The war in Ukraine, and Russia and China’s advocacy of a new multipolar world order, supposedly based upon national sovereignty, has led some to see Vladimir Putin, in particular, as a saviour of sorts. A few commentators have suggested that, motivated by his love for the Russian people and their culture, Putin is determined to stand against the assault on humanity embodied by the so-called Great Reset.
Unfortunately, this is little more than wishful thinking. Putin does not care about the Russian people, nor any other people, for that matter. He cares about the Russian state because that is the source of his power and authority. A multipolar world order, ostensibly controlled by Russia, China and the BRICS, is no better than the G7-led, unipolar alternative. In fact, it is hard to distinguish between the two.
The problem is that a small parasite class considers it their right to establish global governance over the Earth’s population. The mode of implementation is practically irrelevant. Who cares what colour the prison walls are or where the guards are from?
On the 25th of July 1998, Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, was appointed as the Director of the Federal Security Service (Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, or FSB) by then-President of Russia Boris Yeltsin. Putin served in this role for just over a year, leaving on the 9th of August 1999.
He left the FSB to take up his new appointment as Russian Prime Minister and was soon named by Yeltsin as his successor. Despite his lofty position, few considered Putin capable of winning a presidential election. He had virtually no popular support and faced an opposing coalition aligned against him in the State Duma (Russian Parliament).
But a series of horrific alleged terrorist attacks in September 1999 markedly changed Putin’s political fortunes. His tough rhetoric and staunch support for military reprisals in response to the Russian apartment bombings transformed his image from a relatively obscure political non-entity to a great crisis leader.
In December 1999, within a couple of months of the last bombing, Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. In accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, Putin automatically became President. He capitalised on his newfound popularity and soon won his first presidential election in March 2000.
Putin had operational control of the organisation that planned and carried out the Russian apartment bombings. The highly coordinated and well-planned operation killed 317 Russian men, women and children and injured approximately 630 more in just 17 days. Putin then exploited the resultant public fear and anger to seize power.
The only reason you haven’t heard more about the Russian apartment bombings from the West’s corporate-controlled media is that Western power brokers treat the people that they claim to rule with equal disdain. To expose Russia’s pivotal false flag operation would be to expose the West’s own. Russia had its 9/11 and 7/7 first.
The Russian Apartment Bombings
On the 22nd of July 1999, in Moscow’s daily morning paper (Moskovskaya Pravda), respected journalist, defence analyst and former Russian Air Force colonel, Aleksander Zhilin, published an article titled “Storm in Moscow.” Zhilin wrote:
From trustworthy sources in the Kremlin the following has become known. The administration of the president [Yeltsin] has drafted and adopted a broad plan for discrediting Luzhkov [Yuri – Mayor of Moscow and prospective presidential candidate] with the aid of provocations, intended to destabilize the socio-psychological situation in Moscow. In circles close to Tatyana Dyachenko [Yeltsin’s younger daughter and personal advisor – married name Yumasheva], the given plan is being referred to as ‘Storm in Moscow.’ […] As is confirmed by our sources, the city awaits great shocks. The conducting of loud terrorist acts (or attempts at terrorist acts) is being planned in relation to a number of government establishments[.]
The article garnered relatively little interest. The furtive political environment in the capital was frequently the subject of extraordinary claims and conspiracy theories. However, subsequent events would prompt many to re-read Zhilin’s piece with more interest.
Three weeks after Putin left his post as director of the FSB, at 8pm on the 31st of August, a bomb detonated in a shopping mall on Manezhnaya Square in Moscow. One person died and more than 30 were injured. On the 2nd of September 1999, the “Liberation Army of Dagestan” supposedly claimed responsibility for the explosion and warned of further attacks.
There is no evidence that a group called the “Liberation Army of Dagestan” ever existed. Despite published claims, no one knew who they were. Local FSB and Ministry of the Interior officials expressed doubt at the time. The Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov hadn’t heard of them and none of the known Islamist extremists or established groups were known to associate with any group of that name.
Attacks that shook Russia
Later, In 2005, Rizvan Chitigov (a.k.a the American), was killed in Chechnya. The FSB alleged that Chitigov both planned and carried out the Manezhnaya Square bombing and further that he was a CIA asset. Chitigov had no known links to any group called the Liberation Army of Dagestan. So why someone would falsely claim responsibility for a group that didn’t exist remains a mystery.
At 10pm on the 4th of September 1999, in the town of Buynaksk in Dagestan, a car bomb exploded in front of a five story apartment block. The apartments housed the families of Russian border guards. 68 People were killed and approximately 150 injured. Another anonymous call was received with a vague assertion of responsibility which, unusually for supposed terrorists, didn’t name the group taking credit.
A little after midnight on the 9th of September 1999, a bomb detonated in the basement of 19 Gyryanova Street, Moscow. 106 People were murdered and 249 injured in the blast as the building collapsed. The city mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, reacted by blaming terrorists without any real evidence that any terrorist group was responsible.
FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev, who had replaced Putin as the head of the organisation, said that they had recovered samples from the site of the blast:
[T]races of Hexogen (RDX) and TNT were discovered. This already indicates that the explosion was definitely not an accident.
Prime Minister Putin announced that a day of national mourning would be held on the 13th of September.
The 13th of September 1999 was marked by another terrible explosion. A bomb detonated in the basement of an apartment building on Kashirskoye Highway in Moscow. 124 People died and more than 200 were injured. The day of mourning took on an even more poignant significance.
Prime Minister Putin responded and said:
Those who organized and planned this series of cruel terrorist attacks have far-reaching plans. They count on creating political tension in Russia.
The same day, the 13th, two bombs were discovered and made safe in the warehouse on Borisovskiye Prudy Street and in the Kapotnya raion (district). Shortly after the bombing the speaker of the State Duma, Gennady Seleznyov, announced:
I have just received a report. According to information from Rostov-on-Don, an apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk was blown up last night.
The Volgodonsk attack didn’t happen on the 12th of September. The Volgodonsk tragedy struck four days later on the 16th of September. Evidently Seleznyov had been given advanced knowledge of an alleged terrorist attack that had yet to occur.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), later recalled that Seleznyov received the information on a note handed to him by a member of the Duma secretariat (civil service) and then read it aloud at a meeting of the Duma Council.
In the early hours of Monday the 16th of September 1999, a truck bomb blew up outside an apartment in Volgodonsk. Another 18 people were slaughtered and approximately 200 were injured. Again no identifiable terrorist group or individual claimed responsibility.
Following the bombing Vladimir Zhirinovsky was the only State Duma deputy to question Seleznyov about the apparent foreknowledge. He asked Seleznyov:
Look at what’s happening in our country! Do you remember? [. . .] [Y]ou told us on Monday that a house in Volgodonsk had been blown up, three days before the explosion [. . .] How did it happen: they report to you that at 11 a.m. a house was blown up, but the Rostov regional administration was not aware that you had been informed about it? Everyone goes to sleep, three days later there’s an explosion.
Seleznyov did not offer a meaningful response and died in 2015 having never provided a cogent answer. In 2002 he said that the note referred to an improvised hand-grenade incident that occurred in Volgodonsk on the 12th of September 1999. This minor incident, which barely made the local news in Volgodonsk, didn’t kill anyone and did not “blow up” an apartment building. Nonetheless, it became the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation’s official rationale for Seleznyov’s statement.
Russian state officials unequivocally told the Russian people who they should blame for the attacks. Regardless of that fact that they had produced no evidence to support their contention, they vociferously accused Chechen extremists. President Yeltsin said that all transport links and border crossings in and out of Chechnya would be blocked to protect the rest of the country from further atrocities.
Alexandre Zdanovich, FSB spokesman, said:
The people who organise these missions, who prepare the explosives, who deliver them and have overall responsibility for everything that has happened are obviously in Chechnya. I can say with the utmost certainty, I can guarantee you, that they come from the training camps of Khattab and Basayev.
Thus, the narrative was set. There was no evidence to support this tale offered by Russian officials at the time, and little more today.
One of the suspected masterminds behind the bombing, Ibn al Khattab, denied any involvement. If he was responsible, his denial made no sense.
Khattab had previously threatened that Russian’s would face explosions “blasting through their cities.” Taking responsibility for the apartment bombings would therefore have demonstrated his ability to deliver on his threats. Yet, far from glorifying his great victory, Khattab reportedly said:
We would not like to be akin to those who kill sleeping civilians with bombs and shells.
Indeed, many expressed surprise that the supposed terrorists were deliberately killing poorer, working Russian families. They usually struck Russian government or military targets. There seemed to be a sick logic to the Buynaksk attack, but the Moscow and Volgodonsk apartment bombings were anomalous.
It was the deliberate murder of civilians that caused widespread public alarm. The nation rallied behind its political leaders. Check points were set up across the country, local citizen patrols were established and volunteers worked with the authorities to search apartment block basements and other potential targets.
Vladimir Putin emerged as a tough guy, telling the State Duma:
We have to grit our teeth, I’m calling on you to be more disciplined and vigilant, in deeds, not words.
Disciplined and vigilant deeds set the right tone for a terrified nation. While Russia had experience terror attacks in peace time before, it had never been subjected to anything like the string of apartment bombings. The specific targeting of ordinary Russian men, women and children sleeping in their beds, in such a systematic and barbarous campaign, was entirely new.
With no end in sight, many people, especially those residing in urban Russia, were living in a state of fear. In their distress, they looked to their political leaders to save them.
The Ryazan Incident
On the night of the 22nd of September 1999, at around 8.30pm in the central Russian city of Ryazan, local police were alerted to a suspicious group and their vehicle by a vigilant citizen named Alexei Kartofelnikov. The police responded, arriving at 14/16 Novoselov Street, just before 9.30pm, to find that the vehicle and its occupants had left the scene.
Kartofelnikov told them that he had seen two men, in the company of a woman, carrying large sacks down into the basement. The head of the Ryazan bomb squad, Yuri Tkachenko, subsequently disarmed a 150kg bomb with a detonator set to explode the device at 5.30am on the morning of the 23rd.
Yuri Tkachenko was the head of the Engineering and Technical Department of the Ryazan Public Security Police. His team comprised of 13 highly trained officers who regularly updated their expertise and were required to pass Russian state technical exams every two years to demonstrate their current national security and bomb disposal knowledge.
On the night that the device was found Yuri Tkachenko gave a statment to the local press:
There were three bags, the one in the middle had a hole in it. There was an electronic watch inside with wires coming off it. I put my hands in and started gently taking the wires out of the bag.
The residents were evacuated and spent the night in the a nearby October Cinema. They weren’t allowed to return until the following day. According to resident testimony, Alexandre Sergeiev, director of the Ryazan FSB, visited the residents in the cinema and told them:
Today is your second birthday. There were three bags of explosives timed to go off at half-passed five. You would have all been there and you would all have been blown sky-high.
The Ryazan police photographed the detonator and entered it into evidence before handing the case files over to the FSB. The police investigation led the local public prosecutor to declare a terrorist incident that evening, the 23rd of September. Witness statements enabled identikit images of the suspects to be widely circulated in and around Ryazan as the authorities locked the city down.
The Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defence, Emergency Situations and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters (EMERCOM), led by Sergey Shoygu, announced:
[T]hree bags of sugar mixed with Hexogen, as well as detonators, were found in one of the residential buildings on Novoselov Street.
The use of sugar in combination with RDX (Hexogen) both promotes the ignition of RDX and is a relatively inexpensive way to increase the force of the blast. Shortly after Tkachenko had defused the device, at approximately 1.30am on the morning of the 23rd, the the local FSB took a 3kg sample of the suspected explosives away for testing.
The FSB said that they conducted three tests using a shotgun cartridge detonator, similar to the one found in Ryazan, but were not able to detonate the substance.
All phone communication in Ryazan were monitored in an effort to find the perpetrators. A telephone operator called Nadezhda Yukhanova intercepted a call destined for the Lubyanka (Moscow headquarters of the FSB). She later testified that the FSB had said:
Is the woman with you? [. . .] Where’s the car? [. . .] Leave Ryazan separately. There are patrols and checkpoints everywhere.
The call reported by Yukhanova, along with visual identification by local witnesses, enabled Ryazan police to quickly locate and detain two of the suspects. No arrests were made because they immediately discovered that the pair were FSB officers. The Ryazan police were ordered to release the FSB agents as the Russian government confirmed that its agents planted the Ryazan device.
The Ryazan Investigation
As the initial news of the Ryazan bomb discovery reached Moscow, Prime Minister Putin reportedly made a bizarre statement. He said that the best thing about events in Ryazan was that it showed that the public were alert to the danger:
The sack with the explosives was noticed, that means there is at least one plus factor. The public is reacting in the right way to the events that are taking place in our country today.
At the time, no one thought that the Ryazan device was anything other than a real bomb. Surely, the best thing about the Ryazan incident was that the residents of Novoselov Street were not murdered in their beds? Why wasn’t Putin happy about that? His statement seemed very odd.
The situation was evolving rapidly. Speaking to the State Duma the Minister of the Interior, Vladimir Rushailo, confirmed that a bomb had been defused and a tragedy averted:
Positive measures are already being taken. One example is the prevention of an explosion in an apartment building in Ryazan.
This was contradicted within the hour by FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev. He said:
There wasn’t an explosion. An explosion wasn’t prevented. [. . .] It wasn’t good work, it was an exercise. There were no explosives, just sugar.
On the 24th, Patrushev followed this up with a TV interview. He repeated that events in Ryazan were part of a drill to “test responses.” Yet Sergey Shoygu (EMERCOM), Vladimir Rushailo (Interior Minister) and Vladimir Putin (Prime Minister) had made no reference to an exercise in the previous 48 hours.
In response to Patrushev’s statement, the Ryazan FSB issued one of their own thoroughly distancing themselves from the claimed training “exercise:”
It has become known that the planting on 22.09.99 of a dummy explosive device was part of an ongoing interregional exercise. This announcement came as a surprise to us and appeared at a moment when the department of the FSB had identified the places of residence in Ryazan of those involved in planting the explosive device and was preparing to detain them.
The Ryazan FSB stressed that they were about to arrest those they held responsible for “planting the explosive device.” They noted that the training exercise narrative only emerged after they were ordered not to arrest the suspects. For a local FSB branch to openly question and seemingly undermine the Lubyanka in this manner was unheard of. It is clear that the Ryazan FSB were not willing to simply go along with the training exercise story.
In a Ryazan local news interview the regional governor said he knew nothing about the alleged FSB exercise. The mayor, Pavel Mamatov, also expressed his disbelief:
They’ve used us as guinea-pigs. Tested Ryazan for lice. I’m not against exercises, I served in the army myself and I took part in them, but I never saw anything like this.
By the 24th September 1999, the 2nd Chechen War was already underway. The full implications of the Ryazan incident had yet to break nationally and the Russian people were still preoccupied what they believed to be a vicious bombing campaign waged by Chechen terrorists.
Speaking in Astana, Kazakhstan, in one of his first televised press conferences, the new Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, knew precisely what to say to capture the mood of the nation:
We will follow the terrorists wherever they go. If they are at the airport we will be there. Excuse me, but if they’re in the shithouse, we will go in there and blow them away. That’s all there is to it. The problem is solved.
His image, as a hard, no-nonsense man of the people, was playing out well with Russian voters. At last, a leader who would take out the bad guys and keep them safe.
With the Chechen war grabbing all the headlines, the Ryazan incident was largely forgotten. That was about to change.
Unravelling Ryazan
Bomb disposal expert, Yuri Tkachenko, gave an interview to journalist Pavel Voloshin in February 2000, five months after the Ryazan incident, in which he clearly maintained that the analysis he conducted, using a state-of-the-art (for 1999) MO-2 gas analyser, revealed the presence of the explosive RDX (Hexogen). He again confirmed that the detonator was armed and timed. He had no doubt that the Ryazan device was a real bomb.
Voloshin also interviewed the first police officer on the scene Andrei Chernyshev. It was he who had discovered the bomb. He recalled how Novoselov Street quickly became a hive of activity as Interior Ministry and local FSB agents joined the investigation. He was equally clear that everyone present that evening understood that the bomb and the planned attack was real:
No one doubted that the situation was combative. I still have the confidence that these were not exercises.
Voloshin’s article caused a furore. It was at this point that the FSB’s official story changed yet again.
A few weeks after Voloshin published his interview with Tkachenko and Chernyshev, the head of the investigative department of the Ryazan FSB, Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Maksimov, contradicted Voloshin’s piece. Having failed to mention it previously, the FSB now claimed that Tkachenko had not used the $20,000 MO-2 analyser but a different unit called Exprei.
It was not possible to corrupt the readings of the sealed vacuum on the MO-2 analyser but it was possible to contaminate Exprei. This is what Maksimov alleged that Tkachenko had done.
Maksimov claimed that the experienced Tkachenko had caused a false Exprei reading because he had not washed his hands after handling RDX the previous day. He accused Tkachenko of error. Maksimov said that Tkachenko had not worn rubber gloves as they were unavailable due to budget constraints.
Despite having steadfastly maintained his account for months, and categorically stating his certainty about the Ryazan device on numerous occasions, following the statement of his senior commanding officer, Tkachenko changed his mind. He altered his account after losing his job as head of the Engineering and Technical Department and interrogation by the FSB. Tkachenko agreed with Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Maksimov. He said that he could have possibly contaminated the Exprei analyser.
In March 2000 there were still some independent media outlets in Russia capable of genuinely questioning the government. On the 2nd of March 2000 NTV broadcast a public debate in a program called Independent Inquiry.
During the NTV discussion the Director of Investigations for the FSB, Stanislav Voronov, read out a prepared FSB statement signed by both the Interior Ministry and the FSB:
A major operation involving all the members of the Russian Federation was jointly planned by the police and the FSB. The operation was codenamed ‘Anti-Terror Whirlwind.’ It was signed by Patrushev and Rushailo
Speaking on the 23rd September 1999, Interior Minister Rushailo didn’t appear to know anything about the joint exercise he had supposedly authorised. Unwittingly or not, he misled the State Duma.
NTV Audience member Evgueni Savostianov, the former Director of the Moscow FSB, called the whole exercise story “incomprehensible.” He asked FSB spokesman Alexandre Zdanovich why the FSB had not informed Rushailo.
Well, you know, things can sometimes get muddled during an exercise.
Voloshin’s article and the NTV debate prompted questions from some deputies in the State Duma. Deputy Yuri Shchekochikhin put foward two motions requesting the Ryazan incident to be formally investigated by the Prosecutor General’s Office. Vladimir Putin said that the mere suggestion of FSB complicity was “immoral.”
In April 2000 the state Duma voted to deny the motions. All records appertaining to the Ryazan incident were sealed for 75 years.
The Weight of Circumstantial Evidence
In March 2001 a number if Islamist extremist terror suspects were sentenced in connection with the Buynaksk bombing. No physical, witness or forensic evidence placed any of the accused at the scene of the explosion. All the evidence against them related to general acts of terrorism and the commissioning of terrorism.
All mention of RDX and hexogen was removed from the official apartment bombing narrative following the Ryazan incident. By 2002 the bombs were said to have been ammonium nitrate and aluminium based. It was as if the inital findings never existed and no one ever mentioned RDX (hexogen.)
The supposed mastermind behind the campaign Ibn al-Khattab was allegedly assassinated by the FSB in 2002. Another suspect, Yusuf Krymshamkhalov, was sentenced in 2003 to life imprisonment for his alleged part in the Moscow bombings as was Adam Dekkushev for his suspected role in the Volgodonsk bombing.
The trial of Krymshamkhalov and Dekkushev was heard in secret, without a jury. The convictions were based upon interrogation statements submitted to the court by the FSB.
To date, there is no evidence that any of the Russian apartment bombings were carried out by terrorists. All named suspects have either died or supposedly remain at large. Even the convictions of Krymshamkhalov and Dekkushev were for activities related to the commissioning of terrorism.
There is no evidence that any of the Russian apartment bombs were planted by terrorists. By contrast, the evidence indicating that elements within the FSB orchestrated the attacks is overwhelming.
— The FSB planted a device in Ryazan that was initially disarmed by bomb disposal experts. Ryazan investigators discovered that the bomb was real and identified the explosive as RDX (Hexogen). Ryazan officials presented physical evidence of a timer device with an active explosive charge. It was only months later, after he had spent some time being interrogated by the FSB and had lost his job, that bomb disposal expert Yuri Tkachenko changed his story about the equipment he had used. At no stage did he concede that the the device was anything other than a real bomb, only that his analysis could have been “contaminated.”
— The Ryazan police, local FSB, Ryazan residents and all other officials understood that the device was an active bomb with a functioning timer set to explode at 5.30am.
— Traces of the same RDX explosive were found at other apartment bombings. This was confirmed by the Director of the FSB, the head of EMERCOM and other Russian officials during the initial investigation. The Ryazan bomb appeared to be of the same construction as the other bombs used in the apartment bombings.
— The placement of the Ryazan bomb, targeting a poorer, civilian community and situated to bring down their apartment building, followed exactly the same targetting and victim profile as the other apartment bombs, allegedly planted by terrorists. Even the Buynaksk bombing was directed against innocent families.
— The supposed terrorist campaign ceased following the temporary detention of the FSB agents in Ryazan. There were no more attacks. The exposure of the FSB’s secret training methods coincided precisely with the end of the real terror campaign. It was only once the plot was discovered and the story about an alleged “training exercise” emerged, that the terror campaign ceased.
— The supposed mastermind of the campaign, Ibn al-Khattab, specifically denied his involvement, eschewing the chance to take credit. The only named terrorist group that allegedly claimed responsibility (the Liberation Army of Dagestan) didn’t exist.
— A journalist reported that Russian state officials had told him about “loud terrorist acts” that would deliver “great shocks” to Moscow two months prior to such attacks occurring.
— The speaker of the State Duma received a note from a state official relaying news of the Volgodonsk bombing three days before it happened.
— The Prime Minister of Russia effectively expressed an opinion that the best thing about the Ryazan incident was that it showed the Russian people were living in fear.
— Russian investigators and officials repeatedly identified the detected presence of the explosive RDX at the scenes of the apartment bombings. Following the Ryazan incident, where RDX was once again detected by bomb disposal experts, the FSB and other state officials changed their story and claimed that RDX had never been identified, thoroughly contradicting their own previous statements.
— The “training exercise” story makes no logical sense for four key reasons.
— The device was discovered by chance, thanks to the vigilance of Ryazan citizens. The FSB hid the bomb in the basement but did not alert the Ryazan authorities. They made no effort to trigger the response they claimed they wished to evaluate.
— The FSB did not have any operatives, who knew an alleged training exercise was underway, involved in the Ryazan response. If the bomb was a dummy device (merely bags of sugar), as the FSB claimed, then the Ryazan authorities would have known almost immediately that the whole thing was a hoax. Therefore, there would have been no response to a terrorist incident but rather a considerably less urgent investigation into a fake bomb threat.
— The FSB claimed that the purpose of the alleged Ryazan exercise was to train Russian security services to react effectively to a terrorist attack and to test their responsiveness. But Russian security services were already actively engaged in responding to real terrorist attacks. The FSB were seemingly testing and training their troops to fight a battle while they were in the act of fighting it.
If making such an appraisal was the FSB’s objective, it could simply have assessed the many responses that the Russian emergency and security services were already engaged in at the time. The FSB itself was part of those responses. In terms of understanding how Russian security services respond to terrorist attacks, the FSB added nothing and had nothing to learn from the supposed Ryazan “training exercise.”
— On the night of the 22nd of September 1999 the only three people in Ryazan who allegedly knew a live training exercise was underway were the three FSB officers who planted the device. Even the head of the Ryazan FSB had no idea.
There is no evidence that the Lubyanka FSB had any other assets in Ryazan. Its subsequent claimed assessment of “the response” could only have been based upon the analysis of communication intercepts or reports from its local office. But the local Ryazan FSB office was not “evaluating” the response. It was part of the response.
The elements within the FSB who were responsible for planting the device had no assets on the ground in Ryazan capable of monitoring the supposed training exercise.
Who Benefited from the Russian Apartment Bombings?
Ryazan is not a “smoking gun” that proves FSB guilt but, seeing as all relevant records were sealed by the Russian state for 75 years, nor is such evidence likely to be revealed. The Russian political class certainly doesn’t want the matter to be investigated further.
Prior to the apartment bombings Vladimir Putin was seen as yet another Yeltsin flunky who was destined to go down with the ship. He had virtually no public profile, the State Duma was aligned against him and the chances of him winning a popular vote in a national election were effectively zero.
The Russian apartment bombings changed all that and made Putin a national hero. They created the legend of Putin, the “great leader.” He had the motive to commit the crime.
The weight of circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that the FSB orchestrated a highly coordinated terror campaign to change the Russian political landscape. Such a plan would have taken many months to put together. Putin was the director of the FSB for the year leading up to the Russian apartment bombings. He had the means to commit the crime.
Putin left the FSB to become the Russian Prime Minister, making him the main focal point for public attention during a national crisis. That crisis arrived almost as soon as he did, leaving his opponents barely any time to react. Putin was in the right place at the right time and he capitalised upon the crisis to seize power. He had the opportunity to commit the crime.
Putin had the motive, means and opportunity to order elements within the FSB to carry out the Russian apartment bombings. He then benefited politically from the cold-blooded murder of more than 300 Russian men, women and children. While some may hope for a leader to stand against the emerging globalist order, Putin isn’t worthy of anyone’s trust.
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Whatever Putin is or is not, we can trust he will operate by defined parameters unlike the brazen lunatics demolishing the West. You can talk to him about the vital issues of the day and he will respond.
The excellent Archbishop Vigano seems to me to be recognising Putin as a robust countering influence to the current trajectory of rapid descent into madness.
And just in case, what if the West collapses and we survivors need aid from Russia and Putin, would it be too “trusting” to accept such a kind offer?
Thanks Robby
I’m afraid I also don’t buy Iain’s spin on this. It’s clear that 3 members of the FSB were caught red-handed planting one of the bombs. However, these FSB agents may well have been told that it was an exercise, and believed it was just bags filled with sugar. Likewise, to say that Putin himself had a motive is getting ahead of things. Putin was considered a safe pair of hands (a puppet) to take over from the fast fading Yeltsin. The organization behind Yeltsin would have known about the plot, not necessarily the puppet they were hoping to advance for their own advantage. To my mind, this has the MO of Washington — the State Department and the CIA, who were basically running Yeltsin’s government during Clinton’s administration. It follows a similar pattern to the FBI orchistrated Twin Towers attack of 1993. It is more likely that Putin immediately shut down the inside job once he realised it was real, only covering up for it for obvious reasons of national security. This is precisely when he turned on those oligarchs aligned with the West (the most likely candidates behind this provocation), who had previously supported his rise to the top, but subsequently attacked him from exile. The ensuing war in Chechnya was against radical Islamists, also with CIA connections. By assuming Putin was in on it, Iain fails to realize the Western-aligned oligarchs were capable of operating both the provocation and their naive puppet simultaneously. How else to explain Putin’s sudden turn against the hands that fed him and the move away from American insiders in the Russian government. The Russian government may well be after its own version of a NWO, but great powers usually are. That doesn’t mean it has direct ties with the WEF version, after all, it’s pretty obvious that western elites hate him as much as they do Trump.
I am aware of the CIA claim that they regret installing Putin, personally I don’t believe that they did put him in power, but are you suggesting that western intelligence were actually behind the bombings but managed to get the FSB to plant them?
I am not aware of any evidence that they were, but let’s say that western intelligence had something to do with it. The consequence of those bombings was to propell Putin to a much higher political public profile (despite him already being Prime Minister) and solidify his bid for the Presidency. So perhaps that lends credence to the CIA claim? Is Putin their guy? What do you think?
No. The suggestion I am making is that the pro-Western oligarchs (e.g. Boris Berezovsky & co), who were working directly with the US state department, had the networks available to carry out an inside job within the FSB, during a time of immense corruption and graft in Russia. I am also suggesting that at the time, Putin was considered by them as a highly competent but naive (and so safe) pair of hands for these oligarchs to use as their puppet. Once the FSB insider plot was rumbled, Putin caught on and shut these oligarchs down (arresting and exiling them). They subsequently turned against Putin (for obvious reasons), as did their handlers in Washington and London. I thought this was well known? Anyway, we can see the same MO at work with the Litvenenko and Skirpel poisonings, and with the White Hats, all (unconvincingly) operated by British intelligence. The same with the recent Bucha massacre. Their puppet candidate was meant to be the unsuspecting beneficiary. It just didn’t turn out the way they expected. The current Russian administration aren’t angels but the facts are on their side and point instead towards the Russian fifth column. BTW this idea that Putin is a psychopath also works against your hypothesis, since anyone with psychiatric training who has studied Putin’s interviews, speeches, background and off guard behavior knows he’s in fact pretty normal and highly intelligent. They just choose the wrong “dummy”…
Thanks for clarifying admin.
Yes it is well known that Putin ousted some of the troublesome oligarchs, Berezovsky fled before he was pushed but with good reason. It is an interesting hypothesis that there was a secret plot inside the FSB led by Berezovsky et al to instal Putin, wrongly believeing he was their guy. Putin outwitting them and then fameously taking them to task in 2000 (apparently).
But I can’t quite square that with Berezovsky’s own media channels then exposing the Ryazan incident and the evidence that shows both FSB involvement and a subsequent cover up. If you’re theory is correct, why would they expose, unecessarilly, their own insidious plot? If it was to take down Putin then why not firmly point the finger at him instead of gradually piecing the elements together over years?
More to the point, knowing all this, why wouldn’t Putin expose it himself? Why wouldn’t his close associate Patrushev expose the Berezovsky CIA plot you suggest? Why would Patrushev then be involved in the cover up of that same alleged plot? Why would senior FSB officials pressure bomb disposal experts to change their story if exposing the CIA/Berezovsky plot served the Russian government’s interests, as it would if it was as you claim?
Why would the Russian legislature seal all relevant records for 75 years?
I worked in forensic mental health for years. Psychopaths are often extremely intelligent. They largely go unnoticed because they can act as perfectly affable and even caring people. I did not say Putin was “a psychopath,” I said he had the means, motive and opportunity to run an FSB terror campaign and that, in my view, he is untrustworthy. I also suggest that a willingness to kill hundreds for political ends shows psychopathic traits. The question is was Putin behind it. On the balance of evidence, my view is that he was.
The problem facing all amateur sleuths, like ourselves, is that not having powers to subpoena evidence, figuring out what is really going on from a distance becomes a guessing game; one in which the circumstantial evidence can easily be spun this way or that depending on one’s primary assumptions. Is Putin basically a bad guy or a good guy — this will color all of our thinking thereon. I challenge you and your readers to review the whole of Putin’s latest speech, made at the Kremlin Hall yesterday (40 mins), and see how much of what he said strikes you as being in agreement (or not) with your own worldview (as outlined in this blog). It’s an unprecedented speech, which reveals the true thinking of the current Russian administration. Afterwards, ask yourselves again whether you still think he’s a bad guy (psychopath or whatever), or whether the fifth column of Western aligned oligarchs, once they were ousted, just tried their usual trick of attempting to deflect attention from themselves by blaming the victim for their own crimes. I’d be very interested to hear your reaction to this speech
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69465
Why wouldn’t the Russians expose an insider plot within their internal intelligence agency? As I said, for obvious reasons of national security, once the perpetrators were removed from the FSB and elsewhere, you would never undermine your own nation’s security by undermining the public’s faith in it. That, after all is what Russia’s enemies want — demoralization of the Russian people and loss of faith in their government. Like I said, Putin isn’t stupid and he isn’t a psychopath (he obviously cares about his fellow Russians).
Thanks admin. I agree with a lot of what you have said. You are right, we amateur sleuths necessarilly base our views upon snippets of information and, more importantly, the snippets we are allowed to see.
I think Putin’s speech is remarkable for many reasons. The reference to the unipolar world order, Satanism, the “precedent” of nuclear war, etc. I absolutely recommend everyone reads it in full which is why I immediately shared it as soon as it was available [ https://twitter.com/_InThisTogether/status/1575930419236679681 ]. It certainly hits nearly all of the “counter-narrative” points (for want of a better term) that people like you and I (I assume from your comment) have been talking about for years. I am certainly not going to defend the unipolar “rules based” system. As Putin rightly asks, what does that even mean?
But I would like to discuss a statement you made:
I ask you to consider this in light of your opening statement where you said “figuring out what is really going on from a distance becomes a guessing game.” Though, for you, not in the case of this speech by Putin. No need for any evidence, even circumstantial. The statement of this politician reveals the “true thinking” of the Russian government.
You say that our perception of Putin, either as a good or a bad guy, will colour all of our thinking thereon. I agree. It seems like you think he is a good guy and therefore what he says is the truth.
So let me put my cards on the table. I do not trust Putin. Not because he is the Russian President but because he is a politician and I don’t trust what politicians say. I don’t disregard what they say either, but their words are just pieces of evidence in my view and it is beholden upon us to, as you suggest, play the guessing game and try to figure out what all this stuff means.
So, if everything he says in the speech is true, why are Russia fully on board with the CBDC, 4IR, the pseudopandemic narrative, sustainable development and all the other aspect of the “international rules based order” he claims Russia so vehemently opposes?
I see no more reason to take Putin at face value than any other politician. I don’t trust any of them, if for no other reason than they all want to exercise power and authority.
Yes. I think we’re basically in agreement on this, including your points about the current Russian administration’s love affair with all things Big Government. They have their own idea of a NWO (although, we may disagree on how far theirs resembles the Unipolar version), but this is typical of all big powers attempting to find their place in the world. Unfortunately, Russia will have to learn the hard way that the over centralization of power leads eventually to its own undoing (as Lord Acton wisely noted). I base my opinion that Putin is essentially good and well-meaning on more than this speech, which is consistent with his others going back at least a decade, along with his many interviews (I recommend Oliver Stone’s The Putin Interviews, as a good example), and those of other senior members of the Russian government. Nonetheless, I agree with your general intuition that Power corrupts all of those that covet it too greatly, especially those who do so for “good intentions”.
Terrific work, Iain, thank you. We really do need this kind of thoughtful counterpoint to the growing swell of noisy and rather mindless throwing in with both Moscow and Beijing.
Thanks TQO
The author talks about Putin and his “source of power and authority”. The conflict we see unfolding in Ukraine is about power, which is meshing with other localized but equally dangerous conflicts into a global nuclear cataclysm. Both sides in any war are driven by power: it is hard “to distinguish between the two”. World war three will reveal one thing about power: it is an illusion. But history told us that.
https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/
Thanks Iain, interesting read and typically well researched. To be honest I had no doubt that Putin is a psychopath, to rise to such higher echolons of power one has to be consumed with power, driven by it. In my view only psychopaths have this kind of personality trait. ‘Lack of empathy’ is of course another well known personality trait of a psychopath. I think that until the political system is radically overhauled we are doomed to be governed by psychopaths having their strings pulled by deep state/states who are in turn ran by psychopathic satanists.
As you have to be a psychopath to be in a position of great power and influence this can never happen, the system will not be changed from within. The only solution then is to step out of that system and create a new one. How this would look is open to any amount of debate but it would definitely have to be designed as such that there are no rewards for power. In fact I’d say to fill any alloted positions of power should be a huge chore, a demanding and undesirable duty which as such is only endured for a short time on some sort of democratically elected rotational basis. Better even maybe it would be possible to build a society in which positions of power do not exist. Basically I fear psychopaths always will always look collude and hijack any system they exist in so it will have to be designed as such that it cannot be expoited by such deviants. There is probably no perfect sysyem but I’m as sure as hell that we can come up with something better than the one we’ve got!
Would such a thing be ‘allowed’ to evolve though? In their position I’d imagine they’d be well aware that such a movement would have the potential for huge growth and they’d look to snuff out such a movement sooner rather than later.
Sorry went off on a bit of a tangent there. Yea as far as Putin is concerned I have seen that opinion, that he is some sort of saviour to deliver us from this new world order. As you say wishful thinking. Naive and not well considered I would add. One only has to look at the many innocent people been murdered in Ukraine. There are two sides needed for war and although I understand how it can be justified in a geopolitical sense I dont buy it. I dont buy into the idea that Russia is under any sort of real threat from NATO, in reality nobody is about to start bombing them and as for denazifying Ukraine I can see the logic there too but killing more people was not the answer, it never is. Well, not unless you are some sort of psychopath.
Just to add I never knew much about geopolitics, have learnt a litte from people such as yourself, and I’m suspicious. I accept I might be wide off the mark but it seems to me like some elaberate chess game played out by deep state/states and the controlling forces behind them to justify otherwise unacceptable policies and decisions to advance their own agendas. Geopolitics is just the stage it’s played out on so we will accept wars and the such like. I’m sure many people in the play don’t realise it, it’s like a game within a game and although they might know they are actors many don’t ultimately realise what play they are in. That’s how I’m seeing geopolitics at the moment but like I say I accept I could be wrong and I’m open to be shot down and would be interested to know your opinion?
All the best Iain and keep up the good work.
Your gut instinct is spot on Steve. I agree entirely with your assessment and I have been researching so-called geopolitics for decades. The more you know the less you can be certain but nonetheless I have no reason to disagree with your assessment there.
Should be noticed, that Putin claimed that it was hexogene in Kyazan incident and it was Patrushev, who claimed sugar as gov story cover up. Putin wasn’t aware of this operation.
Thanks Mehdi
I am not sure how you have come to that conclusion.
Putin led the organisation that planned it, right up to just 4 weeks before the operation began. He and his St Petersberg bloc were the only group to benefit from it politically. Putin was then misled by his own appointed replacement at the FSB (Patruschev – you allege). After apparently being lied to by Patrushev, not only didn’t Putin sack him but he kept him at the heart of his administration for the next 22 years, promoting his untrustworthy deceiver along the way. But, because Putin was among the millions who knew what the explosive used in the Ryazan incident reportedly were, from this you deduce that he wasn’t aware and wasn’t involved?
Everyone thought hexogen was the explosive used, including the Russian media. Patrushev began the cover up with the sugar story two days later and gradually, over the next few years, hexogen was slowly squeezed out of the narrative of the apartment bombings campaign.
It seems far more plausible to me that Patrushev didn’t inform Putin what the cover up story would be because they hadn’t developed it yet. The necessity didn’t emerge until deputies started discussing Ryazen in the Duma.
We live in a world of nation states, through which a balance of power is reached, via competing national interests. Without nation states, the individual sovereignty, which you espouse, and I support, wouldn’t even be an arguable concept, we’d all be under the thumb of a global one world order, the written checks and balances would mean nothing as they could be replaced and rewritten at will, for whatever the global elite demand. No one would be coming to your aid, or speaking up for your existence, as the international stage would be replaced by something akin to the hunger game, a system of divide and rule, where everyone competes against whatever the ruling elite wants us fighting over, and there will be nothing capable of replacing or defeating them. It would be game over for humanity. The anarchic system some espouse is not really practical, other than in the minds of anarchists.
Of course the nation state system is broken, it has always broken, nothing is perfect and the nation state system has always throughout it’s existence (and was preceded by) existed through competing Empires. However, what comes after it would be far worse because there would be no major competing interests in the global order, the game of Empires would be replaced by the game of global control over what’s left of humanity (which would undoubtedly not be much).
Not all systems are equal. Yet you are trying to equate Russia with the West, there is no comparison. You dredge up a small number of what you claim are False Flags, in order to claim they are just as bad as the West. The Russian versions (if we accept they are false flags) are small fry in comparison to what the West pulls on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis in false flags and hoaxes aimed at demonising one section of the community over another, or providing the pretext for their agendas. False flags have always been a tool in the nation state armoury, they’re nothing new from the sinking of the Maine to the Tonkin Golf, the West (especially the USA) leads the world in them. They are a weapon of war. At Sandhurst they taught officer cadets to motivate their men in the heat of battle with stories of enemy atrocities (real or invented) – I suppose if a body of soldiers have failing moral and are loosing the will to carry on the battle, you need to galvanise them someway. Given that the main preoccupation of the nation state is to survive, and Russia is being constantly targeted by the West for disintegration Yugoslavia or USSR wise, it’s not surprising they may need to pull something out of the bag. Considering these events are so rare in Russia, and yet the norm in the West, they are not grounds for claiming moral equivalence.
You claim to know what motivates Putin, but you don’t really know. It’s impossible to know. If someone comes to the fore as a national leader be they a Putin, or an Erdogan, or a Trump, or a Johnson, it presumptuous to claim to know they are there for purely selfish reasons and have no regard for their people, or their nation. My own feeling is we get a lot of self obsessed politicians in the West, and they’re following instructions from the deep state, not the people, they don’t really have any power themselves, it’s on the books but clearly not employed. That’s not to say they don’t believe in their country, or want to support the people (although it may be the case) but they are clearly following an agenda largely set for them. In case of Putin, he could have had a comfortable life in retirement, but chose to lead his country, his hidden billions around the world is provable BS. There are no grounds for believing he’s in it for himself, he’s been turned into a global despot, someone in it for themselves would have opted for the easy life not put themselves on a global hit list.
Indeed, you are defeating your own arguments, as by claiming moral equity with the other side (or that there is only one other side – there are several China and Russia are hardly the same, the BRICS is not NATO, the EU and NATO are becoming one in all but name but there is divergence of opinion). According to your take, the West isn’t too bad after all, or maybe all sides in the nation state system are equally floored because the system is rotten. What exactly are you hoping it gets replaced with? The one world order the West espouses? Maybe much of what we are told of history is wrong, as the winners write the history books, but we can ascertain enough to know that the Third Reich categorised people, concentrated them in ghettos and camps, used them in slave labour, the USSR did similar, they were therefore not morally equivalent to the British in WW2, or the West during the Cold War. Likewise Russia is not morally equivalent to the West now. The West is magnitudes worse, in what it is doing to its own people, democracy, freedom, society, culture and media! Be careful what you wish for, as it may be exactly what the global elite have planned!
Thanks Ben, a very strong defence of Russia, China and the BRICS mulitpolar world order.
You are right I don’t “know”, indeed cannot know, what the “mindset” of a so-called leader is, or anyone else for that matter. All we can do is look at the evidence and try to work out what their intentions and that possible “mindset” are. I suggest to you that a willingness to kill hundreds of your fellow citizens indicates psychopathy and the absence of basic human compassion that comes with it. So, in Putin’s case, does the evidence suggest that is something he is willing to do?
I think it does.
As for equivalence with Western false flags, In Russia’s case, clearly NATO and western military strategists use false flags as almost the default strategy of manipulation. Operation Gladio for example. There is no suggestion in this post that Russia has done so on anything like the same scale. I am not sure where you get the idea that I am “trying to equate Russia with the West.”
I have written numerous pieces about the West’s false flags, and have consistently criticised the political class in my own country and their political allies. I have been attacked personally for writing about these subjects but nothing on the scale I have witnessed following publication of this article.
It is strange, I think, that I wrote one post about a Russian false-flag and suddenly I’m a shill for the unipolar world order, according to many. You clearly feel that Russia is morally superior and Putin is not espousing a “one world order.” What do you think the “multipolar world order” is? How is it different from the one espoused by the West’s WEF’ish clique?
If we look to, for example, China’s recent use of COVID apps to stop protests against the Hannen banking scandal, that seems to me to be the epitome of the very worst excesses of Technocracy that I, for one, oppose. Yet Putin and Ping say there is no limit to the extent of the cooporation. Does that not cause you pause in your defence of the “multipolar world order”?
You claim that the system of nation states has somehow been a force for good. I assume that is depite the global conflicts and incessant wars, corruption, criminal government, corporate fascism, oppression and mass slaughter it has wrought. Where is the benefit of this “superior” system?
As for the voluntary society I would like to see, the whole point is that it is voluntary. In order to achieve a voluntary society we would need to completely change our relationship with “authority.” People would no longer be “educated” to imagine that obedience is a virtue.
Let’s assume that worked, and within a generation people did not value authority at all. Who would fight in the wars of conquest that have characterised the Westphalian system of nation states? Who would run the killing fields and carry out the orders of psychopaths?
I am always happy to engage in a discussion Ben, but if you resort to ad-hominem attacks to make your point, the comment won’t be posted.
interesting that you chose to remove my post as you can’t take criticism! Says it all really. Not really on our side are you! Just another opinionated ******* who knows it all and can’t cope with being challenged in your view. I’ve also studied global politics all of my life, but rather than leave my carefully prepared comment up, you chose to remove it as it demolishes your world view, a naïve world view or one that seeks to paint everyone as bad as each other, and the nation state system requiring replacement by what? What they want it replaced by.
All comments are reviewed before approval Ben. Because, sadly, people often resort to personal attacks and abuse to make their “carefully prepared comment.” I haven’t “removed” your post at all. It’s 07.20 in the UK, I’ve just seen your comment and approved it. I’ve edited your comment to remove the personal abuse. Why people feel this kind of thing is appropriate I have no idea.
Davis isn’t interested in comments that don’t agree with him, he removes them and then prevents those people commenting. He’s clearly got an agenda, he’s basically made the case that there are no good guys in the nation state system, and if your a political leader you are by default a pyscotpath. It either not living in the real world, or peddeling an agenda for a one world order.
All comments are reviewed before approval Nevin. Sadly, people often resort to personal attacks and abuse. Such comments are not approved.
On the contrary I am, if anything, more interested in comments that challenge my work, particularly those that offer evidence and are reasonably argued. If you look through the comment threads, including this one, you will find such discussions.
Iain,
Thanks for approving my comment, much appreciated, sorry for my impatience.
Your write “I suggest to you that a willingness to kill hundreds of your fellow citizens indicates psychopathy and the absence of basic human compassion that comes with it. So, in Putin’s case, does the evidence suggest that is something he is willing to do? I think it does.”
First of all, I’m not in agreement that some of the false flags you allege, were in fact false flags, they are certainly debatable. Secondly, you assume (if they were false flags) they were authorised by Putin. Do you seriously think the Manchester bombing was authorised by Theresa May. Or the “assassination” of Jo Cox (lot of evidence suggests she wasn’t actually killed and may have been playing a role all along) was authorised by David Cameron? In my view, it’s highly unlikely they were ever consulted, yet alone gave the orders. Could you imagine the repercussions if the truth ever came out? Kept within the confides of the secret state, it’s never likely to come out in a provable way! Sometimes when states cease i.e. the Union of South Africa, or Rhodesia, the USSR, East Germany, South American juntas – the activities of the secret state get exposed. But otherwise remain the domain of “conspiracy theorists”). The secret state / deep state nexus is the source of these type of events, they’ve never had a conscience – it’s the nature of their stoke and trade. For example, they basically deleted the NI intelligence apparatus at the end of the troubles in “a Chinook accident” (in my opinion) to ensure little came out in “illegal” activities (illegal activities that were probably necessary in an intelligence war (it was a war after all and you can only fight fire with fire)… they could have implicated the “wrong type” of people (high level operatives), if their connections were ever proved). The intel services recruit largely from the City and City institutions, and Oxbridge.
Surely it’s obvious a level of power exists well below the surface, of every major government, that controls the power base. They are morally corrupt and certainly psychotic, we can see that from the record of the last 20 years. The politicians, especially in government are merely their puppets. This power control may have always existed, but certainly more so since the age when we could get the types of Harold Wilson or Asquith as Prime Minister.
You say: “It is strange, I think, that I wrote one post about a Russian false-flag and suddenly I’m a shill.”
You’re not a shill at all, but someone I hold in great respect for the work you do, exposing the agenda. I disagree with you on this post and your ideas about replacing the nation state system. The replacement of that system with a one world order is the clear ambition of the people we both despise.
You say: “You clearly feel that Russia is morally superior and Putin is not espousing a “one world order.” What do you think the “multipolar world order” is? How is it different from the one espoused by the West’s WEF’ish clique?”
A “one world order” is not a “multipolar world order”, they are two completely different things. I do believe Russia is moral superior to the West, they are not sending Drag Queens to indoctrinate Russian children, or persuading them to get their genitals removed, take puberty blockers, have full term abortions, pump the LBGTQ++++ agenda down their throats of everyone 24/7, engage in illegal wars, completely reframe their public sector via mass indocrination into cultural Marxism, constantly attack Christianity, freedom of speech, promote celebs as shills, or have a media that just parrots the official line 24/7 (I read the Russian media, it reads like the Western media used to do 40 years ago – not perfect but light years better. They also do actual investigative reporting, something we no longer do).
I studied political science, the first essay I ever wrote was based around the unipolar v bipolar world order, my conclusion was then, and still is today that the bipolar world was a lot safer than the unipolar world, because it had competing interests, not just West v East, but the unaligned movement, and others. It kept power under a certain degree of control. The unipolar moment allowed the US as global hegemon, along with their minions / lap dogs the UK, NATO, EU, etc to commit acts of political vandalism on the world stage starting with the Gulf War, then Yugoslavia, Serbia, Croatia (during the NATO bombing of Serbia the Croats successfully cleans themselves of the Serbs in an act the Western media managed to completely ignore), Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, etc. So a multi-polar world, would be fair world, where one Empire doesn’t hold sway. Even during the Cold War, we were still allowed to read Soviet newspapers, and listen to Radio Moscow. The point we’ve reached today is jaw dropping.
I am a realist.
You say: “If we look to, for example, China’s recent use of COVID apps to stop protests against the Hannen banking scandal, that seems to me to be the epitome of the very worst excesses of Technocracy that I, for one, oppose.” I don’t disagree, but 1. China is not Russia… although the West has successfully pushed Russia into their arms (not by accident). 2. It’s very hard to ascertain how much of what we think we know about China is actually true, and not just Western propaganda. Also could the Covid threat more real in China because perhaps it’s been weaponised against the Chinese? Globalresearch.ca Prof Michel Chossudovsky certainly believes so. I don’t know, but if we recall the Project for a New American Century certainly looked forward to the rise of viruses that could be biologically weaponised against certain races, and the Chinese are one the worlds most racially homogeneous nations making it a distinct possibility – probably well within reach today. Would they do it? Of course they would!
You say I “claim that the system of nation states has somehow been a force for good”. The nations state system is floored, but yes of course it’s done good, and bad. No system is perfect, but it’s better than what preceded it. It enables for example the “British people (Welsh, English, Scottish, N Irish)” to exist and to a degree protect our heritage and culture, to have a system of laws, rights and of government that’s helped us thrive over the centuries. To promote real diversity, rather than the fake diversity that gets pushed via the cultural Marxists and their global elite leaders. A global one world order would whip our identity out, and with it what’s left of the checks and balances within the system out. The nation state system allows for competing interests, which in turn acts to promote the interests of humanity.
The system is being destroyed now, and has been getting targeted for generations, especially since the end of the Cold War, where we entered a path to a one world order. Sometimes better the devil you know, that the devil you don’t know, especially when the alternatives are being offered by the mega monopoly owning corporate banking elite of the WEF less than 0.0001% if the 1%.
You write: “As for the voluntary society I would like to see, the whole point is that it is voluntary. In order to achieve a voluntary society we would need to completely change our relationship with “authority.” People would no longer be “educated” to imagine that obedience is a virtue.”
The reality – as I see it – is that humanity is floored, we’re prone to greed, selfishness, disobedience, rebellion, violence, and some are prone to psychopathy. A world of competing interests and values is a form of natural order. I don’t see the world you espouse coming about.
You say “Let’s assume that worked, and within a generation people did not value authority at all. Who would fight in the wars of conquest that have characterised the Westphalian system of nation states? Who would run the killing fields and carry out the orders of psychopaths?”
Well the psychopaths would be the ones in charge running this brave new world, so they would. At least the nation state system pits the psychopaths against each other, but also allows common humanity to dictate rules and impose checks and balances.
I’ve been against wars all my life. I found myself strangely supporting Russia’s war against Western Ukraine, because it was clear what caused the war, a Western backed coup supported by Nazi’s, a 9 year civil war against Eastern Ukrainians backed by literal privately funded, politically affiliated Nazi militia’s absorbed into the Ukrainian armed forces, police, security services / intel structure and govt bodies, the outlawing of a language spoken by over 50% of Ukrainians as their native tongue (many of them ethnic Russians absorbed into Ukraine in 1918, 1922, 1928 and 1956) and by all Ukrainians as the language spoken there for centuries.
There are worse things than war, and there are worse things than death, like having your culture eradicated and your rights removed, or your children sexually manipulated and corrupted, or their minds destroyed.
As wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Thanks for an excellent comment Ben. No I don’t think Theresa May was behind the Manchester Arena bombing (I doubt there was one to be honest) because there is no evidence to suggest that is the case. However, let’s say T.M was the head of MI5 for the year preceding the bombing and that prior to the bombing T.M had just been appointed to the front bench, was widely opposed by parliament and few in the country really knew anything about her.
Then let’s say, within a few weeks of T.M taking her front bench seat, following the bombing, as everyone else struggled to come to terms with what had happened, T.M suddeny emerged as a “strong and powerful leader” who presented exactly the right message to the people at exactly the right time, capitalising on the bombing to rapidly dominate the political landscape, coming from virtually nowhere to supreme power in hardly any time at all, thanks to the bombing.
Then let’s say that the evidence pointed towards MI5 planting the bomb and the only person to profit from it politically was T.M and her entourage. I think the evidence would suggest that T.M was behind the bombing and killed her fellow Brits to gain political power.
As for the Troubles, given the Stevens Reports and british intelligence involvement in Operation Gladio in mainland Europe, I think there is also evidence to suggest that a Gladio operation was being run in NI.
You make a very good point about the fact that anarchism does, in part, fit in with the ambitions of the globalist push to erode the nation state system. However I suggest to you that it is through the Westphalian system that global corporate fascism (and I think that can be how we might view the coming Technocracy) has achieved the level of power it now enjoys.
Anarchism utterly opposes all rule by coercion and is very much about cooperation between sovereign indivduals. If, as you say, the decentalisation of power stands as a baulwark against corporate totalitarianism then surely more decentralisation offers greater resistance. The whole point of global Technocracy is the centralisation of power.
Stefan Molyneux wrote 6 questions to statists which I wonder if you would be interested in answering.
1. Do State courts actually deliver justice?
2. Do State armies actually defend citizens?
3. Does State policing actually protect private property?
4. Does State welfare actually resolve the problem of poverty?
5. Does the State “war on drugs” actually reduce the problem of addiction and associated crime?
6. Do State prisons actually rehabilitate prisoners and reduce crime?
And finally one of my own, if you have the time.
7. The State has a monopoly of control over the courts, military, police, social welfare, the law and punishment. This amounts to an effective centralised monopoly on violence and coercion. Why couldn’t these “services” be replaced by private service providers who are bound by contracts, secured through competative tendering, paid for voluntarilly?
Hi Iain,
In regards to the “Manchester Bombing” it was extensively exposed by Richard D Hall – he did such a thorough job of exposing it, there is little more to add (although it was pretty obvious what it was to anyone who follows these events). In regards to Theresa May, she didn’t come from nowhere, she’d been climbing the greasy pole for some time. As I said in the previous comment, I don’t believe the political class generally get either the true “heads up” on these events, or get asked to sign off on them – although there may be exceptions (I do believe Johnson was behind the JKF assassination and he had the support of both the FBI and the CIA). The consequences of the truth ever coming out, would destroy the publics faith in democracy completely, and any politician involved would spent the rest of their life in prison. Whilst, very little ever does get exposed, the US COINTELPRO in 1960’s and 70’s was extensively exposed, and the repercussions of the deep state’s involvement in the JFK, RFK, MLK and MX assassinations still rumble on today.
You write: “As for the Troubles, given the Stevens Reports and British intelligence involvement in Operation Gladio in mainland Europe, I think there is also evidence to suggest that a Gladio operation was being run in NI.”
Certainly Gladio type operations took place in NI, depending on your definition, there are lots of books and documentaries on those operations, and a lot of evidence. There was a lot of stupid things done that went wrong, or backfired. Indeed, as you may know, the intel apparatus in NI was heavily involved in plots to destabilise the Wilson government, and eventually replace Labour with a strong Tory government led by Thatcher (Who Frame Colin Wallace, Operation Clockwork Orange, etc), under the belief that Wilson was undermining Britain’s power in the world (something Labour and Conservatives seem to have successfully done since the end of WW2). There are plenty of books on this, from the Wilson Plot, Smear, and films like Ken Loach’s “Hidden Agenda” which is a fictionalised version of the Wilson Plot / Steven’s Enquiry, “50 Dead Men Walking”. Brian Crosier and John Gouriet played a substantial role in manoeuvring Thatcher into power behind the scenes.
Although some really dumb things were done in NI, the IRA was real and the violence wasn’t necessary we had a functional democracy at the time. In a war you have to fight fire with fire, for the most part NI was a containment operation, they never really took on the IRA the way they could have and basically destroyed their ability to function. It was probably a mistake deploying troops and would have been better left to the civil power, there were politicians in the NI govt who wanted reform. Even Wilson, said later on that his deploying of troops was a mistake. Although I think the deployment of troops was more in response to placating the Irish government, who had not just deployed troops to the border, but had government ministers involved in attempting to ship guns to the IRA, (and had delusions of just how powerful the Irish Army would be if it was ordered to intervene). The “arms plot” shipment was only stopped by the Irish soldiers themselves discovering what they were being ordered to ship (ref Dan Harvey – Soldiering Against Subversion: The Irish Defence Forces and Internal Security During the Troubles, 1969–1998).
The UK came up with the stay behind network in Western Europe at the start of the Cold War, using the British Resistance Organisation (not its official name) during WW2 as the blueprint. It was a complex network during WW2 in UK a lot of which is still only being learnt about (it wasn’t just the Aux Home Guard, it involved the Y service (sigint posts), the ROC was also used as aspects of it during WW2). The concept itself wasn’t a bad idea, what was a bad idea was how it was repurposed in the mid 60’s as a tool to engineer political agenda.
After WW2 in the UK Gladio was the domain of 21 and 23 SAS, Army Intel, and probably units like the HAC – virtually nothing has come out. According to the BBC Newsnight exposure and later Timewatch (1992) they were used to train gladio units in Western Europe. There’s no reason to believe they no longer exist, for example the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (which came into existence in 2005 out of 14 Intel Coy) badge incorporates a dagger, that could also be described as a Gladio (Short) sword.
You write:
“You make a very good point about the fact that anarchism does, in part, fit in with the ambitions of the globalist push to erode the nation state system. However I suggest to you that it is through the Westphalian system that global corporate fascism (and I think that can be how we might view the coming Technocracy) has achieved the level of power it now enjoys.
Anarchism utterly opposes all rule by coercion and is very much about cooperation between sovereign individuals. If, as you say, the decentralisation of power stands as a bulwark against corporate totalitarianism then surely more decentralisation offers greater resistance. The whole point of global Technocracy is the centralisation of power.”
The nation state system has been purposefully attacked and vandalised for many reasons over decades. What we call “the West” today is basically an Empire, it operates as a single entity over all matters of economic, foreign policy and defence that are deemed important to the interests of it’s “elite powerbase” (represented by the likes of the WEF). I would argue the nation state has been fading away especially since the end of the Cold War, as national elites have been usurped by or into international elites.
The intention, seems to me, is for it to create a one world order under its control, or failing that, set up some type of new Cold War that isolates competitor nations from its domain. Checks and balances and restoring democracy are the best ways to thwart it. But, they’re making that harder and harder. But we shouldn’t be aiding them in imploding the nation state system, because it is the one system (as I see it) that gives us the best chance to build checks and balances in. Or even flee to a different, more freer land!
You write: “Stefan Molyneux wrote 6 questions to statists which I wonder if you would be interested in answering.”
“1. Do State courts actually deliver justice?”
Yes of course they do, the UK has had a very good record of delivering justice via the jury system.
“2. Do State armies actually defend citizens?”
Yes they do, although our own are being used more and more in globalist wars. The British Forces saved Great Britain and defeated the Spanish and French Empire’s in the Napoleonic Wars, we defeated the German, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire’s in WW1, the Axis Powers in WW2, the Soviet Empire and Eastern Block in the Cold War. Without which much of the nation state system in Europe today would not exist.
“3. Does State policing actually protect private property?”
Yes it does. However, the cultural Marxist police are now preoccupying themselves with thought crimes and other non crimes, plus their own indoctrination programmes (which they seek to impose on the public too, sometimes as punishment for “wrong think”) and virtue signalling (I never though I’d see a day when police officers would be allow to push political and personal sexual agendas on people by wearing rainbow flags, or BLM badges!). If you read Peels 9 principles of policing they laid the foundation stone for modern policing. Of course there wasn’t perfection but the police forces built upon Peel’s founding principles were police forces focused on serving the people, not the elites. However, those principles have been eroded, to the point ask a police constable in the street what they are, and despite learning them in police college, they don’t have a clue about even one of those principles (plenty of videos online where they are asked, and I’ve asked them myself during lockdown protests).
“4. Does State welfare actually resolve the problem of poverty?”
I do believe in welfare and it does resolve poverty, but it’s also got to be done hand in hand with employment rights for native people, and producing a society that feels it has purpose and responsibility. rather than being replaced by a succession of foreign cheaper labour – legal and illegal – into the workforce, and the British people are not pushed on to the slag heap of history (as they are. And you can see the dysfunction from it all around)!
“5. Does the State “war on drugs” actually reduce the problem of addiction and associated crime?”
I’m not a fan of drugs of any kind. However, there has been enough exposure of the “war on drugs” to reveal it’s actually a war to push drugs into certain communities, in the UK it’s the homeless and the under class. Call me cynical but what better way of removing people deemed, by some, to be surplus to requirements, by pushing hard drugs on them. Plenty could be done to tackle the drug problem, stopping certain gangs and migrants entering the country – like Turks and Albanians who do much of the pushing, would solve a lot. Also, actually handing down sentences that fit the crime. It clearly not what elites want, they want us drugged, dumbed down, stupid, at their mercy, and under their control. It wasn’t always this way.
“6. Do State prisons actually rehabilitate prisoners and reduce crime?”
Clearly for the most part not. What is the alternative? A different system to the one we have is needed, but I’m not sure what it is. The prisons are being flooded with drugs… and the question should be how?! With all the modern tech it should be nigh on impossible! They need more staff, for sure but the staff also need better grounding in moral principles, as I’ve known prison officers on coke and they seem to think it was cool! That’s not an example! If that’s how they live their own life, how can we trust such people with prisoners?
Society need more traditional values, morality and Christian principles should be brought back to the schools. It was taken out to degrade us.
“7. The State has a monopoly of control over the courts, military, police, social welfare, the law and punishment. This amounts to an effective centralised monopoly on violence and coercion. Why couldn’t these “services” be replaced by private service providers who are bound by contracts, secured through competitive tendering, paid for voluntarily?”
Isn’t that something happening by stealth to some degree now? I’m an armature military historian, the defence of this country was always the preserve of the people, I’m not just talking about the volunteer movement, but the right to own arms. The UK’s NRA preceded it’s US brother by several years, it was based around the volunteer movement. The state trusted its citizens with firearms, it was under British law, they didn’t just trust the public with arms they encouraged it, and it had been encouraged for generations going back to the longbowmen of Agincourt.
Of course we had elites back then, but they national elites and shared a interest in this country, something not shared by the global elites who now control it!
If we allowed the same level of gun ownership today there would be problems, because our society has been attacked in every way, it’s ill, it’s because it’s been completely assaulted from every direction from power hungry greedy elites. It’s hard to say how many of the mass shootings in the USA are real – hoaxes, patsies or people MKultra’d (I suspect around 95% – they are used for gun control and also divide and conquer). Why don’t they happen in countries like Russia, Israel, or Switzerland where there are as many, or sometimes more guns in private ownership? Why didn’t they happen a few decades ago? Apart for the odd event! It’s a mystery!
You say the state has control of the courts, well it is getting that way but trial by jury is intended to prevent that and it’s been a bulwark defence against state power.
Thanks Ben for a fantastic comment. I agree with much of what you say. Please allow me to respond to your answers to Molyenaux’s questions
1. Do State courts actually deliver justice?”
Ben: – Yes of course they do, the UK has had a very good record of delivering justice via the jury system.
Me: – I think “democracy” is governance by rule by jury: – https://iaindavis.com/long-live-democracy/
I think the original constitution intended that system, via Common Law, to prevail: – https://iaindavis.com/the-british-constitution-deception-part-1/
However, “the State system” has actively resisted the real constitution almost from the moment of its inception. The State system, which is a system of centralised, authoritarian control, has done everything it can to control juries and limit the power of juries in order to maintain control over “justice.” In the hands of the State, so-called justice is a tool of opression that has progressively tightened its grip until we reach the point we have now which is no justice at all. The noble notion of the separation of powers has barely existed at all in the State system and, today, it certainly doesn’t.
2. Do State armies actually defend citizens?”
Ben: – Yes they do, although our own are being used more and more in globalist wars. The British Forces saved Great Britain and defeated the Spanish and French Empire’s in the Napoleonic Wars, we defeated the German, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empire’s in WW1, the Axis Powers in WW2, the Soviet Empire and Eastern Block in the Cold War. Without which much of the nation state system in Europe today would not exist.
Me: – All the wars you cite were fought by nation States. I don’t consider this to be an argument “for” the nation state but rather one to refute it.
All State militaries are used to kill people on a scale that would be impossible without them. This is not to belittle, in any sense, the brave men and women who have fought for the causes they believe in. But I question those beliefs.
WWII was not a defensive war on the part of the British State. Only, in the British case, among the people who were defending themselves and there families against the march of National Socialism, which was a project undertaken by another State. Equally the German troops, who weren’t all Nazis, fought for the State. It was the apperatus of nation States, as highlighted by Anthony C. Sutton most thoroughly, that “caused” the war.
This may not be what your notion of the nation State is intended to be, but that is what it is, and always has been in my view. State armies do not “defend” citizens. They kill them in huge numbers.
3. Does State policing actually protect private property?”
Ben: – Yes it does. However….. [. . .] If you read Peels 9 principles of policing they laid the foundation stone for modern policing. Of course there wasn’t perfection but the police forces built upon Peel’s founding principles were police forces focused on serving the people, not the elites. However…….
Me: – The idea of policing by consent (outlined by Peel) in service and defence of the people is a valuable one. My question is does it exist?
You cite many of the reasons why it doesn’t, I might add a few more. The “policing” of the miners strike, the “policing” of the battle of the beanfield and the poll tax marches, kettling, the crime and cover up of Hillsborough, special branch involvement in the Finucane murder, the extrajudicial killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and the 7/7 patsies, refusal to investigate so-called “elite” paedophile rings, corporate crimes, political crimes and more.
We can look towards people like Mike Veal (Operation Conifer) to see what happens to honest officers if they dare to question “the establishment.” In a State system, the police is an organ of the State and does not serve the people. It serves the State.
Again this is not to say that there aren’t good men and women serving as police officers who do stand on their oath to “protect and serve.” But, as you say, the State system has practically eradicated these principles from their training. In a nation State, the State is the “supreme authority” with a “legal” monopoly on violence. Therefore it only has one enemy: Us!
4. Does State welfare actually resolve the problem of poverty?”
Ben: – I do believe in welfare and it does resolve poverty, but it’s also got to be done hand in hand with employment rights for native people, and producing a society that feels it has purpose and responsibility. rather than being replaced by a succession of foreign cheaper labour – legal and illegal – into the workforce, and the British people are not pushed on to the slag heap of history (as they are. And you can see the dysfunction from it all around)!
Me: – Improvements in public health, technology, workers rights, pay, access to education and employment improve the situation of poverty. The introduction of all of these improvements, applied in an egalitarian manner, have been actively resisted by the State and its “establishment.”
We made these improvements and gained access to them by protest and fighting for that access against the wishes of the State. The State then offers these new found rights, as if it willingly “allows” them, on a conditional basis. Welfare is what we are given when there aren’t enough jobs, when in-work poverty is tolerated, when it is used to finance cheap labour for multinational corporations. All of these deleterious policy decisions are made by the State. State Welfare is not designed to enable people to improve the situation of poverty, it is designed to keep them in it.
5. Does the State “war on drugs” actually reduce the problem of addiction and associated crime?
Ben: – There has been enough exposure of the “war on drugs” to reveal it’s actually a war to push drugs into certain communities, in the UK it’s the homeless and the under class. Call me cynical but what better way of removing people deemed, by some, to be surplus to requirements, by pushing hard drugs on them.
Me: – Yes, a project run by the State (Iran Contra for example) because the State only has one enemy: Us! The State then uses the “war on drugs” to test its new weapons, new surveillance capabilities and “policing techniques.” It’s a big “win win” for the State, meanwhile our lives are blighted, whether by drugs or by those who commit crime to pay for drugs.
You speak about “gangs” but when financial gangs like HSBC make billions laundering money for drug cartels they are “fined” by the the State and simply carry on business as usual. The State is the boggest gang of them all.
6. Do State prisons actually rehabilitate prisoners and reduce crime?
Ben: – Clearly for the most part not. What is the alternative? A different system to the one we have is needed, but I’m not sure what it is. The prisons are being flooded with drugs…
Me: See my response to question 5 (above) and to question 7 (below). Suffice to say, “no,” State prisons don’t work.
7. The State has a monopoly of control over the courts, military, police, social welfare, the law and punishment. This amounts to an effective centralised monopoly on violence and coercion. Why couldn’t these “services” be replaced by private service providers who are bound by contracts, secured through competitive tendering, paid for voluntarily?”
Ben: – Isn’t that something happening by stealth to some degree now?
Me: – No. What is happening now is that the political state is merging with the corporate state to produce a “new normal” State that looks distinctly fascist. The point is to reduce our choice and freedom and centralise and consolidate the power and claimed authority of the new normal State. We don’t “voluntarilly” pay for any of it. Try not paying tax and you will soon discover just how “voluntary” it isn’t. Corporations do not pay tax. We do. Corporations are “partners” within the State. We are not.
Ben: – The state trusted its citizens with firearms, it was under British law, they didn’t just trust the public with arms they encouraged it, and it had been encouraged for generations going back to the longbowmen of Agincourt. Of course we had elites back then, but they national elites and shared a interest in this country, something not shared by the global elites who now control it!
Me: – No. Our forefathers were encouraged to bear arms because they might have to use them in a war started by the State in which they could die and kill defending the State agansit another State.
Ben: – Our society has been attacked in every way, it’s ill, it’s because it’s been completely assaulted from every direction from power hungry greedy elites.
Me: – Yes. The greedy elites who run and have always run the State. We are under attack, we have always been under attack. By the State.
Ben: – You say the state has control of the courts, well it is getting that way but trial by jury is intended to prevent that and it’s been a bulwark defence against state power.
Me: – (See response 1 above) It would be a bulwark against the State if the State hadn’t claimed authority over it, assumed control of it and didn’t operate it for its own benefit. Just look at how the State operates the “jury system” in its Courts: – https://iaindavis.com/gcmaf/
If we just take the penal system as an example. Imagine if there was no State and juries were not “directed” by the State’s representative (the so-called “judge.) Imagine that the jury had the full power to “annul” legistaltion and rule “not guilty” even when the law is technically breeched. What do you think that would do to the size of the Prison population?
Then let’s assume that the people paid voluntarilly for the court system. Do you think people wouldn’t? That they would decide to allow murderers and child rapists to wander around freely in their communities? Why wouldn’t they pay for a “security service” to ensure that they didn’t?
Why wouldn’t they pay for a “justice service” to administer their courts or a “penal service” to teach wrong-doers, not only the error of their ways (punishment) but also how to live as decent, fellow human-beings and give them the tools to enable them to do it.
The emphasis of the contracted “security service” would be to “protect and serve” the community paying for them. If they acted like thugs, didn’t investigate serious crime or refused to arrest people because they were too rich, they would loose their contract to a competitor.
If the “justice service” refused not to listen to the jury, and instead started telling the jury what their decision should be, defnded corporate criminals or punished people for technical breaches of law even when the jusry felt they acted honourably, they too would soon lose their contract to a competitor.
The same would be true for the “penal service” that allowed prisoners to sit around all day getting high and continueing to run criminal operations from within their walls.
The people who voluntarilly pay for these services, something they are currently “forced” to do, would not only demand value for money, if they didn’t get it they could actually do something about it. While the State (with its corporate partners) continues to demand money with menaces to pay for shareholder dividends and deliver the cheapest service possible in order to maximise profits, without any competition whatsoever, the people are powerless and merely have to suffer useless, often oppressive, policing, corrupt courts and prisons that act more like universities of crime.
Of course voluntarism isn’t a magic wand that solves everything. How would we deal with those who chose not to pay for essential services? How would we assist those who were genuinely in need and so-on.
You asked how we could improve the chronic situation we now find ourselves in. I suggest a voluntary system provides considerable scope for a possible remedy.
I am certain that the State cannot be the solution. It is the problem and it only has one enemy. Us!
Hi Iain,
I think you’re looking for the perfect system. It is the inherent competition between nations, that is the biggest check on power. If we take example this country’s role in Europe – it has been to prevent a single Empire controlling the entire continent. To that end we defeated the Spanish Empire, the French Empire, the Spanish and the French, the Germans, the Soviets. The nation state system in Europe today wouldn’t exist, but for this islands role. Without the nation state system, we would not live in a unique country, with a unique history and cultures, with a unique system of law and order… it would all be eroded, we’d all be the same, and the predator class would pit us against whatever boogieman they created in order to best exploit what is left of humanity.
The EU came about and reached the point where it became the new Empire on the block, and it is about to be destroyed, thanks to its own sanctions policy on Russia. At this stage the cost of energy in Europe will destroy what’s left of the Euro and the EU’s industrial output and economy. The USA seeing it as a future power rival has led it up a dark ally and allowed it to flatulate itself to death in an effort to stay onboard with the US agenda re-Russia – out of the mistaken belief Russia is going to plough through Eastern Europe next.
I compare the nation state system to Highlander, not all are equal and the end goal is to be the global hegemon- “there can be only one” – however nations come and go, and Empires fall and rise. If we end up in a multi-polar world order, it could be the best possible outcome as it would prevent a one world order, and the inherent check on power would prevent many wars, and rouge governments. It’s impossible to know the end outcome of where we are now. Will the West collapse? Will it bring much of the world with it? Will it turn into some kind of new Soviet Union under its communitarian Great Reset? And what can we do about it? We defiantly need more solutions but solutions that don’t help destroy what good there is left, and help serve some other agenda.
You talk about state power as if it’s a single entity, or that it isn’t different within different nation states. It differs substantially from state to state. Building checks and balances keeps it in check. In recent years in the West they’ve started tearing them down. So we need to think about how to reinforce them, and build them back. Could we build something new? Yes, to build new you don’t destroy everything that went before, unless you want a disaster.
Wars are bad. Britain fought WW2 for selfish reasons of national security, had the Third Reich conquered Europe it would have controlled the UK’s trade routes and held us the British Commonwealth to ransom. All nations act out of self interest, unless acting on behalf of a power block they’ve affiliated to (NATO, EU, USA, WEF etc) – at which point they’re prone to self harm by following the whim of the strongest entity in that block.
The best way to avoid war is to build checks and balances into the international system, so for example we have a Geneva Convention, a UN Security Council, a ban on nuclear proliferation, a “Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction” (which incidentally Ukraine signed but clearly didn’t enact but which the West couldn’t care less about). The problem in all of these systems are that power hungry – psychopathic elites – seek to circumvent them. The West for example has today weaponised everything possible in its effort to destroy Russia, from the UN, to Sport, to Sanctions, to International Bodies, including the Arts, and the demonization of the Russian people, and lying about everything taking place. The West has effectively ripped up any sense of human decency, morality and ridden a coach and horses through the checks and balances and international system. It’s as if the West believes it owns the international order – which of course is its intention.
Your criticism of the legal system and the police, is looking for perfection. Of course there have always been bad eggs, there always will be. However, in a system devoid of morality and based on nothing, things will inevitably get worse and worse. If there is no God, what is morality? If morality is so fluid, why not change it to suit whatever agenda comes next? That is exactly what is taking place.
I’m a social Conservative, I believe in foundations and don’t believe in change for the sake of change, or at the whim and demands of economic elites who have their own agendas to get richer and powerful. A house built on sand collapses, the checks and balances in the system are the foundation blocks every society requires in order to exist. Remove them, and collapse follows. Collapse is getting closer and closer.
Maybe I’ve got somethings wrong, maybe you have. I’m an open minded guy. I enjoy reading your posts. Hopefully, in this wider community we can learn from each other and build something better than what is being forced on us.
Thanks Ben. You are right, I am “looking for the perfect system” precisely because “power hungry – psychopathic elites – seek to circumvent them.” For me, that perfect system would be one in which they cannot achieve their ambitions. Of course, no system is perfect, we will still face a myriad of problems. Such is life.
If we consider the Westphalian Treaties of 1648 to be the formal birth of the global nation state system, we are talking about something that has existed for less that 400 years. For most of human history we did not live within the lines drawn on maps. Intead we lived under the authority of the local Lord or King.
I think we can look to David Rothkopf’s “Superclass” and consider the psychopathic elites to be the “people who influence the lives of millions across borders on a regular basis.” To them the nation state is simply a square on Brzezinski’s grand chessboard. They “seek” to control the whole chessboard. We are “educated” to believe that political leaders are playing chess. The problem is the “superclass” are playing Monopoly on the same board.
Prior to the nation state system the same monopolists formed the same kind of aliances in fiefdoms, as one King attempted to kill many. Today, with corporations ruling nation states, as Marx observed, “one capitalist always kills many.”
These observations are not arguments against either the nation state or capitalism but they illustrate the fundamental problem. A few people who can “influence the lives of millions” are playing monopoly, using the planet as their board, just as they always have. The Westphalian model suits them. If it didn’t it wouldn’t exist. Now they are seeking dominion over everything and are no longer so interested in the nation state model and are transitioning us and the system to a “new normal.”.
As the people inhabiting the planet, our problem is not the model favoured, it is that none of those models would operate at all unless they suited the interests of the superclass. The feudal Lord is now the CEO and the King is now the beneficial owner of a global corporation.
For me then, our core problem is our collective belief in “authority.” We allow ourselves to be ruled. Whether by a King, a government or a corporation. While we do, no matter what system we believe in or endure, we will be ruled by psychopathic elites. Just as we always have.
So the change I think we need is not going to come from any redrawing of the map or any political system. It is going to come from a fundamental shift in our mindset. Away from a belief that authority has meaning and towards one of voluntary cooperation that will brook no claim of authority. Should we succeed in that endeavour then Kings, CEO’s and Central Bankers will have nothing and no one to rule. They will just be mad men, stood on a mound no one cares about, howling into the wind.
My fear is Ben, that unless we are prepared to take this intellectual leap, we will be slaves to the superclass forever, no matter what lines we draw or political system we protect.
Deer Eating
I grew up in a community that shared farm labor, produce, equipment and even now; we put out our extra garden produce for the community to share on the honor system. We didn’t have electricity here until 1957 and the community spirit necessary for survival didn’t really die out until the 1980’s when people from larger cities began moving here to retire or commute 2 hours to a larger city for work. When a storm drops a tree on a neighbor’s house, we all pitch in to clear it. When the neighbor’s goats get out and eat the corn, we go help fix the fence. The best lesson I learned growing up was that to have good neighbors, you have to be a good neighbor. Mr. Rogers had it right.
No worries Guy. Thanks for both parts of a fascinating comment.
Iain
(I pushed Comment button before I posted my full Post I am sorry )
It should be this.
To me this is the answer to all the problems we are experiencing at present. We need to find Good Neighbor.
The Problems with the Human race is that we hve Narcissium. The malignant kind. They are the thorn in the side of Good people.
The inuit had a way of dealing with them according to Proff Robert D Hare. They Would Push Them off the edge of the Sea Ice. I do not wish to do that.
The Only Way Out I can See is for Towns , groups Communities to become as self sustaining as possible.
The Russia Ukrain war is TO ME ANYWAY. Is part of the agenda. To cause a global collapse of currencies as did the great depression 1920’s. So they can bring in there digital money.