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| Just den här sägs dock vara indisk... Credit: Allocer |
En av många bottnar i den här historien är att Ryssland uppenbarligen inte klarar av att bygga kärnvapen själva!
Men Donald Trump (och SD) var rysk agenter...?
Svenska företag förser Putin med atomvapen
Ryska tillverkare av kärnvapen köper svensk utrustning
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| Credit: Alchetron |
This kind of stuff makes my head spin. Apparently, astronomers have discovered a super-distant star (nicknamed Earendel) at the "comoving distance" of 28 billion lightyears from Earth. Whatever that even means, since the star was formed only 900 million years after the Big Bang (when the universe was much smaller than today) and ceased to exist after only a few million years. The star literally doesn´t exist anymore, yet its previous position is *now* 28 billion lightyears away from us (at least at the previously mentioned "comoving distance").
Or something.
Still, it *is* fascinating...
"Servant of the People 2" is a 2016 Ukrainian film starring Volodomyr Zelensky as president of Ukraine.
Yes, you read that right.
Zelensky was originally an actor who starred a fictitious Ukrainian president in a political comedy series aired on Ukrainian TV. The series, called "Servant of the People" in English, spawned a sequel film, known as "Servant of the People 2". In 2019, Zelensky became the *real* president of Ukraine after winning a landslide victory over the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko. The name of Zelensky´s political party? Servant of the People...
I think it´s obvious that this wasn´t a co-incidence. Zelensky was building his brand for several years prior to actually running for president. Indeed, the party Servant of the People seems to have been formed by Kvartal 95, the production company behind the TV series of the same name!
Swedish TV recently showed "Servant of the People 2", obviously because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. To me as a random viewer, the film wasn´t that interesting. To a Ukrainian, I suppose it meant much more, since the lead actor was elected president three years later. Maybe it´s of interest to students of contemporary Ukrainian politics?
The cultural references are incomprehensible to non-Ukrainians. Who is the mysterious Cossack leader who says he is going to defeat the Khazar army? Why does the film contain both references to classical culture (the twelve labors of Heracles) and modern pop culture (Star Wars and LOTR)? And why the obsession with Capri and Italy? OK, I checked that one. It´s also a bit ironic that Zaporizhzhia, depicted as a very heroic town resisting the Russian onslaught in recent media reports, is depicted as a gangster-infested corrupted "butthole" in this film! And unless I´m mistaken, most of the characters in "Servant of the People 2" actually speak Russian.
I was also struck by the old fashioned humor. Cross-dressing is still considered great fun east of the ex-Iron Curtain, it seems, and at one point, the "president" and his foremost associate dress in drag at a decadent party at a hotel in Zaporizhzhia. The Ukrainian drag queen Verka Serduchka actually stars in the film (yes, I recognized him, but then, that´s not difficult). Alcohol and girls dressed in folk costumes are apparently comic, too. So is making fun of German last names...
Let´s be brutally honest here: without the war, "Servant of the People 2" would be considered "problematic" west of the ex-Iron Curtain!
The plot, such as it is, circles around "president Goloborodko´s" attempts to get the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) to vote for a reform package needed to obtain loans from the IMF. The reforms are opposed by three powerful oligarchs, who control most of the parliamentary delegates. To neutralize the oligarchs, Goloborodko teams up with an imprisoned ex-oligarch and bon vivant, Chuiko, after first promising him amnesty. After the previously mentioned drag acts, Goloborodko secures the parliament´s support, only to find out that the IMF delegation is equally corrupted. The film actually ends with Zelensky´s character refusing to sign the IMF deal, instead making an impassioned speech about Ukrainians not being "beggars or guestworkers", and Ukraine not being a "border region between elves and orcs". He then tells the IMF to go to hell! Interestingly, he doesn´t sound ethno-nationalist, rather calling for unity between all citizens of Ukraine (many of whom are ethnic Russians or Russian-speakers). In real life, Zelensky is a Russian-speaking Jew.
In the 2019 elections, Zelensky put himself forward as an anti-corruption candidate, something clearly foreshadowed in "Servant of the People 2" with "Goloborodko´s" constant rants (often filled with expletives) against oligarchs and their political patsies. In reality, Zelensky is a patsy himself, but for another oligarchic faction. This may not be politic to point out due to the war, but it´s a fact nevertheless. It may be even more impolite to state that this particular faction is heavily Jewish...
I support Ukraine against Russia, but my cynical side tells me that Zelensky might not have been re-elected had the war not interfered. Indeed, East Europeans tend to be pretty ungrateful to their independence leaders and democracy activists. It will be interesting to see how long the Ukrainians remain loyal to the Servant of the People...
Sanction Russia, sell out the economy to China. Which is an ally of...well...Russia. Welcome to Tory-governed Britain! Time to dust off that old demand to nationalize the economy under *British* workers´ control?
From the article: "Chinese firms have also been keen on buying up large swaths of the British economy, reportedly spending at least £135 billion to buy ownership stakes in British companies, property, and infrastructure, such as Thames Water, Heathrow airport, and UK Power Networks. The Communist Party-linked Jingye Group has also taken over ownership of British Steel, which produces one third of the United Kingdom’s domestic steel."
And now, the UK has essentially handed over its semiconductor production to China, as well. A line of business in which China competes with Taiwan!
Our old friend, the Tantric joker Professor Timalsina, has something to say about suffering and "ananda" (bliss). As a good Tantrika, he naturally believes that the world is really composed of the latter...
The rapture will be in 2022. Did you know? Not me neither, but I should have. This according to a dream by a Muslim convert to Christianity named Fatima. I wonder if the name is a co-incidence?
Or maybe some other shite will happen, as per Baba Vanga here above. (Note that this late Bulgarian mystic didn´t predict the Russian invasion of Ukraine!) But the baba claimed that the world won´t end until 5079, so presumably her posthumous self will be out-competed by all the 2022 doomsayers...and the 2023 ones...and the 2024 ones...
You get the picture.
At least Nibiru has been written off. I haven´t checked *that* particular milieu since 2018 (when they predicted the end would happen on November 28 - it didn´t), but a quick search on YouTube reveals no new Nibiru prophecies this year. Wow!
There *is* a chance that the world might end in a nuclear conflagration c/o Vlad the Even Madder, but if you ask me, we´ll both still be here in 2023, discussing another round of failed apocalyptic scenarios...
I admit that I didn´t know that ice can "sing", or rather emit weird sounds (like an arcade game), until earlier this week, when "my" local frozen birdlake started to sound...haunted! The sounds were similar to the ones heard in the clip above (also from Sweden).
In combination with an eerie silence overall (the birds didn´t quack, caw or scream), the "singing" ice made the whole thing feel almost otherworldly. Occasionally, a kind of "explosions" were heard, too!
You learn something new every day.
The classical definition of fascism is something like "a reactionary mass mobilization directed against the labor movement and democracy as such, headed by an authoritarian right-wing party with pseudo-socialist traits", one of these being a mixed economy under strict government supervision.
But is that really the only way fascism can manifest? Why can´t there be a neo-liberal form of fascism, for instance? After all, Social Democrats or centrists can adopt neo-liberal policies, so why can´t fascists?
In the United States, David Duke - if I understand him correctly - calls for a free market economy. However, it would be weird not to call him a fascist. He has, after all, an almost explicit Nazi ideology on all other points! Indeed, most American far right-wingers probably call for a free market (or a combination of free domestic markets and closed borders).
Other examples inlcude the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria, or the BJP in India (or at least the earlier and more militant incarnations of the Hindutva movement).
Another interesting question is if fascism can also take a Communist form. Most people would think of Stalin, but for obvious reasons, Stalin and mass mobilizations (at least in his home town) didn´t exactly mix. More relevant examples would be the Russian Red-Brown Bloc of the 1990´s, Sendero Luminoso in Peru, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
Of course, the term "fascism" doesn´t have an essentialist meaning, so strictly speaking, we can define it anyway we see fit. (Stalin notoriously called the Social Democrats "social fascists"!) However, if stormtroopers start stirring up "the masses" against your union hall in the name of the Nation, the Great Leader and the free market, it would seem strange not to see this as somewhat analogous to Hitler or Mussolini...
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| Britt-Marie 45, glatt skrockande |
Dagens största aprilskämt, som faktiskt är sant...
