Before hitting the road :-)

Dear friends,

I am about to hit the road and do what I like most: jump in the car with my wife, leave everything behind, and spend a couple of days in the Florida wilderness.  God willing, we will be back on Friday.

In the meantime, I want to leave you with a few short notes:

1) Podcast: there definitely was some kind of glitch in the 2nd part of the podcast and I had no time to detect it.  Lesson learned: it was a mistake to leave the post with questions open until Friday 18000 GMT and hope to get the podcast ready my Monday.  The next time around, I will leave three days to post questions (Monday-Wednesday) and then I will use the remaining time (Wednesday-Sunday) to prepare the podcast for release on Monday.  From now on and until the new blog is up, I will release on Soundcloud, Mediafire and Youtube.

2) My "homophobic video": from a comment posted today I realized that some of you had not realized that the person sitting next to the cop is not a a woman at all but, to quote the official dogma, a person manifesting a "normal and natural variation in human sexuality and is not in and of itself a source of negative psychological effects".

3) These past couple of weeks I have been bombarded with people accusing me of endorsing Šešelj or of "discrediting" or even "abandoning" Strelkov.  What these critics apparently fail to understand is that I can discuss somebody's views or situation without necessarily endorsing or betraying that person.  As it happens, I have no personal opinion whatsoever about Šešelj and I have the utmost respect for Strelkov.  My view of the world and of people is not binary, black or white, and I like to freely analyze and discuss ideas, situations and personalities.  If you are too stupid to cope with that kind of diversity of approaches, then I suggest you avoid my blog like the plague because I sure intend to continue to do that.

4) The "Putin is weak and beaten" chorus is not letting up.  I personally explain that by too much exposure to the corporate media which is constantly presenting Putin as beat, isolated, humiliated and otherwise broken.  Since these comments never come with fact based and logically presented arguments, I don't see the point if trying to refute them.

5) Novorussia: today Foreign Minister Lavrov spoke during a Q&A at the Duma and he also mentioned the possibility that the economic blockade of Novorussia by the Nazi regime in Kiev (which basically stole the money of the people of Novorussia) could be a prelude to a Ukrainian attack.  I am personally convinced that the recent statements of Putin and Lavrov about this possibility are designed to prepare the public opinion of Russia and, to some degree, the EU to situation in which Russia might have to intervene to stop such an attack.  The situation right now is extremely dangerous, but not hopeless as I am sure that there is a lot of pressure put upon the junta and its US bosses by Russia and other countries not to attack.

6) US elections: I am not a US citizen, so I don't get to vote anyway.  If I did, I still would not vote.  The choice of a lesser evil is still a choice for evil.  It is also a de-facto endorsement of the legitimacy of the system.  Can I recommend to those interested in this issue to read an old post of mine entitled "USSR 1974 - USA 2007: back to the future"? 

Okay, that's it for today.  I am off to my beloved wilderness with wifey.  See you all in a couple of days!

The Saker