Chris

We’re turning the corner, things are looking up, the crimes and misdemeanors of TPTB are being exposed. The road ahead may be rocky but leads somewhere good.

[Handre @Handre]

Nobody elected the European Commission, yet 27 commissioners sitting in Brussels write the rules that govern 450 million people's working hours, agricultural output, energy choices, and savings.

This structure is deliberate; Jean-Claude Juncker admitted it in 2015: "There can be no democratic choice against the European Treaties." Translate that, and it means your vote changes the furniture but never the architecture. National parliaments debate within a cage the Commission built.

The EU's regulatory burden costs European businesses an estimated 146 billion euros annually, according to the Commission's own impact assessments. Germany's industrial output fell 12 percent between 2022 and 2025 partly because Brussels energy policy made manufacturing uncompetitive against American and Chinese producers operating without those constraints. Meanwhile, the Common Agricultural Policy funnels 57 billion euros per year into subsidies that reward large landowners and price young farmers out of entry.

Prices coordinate information across millions of people better than any committee. When Brussels mandates energy price caps, timber quotas, or pharmaceutical approval timelines, it destroys the signals producers and consumers need to allocate resources correctly. Shortages follow. Then the Commission proposes new regulations to fix the shortages its previous regulations created.

The compounding is the point. Each intervention generates a visible failure, which bureaucrats cite as justification for the next intervention. Ludwig von Mises described this interventionist dynamic in 1929. Nearly a century later, Brussels runs the same playbook, and Europeans pay the higher prices it produces.

[🅰pocalypsis 🅰pocalypseos 🇷🇺 🇨🇳 🅉 @apocalypseos]

Alex Krainer (@NakedHedgie): The British Empire did not die in the 1950s. It went undead. London writes the paper. Washington drops the bomb. Policy Exchange scripted Iran—and Maduro—before October 7.

Alex Krainer:

“I call it the undead British Empire, because you think it doesn’t exist anymore, but there is a zombified form that still exists that still is the most pathogenic parasite on the face of the earth, and they always pretend that they are neutral. They can’t pretend in the case of Ukraine, but they pretend that they’re neutral with regard to the Yemeni conflict, with regard to the Iranian conflict and so forth, but they never are. I wager that wherever human blood is flowing in rivers, you will find British intelligence, the British Council, British NGOs, British charity organizations, very, very deeply involved. And the United States only enters the arena in a very visible way when the time comes to apply brute force. So the Americans will come with the big bombs and start dropping them. But usually by that time the British have been involved for years, if not decades. Syria, Myanmar, Somalia—they’re involved in all of these places, and they always attempt to be neutral. And when you read the strategy documents of places like Policy Exchange, Chatham House and so forth, you see that what’s happening in these different parts of the world is almost precisely the framework that was drawn up and decided in London. Even the Iran war. You’ll find a document called British Policy and the Iran Crisis. It’s like a monster 74-page write-up by Policy Exchange, written before 7 October. So it was written in July of 2023. And basically it sets the script for the whole Middle Eastern crisis that we have since October 7, 2023, including in one place specifying that before we can tackle Iran, we have to take out Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. I’m not exaggerating. I’m not BSing here. That’s all spelled out in those documents.”

Pascal Lottaz:

“It’s really a very good observation, because the narrative also in our bubble usually is that what happened is that there was a tag-team kind of moment, right—when the British Empire basically overextended, the United States managed to break it and force it to sell off, and basically there was this handover moment that happened in the ’50s and ’60s. One of the examples being, for instance, the first Iran coup d’état, Mossadegh, who was toppled with the MI6, but it was also the first time the CIA was really involved, and the CIA learned the playbook from the MI6, and then they used that and implemented that in Latin America over and over and over again, and worldwide and so on. But it’s basically a handover. But you’re saying, like, no, it’s not a handover. It’s actually still a cooperation of the brute thug on the other side of the Atlantic and the British gentleman on this side that still does this snobbish kind of tea-drinking while Evel Knievel kind of thing.”

[Chris @Chrisherew]

@TFL1728 The Dutch have wonderful collateral in the form of Europe’s largest gas field only they’ve sealed off access to it with concrete!

[Chris @Chrisherew]

There are going to be a lot of actors, cameramen, lighting and sound technicians out of a job soon:

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

People are really not paying enough attention to this.

Last week, in the post below, I wrote that China would soon have AI tools to easily internationalize the hundreds of thousands of AI mini-series it produces every year, and "re-render the footage with local faces, languages and other local cultural characteristics for every single international market at near-zero cost."

Turns out I was already behind: these tools exist already.

The video below demos Seko, made by SenseTime (商汤, Shāngtāng), a Hong Kong-listed computer vision company. Seko is a platform for making AI-powered mini-series, and in early September it added a feature called 出海转绘 (chūhǎi zhuǎnhuì, "overseas re-rendering").

The way it works is that you upload a finished episode, it breaks it down shot by shot (framing, camera movement, props, sound), you pick a target market and language, and it regenerates the whole thing with local characters, sets, props and even on-screen signs, keeping the same composition and pacing as the original. English, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Portuguese, French, German: one episode, as many versions as you want.

It's basically as if Netflix could remake every single one of its series for every country on earth, with local actors and in local language, at the push of a button. It's a massive change in the entertainment industry.

Which means we're probably on the eve of an absolute avalanche of Chinese mini-series hitting every social feed on the planet, each one looking like it was shot down the street.

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

Idiot Noah Builds An Ark When He Could Have Just Paid More Taxes To Stop Climate Change https://t.co/jv0T6nIrXV

[Chris @Chrisherew]

@MadelonVos__ Je zou er bijna zin in krijgen om iemand vol op z’n bek te slaan hierover.

[Chris @Chrisherew]

@SchoutenLegal @SPnl En wat ga je doen met je wapentjes als de Iskanders, Kalibrs, Oresjniks en Sarmats ons om de oren vliegen? Want als het oorlog wordt dan zal het geen loopgravenoorlog worden. Diplomatie en onderhandelingen zijn ons enige optie.

[Alex (Sasha) Krainer @NakedHedgie]

Good morning from Croatia. Russia is not my enemy. And thank you for joining me in defending peace.

[Mats Nilsson @mazzenilsson]

Important by @Glenn_Diesen:

"I do not think everyone fully grasps the gravity of the Defense Minister accusing me of spreading "Russian propaganda" without presenting any concrete justification. This type of casting of suspicion, delegitimization, and labeling aims to narrow the scope of free expression. That this comes from the Defense Minister is deeply authoritarian and represents an attack on our democratic principles. Here, state power is attempting to monopolize the truth; instead of engaging with my arguments, dissent is criminalized and portrayed as a threat to national security.

The Defense Minister is doing what all authoritarian leaders have always done: equating dissent with treason, centralizing control over the discourse, erasing the distinction between state power and truth, and encouraging arbitrary punishment.

How can academics remain independent when state power dictates which "official truths" must be repeated? The Defense Minister claims I blame Ukraine for the war, which is incorrect. I maintain that NATO provoked this war—a claim I can substantiate with indisputable facts from the past 30 years, as well as clear statements from leading Western heads of state, diplomats, intelligence chiefs, and military leaders. Yet, the Defense Minister does not address my arguments or the facts; he resorts solely to personal attacks, equating loyalty to the state’s narrative with loyalty to the nation.

On February 25, 2022, NRK reported Støre stating that it was "out of the question to change the law preventing Norway from sending military equipment to Ukraine." How is it that all 169 representatives in the Storting now support arms shipments, and that no one argues for diplomacy with Russia? How is it that none of our media outlets can discuss indisputable facts that do not fit the dumbed-down war narratives of a battle between heroes and villains?

How did we end up with this seemingly monolithic consensus? Was it created through open debate about what is best for Norwegian and Ukrainian security, or was the consensus established by creating a climate of fear in which anyone disagreeing with the state is accused of spreading enemy propaganda? Our policy has been a spectacular failure: Ukraine is being destroyed, the US is distancing itself from Europe, and we now stand on the brink of nuclear war with Russia—yet the state’s monopoly on truth remains unchallenged. How has it become normalized for the Norwegian Minister of Defence to attack media outlets that dare to speak with an academic who reaches conclusions critical of NATO?

I discuss how NATO provoked this war not because I take Russia’s side against Norway, but because acknowledging reality and the security concerns of the opposing side is essential for fostering peaceful solutions. When was the last time any of us heard politicians or the media discuss the legitimate security concerns of Russia, China, Iran, or other adversaries? This was perfectly normal during the Cold War as a means of reducing security competition, yet today, mutual understanding is met with suspicion. If we cannot acknowledge that the opposing side has legitimate security concerns, war becomes our only solution."

https://t.co/36OSBo0Tec

[Thomas Fazi @battleforeurope]

Fantastic piece!

“I argue that the United States is deliberately preparing to sacrifice Europe. When Ukrainian manpower is exhausted, European men and European territory are to become the next expendable resource in a proxy war against Russia.

For decades a networked elite has manipulated governments, manufactured consent for wars of aggression, and shielded itself from accountability through legal and institutional mechanisms designed for that purpose. That same elite now faces the collapse of its financial instruments, the failure of its traditional tools of control, and the rise of powers it can no longer dominate. It cannot afford to lose power, because loss of power would mean exposure for crimes that, under the standards established at Nuremberg, constitute the supreme international crime.

Europe’s own political class is not working for Europe’s interest. Its loyalty has been carefully cultivated to serve the American hegemon — more like a beaten wife than an equal partner. The continent is therefore being transformed from ally into resource: economically drained, politically captured, and militarily prepared as the theatre in which the costs of imperial decline will be paid. The ultimate expression of this strategy is a managed escalation that keeps the American homeland as sanctuary while Europe absorbs both the conventional attrition and the nuclear risk”.

Link to the article: https://t.co/8l41c02DM7

[Chris @Chrisherew]

@SaskiaHeijden Misschien moet we ze gewoon op hun bek slaan - metaforisch gezien dan, uiteraard.

[Martin A. Armstrong @ArmstrongEcon]

Look at the EU. Ursula, she doesn’t stand for election. She’s appointed by the people who are there.

The people in the back room make all the decisions on laws, and nobody stands for election.

You don’t even know who they are.

I was there.

It was deliberately created to eliminate democracy.

[Chris @Chrisherew]

@RealPepeEscobar Imagine sitting through a 20’ meeting with Whaddafool 😩

[𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕻𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕤 @SprinterPress]

"Everything is heading towards a finale": Historian Emmanuel Todd comments on the conflict in Ukraine.

The conflict in Ukraine is moving towards a resolution, and that's why European leaders are so nervous, said French historian Emmanuel Todd on Figaro TV. According to him, each of them will soon have to pay the bill.

Todd called the policies pursued by current European leaders "fantocracy" – the rule of fantasy. Fairy tales about a "wicked Russia that is about to attack" are the product of the sick imagination of bureaucrats in Brussels. It is they, driven by these delusions, who pushed the Kyiv regime towards self-destruction.

[Chris @Chrisherew]

Exactly this:

[John Michael Greer @JMGreerWriter]

The European leadership are stupid, that I freely grant, but their problem isn’t short term thinking. The problem is that for several generations now, across the top end of the Western European and European-diaspora privileged classes, the one ironclad rule has been that nobody must ever suffer the consequences of even their most stupid actions. They are only permitted to fail upwards. The result is that it has never occurred to the current inmates of that class that they could lose.

They have grand long-term plans; they expect to divide up Russia into weak successor states that can be brought into the EU and stripped of assets for their benefit; they expect to absorb Canada, as shown by the recent chatter about Canadian “associate membership;” their ultimate goal is clearly nothing less than turning the EU into the nucleus of a global government.

The problem is that they’ve completely failed to consider the possibility that Russia, in particular, might object to this, take their objections onto the battlefield, and win.

The Eurocrats literally can’t imagine a scenario where they don’t get whatever they want. So they’re busy pounding their flabby little fists and sticking out their scrawny little chests in a display of faux machismo, in serenely self-inflicted blindness to the very real possibility that the response might involve Russian hypersonic weapons taking out the British nuclear arsenal on the ground, submarine drones sinking every Royal Navy asset larger than a rowboat, and Oreshniks descending at Mach 12 or so on every significant underground bunker in the UK and reducing its human and electronic contents to white-hot dust.

[Chris @Chrisherew]

@pimgunzel Groter dan Joezhmasj?

[Chris @Chrisherew]

@BowesChay …and no comb.

[Chris @Chrisherew]

@PasqualVerhagen @ewaldeng Yeah, no doubt you’re right after all lying seems to be the done thing these days and besides there are surely so many examples.

[Chris @Chrisherew]

Horrifying

[Alex (Sasha) Krainer @NakedHedgie]

Yes this is exactly where this is going!