Their oligarchs and ours

Candy King? 

What exactly is an "oligarch"? Why aren´t Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg or Michael Bloomberg called "oligarchs"? Or Trump, for that matter? Why are there "oligarchs" only in Russia and the Ukraine? And even then, the label is somewhat selective. Why isn´t Hunter Biden seen as a kind of tinpot oligarchista?

Answer: a corporate-statist capitalist not controlled by the United States or any other Western nation is an "oligarch". If they are "ours" (or rather, control us), then they are just "private entrepreneurs", even if they act like their Russo-Ukrainian counterparts...

Poroshenko was apparently an oligarch before he became our man in Kyiv. And since he is currently out of favor, he is apparently an oligarch again. If Zelensky is kicked out in favor of Poroshenko again, the latter will become the democratically elected president, while the former´s connections to, ahem, oligarchs will be blasted all over the front pages. 

In other words: oligarch is just a stupid insult, a bit like "ex-Communist" (which really means Communist). 

But you probably knew that already. 

Unsurprising intervention

Erdogan together with some dude bro

Turkey´s president Erdogan wants to broker a peace agreement between Russia and the Ukraine. I´m not surprised. While Turkey is a NATO member, the authoritarian nationalist and semi-Islamist Erdogan (who had his, shall we say, disagreements with the United States) has relatively good relations with both Putin and Zelensky. 

If succesful, perhaps he could look forward to another 10 years in power, who knows? And since Biden, at least implicitly, doesn´t want to defend the Ukraine against Russia in case of an actual shooting war, giving Erdogan the green lights to mediate in the conflict might be an option. In return, the old Turkish fox (or is it wolf) will probably demand certain security guarantees from the US administration, such as "don´t try to overthrow me again"...

And yes, the article linked to below has a bizarre headline.

"Turkey´s Erdogan desperately seeks role in Ukraine mess"

The guns of January

NATO members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will ship US-made weapons to the Ukraine. Estonia also wants to send German arms, but needs the approval of both Germany and Finland (the latter being a non-NATO member). 

This is probably as far as the Western alliance can go without actually sending troops to aid the Ukrainian government against a Russian invasion attempt. Will probably not be tolerated by Putin anyway. 

Things are getting dangerously close to a war.... 

Baltic nations to ship US weapons to Ukraine

Come and meet your liberal neighbor

48% of Democratic voters support prison sentences for people who question the vaccines on social media. 45% support internment camps for the unvaccinated?! 

These are some of the *insane* results from a recent survey. 

I wonder if the Dem voters are just venting against Trump supporters, and if they realize that many Blacks and "Third World" immigrants are unvaccinated? 

Remember: this is the party that supposedly "defends democracy" in the United States... 

The survey results summarized (from Twitter)

Bring back Boomer science

 

Brontosaurus have been rehabilitated. 

Now, let´s bring back Pluto into planetary orbit, prove that cyanobacteria are really plants, and stop calling birds freakin´ dinosaurs (cuz they aint). And why not resuscitate Fred Hoyle´s steady-state theory of the universe, when we´re already at it? *And* admit that Neandertals were really Homo sapiens! 

Can we make this happen, fam?

Inte utan min becknarväska

Förrförra årets drev om skolor och kläder. En liten påminnelse. Explainer bifogas. 

Skola förbjuder "machokläder"

Veckans nyord: becknarväska

En enkel fråga

Gäller samma principer muslimska friskolor, också? 

"En flickas kropp är ett slagfält"

Kom och träffa chefen, grabben

Come and meet the bossman, kiddo!

En del av mig (min elaka jävulusiska sida) vill verkligen att Biden och Putte gör en deal som innefattar skriftliga garantier från USA om att Sverige aldrig kommer att få gå med i NATO. Givetvis beslutat helt över huvudet på våra kära folkvalda. 

Då skulle alla politiker i det här lilla Kalle Anka-landet skita ner sig totalt. Sverige och andra småländer har inget "nationellt självbestämmande", har aldrig haft det och kommer heller aldrig att ha det. 

Det vore väldigt ironiskt om Biden visar att You-Ess-Ay är Bossman genom att *stoppa* en av sina telekom-neo-kolonier från att ansluta sig till den där nordatlantiska militäralliansen. HA HA HA. 

Och en nyttig påminnelse till alla svenska politiska posörer om de geopolitiska realiteterna. 

Cancel Canada

End it already, I say. 

Canadians support repression against "the unvaccinated"

Restoring the balance

Credit: Impawards

"Godzilla" is a 2014 US film in the so-called MonsterVerse franchise, which features the two "classical" monstrosities Godzilla (Gojira) and King Kong in various combinations. In this particular flick, the primordial stegosaurid Godzilla is awakened by a deep sea expedition, and the nuclear tests at Bikini Island were supposedly attempts to kill this monster! When this fails, the US government sets up the ultra-secret Project Monarch to study the bizarre creature. Just as well, since even more monstrosities are hiding beneath the Earth surface, including two MUTOs or Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms! (Is somebody making fun of the UFO subculture, I wonder?) 

The MUTOs, who have an obvious family resemblance to the Devil himself, want to mate and breed some more abominable creatures, destroying a Japanese nuclear power plant, Honolulu and Las Vegas (sic) in the process, before descending on an unsuspecting San Fransisco. Luckily, Gojira turns out to be on our side (more or less), and in the chaos and mayhem following the MUTO mating ritual, the stegosaurid seems to be the only thing that stands between us and a mass extinction event of Homo freakin´ sapiens. Apparently, "the king of the monsters" is Mother Nature´s way of "restoring the balance", sorely upset by the rampage of the trysting gargoyles.

I was going to complain about the major plot holes (one of them involving an encased nuclear device), but after the botched COVID response in the real world, the illogical chaos in "Godzilla" doesn´t seem so unrealistic anymore, I mean, the film almost comes across as a documentary! Must be the first time I get *that* feeling when watching a film where more money was used for the special effects than for the script...

I already reviewed "Kong: Skull Island", but I haven´t seen the later films in this series, one of which apparently pits Gojira against the over-sized gorilla in some kind of ultimate fighting of the ages. 

And while it probably doesn´t mean anything at all, I do think it´s funny to see a sci fi production involving hideous creatures from the bowels of our own planet, rather than the (obviously unrealistic) space aliens who litter every other SF flick! 

Three stars?