“… The Soviets and Americans did their best to overcome differences of language and culture as they worked together. The language gap was not only a hurdle; it was an opportunity for the occasional prank. One of the US personnel taught a Soviet soldier guarding the entrance to headquarters to greet every American officer with the following words: ‘Good morning, you filthy son of a bitch.’ The soldier was proud when he said those words: his pronunciation was not perfect, but the message got through. Deane thought such episodes meant that the Soviets and Americans were learning to get along.”

—Serhii Plokhy, Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: American Airmen behind the Soviet Lines and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 26, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 27, 2023

On December 26, 1991, the New York Times ran a banner headline: “Gorbachev, Last Soviet Leader, Resigns; U.S. Recognizes Republics’ Independence.” On December 25, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned, marking the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, often referred to as the Soviet Union or USSR.

Former Soviet republics had begun declaring their independence in March 1990, the Warsaw Pact linking the USSR’s Eastern European satellites into a defense treaty dissolved by July 1991, and by December 1991 the movement had gathered enough power that Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine joined together in a “union treaty” as their leaders announced they were creating a new Commonwealth of Independent States. When almost all the other Soviet republics announced on December 21 that they were joining the new alliance, Gorbachev could either try to hold the USSR together by force or step down. He chose to step down, handing power to the president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin.

The dissolution of the USSR meant the end of the Cold War, and those Americans who had come to define the world as a fight between the dark forces of communism and the good forces of capitalism believed their ideology had triumphed. Two years ago, Gorbachev said that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, "They grew arrogant and self-confident. They declared victory in the Cold War." 

The collapse of the USSR gave the branch of the Republican Party that wanted to destroy the New Deal confidence that their ideology was right. Believing that their ideology of radical individualism had destroyed the USSR, these so-called Movement Conservatives very deliberately set out to destroy what they saw as Soviet-like socialist ideology at home. As anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “For 40 years conservatives fought a two-front battle against statism, against the Soviet empire abroad and the American left at home. Now the Soviet Union is gone and conservatives can redeploy. And this time, the other team doesn't have nuclear weapons.”

In the 1990s the Movement Conservatives turned their firepower on those they considered insufficiently committed to free enterprise, including traditional Republicans who agreed with Democrats that the government should regulate the economy, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure. Movement Conservatives called these traditional Republicans “Republicans in Name Only” or RINOs and said that, along with Democrats, such RINOs were bringing “socialism” to America. 

With the “evil empire,” as President Ronald Reagan had dubbed the Soviet Union, no longer a viable enemy, Movement Conservatives, aided by new talk radio hosts, increasingly demonized their domestic political opponents. As they strengthened their hold on the Republican Party, Movement Conservatives cut taxes, slashed the social safety net, and deregulated the economy. 

​​At the same time, the oligarchs who rose to power in the former Soviet republics looked to park their illicit money in western democracies, where the rule of law would protect their investments. Once invested in the United States, they favored the Republicans who focused on the protection of wealth rather than social services. For their part, Republican politicians focused on spreading capitalism rather than democracy, arguing that the two went hand in hand.

The financial deregulation that made the U.S. a good bet for oligarchs to launder money got a boost when, shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Congress passed the PATRIOT Act to address the threat of terrorism. The law took on money laundering and the illicit funding of terrorism, requiring financial institutions to inspect large sums of money passing through them. But the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) exempted many real estate deals from the new regulations. 

The United States became one of the money-laundering capitals of the world, with hundreds of billions of dollars laundered in the U.S. every year. 

In 2011 the international movement of illicit money led then–FBI director Robert Mueller to tell the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City that globalization and technology had changed the nature of organized crime. International enterprises, he said, “are running multi-national, multi-billion dollar schemes from start to finish…. They may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military…. These criminal enterprises are making billions of dollars from human trafficking, health care fraud, computer intrusions, and copyright infringement. They are cornering the market on natural gas, oil, and precious metals, and selling to the highest bidder…. These groups may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called ‘iron triangles’ of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat.”

In 2021, Congress addressed this threat by including the Corporate Transparency Act in the National Defense Authorization Act. It undercut shell companies and money laundering by requiring the owners of any company that is not otherwise overseen by the federal government (by filing taxes, for example, or through close regulation) to file with FinCEN a report identifying (by name, birth date, address, and an identifying number) each person associated with the company who either owns 25% or more of it or exercised substantial control over it. The measure also increased penalties for money laundering and streamlined cooperation between banks and foreign law enforcement authorities.

But that act wouldn’t take effect for another three years. 

Meanwhile, once in office, the Biden administration made fighting corruption a centerpiece of its attempt to shore up democracy both at home and abroad. In June 2021, Biden declared the fight against corruption a core U.S. national security interest. “Corruption threatens United States national security, economic equity, global anti-poverty and development efforts, and democracy itself,” he wrote. “But by effectively preventing and countering corruption and demonstrating the advantages of transparent and accountable governance, we can secure a critical advantage for the United States and other democracies.” 

In March 2023 the Treasury told Congress that “[m]oney laundering perpetrated by the Government of the Russian Federation (GOR), Russian [state-owned enterprises], Russian organized crime, and Russian elites poses a significant threat to the national security of the United States and the integrity of the international financial system,” and it outlined the ways in which it had been trying to combat that corruption. “In light of Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine,” it said, “we must redouble our efforts to prevent Russia from abusing the U.S. financial system to sustain its war and counter Russian sanctioned individuals and firms seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.” 

The collapse of the USSR helped to undermine the Cold War democracy that opposed it. In the past 32 years we have torn ourselves apart as politicians adhering to an extreme ideology demonized their opponents. That demonization also helped to justify the deregulation of our economy and then the illicit money from the rising oligarchs it attracted, money that has corrupted our democratic system. 

But there are at least signs that the financial free-for-all might be changing. The three years are up, and the Corporate Transparency Act will take effect on January 1, 2024.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

So anarchy is appealing to me but the only real problem I see is that typically people that want to be left alone will not be left alone by those who feel the need to rule others "for their own good".

I remember being in an argument with a person and they said something along the lines of "we will keep progressing for the good of everyone, even you." Which to me sounds like they'd try to force me to along with their bullshit. Some real Soviet shit where you either toe the line or they kill you and burn your farm.

Typically these groups have power in numbers and will be able to bully lone anarchists or small groups of anarchists. Unless they come together to form some loose coalition, in desperate times of need mind you, something like say modern minute men, how can they resist a large governmental force that seeks to strip their anarchy away for whatever reason?

I personally like the idea of anarchism but it just seems doomed to fail to encroaching ideologies that has strength in numbers. How would you address such a thing and sorry if you've covered it before.

This was my main sticking point as well before being convinced anarchy was better. It has been addressed before and like other arguments there isn't just one answer and you kind of said one of the ideas already, before America was America and had a state army that was how they defended themselves...minutemen. and I would say it proved effective. The only difference was their goal was establishing their own government rather than just being free of government...had that been their goal it would have been a successful example of a group of people defending themselves from the encroachment of a much larger imperial army.

I mean look at how having a big government centralized army is working to protect American and Canadian interests from invasion...the state is just giving stuff away and the people have no say. The first thing Trudeau did when taking power was sell off critical Canadian farmland to China. The American government literally just sends money and firepower to islamic terrorists that hate you and is actively flooding your country with mass immigration from countries you do and do not share borders with. People who only wish to invade because they are bribed with money and benefits stolen from you by the state. So this idea that a state army keeps you safe from different state armies or from invasion... falls apart when two states collude against their people. I mean how many wars with foreign governments have been fought on American soil? How many wars with foreign government have been the government sending its people to die in someone elses war overseas? People underestimate how much a culture change in a place like America would make it such an undesirable target for foreign invasion with or without government. American citizens outnumber and outgun the American military by a longshot, imagine how much more so that would be the case without the state regulating and taking away many of their citizens means of self defense. Currently if people tried to organize their own self defence they'd be put on watchlists branded terrorists and would get Ruby Ridged by their own government... In that way I'd argue people would actually be safer from foreign governments without a government of their own.

The other answer as well is contract PMCs (private military corporations). You can still have a stateless army. Remember capitalism doesn't go away just because the government does and you can still pay people to make defense their full time job. Now PMCs already exist and there are a lot of problems with the concept of mercenaries, but the reality we are in now a PMC is just a hired gun in foreign wars, without government they'd be able to be contracted solely for national defense. (and yes nations can exist as rough cultural groupings on specific landmasses and you can have nations without a state, American natives did it forever until America) The difference between a PMC alongside a state and a stateless PMC is without a state starting foreign wars a PMC would be mercenaries yes...but mercenaries who also have the added incentive of defending their own homes. It combines the idea of a strong organized military with the idea of people defending their own homes. I have resvervations about the idea of PMCs personally but the point is it is another stateless solution.

This is the one sticking point for a lot of people. I hear a lot of libertarians saying they hate government and want it out of their lives...except national defense we need a government for that. The problem is the same argument that they use to denounce socialism can be used for national defense as well. If you would vote to have a government steal your money to fund it by force...would you not also give voluntrily to fund it? If all the people who said we need the government for national defense donated to fund a national defense PMC you'd still have an army and I'd argue a cheaper more cost effective one.

You hear all kinds of storage down here or up interpretation and all this is recorded directly through Google keyboard I guess it's weird to vacuum this point I'm hasn't got a shit yet what does put simply well despite everything everything despite everything we did it it went to shit.

We had achieved world peace people were dying for to unbelievable reasons and we were slowly building our way out of death. And then it went to s***, one after another there were natural disaster the that we didn't coming, and people got scared. And they tried to go back, and when they realise they couldn't return to the ignorance, they got angry.

I want to save what happened exactly what people did, most of the world cut off from these violent groups, and people like me we did what we always did.

We gave hope it was pointless stupid reckless useless, but it was all I could do.

People would race down streets, scream and beg for help. And against my better judgement igram I sword down defending a woman I never met in a country I wasn't knowledgeable in and I fought for the same reason I argued with the greatest academics in the world.

Because it was right thing because it was the only thing that was going to keep this world together, a pack of morons you would fight for the bus stupid bizarre suicide you could possibly think, and I was leading the charge.

What happened next was beyond anyone's imagining they escalated it. We don't know who MH730 I believe it was. Same situation someone fighting in American some kind of nuke from a Russian missile silo, but this wasn't a conventional nuke. The Russians somehow meaning nuke that could borrow it's way down to the ground and naturally the Russian scientists that did know. Were dead.

One of Vladimir Putin's final notes, was on the blind spot of the burrowing nukes. To this day we still don't know exactly how the soviets figured it out I mean I knew later but well what happened next wasn't even by my standards.

In my world magic exist and we know we can understand your mana, magic being just a way to control mana, but we also found the legends some old story and they turned out to have a kernel of truth. Fae, Jin. Over the next hundreds of thousands of years humanity evolved. When aliens came a knocking we... Hid our magic, partially because we had not integrated any of it. And also because. We were scared of what these aliens had.

The year is 150 x x, we are at war everything has boiled over is all coming to shit. We will not survive this, we have lost our heavy hitters they are no longer with another reality the only thing that keep them in reality to let them come back, if we die then come back and it will shatter reality as we know it.

If you listen to this and you can hear me no reality no longer exists or, you have the power to kill God. But to get such power, you must make a deal and let yourself turn into a monster. A reasonable monster.

I am the host of something that has no name I can come up with at this time. I will die and I shall ascend to be more then anything any person in my- any reality. And I will keep my humanity at any cost in the universe because I shall sacrifice it. For I, am not a god. Or a demon. I'm a human, and a monster.

My name. Is Triage, and you will never. Tell anyone about this.

a recent tumblr post made me read Anne Applebaum's Twilight of Democracy and it's so amazing how stupid it is. Like she always gets THIS close to getting it and she tries to analyze it through her center-right American "the dichotomy is totalitarianism or freedom" view and it ends up borderline nonsensical

Like I'm only on chapter 3 and it's AMAZING how all of chapter one was different stories going like "This person was a well-known anti-Communist activist who had a thorough understanding of the dangers of totalitarianism because they ran an Eastern European museum that equated Nazism and Communism. For a reason completely unknown and paradoxical-seeming to me they then fell for authoritarianism and started a newspaper publishing antisemitic caricature and fearmongering against LGBT people" (real actual example from the book).

The whole book is tied together, from her point of view, by a description of the Good Old Times, the New Year's Party 1999 which she celebrated with her rightwing Eastern European and American friends (half of whom, inexplicably to her, have now become staunch rightwing authoritarians), at the peak of Western Liberalism, in a mansion that she describes as "mildewed, uninhabitable ruin, unrenovated since the previous occupants fled the Red Army in 1945". Except this mansion is very googleable and its previous owner was in fact a Pole who fled in 1939 from the German invasion and went towards the Soviet Union, where his kids joined the Anders Army, which was made up of ethnic Poles and fought for the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany (and also... until it was privatized again after the end of the communist era, it was used as an administrative building of the local State Agricultural Holding, with the lands being used as public farmland lmao)

And then there's quotes like this:

which is like... as an East German 90s kid from a mixed family I REALLY beg to differ like neo-Nazi violence EXPLODED after the unification because of the deadly combination of power vacuum, rabid wave of anti-Communism that rendered basically everything slightly leftist suspect and massive and sudden disenfranchisement due to basically complete social collapse, it's just that this did not fit the neat narrative of "Totalitarianism is defeated now, we've reached the end of history" and mostly happened to people who were considered expendable anyway because let's face it, the Vietnamese worker's in the Rostock Sonnenblumenhaus would not have been invited at Anne Applebaum's party.

Literally when she describes her social circle it feels like she never interacted with people outside of a very specific upper class Eastern European rightwing bubble who in the 1990s managed to sell their specific brand of nationalism as pro-Western liberalism (because hey, it was anti-Communist) and now she's surprised that it turns out to be... Eastern European nationalism.

Azerbaijan’s military strike on Nagorno-Karabakh culminated in Baku’s regaining full control over the separatist region within 24 hours. The Republic of Artsakh, established in the region by the local Armenian majority with military support form Yerevan, will now be dismantled, together with its defeated militia forces. Armenia must also withdraw its remaining troops from the region. Numerous Karabakh Armenians became refugees virtually overnight, as both Russia and the West distanced themselves from the conflict. Meduza correspondent Margarita Liutova talked about the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh with Ruben Enikolopov, a professor of economics at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and a self-described Karabakh-born, Russian-speaking Armenian. Here’s what he thinks about the future of his birthplace and its Armenian population under Baku, and about the region’s human rights predicament, neglected by the international community.

Could you first talk about your Karabakh roots? Your grandfather, Nikolay Enikolopov, the well-known Soviet chemist, was born in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, part of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan.

Yes, our family originally came from Kusapat, where he was born, and shortly afterwards they moved to Stepanakert. He died when I was very little, but I do remember him talking to me about the Karabakh conflict. It bothered him a great deal. He always had a balanced position, clear of any extremist leanings, but he worried a great deal about what was happening to his family members in the region.

I often travel to Armenia, but the last time I was in Karabakh was about 10 years ago. Stupidly, I thought I had plenty of time to go back.

My identity is complicated. I am a Moscow Armenian — I grew up in Moscow and hardly speak any Armenian. On the other hand, I have at least twice as much Armenian blood in me than any other kind. I identify as an ethnic Armenian — a Russian-speaking Armenian, let’s put it this way.

I still have family in Karabakh. In the 1990s, some of my relatives were killed — one of them, mind you, wasn’t even in the military. He was a baker, and bakers are always the last to leave, since people would die without them. So he was killed, in the village where he was, close to the front line.

In 2020, I lost my 19-year-old nephew who was serving his obligatory term in the Armenian army. He was a business student at the American University of Armenia.

Fewer of my relatives live there now. The Red Cross evacuated my aunt in February.

What did you think about the cease-fire, achieved on condition of Armenia withdrawing its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh?

It’s a complete forfeiture of Karabakh and Artsakh. I guess it could have been worse. A meat-grinder with thousands or tens of thousands being killed, with the same end result, would have been far worse. But it’s still a heavy feeling.

Russia has clearly decided to step back and give Turkey carte blanche. There are two old empires still in existence in our world, and they live according to 19th-century laws, with the division of spheres of influence and so on. I think that Putin’s meeting with Erdogan definitely had something to do with this conflict. The phrase “Do what you want” was uttered there — and the rest was settled by Azerbaijan’s military superiority, buttressed by Turkey.

Armenia has a banal problem: it doesn’t have weapons, and that’s a huge strategic mistake. In the 1990s, wars were fought with manpower. Now, warfare has become capital-intensive. A country can ramp up its armaments very quickly if it has partners who support it. In Azerbaijan’s case, we’re talking about partnerships ranging from Turkey to Israel. If you don’t have partners, as Armenia doesn’t, this isn’t achievable. Buying weapons from India is a desperate measure.

I could see two possible solutions to this conflict, one of them being less ghastly than the other, but we don’t yet know which of them has been implemented.

I’m afraid that the only scenario that could preserve Artsakh’s independence would involve Kosovo-style bloodshed, captured on video. This could possibly pave the way to some Kosovo-style arrangement. But people matter more than territories, and sacrificing such a huge number of people for the sake of a very uncertain goal would have simply been strange. In a situation where no one was going to intervene from the outside, given this kind of imbalance of forces, surrender was predictable.

The only question left is what’s going to happen with the people who are now in Karabakh. The last 30 years of history have shown that tolerable relations between Baku and Karabakh Armenians are hardly possible. Besides, Ilham Aliyev’s legitimacy rests squarely on his reputation as the “liberator of Karabakh” (apart from him being also the son of the Soviet-era politician Heydar Aliyev).

What this means is that there won’t be any Armenians left in Karabakh. Some of them are bound to become refugees in Armenia. Others will be deposited in Azerbaijani prisons.

Do you mean that they’ll be prosecuted for separatism?

Yes, they could very well simply arrest all the men. Azerbaijani troops have been known to abduct people right out of Red Cross vehicles. The overall state of Azerbaijan’s justice system is very questionable. So, it’s merely a political decision, how many men to arrest and how many not to. The courts have very little to do with it.

It’s unclear at the moment how the question of Karabakh’s population will be dealt with, since no one is ready to intervene or guarantee those people’s safety.

I head about Armenians’ fears that Azerbaijan might launch an aggressive attack on Armenia itself, and not just Karabakh.

I think it’s a perfectly realistic scenario. Armenian Premier Pashinyan’s decision is fairly obvious: we’ll relinquish Karabakh, in exchange for security for Armenia. I’m not all that sure that the second part of that deal will be upheld. Over the past few months, Azerbaijan has attacked Armenian territories and remonstrated about Armenia’s airports and Armenia’s extraction of natural resources — not in Karabakh, but on its own territory proper.

So, I have some doubts about the prospect of peace and quiet in Azerbaijan’s relations with Armenia under the current regime in Baku. I’m not sure that they won’t end up at war. Azerbaijan, meanwhile, doesn’t have Russia’s immunity to sanctions. These two economies have completely different scale. So, sanctioning Azerbaijan is only a matter of will in the West to protect Armenia.

But for Europe, this conflict is remote. Judging by the kind of rhetoric that comes from the West, this region simply doesn’t register as a group of independent subjects. They treat it as a kind of chess board: Armenia hardly gets a mention; Turkey doesn’t, either, because they don’t yet understand the situation. There’s Russia, though, with its waning influence in the region. Regardless of whether it’s Georgia, Armenia, or Azerbaijan, they’re seen as distant, insignificant countries where there’s little point in wasting political resources.

As far as humanitarian motives, they’ve long since been forgotten, it seems to me. I haven’t seen the West intervene in anything for humanitarian reasons in years. There had been examples of this in the 1990s, but not since the turn of the millennium.

Things used to be simpler for the West: there was the USSR and it has to be defeated, for the sake of freedom and democracy. The methods varied — some were so bad it would have been better not to struggle at all — but the goal was there. Now, I see a deep global crisis of objectives. What bright future are we now aspiring to? What kind of utopia do we dream of? There isn’t any utopia left. And in the absence of goals and ideals, what remains is bare pragmatism.

While liberal Russians tend to sympathize with the Armenian people, the West seems to be emphasizing Azerbaijan’s sovereignty, comparing the Republic of Artsakh to the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “republics” in Ukraine. What do you think about these comparisons?

This is a complicated situation, and it lends itself to spin. When you don’t want to intervene, you can say that you care about territorial integrity. But in Yugoslavia, it turned out that ethnic cleansing mattered more than territorial integrity.

No one is trying to say that Karabakh Armenians were right with respect to all the international norms. They weren’t, and this is why Artsakh wasn’t recognized as a state. But it’s too late to go back to the early 1990s, when for simplicity’s sake the borders of old Soviet republics were preserved, which created problems for Karabakh. We understand, for example, how Europe set state borders in Africa, drawing straight lines from afar. This was the same approach.

As for the West, the last time it even glanced in this region’s direction was probably 100 years ago, when Woodrow Wilson drafted a treaty that defined how the place should be run. Since then, it’s been just a remote region no one cares about.

Let’s admit it: if the West had wanted to regulate this conflict, it has certainly failed. A year ago, when missiles were already flying into Armenia, the U.S. sent in a ranger (in the figure of Nancy Pelosi) who scattered everyone, redlining the situation. When they want to, they’re certainly capable of achieving results.

As for the mistakes committed by the Armenian leadership, it’s always hard to tell apart its lack of will from its lack of opportunities. From my perspective, the current failure is definitely the failure of Armenia’s earlier leadership, who was in the best position to resolve the Karabakh question on its own terms in the 1990s, when it controlled both Karabakh and some of Azerbaijan’s territory. What proved to be an absolutely losing strategy, though, was to sit and think: “We already won, so let’s not do anything, since Russia has us under its wing.”

After 2020, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan certainly understood that Armenia was on its way to relinquishing Karabakh. We must also take into view that the people who pour into the streets of Yerevan in protest want to preserve Artsakh by force — but this isn’t how 100 percent of Armenians think. Lots of them could not understand why their children should have to die for Artsakh, and the disproportionate place of the Artsakh question in Armenian politics wasn’t something everyone appreciated. Society itself was conflicted about this, but not openly: it’s hard to talk about such things aloud, and so they were never fully formulated in the public space.

I have a very distinct feeling that the government could have achieved much more, which makes me doubt its professionalism. At the very least, they could have achieved greater guarantees for the people who live there, even while relinquishing that territory. Yes, they’ll evacuate women, children, and the elderly. But what about the men? How many of them will remain alive and not in prison?

Of course, even guarantees from Baku couldn’t but inspire skepticism, since Baku can say anything at all in the absence of any checks and balances, either inside the country (which is an autocracy) or from outside agents. Russia is out of the game, the international community is silent. It strikes me as particularly cynical that this should all be happening while the UN General Assembly is in session. This proves the UN’s incapacity to do anything at all. This has been clear for quite a while, but here’s another nail in that coffin.

The destruction of international mechanisms that once guaranteed adherence to agreements is not a normal situation. For the time being, things are only getting worse, and rebuilding that system is today’s major challenge for global politics.

Kenneth Rowe, Who Defected From North Korea With His Jet, Dies at 90

Just two months later, following that Korean War armistice, Lt. No Kum-Sok from the North Korean Air Force broke off from his 16-plane troop close to the capital of the country, Pyongyang; streaked undetected into South Korea in his Soviet-built MIG jet fighter. He was spotted landing at a military airfield operated by United States Air Force and airmen from other allied countries. An experienced pilot with more than 100 missions The 21-year-old pilot got into his silver, swept-wing airplane and was adorned with the red star and brimming with machine guns while stunned airmen were gathered around the pilot. He had accomplished his goal of leaving Communism and presented a present to the United States Air Force: -- the first fully functioning MIG to drop into the hands of its commanders. One year later his new name"Kenny Rowe" Kenneth Rowe -- and a new home, having started his life in America as a student at a college. The day that Mr. Rowe died at 90 on Dec. 26 at his home in Daytona Beach, Fla. He was remembered for his role in delivering America an intelligence boon thanks to his headline-grabbing flight in the MIG-15bis model, which was a late-model variant of the fighters which fought in battle with American F-86 Sabre jets in the Korean War. The cause of passing was announced by his sister, Bonnie Rowe. He. Rowe had become a part of North Korea's Communist Party and "played the Communist zealot" according to him during his time in the Korean War. However, he was also inspired by his anti-Communist father and mom's Roman Catholic upbringing to yearn for a democratic society. He was thinking about a route to get across to America after Korea was divided following World War II and the Soviet-backed Kim Il-sung imposed Communist rule over what would become North Korea. The moment he touched down at Kimpo airport in the early morning of September. 21 1953, he almost made an impeccable escape. But disaster almost struck. As his wheels struck the runway the F-86 that was just landing was roaring towards his direction from the opposite side. Two pilots flew across one another, narrowly getting away from the possibility of a collision. "I removed my mask of oxygen and breathed in fresh oxygen for the very first ever in my life." he recalled in his memoir "A MiG-15 to Freedom" (1996) which he co-wrote together with J. Roger Osterholm. He parked among a group of American warplanes. He ripped the picture of Kim Il-sung off the instrument panel, then jumped from his cockpit and throw the photo onto the ground. Then when he recalled that moment, "all hell broke loose all over the air base." Airmen from all over the world ran to him, while the commander of the Fifth Air Force, Lt. Gen. Samuel E. Anderson ran to the base. "Nobody was able to figure out the right way to go about it," Mr. Rowe remembered. "I exclaimed 'Motorcar, Motorcar", motorcar," which was one word of English I remember in high school. I was hoping that someone would have an automobile that could take me to the headquarters." Two pilots placed him in an SUV, asked him to surrender his semiautomatic gun and he happily did, and then took him to a facility to be interrogated. The incident was an important news story. "Red Lands MIG Near Seoul and Accedes to Allies," The New York Times published in an article on 1st page 1 headline. In order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the MIG in the case of future conflicts against the Soviet Union and its allies In order to determine the MIG's strengths and weaknesses, the Air Force dispatched some of its most experienced test pilots, including Major. Chuck Yeager, who was famous in 1947 when he became the first pilot to break through the sound barrier test the MIG-15 through a series of strenuous maneuvers. They came to the conclusion that the F-86 was the best warplane. Kenneth Hill Rowe, as his name was coined as, was born on Jan. 10th, 1932 in an area of 10,000 inhabitants in the northern region of the Japan-occupied Korean Peninsula. The father of his son, No Zae, was the administrator of the Japanese industry company in Korea. The mother of No Zae, Veronica Ko, was a housewife. He was a naval cadet in 1949 to have a path towards completing a free college education, and possibly one day having a an opportunity to join the port of a foreign country. Later, he was assigned to the Air Force and received jet-fighter training from Soviet airmen in Manchuria. He earned his wings at the age of 19. After eight weeks of the Korean armistice was signed, he took off from his watch, at a height of 23,000 feet before turning to the south, taking a trip of just 13 minutes over the Demilitarized Zone to Kimpo. The luck was on his side. It was fortunate that the American military radar for air defence north of Kimpo was closed for routine maintenance. neither American aircrafts in flight as well as antiaircraft crews were able to spot the man. In the latter stages during the final stages of Korean War, the Air Force dropped flyers over North Korea offering a $100,000 reward for the first North Korean pilot to defect to a MIG. The man. Rowe maintained that he did not know about the reward, and claimed that he simply wanted to lead in peace. However, he did accept it. He arrived in his home in United States in May 1954 and became something of an international star. The Vice-President was introduced by Richard M. Nixon, was interviewed by Dave Garroway on NBC's "Today" program, and was featured on broadcasts on The Voice of America. He earned an engineering diploma from University of Delaware, became an American citizen in 1962, and was employed as an engineer at major aerospace and defense firms. Later, he became an engineer professor for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. In the same way as his daughter, and his daughter, Mr. Rowe is survived by his wife, Clara (Kim) Rowe and his son Raymond and a grandchild. In the time that the Mr. Rowe arrived in the United States, his MIG-15bis was also brought over to conduct additional flight tests from Air Force. Air Force. Seven years later, that aircraft remains in existence, and is located in the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force close to Dayton, Ohio. Its red star is repainted, it's on display with another American F-86 Sabre jet, an ode to the dogfights that fought during the Korean War in the swath of sky referred to in the region of MIG Alley. Alex Traub contributed reporting. Read the full article

Yesterday, 70,000 people protested in Prague, in the Czech republic, in support of Russia, and in protest to their government and EU politicians, about their shocking policies, making people poorer and facing a cold winter without Russian gas and other energy supplies. And this was only one country in Europe.. many more are getting ready for mass protests.

Europe is apperantlly storing gas for this winter..but noone told people that gas can't be stored effectively for more than a month..it starts to get low on energy and eventually becomes useless. Bulgaria has only stored 62% of recommended levels. I guess, the Bulgarians know well that storing gas is a fluke.. they imported over 90% of their gas needs from Russia, before Russia cut them off for aggressive and very rude behaviour of their government. The Bulgarian population is mainly Slavic, and considers Russians as closest brothers and sisters.. that been always the case, going back to ancient times.. after all Bulgarians know from their history, that only Russia and the Soviet Union has ever fought and freed them from all occupiers. Yet, some Bulgarian governments have sent troops against Russia.. crazy stuff, when you align yourself with the bad guys, like Germany in both world wars.

Again, history repeats itself. The Bulgarian government is aligned with Nato and EU/US, when the vast majority of the Bulgarians cary Russian love in their hearts. Every year many Bulgarian Socialists and Communists get together, under Soviet flags and swear to return proper Socialism to Bulgaria. No wonder, as many ordinary Bulgarians remember that Bulgaria was a great success in Socialism and that life was much better in it. Only young, badly disinformed Bulgarians defend the corrupt system now.. many of them making money by criminal activities. These people defend the regime and Propaganda now. Bulgaria, as well as number of other countries in Europe, like Germany, is getting tested this winter. The populations in Europe have long history of revolution and rebellion. Once it starts on such large mass, it's very difficult to be stopped.

On the battlefields of Ukraine, the great Zelensky offensive near Kherson region, has halted badly. The Russian special forces have stopped Zelensky's disorganised mobs, and now are counter attacking.. taking even more ground, they didn't have previously. But this is just a small battle. The high Russian command seems to be organising a major offensive, to retake the whole of Ukraine, province after province. It also seems that they are not prepared to expose large amounts of civilians in the large cities of Kiev and Kharkov to everyday battles. Rather, will probably encircle them, and let the Zelensky regime collapse. The west can't support Zelensky anylonger. The Germans, Americans, Australians, have all been saying so..leaking it to media. But that was obvious from the very start. Zelensky is becoming more isolated from western money and weapons, by the day. German military officials said that Germany has given all it can..and can't send more weapons to Zelensky because it will affect it's own defences. Money is even in shorter supply in the west, as winter is coming, and all Northern western governments are setting billions of dollars, to support own populations. Germany announced 68 billion yesterday, just for initial winter heating bills.

So, again.. the longer Zelensky remains.. the longer the suffering for people in the west.

Who was Ayman al-Zawahiri ( Al Qaeda leader killed in drone strike ) Wiki, Bio, Age, Crime, Incident Details, Investigations and More Facts

Ayman al-Zawahiri Biography                      Ayman al-Zawahiri Wiki

According to several sources, the United States killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike. Zawahiri, who had just turned 71, had remained a visible international symbol for the group 11 years after the United States killed Osama bin Laden. He was once bin Laden's personal physician.

Death Confirmed

The US government has yet to confirm his death. President Joe Biden will speak at 7:30 p.m. ET on a "successful counter-terrorism operation" against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the White House announced on Monday. “Over the weekend, the United States conducted a counterterrorism operation against a key al-Qaeda target in Afghanistan. The operation was a success and there were no civilian casualties," a senior government official said. Biden, who tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday while treating a rebound case of the virus, will speak outside from the Blue Room balcony of the White House. The US State Department has offered a reward of up to $25 million for information leading directly to Zawahiri's arrest. Some "presidents" yuk it up at Saudi golf events with testicle tanners and Gazpacho Peach Tree Bishes... Other Presidents stay home with covid and order strikes on 9/11 terrorists like Ayman Al-Zawahiri. I prefer THOSE Presidents. pic.twitter.com/UXYLeP89qZ — BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) August 1, 2022 A June 2021 UN report said it was somewhere in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and may be too fragile to mention in propaganda. According to The New York Times, Zawahiri comes from a respected Egyptian family. His grandfather, Rabia'a ​​al-Zawahiri, was an imam at al-Azhar University in Cairo. His great-uncle Abdel Rahman Azzam was the first secretary of the Arab League. He helped lead the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil when hijackers turned American planes into missiles. "Those 19 brothers who went out and gave their souls to Almighty Allah, Almighty God granted them this victory which we now enjoy," al-Zawahiri said in a video message posted in April 2002. It was the first of many derisive messages the terrorist - who became leader of al-Qaeda after bin Laden was assassinated by US forces in 2011 - would send over the years urging militants to stop fighting the America, and he reprimanded American leaders. Zawahiri was on the move when the US invasion of Afghanistan began following the September 11, 2001 attacks. On one occasion, he narrowly escaped a US attack in Afghanistan's rugged mountainous Tora Bora region, a attack that killed his wife and children. He made his public debut as a Muslim activist while in prison for his role in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981. "We want to talk to the whole world. Who are we? Who are we?" he said in a prison interview. By this time, al-Zawahiri, a young doctor, was already a convinced terrorist who for years had conspired to overthrow the Egyptian government and attempted to replace it with the fundamentalist Islamic government. He proudly supported the assassination of Sadat after the Egyptian leader made peace with Israel.

After Sadat's murder

He spent three years in prison and claimed to have been tortured while in custody. After his release, he traveled to Pakistan, where he treated wounded mujahideen fighters fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It was then that he met Bin Laden and found common ground. "We are working with brother bin Laden," he said in announcing in May 1998 the merger of his terrorist group, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, with al-Qaeda. “We have known him for more than 10 years. We fought with him here in Afghanistan. » Together, the two terrorists signed a fatwa, or declaration: "The verdict to kill and fight the Americans and their allies, whether civilian or military, is the obligation of every Muslim". Attacks on the United States and its institutions began weeks later with the suicide bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people and wounding more than 5,000. Zawahiri and bin Laden rejoiced after escaping a US cruise missile strike in Afghanistan launched in retaliation. Then there was the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, when suicide bombers on an inflatable boat blew up their boat, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39 others. The culmination of Zawahiri's terrorist plans came on September 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon's twin towers. A fourth hijacked airliner en route to Washington crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, Read the full article

Hello friends it’s 5am and I want to talk about a few things: Jewish Bucky, Steve the golem, and the importance of Sam and Bucky’s dynamic. This is gonna get long so I’ll put a cut in at some point

okay so Bucky in the MCU is based off two characters, Bucky Barnes, Captain America's sidekick and Arnie Roth, Steve Rogers' childhood best friend who saved him from bullies growing up. Arnie is gay and Jewish (Roth is a very typical Jewish name without being a stereotype). Remember these characters were all originally created by Jews and names are very important in Jewish culture. Now, Steve is a character who was metatextually created by Jewish writers to fight the Nazis (and therefore protect the Jewish people). A golem is a being created from clay to protect the Jews in times of trouble. There's a whole extra thing about truth  and death that i can get into at another point BUT that's not super important right now because Steve is a different kind of golem.

Steve obviously is also his own character within the context of the story, so he's a metaphorical golem. The writers created him to fight the Nazis like I said... but textually he's also a golem, "created" in a sense by the Jewish scientist Abraham Erskine... to fight the nazis and protect the Jews. Futhermore, while it's a different kind of star to not be quite so obvious, the Hebrew words for "star of David" is "magen david" or "shield of David" and what does Steve fight with? 

A shield. With a star. And he uses that shield to save his Jewish best friend from the Nazis.

(Side note, Jewish prisoners were more likely to be selected for experimentation, which is what was happening to Bucky when Steve found him.)

So now that we've gotten all of that established, let's talk about why it's so important that Sam isn't give the super soldier serum (in canon, please have fun with all your fics and headcanons) but Bucky is. Bucky was held captive by a fictional group of people that started off with the Nazis and have since morphed into something different, something possibly more dangerous, because it's hidden. He was held captive and tortured by Neo-Nazis. (I hope I don’t need to explain that Soviet Russia was also not a big fan of the Jews.) He was also forced to do terrible things to survive, something with which many white Jews have to reckon.

Bucky ultimately can’t be held responsible for his actions by any law, but he is morally held responsible and takes it upon himself to make amends. This is a very Jewish concept of forgiveness (not to say it doesn’t exist in other cultures). According to Jewish law, a person can’t be granted forgiveness by G-d unless they’ve truly and genuinely undergone “teshuvah” or “repentance”. This means a sincere attempt at making amends to the person you’ve wronged, or to their family. I don’t know if the FAWS team knew what they were doing here, but honestly kudos either way. 

Teshuvah is not just about making amends though, it also involves self-reflection.

The elements of teshuvah include rigorous self-examination and require the perpetrator to engage with the victim, by confessing, expressing regret and making every effort possible to right the wrong that he committed.

What is therapy if not self-examination? 

That also makes it very important that Bucky isn’t really making amends in the way that Jewish law requires until Sam sets him straight. Now, let’s talk about Sam for a bit. Samuel Wilson, a black man who grew up in modern day America, and in FAWS it’s the American South. He’s constantly bombared by an image of America that has never fought for him. But when he’s handed the shield by Steve, he doesn’t become a golem the way Steve was... and he’s never given the serum. On one level that’s good because it would harken back to the Tuskegee Experiments, which is very blatantly referred to with Isaiah. But I feel like I’m probably not overstepping any bounds as a white person to say that maybe we don’t need more torture porn. If I am feel free to call me out. 

That said, I think it’s really important that with Sam and Bucky, the dynamic is flipped. Whereas Steve, in his position of social power over Bucky as a white goyische man (though still a victim of some oppression himself as a working class Irish Catholic in the 30s) was the one saving Bucky (after Bucky saved him when he was physically weaker), now Bucky the white Jewish man is the physically stronger one who protects, defends, and uplifts the black man wearing the stars and stripes. When Steve first had his Captain America moment, Bucky shouted to the crowd “Let’s hear it for Captain America!” Steve was a vehicle for a Jewish voice. Meanwhile Sam’s Captain America moment involved him getting to directly yell at US senators over their refusal to help the people of their country and the world who need them, despite the fact that they very easily could. After Sam gets to have his voice heard, Bucky quietly tells him, “Good job, Cap.” It’s not Bucky’s place to speak for Sam, but to validate and support him instead.

There is a long history between the Jewish and Black communities, one of both contention and support, with a hell of a lot of crossover. We are often pitted against each other by white goyische society despite the fact that we have common goals, and Sam and Bucky are a really great (probably mostly accidental) metaphor for what we can accomplish working together. While Bucky is a victim of white supremacy as a Jew, he also benefits from it as a white man, so it’s his responsibility to use that whiteness to defend Sam when he needs it (both in battle - Bucky will often jump in front of Sam to take a hit meant for him - and in society in general, like when Sam was justifiably angry at him and the cops started hassling Sam for his ID).

Anyway this ramble was partly brought to you all by the batshit take that Bucky in FAWS is actually supposed to be a Nazi and the moral of FAWS is that we’re supposed to forgive Nazis. Shoutout to Noah Berlatsky for muting me on twitter when I tried to argue with him about it. Bucky isn’t a Nazi, he’s a Jew who suffered under white supremacy and also helped to perpetuate it but is now attempting to make amends and uplift black voices.

Character Profiles  Hiro Fujimaru

Young Hiro-23 

(Credit to the Artist, unable to find them.) 

(Credit to the artist, Unable to find them again)

Current Hiro

Name: Hiro Fujimaru 

Age: 47 

Born: March 31st, 1947 

Sign: Aries

Year: Pig 

IQ: 192 (Suffered head trauma in his youth that either stunted its ability to go further or instead heightened it to this point.)

Sexual Orientation: Bisexual

Race: Japanese 

Family: Yuu Fujimaru (Son), Akira Fujimaru {Nee Satou} (Ex-Wife), Mr Fujimaru (Father), Mrs. Fujimaru (Mother) 

Occupation: Assassin (Formerly), CEO of Fujimaru Conglomerate, Co-Head of Magical Agriculture and Associations, Accessory to the Hogwarts Board of Governors (Unwillingly) 

Eye Color: Bright Green 

Hair Color: Pitch Black 

Height: 6′10″/ 208 cm 

Favorite Food: Toshikoshi Soba

Least Favorite Food: Sushi 

Unusual Traits: Congenital Analgesia (A condition in which one is unable to feel any or has every felt physical pain) 

Known Nicknames: The Black Death of the East, The Shinigami, Wolf of Wallstreet, The Muggle Salazar Slytherin, Righteous Bastard 

Hiro is a man who had never let an opportunity get past by him, be it first getting together with his now Ex-Wife Akira or leaving the dark underbelly of the underworld to stay with his son that Akira threatened to take away from him. He leaves no stone unturned when it comes to his son because he does not feel as if he is a good enough father. Raised in the aftermath of both World Wars with parents who grew up in the shadow of the first WW and fought in the Second, he was no stranger to suspicion and even threats against his life as they eased their way into the Cold War between America and the then Soviet Union. Being the only son of American Diplomats to America from Japan, his life was constantly at risk by both sides, but more lethally when it wasn’t from America. He learned from a young age that you must fight for survival and soon would delve into the realm of contract killing as a form of protection and security later in life, becoming the deadliest in the world with the moniker The Black Death of the East or the Shinigami. He would take out a record number of 150-200 people in his 13 year tenure as an assassin, 45 of them would be Wizards that he was contracted via their ministries unknowingly. In the paranoia of his parents he was constantly fed poison to build up a resistance so they had one less way to off him and he passed it onto his son, in hopes that his old Assassin Pal’s would not be able to use poison against his son like how his parents hoped for him. He is constantly hunted by his old teammates who he left alive in a fit of sentimentality, which would later prove him wrong as they would try and hurt him by taking out his son. So he takes out the trash every few years when one of them gather’s the courage to try and off his son. 

Cold as it might be he had secretly hoped his son, when he vanished after his 10th birthday bash organized by his wife at the time, Akira, would stay where he had run off to and never return. He was powerless against the woman who used his own child as leverage and lived as a starlet getting drunk and high off all manner of illicit substances, while he was forced to deal with it in fears she would take away his child. That being said, he is always in the know. Be it in his office, home or Hogwarts, nothing is done in secret when he is present. When his son returned he lamented the fact but chose to help him in anyway he could, and further relaxed when his son was shown to be a wizard. All pieces fell into place and he embraced his extraordinary child while his wife began to crumble along with their 20 year relationship and 16 year marriage. Unbeknownst to him, via his father’s line he is descended from the Great Onmyoji Abe-no-Seimei and via his mother’s line he is descended from Sei Mei’s rival the Onmyoji Ashiya Douman. His Magic has been stagnant since birth but was passed to his son via his own mother’s blood to which she was a descendant of the Nine Tailed Fox Demon Tamamo No Mae. He is a simple man despite all of that and loves his son as best as he can despite all he has gone through and wishes the best for his powerful but lonely son. It is currently unknown if he will go to Twisted Wonderland, despite the fact he would become his Son’s manager due to his dealings with Vil and the potential of a star. 

As of recently he dealt with one of the most dangerous member of his former assassination squad, assuring his son is much safer. But this attack held another type of enemy of the magical kind that he had been luring to the house to ensure his son’s safety in the wizarding world, proving to him that he has made his enemies in the wizarding world and he is too deep now to leave. As of recently he has been in the works to make weapons to not only withstand the force of magic but be unaffected by spells so he might even out the playing field when faced with them and has succeeded on that regard. He is, in his own opinion, close with Grindelwald who despises him for certain reasons. More often than not, he will be found in Nurmengard Castle’s library reading and working to make more weapons as he converses with the former dark lord who he helped get back with his old boyfriend. He is a man of many talents and skills, even if he is a bit emotionally stunted. 

Though it stands to question, would he be alright with Crewel taking over the father position in Yuu’s life? 

A/N-Crowley doesn’t even factor in on this debate, he’s Useless Bird Dad that pretends to be a Dad

hi! so i know you're big on russian hockey history, etc. can you talk about, in your amazing and incredible engaging narrative nonfiction with photos style, about fetisov and kasatonov on the devils and the whole thing of "they were really good but they hated each other's guts"? i'm a devils fan and i think i might know some pieces of the story, but i feel like if anyone would know more, it's you.

(yes, this was spurred by a post you made, and a quick google search of "nj devils russian players who hated each other" lmao)

thanks!

[Defensemen Vyacheslav Fetisov (2) and Alexei Kasatonov (7) being awkward on the bench. From Devils game footage, 1990. And posing in their Soviet League uniforms in the mid '80s.]

Thank you! I think this is a great question, because the famous version of the story is exactly what you said: They were good together but hated each other.

In that story it has something to do with a manly, unshaven Fetisov fist-fighting commies to get to America and Kasatonov being a commie. But not like a really bad one, because he also came to America and was a really nice guy (also surprisingly has the better facial hair.)

But it’s always smart to ask where a story like that comes from, who tells it, and how.

Thing is, I can’t give you any evidence—any words they’ve said or things they’ve done—that has hate in it. Conflict, trauma, survivor’s guilt and survivor’s anger, sure. But those aren’t hateful.

I think the story that got famous is a little bit...easy. A story where two people both hurt each other and hate each other for it might not be fun, but it isn’t hard. Because in a story like that, even if some harm was done, it was done by someone who was a peer—someone famous for being an equal half of a perfect match—not someone in power. It doesn't challenge anything.

If it was a personal issue, then as long as the two of them just repressed it and kept working, then everybody could enjoy the hockey they gave us, and nothing big or deep or important in our sport had to change.

In the immortal words of Vyacheslav Fetisov:

“You never asked me when I came in 1989 about what is happening. It wasn’t interesting. I went through a tough time, but you didn’t give a shit, and now you want to talk about it 25 years later, but it’s OK.”

Let's talk about this story and challenge some shit.

The two of them say they love each other. They loved each other, and they were abused, and one of them also loved their abuser. Those are three really hard things to do.

This story is about coaching abuse, and what that even is.

I don’t want to say this is the originary trauma of our sport. It’s not. I’m going to mention a number of difficult things that were happening in hockey at the time: I don’t mean to compare, rank, or minimize those in relation to this one, I’d just feel wrong if I didn’t acknowledge them (at the same time, this isn’t comprehensive).

I think it’s just an exemplary story, one that tested how famous a case abuse and violence could get without being questioned: how normalized those things are, and how many coaches and executives learned in the ‘80s what they could get away with. And, too, how there have always been people willing to work together, and to resist systems of violence.

There’s emotional and physical abuse throughout this story. I won’t give graphic descriptions, I will give content notes at the tops of certain sections.

1. A Teaser

It’s just between Christmas and New Year’s, 1977. From the photos I can tell you snow was falling in fat fluffy drifts, the way it does when Montréal decides to get romantic. Two boys who weren’t from there bumped into each other for the first time.

It was the window between their birthdays: one had just turned eighteen, and the other wouldn’t be twenty for a few more weeks, so they could both be there for the second-ever World Junior Championships.

That was the closest they had to common ground. One of the boys had four gold junior medals already, and a bronze from last year’s World Championships with the big boys. The other had never lived alone or really left his country before. The two of them were raised across an old rivalry that was getting worse.

[Dec. 28, 1977. by Doug Ball]

I’m sorry, that’s a picture of Vyacheslav Fetisov meeting Wayne Gretzky. Wayne Gretzky will just, like, also be around for all this

I’m giving you all this one [via Sports Illustrated]

The other boy in that first photo is Vyacheslav Aleksandrovich Fetisov, age 19, from the city of Moscow. 6’1”, left-side D, left-hand shot. Just touch a “yuh” sound for a moment and glide into an “ah” when you say the first syllable, not “Vee-ah”; for his last name, land on the second syllable.

Fetisov’s name has been a Cold War shibboleth: for fifteen years, when he played in North America, those were the only time you saw him. You couldn’t watch tape. Officials for Team Canada and Team USA passed around reels like porn. Soviet officials didn’t like anyone to know who their players were or which ones they’d be bringing to any given event, partly because the crest on the front was meant to matter more than the name on the back and partly because of all the kidnapping attempts (we’ll get there). Anglo announcers got the roster the morning of, and guessed.

You had to have precious access to the Soviet players to know. (You had to be, well, Wayne Gretzky). Then Fetisov came to America. He became a “fearless individualist” who “fought the system”, and everybody liked that.

If you’ve seen Miracle, you’ve heard Al Michaels’ second crack at his legendary calls. You’ll hear him say feh-TEA-sov several times, over the moments when he said something more like FED-ih-soff. Twenty years later, the producers thought that American hockey fans would think it was the movie’s mistake if they used the real audio. Americans had adopted Fetisov into our hearts, and learned to say his name—learned to tolerate his Russian-ness—and in going that forgot and then wrote over what hockey’s Cold War had really been like for him. Of course, maybe the producers were wrong at the time—but now the movie’s been around for almost twenty years itself.

He always calls himself Slava.

could I dm you this? yes. but also asks are fun even though this question is mean so. how do Ed and Lorraine react to the Vietnam war?

Okay so my Ed and Lorraine are absolutely Kennedy Democrats, are both very excited and enthusiastic about the first Catholic president, but both are against the Vietnam War and US military intervention from the start. Ed's already fought in one imperialist proxy war, he's got the PTSD to prove it, and Lorraine just is truly repulsed by violence of any kind.

And also like, to go completely left field for a minute -- I've been thinking a lot about how teenage Lored were effectively trapped at 17-19 years old. Mostly financially, and in different ways. in 1951, Lorraine wouldn't have been able to have her own bank account. Women wouldn't have the right to open their own bank account until the 60s or have a credit card until the 70s -- her money would have been her father's, effectively. and while probably not maliciously, since she was a young woman she likely wouldn't have had much access to her pay checks unless she was cashing them directly. Ed, meanwhile, while trying to survive a negligent/abusive household, absolutely would have been spending money on things most teens wouldn't have to in order to survive... and that's before getting the draft notice from the Selective Service, which took away even more control of his own life.

So I see Ed and Lorraine getting married young (even for the 50s, they're a few years younger than the median, though the war was actively driving that age down) mostly out of making the most out of what they could together. Ed putting Lorraine on his bank accounts and asking her actively to manage them while he's away, and her depositing her paychecks into his account would give her more financial control in her life than most women of the era. Lorraine's engagement ring (the size of that goddamn rock) is even an insurance policy most women her age and demographic didn't have -- often when women fled marriages, it was only with their jewelry to sell. It's half about Ed's possessive streak, half him showing he's not afraid to give her the money to run, if she needed to.

Anyway -- the trauma of their late teens and early twenties is entirely rooted in the rising Cold War anxieties and the locus of harm done to women in the 50s and I fully see their pursuit of demonology and the supernatural as something Lorraine initially started while working as a secretary for the Diocese, something she did to stay late at work and help people she could physically reach while Ed was away at war. She initially started staying late on the days she knew Father Gordon would be bringing in a scared family or terrified couple or frightened soul in through the back door hours after everyone had left, staying to pray and keep herself nearby, to be an observer to a fight she could be party to. Father Gordon figures her out quickly, of course, asking what interest she has in demons and exorcisms, and figures out she's clever with records and archives, almost to an uncanny degree.

And then figures out to exactly what uncanny degree.

After Ed came home and became the husband instead of the boyfriend, it turned into something Ed could throw all his metaphorical demons onto and a healthy way to exercise his control issues and fear and anxiety that doesn't (generally) affect Lorraine because she's fighting with him side by side in this, when before they were separated by thousands of miles -- the beginning everyone's favorite Catholic battle couple very much rooted in Ed and Lorraine parsing out who brought home metaphorical demons from the war, and who brought home literal ones, and bringing them to Father Gordon when necessary. Rooted in Ed needing to be useful, to dusting off his Catholic school Latin and reading everything he could get his hands on so that he could continue to help, continue to fight.

Lorraine would have been pregnant with Judy during the heightening tensions with Cuba and as Kennedy is sending more and more military "advisors" to Vietnam and Cold War tensions flared the hottest they'd get in the 1960s and I can just see both of their control issues revving up, especially with a few-months-old baby in the mix. Just the two of them laying bed, looking down at their three month old baby girl, wondering if they'd all get nuked tomorrow. If war would be declared tomorrow. If they'd all be dead, if they brought her into the world just to die violently. It's like taking guns off the street. They can't control the White House, or the Soviets, or Cuba or China or or or -- but they know about demons, they know about spirits, they know about taking these bombs off the battlefield, in the war of good against evil, and this is a war they can be foot soldiers in together.

Lorraine would get a bit of relief in the March of '63 when Kennedy dropped married men with children to the bottom of the draft pool, and then dropped the age of the draft pool to 26, aging Ed out of the Selective Service entirely. And then in November, JFK would be assassinated, and the photo of Jackie Kennedy covered in blood, leaving the hospital hand-in-hand with RFK, would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country. It would be a jolt for both of them -- but it wouldn't fully hit Lorraine until seven years later, when she'd have her first vision of Ed's death and fully understand Jackie Kennedy's weary, "I want them to see what they have done to Jack."

After the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August of 1964, they fully throw themselves into taking cases almost full time. As the war heats up, Ed pulls back from teaching art classes at the VA. If he spends too much time there, he has to face how pointless the violence has been. If he spends too much time there, now, he has to face that he still doesn't know why he survived. Why he lived, and everyone else on board the ship with him died. Because he still doesn't know, he still is fighting to make his life matter in a way that makes sense to him. All he has is his sense of duty, a couple of college credits, and his hands. On good days, he knows that he's loved -- that Lorraine loves him so much it makes it hurt to breathe, that he's a good father to his daughter, who will never be afraid of him.

Ed has a complete PTSD relapse in 1966, with the beginning of the ground war and the full-throated resurgence of the American propaganda machine and military recruitment. He's back in the guilt spiral, the "I never had it that bad, I was only in the Navy for two years, I never had it that bad," just feeding into "why did I live when everyone else I fought with died," back and forth until he can't sleep, can only sleep when Judy sleeps, accidentally ends up adapting himself to her nap schedule and has to sleep with his hand on her chest, feeling her breathe.

Lorraine calls in Chief, after Ed can't get out of bed for 72 hours and misses mass for the first time in his life. Chief, who comes up from Brooklyn to remind Ed of the time their entire ship exploded and Ed treaded water for eight hours and everyone else died. How they spent the next six months getting drunk whenever they weren't on duty and picking fights they couldn't get out of, and that one time they got thrown in the brig because Chief struck a superior asshole and Ed just followed him into the fight. (No, Lorraine does not know about that time Ed and Chief ended up in the brig. She will never know about that time. Judy will at some point in her early 20s learn about that time, when she needs to learn about how her parents are people, who have absolutely made mistakes in their lives.) "You and I spent six months drunk," Chief says, bouncing Judy on his knee in the kitchen over a cup of coffee, Ed refusing to look at him as he deep cleans the stove. "And then your dad died, and your sainted wife handled everything for you, and we realized we couldn't send you home to her like that."

"I still don't know why I lived."

Chief shrugs. "It doesn't matter why, son. The same reason any of us live, and any of us die. It doesn't matter. You have a little girl now who depends on you. She matters more than any goddamn reason -- you live for her, and your saint of a wife, and for all the people that you help. So that you can look them in the face, say you've been down in the hole that they're in now, and you know the way out."

Lorraine calls in Chief, because she absolutely picked a fight after mass that day without Ed, with Judy on her hip. Overheard Dorothy O'Malley running her mouth in the pew in front of her sounding like a national security ghoul and didn't even think before she opened her mouth and unloading the full force of her anxiety and anger on her. Only stops because she feels a gentle hand on her shoulder and Father Gordon murmuring in her ear, "Okay Mrs. Warren, you've made your point," while leading her away. It's the "Mrs. Warren" instead of the familiar "Lorraine" that jolts her back to herself, kissing Judy's head as she tries to shake herself out of it.

"Thank you," she tells Father Gordon, defeated.

He shrugs. "You don't come to confession until before Friday night prayer service. I didn't want you stewing on this all week." Pausing, he takes a moment to fondly tug on one of Judy's pig tails, making her laugh. "If Ed's not... feeling well, I know about that."

Lorraine bites her lip, knowing full and well that Father Gordon served as a chaplain in World War II. That seeing the violence of the Nazis firsthand is what convinced him that the Devil was more than a metaphor, that evil truly walked the Earth. Sent him on his own path, chasing darkness.

Lorraine nods.

"I could talk to him," Father Gordon says. "But it would likely come better from someone he served with."

When she gets home, she finds Chief's number in their phone book, and calls Brooklyn for the first and last time. He comes up the next day, and shoos her out of the house to do something for herself for the first time in months, telling her that he's more than equipped to look after a single three year old.

Ed goes back to teaching at the VA a few months after that, teaching art to the new round of mentally scarred children returning from war. He concedes to group therapy, and a few sessions with the VA psychiatrist to get something to take the edge off. He teaches at the VA until the troop withdrawals in 1970, reducing his class load as he and Lorraine take on more and more cases -- verging towards a hundred a year -- for the Catholic Church, and the media attention that comes along with that, the publicity engagements that help keep their bills paid, the articles and academic talks.

Even still, Ed occasionally brings home someone for dinner, just to make sure that they've only brought metaphorical demons home from war with them, not literal ones.

Sometimes it's literal ones.

Interview with Alexander Dugin – ‘Welcome all newcomers!’

Prof. Alexander Dugin, philosopher and geopolitical expert from Russia, sees the world changing: the old liberalism is being replaced by a new, aggressive, globalist mutation. Manuel Ochsenreiter's interview with Dugin gives a fascinating insight into the globalist future.

Published: June 18, 2021, 11:42 am

Prof. Dugin, in your latest essay you wrote about “Liberalism 2.0”. Is liberalism changing?

Dugin: Of course! Every ideology is a subject to constant change, including liberalism. Right now we are witnessing a dramatic shift in liberalism. It is now becoming even more dangerous, even more destructive.

How do you even recognize such a change?

Dugin: We can observe a certain “rite of passage”. As such, I interpret the situation in which Donald Trump’s presidency culminated, namely in his fall by hand of the globalist elite, represented by Joe Biden. This is nothing more than a “rite of passage” – embodied by gay parades, BLM uprisings, imperialist LGBT + attacks, the worldwide uprising of extreme feminism and the spectacular arrival of post-humanism and extreme technocracy. There are profound intellectual and philosophical processes going on behind all of this. And these processes have an impact on culture and politics.

You write that liberalism has become “lonely”…

Dugin: Modern liberalism seems to have lost its enemies after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is fatal for this ideology, as it is primarily defined by its demarcation. In my “Fourth Political Theory”, liberalism is defined as the first theory to fight the two “main enemies” – communism (second theory) and fascism (third theory). Both had challenged liberalism: for liberalism claims to be the most modern and progressive theory. But both communism and fascism made the same claim. In 1990 communism and fascism were considered defeated.

This is usually called the “unipolar moment” (Charles Krauthammer) and it was prematurely, as we now know – even raised by Francis Fukuyama to the “end of history”. In the 1990s, however, it seemed that liberalism no longer had any opponents. Smaller burgeoning anti-liberal right, left, and “national Bolshevik” alliances were no real challenge. The absence of its “enemies” for liberalism also meant that it had lost its self-affirmation. Here we see very clearly the “loneliness”, which of course I don’t mean in a melancholy sense. Therefore, the transition to Liberalism 2.0 with a “new impetus” was almost inevitable.

How would you describe that?

Dugin: An opponent had to come back. But actually only the weak, illiberal alliances that can be described as “national Bolsheviks” were offered – even if the so-called movements themselves do not see it that way. Perhaps it is more understandable if one divides the new political camps into globalists (Liberalism 2.0) and anti-globalists. One must not forget: Liberalism 1.0 will not be “reformed”, it will also become the “enemy” of Liberalism 2.0. We can perhaps even speak of a “mutation”. Because there are also old-style liberals who are now more drawn to the camp of anti-globalists because they reject the limitless, hedonistic and total individualism of Liberalism 2.0.

So liberals against liberals?

Dugin: [laughs] Liberalism 2.0 can be seen as a kind of “fifth column” within liberalism. And the new liberalism is brutal and unyielding, it no longer discusses, it does not invite debate. It is a “cancel culture”, it stigmatizes its opponents, it excludes them. “Old” liberals also fall victim to this, as can be seen almost regularly in Europe today. Who are the victims of the “cancel culture”? Maybe fascists or communists? Most of the time it is artists, journalists and authors who have been completely in the mainstream waters – but who are now suddenly targeted. Liberalism 2.0 lets the hammer go round.

Your country, Russia, is seen today as a great opponent of globalism – especially under President Vladimir Putin…

Dugin: The resurgence of Putin’s Russia can be understood as a new mix of the Soviet-style strategy of anti-Western politics and traditional Russian nationalism. On the other hand, the Putin phenomenon remains a mystery – even to us Russians. Certainly, one can recognize “national Bolshevik” elements in his politics, but also a lot of liberal elements. Incidentally, this also applies to the Chinese phenomenon. Here we see again the special Chinese communism mixed with perceptible Chinese nationalism. The same can be said of the growth of European populism where the distance between the left and the right is increasingly disappearing to the point of the symbolic creation of the left-right alliance in the Italian government: I am talking about the agreement between the “Lega Nord” (right-wing populist) and the “5-star” movement (left-wing populist). We see the same phenomenon prefigured in the populist revolt of the “yellow vests” against President Emmanuel Macron in France, in which the supporters of Marine Le Pen fought together with the supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon against the liberal center.

The “left-right” alliances you mentioned only existed for a certain period of time, often they fought each other again more than the liberal center…

Dugin: That’s a key point. Since the anti-globalist, right-left alliances are the greatest opponents of Liberalism 2.0, it must constantly fight them, keep them small and also infiltrate them. If anti-globalist left and right in Europe fight each other more than the center, then liberalism 2.0 is the laughing third party. What is more: there is even a certain tendency on the part of the fringes to make pacts with the center in the fight against the other fringe. I think you can see such a situation in all European countries. Thus, Globalism fragments the camp of its opponents and prevents a possibly powerful alliance.

What could such a “powerful alliance” look like?

Dugin: If Putin from Russia, Xi Jinping from China, the European populists and the anti-Western movements in Islam, the anti-capitalist currents in Latin America and Africa had been aware that they are opposing liberal globalism from a somewhat united ideological position and would have adopted left/right and integral populism as their basis, this would have increased their resistance considerably and even multiplied its potential. So in order not to let this happen, the globalists have left no stone unturned to prevent any ideological movement in this direction.

In your essay you refer to Donald Trump as the “midwife of Liberalism 2.0”. What do you mean?

Dugin: I have already said: a political ideology cannot exist if the “friend-foe antagonism” is erased. It loses its identity. To have no more enemy is to commit ideological suicide. So an obscure and undefined external enemy was not enough to justify liberalism. By demonizing Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China, the liberals could no longer be convincing. More than that: the assumption of the existence of a formal, structured ideological enemy outside the liberal zone of influence (democracy, market economy, human rights, universal technology, total network, etc.) after the onset of the unipolar moment in the early 1990s on a global level would have been tantamount to acknowledging a serious mistake. Logically, an enemy from within had to appear. This was a theoretical necessity in the development of ideological processes during the 1990s.

This enemy from within appeared just in time, at the exact moment when it was needed most. And it had a name: Donald Trump. He embodied the boundary between Liberalism 1.0 and Liberalism 2.0. Initially, attempts were made to establish a connection between Trump and “red-brown Putin”. This seriously damaged Trump’s presidency, but was ideologically inconsistent. Not only because of the lack of real relations between Trump and Putin and Trump’s ideological opportunism, but also because Putin himself is, in fact, a very pragmatic realist.

Much like Trump, Putin is a poll populist, and like Trump, he’s most likely to be an opportunist with no real interest in a worldview. The alternate scenario portraying Trump as a “fascist” is just as ridiculous. Because it has been used by his political rivals too often, it has caused trouble for Trump, but it has also been inconsistent. Neither Trump himself nor his staff consisted of “fascists” or representatives of any right-wing extremist tendency which had long ago been marginalized in American society and only existed as a kind of extreme libertarian fringe or kitsch culture.

How can you then ultimately classify Trump?

Dugin: Trump was and is a representative of Liberalism 1.0. If we put aside all foreign regimes that oppose liberal ideology in their political practice, there will only be one real enemy of liberalism left – liberalism itself. So in order to move forward, liberalism had to carry out an “internal cleansing”. And it is precisely this old liberalism that has been identified with the symbolic figure of Donald Trump. He was the ultimate enemy in the election campaign of Joe Biden, who stands for the new liberalism 2.0. Biden spoke of the “return to normal”. Liberalism 1.0 – national, capitalist, pragmatic, individualistic and to a certain extent libertarian – was thus declared an “abnormality”.

Liberalism focuses on individualism, that is, the individual human being. Other ideologies speak in terms of collectives like the people or the class. What does Liberalism 2.0 do?

Dugin: Right. The figure of the individual plays the same role in the social physics of liberalism as the atom in scientific physics. Society consists of atoms/individuals, who are the only real and empirical basis for subsequent social, political and economic constructions. Everything can be reduced to the individual. That is the liberal law. So the struggle against all kinds of collective identity is the moral duty of liberals, and progress is measured by whether or not this struggle is successful.

A look at Western societies shows that the struggle was largely successful…

Dugin: At that point, when Liberals began to realize this scenario, despite all their victories, there was still something collective, some kind of forgotten collective identity that also needed to be destroyed. Welcome to gender politics! To be a man and a woman means to share a collective identity which dictates strong social and cultural practices. This is a new challenge for liberalism. The individual must be liberated from biological sex, since the latter is still viewed as something objective. Gender must be purely optional and seen as a consequence of a purely individual decision. Gender politics starts here and changes the very nature of the concept of the individual. The postmodernists were the first to show that the liberal individual is a masculine, rationalist construction. Simply equalizing social opportunities and functions for men and women, including the right to change gender at will, does not solve the problem. The “traditional” patriarchy still survives by defining rationality and norms. Hence, it has been concluded that the liberation of the individual is not enough. The next step consists in the liberation of the human being or rather the “living entity” from the individual.

Now the moment is approaching for the final replacement of the individual by the gender-optional entity, a kind of network identity. And the final step will eventually be to replace humanity with creepy beings – machines, chimeras, robots, artificial intelligence and other species of genetic engineering. The line between what is still human and what is already post-human is the main problem of the paradigm shift from Liberalism 1.0 to Liberalism 2.0. Trump was a human individualist who defended individualism in the old style of human context. Perhaps he was the last of his kind. Biden is a representative of the arriving post-humanity.

So far, it all sounds like a smooth march for the globalist elite. Can one counter that?

Dugin: One cannot avoid the realization that both old-fashioned nationalism and communism have been defeated by liberalism. Neither right-wing nor left-wing illiberal populism can win the victory over liberalism today. To be able to do this, we would have to integrate the illiberal left and the illiberal right. But the ruling liberals are very vigilant about this and always try to prevent any movement in this direction in advance.

The short-sightedness of the radical left and radical right politicians and groups only helps liberals to implement their agenda. At the same time, we must not ignore the growing chasm between Liberalism 1.0 and Liberalism 2.0. It seems as if the internal cleansing of modernity and postmodernism is now leading to brutal punishment and excommunication of new species of political beings – this time the liberals themselves are being sacrificed.

Those of them who do not consider themselves as a part of the Great Reset strategy and the Biden-Soros axis, those who refuse to enjoy the final disappearance of good old mankind, good old individuals, good old freedom and the market economy. There will be no place for any of these in Liberalism 2.0.

It will become post-human, and anyone who questions such a new concept will be welcomed to the Unity of Enemies of the Open Society.

And then we, Russians, will be able to tell them: “We have been here for decades and we feel more or less at home here. So we welcome you to hell, newbies!” Every Trump supporter and ordinary Republican is now seen as a potentially dangerous person, just as we have been for a long time. So let Liberals 1.0 join our ranks! To do this, it is not necessary to become illiberal, philo-communist or ultra-nationalist. Nothing like that! Everyone can keep their good old prejudices for as long as they want. The “Fourth Political Theory” presents a unique position where true freedom is welcomed: the freedom to fight for social justice, to be a patriot, to defend the state, the church, the people, the family – and to remain a human.

Prof. Dugin, thank you very much for the interview.

All rights reserved. You have permission to quote freely from the articles provided that the source (www.freewestmedia.com) is given.

Worldbuilding Month: Day 2

{Hoo boy, history.

Covering the complete history of the Pokémon world is impossible because, you know, there’s so much of it. I’m not going to go too deeply into canon because I can just vaguely motion to the games and go “that happened,” so I’ll start off by saying, yes, if it’s a major world event that can have pokémon inserted into it, chances are it happened, and there were pokémon. (George Washington had a rapidash, not a horse, for an off-handed example.)

The exception is ... World War II onwards.

So basically, World War II itself happened exactly as it actually did, right up to the point where the Manhattan Project occurred. Oh, that still happened too (because that ushered in the Atomic Age and therefore a whole slew of innovations that I can’t quite write out of the universe), but what actually ended the war wasn’t the atomic bomb. It was a second experimental project that also happened in the southwestern desert of the good ol’ US of A.

Basically, somebody tried to unearth a world-ending mythical, as you kinda do. Except this world-ending mythical actually could end the world, and it wasn’t exactly happy that it was unearthed. So instead of behaving for its new government-sanctioned masters like the Americans wanted, it basically decimated an entire region and the wild pokémon in it, and long story short, that’s why Orre is the way it is.

Of course, the story doesn’t end there because Lt. Surge fought in a war, and we need to get to the part where there’s world peace, right?

(First, a tangent: I haven’t quite decided whether or not the atomic bombs were ever actually used, since the Japanese-based regions seem like they’re better off/more advanced/more of a utopia than the American-based ones, not to mention the Pokémon-world equivalent of Nagasaki—literally half of Hoenn—doesn’t seem to reference that part of history at all ... not that it likely would, but still.)

So basically, when Orre was decimated (save for Agate Village), the world decided that maybe it would be time to start building some semblance of peace. Sort of. See, one of the many, many, many hallmarks of the actual Cold War consisted of a lot of “global efforts for the betterment of mankind” that were really just potshots between the States and the Soviet Union. Space Race? Potshot. Most of the Olympics between 1945 and the early 1990s? Potshots. And so on and so forth. It wasn’t really an all-out war so much as a bunch of minor ones and a lot of tension stemming from the constant awareness that your enemy was absolutely stockpiling weapons capable of leveling entire cities.

Now do that, but add pokémon to it.

Yeeeeeeah.

So the US and the Soviet Union were still absolutely at each others’ throats. Meanwhile, Japan was looking towards the both of these—the global superpower that was its literal neighbor and the global superpower that once tried to literally level its population—and it started organizing efforts to, you know. Not do what happened at the end of World War II again. This was called the Saffron Summits, after the city in which a lot of world leaders gathered together to hammer out the details of global, universal systems. Through the Saffron Summits, global powers decided to hinge a lot of this peace on the one thing all of them had in common, the one thing they all agreed was good and pure in the world, the thing everyone could remember from their childhood experiences and that everyone wanted for their own children: pokémon training.

In other words, yes, the first modern Pokémon Leagues were invented literally to maintain peace in the world.

(Side point: I say the “first modern Pokémon Leagues” because pokémon training, the concept of going on a pokémon journey, and even competitions in small, local arenas wherein you fight local masters and earn emblems for the right to fight the strongest trainer in the land is eons old, to the point where no one actually knows where all of these customs started or how. In fact, the Saffron Summits drew on customs from several different countries to hammer out the formal gym system and original League rules.)

From there, it was decided that the world needed to be a safe and easy place for young trainers to go from one league to the next, so they created pokéyen to serve as a universal currency (which eliminated the need for young trainers to exchange money) as well as a language based on a combination of Japanese, English, Russian, and the ancient unown scripts. The latter was called Common.

So yes: 1) the Saffron Summits were basically a peace forum dedicated to the creation of the Pokémon League, which was basically meant to reinforce the peace treaties that, incidentally, were also signed at these meetings, and 2) everyone over the age of 50 was taught Common as one of their first languages, thanks to this meeting.

Of course, this still didn’t fully quell the unease between the United States and Soviet Union, nor did it quell any other form of political unrest. There was a lot of rioting going on, especially in Galar and Kalos, especially thanks to the rise of both anarchy and communism. I bring this up because this (and the Cold War/political unrest going on in the US), rather than the creation of the Leagues, resulted in one of many, many diasporas, which is why you have a lot of Western culture in Japan. In fact, it’s literally why a guy named Bill lived in Pokémon Kansai—as in, his grandfather literally fled Galar due to the increasingly oppressive regime of the era + actual riots and domestic attacks (i.e., it was an ugly era where no one was safe—but, you know, it got better by the time Sword/Shield happened) and settled with a lot of Galarian refugees in southern Goldenrod. But, uh, that’s a side point.

What isn’t so much is the fact that Cold War era conflicts still happened. The war Surge is talking about? The Gulf War—or at least an equivalent of it. This all culminated in the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s, which happened just about the same way as it did in real life, with one major addition:

The decimation of a lot of Siberia thanks to another world-ending mythical.

Speaking of, the US never caught the aforementioned world-ending mythical at the end of World War II. No one knows what happened to it; it simply vanished as quickly as it arrived. Same story goes for the one that decimated a chunk of Russia. But after that point, a huge swath of land area above the Arctic Circle became basically no-man’s land ... specifically the area around Tiksi, which I bring up because of that one scientist in Gen I who specifically calls it out as home to a Team Rocket base that people get sent to when they’re disappointments to the organization.

Which brings up the final thing I want to cover, which is the rise of evil organizations such as the various Teams. They all have very different goals, obviously, but they’re often inspired by the US and Soviet Union’s attempts to use world-ending mythicals on each other. In fact, the first such team, which was not Team Rocket but something else entirely, famously destroyed themselves with a very public attempt at gaining control of Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, which ended with the destruction of the original East Kanto Power Plant (which then became Zapdos’s nest until one brave trainer finally caught it). Team Rocket’s Madame Boss was inspired by these efforts and reports of potential Mew sightings across the globe to take it one step further, and pretty much every other team that’s tried to take over/remake the world through the use of legendaries and mythicals were inspired by these efforts.

While the rest of the world has finally settled down in terms of political unrest and general all-out wars (mostly thanks to the sharp rise in legendary sightings across the globe), practically the biggest source of global conflict remains with these fringe group “teams.” And of course, the International Police (see: Looker and his employers) have tried their hardest to stamp these teams out before their efforts get out of hand, but there’s really only so much you can do, as new teams seem to keep popping up every couple of years like weeds.

Apparently, war’s been resolved, but nothing can really stop sheer, capitalistic greed.}

Recounting 'Seven Sins' of the US' Alliance System

— Bu Wuwen | June 4, 2021 | Global Times

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Alliance is the evil weapon of hegemony. This is a common consensus reached among most countries, and one of the founding missions of the United States of America.

George Washington, the founding father of the United States of America, had repeatedly warned the American people to prevent the country from copying its European allies' pursuit of hegemony. In his farewell address in September 1796, Washington reinforced the idea that it was their 'true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

The US, driven by its irresistible greed for power, is now ironically what its founding father forewarned of and the world abominates. American geostrategist Zbigniew Brzezinski declared that the supremacy of the US in the world is supported by a fine system of alliances that covers the whole world.

The US is now desperate to find its few remaining nickles, being the over-spender it is, after being struck by financial crises and the COVID-19 pandemic. As an incurable addict of hegemony, the US cast its eyes on its allies. The US has created a gang out of the alliance system, whose trail is full of partisanship and fratricide.

We shall now recount the seven sins of this gang. '7 sins' of the US' Alliance System Infographic: Wu Tiantong — Global Times

1. Concealment

Those who chase profits are often entangled together — Old Chinese saying

Japan has recently declared that it would directly discharge the radioactive wastewater from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean, which has raised worldwide concern. Surprisingly, the US, a self-proclaimed shining beacon of environmental protection, human rights, and justice, betrayed Asian-Pacific countries and the Earth, and expressed "appreciation" in response to Japan's decision, exposing its hypocrisy.

None of this comes as a surprise. The US was always known for its double standards, where fairness and justice are nothing more than arbitrary fig leaves.

In Sharpeville of South Africa, during the apartheid era, the government opened fire on black demonstrators, killing 69 of them in the Sharpeville Massacre. In order to contain the former Soviet Union's influence in the Third World, the US could not accept losing an anti-communist ally. In the end, the "leader of the free world" cravenly defended the all-white government in South Africa without hesitation.

In fact, the standard criteria for the US' decision-making process are ideological confrontation and geopolitical interests. To serve its purpose, it stages nasty Faustian deals at any cost; it sells its soul to the devil in exchange for its gains.

2. Lying

We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment. - Michael Pompeo

In the past two decades alone, the US-led Multinational Coalition and Coalition of the Willing caused countless tragedies by fabricating lies.

Using a tube of detergent as evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the US launched the Iraq War that killed 250,000 civilians in the Gulf country. Jessica Lynch, a female private in the US Army was injured in the war and saved by Iraqi medics. CNN, however, falsified the story and said that Lynch was tortured as a prisoner in Iraq, and was a witness for human rights abuses. In 2007, Lynch testified in a congressional hearing that the US Army made false claims about her capture.

A decade later, the US replicated the Iraq lie. It fabricated footages of Syria using chemical weapons on civilians, which was a convenient excuse for the US to launch air raids on another country. From 2016 to 2019, the recorded number of civilian deaths in Syria was 33,584. Half of the 3,833 victims killed by bombs dropped by the US-led coalition were women and children.

Fortunately, the truth is beginning to reveal itself. Recently Vice President Kamala Harris blurted out: "You know for years and generations wars have been fought over oil." This matches the American magazine Foreign Policy's comment that "safeguarding human rights" isn't the driving force for US' external warfare, but a means to seek interests.

Hegemony monopolizes absolute power and dehumanizes the US into moral bankruptcy. The historically flaunted promised land of progression and idealism has now fallen. All is lost.

— Wu Tiantong | June 4, 2021

3. Violence

The Americans of the United States have achieved this double result with a marvelous ease, calmly, legally, philanthropically, without shedding blood, without violating a single one of the great principles of morality in the eyes of the world. You cannot destroy men while better respecting the laws of humanity. - Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville

Hegemony is by nature coldblooded. Throughout its 245 years of history, the Americans enjoyed as few as 16 years without war. From the end of WWII to 2001, the world had seen 248 armed conflicts in 153 regions, and 201 of them were started by the US.

In 1989, the US invaded Panama to depose the de facto Panamanian leader. In 1999, the US-led NATO forces, without authorization from the United Nations Security Council, bombarded the former Yugoslavia and "accidentally" bombed the Chinese embassy, killing three Chinese journalists. Since 2001, the US has started wars or military actions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, leaving more than 800,000 dead and tens of millions of refugees.

The US military dragged its allies to wars that caused unprecedented refugee crises. Statistically, the number of refugees reached 11 million in Afghanistan, 380,000 in Pakistan, 3.25 million in Iraq and 12.59 million in Syria. About 1.3 million Afghans went to Pakistan and 900,000 to Iran. Of the Iraqi and Syrian refugees, about 3.5 million fled to Turkey and 1 million to Iran.

The US military always hit the headlines for its ruthless prisoner abuses. In addition, Australia proved to be a reliable lackey, allowing its soldiers to slaughter civilians in Afghanistan.

4. Plunder

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do. - Samuel P. Huntington

In the US' alliance system, war is the most immediate way to plunder. The US, the world's top war machine, writes the word "plunder" on every page of its history of more than 200 years.

Dwight D. Eisenhower concluded his presidential term by warning the US about the increasing power of the military-industry complex. Michael Brenes, professor of history at Yale University, in his To Defeat the Radical Right, End American Empire pointed out that the American military has long been fertile ground for the far right and they together built the warfare state.

After unpegging the US dollar from gold in 1971, the US shaped a USA-US military-US dollar trinity to support its hegemony. In collaboration with its allies, the US grabbed control over the oil resources in the Middle East to prevent its dollar hegemony from falling apart, and also opened the door to plunder the region's wealth.

The US profits from every global crisis, such as from the crises in Russia and Eastern Europe when the former Soviet Union collapsed; from the Balkan Peninsula when the former Yugoslavia broke up; from the Four Asian Tigers and Southeast Asia during the Asian Financial Crisis. During the 2008 financial crisis, the whole world had to pay the American debt. Now, the US has brought out a $1.9 trillion stimulus package which, in fact, means massive amounts of banknotes will be issued to tamp down the exchange rates of foreign currencies, and consequently take advantage of the rest of the world.

Relying on its financial hegemony, the US has robbed tens of trillions of dollars from other countries. The victims, though filled with anger, are so afraid of the American military alliance which is armed to the teeth, that most of them choose to keep silent.

5. Infringement

The judicial system leaves you no room to have faith in it. It's like peeling layers and layers of onion skin. Every layer that you peel, your eyes get more teary to the point where you can't peel anymore because your eyes are so watery. You're literally weeping, and the Bible talks about this, until you have no more strength to weep. - Emmett G. Price III, host of WGBH, a public radio station located in Boston

The American alliance system expertly manipulates international rules. Power trumps justice in the pursuit of self-interest. The US chooses which international laws to enforce based solely on its convenience. In recent years, the US pulled out of the Paris Agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Treaty on Open Skies, and the INF Treaty, revoked the signing of the Arms Trade Treaty, and handled the renewal of the New START Treaty passively. It is addicted to breaching treaties.

Moreover, it feels glorified instead of being ashamed, and starts to advocate the "rules-based international order" in which the "rules" refer to its alliance's own rules and unequal terms.

The US and its allies challenged the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea with the Freedom of Navigation. They attempted to prevent the International Criminal Court (ICC) from investigating its crimes committed in the Afghan War at all costs, which included threatening the ICC investigation staff that they would be subject to retribution.

In the information sphere, the US is a hackers' empire. Early in the Cold War, it organized the notorious Five Eyes alliance to monitor electronic communications worldwide. The US blames others for information theft and cyber-attacks while it covertly obstructs cyber security.

In 2013, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee Edward Snowden brought to light the PRISM program operated by the US, which was a surveillance program targeting both citizens and political figures on a global scale. Also in 2013, Der Spiegel disclosed that the National Security Agency (NSA) had installed spyware or modified hardware in the computers before they were delivered for foreign diplomats' use.

In 2017, WikiLeaks released thousands of confidential documents that exposed how the CIA was hacking the world. In 2020, it was revealed that since the end of WWII, the CIA has been controlling a Swiss encryption company to intercept top secrets of many countries, including its allies.

6. Destruction

Moral depravity defines US politics. The United States is regarded as the greatest threat to world peace. - Noam Chomsky, US philosopher

The US and its allies have long been the fallen angel that wreck foreign regimes and regional peace.

According to Covert Regime Change: America's Secret Cold War by Assistant Professor Lindsey O'Rourke at Boston College, in the 42 years between 1947 and 1989, the US had 64 covert subversions and six open operations. The US seems to show more excitement and enthusiasm for overthrowing foreign regimes than it does for celebrating Christmas.

After the Cold War, the US has turned into an even more unscrupulous interventionist. Its frequent attempts to export the Color Revolution brought the Arab Spring. Unfortunately, it only brought an Arab Winter and an Arab Disaster.

In his On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare, Noam Chomsky sorrowfully wrote, "This relatively short period has arguably seen the greatest number of massacres in human history. Most of them were performed in the name of lofty slogans such as freedom and democracy."

The US boasts its grandiose offshore balance strategy with its soft power and smart power when in reality, it is merely thick black theory full of schemes. In contrast to the Eastern tradition of valuing harmony and peace, the Anglo-Saxon world (the US and the UK) believes that disagreements and conflicts equals opportunity.

The US manipulated NATO to squeeze Russia's geo-space, and undermined the EU-Russia reconciliation and oil pipeline program. It supported Brexit to cripple the EU and reinforce US' control over Europe. It sowed discord in the Middle East in order to control the oil resources and made Iran an enemy of the region.

When it comes to China, the US spares no effort. The US rocked the boat in the South China Sea and made provocations, which led to turbulence in regional stability. It casts controllable tension on the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Straits to hinder peace progresses. At the China-India border, it fanned the flames of conflicts and mediated in favor of India. It also used the Quad to lure India into confronting China, intending to cause a lose-lose fight between the two developing giants.

Recently, the US obstructed the passing of a joint statement on ceasefire and cessation of violence and the protection of civilians at the Security Council despite the ongoing escalation of the Palestine-Israel situation and the overwhelming majority of UNSC members' call for an immediate ceasefire. Rather than taking proactive measures to promote peace, the US stands ready to fuel tension.

Time and time again, history has proven that the US and its allies always bring with them trouble and turmoil.

7. Disunion

In a war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times. - Winston Churchill

Forty years ago, the US forced Japan to sign the Plaza Accord to secure its economic supremacy. The Japanese hi-tech industry was dismantled and the Japanese economy crippled for decades. Today, it turns to South Korea and Chinese Taiwan, threatening to relocate their semiconductor industries back to the US.

From 2009 to 2017, the US imposed its long-arm jurisdiction on Europe, whereby it collected US$190 billion in penalties, monopolized massive quantities of personal information, and forcefully took over European enterprises that were sanctioned. In an attempt to reap profits, the Wall Street recently tried to overturn the century-old European football world by forming an independent European Super League, which was widely resisted and disgracefully aborted.

The COVID-19 outbreak put the US in the spotlight. The egomaniac that it is, the US selfishly fed itself even at the cost of its allies. The mask war between the US and its allies is indeed an abomination.

Ever since they have developed the COVID-19 vaccines, the US has ranked its allies. It is generous to Anglo-Saxon purebreds like the UK and Australia, lukewarm to Europe and other common allies, but haggles over ounces with Japan and South Korea.

Japan, challenged by the upcoming Olympics and the worsening pandemic, received no vaccines from the US. The Japanese Prime Minister had to beg American vaccine companies. The vaccination rate is 1 percent in Japan, which is only one fiftieth of the US. The South Korean foreign minister also begged the US for help but heard a resolute no.

At the early stage of the pandemic, India offered the Trump administration large quantities of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). Now that India is in the midst of a severe pandemic, it has received neither the vaccine raw materials that the US promised, nor any American oxygen or inhalators.

The US is an octopus and its allies are its tentacles. It uses them to try and rule the world but stay alert to prevent them from growing too strong. Once its interests are threatened, the octopus won't hesitate to cut off one or more of the tentacles or even feed on them.

So how could such an egoist and a corrupted alliance system take on global governance? How could they shamelessly claim to represent the international community?

After the Vietnam War, former Senator J. William Fulbright expressed his deep concern about the aggrandizement of the Arrogance of Power that would incur immeasurable destruction, and excessive expansion that would result in the nation's decline.

Recently, renowned American scholar Joseph Nye rang the alarm again: more and more countries are beyond the control of the US. It is extremely dangerous to believe the US is invincible.

What goes around comes around, and where vice is, vengeance follows. There will be severe penalties for the seven sins committed by the US. Justice may be served later, but it will never be absent.