I do not agree that Russia «invaded» the Ukraine. Russia came to the aid of Donetsk and Lugansk under a treaty, after they had been bombed and invaded for years by the neo-Nazi Ukrainian puppet régime that the US had installed for the purpose. The whole thing was a provocation by the Yankee bloc, and the media have misrepresented the facts.
I don't carry a flag for any state today, but Russia happens to be in the right here, at least for the most part.
Very true. There was also other reasons that prompted the invasion. Western meddling in Ukraine since the colour revolutions and the siting of nuclear weapons in non nuclear Eastern European countries in contravention of the non proliferation treaty.
I am sorry to read that you have assumed that Russia 'fomented trouble'. That is simply untrue. NATO countries took part in a political coup in 2014 which resulted in Russian-speakers being persecuted in Ukraine. Russia did everything it could to negotiate for reasonable treatment but the terrorism undertaken by the Azov Brigade and Ukraine military murdered people and destroyed infrastructure. Refugees poured into Russia with stories and videos that obviously did not reach your attention.
The Special Military Operation that was dubbed 'an invasion' by western media was intended to defend the civilians and that is precisely what it has achieved.
Frances is perfectly correct. The trouble actually started in the early 1990s, with the establishment of a Ukrainian state that has shamefully failed (the only state in the world that is poorer today than it was 35 years ago) and turned into a cesspool of fascism.
One quick comment about the Crimea: Ukrainian constitutional law has nothing to do with it. The people of the Crimea had the right to self-determination and unsurprisingly chose to exercise it. About 98% of the voters—and the vast majority turned out—favoured it. Of course, the will of the people is never enough for the US and its cronies, which support separation for an unpopular puppet movement but insist on the «territorial integrity» of a client state such as the Ukraine.
As you said, the real constitutional issue lies in the original transfer of the Crimea to the Ukraine, which clearly *was* carried out in contravention of the Soviet constitution and therefore had no legal effect.
Yes. I agree with you Scott. I had noted: 'Russia’s annexation of Crimea was technically illegal under Ukrainian constitutional law'. I was aware that it was a grey area and expanded on it further. Thanks for your like!
And at the same time so many East Germans have complaining about the good old days when the state provided everything and they didn’t have to compete in a crazy jungle. This has, in fact, has been driving some anti-immigrant and racist sentiments. Obviously there are those who want capitalism and those who don’t. Both exist.
All western neoliberal countries are singing from the same obscene song sheet, Avigail, and it's disgusting.
I agree with Scott's comment below, and I think it's important to know this because Russia is not a threat to the western world. It's just having to defend itself from a NATO proxy war using Ukraine as its proxy.
Time may be short on this excellent documentary about Palestine Action, which may be about to be banned in the UK, and from there, most likely the film, because the UK government is trying to designate them as a terrorist organisation. You can watch the film online, but come Monday, 30 June, after the UK Parliament meets, who knows. These are y/our freedoms on the line.
Thanks, Avigail, for letting me know how to disable these messages. I have been annoyed by loud sounds pertaining to matters such as the alleged abduction of a child within hundreds of kilometres. I did not know that the telephone might issue these alarms even when the sound was turned off, as it is when I go to court (something that I did three times this week). I have turned all of the alarms off. I should be able to find out about any real emergency by other means.
I am sorry that you have tinnitus. So do I. I had frequent ear infections as a child, and one at age 19 was misdiagnosed (who could fail to see it?) and left me with permanent damage. At least tinnitus has been bothering me less in recent years.
I’m lucky that there has never suffered hearing damage, but I have never had silence in my head… I am sorry you have this too.
I understand that in different countries there are different options in the ‘notifications’ section of our phones and they are also different between makes. Glad you found this helpful.
There were three sets of alarms here, not counting one for earthquakes that is not used in this area of low seismic activity. Really, if there were an earthquake, would I not know without getting a message on my telephone?
I do have hearing loss, but it is still fairly mild. I am even going to perform a piece by Chopin at a piano recital tomorrow.
Awfully sorry but it is impossible to destroy the earth. 🌍 We will most definitely destroy ourselves but not planet. The way I see it, after we have wiped ourselves out, the planet will go into deep hibernation for billions of years to rejuvenate and digest everything we built. The forests will return, the oceans will be full life and the savannah will be covered with animals again. The planet is very old you see and as far as it is concerned, we have only been around for all of 31 minutes!
The planet will indeed go on with or without us. When Avigail spoke of destroying the Earth, she didn't mean driving the planet out of existence; she meant destroying it as a place for human habitation.
When I studied economics we were taught about the pure model of capitalism. In the modern world we’ve never had it. Pure capitalism is about real and pure supply and demand. Advertising, which tries to manipulate and create demand is not allowed. Packing, if necessary, is all the same and only provides information about the product. People choose what to buy or consume by the quality of the product or their preferences. At the market you buy x’s cheese and not y’s because you prefer it, not because the packaging is alluring or advertising convinced you. In the pure capitalist model cartels or monopolies are forbidden. Neoliberalism is not strictly capitalism. It is an abomination. It doesn’t play fair, and it’s about manipulation, power and control
The 'pure' capitalism they taught you about is a fairytale the 'vulgar economists' confected to seduce the unwary into thinking that capitalism wasn't INHERENTLY inimical to life. It has never existed and the way capitalism works - 'economic growth' - ensures that in principle, it never could exist.
I know. It was purely a model that never existed and could never exist given the current level of human development. I was just making a point. My lecturers were in fact critical of the kind of neoliberalist capitalism we were just starting to have in the late 1980s.
"It’s also his way of sending a clear message to NATO that Russia is not a threat. He really does understand Western psychology."
I would say the opposite. What Russia thinks are gestures showing reasonableness and humanitarianism are seen in the West as contemptible weakness and merely invite further provocations.
The West can only go on making trouble. There will never be peace while the US bloc exists, since, as Avigail said, neoliberalism lives at the expense of most of the world and must therefore go on exploiting other countries.
So what does the rest of the world propose to do about it? They crave American carrot and fear American stick. That is why the only ones to do anything concrete about Gaza were the Houthis of Yemen. (Iran responded only after it was attacked.)
I can wish away pit bulls, but they are still there and will kill me if they can catch me.
Unfortunately, the rest of the world has been doing very little, as you said. I have become disgusted with politics in the face of inaction by the oppressed.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Thank you.i refuse to be frightened by the constant media and social media comments in my country that a Chinese invasion is going to sail into the likes of Port Phillip or Botany Bay. I reject the idea that our young people are not motivated enough to fight and thereby deserve much criticism.
This is an authoritatian hellhole and always was. When i came here from the same hellhole you did, everything seemed more free but soon i learned it was a veneer. It is alarming how fast things seem to be moving towards a less benign totalitarianism.
Thank you for your report. I’m actually more worried about what our home Government will do to us than I am about any other country attacking us. Our enemy here in the UK is, as far as I can see, mostly the UK itself and the USA.
Some interesting stuff here, Avigail, and full marks for not buying into the fiction that NATO expansion was somehow responsible for Putin's murderous invasion of Ukraine. I kind of get why Stalinist and "Pabloite "lefts" would be soft on the USSR in the past and would have myself defended the degenerated workers' state from Imperialism. The USSR, for example, didn't invade Afghanistan but were invited in by civilian politicians ousted in Amin's coup. However, Putin's FASCIST RUSSIA is NOT THE USSR, its run by Oligarchs, has capitalist social relations of the most repugnant form, is guilty of war crimes all over Africa, enables and supports fascists in Europe from Viktor Orban to Marine Le Pen and Farage, helped engineer BREXIT and delivered their bought and paid for bitch, Donald Trump (Sixth Directorate code name Krasnov) to the White House. For God's sake when will people who claim to be on the Left STOP giving Putin any slack?
As for Enoch Starmer's recent proclamation that Britain should be preparing for war, I'd go along with that if he was doing it properly and not serving a nefarious agenda just days after he banned Palestine Action. The Danes are quite rightly on a war footing in response to the existential military threat posed by BOTH Putin AND Trump vis-a-vis Greenland. By contrast, Starmer is directly complicit in Zionist genocide in Israel, would have been quite happy to go along with a war against Iran and is in complete denial that Trump is as much this country's enemy (and that of the whole continent) as Putin.
An appropriate response to the threat of war therefore means also tackling the assets of two hostile powers that support and are enabled by both Putin and Trump, meaning that Farage's Reform, the EDL, etc., be BANNED under a suppression of fascism act and any politician who accepted Russian money or was involved in Russian money laundering or the BREXIT campaign must be jailed for life. That put's paid to Cameron, Johnson and Rees-Mogg among others. We would also need to nationalise most of the economy, including expropriating ALL US assets without compensation, rejoin the Customs Union, initialise a trade and economic war against the US and advocate the formation of an independent European defence policy and standing army against BOTH Russia AND the US. We would particularly need to nationalise the armaments industry, purging it of all who colluded in genocide or arms sales to autocrats and seize all financial institutions and hedge funds, etc, particularly including offshore, using existing counter terrorism laws. We'd also be raising anti-fascist militia answerable to councils of action as created in the French General Strike of 1968 as well as breaking up media monopolies, banning GB NEWS and closing down FACEBOOK and X.
Putin's main threat to Western Europe isn't military but in the enabling of fascism.
Starmer's preparation for war is of a very different colour and is all about banning demonstrations and groups like Palestine Action who oppose Zionist genocide as well as broadening the net to include any dissent on the Left. It's an extension of the purge he began in the Labour Party at the behest of his puppet masters in the Deep State, that has seen the Police Courts and Sentencing Act used to imprison Just Stop Oil with obscene and ridiculously harsh sentences and will include using the National Security Act against journalists. Kept out of the loop by Trump he no doubt thought there'd be a war with Iran to slip these measures through but now there isn't so what's the excuse, scumbag? It isn't Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil who should be in the Dock but Starmer, for collusion in war crimes in Palestine and Yemen, for covering up Jimmy Savile and Grenville Janner when he was DPP and for attacking democracy as agent of a hostile fascist power, namely Donald Trump.
Boy did you ever hit the nail square on the head with this one. What are we to do to sink the neoliberal era. Here's an interesting piece I read this morning that dives into whether the BRICS+ can replace it and if so what the might look like, especially within context of Chinese confucism.
Throughout the Chicken Little–style panic surrounding COVID-19, I refused to wear a mask. Anyone with a basic understanding of science (such as the size of a virion relative to that of the openings in the mask's material and all around the edge of the mask) would know that those masks do not significantly prevent the spreading of infection. Originally various states discouraged their use; quickly, however, they were seen as a good means of social control, so they were forced on everyone. I never wore one, not once.
By the way, the poor state of public education also contributes to fear through the promulgation of ignorance. I remember countless discussions of this nature:
— How big is a virion? Can you tell me, within three or four orders of magnitude?
— [stunned silence]
Or this, after I had explained something carefully:
— Well, you have your facts and I have mine, so why don't we agree to disagree?
Totally irrational, yet ubiquitous. People who will not think or inform themselves are readily manipulated and controlled. This is why trivia such as stupid football games and other low-grade entertainment are so heavily promoted. Juvenal said that the people could be bought off with bread and the circus (_panem et Circenses_). Now it is frozen pizza and soap operas…
Sorry had to react to your sweeping statement, football is a great game that anyone can play even without special equipment, it’s fun and keeps you fit. Don’t get me going on FIFA tho’ 😤
I have nothing against playing football or other sports; I was referring to the insanity of «spectator sports», with the endless promotion of vicarious living through celebrities and also of passivity.
In China, a person who claims football as a hobby plays it. In settler-colonial North America, the person cheers mindlessly while eating junk food and watching others play football on television.
I do not agree that Russia «invaded» the Ukraine. Russia came to the aid of Donetsk and Lugansk under a treaty, after they had been bombed and invaded for years by the neo-Nazi Ukrainian puppet régime that the US had installed for the purpose. The whole thing was a provocation by the Yankee bloc, and the media have misrepresented the facts.
I don't carry a flag for any state today, but Russia happens to be in the right here, at least for the most part.
Very true. There was also other reasons that prompted the invasion. Western meddling in Ukraine since the colour revolutions and the siting of nuclear weapons in non nuclear Eastern European countries in contravention of the non proliferation treaty.
agree with you. People who buy the Nato narritive should watch this movie from 2015.. https://youtu.be/507pmWbfDUc?feature=shared
I am sorry to read that you have assumed that Russia 'fomented trouble'. That is simply untrue. NATO countries took part in a political coup in 2014 which resulted in Russian-speakers being persecuted in Ukraine. Russia did everything it could to negotiate for reasonable treatment but the terrorism undertaken by the Azov Brigade and Ukraine military murdered people and destroyed infrastructure. Refugees poured into Russia with stories and videos that obviously did not reach your attention.
The Special Military Operation that was dubbed 'an invasion' by western media was intended to defend the civilians and that is precisely what it has achieved.
Frances is perfectly correct. The trouble actually started in the early 1990s, with the establishment of a Ukrainian state that has shamefully failed (the only state in the world that is poorer today than it was 35 years ago) and turned into a cesspool of fascism.
I put out this piece on Ukraine a year before the invasion https://shadowlightblog.substack.com/p/ukraine-the-real-story-behind-the
With regards to the child abductions, have a look at this article from the Grayzone https://thegrayzone.com/2023/03/31/iccs-putin-arrest-state-dept-report/
Thanks, Barry. Well put.
One quick comment about the Crimea: Ukrainian constitutional law has nothing to do with it. The people of the Crimea had the right to self-determination and unsurprisingly chose to exercise it. About 98% of the voters—and the vast majority turned out—favoured it. Of course, the will of the people is never enough for the US and its cronies, which support separation for an unpopular puppet movement but insist on the «territorial integrity» of a client state such as the Ukraine.
As you said, the real constitutional issue lies in the original transfer of the Crimea to the Ukraine, which clearly *was* carried out in contravention of the Soviet constitution and therefore had no legal effect.
Yes. I agree with you Scott. I had noted: 'Russia’s annexation of Crimea was technically illegal under Ukrainian constitutional law'. I was aware that it was a grey area and expanded on it further. Thanks for your like!
And at the same time so many East Germans have complaining about the good old days when the state provided everything and they didn’t have to compete in a crazy jungle. This has, in fact, has been driving some anti-immigrant and racist sentiments. Obviously there are those who want capitalism and those who don’t. Both exist.
All western neoliberal countries are singing from the same obscene song sheet, Avigail, and it's disgusting.
I agree with Scott's comment below, and I think it's important to know this because Russia is not a threat to the western world. It's just having to defend itself from a NATO proxy war using Ukraine as its proxy.
Time may be short on this excellent documentary about Palestine Action, which may be about to be banned in the UK, and from there, most likely the film, because the UK government is trying to designate them as a terrorist organisation. You can watch the film online, but come Monday, 30 June, after the UK Parliament meets, who knows. These are y/our freedoms on the line.
https://tokillawarmachine.com
Thanks, Avigail, for letting me know how to disable these messages. I have been annoyed by loud sounds pertaining to matters such as the alleged abduction of a child within hundreds of kilometres. I did not know that the telephone might issue these alarms even when the sound was turned off, as it is when I go to court (something that I did three times this week). I have turned all of the alarms off. I should be able to find out about any real emergency by other means.
I am sorry that you have tinnitus. So do I. I had frequent ear infections as a child, and one at age 19 was misdiagnosed (who could fail to see it?) and left me with permanent damage. At least tinnitus has been bothering me less in recent years.
I’m lucky that there has never suffered hearing damage, but I have never had silence in my head… I am sorry you have this too.
I understand that in different countries there are different options in the ‘notifications’ section of our phones and they are also different between makes. Glad you found this helpful.
There were three sets of alarms here, not counting one for earthquakes that is not used in this area of low seismic activity. Really, if there were an earthquake, would I not know without getting a message on my telephone?
I do have hearing loss, but it is still fairly mild. I am even going to perform a piece by Chopin at a piano recital tomorrow.
Hope it goes well.
Well enough, thanks. I'm certainly not going to be invited to perform at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées…
☺️
Spot on. I've touched on neoliberalism in my own writing quite a lot. It's an insidious entity. Capitalism on steroids.
But capitalism in decline. Neoliberalism will be capitalism’s tacky, decadent swan song.
Or it destroys the Earth first…
Awfully sorry but it is impossible to destroy the earth. 🌍 We will most definitely destroy ourselves but not planet. The way I see it, after we have wiped ourselves out, the planet will go into deep hibernation for billions of years to rejuvenate and digest everything we built. The forests will return, the oceans will be full life and the savannah will be covered with animals again. The planet is very old you see and as far as it is concerned, we have only been around for all of 31 minutes!
The planet will indeed go on with or without us. When Avigail spoke of destroying the Earth, she didn't mean driving the planet out of existence; she meant destroying it as a place for human habitation.
Yeah. Fair point. Neoliberalism encourages monopolisation, which extinguishes competition - the fundamental base for capitalism.
Yes. Capitalism bears within itself the seed of its own destruction. We can only hope that it will be destroyed before it destroys the world.
When I studied economics we were taught about the pure model of capitalism. In the modern world we’ve never had it. Pure capitalism is about real and pure supply and demand. Advertising, which tries to manipulate and create demand is not allowed. Packing, if necessary, is all the same and only provides information about the product. People choose what to buy or consume by the quality of the product or their preferences. At the market you buy x’s cheese and not y’s because you prefer it, not because the packaging is alluring or advertising convinced you. In the pure capitalist model cartels or monopolies are forbidden. Neoliberalism is not strictly capitalism. It is an abomination. It doesn’t play fair, and it’s about manipulation, power and control
The 'pure' capitalism they taught you about is a fairytale the 'vulgar economists' confected to seduce the unwary into thinking that capitalism wasn't INHERENTLY inimical to life. It has never existed and the way capitalism works - 'economic growth' - ensures that in principle, it never could exist.
I know. It was purely a model that never existed and could never exist given the current level of human development. I was just making a point. My lecturers were in fact critical of the kind of neoliberalist capitalism we were just starting to have in the late 1980s.
It is indeed a risible fantasy, as is the notion that we should go «back» to that «pure» capitalism that has never existed and never will.
"It’s also his way of sending a clear message to NATO that Russia is not a threat. He really does understand Western psychology."
I would say the opposite. What Russia thinks are gestures showing reasonableness and humanitarianism are seen in the West as contemptible weakness and merely invite further provocations.
It’s not really the opposite. It in fact validates what I am saying… 🙏🏼
The West can only go on making trouble. There will never be peace while the US bloc exists, since, as Avigail said, neoliberalism lives at the expense of most of the world and must therefore go on exploiting other countries.
So what does the rest of the world propose to do about it? They crave American carrot and fear American stick. That is why the only ones to do anything concrete about Gaza were the Houthis of Yemen. (Iran responded only after it was attacked.)
I can wish away pit bulls, but they are still there and will kill me if they can catch me.
Unfortunately, the rest of the world has been doing very little, as you said. I have become disgusted with politics in the face of inaction by the oppressed.
You and me both.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune
Thank you.i refuse to be frightened by the constant media and social media comments in my country that a Chinese invasion is going to sail into the likes of Port Phillip or Botany Bay. I reject the idea that our young people are not motivated enough to fight and thereby deserve much criticism.
Ah, you're in England too?
This is an authoritatian hellhole and always was. When i came here from the same hellhole you did, everything seemed more free but soon i learned it was a veneer. It is alarming how fast things seem to be moving towards a less benign totalitarianism.
Scotland.
I'm afraid of the weather there 😂
Nothing to be afraid of. We have fabulous weather in the north of the country. It’s a well kept secret. 😊
Thank you for your report. I’m actually more worried about what our home Government will do to us than I am about any other country attacking us. Our enemy here in the UK is, as far as I can see, mostly the UK itself and the USA.
I thought I'd flag this up here. Tomorrow the UK Government could proscribe Palestine Action. You can donate to their legal fight here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/palestine-action/
Some interesting stuff here, Avigail, and full marks for not buying into the fiction that NATO expansion was somehow responsible for Putin's murderous invasion of Ukraine. I kind of get why Stalinist and "Pabloite "lefts" would be soft on the USSR in the past and would have myself defended the degenerated workers' state from Imperialism. The USSR, for example, didn't invade Afghanistan but were invited in by civilian politicians ousted in Amin's coup. However, Putin's FASCIST RUSSIA is NOT THE USSR, its run by Oligarchs, has capitalist social relations of the most repugnant form, is guilty of war crimes all over Africa, enables and supports fascists in Europe from Viktor Orban to Marine Le Pen and Farage, helped engineer BREXIT and delivered their bought and paid for bitch, Donald Trump (Sixth Directorate code name Krasnov) to the White House. For God's sake when will people who claim to be on the Left STOP giving Putin any slack?
As for Enoch Starmer's recent proclamation that Britain should be preparing for war, I'd go along with that if he was doing it properly and not serving a nefarious agenda just days after he banned Palestine Action. The Danes are quite rightly on a war footing in response to the existential military threat posed by BOTH Putin AND Trump vis-a-vis Greenland. By contrast, Starmer is directly complicit in Zionist genocide in Israel, would have been quite happy to go along with a war against Iran and is in complete denial that Trump is as much this country's enemy (and that of the whole continent) as Putin.
An appropriate response to the threat of war therefore means also tackling the assets of two hostile powers that support and are enabled by both Putin and Trump, meaning that Farage's Reform, the EDL, etc., be BANNED under a suppression of fascism act and any politician who accepted Russian money or was involved in Russian money laundering or the BREXIT campaign must be jailed for life. That put's paid to Cameron, Johnson and Rees-Mogg among others. We would also need to nationalise most of the economy, including expropriating ALL US assets without compensation, rejoin the Customs Union, initialise a trade and economic war against the US and advocate the formation of an independent European defence policy and standing army against BOTH Russia AND the US. We would particularly need to nationalise the armaments industry, purging it of all who colluded in genocide or arms sales to autocrats and seize all financial institutions and hedge funds, etc, particularly including offshore, using existing counter terrorism laws. We'd also be raising anti-fascist militia answerable to councils of action as created in the French General Strike of 1968 as well as breaking up media monopolies, banning GB NEWS and closing down FACEBOOK and X.
Putin's main threat to Western Europe isn't military but in the enabling of fascism.
Starmer's preparation for war is of a very different colour and is all about banning demonstrations and groups like Palestine Action who oppose Zionist genocide as well as broadening the net to include any dissent on the Left. It's an extension of the purge he began in the Labour Party at the behest of his puppet masters in the Deep State, that has seen the Police Courts and Sentencing Act used to imprison Just Stop Oil with obscene and ridiculously harsh sentences and will include using the National Security Act against journalists. Kept out of the loop by Trump he no doubt thought there'd be a war with Iran to slip these measures through but now there isn't so what's the excuse, scumbag? It isn't Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil who should be in the Dock but Starmer, for collusion in war crimes in Palestine and Yemen, for covering up Jimmy Savile and Grenville Janner when he was DPP and for attacking democracy as agent of a hostile fascist power, namely Donald Trump.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
——_Julius Caesar_, I.ii
Boy did you ever hit the nail square on the head with this one. What are we to do to sink the neoliberal era. Here's an interesting piece I read this morning that dives into whether the BRICS+ can replace it and if so what the might look like, especially within context of Chinese confucism.
.
https://open.substack.com/pub/fredgao/p/what-are-the-chinese-after-when-they
Throughout the Chicken Little–style panic surrounding COVID-19, I refused to wear a mask. Anyone with a basic understanding of science (such as the size of a virion relative to that of the openings in the mask's material and all around the edge of the mask) would know that those masks do not significantly prevent the spreading of infection. Originally various states discouraged their use; quickly, however, they were seen as a good means of social control, so they were forced on everyone. I never wore one, not once.
I never wore one either for the same reasons as you. Viruses are so small, they infect bacteria… And the same happened here too.
By the way, the poor state of public education also contributes to fear through the promulgation of ignorance. I remember countless discussions of this nature:
— How big is a virion? Can you tell me, within three or four orders of magnitude?
— [stunned silence]
Or this, after I had explained something carefully:
— Well, you have your facts and I have mine, so why don't we agree to disagree?
Totally irrational, yet ubiquitous. People who will not think or inform themselves are readily manipulated and controlled. This is why trivia such as stupid football games and other low-grade entertainment are so heavily promoted. Juvenal said that the people could be bought off with bread and the circus (_panem et Circenses_). Now it is frozen pizza and soap operas…
....although not all football games are stupid.
There is nothing wrong with football as such. There is something wrong with the extreme glorification that it gets in some societies.
Sorry had to react to your sweeping statement, football is a great game that anyone can play even without special equipment, it’s fun and keeps you fit. Don’t get me going on FIFA tho’ 😤
I have nothing against playing football or other sports; I was referring to the insanity of «spectator sports», with the endless promotion of vicarious living through celebrities and also of passivity.
In China, a person who claims football as a hobby plays it. In settler-colonial North America, the person cheers mindlessly while eating junk food and watching others play football on television.
Setting up the scenario for a 9/11 false flag operation by the MOSSAD maybe in partnership with MI6.