Feverishly Awaiting Orders from the Mother Ship

As you know, they are having forest fires in Russia. As you might expect, the “real truth©™” is “some other thing” that makes those “in the know” feel that they have some special wisdom that the ugly mass of morons that they imagine their fellow man to be. It always seems to be dispensed by what one can only describe as a modern day soothsayer-charlatan:

As Muscovites suffer record high temperatures this summer, a Russian political scientist has claimed the United States may be using climate-change weapons to alter the temperatures and crop yields of Russia and other Central Asian countries.

In a recent article, Andrei Areshev, deputy director of the Strategic Culture Foundation, wrote, "At the moment, climate weapons may be reaching their target capacity and may be used to provoke droughts, erase crops, and induce various anomalous phenomena in certain countries."

The second recurring features required for this kind of thing (that never seems to go away,) is that those that buy into it think that natural phenomena CAN’T be natural, because they are somehow personalized. The proof of this being that it is happening to them.

The primary recurring feature is ignorance.

But Russia isn't the only country suffering form a heat wave this summer. Indeed, the United States is also experiencing record temperatures. On July 24, temperatures in Washington, D.C., hit 37.7 degrees, and local weather services issued heat warnings for the first time this summer.

Areshev agrees that it is also hot in the United States, but notes that the United States is significantly farther south than Russia, meaning that such high temperatures are not so surprising there.

Statistics be damned! Some mysterious, evil Ernst Stavro Blofeld type controls the universe, and the weather at that, and has it IN FOR HIM! Possibly because he (at least believes) that he matters THAT MUCH! It’s the perfect, virtue-less circle.

Notes on random terms: Spandau Ballet...

...and of the desire to own someone else’s experiences.

The “ballet” term was said to have had a darker provenance, though. It was slang to describe the last jerking leg movements of somebody hanged at the gallows in Spandau Prison. Oddly enough, Spandau is considered to be outside Berlin by the residents of Spandau, while Berliners consider Spandau one of their suburbs.

In the divided Berlin, that FIRST “Berlin Republic”, it was in British sector, and still offers a sense of escape from “the city”. In the divided Berlin, it felt like a town far away, and offered a refreshing pause: you could imagine leaving town, going to another, without thinking about the harsh, faded paint, rusted out, and hostile reliquary of the East German dictatorship getting in your way.

The band’s Mark Robinson said otherwise:

"The three of us were in a band in 1978 trying to think up a good name. I was reading the recently published "Spandau,The Secret Diaries" by Albert Speer and thought that Spandau, the prison near Berlin where Speer wrote the diaries before his release in 1966, would make a great name for our band. Mick and David used to love anything military and they were in awe of the German Maxim machine gun called the Spandau so they liked the name too. We randomly added the word "Ballet" via the "Bowie" method of cut up words in a hat, to form "Spandau Ballet".

In other words, an “exquisite corpse” sort of exercise, without the meaning that the natives were hoping for. One local rumor ran that a few parties to the act were former British Paratroops in Berlin. The Ballet was political. Clues observed, queues given, the military’s gestures were a dance. Heaven only knows at this point, but the penchance for a dramatic notion of one’s city may have driven the rumor to be believed.

The odd thing about these things is that it’s always someone else who wants the bragging rights to a name, legacy, or otherwise. We should not care, but here’s one reason British pop culture did:




None of the drama could have been made possible were it not for an old Nazi. It’s yet another frotteur with another dark image that few find interesting any longer, except in an emo-esque, historically ignorant way.

Those who lived it knew those fearful indulgences for real, unlike the recreational wallowers in misery that we see today. What says much about the way people react, is the precipitous fall in interest people had in the paranormal, and belief in the existence of UFOs shortly after the fall of Marxist-Leninism. Fear induces paranoia and irrationalism in those willing, if not wanting - to become its victims.

How do we get back to Spandau Ballet of all things? Well, it had an air of “something else” because some wanted it to. We all know where that went when the drama that the notion was based on went away.

Nothing Gets those Wise Germans Worked up like a Hackneyed Old Argument

In fact the further back “the crime against humanity” is in the loon-induced mist, the better. But look at this in basic terms. 9-11 takes place. These idiots, employing the same weak logic that they always have in their overraught and fiction-laden way over the past four decades, want to blame the victims, and the majority of “wizened” folk in this “wizened” land just nod along with them.

Other than among associates of Feisal Abdul Rauf, one could well believe that 9/11 “trutherism” is largely a thing of the past. The main target of the “9/11 truth movement” was always, after all, the supposedly nefarious cabal otherwise known as the Bush administration. With the end of President Bush’s second term, the “movement” had lost its very raison d’être.

In the meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans have other fish to fry. But photographs from a rally that took place in Berlin on the anniversary of 9/11 suggest that 9/11 “trutherism” is alive and well in Germany.

These people are not allies – not of the US, nor to the humanity that they pretend to have a monopoly on the sympathy people have for them.

“Regime change” in the United States appears not to have sated the hunger for “9/11 truth” in Germany. As documented on the German Gnurpsnewoel blog, “truthers” were out in force earlier this month at the “Freedom Not Fear” demonstration that took place on Saturday, September 11, in Berlin.

They have forfeited (for the last time,) any “sure I’ll play along for history’s sake” respect that anyone could possibly have for them. Looking for a “class enemy” fit to rally the proletarian mass? Well, here they are:

The reference is to the February 1933 Reichstag fire, which was famously exploited by the Nazi regime to consolidate its power and persecute its political opponents. It has frequently been suggested that the Nazis themselves were responsible for setting the fire. The “9/11 = the Reichstag fire” equation has long been a preferred trope of Germany’s homegrown brand of “trutherism” – or what might better be called, in light of historical precedents, “9/11 revisionism.”

There is a certain irony in the fact that such 9/11 revisionism would abound at Berlin’s “Freedom Not Fear” demonstration. As German-language publicity materials make clear, the principal practical objective of the sponsoring organizations is to combat so-called data-retention laws. In March, Germany’s Constitutional Court overturned a German law implementing minimum data retention requirements laid out in a 2006 European Union directive.

So if its’ any sort of salve, the reason they persistently find new and rotating ways over the decades to hate American and the United States, is because it’s an easier, more passive-aggressive way to hate their fellow Germans.

“Freedom Not Fear,” indeed...

What is it REALLY all about anyway? The same as it always is. This year’s pretext just has to be a juicy enough lie to keep the kids marching: the idea that everyone not like them, their “class”, their “tribe”, etc., permanently has blood on their hands. And somehow, despite the regimes they love to defend, they don’t.

Without irony, the march started at what was once a divided zone, part of which was the “death strip” of a regime that never seem to understand is had the same ideology as the one most of them promote.

Starting at Potzdamer Platz, any direction you would then go in would run you into a former line in the boundary where people seeking “Freedom from Fear” were shot on sight by fellow anti-capitalists who pretended to have a monopoly on human decency – whose enemy was a faceless mythical super-beast with stars and stripes on their flag, and a flunky German federal state to do its’ bidding.

Nothing has changes. They are simply to intellectually narrow to see events as events, and not a burning bush confirming their theories and world view. They are incapable of dealing with any of the randomness and complexity of the real world.

In fact, I think that the stale repetition of the whole thing actually provides comfort, much in the way that children crave continuity.




By the way, DW-Radio last week, actually reported this event on air. However, they called it a “data privacy” rally, with the gist of the story being that “gee, people just don’t come out for these things like they used to.” The pedantic, old fashioned antikapitalismus, “Black Bloc”, anti-Polizei crap, nor were the terrorist-supporting themes mentioned. In fact the thrust of their complaint is that German ISPs log data, but somehow, by some secrete international magic, it’s all because “9-11 was an inside job”.

Demonstrators also criticized electronic cards for health insurance and the SWIFT agreement, which gives the United States access to bank transaction details in the EU to carry out counterterrorism operations.

Never mind anything else they also, in large margin, said.

Decades ago, I first saw this logic operate in exactly the same manner. It remains as vacuously and morally inverted as ever, as strange as people going on hunger strikes for the release of Baader-Meinhof gang memebers.

Some Symbols More Obvious that Others

It often offers clarity of message, and clarity of purpose. The Badge of the long disbanded British Berlin Infantry Brigade is quite clear: we are surrounded, represented by a red ring. It should come as no surprise that they were dominated by paratroopers, who are used to the idea of being deep in hostile lands.

I don’t think there has ever been a time when a population had as much affinity with those who were technically a protector and an occupier than when it comes to this idea. Collectively, they were captives. Considering their possible fate based on what surrounded them, in many ways, they were all rebels too.

The Poor and India

David the Wayfarer asks a question about the malthusian old saw: will the poor always be with us?