RadixJournal - The Cheerleader Who Got In The Game

00:00:00.000 gets us, I guess, to Nord Stream in the sense that the first one came up around 2011 and then

00:00:06.060 Nord Stream 2 was going to come online imminently, but obviously we'll never go online. And these

00:00:15.060 were multi-billion dollar projects. And it is actually a huge feat of engineering. So they were

00:00:25.840 privately built. They were done with Gazprom. So I guess whether you consider that to be a private

00:00:33.460 organization or not, I guess it's up to you. It was the former oil and gas monopoly that was

00:00:41.060 privatized, quote unquote. And so there was a tremendous amount of European and Russian money

00:00:51.060 that went into it. Nord Stream 2 never went online. Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2 was basically

00:00:59.180 canceled immediately after the invasion. And you have these issues that, you know, I saw a Tucker

00:01:07.140 Carlson piece that I would like to talk more about, but they play these clips from Joe Biden saying,

00:01:17.680 you know, if Putin invades Ukraine, you know, Nord Stream 2 is out, we're going to do something,

00:01:23.360 you know, one way or the other, it will not go online. And yeah, I think some things like that

00:01:30.560 were kind of threatening, almost said like a mob boss, you know, one way or another, you know, it won't

00:01:38.840 happen. I get that. But the fact is, it didn't happen. And it didn't take much of any cross Atlantic

00:01:46.380 diplomatic pressure for that to be cut off almost immediately. The Germans decided that, and they

00:01:53.020 made a fateful decision to do that. I actually saw an interview that Deutsche Welle is actually a really

00:01:59.700 good kind of CNN alternative, if you will. And most of their, or I don't know, half of their stuff is in

00:02:06.700 English. But they were interviewing a green, German green politician and some German engineers.

00:02:15.740 And yeah, they, there was, there does not seem to be this like alt left that is promoting

00:02:23.980 reopening the Nord Stream. And I would imagine there is a sort of alt right that wants to work

00:02:31.880 with Russia. But I think a lot of those people are direct Russian assets, to be frank. But so this

00:02:40.880 happened, it happened right in the middle, there was a bombing of both Nord Stream pipelines. As you

00:02:48.700 know, I'm sure. And it actually news of it was occurring just as we went live on Tuesday. So I didn't

00:02:57.320 quite know what to make of it. And I had to look into it. And the first thing you would say, of course,

00:03:05.800 is what I saw a lot on Twitter early on, which is that this must have been a CIA operation. And

00:03:15.740 because NATO, if not Washington, and maybe even some forces within Europe as well. I saw someone

00:03:26.580 throwing out the idea that France might have done it because they have submarine capabilities,

00:03:32.520 a very good submarine capabilities. Who knows, maybe that's true. Maybe that's not. It's just a,

00:03:38.560 you know, evidence free speculation, just simply operating on cui bono. But you can understand

00:03:46.820 the cui bono rationale for this benefit to the United States or NATO or the West, in the sense that it

00:03:55.760 cuts off Russia permanently from, or well, if not permanently, about as close as permanent as you can

00:04:05.360 get. That, you know, methane plume coming out from the water, that's going to be bad optics,

00:04:14.380 first off, forever generating again. It was, yeah, it does seem to be rather decisive in that sense.

00:04:25.900 From what I understand, and I have read into this, Boris mentioned this as well on a couple of our calls,

00:04:33.560 and I've looked at some other sources that more or less confirm this, that energy prices will be

00:04:40.860 absolutely terrible. I've, I've heard someone who's paying 400 euros a month and it's at 1400 euros a

00:04:48.520 month. I, that was just a little tidbit that I heard somewhere. So if anything, if that is true,

00:04:54.040 that energies have doubled, tripled or quadrupled, that is a huge bitch. I mean, that's going to,

00:05:01.000 first off, not even cut down on discretionary spending or whatever. I mean, some people just

00:05:06.260 simply cannot pay that. I mean, and so that is terrible and could cause unrest. Even your vacation

00:05:15.160 is out the window. You've sold your other car and you're selling your grandma's jewelry to,

00:05:21.800 you know, put food on the table. I totally get that. But it, it just is what it is. I mean, they,

00:05:28.900 you know, Russia is playing this game where it wanted to use natural resources as leverage and

00:05:39.080 as a, as a weapon. And I do think that there's a strategy of, you know, external

00:05:47.000 destabilization. And, you know, I, I don't mean that in the sense that

00:05:54.280 there are going to be coups throughout Western Europe and, you know, blood in the streets. I

00:06:00.260 doubt that I, there might very well be, you know, some, something resembling that in some way. I mean,

00:06:08.680 I, you know, if people, if people are getting, I don't know, there are laws in the United States

00:06:13.940 about shutting off heat in the winter, at least, you know, if, if the Germans, average Germans are

00:06:21.100 getting their heat shut off and people are freezing or something that obviously that's a disaster,

00:06:27.620 but I don't, I don't think that is going to happen. And I don't think the German government

00:06:32.540 is going to allow such a catastrophe to occur. I mean, something like that happened in Texas and

00:06:38.680 it was like a 48 hour deal in Texas and it was talked about forever. And there actually were some

00:06:48.620 deaths that were directly as a result of that. So it's a, it's a serious thing, but the idea of,

00:06:54.020 you know, I I've been in Germany in the winter, I mean, four or five months of people freezing in

00:07:00.420 their homes, burning their furniture, the government just won't allow that to happen. They just won't.

00:07:06.660 So it's, it's horrible. I totally get it. And I don't even know where you go from here because

00:07:12.920 there's no, there's going to be no more Russian gas. I mean, this is not, you know, as I, as I've

00:07:20.880 been saying, I mean, Putin has doubled, tripled down. I mean, he is in this thing and there is no

00:07:28.680 turning this around, you know, much like say, um, uh, Georgia in 2008, or even the Crimea thing,

00:07:38.440 in 2014, where granted there was still something like a cold war going on, but you know, we can

00:07:46.620 still deal with Putin. It's not a big deal. Yeah. He's kind of rough around the edges. No, it's,

00:07:52.640 it's over. And so a lot of these things are just like fate on complete. I mean, you can whine all you

00:08:00.260 want. Um, but it's not turning around. And I think that might've been somewhat of the motivation,

00:08:06.320 whoever did this, uh, was motivated to kind of reach some kind of end point. Like you're never

00:08:14.980 turning this back on now. Keep in mind, Putin shut off North stream one, which was operational

00:08:22.300 three or four weeks ago. So there was no gas, uh, flowing through the tubes, but there was still

00:08:33.900 obviously methane that was, um, I don't know the right word dormant or something in the tube. Uh,

00:08:40.760 so it's not like Germany was getting all of this natural gas and, you know, living the high life.

00:08:49.540 And then the CIA bombed the pipeline and they can't have money anymore. I mean, it, it, that,

00:08:58.900 that just did not happen. Um, it's a very, it's a much more difficult situation. And that's why I

00:09:04.760 think who exactly did this is unclear, but it is interesting to speculate on it. Um, again, I,

00:09:15.800 I already mentioned there was a little, someone throwing out France. They have the, um, submarine

00:09:21.300 capabilities. Uh, there, the, uh, us did offer a warning to Germany about this. This has been reported

00:09:30.540 and, and, you know, reputable sources. So I don't think it's a fake news, but who knows exactly. I

00:09:41.080 mean, there's no doubt that, you know, elite play games with strategic leagues and so on. Uh, but they,

00:09:47.060 there was a report on it. And, um, uh, so that it does seem odd if the U S is engaging in these dark

00:09:56.300 actions of international terrorism. I mean, keep in mind, if the U S did this, they would be attacking

00:10:04.240 something in the Euro zone in, um, I guess in, uh, Swedish territory, uh, in terms of waterways,

00:10:14.320 uh, 200, you know, feet below the surface engaging in state terrorism. Uh, now that doesn't mean that

00:10:24.140 the U S wouldn't be willing to do something like that, but that is a pretty dastardly diabolical

00:10:35.780 thing to do. And if you were ever caught, like if that, let's say it all went wrong. I mean, okay,

00:10:43.200 let's say it went right. And the U S actually did do this and we find out 20 years from now

00:10:50.900 or something, I think people would basically consider it, you know, an interesting thing,

00:10:55.880 but it's water under the bridge and, Oh, in some weird way, I'm glad they did it because

00:11:00.540 NATO defeated Russia in this protracted war. If that situation went wrong, I mean, the, the risk

00:11:11.340 of the, like 1% chance. I mean, when the risk of 1% chance of failure is so high, um, I just,

00:11:21.580 it's hard to imagine them doing this. And it's hard to imagine them, like they could exert pressure

00:11:29.120 on Germany to never consider the North stream. And keep in mind, North stream two has been closed

00:11:37.420 for six months. Putin himself cut off the gas three weeks ago. So what you're, you're so desperate to

00:11:46.600 go bomb it just in case this just, I see the notion that was promoted by Tucker Carlson and most of the

00:11:57.460 dissident, right. I do see it. I just kind of don't see it. I mean, at the end of the day,

00:12:05.080 their willingness to do that just strikes me as it's, it's just too much. What, what bubbled up to

00:12:12.220 the surface is a drop in the bucket. It's a co-production to the tunes of tens of billions.

00:12:20.480 I mean, it's, again, ecological disaster too. It's an environmental disaster.

00:12:25.360 Yeah. Right. And you know, look, the Putin doesn't care about that. And even darker elements within the

00:12:32.620 American security state don't care about that, but you know, it, it, it is what it is, but you're,

00:12:39.140 you're attacking mostly German property actually. Right. The physical infrastructure, right. The

00:12:45.820 actual type of German private property also, and not, I mean, that's why it's kind of weirdly a

00:12:51.740 act of terrorism. Um, that being said, uh, uh, Russia owes money on this thing. They aren't going

00:13:00.800 to be getting any, uh, likely any revenue from that, uh, particularly since the day that it occurred,

00:13:08.700 not coincidentally, presumably, um, this, uh, Norwegian, uh, pipeline came online. So you can then

00:13:19.480 claim, I mean, I, I don't think Russia really even needs an excuse. They could just refuse to pay at

00:13:24.920 this point, but you can then claim a force majeure and, uh, no longer continue payments on this

00:13:32.560 massive feat of engineering. Um, you can also put it offline. I mean, if you think that, uh,

00:13:41.900 you know, if, if you think that, uh, Germans are freezing to death and you've kind of like

00:13:47.940 underestimated their capabilities, um, or, or competency, and then you, you've, you've also

00:13:55.620 probably kind of overestimated natural, uh, national, uh, outrage and civil unrest and so on.

00:14:03.660 Um, then you can say, you know, Oh, you know, we'd love to help you. We would love to help, you know,

00:14:08.100 but you're, you're a bastard friend, NATO allies destroyed this. So I agree. The whole thing is

00:14:16.300 very unclear. I mean, Blinken said it's in no one's interest, which seems to be a bit of a punt. I mean,

00:14:23.020 obviously anything that happens is in someone's interest. Uh, but to say that, to just like wave

00:14:32.460 your hands and say that Russia didn't do it, I, I do believe is naive. Um, you know, similar this,

00:14:42.000 this harkens back to the Daria Dugin situation or Dugina situation where, you know, look,

00:14:50.820 ostensibly you could say, why on earth would Russia conceivably try to assassinate Alexander Dugin or

00:15:01.220 even worse, his own daughter, why would they do this? These people are hyper Russian patriots.

00:15:09.560 So it must have been done by the CIA or Ukraine. Um, that is ostensibly that, that is completely

00:15:18.700 plausible. And that, that is what I thought when it immediately occurred, but sometimes you do have

00:15:25.080 to sit back and first off, ask yourself, I mean, surely Ukrainians have bigger fish to fry than knocking

00:15:35.800 off the daughter of a philosopher who, though not unconnected with the regime is fairly marginal

00:15:45.580 and kind of a, uh, you know, mascot for, you know, a bit crazy, neo-Orthodox, multipolarity, Russian

00:16:00.320 imperialism. He's a bit of a dreamer and he'll go on the, a bit like me in a way, in the sense that he's

00:16:07.760 kind of over S his influence is overestimated due to the fact that he has been on the mainstream

00:16:15.840 media. He's been on 60 minutes, he's been on other places. And so, you know, would they do that? If,

00:16:23.260 if you, would you, you know, engage in an assassination within enemy territory at a great risk,

00:16:32.320 and even in a great risk of that backfiring of, of that creating outrage and so on from

00:16:40.740 the world or even your allies. I mean, it just, it just strikes me as it starts to get unlikely when

00:16:47.700 you look at it soberly. And then when you look at it soberly, you start to see the motivations for,

00:16:55.060 uh, Russia to do that. First off, they certainly have the willingness. If you are well-connected and

00:17:02.120 you're a billionaire, that is really nice. And I hope you enjoy your Lamborghini, but it's probably

00:17:09.900 not going to last. And in fact, you and your family will likely be, will end up dead in your

00:17:16.220 luxury apartment pretty soon because that is the trend. And I don't know what actually motivated each

00:17:26.480 in every one of these assassinations, but anyone who was viewed as some kind of threat or has just

00:17:32.420 simply outused his, uh, usefulness ends up knocked off in, in really brutal fashion. So the idea that

00:17:40.580 the Kremlin or, or some faction within it or national security faction isn't willing to do that is,

00:17:48.620 is certainly wrong. And I think it also kind of fits with Putin's or, uh, I should, I'll just say the

00:17:55.720 Kremlin's like general predicament, um, which is that they're trying to manage a population that is

00:18:05.800 mostly on depoliticized. It's not polarized, it's depoliticized. And you like the cheerleaders

00:18:16.520 on the far right, but sometimes, you know, it's kind of like the cheerleader who's cheering a little

00:18:23.300 too hard. And in fact, starts to step out onto the field and kind of, you know, deflect the football

00:18:30.720 and say, well, you know, why aren't you guys playing hard enough? Maybe I should get out there and play

00:18:35.180 hard. Well, those, that kind of cheerleader can be a problem and, you know, she's not serving her

00:18:41.940 purpose. So I can see a kind of calculus for this from Russia. And it just seems particularly in the

00:18:53.500 Dugina situation where she was murdered within Russian territory, not too far from Moscow. It,

00:19:00.360 it seems to make a lot more sense in that, in that way. Like is a CIA, CIA black ops division,

00:19:09.440 I mean, of all the things to do, you're going to do that. I mean, that just, it's, it's true. It

00:19:16.580 begins to strike me as implausible, more and more implausible as I think about it. Now, this situation

00:19:22.720 is a little bit different in the sense that it is in EU territory. Um, and it, and both situations

00:19:33.380 are completely opaque. I mean, we're not in the know and these are highly professional operations.

00:19:41.020 I mean, uh, the, the Dugina assassination that was done by professionals. That was not some random,

00:19:49.180 you know, shooting your ex-girlfriend or something that, that was done as a professional operation.

00:19:55.920 This even more. So this was done with underwater drones. Maybe it was done through a entity state

00:20:04.620 or otherwise that had access to submarines, deep sea divers. Um, this is not done with someone with a

00:20:11.520 snorkel and a, uh, hand, and a hand grenade or something like that. This was a serious thing.

00:20:18.640 And so it is, that makes it even more opaque. I mean, we're dealing with highly trained professional

00:20:25.680 killers or saboteurism in the latter instance. And so we're not in the loop. I'm about, let's say

00:20:32.880 80% certain that Dario Dugina was not killed by the West. I would say I'm more like 60, 65

00:20:43.540 that Russia did this last action. I kind of lean that way, but I don't really want to jump out there

00:20:53.220 and like throw down my cards, you know, it's like column. Here's my hand when I might very well

00:21:00.580 have a, you know, pair of twos or something. I, I just, I, I'm not certain about this, but

00:21:08.180 the remarkable alacrity with which the entire dissident, right. And that includes like Tucker

00:21:17.300 and all these people around them, the, the, the fact that they just jumped out there

00:21:24.100 hours after it occurred and declared it a CIA operation, I thought was very remarkable.

00:21:30.740 Do you think that for Russia as a strategy, this would be the perfect time to try to get something

00:21:38.980 with a bit of nudging a yellow vests type movement again?

00:21:44.180 Yeah. I mean, that, that I was suggesting that there's another point that I just wanted to make

00:21:49.540 about like the, the Russian society and then the West. So,

00:21:56.740 and again, I have visited Russia, but only as a tourist, this was the impression I got. This is

00:22:05.140 what I hear from Boris. This is what I have read. Uh, and this is what I've heard as well from some,

00:22:13.140 you know, expat Russians who have, who were, who were talking about this stuff in English. And, and I

00:22:19.060 think my impression is that they're talking about it in a disinterested, uh, and, and genuine way, uh,

00:22:28.260 is that depoliticization. So you have 50% of the 50 to 60% of the population that is totally tuned out

00:22:36.260 and that just outsources all politics to Putin. But the deal is you can't direly affect our lives

00:22:48.260 with any political miscalculation. And you certainly can't demand that we fight a war for you.

00:22:54.340 So that type of situation is good in the, you know, medium to long-term your population doesn't

00:23:07.940 hate you. If there's a scandal, they don't want to get involved. They don't rally around some kind of

00:23:14.260 idealistic, idealistic reformer because they don't give a shit. And they're cynical as hell,

00:23:21.060 you know, for good reason. Uh, but that's also a danger once you start to fuck up. And once you

00:23:31.780 start, if you ever try to get them motivated, get them off the sidelines and in the game,

00:23:38.180 that also can be a very, uh, dire situation because the social contract you just made was with us doing

00:23:48.180 nothing politically. Like you, you've got this. You're the, you're the politician. We'll say,

00:23:52.980 we'll mutter cynical things about you under our breath. We won't actually do anything. We won't

00:23:57.540 support any operation. We won't engage in unrest surely. And we'll just kind of live our lives and

00:24:03.940 shop. Um, there's also another dangerous part of the Russian population, which is the, you know,

00:24:10.980 the Z fan, uh, you know, right wing extremist who think that Putin is, you know, playing with kit

00:24:19.780 gloves on and he hasn't nuked Ukraine and or Washington yet. And that's, he's a cuck. So that

00:24:28.020 is also a potentially dangerous situation. It's kind of like the cheerleader that I was describing who

00:24:34.500 stops cheering and starts, you know, jumps on the field and starts punching people that that's a

00:24:40.180 really potentially dangerous situation, but it's very different than like our hyper polarized,

00:24:47.780 hyper engaged situation that we have in America and, and the rest of the West where people,

00:24:56.980 you know, some little court filing occurs with regard to Mar-a-Lago and Trump and people

00:25:04.180 start yelling and opining and, uh, talking about how we need, you know, uh, Joe Biden isn't doing

00:25:14.020 enough against Trump and, you know, Oh, actually the FBI planted the evidence. We need to go protest

00:25:20.820 the FBI. I mean, you, we have, we're in a hyper polarized society and that has its own problems. I do

00:25:28.020 believe that large percentages of the population on left and right, it seems to be a little more

00:25:34.100 noticeable on the right, but I do think a lot of the left as well. The liberal left is crazy.

00:25:40.820 Um, but yeah, we've just gone nuts and we can't see straight because we are so polarized.

00:25:47.700 Um, I was gonna, I do think there was an interesting situation 20 years ago when you definitely saw the

00:25:57.220 polarization, you know, as far back as the nineties, but, uh, you know, like after the attacks of nine

00:26:07.780 11, there was a kind of weird deal that Bush made, which was that you're going to be hyper engaged in

00:26:17.140 the society. You're going to wave flags and wear flag pins and, you know, watch me land on an aircraft

00:26:26.740 carrier and sing the national anthem with more gusto. But I promise that all of our wars

00:26:33.780 won't actually affect you and that you won't have to do something. And so he did, I think quite

00:26:41.300 literally say, you know, the way to fight Osama bin Laden is to go to a shopping mall or Disneyland

00:26:48.420 and show him that, you know, we haven't given up, you know, we're still nihilistic consuming assholes.

00:26:55.780 And, you know, you haven't stopped us. We're not afraid, uh, to, uh, buy, um, Victoria's secret

00:27:04.580 lingerie or go on space mountain or something. I mean, it was a really kind of bizarre situation in a way.

00:27:13.460 And I think Putin might be in something, a situation kind of like that in the sense that

00:27:23.860 I, you know, Russians were kind of willing to be, to take in the propaganda because they,

00:27:30.180 they've just outsourced that aspect of their existence. They're not on the field politically.

00:27:37.620 And now Putin has to deal with the fact that he needs the, I mean, he clearly needs reserves to

00:27:44.660 come in and replace the dead and, or he's going to lose. And he would never have done partial

00:27:54.500 so-called mobilization if that were not the case. Uh, you know, I, I surely believe,

00:28:01.860 I certainly think that he thought this was going to be a, you know, two weeks, maybe a month.

00:28:09.700 We might even go all the way. I mean, look, he called out Kyiv as a hive of Nazis, you know? I mean,

00:28:17.060 you, you don't just say that without planning to go in and have a few show trials or have a regime

00:28:24.020 change and then create this like neutered buffer state that is, you know, maybe bring back Yanukovych

00:28:31.620 or something, who knows? Um, and, and, and it didn't work that way. So he has to do something

00:28:38.420 really damaging. It would be the equivalent of George W. Bush declaring a draft in, in 2004 and saying,

00:28:46.820 Oh, we got an insurgency here. You guys have to go out there and die. And keep in mind, even by 2004,

00:28:53.620 it was already hot. And certainly by 2005, 2006, there wasn't like civil unrest, but there, there

00:29:01.300 were, there was just a general cynicism and, uh, you know, his political, his, his approval writings

00:29:09.620 were, were at 20 or 30% or who knows. And, um, there was just a general disgust towards all this

00:29:17.940 stuff. And so that can happen really quickly when you need to like mobilize a kind of depoliticized

00:29:27.300 society, even one that's patriotic, it's still depoliticized. And so I do think this is a,

00:29:33.940 it's a fascinating situation and it, it does kind of, it's different, but it rhymes with the situation

00:29:42.740 that Bush was in.

RadixJournal - September 30, 2022

The Cheerleader Who Got In The Game

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