Ukraine: Recent History that Remains Unwritten.

Quote, "The draft proposed holding talks over a period of 10-15 years regarding the status of Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014." Who am I quoting? Reuters, in the absence of real journalism. What is the point of the quotation? In 2022, Ukraine allegedly proposed that they would leave the Russian occupation of Crimea unchallenged for a period of "ten to fifteen years" as part of a peace plan now referred to in retrospect as if anyone knew anything about it.

There was a meeting in Istanbul on March 29th of 2022: that, at least, is an historical fact.

What is not known is why Vladimir Putin ordered his northern army to withdraw from the steps of Kyiv on approximately the same day: the current incarnation of Wikipedia (i.e., a text that can change at any time) states blandly, "Russia began withdrawing its forces from the Kyiv area on 29 March…". This was an army that had marched from the north and was ordered to return to the north, i.e., the Belarusian border.

Of all the oddities in this badly recorded and barely observed war, this raises several of the most important unasked questions: what was Vladimir Putin offered (or threatened with, or told) that resulted in the orders being given to abandon that (very successful) offensive against Ukraine's capital city terminus ante quem March 29th of 2022?

It may be easily said that the Istanbul negotiations accomplished nothing at all, and many sources (from all sides) now do state this… but, in fact, (1) these negotiations resulted in one of Putin's most crucial victories being turned into a defeat (i.e., the Russians abandoned their offensive position in the suburbs of Kyiv, where they were already close enough to destroy the city with very cheap artillery arrays unloaded from the back of a truck, etc.) and (2) they revealed Ukraine's willingness to abandon Crimea for what sounds like a period of time presumed to be long enough for Vladimir Putin to die of natural causes ("let's say ten to fifteen years").

And why? Why did either one of these things happen? Based on available information, neither one of them make sense; perhaps there is unavailable information that would suddenly reveal how both make sense. And it is hard to imagine that anyone other than Joe Biden played the crucial role, unseen and undocumented, on the sidelines: it is very hard to imagine that France or Germany (or China) stepped in and somehow compelled that northern army to return to Belarus —with the carrot or the stick.

Sparta: Socialism in Principle, Aristocracy in Practice.

PLUTARCH GAIDEN: EPISODE 3.5!

I certainly hope you all know the meaning of the word Gaiden: 外伝. ;-)

LINK: https://youtube.com/live/SkpW33jcSfE

JJ McCullough is Right About Canada

In part a riposte to J.J. McCullough…
LINK: https://www.youtube.com/@JJMcCullough/videos
…And in part a riposte to a video titled, "JJ McCullough Is Wrong About Canada", from a channel (oddly) called The New Travel:
LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMpngsJSMyc

And here's the link to the video I uploaded myself, JJ McCullough is Right About Canada: https://youtu.be/gwVpxfx1wJw

[Other voices:] "I was also eight months pregnant at the time…"

The link should take you to the 3:22 mark…

just a few seconds later, the quotation that I've made into the title of this Patreon post ensues.

This is a rare example of Lola Phoenix, the host of the show, flying off the handle like a cast iron skillet cooking up illegal fireworks after decades of metal fatigue.

"I am trying really hard not to be furious on your behalf…"

LINK: https://youtu.be/KBy7InAKtP0&t=202

The video had only 21 views when I clicked on it, incidentally (the prior episode had 12, and the one before it had only 19… despite a relative ocean of time elapsing between each upload). She is famous within an even small demimonde than I.

Keep in mind: as demimondes go, veganism is narrow but deep, whereas nihilism is vast enough to encompass the whole world, and rises up to the zenith of our sky.

The Spartan Utopia and the Death of the Buddha (Mahāparinibbāna Sutta)

A sort of footnote on the historical reality (or unreality) of Lycurgus of Sparta, less than three minutes long:

LINK: https://youtube.com/shorts/mZw9_Tm0obs

And, now, a sort of footnote to a footnote: The Historical Buddha: Did He Really Exist?

LINK: https://youtube.com/shorts/vE9DYWfthSo

The illusory purity of inaction and ignorance: the real impurity of action and wisdom.

This is an extreme example of the excuses being harder to quit than the thing itself: Irish neutrality has ended, but the excuses made for it still haunt this earth. Here's the brief article I'd like to draw your attention to:

LINK: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/hear-no-evil-see-no-evil-speak-1.409461

In the midst of that article you'll find the remarkable phrase "One side was as bad as the other" —a uniquely Irish attitude toward World War Two that I still encounter in Newfoundland today. This dismissive attitude is not the same as outright Neo-Nazi-ism, but it has created the basis for the peculiar kind of antisemitism now prevalent in Ireland (and amongst those who think of themselves as Irish in Canada, to some extent).

During WW2, the Irish government did not allow the public to have any knowledge of the then-ongoing holocaust, as part of a policy of "neutrality" that can indeed be glossed as passive support for the Nazis. It also established the pretense that (i) the Irish, in their victimhood, are morally superior to the British Empire, but also (ii) the whole world outside of Ireland cannot possibly be worse than the British Empire. As the linked-to article shows, this "logic" was extended to both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.

The Irish Press told its readers in April 1943, "There is no kind of oppression visited on any minority in Europe which the Six-County nationalists [of Ireland] have not also endured."

Moral superiority, alas, does not result from the things we do not do, and wisdom does not result from the things we do not know: the Irish have confused moral ignorance with morality, thinking action inferior to the purity of inaction. Neutrality justified by ignorance of evil soon starts to justify both ignorance and evil for the sake of that neutrality.

Plutarch 03: Primitive Communism, Decadent Aristocracy. Lycurgus of Sparta.

LINK: https://youtu.be/FBCSRMTAZJw

Share the link with a friend, share the link with your worst enemy. ;-)

We're dealing with the intersection of mythology and political philosophy once again with the third chapter of Plutarch's Lives: the "biography" of an entirely fictional character, Lycurgus of Sparta —presented both as "real history" and as the model for a better, future society that many have emulated.

Thrasymachus: Nihilism Against Idealism, Plato's Republic and the Socratic Method.

A few of you have heard this before, when it was a podcast and not yet a youtube video.

If so, I would challenge you to leave an intelligent comment on the video this time: you have "a head start", relative to other members of the audience who are only now hearing it for the first time, and there are very few intelligent comments (publicly) on these videos (although I do hear back, privately, from many members of the audience).

LINK: https://youtu.be/YRKmDw4aov8

Race is not a social construct: an anti-racist perspective.

[A member of the audience writes in reply to my short video titled, Anti-Racism: Perception and Action:]

I think the real issue is that skin color doesn't tell you anything meaningful about a person's character, which is the only thing that matters. The degree to which anyone else believes your skin color defines you of course changes the way they treat you, but this is a false belief, since race is a social construct rather than a biological reality. Realizing this is as close as we can get to being colorblind, but since there are still people who believe the mirage, we are stuck navigating that regardless.

[And I reply:]

No, you're making two incompatible points: (1) "I think the real issue is that skin color doesn't tell you anything meaningful about a person's character, which is the only thing that matters." (2) "…race is a social construct rather than a biological reality."

Point two is nonsensical if you profoundly understand point one: skin color is a biological reality but is not salient to judgements made about a person's character —it is "real but irrelevant". It would be deeply incoherent to then try to argue that it is unreal and a social construct: in parallel, it wouldn't liberate anyone to argue that homosexuality is unreal and a social construct.

As a further —even more absurd— parallel: it doesn't liberate anyone to argue that veganism is biologically unreal and merely "a social construct". The cultural concept of veganism is different in China, America and Israel today, and a human being could reasonably say that these cultural assumptions are "socially constructed" in some sense, but it is utterly absurd to claim that veganism as such, sensu stricto, is a biologically unreal social construct. Likewise, cultural assumptions surrounding homosexuality are different from place to place, etc.

There is a biological difference between beef and tofu; there is a scientifically, objectively real difference between a vegan and a non-vegan —and, likewise, there is a scientifically, objectively real difference between someone who never drinks alcohol and someone who regularly does —and this difference is ultimately rooted in the biological difference between alcohol and orange juice. If there were no chemically real difference between alcohol and water, and if there were no biologically real difference between the effect of alcohol and the effect of water on your brain and body, this whole line of reasoning would be ridiculous.

Is there some great step taken forward for human equality if we say that the effects of alcohol are "biologically unreal" and that alcoholism is merely "a social construct"? Perhaps the relationship between cholesterol and heart attacks is similarly relativistic?

My video (Anti-Racism: Perception and Action) already made this point: disregarding differences does not overcome them, but deepens them. We do not make progress —and we do not liberate anyone— by pretending that these differences do not exist. What is shallow let us regard as shallow and what is profound let us regard as profound.

This is the London Review of Books… which has become a youtube channel… with all the inevitability of a can of tomato soup rolling down a staircase.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG1RRmjv760

Their struggle to avoid sounding self-congratulatory exacerbates their idiocy: it would have been better if they could have spoken self-confidently in the first person, "This is how and why I became an intellectual, and this is what it means to me, etc."