D.R. Bell's Blog

Since the Soviet government restricted the flow of information via "official" sources (e.g., Pravda), microwave radios were in demand. Families would huddle around them to listen to the Voice of America station. On low volume, of course.
We already know for a fact - thanks to Elon Musk and the "Twitter files" - that our government tried to restrict distribution of some of the non-sanctioned views. Now there's a proposed legislation called the RESTRICT Act that will protect us from Tik-Tok and give the government pretty broad powers over what we can do online. I'm sure it's for our own good.
https://reason.com/2023/03/29/could-t...

From Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard, one of the best geostrategy books of the modern era:
"Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an "antihegemonic" coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. ... Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of U.S. geostrategic skill ..."
This was written 25 years ago. I guess we've had a lack of skills ... or brains?
https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Chessboa...

In "Eleos" I stated that Pope Pius XII's actions during the Holocaust amounted to an astonishing moral failure. I had received some rather unpleasant emails over that. Well, a glimpse in the Vatican archives indicates that I may have been too reserved in my view. He was a scumbag.
"The long-awaited opening of Pope Pius XII’s wartime records lasted only a week before the coronavirus outbreak shut down the Vatican archives. But that was long enough for documents to emerge that reflect badly on the pontiff accused of silence during the Holocaust, according to published reports.
In that week alone, German researchers found that the pope, who never directly criticized the Nazi slaughter of Jews, knew from his own sources about Berlin’s death campaign early on. But he kept this from the U.S. government after an aide argued that Jews and Ukrainians — his main sources — could not be trusted because they lied and exaggerated, the researchers said.
They also discovered that the Vatican hid these and other sensitive documents presumably to protect Pius’s image."
Article

“Fists raised high, the young Frenchmen shouted out slogans condemning Soviet imperialism … She found herself unable to shout along with them. When she told her French friends about it, they were amazed … She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison. But she knew she would never be able to make them understand,” - Sabina in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Sabina is an escapee from a Communist regime. Like her, I understand that evil but also find it difficult to explain to my American friends. There’s no great distinction between Fascism and Communism, it’s the same animal with different stripes which in the name of social justice imposes uniformity for all but a select caste. Not all social justice movements are Fascist, but all Fascist regimes began as social justice movements for the betterment of society – and in the name of such betterment old principles were discarded. When do lines get crossed and a quest for social justice turns into an outright Fascist oppression? It’s a hard question that can only be answered in a hindsight, changes are gradual and there’re no big flashing signs. But I do think we have entered a danger zone.

Finished reading "The Hundred-Year Marathon" by Michael Pillsbury, who has served in senior national security positions since Nixon's days. After many years of wishful thinking that China will become a Western-style democracy, Mr. Pillsbury woke up to realize that China seeks world's hegemony. Better late than never, I guess. I would call this the defining battle of this century, but is it really a "battle" when one side is strategic and focused while the other is pre-occupied with internal strife? Those who grew up under totalitarian regimes knew for many years that the whole "liberalization" shtick was a hoax for gullible Westerners (designed to obtain investments and technology) and that the Chinese Communist Party is a despotic, ruthless, criminal organization (just like the USSR Communist Party was) whose only goal is to perpetuate and grow its own power. This is the regime that killed more people than Stalin or Hitler, massacred Tiananmen's protesters, jails dissidents, and unleashed the virus with callous disregard for the rest of the world (whether is was developed in the Wuhan lab or jumped from animals). Meanwhile, the same US companies that off-shored millions of jobs and actively virtue-signal at home not only overlook but literally cover up China's relentless persecution of minorities.
I'm afraid there's only one way to break this decades-long ignorance and short-sightedness: for the American voters to make foreign policy one of the top priorities and elect politicians that will take a longer-term view and stop coddling the country that showed itself to be our strategic enemy. Otherwise, our grandchildren will be growing in the world dominated by the the Chinese Communist Party. And if you think that "Pax Americana" was bad, you ain't seen nothing yet.

It was a cold Leningrad evening when I left the apartment of my refusenik friends (for those not old enough to remember, refuseniks were people in the former Soviet Union who were denied permission to emigrate). In front of their apartment building stood a black car of the type that was only too familiar to Soviet citizens. The KGB person leaning against it motioned for me to approach. I slowly did, my knees shaking. In my backpack was a samizdat version of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, a “dangerous” book that was considered damaging to the glory of the triumphant working class. It no longer carried the ten-years-of-hard-labor (basically the death sentence) of Stalin’s time, the likely punishment was what some now would call a “cancellation”: expulsion from the university, inability to find a good job, etc. The KGB man asked me for a light for his cigarette and with a smirk waived me off. I got lucky.
I recalled that episode when reading this article by Abigail Shrier. I am not familiar with the book being discussed and have no opinion on its scientific merits. The point is that a publication can be hounded and practically erased from existence by powerful monopolies because some find it offensive and/or disagree with the information. Meanwhile, Mein Kampf is readily available (as it should be). Is the The Books Are Already Burning headline justified? I’m not sure. There were periodic bouts of censorship in the US history when the likes of Tropic of Cancer and The Catcher in the Rye were banned for being offensive. I hope we collectively come to our senses and remember that – as Salman Rushdie said - “nobody has the right to not be offended.” The man knows something about the dangers of enforced conformity no matter how well-meaning it portrays itself to be.

Kudos to President Biden for doing the right thing in recognizing Armenian Genocide!
Governments of 28 nations, including Canada, Sweden, Italy, France, Argentina, Germany, Poland, Brazil and Russia, recognize the World War I massacre of Armenians as a genocide (in six of these countries denial of this genocide has been criminalized). It’s been recognized by the European Parliament and by the Catholic Church. In the past, many US presidents promised to do this but evidently did not want to upset Turkey. Finally, it's done!

Supposedly it was Mark Twain who said: “History doesn’t repeat but it often rhymes.” I think of the English Restoration of 1660: after the Cromwell’s revolt of the middle class against the establishment, the old order returned with Charles II installed on the throne. But the Restoration eventually failed to the Glorious (and mostly peaceful) Revolution, with William of Orange assuming power and implementing many of the Cromwell’s undertakings.

I’m not comparing Biden to Charles II or Trump to Cromwell, that’s not the point at all. But there’s certain rhyming with our time. Peasants revolt has been suppressed and they’ve been labeled as extremists (which some indeed were, but most not so). The “old order” of Big Government of the two major parties (yes, they’re both big government parties), Big Finance and Big Tech is back in the saddle (there used to be Big Oil, but they’ve been tarred and feathered). Eisenhower’s prophesy of the government-military-industrial complex lives on, albeit in a different incarnation. Yet only a week into the Restoration some cracks are appearing. The Big Tech flexed its muscle, but instead of welcoming shutdowns of “deplorables” many people – and importantly, governments – said “Wow, Nelly, we don’t want that! We value freedom of speech!” The Europeans are about to cut the Big Tech’s power down to size, while in the US individuals are finding other ways to connect. The Big Finance came under attack from a bunch of unruly Robin Hood’ers, and are now screaming for the Big Government to protect them. They don’t want to lose their monopoly on manipulating markets (some of us remember their so-called “honest price discovery” during dot-bomb and financial crisis). Yet for the government to move against Robin-Hood’ers will just expose more hypocrisy of the establishment.

Speaking of the establishment, what about our two major parties? Our founders, George Washington and John Adams, both warned us that having only two parties is a poison to democracy. They were right. After one hundred-and-fifty years, this duopoly is coming to an end. There are more Independents in this country than either Republicans or Democrats, but only four nominally independent congressmen and senators. I don’t know exactly how it will happen, but it will. My guess is that it will start with a breakup of one of the major parties and that would drag the other one down as well.

So yes, I think our time rhymes with the Restoration. And just like the one in the 17th century, I think it will end in a peaceful Glorious Revolution. Viva la Glorioso Revolucion!

The premise of my 2013 book “The Great Game” was a 2020 financial attack by China and Russia that almost succeeds in splitting up the US along red/blue lines. I was wrong: the attack that came was biological, not financial. Whether the virus was developed in the Wuhan lab or jumped from animals, subsequent actions by the Chinese Communist Party showed at best callous disregard for the rest of the world. The blueprint for a classic asymmetrical warfare has been established: tens of trillions in damage inflicted at a cost of a few million dollars development. And before you protest on humanitarian grounds: this is the regime that killed more people than Stalin or Hitler. They relaxed some of the economic rules because they didn't want to end up like the Soviet Union, but their nature has not changed. Uyghurs and Tibetans will testify to that.
I hope that president-elect Biden takes steps to counteract impact of future attacks, starting with bringing the critical manufacturing back to the US. And we should calm down on this blue vs. red rhetoric. Because we are indeed at war and the enemy doesn't care who you voted for.

Two years after finishing Eleos, I’m still getting (mostly unfavorable) comments over my portrayal of the Pius XII’s role during that time. I will admit that I do puzzle over this: why was Pius XII publicly silent about the Holocaust? With hundreds of millions of Catholics in the world and one of every three Germans being a Catholic, the threat of papal excommunication was a powerful weapon. There’s no doubt that in 1942 he already knew about the extermination. The two main explanations that were advanced: 1) he didn’t want to risk even greater atrocities, and 2) he saw Communism as the greater enemy and wanted to be a peacemaker between Germany and the Western Allies. I think these explanations are plausible up to a specific point of October 1943, when Nazis occupied Rome. Over a thousand Jews were rounded up right next to the Vatican (they were sent to Auschwitz; only sixteen survived). Pius XII sent a letter threatening Berlin with a public protest. But ultimately, he issued no public declaration of any kind.
At that point, neither of the offered explanations made a lot of sense. The truth about death camps was out, what greater atrocities could be imagined? And the Western Allies made it quite clear that there will be no separate peace with the Nazis. Either Pius XII was deluding himself about his influence as a “peacemaker,” or something else was in play here. With the German Army in Rome, Hitler could have had Pius XII arrested and taken to Berlin. We know that such a plan existed; it’s likely Pius XII knew that too. The simplest explanation for the papal silence in October of 1943 is that he was afraid of being arrested. Which is perfectly human: when faced with a dire physical threat, most of us would keep silent. But, unlike most of us, he was the Vicar of Christ.
I’m sorry if raising this possibility offends some, but as the Occam’s razor teaches us: the simplest explanation is usually the right one. We often don’t consciously know our own hidden motives; the truth of “real” motives for Pius XII’s silence will likely never be known. We only know that publicly he kept silent.