Damn: that article hits dark. My family members in the States are Vietnamese-Americans, but professional class - doctors, mostly. Not surprisingly: they all loathe Trump. I thought their status would be pretty safe in future, but after reading the article, I now have my doubts.
It's probably not what you want to hear, Yasha - but if things go really dark, you, Evgenia and kids are welcome in Australia. The society is still pretty racist - blackface was acceptable on TV until pretty recently - but it's *amateur* racism. That sort of *professional* racism showed by Stephen Miller would be so offputting that he'd be more likely to have the shit beaten out of him on the streets than promoted.
(Needless to say, the standing offer of welcome is also for my family. We have better public transport and better public space. And the playgrounds are to die for.)
Hi Yasha! Totally agree. But I wouldn't be too concerned if I were you. Being Jewish is (at least for now) a good thing. Hence the nonsense that Zohran, who is not Jewish and also not "white," MUST be an anti-Semite. His "communist tendencies" don't help either.
I subscribed to learn why you, a former Russian, think Putin's invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. Is it because you think NATO expansion was not a threat to Russia? Or is it because of your memories of Russia during a horrible time there (that the West helped make worse)? Or Is it because there's a lot of anti-Semitism in Russia?
I think people "who were there" are sometimes too enmeshed to see the big picture, which (in my view) is that U.S. global corporations have enlisted the U.S. government to overturn governments whose resources and/or cheap labor those corporations seek to control. This is the story of America and since 9/11 it's gotten totally out of control. Or maybe it's just more obvious. At least to me.
But getting back to this insane deportation binge, those who SHOULD worry are those who are neither Jewish nor Anglo. Trump is going after people he and his white-supremacist advisor Stephen Miller deem inferior, black and brown people. The "other." Our local newspaper ran a story yesterday about how ICE is deporting Laotian (Hmong) men who were given asylum decades ago because they helped us in our efforts to "defeat Communism" in Southeast Asia, efforts (i.e. a bloody war) that failed, of course. Hence the asylum.
This particular group of deportees were children when they came to Minnesota and followed the Hmong custom of marrying at 14. This triggered arrests on charges of sexual predation. The men have long since "rehabilitated" themselves. They have "adapted" to Western culture and then some. Many support their families through vegetable farming. Many opened restaurants. They have become indispensable to our local food culture, not in the way undocumented immigrants are in places like Iowa and Kansas (and Minnesota) where they are "employed" (read enslaved) by meat packers like Cargill to do the dangerous and inhumane dirty work "no one else will do" for poverty-scale pay.
The Hmong are U.S. citizens, fully self-sufficient, and are educating Americans about how food should be grown and cooked. And this is what happens to them. They get thrown out of the country; their lives destroyed not once but twice by the ruthless corporate-sponsored warmongers who run our country and always have.
“U.S. global corporations have enlisted the U.S. government to overturn governments whose resources and/or cheap labor those corporations seek to control.” Sure. But Russia, China, Germany and France are all very obvious players at the same game. Different global U.S. industries have conflicting interests as well, preventing the U.S. from acting with the same long term consistent vision that China and Russia can.
The Ukraine really isn’t of much strategic interest to the US or US corporations though. Nor is Russia really- Russia is an economic midget. It is in the EU’s interest to pull Ukraine away from Russia and the EU has been driving Ukraine away from Moscow. The Biden Administration still saw the EU as an American dependency that the US should support. The Trump Administration tends to see the EU as a threat to US economic and political power that needs to be contained, hence the pivot towards helping Russia kill Ukrainian civilians we have seen in the last 6 months.
Where do you get the idea that Russia is an "economic midget?" On the Purchasing Power Parity scale, it's the fourth largest economy in the world. Forget the nonsense of GDP, which counts financial shenanigans as somehow beneficial. Look at natural resources, education, real manufacturing of real things.
Yes, and. . . I can tell you this from my personal experience. My brother is a high-up VP at Cargill, the Big Ag giant and the world biggest privately held company. He explained to me back in 2022 when the SMO began why his company would stay in Russia while other Western nations were leaving "in protest." Cargill is playing the long game, he said. This invasion represented step two in "weakening Russia," the first step being regime change (see 2014 Maidan coup, orchestrated by the U.S.) in Ukraine. Putin had no choice but to invade when peace talks failed (see Boris Johnson's last-minute appearance at the Istanbul talks, and how he sabotaged the process by essentially threatening Zelensky into cooperating with the West). NATO expansion to include Ukraine meant U.S. missiles on Russia's border and much else. We knew Putin would invade because we gave him no choice. The assumption was that Russia's SMO would fail and that the people, impoverished by war, would rise up and oust Putin. This was step two. The 2019 Rand Corporation report (it's online) outlines this plan in detail.
So, why regime change in Russia? Take a look at a map. Russia will be the most powerful nation in the world as climate change continues to ravage the planet, thanks to what my brother calls its "strategic location." As he put it, "Siberia is already becoming the new global breadbasket." Our own Midwest is running out of water and horribly polluted and too hot, thanks in part to Big Ag's predations. Naturally, Cargill wants to remain in control of global grain shipping and distribution. If the West controls Russia, no problem. If not. . . uh-oh. . . .
Uh-oh is right. We have managed to squander any good will between us and them since the USSR collapsed, breaking every promise we ever made on the assumption that Putin would be gone soon. He simply outsmarted us. This was no very hard, actually. Once you figure out that every promise we make we break, you proceed accordingly to beat us at our own game.
As to Russian resources, obviously food is the tip of the iceberg (NPI) what with Russia's immense reserves of oil and gas, precious metals, and everything else.
Even China is aware of its own vulnerability. Compared to Russia's "strategic location," its own location requires it to partner with Russia in the interests of its own long-term stability. Western elites are too short-term in their thinking to consider such things. The next election looms. The Deep State doesn't care about elections. We've always managed to get our way through imperialist (military and soft power) means. Those days are gone.
It's sad that no one I know has ever heard of BRICS. Again, our MSM is the new Pravda. Thank God for Substack.
I get the idea from working in medtech manufacturing and seeing how embarrassing Russian manufacturing products are compared to Poland, Turkey or even Indonesia. Russia is a dig and deliver economy that mostly squanders the talents of its workforce because the extraction industries and big Ag are most of foreign trade. Russia’s current economic position vs China is a lot like India vs. Great Britain under the Raj. PPP is nice but it’s a measure of internal wealth not a country’s relative strength.
Well Yasha I wish you luck. This is nothing but "racism."
This has always been coming for the USA: the wonderful idea of taking immigrants to their bosom has always been bullshit unless they are WHITE.
Sadly I have NO sadness (after all the wars the US has inflicted on Sovereign Countries around the world) not many in the US cared.....they just went shopping!
I lived in the US for 23yrs and left when GWB was about to be nominated.
Wonderful idea BUT flawed. ONE WHITE megolomaniac (catatalyst) has been born.
I imagine New York is a safer place to be right now?
I see many parallels with what happened in the French Revolution with regard to the Law.
Thank heavens there are STILL some 'lawyers' who will do the right thing..........this is not going to last.
No bombs dropped on YOU USA but you 'implode' from within.
I'm third generation white yankee and even I'm formulating a plan for when they get to rounding up my cohort, while doing the things I can to at least be a speed bump to this shit as it picks up momentum.
Interesting things happened with fire and police dept in gold old Bell.
Damn: that article hits dark. My family members in the States are Vietnamese-Americans, but professional class - doctors, mostly. Not surprisingly: they all loathe Trump. I thought their status would be pretty safe in future, but after reading the article, I now have my doubts.
It's probably not what you want to hear, Yasha - but if things go really dark, you, Evgenia and kids are welcome in Australia. The society is still pretty racist - blackface was acceptable on TV until pretty recently - but it's *amateur* racism. That sort of *professional* racism showed by Stephen Miller would be so offputting that he'd be more likely to have the shit beaten out of him on the streets than promoted.
(Needless to say, the standing offer of welcome is also for my family. We have better public transport and better public space. And the playgrounds are to die for.)
Elon Musk, Zohran Mamdani and Yasha Levine: the New York Three (with more to be added).
Hopefully you beat the system like the Chicago 7.
Hi Yasha! Totally agree. But I wouldn't be too concerned if I were you. Being Jewish is (at least for now) a good thing. Hence the nonsense that Zohran, who is not Jewish and also not "white," MUST be an anti-Semite. His "communist tendencies" don't help either.
I subscribed to learn why you, a former Russian, think Putin's invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. Is it because you think NATO expansion was not a threat to Russia? Or is it because of your memories of Russia during a horrible time there (that the West helped make worse)? Or Is it because there's a lot of anti-Semitism in Russia?
I think people "who were there" are sometimes too enmeshed to see the big picture, which (in my view) is that U.S. global corporations have enlisted the U.S. government to overturn governments whose resources and/or cheap labor those corporations seek to control. This is the story of America and since 9/11 it's gotten totally out of control. Or maybe it's just more obvious. At least to me.
But getting back to this insane deportation binge, those who SHOULD worry are those who are neither Jewish nor Anglo. Trump is going after people he and his white-supremacist advisor Stephen Miller deem inferior, black and brown people. The "other." Our local newspaper ran a story yesterday about how ICE is deporting Laotian (Hmong) men who were given asylum decades ago because they helped us in our efforts to "defeat Communism" in Southeast Asia, efforts (i.e. a bloody war) that failed, of course. Hence the asylum.
This particular group of deportees were children when they came to Minnesota and followed the Hmong custom of marrying at 14. This triggered arrests on charges of sexual predation. The men have long since "rehabilitated" themselves. They have "adapted" to Western culture and then some. Many support their families through vegetable farming. Many opened restaurants. They have become indispensable to our local food culture, not in the way undocumented immigrants are in places like Iowa and Kansas (and Minnesota) where they are "employed" (read enslaved) by meat packers like Cargill to do the dangerous and inhumane dirty work "no one else will do" for poverty-scale pay.
The Hmong are U.S. citizens, fully self-sufficient, and are educating Americans about how food should be grown and cooked. And this is what happens to them. They get thrown out of the country; their lives destroyed not once but twice by the ruthless corporate-sponsored warmongers who run our country and always have.
“U.S. global corporations have enlisted the U.S. government to overturn governments whose resources and/or cheap labor those corporations seek to control.” Sure. But Russia, China, Germany and France are all very obvious players at the same game. Different global U.S. industries have conflicting interests as well, preventing the U.S. from acting with the same long term consistent vision that China and Russia can.
The Ukraine really isn’t of much strategic interest to the US or US corporations though. Nor is Russia really- Russia is an economic midget. It is in the EU’s interest to pull Ukraine away from Russia and the EU has been driving Ukraine away from Moscow. The Biden Administration still saw the EU as an American dependency that the US should support. The Trump Administration tends to see the EU as a threat to US economic and political power that needs to be contained, hence the pivot towards helping Russia kill Ukrainian civilians we have seen in the last 6 months.
Where do you get the idea that Russia is an "economic midget?" On the Purchasing Power Parity scale, it's the fourth largest economy in the world. Forget the nonsense of GDP, which counts financial shenanigans as somehow beneficial. Look at natural resources, education, real manufacturing of real things.
Yes, and. . . I can tell you this from my personal experience. My brother is a high-up VP at Cargill, the Big Ag giant and the world biggest privately held company. He explained to me back in 2022 when the SMO began why his company would stay in Russia while other Western nations were leaving "in protest." Cargill is playing the long game, he said. This invasion represented step two in "weakening Russia," the first step being regime change (see 2014 Maidan coup, orchestrated by the U.S.) in Ukraine. Putin had no choice but to invade when peace talks failed (see Boris Johnson's last-minute appearance at the Istanbul talks, and how he sabotaged the process by essentially threatening Zelensky into cooperating with the West). NATO expansion to include Ukraine meant U.S. missiles on Russia's border and much else. We knew Putin would invade because we gave him no choice. The assumption was that Russia's SMO would fail and that the people, impoverished by war, would rise up and oust Putin. This was step two. The 2019 Rand Corporation report (it's online) outlines this plan in detail.
So, why regime change in Russia? Take a look at a map. Russia will be the most powerful nation in the world as climate change continues to ravage the planet, thanks to what my brother calls its "strategic location." As he put it, "Siberia is already becoming the new global breadbasket." Our own Midwest is running out of water and horribly polluted and too hot, thanks in part to Big Ag's predations. Naturally, Cargill wants to remain in control of global grain shipping and distribution. If the West controls Russia, no problem. If not. . . uh-oh. . . .
Uh-oh is right. We have managed to squander any good will between us and them since the USSR collapsed, breaking every promise we ever made on the assumption that Putin would be gone soon. He simply outsmarted us. This was no very hard, actually. Once you figure out that every promise we make we break, you proceed accordingly to beat us at our own game.
As to Russian resources, obviously food is the tip of the iceberg (NPI) what with Russia's immense reserves of oil and gas, precious metals, and everything else.
Even China is aware of its own vulnerability. Compared to Russia's "strategic location," its own location requires it to partner with Russia in the interests of its own long-term stability. Western elites are too short-term in their thinking to consider such things. The next election looms. The Deep State doesn't care about elections. We've always managed to get our way through imperialist (military and soft power) means. Those days are gone.
It's sad that no one I know has ever heard of BRICS. Again, our MSM is the new Pravda. Thank God for Substack.
I get the idea from working in medtech manufacturing and seeing how embarrassing Russian manufacturing products are compared to Poland, Turkey or even Indonesia. Russia is a dig and deliver economy that mostly squanders the talents of its workforce because the extraction industries and big Ag are most of foreign trade. Russia’s current economic position vs China is a lot like India vs. Great Britain under the Raj. PPP is nice but it’s a measure of internal wealth not a country’s relative strength.
Well Yasha I wish you luck. This is nothing but "racism."
This has always been coming for the USA: the wonderful idea of taking immigrants to their bosom has always been bullshit unless they are WHITE.
Sadly I have NO sadness (after all the wars the US has inflicted on Sovereign Countries around the world) not many in the US cared.....they just went shopping!
I lived in the US for 23yrs and left when GWB was about to be nominated.
Wonderful idea BUT flawed. ONE WHITE megolomaniac (catatalyst) has been born.
I imagine New York is a safer place to be right now?
I see many parallels with what happened in the French Revolution with regard to the Law.
Thank heavens there are STILL some 'lawyers' who will do the right thing..........this is not going to last.
No bombs dropped on YOU USA but you 'implode' from within.
The Centre cannot hold.
BUILD walls around NYC......loved this City.
I'm third generation white yankee and even I'm formulating a plan for when they get to rounding up my cohort, while doing the things I can to at least be a speed bump to this shit as it picks up momentum.
Interesting things happened with fire and police dept in gold old Bell.
https://bsky.app/profile/sarahtaber.bsky.social/post/3lt5qxlxpjs2u
Hard to shake off those white nationalism roots.