. Such travellers are self-centred enough to pooh-pooh FAA’s website’s claim according to which people with “severe” mental and physical disabilities are the most under-represented segment of the federal workforce.

“Because diversity is so critical, FAA actively supports and engages in a variety of associations, programs, coalitions and initiatives to support and accommodate employees from diverse communities and backgrounds. Our people are our strength, and we take great care in investing in and valuing them as such,” the FAA states.

The FAA claim that the Administration thoroughly seek and vet qualified candidates “from as many sources as possible” for a range of positions. Besides, in the woke world we live in now, refusing to accept mentally ill people would equal discrimination.

Here’s FAA’s official word: “The FAA employs tens of thousands of people for a wide range of positions, from administrative roles to oversight and execution of critical safety functions. Like many large employers, the Administration proactively seeks qualified candidates from as many sources as possible, all of whom must meet rigorous qualifications that of course will vary by position.”

The so-called progressives (one wonders how they dared steal the word) have created a group of health care professionals, medical students and policymakers working to (their own blurb) “protect health care from a radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideology.”

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a retired professor and the former associate dean for curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine is the chairman of Do No Harm, as the group call themselves. Who cares they stole the expression from Hippocrates?

Dr. Goldfarb compared his field of expertise with that of aviation. Answering a Fox News reporter’s question, he said that similar to the medical field, the aviation industry has an obligation to protect its travellers.

“The aviation industry has a responsibility for traveller safety just as the health care industry has a responsibility for patient safety. These responsibilities outweigh other factors when considering applicants to work in those fields.”

Realising he might have gone too far, he qualified his statement thus: “People with disabilities who can successfully complete the task should never face discrimination.”

Seeing the lack of logic made the good old professor back somewhat faster, even: “Unfortunately,” identity politics is “creating opportunities for so-called oppressed groups by lowering standards for entry into those fields and thereby endangering the safety of those which it’s designed to serve. Some endeavours simply do not lend themselves to identity politics,” he added.

In a fine display of alibism, the FAA also trumpets that employees with disabilities will be provided “reasonable accommodation” on the job, whatever this is supposed to mean.

You won’t believe what can parade as science

People, stop breathing, and the earth will be saved.

Thus results of a study by PLOS One: methane and nitrous oxide found in human exhalations are worse for the environment than carbon dioxide.

PLOS who?

They trumpet themselves as a peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science since 2006.The journal covers primary research from any discipline within science and medicine.

One wonders how many of the peers reviewing PLOS One’s content have finished high school.

PLOS One’s authors have published a view according to which science (society) have underestimated human respiration’s contribution to climate change. It merits further study.

Not shockingly, a number of mainstream media have picked the story up, fuelling further panic, without acknowledging (at least) the “further study” reference.

Scary sample

It took 328 people who exhaled at these would-be scientists’ demands to establish that human breath comprises 0.05 per cent of the United Kingdom’s methane emissions and 0.1 per cent of its nitrous oxide.

What does it tell us? Or, to be more specific, what does it tell the PLOS One’s shamans? Both of those gasses “have a much higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide,” they concluded.

And now, to the real bomb: “Exhaled human breath can contain small, elevated concentrations of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), both of which contribute to global warming.”

The effort was led by atmospheric physicist Nicholas Cowan of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and it warned: “We would urge caution in the assumption that emissions from humans are negligible.”

Cowan himself urged caution: “CO2 contribution in human breath to climate change is essentially zero.” Simply because plants absorb nearly all the carbon dioxide humans breathe out. It’s the other two gasses that are left in the atmosphere. Methane traps 80 times the amount of heat as carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere. This figure decreases over time.

PLOS One went deeper, looking at their subjects’ diets. They found no sign that meat eaters produced more of either gas. Remarkably, all test subjects exhaled nitrous oxide, only 31 per cent exhaled methane. The PLOS One ground-breaking paper referred to them as “methane producers,” adding, without any explanation as to reasons, that they were more likely to be female and over 30 years of age.

This shocking research only looked at breath, the paper’s authors said, and called for further research into the total picture of human gas emissions, insisting it could reveal more about the “impacts of an aging population and shifting diets” on the planet.

Cows that have no table manners

Farting cows have been a focal point for a number of so-called environmental studies in recent years. They blamed methane emissions from cows for the deterioration of our environment. Bovines’ herbivorous diet is broken down by methane-producing bacteria in their multiple stomachs.

Sceptics, from serious scientists all the way to stand-up comics, have found this an attractive point to have fun with and make fun of.

Cow farting jokes notwithstanding, the British government, for example, have legally committed themselves to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 78 per cent by 2035 compared to 1990. Hey, Brits, their new King urges his citizens, start eating less meat, if you wish to save the planet and yourselves with it.

This is going to be tougher than it seems: a number of estimates say the share of global greenhouse gas emissions from raising livestock for meat at 15 per cent. But the PLOS One study has turned it all upside down: moving to a high-fibre vegetarian diet could potentially cause more methane and nitrous oxide emissions. They call this phenomenon “pollution swapping:” nothing beats a fancy scientifically-looking terminus technicus.

And now that they’ve given us yet another reason to be scared out of our minds, they have given us a solution: five, six, seven, eight, let’s stop breathing. All of us, at once.

Feeling better yet?

Re-inventing JFK’s assassination

Parkland Hospital physicians who treated then-President John F. Kennedy’s fatal wounds that day in Dallas in 1963 must have been young geniuses just thinking about entering medical school.

How else would they be able to express serious doubts about the official story (narrative is today’s expression) in a documentary filmed six decades later, in 2013?

And how come that 2013 work of art is only making headlines now, a decade since its creation?

According to the Warren Commission, a low gunman fired two shots from the sixth floor of Texas School Book Depository. The two bullets struck President Kennedy from behind as he was travelling in a motorcade in Dallas. One of the bullets entered his upper back and exited near his larynx, while the second bullet entered the right side of his head and exited via his forehead.

Several doctors present in the emergency room when President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 claimed that the official narrative featuring the lone gunman theory was wrong, and they said so on camera, in Jacquelynn Lueth’s JFK: What the Doctors Saw. Lueth was the 2013 film’s executive producer.

On entering Parkland Hospital, President Kennedy was still alive and breathing. He would be pronounced dead about 30 minutes later.

Seven doctors said in Ms. Lueth’s footage that the commission’s claims about the events differ substantially from what they’d seen, heard and experienced while in the Parkland Hospital emergency rooms.

In an article written for CBS News, Ms. Lueth recalls that the doctors’ “recollections were precise and clear, as if the intervening decades had melted away.”

Not only that: “Each of them reacted strongly when the autopsy pictures were projected on a screen,” Ms. Lueth wrote. “They didn’t agree on everything, but it became obvious that the way the president looked at Parkland did not match the autopsy photos taken at Bethesda even before the official autopsy began.”

The Parkland doctors “had no agenda other than trying to save the president’s life,” she wrote, adding that those who witnessed the wound to the president’s neck “believed it was an entrance wound.” That would contradict the Warren Commission’s findings. “Several of them saw a gaping hole in the back of JFK’s head,” she said.

Shut up or else

Several of the doctors mentioned what Dr. Malcolm Perry, the surgeon who attended to President Kennedy, was told. He would also attend to the alleged killer, Oswald.

“So, at the press conference, Dr. Perry, in describing the [throat] wound here, said that he thought it looked like an entrance wound,” said Dr. Robert McClelland in the video taken from the documentary.

“So, we were thinking there were two wounds. Had to be an entrance wound and an exit wound. That was the only way we could put it together. And so, I thought it was an entrance wound,” said Dr. Ronald Jones, another Parkland doctor.

Later, Dr. McClelland recalled that he noticed something unusual after the press conference with Dr. Perry about the JFK assassination.

“When [Dr. Perry] left the room, someone came up to him who Dr. Perry thought maybe was a Secret Service man, and he told Dr. Perry, ‘You must never, ever say that was an entrance wound again if you know what’s good for you,’ “ he said.

Dr. McClelland, who died aged 89 in 2019, said that he believed that “in all probability there was a conspiracy, i.e. there was more than one shooter.”

And now it all becomes somewhat murky.

A shocking thriller by American attorney Charles Brandt, titled I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa, quotes the self-admitted Mafia gunman as saying he had been ordered to deliver several guns to Dallas shortly before the Kennedy assassination. By whom? His superiors. Who were they? His superiors whom you obeyed, no questions asked, if you knew what’s good for you.

The 2013 documentary is based on several physicians retrieving memories from times they were still wearing diapers. On top of it, a Secret Service agent recalled he’d picked a bullet that landed in JFK’s limousine, put it on the presidential stretcher as it was rushed to the operating room, and forgot about it. Until September 2023 when he shared his story with the New York Times.

Destroying the system

All of these “new” revelations seem to point firmly at America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It had an axe to grind with JFK and his younger brother Robert. The two, according to numerous reports, some more substantiated than others, blamed the CIA for a failed 1961 invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs by some 1,500 Cuban exiles trained and financed by the CIA.

Kennedy inherited the fiasco from his predecessor, John Dwight Eisenhower, and wasn’t too pleased with it.

This was about the time the surreptitious movement to discredit American government structures, law enforcement in particular, was beginning to gather steam.

It seemed to reach its summit with the so-called Watergate scandal in the early 1970s: President Richard Nixon’s supporters allegedly broke into Democratic Party offices in the Watergate hotel and intrepid Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein allegedly brought down “tricky Dick’s” administration. It would take an American lawyer John O’Connor several decades to dig out some sordid facts in his two page-turners: Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate, and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism, to be followed by a volume dealing with the sham more specifically: The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened.

Not that the CIA has been innocent throughout its history. But: many (most) of that agency’s critics these days tend to forget most of CIA’s rough tactics were used during the so-called Cold War. That is at a time when the U.S. and the rest of the then-free world faced an enemy as ruthless as ruthless can be.

Single example: the Soviet Union had a special institute set up to nullify the effectiveness of polygraph tests (a.k.a. lie detectors). Today’s accepted wisdom (Wikipedia, for example,) calls them junk science devices or procedures that measure and record several physiological indicators such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while a person is asked and answers a series of questions.

Unlike today’s Wikipedia, the Soviet KGB had been aware that the CIA (and other U.S. law enforcement agencies) used to accept polygraph tests as sacred words from the mount. So, the KGB spent gobs of money and effort on developing techniques to defeat interrogations on polygraphs.

Compared to that, the CIA’s ugly MK Ultra program was child’s play. For those whose memories don’t extend far enough, that would be a covert program by the CIA to develop drugs and techniques for interrogating and brainwashing people.

The democracies then faced two options: either treat the communist dangers using democratic methods, or treat them dropping velvet gloves and showing the iron fist inside.

They chose the latter, and it’s coming back to haunt them.

Keeping my voice to myself

When you call your bank to discuss an issue or two, one of the first things they tell you is that your conversation with them may be recorded. They do it for mutual protection and training purposes is how they usually explain it.

Now, the opening gambit has received yet another twist: we may be, they say, using voice identification (voice ID is how they usually put it), and it’s up to you to tell us if that’s all right with you or not. That last part, by the way, equals what has been known as negative billing, and the practice just happens to be illegal in Canada.

I’ve been always somewhat uneasy while ignoring the bank’s automatic telephone system’s helpful suggestion I should tell them if or when I didn’t like their voice ID plan.

It did take me some time, but from now on, I plan to politely but firmly reject the plan any good old time they mention it.

It’s not only because I have difficulty buying their frightful idea that having my voice-print on their records will make my interactions with the bank any safer.

Canadian banks seem to have no issues with sharing their data with governments for whatever reasons, some more nefarious than others. That reminds me of George Orwell’s masterpiece, 1984. It also reminds me of my own personal experiences while living and working in a communist country decades ago.

A caretaker who knew too much

Here’s one: my talented and creative wife, a former star with the famous Black Light Theatre of Prague, was invited to create her own Black-Light show with a former colleague of hers, and perform for several months in some posh establishment in Greece.

One nice afternoon, as we were getting out to go for a walk, we encountered our building’s caretaker.

After a polite exchange of hellos, he said to her, so, you’re off to Greece. Seeing her surprised expression, he added, oh, don’t you worry one bit, we know everything, and, trying to soothe her fraying nerves, he concluded, but just take it easy, we wrote a perfectly excellent recommendation for the proper authorities.

This didn’t calm us down one iota: we had been quietly planning to defect already, so, this revelation by our building’s caretaker only convinced us we haven’t much time and space.

For a bit of an explanation: to a communist authority, Greece was integral part of the capitalist west, and not everybody and their dog were allowed to cross the barbed-wire borders on their way there. Which, in this instance, meant not only that the show my wife created had to be perfect and innovative, but it also was supposed not to contain a single sign of criticism of the communist regime, and she was supposed to be trusted enough that she won’t permit herself to be lured into anti-communist espionage, and that she wouldn’t be spilling any beans about things communist authorities wished to keep secret (if she knew any).

That was long before the introduction of modern electronic gimmicks and gadgets into the shady game of identifying people.

And it was shortly after I’d met Soviet dissident writer, Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. This was the man who unveiled the authoritarianism’s cruelty before the entire world in his novel Gulag Archipelago. Gulag was an official abbreviation for the Soviet state concentration camp administration.

In an earlier book, V krugu pervom (The first circle), Solzhenitsyn revealed for the first time ever the existence of scientific research establishments within the Soviet concentration camp system.

An unbelievable number of researchers worked there, doing their utmost for the system that had them shut in. It was either that, or forced labour camps in the open air of frozen tundra north of the polar circle (63^rd parallel).

The chief designer of Soviet multi-stage ballistic missiles, Sergei Korolev, spent considerable time behind bars in a sharashka (шарашка, and Solzhenitsyn himself used to theorise that the verb ошарашить, meaning to stun or astonish, was at its root). Korolev’s products sent the first satellite (Sputnik) into orbit, and the first people, too (Yuri Gagarin, German Titov, etc.). And the world celebrated a former political prisoner’s achievements.

While in a sharashka , the famous airplane designer Andrei Tupolev created his first long-distance bomber that flew pilot Valeri Chkalov’s crew from Moscow all the way across the North Pole, landing in Portland, Oregon, after more than 63 hours in the air, without magnetic compass, reliable charts, or consistent radio communication to identify their bearings.

It was in similar circumstances, Solzhenitsyn said, that Soviet scientists created the first voice identification system.

They were proud of their achievement. They claimed that it was more reliable than dactyloscopic fingerprinting. Any tested person could try speaking over the phone, their voice muffled through a handkerchief, changing the pitch all the way to a shrieking sound, and yet, the system would recognise the speaker ten times out of ten.

Frightful dilemma

And here I was, in a supposedly democratic Canada, expected to be using that same system, or a version of it!

Besides, what guarantees does one have that the bank, if and when one turns them down, obeys and does what it is bid? Gone are the days when whatever happened between you and your bank remained between you and your bank, just as it would happen between you and your lawyer or between you and your medical attendant.

After all, Canadian federal government showed in full Technicolor what they meant about client-practitioner privacy when they went after upset truckers’ financial accounts, as well as demonising crowd-funding efforts, with banks welcoming them with open arms.

Many – when told this or that institution, private or governmental, likes to record their identity and keep a record of of it on file – shrug it off: I’m doing nothing wrong, I have nothing to fear.

They can hardly be more wrong. These guys don’t exist to please our beautiful eyes. Governments are all about control.

I prefer to control myself. Whether I’m right or wrong remains to be seen, but it’s my decision, and if I goofed, I’ll be responsible. Not to a government’s unseen hand. To myself. That, to me, is good enough.

YouTube adds girlie sales to its portfolio

Unbelievable? Should it be?

While demonising anyone who offers differing views on current events in the world from what the powers-that-be say is the only permissible opinion (or information), youtube.com has gladly joined the world of what has become known as illegal trafficking in humans.

Simply put, they’ve gone and become a willing partner in a massive worldwide prostitution rink.

If you want to check them out for more information, here it is:

Want to know more? Google is willing to share:

Advertiser identity verified by Google

Advertiser

ASTRASOFT PROJECTS LTD

Location

Cyprus

See more ads this advertiser has shown using Google

Why you’re seeing this ad

This is an ad. Ads are paid and are always labelled with “Ad” or “Sponsored”. They’re ranked based on a number of factors, including advertiser bid and ad quality. Some ads may contain reviews. Reviews aren’t verified by Google, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it’s identified.

End of quote.

Fake content? How about immoral content?

Interestingly, these ads concentrate on Slavic girls, with those coming from war-torn Ukraine attracting the most traffic. Whether this means that interested males in other parts of the world think these girls would be more docile, submissive, even, because of the conditions whence they are coming, who knows?

This is not a psychological review, this is a simple statement: the politically correct YouTube, with its even more woke parent, Google, sees no reason not to accept money tainted by sales of what is called “white meat” in the biz.

After all, with Ukraine in all kinds of headlines all over the place these days, business must be booming.

Many of these girls, while of loose moral standards, may be simply and purely stupid. Uninformed, to put it politely. Any Westerner enjoys a better quality of life than they do, and if a western guy can create an impression of high standards of everyday living, then, ho for it, let’s get hitched and share the happiness.

The world has gone wildly off its rocker, pushing material achievements well ahead of the ability to enjoy life without buying new and newer gadgets every day. We have succumbed so low we believe that a car we’d just bought has become obsolete the moment we leave the dealer’s lot. Speaking of which, these lots are filled with next-year models as soon as our hangovers from New Year’s parties start to vanish. And way too many customers fall for it.

So, why should the poor Ukrainian girls not fall for it, too: their information about life in the so-called “richer” countries is so much poorer.

Are they gold-diggers, as many would sneeringly describe them?

Not really. It has been a well-established fact through history that when a female casts for a husband, that is, a future father of her children, good looks and sex appeal aren’t the only (or major) criteria. What she’s looking for is a safe and economically secure future for her children.

So: is YouTube actually a philanthropist by providing these girls with a comfortable option how to join the club of future for their children that would be brighter than what they had experienced?

Absolutely not.

This is not a simple dating site. This a service that sells people to the highest bidders.

Yes, the girls who let their names stand must know what they are getting into.

To a degree, they do. Obviously. To another degree, they do not.

Still, the question persists: is this moral? A rhetorical question to end all rhetorical questions.

Cheering a Nazi in Canada’s House of Commons

When Canada’s House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota welcomed Yaroslav Hunka and said the guest of honour was a hero who’d fought the Russians during World War II, he’d recognised the howler of his ways immediately: in order to fight the Soviets, Hunka had to serve the Nazis. And that was an ideology Canada fought with all her vigour during that war.

Indeed, history will record that Canadian members of Parliament gave a standing ovation to a former member of the Waffen SS, a Nazi war tool accused of war crimes during World War II.

Canadian historians Irving Abella and Harold Troper published a shocking j’accuse in 1983; None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933–1948. It describes Canada’s restrictive immigration policy towards Jewish refugees during the Holocaust years. It made the expression “none is too many” an accepted turn of phrase in Canada.

Speaker Rota is no longer Speaker: he announced his resignation.

“This House is above any of us. Therefore, I must step down as your Speaker,” he said in the House of Commons before Question Period on Sept. 26.

“I reiterate my profound regret for my error in recognising an individual in the house during the joint address to Parliament of President Zelenskyy.”

Following a 30-second round of applause by all MPs present, Rota added that Hunka is “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service.”

The Conservatives, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois had called for Rota to step down from his position. During a media scrum, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that House leaders would be holding a meeting on the subject later the same day.

Meanwhile, His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the Conservatives, say it is the entire Liberal government that is to blame for the vetting failure, while the Liberals say the responsibility is the Speaker’s alone.

At least the Speaker acted honourably by resigning.

His party leader and Prime Minister would have done nothing of the sort, even when caught in flagrante delicto (with both hands in the cookie jar) by the country’s Ethics Commissioner.

Then still-Speaker Rota apologised following the Sept. 24 incident, saying the decision to recognise Mr. Hunka was “entirely my own” and extended his “deepest apologies to Jewish communities in Canada and around the world.” He added that before recognising the man in Parliament, he had not been aware of his connections to the Nazi regime.

Murky history

MPs from all parties would say later that Hunka should not have been honoured in Parliament. Many in the Conservative Party started wondering how a former member of the Waffen SS could slip past the vetting process and receive roaring applause from Canadian politicians.

But: how a democracy like Canada, which fought alongside the allies against the Nazi regime, could have allowed former Nazis to immigrate into the country?

Soviet Union policies between 1932 and 1933, helped decimate Ukraine’s population beyond words of shock. The famine, a.k.a. Holodomor, created by enforced collectivisation led to collective hatred of everything coming from Moscow (that’s where the traditional hate-filled expression Moskali had its heyday. Soviet leaders played on Ukrainians’ traditional anti-Semitism, sending in commissars of Jewish origin to implement the murderous policies that would cost some five million Ukrainians their lives.

So, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, a number of Ukrainians would welcome them as long-awaited liberators. The Ukrainians’ new occupiers went on brutalising them, but even so, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists had put together a multinational force in 1943, to fight on behalf of the retreating Nazi army.

That’s when Yaroslav Hunka fought with the 4th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, the military wing of the Nazi Party. The unit consisted of troops from the Galicia region in western Ukraine and was armed and trained by the Nazis.

In February 1944, the unit perpetrated a massacre of Polish villagers in Huta Pieniacka, Ukraine, burning between 500 and 1,000 Polish people alive, according to various estimates. According to witnesses, children were executed in front of their parents by having their heads smashed against tree trunks or being burned alive in houses.

The International Military Tribunal after the war declared the Waffen SS a criminal organisation. Some 5 million to 7 million Ukrainians died during World War II, and the country would remain under the control of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991.

How did they get here?

Writing for the Canadian military magazine Esprit de Corps, David Pugliese described the ingenious effort by Flight Lt. Bohan Panchuk.

His name says it all: Flight. Lt. Bohan Panchuk was of Ukrainian roots.

Canada would not accept immigrants that had voluntarily served the Nazis. But Flight Lt. Panchuk, who started the Ukrainian Canadian Servicemen’s Association, was able to bring some two thousand Ukrainians to the country by lying about their past.

According to Pugliese’s story, Flight Lt. Panchuck, who helped over 30,000 Ukrainian refugees come to Canada after the war’s end, put forth a “positive narrative” that portrayed the unit as victims who had been forced to fight against the Soviets against their will. The Royal Canadian Air Force officer made no mention of the group’s connections with the SS.

In an effort to hide its Nazi past, the 14th Waffen SS Division Galicia had also changed its name to the First Division Ukrainian National Army. That happened while its members were held in a camp in Italy in the last days of the war.

The Canadian government did not look deeply into the unit’s background, but many in the British government knew that members of the unit had connections to the Nazis. A report from Britain’s Under-Secretary of State noted that because the unit was an SS division, technically, “all of its officers and senior NCOs are liable for trial as war criminals.” One British bureaucrat said in 1948 that his country was hoping to “get rid of the less desirable” Ukrainian prisoners of war by sending them either to Germany or Canada.

Some members of the Canadian-Ukrainian community also knew of the unit’s past. The Association of United Ukrainians in Canada started a campaign to stop the former Nazi collaborators from arriving in Canada.

“Ukrainian Division (Galicia) was part and parcel of the Hitler army. It was against them that our Canadian boys fought on the battlefields of Italy. Many a Canadian son remained over there, shot by the VERY ONES that Mr. Panchuk would wish your Department to bring to Canada,” the association wrote to Canadian immigration officials, according to Esprit de Corps’s story by David Pugliese.

Ultimately, Lt. Panchuk’s campaign was successful and 2,000 members of the 14th SS Division Galicia arrived and settled in Canada in the 1950s.

The Deschênes Commission

In 1985, then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney called for a royal commission to determine whether Canada had become a safe haven for war criminals.

Known as the Deschênes Commission, it would find there were about 600 former members of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division living in Canada at the time, but that the country did not have the legal means to prosecute them.

The commission’s report, heavily redacted, would only reveal that members of Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian police units who murdered Jews later became members of the Galicia Division. The Canadian government was aware of the report all along, but chose not to publish it.

The Deschênes Commission report would lead to changes in the Canadian Criminal Code in 1987, letting Canada’s judiciary put suspected Nazi war criminals living in Canada on trial. Prosecutors later pressed charges against at least four men on allegations of participation in Holocaust-related war crimes, but one case ended in acquittal, two cases were dropped when prosecutors had trouble obtaining overseas evidence, and the fourth case was stayed due to the defendant’s health.

In summary

Canada’s record with Nazi war criminals has not been much to write home about all along her history.

And now, this world-wide outrage.

Canada’s current Prime Minister’s father, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, was infamously quoted as saying he saw no positives in chasing Nazi war criminals living in Canada because that could strain his country’s ties with places whence those individuals had come, as well as endangering his cherished dream of “multiculturalism.”

Canada’s current Prime Minister, his son Justin, would invite a person wanted in India to be his official guest during a state trip to India, thus giving a convicted criminal a richly undeserved immunity.

Meanwhile, a Polish government minister said he has “taken steps” to have Yaroslav Hunka extradited to Poland.

“In view of the scandalous events in the Canadian Parliament, which involved honouring, in the presence of President Zelenskiy, a member of the criminal Nazi SS Galizien formation, I have taken steps towards the possible extradition of this man to Poland,” Polish Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek said in a statement posted on platform X on Sept. 26.

Czarnek also included a copy of the letter he sent to the head of the Institute of National Remembrance, a Polish historical body that has prosecutorial powers, asking him to “urgently [establish] whether Yaroslav Hunka is wanted for crimes against the Polish nation or Poles of Jewish origin.”

“Such crimes constitute grounds for applying to Canada for his extradition,” added Czarnek.

Poland – while supporting Ukraine militarily and hating everything that smells Russia with a passion – has been putting claims on territories currently owned by Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent description that Poland got these territories as a gift from Soviet dictator Iosiph Stalin were a cynical statement of truth. Polish politicians were upset: such truths hurt. It put the Poles where Putin thinks they belong.

Poland’s relationship with Ukraine is tense, to put it mildly. Suffice it to recall the current Polish refusal to import and use Ukrainian wheat.

And into this steps an illiterate Canadian Parliamentary Speaker, more his Prime Minister’s bootlicker than anything else, who embarrasses his country by having Parliamentarians cheer and applaud a Nazi, putting a brand new face on the entire conflict.

Gray Lady’s false-flag howler

A 9M38 missile that landed and exploded in the market place at the Ukrainian community of Konstantinovka on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023, killing at least 15 and injuring twice as many, was launched by the Ukrainian BUK system from Druzhkovka, a place controlled by the Ukrainian military, a few miles northwest of Konstantinovka.

Thus a U.S. military investigation, omitted somehow by most North American mainstream media, a.k.a. MSM.

One outlet published it. Shockingly, it was the Queen of anti-Russian disinformation, the Gray Lady herself, The New York Times.

Considering the Gray Lady went public with the outrage just as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was on his way to America where he would demand that the United Nations remove the Security Council right of veto from Russia, this is more than a tad surprising, bordering on plainly shocking.

The news hit the pages just as Zelensky was meeting with America’s fattest money bags, including representatives of JP Morgan, demanding more and more substantial financial support in order to be able to stop Russian atrocities. And now this.

Zelensky met with Wall Street CEOs and business power players to discuss efforts to rebuild his war-torn country and its economy, the official report said.

The roundtable, convened by JPMorgan Chase, included former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, billionaire Mike Bloomberg, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and billionaire Barry Sternlicht.

Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of JPMorgan Asset & Wealth Management, Workplace CEO Vince LaPadula and JPMorgan alternative investments boss Anton Pil, hosted the get-together.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon was absent. He was travelling at the time.

Whether that was supposed to signal anything to anybody matters little.

Here’s the most surprising part: the Gray Lady has put together a bullet-proof case of Ukrainian military’s complicity: direct video, eyewitness reports, satellite imagery, collection of the missile’s destructive parts, with analysis, reports by ballistics experts concerning the launch spot, and yet, the conclusions would only mention “human error,” “tragic accident,” and, to top it off, “these missiles have been prone to miss their targets for a number of reasons, such as electronic malfunction or internal steering system damage that happened during lift-off.”

Not a word about Ukrainian military’s lack of qualified military personnel or, Heavens forbid, that their hit on Konstantinovka could have been intentional.

As if there hadn’t been enough cases of such disregard for human lives on their part in the recent past.

How could a missile that has a 17-mile flying range land in Konstantinovka, is not clear, except that it must have been a result of a technical failure that could have happened before it reached its planned target.

That the target remained unnamed in the Gray Lady report is not surprising.

That the story took off with blaming Russian terrorists who wouldn’t hesitate before attacking known civilian targets is not surprising, either. After all, that was the first thing Zelensky thought of saying when the news hit the public.

If anyone happened to think of similarities with a Ukrainian missile landing and exploding in Poland, with all and sundry using this to attack those Russian so-and-sos, they seem to have been on the right track. Ukrainian intelligence services, including those serving with the military, have learnt their lesson from their Soviet predecessors well.

False flag operation is what it’s called.

That it could have easily triggered the Third World War, Zelensky and his backers could hardly care less. That the fourth-class comedian who entertained crowds in the seediest of the seedy clubs didn’t is not surprising.

That the Gray Lady didn’t, either, should be.

Is another Red Book coming?

When Mao Tse-tung served as People’s Republic of China’s chairman, Great Helmsman and whatever other enthusiastic epithet his followers found useful, his sayings were compiled into a smallish book. Wrapped in red cover, the faithful would recite full chapters, perfectly enthralled, and not understanding an iota of its content.

Amid reports of economic difficulties in his country, the current People’s Republic of China’s boss, Xi Jing-ping has penned a paper on (verbatim translation from the news release) in-depth study and implementation of thematic education in the new era of socialism.

Whatever THAT is supposed to mean. Dense or dense?

This comes from the Xinhua News Agency, courtesy New China Radio International: making sure the leader’s work is available to everyone, the Office of the Leadership Group of the Central Thematic Education and People’s Republic’s State Commission for Ethnic Issues have tasked the Chinese National Language and Interpretation Institute with translating Excerpts from Xi Jingping’s notes regarding socialism with Chinese character for the new era. It will be available in Chinese Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Kazakh, Korean, Guangzhou and Yuehai languages, and published forthwith throughout the entire country.

Just a second

Some commentators are laughing the entire idea off. They pretend they’re wiser than the masses of young western intellectuals of the 1960s through the 1990s, and thus, they won’t be swayed by the drivel contained in Xi Jinping’s newest masterpiece.

Obviously, they haven’t read it. And, just as obviously, they don’t understand why the 1960s through the 1990s western intellectuals were so much taken by the Great Helmsman’s pronouncements they would buy them for their own.

Those fans of the Great Helmsman Mao admired him because, they said, the Soviet Union was as expansionist and imperialist as its American counterpart, and its communism was no longer to be trusted.

The People’s Republic, on the other hand, with her Red Guards (and their excesses) were the true revolutionaries to be followed, and their word taken as gospel.

And now?

The U.S. has been throwing all of its credibility into any garbage bin it happened to meet along the way, with the education system and mainstream media helping the former beacon of freedom lose all of its shine. Miscalculating the world’s polarity as the 20^th century was winding down, the U.S. has now become the world’s buffoon instead of a respected superpower. Even NATO supporters are now beginning to fear that the organisation, under American leadership, won’t survive another few years.

To add insult to the injury, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have received invitations to join Brasil, Russia, India, China and South America as members of the BRICS. The group already represents 32 per cent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (calculated using the Parity of Purchase Power. a.k.a. PPP, meaning purchases made using American currency). This will grow to 37 per cent within the six months needed to grant the invitees’ accession. BRICS’s GDP is even now higher than the famous and U.S.-controlled G-7’s 30 per cent of the world’s economy.

The West’s ideologues, including mainstream media, keep pooh-poohing BRICS, saying it’s a mere patchwork of nations as culturally diverse as can be. Strange, when comparing such statements to their babble about diversity. It matters and, then again, it doesn’t.

If only they paid more attention to what BRICS leaders have to say on the topic. Chinese vision about building a worldwide community of individual civilisations’ mutual understanding without forcing any kind of universal values upon anybody happens to be a prime example. It’s the opposite of the West’s ways.

It just so happens that all of the BRICS members represent important parts of their regional, political and economic blocs. Even now, BRICS has become a keystone uniting all (or most) of the groups outside of the northern Atlantic and west European regions.

That, too, seems to have been the idea behind its emergence. The United Nations Organisation will have to change its ways to account for BRICS, and so will such economic groups as G7 and G20.

Speaking of G20, it is very quickly becoming obvious what China’s Xi Jingping thinks of it: having to decide whether to attend the end-of-August BRICS meeting in South Africa’s Johannesburg or the forthcoming early-September G20 gathering in New Delhi, he’s sending Premier Li Qiang as his country’s representative to India, choosing South Africa for himself, instead.

Gradual changes

The West’s policy makers were expecting immediate changes to come out of Johannesburg, especially in the field of finances. That didn’t happen: BRICS, as well as a number of other, non-NATO and non-EU countries, have been speaking about de-dollarisation for quite some time. The Johannesburg meeting indicated it was the goal, still, but made sure to explain the process will be based on solid analysis, not ideology.

They aren’t working on a common currency, either. That fundamental move may or may not come in the future.

Here’s the most important message to NATO and EU: take us seriously. And don’t even think of dragging the world into a nuclear conflict. It would kill everybody, but YOU would be the first to fry.

The West’s ideologues and policy-makers would do well to read Xi Jingping’s new version of the Red Book. Their predecessors ignored the earlier version by Mao, and look where it got them.