Forty-something Brandon Smith (about half a generation younger than me) decided to take on Rachel’s arguments head-on.

I can still explain for the NYT why men are walking away if they’re willing to listen.

1. First, I must say that an author in her 50s still longing for casual sitcom encounters like she’s in her 20s reveals a lot about why modern women are oblivious. Real life is not Sex In The City – Most men of means do not gravitate towards long term relationships with women in their grandma phase. She should already be in a happy relationship or marriage, she’s had plenty of time to figure this out.

Feminism has made women think they can engage with life on their own schedule. They can’t.

This is self-evident. Risk of infertility or miscarriage skyrockets for first child after thirty-four. The older mothers one sees, most of them had at least one child earlier. Defy biology in favour of your career at your peril.

2. Men are especially wary of women with baggage. Women initiate 70% of breakups and divorces and feminist influence over family law has made divorce easier and more lucrative than ever for women. The older a woman is the more baggage she has and the less likely a man is going to want to date her seriously, let alone put an expensive ring on her finger.

Western women have been taught they need to party in their 20s, then pursue serious relationships in their 30s or 40s. Meaning, they ignore their best prospects for at least a decade. Their ideology sets them up to enter the relationship market when their marriage value is lowest.

Those statistics are frightening. Family law in the United States and Canada has made the idea of a serious relationship seem like self-harm to most men. I’ve seen dozens of women cynically crow about how they took a man for whom she never cared to the cleaners. Bragging rights. The social contract is completely broken in Fortress North America.

And Brandon is absolutely right. Attractive women have the choice of their social circles from about seventeen to twenty-five. Choose a man who loves you and will make you happy and build your life with him. When I was young, this was harder as my generation of men was trained to pick the flowers as we walked and actively discouraged from settling down. It was the women who did the harm: “Don’t even consider marriage until you’re in your mid-thirties” more than one aunt from both sides of the family admonished me.

3. Men are no longer tolerating the concept of the sexual revolution. They don’t want to take any chances on women who think promiscuity is a virtue. They know that statistically, women who sleep around lack discernment, the ability to connect, self respect and mental stability. Starting a relationship with such a person will only lead to disaster. They never stay happy for long (the grass is always greener). And so, men stay home. Want to get them back? Keep your body count low.

I’m not sure about the science, but empirical observations going back millennia indicate that when women either jump off the end of the pier as amateur nymphomaniacs or as sex pros, they rarely keep their marbles. The pros are a better bet as it’s mostly motivated behaviour which can bought out by plenty or diminishes when the buyers disappear. Sexual addiction, particularly in women, is only slightly healthier than heroine addiction.

The feminists gambled that if (almost) all women are promiscuous, men will accept promiscuity in their long-term partners. They made a losing bet here. Some men just decided to eat ice cream every day and throw away the cup afterwards. Others decided that they didn’t like ice cream enough to put up with the mess it makes when it melts.

4. Third-Wave Feminists spent the better part of the last 20 years telling men they are pure evil for being masculine and wanting to chase women. So, men did what you asked of them – They stopped chasing you. They found other more interesting endeavors like their careers and their hobbies. If you want men to come back, perhaps you should APOLOGIZE for all those years of slander.

Apologies are not necessary. Excuses are just words. More intriguing behaviour and a better attitude are certainly requisite.

More interesting endavours? Speak for yourself, Brandon. There are few situations more stimulating than the company of an intelligent and attractive woman who is interested in that man. As the poets wrote last century:

The purring of the invisible antennae
Is both stimulating and delightful.

and in 16th century France:

Quand à longs traits je bois l’amoureuse étincelle
Qui sort de tes beaux yeux, les miens sont éblouis :
D’esprit ni de raison, troublé, je ne jouis,
Et comme ivre d’amour, tout le corps me chancelle.

and before the birth of our Lord and Saviour:

dulce ridentem, misero quod omnis
eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te,
Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi
vocis in ore;

Marvellous women are sublime. Slatterns are not.

5. Modern women have greatly overestimated the usefulness of sex as a bartering tool for securing a man. If you want a man to stick around you’re going to have to show him love and respect, not just what’s inside your pants.

Well said. For men, the first two weeks without sex are difficult. After that it’s just habit. Curiously for women, sexual tension builds over time becoming worse over the long haul. Once young men decide they don’t need women and get used to it – well you have the situation today.

Plus every woman can provide sex. So to hold sex over a man he has to be incapable of finding sex elsewhere. Sex has been everywhere for at least thirty years.

6. Men are far more conditioned to be alone than women are. Women are communal creatures. They rely on constant interactions, affirmations and group inclusion. Social media might fill the void for a while but it can’t give them what they really want – Intimate personal attention 24/7. Only a partner and children can give you that. In a battle of who can endure loneliness longer, men will win, so don’t make it into a battle.

Not sure I follow Brandon’s argument here. Both men and women are driven to reproduce (happily enough for the human race). While more men certainly can live happier lives as long wolves. neither men nor women as a group would be happier in solitude. Humans are fundamentally social animals (more pack animals like wolves than herd animals like cariboo though we show characteristics of both).

7. I’ll tell you the biggest open secret that modern women still don’t understand – They claim that men are afraid of approaching them. They say that men today are “weak” and that they can’t handle the new era of the “boss babe”. They argue that men need to abandon their traditional masculine roles and act more feminine; this will make it easier for everyone to get along.

These are common jabs at the male ego designed to make men feel ashamed for distancing themselves from feminists. In reality, men value one thing above all else: Peace. If you can’t offer peace, then no man with any sense of self worth has a use for you. Feminists offer the opposite of peace, and so they have no value.

Not every man values peace as highly as Brandon Smith. On the other hand, the hyper bitchy standard Canadian female stance is about as appealing as laundry detergent for dinner. Canadian women drop their voices at the end of sentences, the men lift their voices at the end of the sentences. This is literal biological role reversal. Any man who wants to date men can just do it, especially in Canada. The gay community in Toronto is a whole lot more welcoming than T.O’s ubiquitous covens of careerist women.

Most men have no desire to take on feminine roles. If women are waiting for masculine men who will give wear aprons, they will be waiting a long time at an empty station. Still a more balanced approach is common among modern homes. For some reason, my partner loves construction type projects. She does most of these (I’ll help her) while I like to read poetry, fix technology and bikes. We both cook and we both do dishes.

The weird part of the boss bitch movement is that once these women emasculate their partners, they go out and seek strong masculine types to scratch their sexual urges. Working at 180˚ to biology is rarely a winning hand.

8. Feminism, like all Marxist movements, is obsessed with power. Everything they do is driven by a desire for power and control; not just over their own lives but over the world around them. Modern women say they want the same power as men, but they need to accept that no matter how much the scales are tipped in their favor through laws, government subsidies, easy college grants, DEI hiring and unfair divorce, they will never be like men.

Brandon is wrong here. Women can be like men. Women like that become Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton or Madeleine Albright. If they were men, nobody would like them either. Cruelty combined with a psychopathic desire for power is unattractive even in men. We shouldn’t let men get away with this kind of behaviour either. Many men like this die young.

What is most attractive in men is benevolent nobility and graceful generosity. The wise king, the kind prince.

The author suggests that men no longer shape the world because they have abandoned the current relationship dynamic. This is foolish. Men continue to shape everything around you. Every utility, every necessity, every government, nearly every company, your safety and security, your ability to be free, it’s all reliant on men. You have no power and you never will.

Two years ago I would probably have disagreed with Mr. Smith. The last two years have shown that men and “the world’s leading democracies” are quite capable of putting international relations and trade back to a caveman level. Just this week, a two-time Dutch Prime Minister absurdly curried the favour of “Europe’s Daddy” in the person of President D.J. Trump. All the money in the US has been going into the military for the last twenty years. Now all the money in Europe is going into the military. War appears to have returned for the next couple of decades, if we survive its radioactive depredations.

Israel’s unprovoked strikes on Syria, Lebanon and now Iran over the last five years have made it clear that might makes right. No one in power in the West even attempted to put the brakes on Israel war crimes. On a similar note, the West failed to make a deal with Russia in 2021 when a deal was easily to be had. Through countless mouthpieces (mostly British), Western leaders have demanded that “matters be settled on the battlefield”. Well at least until about six months ago when they started to conclusively lose the war for Ukraine.

This is not a woman’s world and we’re going back to a world where to survive a woman needs a powerful and even dangerous man at her side. It’s not a world, I’d choose. Men are dangerous, we are. Encouraging us to live as battle-hardened warriors will make everyone’s life more precarious.

Men should take a lot of blame for the culture we built where money and power are prized above all and the rich get a pass for bad behaviour. Value our teachers, our firemen, front-line emergency doctors (not just fat-cat specialists), builders. This idea that only businessmen and celebrities are valuable and that hard-working men but without extremely high net worth are unworthy renders women mad and a society non-functional.

But women should look hard at their own self-defeating behaviour. Ordinary women chronically chase the top percent of men (women grade men mostly on two attributes: net worth and height). Dumpy Cinderella is not a winning proposition. Getting to touch the magic wand in the dark doesn’t mean you’ll see the light of day in the company of “your catch”. Ladies, stop chasing the top ten percent of men and target the ordinary, good men who keep the lights on and the children safe.

If Western women had not so convincingly emasculated their men over the last forty years, there would be more strong men to stand up to the robber brutes like Donald Trump and Benjamin Mileikowsky and demand peace and prosperity. By emasculating men, women have made themselves and all of us less safe.

The game play was not as dull as the score might suggest as Deutsch Jahrndorf had a few nice chances. Had Deutsch Jahrndorf gotten lucky early, the game could have been much closer, tight even.

Here’s the photos.

Michael Wernecker got away early and put a dangerous shot on net between two defenders Irfan Akbiyik and Ömer Faruk Akbiyik. Michael Unger made a good save.

Jozef Sombat dallied regularly near the net, keeping Michael Unger on his toes.

Deutsch Jahrndorf Captain Carsten Lang surveys his fallen comrade as keeper Michael Unger calls for a substitution

Defender Boris Brydniak attempts to stop Michal Belko’s break on neck.

Defender Boris Brydniak pulls Michal Belko sleeve as keeper Michael Unger covers the angle

Attacker Carsten Lang and Kittsee defender Jakub Lieskovsky battle as Manuel Schiszler makes a big save

Neither Carsten Lang nor Eden Palic can get a handle on the shifty Maximilian Mikula

Defender Boris Brydniak niftily slips between Michal Belko and the ball

Mustafa Atik protests his innocence and slips away without a yellow card, after some grabs and trips, while teammate Ivan Ziga warily watches

Kittsee continues to press with Ibrahim Kamasik and Jozef Sombat in close on net hoping for a drop from keeper Michael Unger. Defender Ömer Faruk Akbiyik ignores the two attackers, watches his keeper and hopes for the best.

Eden Palic urgently swivels to stop Kamasik’s break. An out of breath Carsten Lang and Boris Brydniak jog behind the play.

Under the night lights Ibrahim Kamasik surveys the field before making his throw

Jozef Sombat gave the Deutsch Jahrndorf fits all night, scoring two goals, one at 43′ and the other at 73′

Boris Brydniak futilely rushes to beat Balko to the ball while Jozef Sombat starts a run towards goal

A cool evening with a modest but enthusiastic crowd, who were well-rewarded with a 4:0 win.

Carsten Lang jumps straight up one metre vertical and clears a very dangerous shot and keep Deutsch Jahrndorf in the game.

Carsten Lang looks on while ref Nevrez Cetiner checks extra time allowance. Restless Borys Brydniak awaits his throw-in.

Manuel Schiszler keeps a good angle to force Borys Brydniak’s shot wide. Manuel Oswald watches the dangerous ball roll.

Manuel Schiszler pounds a deep pass to send the ball to the Deutsch Jahrndorf half

Michal Matušica heads to sideline with veteran trainer

Manuel Schiszler defends Borys Brydniak’s close attack. Michal Belko and Manuel Oswald attempt to slow Brydniak while Roman Tarek looks on.

Kittsee defender Manuel Oswald attempt to pass the ball past Milan Losonci, trainer Weiß looks on.

Michael Wernecker keeps the ball away from defender Borys Brydniak.

Sombat winds up to release hard shot which flies past a sprawling Michael Unger. Milan Losonci arrives too late.

Sombat winds up to release hard shot which flies past a sprawling Michael Unger. Milan Losonci arrives too late.

Michal Belko starts the celebration while Deutsch Jahrndorf players Borys Brydniak, Edin Planic, Ömer Faruk Akbiyik lose hope of a comeback against Sombat’s 3:0 marker at 73′

Happy Kittsee players line up to congratulate Jozef Sombat, while Deutsch Jahrndorf Borys Brydniak stands with his hands on hips, search his soul.

Maximilian Mikula runs through three Deutsch Jahrndorf attackers to clear the ball. Substitute Thomas Bastian shows off his fresh legs waiting for a pass.

Ivan Ziga slips past a surprised Christoph Drobela and into a waiting Thomas Bastian

Bastian surveys the field before making a deep pass

Maximilian Mikula knocks the ball into the center of the field in front of the main SC Kittsee fan section where Florian Gombay defends.

Manuel Oswald and Ivan Ziga duelat midfield for the loose ball.

SC Kittsee celebrate Edin Planic’s own goal to take the score to 4:0 in minute 85. Milan Losonci walks away dejected.

Deutsch Jahrndorf coach Elvir Jusic has run out of answers at minute 88, as former Kittsee forward Mustafa Atik leaves the game.

Deutsch Jahrndorf enjoyed a late penalty. Manuel Schiszler made a big save to preserve his well-earned shutout.

SC Kittsee present themselves to the fan section a well-earned bow in front of the spectators.

The real problem with China’s economy The country risks making some of the mistakes the Soviet Union did

The crash in China’s economy has been a long time coming. Shenzou points oput what western magazines have been saying about China since 1990:

1990. The Economist: China's economy has come to a halt.
1996. The Economist: China's economy will face a hard landing.
1998. The Economist: China's economy entering a dangerous period of sluggish growth.
1999. Bank of Canada: Likelihood of a hard landing for the Chinese economy.
2000. Chicago Tribune: China currency move nails hard landing risk coffin.
2001. Wilbanks, Smith & Thomas: A hard landing in China.
2002. Westchester University: China Anxiously Seeks a Soft Economic Landing.
2003. New York Times: Banking crisis imperils China.
2004. The Economist: The great fall of China?
2005. Nouriel Roubini: The Risk of a Hard Landing in China.
2006. International Economy: Can China Achieve a Soft Landing?
2007. TIME: Is China's Economy Overheating? Can China avoid a hard landing?
2008. Forbes: Hard Landing In China?
2009. Fortune: China's hard landing. China must find a way to recover.
2010: Nouriel Roubini: Hard landing coming in China.
2011: Business Insider: A Chinese Hard Landing May Be Closer Than You Think.
2012: American Interest: Dismal Economic News from China: A Hard Landing.
2013: Zero Hedge: A Hard Landing In China.
2014. CNBC: A hard landing in China.
2015. Forbes: Congratulations, You Got Yourself A Chinese Hard Landing.
2016. The Economist: Hard landing looms for China.
2017. National Interest: Is China's Economy Going To Crash.
2018. The Daily Reckoning: China's Coming Financial Meltdown.
2019. BBC: China's Economic Slowdown: How worried should we be?
2020. New York Times: Coronavirus Could End China's Decades-Long Economic Growth Streak.
2021. Bloomberg: Chinese economy risks deeper slowdown than markets realize.
2022. Bloomberg: China Surprise Data Could Spell RECESSION.
2023. Bloomberg: No word should be off-limits to describe China's faltering economy.

… Yet it’s already 2024 and China’s economy is still going strong.

The first couple of minutes of this video¹ features economist Dr. Keyu Jin, a professor at the London School of Economics, who makes the point China is a hero not a villain in most of the world:

Ninety percent of the people in today’s world still live in developing countries, and they have a very different view and perspective on China compared to the more hawkish military perspective that we often hear in the West. Chinese technologies are eminently practical, cheaper, and either of the same quality or higher quality. They are intended to address the issues faced by developing countries.

A commenter on the video from Sudan reinforces Jin’s point:

Ask me and every Sudanese citizen you can find and they will tell you the same thing. The US crippled us with economic sanctions to make us comply to thier whims, while China assisted us in every possible way and respected our right to govern ourselves the way we want.

It’s high time we in the West started to cooperate with lower income countries and stopped trying to rob them to support our extravagant, spoiled and unproductive lifestyle.²

Vote count in 2020 and 2024 US presidential elections

Great question. The answer is the absence of ballot stuffing in 2024. Republican and clean voting activists did yeoman work cleaning the electoral register and vetting incoming postal ballots.

Wackford Squeers wrote a concise summary.

Some lib asked “18 million ballots were rejected and purged HOW?“

Via the good people at StopBogusBallots.com and Common Sense Elections.  Thank you, Austin, Texas-based ballot security expert Jay Valentine! 

What Common Sense Elections discovered in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin: 

—Across these states, 660,290 mail-in ballots are tied to registered voters who permanently moved to other states. These absentees number 68,983 in Georgia (far exceeding Joe Biden’s 2020 margin of victory: 11,779 votes); 262,488 in Pennsylvania (which Biden won by 80,555); and 42,043 in Wisconsin (Biden’s by 20,682).

—Voters who moved to other in-state counties total 457,310. These include 65,857 relocated voters in Michigan (which Trump won in 2016 by 10,704 votes) and 169,083 in Pennsylvania (which Trump secured in 2016 with 44,292 votes).

—Voters who moved and left no forwarding residence total 146,160.

—Those linked to invalid addresses total 663,514. Pennsylvania is home to 346,505 such “voters.”

—Voters recorded as residing at commercial sites: 4,914. These reflect, among others, “voters” at Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport and a vacant lot at 9145 Mann St., Las Vegas.

—A staggering 916,100 voters are enrolled with missing or incorrect apartment numbers. This boosts the odds that postal workers will leave unclaimed ballots in lobbies or mailrooms, where harvesters can retrieve and abuse them.

—All told, these screwy ballots total 2,848,288—in just these six states and involving only these six anomalies shown here. Deeper and wider scrutiny has yielded graver worries.

The good news is that Common Sense Elections’ technology identifies these suspicious destinations. It then asks county clerks not to send them mail-in ballots.

CSE also monitors ballots that are filled in and returned. It flags those that arrive from fishy addresses and advises election officials not to count them.

Mail-in and expatriate ballots have become the most popular election fraud method. The way to stop it is to only allow in-person voting with paper ballots which can be recounted. If someone cannot be bothered to show up with official ID to vote, that person does not deserve to have a vote. If this means a certain number of seniors cannot vote, so be it. It’s an open question that whether people who are so elderly that they cannot move or follow the news are qualified voters.⁴ Having a pulse should not be the only requirement to cast a vote.⁵

Would it have been better for the United States to have had Donald Trump as president for two consecutive terms or with an interrupted second term is a question for which we’ll never have an answer. In principle, for the deep changes Trump and his supporters (including Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr) would like to implement, today is a more propitious time than in the middle of the mock pandemic.

That the USA has figured out how to defuse mail-in ballot fraud is good news for the rest of the world. Let’s hope the trend continues. If our goal is democracy, there’s literally no point in holding dishonest elections.

Boeing spent tens of billions of dollars over years and years buying up their own stock. They refused to invest in new designs, they refused to invest in their workers, they refused to invest in their process, their tooling, their research and development, and instead played financial games designed to boost their stock price while ignoring the fundamentals of their business. This is what happens when MBA’s take over a company, and Boeing has become a shining example of what not to do with a major company if you care about it surviving, growing, and prospering over the long run.

If, however, your goal is to “bust out” the company and snap up the wealth while destroying it, then Boeing is a shining example of exactly what to do and how to do it. Who knew “Mafia 101” would become a major part of the MBA curriculum? Then again, with hypercapitalism and all, maybe Mafia 101 is the new and improved ultimate goal. 

> “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” – Frederic Bastiat, “The Law”_

Again, it’s the idea that a corporation is responsible to make as much money for its shareholders as possible. The issue is with timeline. As much money as possible in the next six months, or as much money as possible in the next six years, or to generate as much value as possible in the next sixty years.

Henry Ford thought in terms of decades. The current crop of business people appear to be crooks in suit, devoid of both patriotism and common decency. When these are the values one promolgates in one’s cinema, in one’s press and in one’s universities, these are the values one will see both among bootblacks and among one’s elite.

Financialisation is the gutting of an economy. Each agent of financialisation who takes an unearned piece of the pie leaves less on the plate for those who do contribute to society, with their services, their labour or their goods.

Why do Europe’s leaders want to turn our beautiful lands into a giant military camp cum prison colony, administered by printing press bankers? The trade is almost as bad as the one the Lenape made, trading the island of Manhattan for glass beads.

Giorgia Meloni and Elon Musk together in New York on Monday night.
FILIPPO ATTILI/US PALAZZO CHIGI PRESS OFFICE HANDOUT

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni was feted recently at a swanky event in New York City held by the Atlantic Council.

I couldn’t get the lingering smell of rotting fish out of my nostrils for a few days after that. The Atlantic Council is the “NGO” par excellence when it comes to US foreign policy. According to the US Library of Congress, the Atlantic Council is:

> “…..a think tank in the field of international affairs. Founded in 1961, it provides a forum for international political, business, and intellectual leaders. It manages ten regional centers and functional programs related to international security and global economic prosperity. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. It is a member of the Atlantic Treaty Association.”

It’s a very serious operation, and its funders read like a who’s who of very powerful global interests. Here is a small sample of their donors:

• British Foreign and Commonwealth Office
• Embassy of the United Arab Emirates
• Facebook
• Goldman Sachs & Co.
• The Rockefeller Foundation
• Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
• Airbus
• Chevron Corporation
• Google
• HSBC Holdings P.L.C.
• JPMorgan Chase Foundation
• Palantir
• Raytheon Company (now, Raytheon Technologies)
• US State Department
• Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs
• Army Future Studies Group
• Blackstone
• Burisma
• Embassy of Bahrain to the United States
• Embassy of Japan to the United States
• Eni SpA
• Lockheed Martin Corporation
• NATO Public Diplomacy Division
• NATO StratCom Center of Excellence
• Open Society Foundations
• etc.

Big Oil, Big Finance, Big Tech, weapons manufacturers, various governments and various government entities….they are all represented in this so-called “non-governmental organization” that is devoted to Atlanticism (read: continued US global hegemony).

Some of you may be thinking “so what? Italy is firmly within the Atlanticist orbit, and Meloni, as Premier of Italy, needs to represent her country at these events”.

Fair enough. On the other hand, many of you will recall that the Atlantic Council played a central role in the censorship regime forced onto/aided by Big Tech in the run up to the 2020 US Presidential Election, effectively tipping the scale in favour of Joe Biden’s candidacy. In 2018, the Atlantic Council partnered up with Facebook’s parent company Meta to create what is known as the Digital Forensic Research Lab. All of you here are aware that the US Government during Joe Biden’s administration funded efforts that resulted in government-backed calls for social media bans for certain American citizens, with many of the requests succeeding. You also already know the role that the USGov played in shaping the narratives around COVID-19, efforts that were assisted by the Digital Forensic Research Lab.

All of you should be aware that this outfit worked on behalf of government to monitor and censor online speech:

> The SIO’s role in monitoring and censoring online speech has garnered widespread political and legal scrutiny for stifling protected speech in conjunction with the federal government. The SIO-led so-called Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), composed of the University of Washington, Graphika Inc., and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), silenced anti-mainstream narratives at the height of the 2020 presidential race in blatant disregard of the First Amendment. > > Emails from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reveal that the federal agency secretly collaborated with the EIP to censor vast amounts of speech deemed “threatening” and “dangerous” to its agenda. Journalist Matt Taibbi’s reporting detailed Stanford’s abandonment of free expression, open discourse, and intellectual diversity as it aided CISA in an unprecedented crackdown against political topics damaging to Democrats and the pro-lockdown left.

By now, some of you may be wondering why X owner Elon Musk would attend an event hosted by an organization that runs counter to his stated principles at X. I don’t have an answer to this, as Musk’s motivations are his own, and super billionaires reside in a different universe than us mere mortals. In my opinion, it’s not a good look….but my opinion does not appear on Elon’s radar.

My concerns here are focused on Giorgia Meloni, a populist who heads a party founded by neo-fascists, but who is now being celebrated by the powers-that-be, including those who seek to censor information on subjects such as mass migration, an issue where Meloni is supposed to be at complete odds with Atlanticism. What exactly is she trying to achieve here? Her flirtations with Brussels (the EU is firmly aligned with the Atlantic Council) resulted in her being spurned and publicly humiliated. So what gives?****

Thomas Fazi

**approaches the subject from the view of economics and Italy’s dissipating national sovereignty**:

> Taken together, then, you get the sense that Meloni gambled her political survival on shedding her populist image and rushing in the opposite direction, becoming more pro-European and more pro-American than your average European centrist. Now, however, the liberal media is aflame once more. Chatter about Meloni’s political journey started in September, when she was presented with a “Global Citizen Award” at the Atlantic Council in New York. Beyond the think tank’s Atlanticist flavour, what really got politicos talking was who gave Meloni her prize: one Elon Musk. This has fuelled speculation about a potential political (re)alignment with Trump on Meloni’s part. Given the mercurial South African’s financial and political support for Trump’s presidential run — and the (denied) allegations of a burgeoning romance between the businessman and the Prime Minister — these claims don’t feel completely fanciful.

Okay, no big deal so far. Not playing favourites in a foreign election is common sense.

Here’s where Fazi gets to his core argument:

> So could Meloni’s recent moves be signalling a return to her radical roots? I think not. At its core, rather, this story is less about policy — and more about cold hard cash, both in Italy itself and further afield. That’s clear enough if you put aside the trees, Meloni and Musk, and instead focus on the woods: the Atlantic Council that offered Meloni her prize. The think tank euphemistically describes itself as a nonpartisan organisation that “galvanises” US global leadership and encourages engagement with its friends and allies. In plain English, that means that the Atlantic Council exists to promote the interests of US corporations — and American imperial interests more generally. Founded in the Sixties, to boost political support for Nato, today it remains active on transatlantic security issues. 

The meat:

> Nor is Musk the only US investor ingratiating himself with Meloni. After returning from her bash in New York, she also met with Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment company. With assets worth $10 trillion, the firm boasts the equivalent of Germany and Japan’s combined GDP. In Italy itself, BlackRock is comfortably the largest foreign institutional investor on the Milan Stock Exchange, owning substantial stakes in some of the country’s largest listed companies. The firm is bolstering its Italian presence elsewhere too. Earlier this year, for instance, Meloni oversaw the sale of Tim’s entire fixed-line network to KKR, a US fund that boasts BlackRock among its main institutional investors.  > > Beyond the fact that the network represents a strategic national asset, with its sensitive user data now effectively under foreign control, these varied moves represent the culmination of a long sequence of privatisations and selling-off of Italian public and private assets beginning back in the Nineties. Once you dovetail that with BlackRock’s future plans — among other things, it hopes to snatch up Italy’s highway and railway networks, currently under public or semi-public control — the country looks set to become little more than an outpost of American capital, losing what little is left of its economic sovereignty. 

Fazi makes the point that by Meloni selling off Italy’s economic crown jewels to US corporate, security, and financial interests, she is reducing her own country to the state of an economic dependency of the USA. Smart Europeans are worried about the continent’s economic decline, and there are strong calls for a strategy to create “European giants” in all economic sectors. By selling off such assets to the Americans, these efforts are instantly handicapped.

Italy as the USA’s “economic Trojan Horse”:

> That this should be happening under a nominally “sovereigntist” prime minister is remarkable enough — but what really matters is the way US investors, notably BlackRock, are using Italy as a Trojan horse to expand their influence right across Europe. Consider the example of Germany. Unlike other countries, companies in Munich or Hamburg largely remain in the hands of the families that founded them. Local investors have substantial influence too, as does KFW, the public bank dedicated to supporting the Federal Republic’s industrial development. > > In practice, that means the penetration of BlackRock and other US mega-funds in the German economy remains relatively marginal. That’s an anomaly that US capital now seems intent on fixing, using Italy as its battering ram. Last month, for instance, Milan’s UniCredit bank announced a surprise hostile takeover of Commerzbank, effectively becoming the Frankfurt outfit’s largest shareholder. Though this caused some patriotic fervour among Italian commentators — an Italian bank taking over a German rival! — the reality is that the move was likely spearheaded by BlackRock itself, which executed the move with the help of other Anglo-American funds, all to consolidate its control of Germany’s financial system. No wonder Larry Fink welcomed the move. “Europe,” he said, “needs a stronger capital markets system and a more unified banking system.” 

For obvious reasons, I don’t find the following quote by Todd to be entirely correct, but the gist of it certainly holds true:

> What we are witnessing, in short, is the economic cannibalisation of Europe by US capital. Not that we should be surprised. As Emmanuel Todd, a French historian, writes in his latest book: “As its power diminishes worldwide, the American system ultimately ends up burdening its protectorates more and more, as they remain the last bases of its power.” With European industry crucial to US interests, Todd continues, we should expect more “systemic exploitation” of Rome and Berlin from the imperial centre in Washington. The fact that this is happening under the auspices of a self-described “patriot” like Meloni only highlights the grotesque weakness of European politics.

No matter who moves into the White House in January of next year, Europe is going to be negatively affected by policies emanating from the ravenous US of A.

I wanted to be that change and not just report it. Sometimes I’ve succeeded, sometimes I have not. Elizabeth Nickson, another renegade former journalist and Canadian (her career include stints as an editor at Time and Life magazine) describes acerbically the delusions of the contemporary press corps. For some reason, modern journalists consider themselves to be the peers of their subjects:

Average journalism-school graduates watched their fellow undergrads go on to wealth in finance, innovation in technology, or power in politics. Meanwhile, the high Masters of Journalism are struggling to avoid replacement by college interns and to out-write AI software. After years in expensive schools cozying up to the right people, they believe that an equal professional respect is due. The trouble is, they’ve done little to earn it.

The media follows a socialism of status, demanding cultural equity with the newsmakers they cover. The members of the media don’t realize that the elites consider them with as little regard as does their dwindling audience. Striving for acceptance into the right social circles makes them all the more desperate to parrot the conventional wisdom of the ruling class. See, I’m on your team, the reporter thinks, as the Vice Undersecretary for the Department of Agriculture (Tropical Fruit Division) glances across the room to find someone worthy of his notice….

Perhaps journalists could improve…by not catastrophizing every issue that has plagued humanity since ancient Sumer. But one crisis left unnoticed has doomed journalism to dwindling audiences, rising irrelevance, and public contempt. Newsrooms from Washington to San Francisco, New York to London, suffer from a humility crisis. What makes this odd is that journalists have so much to be humble about.

This is part of her essay contributed to Michael Walsh’s new book Against the Corporate Media: Forty-two Ways the Press Hates You (2024).

I’m far from certain I could bear to read 448 pages about the contemporary press but for those who care about fourth estate, it looks like obligatory reading.

On a serious note, what’s gone wrong with journalism is the tendency for publications to no longer pay their reporters properly and no profits from the press. Journalists need a side gig. Side gigs depend on being considered “easy to work with” and “cooperative. Almost all newspapers and magazines are money losers now, and their future existence depends not on their readers, but on their advertisers and their corporate sponsors.

Courage has left the building, and modern mainstream journalists have become PR hacks instead of investigative/critical journalists.

Substack and independent websites provide the vast majority of serious reporting these days. The decline started with the rise of the internet. Journalists slowly became toothless from as far back as the year 2000.

^* I wrote regularly for The Economist, The Moscow Times, Dance International; produced news spots for ABC Television and short documentaries for Radio-Canada.

Sometimes honest observers take a too idealistic view of the past.

I’ve recently read George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872) set in 1829-1832. The financial sector in England was nearly as corrupt then as in today’s USA. Society and public opinion nearly as stupid and parochial as the US media. At this time, the Triangular Trade in human slaves was just coming to an end. In fairness to England, they were among the first to outlaw slavery in modern times (1834) and even allotted a fleet to the west coast of Africa to hinder the slave trade. Yet the expropriation of the natives continued apace, in both the Dominion of Canada and the United States of America. Simultaneously India was despoiled by the British, as they prepared for the Opium Wars to cripple China (1839-1842, 1856-1860).

Tonight I just happened to read a bit of Percy Shelley, “Song to the Men of England” (1839). Here’s the most moving stanzas:

Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save
From the cradle to the grave
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?...

The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.

The American militiaman and worker effectively lives today as Englishmen did 185 years ago. Not Percy Shelley, not Juan Cole, not Philip Weiss, not Richard Medhurst, not Bernhard Horstmann, not Ron Unz and certainly not Alec Kinnear have been able to put a stop to it. Those who would enslave, expropriate and war carry on making the human condition worse as quickly as technology will enable it and the laws allow them.

The ubiquity of evil in the past does not excuse us from fighting evil where we find it in the present. In recent times, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden did manage to put a small dent in evil doing by exposing it to light. Collateral damage will never as effective a euphemism (Assange), while conspiracy theory has become conspiracy reality (Snowden), thanks to their efforts.

People wonder where the laid off people will go. Some suggest this is the beginning of guaranteed minimum income.

Imagine how wild US cities would be if the US Gov’t didn’t directly or indirectly employ most of the working age population and pay them with debt.

There’s no greater motivator for random violence than an empty stomach.

I agree, one cannot underemploy more than 10% of your population and hope for social stability. In fairness, Spain has had youth unemployment of 30% for decades and has not blown up yet, but the restlessness and dissatisfaction is palpable. Young people live with their parents, who have some kind of security and share the wealth. But it makes for a weird society. Strange as Spain seems like it should be prosperous. The people are intelligent enough, the underlying infrastructure is excellent (buildings, roads).

What’s weird is the fetishistic worship of private enterprise in the United States. When it’s clear that private enterprise in mid-twenty-first-century capitalism mistreats its employees and betrays its customers. Just look at Enron, Uber, Bolt, the big banks. All of them are scamming everyone most of the time. A few executives at the top pillage public companies before parachuting out with their gold.

Still Yanks continue to post blind private enterprise and libertarian nonsense. E5 answer the post above with this tirade against the state:

Massive innovation, increase to standard of living, and wealth is what happens. That hungry stomach gets cut open by 7 other hungry stomachs who are protecting the property rights of the successful. 1 million government shovels and donkeys building hovels are replaced by mechanization allowing for your internet, computers, satellites, cars, air conditioning… government has never produced anything. Even the manhattan project was invented by the private sector as are all weapons.

A surprising take. History has shown that energy, transportation and medical infrastructure are better managed by state monopolies.^* In first-world high trust societies. The reason that the government gets such a bad rap today is that the West are no longer high trust or first world societies. If you have a bunch of corrupt and venal civil servants who think nothing of betraying their country and flouting the law, of course state ownership doesn’t work.

The fish rots from the head. Since we have self-interested, unpatriotic, corrupt and venal career politicians everywhere, few others think they should work like the country’s, their neighbour’s and their own well-being depended on them.  Which it does.

Civilisation is in a devolutionary phase now, like the dark ages. A reminder about roaming armed bands, every man for himself, rape and pillage, brigands on every road, sanitation issues with attendant plagues. Of late, civilisation doesn’t look like it will stop sinking until it hits rock bottom unfortunately.

^* Medical costs per capita in the United States are three to five times higher than the rest of the Western world, with no better outcomes. The hospitals work on the profit principle and most of the psychological energy is expended between the insurance companies and hospitals on how high the astronomical bills should be and how to bankrupt the patient. Medical outcomes are secondary. This is just a simple clear example of how the private sphere does not always outperform the state. Here’s a couple more. Privatisation of energy utilities lead to disrupted service, failed infrastructure, higher costs to the state to repair the damage. The privatisation of the railroads in England has resulted in colossal neglect of the lines, cut backs of service, extortionate pricing for casual travellers. This is not to say there are not counter-examples. Produce markets and distributed farming perform far better in private hands. Clothes making which again does not require massive infrastructure and top engineering specialists is better in private hands.

It’s well worth a look. Here it is.

Canada makes the list on both sides. Canadians are number ten in both average and median wealth. The difference between average and median wealth astonishes me. In Canada, average wealth is $375K but median wealth is just $142K. That’s a ratio of about 2.5 to 1. I wondered about the inequality in Canada, as Denmark shows $449K and $194K, significantly closer to 2:1. Australia does reach a disparity of just 2:1.

But the situation in the US situation is far worse, their median wealth doesn’t even make the chart, despite being 4th with avarage wealth of $565K, well-ahead of Canada.

The US economy has basically become oligarchical, with a small coterie of well-heeled multi-millionaires and billionaires riding rough shod over everyone else.