Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ “The Dark Knight Rises” is the epic conclusion to filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Leading an all-star international cast, Oscar(R) winner Christian Bale (“The Fighter”) again plays the dual role of Bruce Wayne/Batman. The film also stars Anne Hathaway, as Selina Kyle; Tom Hardy, as Bane; Oscar(R) winner Marion Cotillard (“La Vie en Rose”), as Miranda Tate; and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as John Blake. Returning to the main cast, Oscar(R) winner Michael Caine (“The Cider House Rules”) plays Alfred; Gary Oldman is Commissioner Gordon; and Oscar(R) winner Morgan Freeman (“Million Dollar Baby”) reprises the role of Lucius Fox.

When it comes to what my favorite anime is, I will list 10 films, 10 TV series, and 10 OVAs. I don’t consider these picks to be the best anime. These are simply my favorites, though some of the picks can easily be considered to be the best anime out there. I had to leave out many of my favorites in order to narrow this list to 30 titles. For example, I left out Castle in the Sky (1986) and Spirited Away (2001) because I didn’t want to include many Studio Ghibli films, and I left out Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (1991) because I didn’t want to include many Gundam titles.

Favorite TV series: Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Vision of Escaflowne, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Maison Ikkoku, Gurren Lagann, Martian Successor Nadesico, Saber Marionette J, Kimagure Orange Road.
Favorite OVAs: Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki, Bubblegum Crisis, Macross Plus, Gunbuster, Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, Rurouni Kenshin: Trust & Betrayal, Giant Robo, Moldiver, Oh My Goddess!.
Favorite films: The Fuma Conspiracy (1987), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Ghost in the Shell (1995), Akira (1988), Perfect Blue (1997), Patlabor 2: The Movie (1993), Whisper of the Heart (1995), Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack (1988), Ninja Scroll (1993).

I got to see Neon Genesis Evangelion again in 2021. This was probably my third time watching this series from beginning to end. Of course, after I finished watching the series, I also watched Death & Rebirth (1997) and The End of Evangelion (1997). The DVD for Death & Rebirth was probably the first DVD that I ever bought. This happened soon after I graduated from high school, and I think that I bought it in new condition at Future Shop, which was a Canadian electronics store chain. The first half of the film, Death, is a re-cap editing together of scenes from the first 24 episodes of the series. It’s my favorite part of the film, and I watched it multiple times since I bought the DVD. To be honest, I don’t like the second half of the film, Rebirth, much, and I don’t like The End of Evangelion much either. Since The End of Evangelion was released in the 1990s, when anime was still in its golden age, it’s a visually impressive film. The animation is often striking. Some of the scenes are inspired and memorable. But, overall, I don’t find the film to be all that interesting or appealing. Therefore, I watch it only when I decide to watch the TV series from beginning to end in order to have a feeling of completion. Since Evangelion is one of my favorite anime, it’s not surprising that I enjoyed watching it again. When I watch it, I don’t get to relive my childhood, as some people say, because I didn’t watch it for the first time when I was a child, but it does kind of make me relive the time after I graduated from high school because that’s when I watched it for the first time. By the way, Evangelion has an interesting story. For example, I recommend reading about the First Ancenstral Race on the internet. Before I watched Evangelion again in 2021, I watched The Vision of Escaflowne again in 2020. Well, now I’m slowly watching Cowboy Bebop again because it’s another series that I haven’t seen in years. When it comes to the films that I’ve seen recently, I can say that I enjoyed seeing Avatar (2009) again. I got to see it for the first time in 2009, right after it was released in theaters. Back then, I had to wear 3D glasses when I watched it in a theater. In my opinion, the glasses don’t improve the viewing experience of this film. I don’t consider Avatar to be one of James Cameron’s best films, but it’s still one of the best films of the last two decades, in my opinion. Some parts of the film are inspired. The part of the film that I like the most is the battle at the end between Quaritch’s men and the Na’vi, and I like the scene near the end in which Neytiri meets Jake Sully for the first time. What’s odd is that I haven’t seen Avatar since 2009, when I watched it for the first time. Seeing it again in 2022 was only my second time. I like it more now than I did back then. It’s not surprising that I’m still watching Dallas. This TV series has 14 seasons and 357 episodes. I don’t yet know if I’ll watch this show until the very end. This will depend on how good it continues to be. I’m already watching season 7 of the show, and I’ve got to say that it continues to be wonderful. I particularly liked seeing season 6, in which J.R. Ewing and Bobby Ewing fight for control of Ewing Oil. I sure do like the clothes, especially the suits, that they wore in that season. What’s interesting is that I feel like I’ve already been watching Dallas for a very long time. Well, this is true because I’ve already seen over 130 episodes of the show, but season 7 was originally screened on television from 1983 to 1984. So, I still haven’t even watched the mid-1980s phase of the show yet. Hopefully, the show remains as good as it is now for several more seasons. In an earlier post, I pointed out that I like Larry Hagman’s performance and Jim Davis’s performance the most in the show. I like Patrick Duffy’s performance too. He obviously played the most sympathetic male character. Among the women of the cast, I think that Linda Gray’s performance is the best. What surprised me is that Priscilla Presley delivered a good performance as Jenna Wade. Before that, I’ve seen her only in the Naked Gun films. In the Naked Gun films, she played a character that’s almost an airhead. In season 7, Presley joined the main cast of Dallas as Jenna, and I’ve got to say that she played Jenna as a pretty sharp woman.

I can point out that I bought a PlayStation 4 several months ago. Before I bought it, I didn’t think that I’d buy it this early. I used to think that I’d eventually buy it because some of the video games that I want to play are available only on the PS4, but I thought that I’d buy it a few years from now. I bought it at the same pawn shop where I bought my Xbox 360, and I bought it because it was on sale. It cost me less than $150. The version of the PS4 that I bought is the original one, with 500 GB of storage, and I’d say that its condition is very good. There was a reason for the somewhat low price of the console, however, as I later found out. The console itself is in excellent condition, but the Blu-ray drive didn’t work. Since I didn’t want to spend time on finding out if the drive can be fixed or not, I ordered a replacement drive on eBay. The first replacement drive arrived in April from a seller in the United States, but it didn’t work. After returning it, I ordered a replacement drive from a seller in the United Kingdom. This second replacement drive does work. I’ve kept the original broken Blu-ray drive because maybe I’ll try to fix it in the future. I personally don’t like the PS4 as much as the PlayStation 3. I find the graphical user interface of the PS3 to be more appealing, for example. The PS3 was released at about the time when I became interested in gaming. Back then, I couldn’t own a PlayStation 3 or any other console, but I still read about it and watched videos about it because I was impressed by its features and design. I already had small hopes of buying a PS2, but I couldn’t even dream of buying a PS3 back then because of its high price. It seems to me that the success of the PS1 and the PS2 gave quite a boost to Sony because the profits allowed Sony to be quite ambitious in the 2000s and in the early-2010s. Back then, Sony released various walkmans, smarthphones, television sets, laptops, and many other quality electronic devices. It also released the PlayStation Portable, which is a beautiful handheld game console, in my opinion. Nowadays, electronic devices made by Sony are barely present in stores or they’re not present at all. The wide variety and availability of electronic devices in the 2000s is another thing that makes me look back with some fondness at that time. I recently bought a used Sony CD player (Walkman D-EJ361), which was released in 2002, in order to play the compact discs that I have now. Like many other electronic devices made by Sony in the 2000s, it looks beautiful. I remember that in the mid-2000s, I bought a Sony MiniDisc player. The model was probably the Walkman MZ-DH10P. I bought it at an electronics store that was located in Downtown Vancouver, on Seymour Street, near the Granville SkyTrain station. I remember that I was impressed by how well it played music and by how good it looked, but, for some reason, I returned it soon after I bought it. Well, nowadays, I regret returning it. Back then, I was much younger, less knowledgeable, and less restrained. Heck, at that time, Sony even managed to make the best Spider-Man films ever, Spider-Man (2002) and Spider-Man 2 (2004), with its studio Columbia Pictures. Therefore, now that I think about it, Sony provided buyers with many inspired, quality products at that time, when the company was in one of its heydays. In the 2010s, when Sony began to go into a slump, it released the terrible The Amazing Spider-Man films, for example. Moreover, at the same time, Sony failed to turn the PlayStation Vita into a success. I don’t like the Vita as much as I like the PSP, but the Vita was still a very impressive handheld for its time. Actually, the Vita is still an impressive handheld. I guess that in the 2010s Sony kind of went the way of the Internet Archive digital library. Even a few years ago, the Internet Archive provided people with numerous free books and other useful files. Nowadays, like many other popular American websites, it restricts access to information and to quality content, books have to be “borrowed” on it, and it has wiped out the numerous free files that used to be available on it. Anyway, I also remember seeing Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films very well at that time. Kick-Ass (2010) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) are two superhero films that I now remember seeing with some fondness. They’re by no means perfect, but there are still some inspired scenes in them and they feature some excellent music. In addition, they’re quite different from the films that are made by Marvel Studios. The Dark Knight Rises, in particular, is a film that contains very little comedy. It’s a serious and quite ambitious film that I got to see more than once in a theater. I think that, artistically, it’s Nolan’s best Dark Knight film, and it’s my favorite Dark Knight film. One of the big reasons why I like it is because it features an excellent music score by Hans Zimmer. Moreover, the film features Batman’s incredible “WHERE’S THE TRIGGER?!!!” line and Talia al Ghul’s “awesome” death scene. My second favorite Dark Knight film is Batman Begins (2005). Anyway, many video games got released for the PS4, and several of them are indeed great games. One of the games that I’ve already bought and downloaded is God of War (2018). I bought it because it was on sale. I also bought and downloaded Bloodborne, which is the PS4 game that I wanted to play the most. I began playing these games but then stopped after a few hours of playing because I wanted to finish playing some other games first. Therefore, I can’t get into what I think about them yet. I can’t really say anything more about my PS4 for now because I’ve hardly used it since I bought it. It’s interesting that the PS4 is the second best-selling home console. The Nintendo Switch, which I haven’t bought and which I don’t plan on buying, is just behind it when it comes to sales. The PlayStation 2 is still the best-selling console of all time, and it’s also the first video game console that I ever bought.

One novel that I have finished reading recently is John Brunner’s Total Eclipse. I’ve wanted to finish reading an edgy and brilliant science-fiction novel for quite some time, but I must admit that I haven’t been reading much in the last several months. Still, I’ve been craving to finish reading as good a novel as Inherit the Stars (1977), Blood Music (1985), Emergence (1984), or The Robots of Dawn (1983) for quite some time. Total Eclipse is such a novel, and it has mostly satisfied my craving for now. I haven’t read any other novels by Brunner yet, but Total Eclipse is probably one of his best. Good and original science-fiction novels like Total Eclipse simply don’t get written anymore. One of the novels that I’m still reading, for example, is Sylvain Neuvel’s Sleeping Giants (2016). It’s considered by some readers and critics to be one of the best science-fiction novels of the last decade. In reality, however, it’s a disappointment if it’s compared to the science-fiction of the 20th century. Sleeping Giants isn’t a bad novel, but it is pretty dull and not particularly interesting. By today’s standards, however, it’s considered to be good because today’s standards for novels are low. Perhaps I will review Sleeping Giants in more detail after I finish reading it. Something else that I’ve enjoyed reading lately is Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell manga. It turns out that it’s not only the anime films, Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), that are worth seeing. The manga is pretty awesome too. It’s best to get the hardcover deluxe edition of the manga because it would look good on any bookshelf. The manga is large, and it features some beautiful colored pages.

Animal Group: Mammal
Regions: Asia
Sub-regions: South-Eastern Asia
Countries: Indonesia

The famous Bali tiger is now an extinct subspecies that was found only on the island of Bali in Indonesia. It became the first tiger to go extinct in recent years and one of three subspecies that make up the tigers of Indonesia. Of the three, only the Sumatran tiger remains and it is dangerously close to becoming extinct itself. There was a close relationship between the Bali and Java Tigers which were probably one group until separated at the end of the last ice age when the oceans split apart the islands of Bali and Java. However, given the relatively narrow straits it is certainly possible that the tigers swam across on occasion.

Of the nine known subspecies of tigers, the Bali tier was the smallest and was about the size of a typical cougar or leopard. Males weighed about 200 pounds and were roughly 7 feet in length while females were smaller at roughly 150 pounds and just under 7 feet in length if you include the tail. Sporting short fur that was a dark orange and relatively few stripes, the most distinguishing features was the bar-type patterns on the head of the animal. Their underbellies sported white fur that really stood out more than any other tiger in existence because of their very dark orange fur on top. The curved line of the Bali tiger helped make it appear more graceful than some of its counterparts.

Habitat

Bali tigers lived in the forested areas of the island which limited their movements considerably. Their main sources of food were a number of creatures that lived on the island which included, but not limited to the following: Wild Boar, Rusa Deer, Indian Muntjac, Red Junglefowl, Monitor Lizards and Monkeys.

The Banteng which is also now extinct may have been prey for the tiger as well. The only predator of the tiger was humans who hunted them mostly for sport.

Reason for Extinction

The last known Bali tiger was killed on September 27th, 1937 which was a female. However, it is believed that the species itself lasted for another ten to twenty years after that incident before dying out. Although the Dutch who came to the island during the Colonial period did great destruction to their population due to their hunting methods, the natives on the island also hunted the tiger frequently as it was perceived as a dire threat.

There were a number of separate reasons that led to the extinction of the Bali tiger. The relatively small size of the island combined with the large hunting radius the tiger needed for food was arguably the most pertinent reason. Add to this the increase in human habitation combined with hunting the tiger helped push it to extinction. However, it must be noted that the limited amount of forestation on the island combined with the relative small size meant that the population of the Bali tiger was fairly small even before humans first arrived on the island.

This presentation by Mario Sousa – less than an hour in duration – will change your view of history. “Most sane and educated people accept that there were serious human rights abuses in the Soviet Union, during the Stalin period.” he says. The evidence is ‘everywhere’ – everyone says so, and there’s no smoke without fire, after all. But what is the evidence? And where does it come from?

Not that long ago President Obama said that Russia and President Putin had tried to influence the outcome of our election process and that it was “unacceptable” behavior for a nation to attempt to influence the democratic process of other nations. Forget for a second that his evidence was so laughable that the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that cobbled it together, posted a disclaimer on the first page of the report that said it didn’t stand by a single shred of “proof” in it’s own report:

“this report is provided “as is” for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within.”

Let’s also forget for a moment the troubling rise of the New McCarthyism in America and the lynch-mob mentality that goes along with it.

Russia did not attempt to influence our election. They did not “hack” the DNC, Hillary Clinton’s illegal private email server nor the email account of the perpetually corrupt John Podesta. Even if they did, which they didn’t, all they did was expose the truth about these three deeply tainted entities. No one has disputed the authenticity of the leaks. They stand as an accurate representation of the level of corruption that exists in the fake left that is the unDemocratic Party of America these days. This is a footnote that gets lost in the discussion far too often these days.

Which leads me to ask one simple question: since when is it considered “unacceptable” behavior to expose the truth about corruption at the highest ranks in the American political system?

Oh, that’s right. President Peace Prize made it a priority to wage war on whistle-blowers throughout the duration of his tenure.

For all the McCarthyite efforts being put forward by the breathless ladder-climbers of the corporate propaganda mills which pass for “news organizations” these days I am often awestruck by those who seem to wish to demand their guests present a kind of American exceptionalism when it comes to comparisons between this fake news story about Russia “hacking” our democracy and the altogether too real history of our State Department and the CIA doing the exact same thing to other countries across the globe. The hypocrisy is simply stunning. And that is when a guest has the audacity to bring up said history, which doesn’t happen very often.

No one can deny our long history of meddling in the political affairs of other countries on behalf of our “national interests” and you even find a few MSM outlets having to address this seemingly sticky bit of trivia every now and again:

“The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University.

That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring.” L.A. Times, Dec. 2016

From the State Department to the CIA to NGOs like the National Endowment for Democracy or USAID, I think you would have an easier time listing all the elections in the world since WWII that the U.S. didn’t try to subvert or influence to suit their needs than then ones they did. It doesn’t matter the size of the country or their ranking on the global index of natural resource ownership. Take Haiti for instance. Or Palestine for that matter. They are hardly world leaders in anything, yet both little nations felt the brunt of our “democratization” efforts in ways that are both proven and disastrous to the citizens of those nations. Of that there is no doubt.

But what about Russia?

Now we can go back to the heyday of the neoliberalization of Russia if we want to and some suggest the Russian hacking might just be payback for the good-old Clinton days of spreading “democracy” by infecting various nations with the cancer of Milton Friedman’s “free market” ideology.

“Early 1996 Boris Yeltsin’s approval rate was in the single digits. He had carried out a presidential putsch, started a shambolic war in Chechnya and had helped oligarchs pillage the nation and brought the economy to its knees. July 1996 he was elected president for the second time. How did this happen?

Oh well, it just took one of the most unfair, costliest and most fraudulent election battles in the history of democracy. — All with the complicity of the United States which backed the Russian alcoholic in chief every step of the way (as it had during the ’93 coup) Russian Insider

It is no secret that the U.S.’s man in Moscow was the drunken puppet Boris Yeltsin. We installed him and we instructed him on how to neoliberalize the country, a process that was so entirely detrimental to the Soviet people they wanted to go back to communism before his first term in office was complete. The billionaires and the global bankers liked him though, so we sent some of Milton Friedman’s Chicago Boys and PR spin doctors to the country to help keep him in office. And if you think that quote from Russian Insider is biased and a conspiracy theory, just look up TIME magazine’s July 15th, 1996 cover page for a little more insight. It isn’t a conspiracy theory folks.

You can go back that far if you want, but I figure all we have to do is go back to their last election and see how we tried to influence it on behalf of the same “national interests” our political hacks have served since the beginning of time.

I would like to remind you of Hillary Clinton’s destabilization campaign in Russia circa Nov. 2011 through March 2012 and a little thing called “Pussy Riot”

Now I have written a great deal about these efforts of Hillary’s and I am not going to rehash all of it today. Here are a few choice articles you might want to review in order to get up to date on the REAL history of U.S./Russia democracy interference.

Destabilizing Russia – Clinton State Department Dusts off Color Revolution Model and Threatens Us All Dec. 8th, 2011
Destabilizing Russia – FOX News Caught Using Fake Video Of Riots Dec. 11th, 2011
American Everyman Imperialist War and Political Ticker Dec. 29th, 2011
Russian vs U.S. Elections Dec. 2011
Clinton Pushes For Regime Change Language in Resolution While Her Psyops Surge Feb. 4th, 2012
Russian Election Propaganda Covers Entire Spectrum of News Sources: Landmark Monitoring System Completely Ignored By Western Press March 5th, 2012
Clinton Finally Admits Putin Won the Russian Presidential Election Fair and Square March 8th, 2012

Back in those days Hillary Clinton was doing everything she could to influence the Russian democratic process and that is because Vladimir Putin was extremely popular among Russian citizens at the time. He was the symbol of the new anti-neoliberal revolution that took place once they finally got rid of our puppet Boris Yeltsin and the standard of living for many Russians improved greatly under his leadership. He arrested corrupt oligarchs who, along with their global partners in crime, attempted to fleece the entire country for every penny they could suck out of it while Yeltsin and the Chicago Boys ran the government.

Understanding that the parliamentary elections and the presidential elections were right around the corner, our NGOs started funding color revolution type destabilization campaigns (like Pussy Riot for starters) and Hillary installed a color revolution specialist as our ambassador to Russia (Michael Anthony McFaul)

“Want to know why so many Russians hated Boris Nemtsov? Here’s a video of him paying a visit on U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael Anthony McFaul, just after McFaul took office back in 2012. It’s well understood here and in Russia, that McFaul’s task was to attempt to instigate a color revolution in Russia from day one.

“Most Russia-watchers are diplomats, or specialists on security and arms control. Or Russian culture. I am neither. I can’t recite Pushkin by heart. I am a specialist in democracy, anti-dictatorial movements, and revolutions” (emphasis added). Michael Anthony McFaul

“(Hillary) Clinton noted that McFaul, who is a specialist in democratic transition – a Kommersant headline from January 11 touted him as a “color revolution specialist” – is uniquely suited for his new post, given Russia’s current climate.” Russia Profile

So in comes the color revolution specialist and one of the first to meet and greet the neoliberal scum, is Boris Nemtsov. Go figure.” Scott Creighton, March 1, 2015

Sending regime change specialists into targeted nations as our ambassadors was standard operating procedure for Hillary Clinton. She did it with Russia. She did it with Robert Ford in Syria in Dec. of 2010 just before the color revolution started over there. And she had a hand in selection Geoffrey R. Pyatt to take office in 2013 after she left the State Department. Soon after he took over, he started meeting with opposition leaders and the Ukraine color revolution was underway in Jan. of 2014.

This is what Clinton called “smart power”: going into various nations who don’t bow down to our “national interests” and getting some of the most deplorable, degenerate, out-of-power opposition leaders you can find to sign onto your regime change plan in exchange for a promise of future control. Future control under your thumb of course. Kinda like Boris Yeltsin.

In April of 2015 a Russian Federation council member explained it this way:

“Extremism is used as a geopolitical instrument, for reshaping the spheres of influence, overthrowing regimes undesirable for some countries by the means of organizing ‘color revolutions’,” Matviyenko said. “The West makes attempts to organize them [‘color revolutions’] in Russia as well,” she added. These efforts are directed at “discrediting the authorities and destabilizing the situation in Russia, and using both extremist elements and opposition for that,” the speaker noted.” TASS News

Smart power. Hiring terrorists and extremists to do the dirty work, the wet work, of overthrowing your enemies. Libya, Egypt, Syria, Thailand, Yugoslavia, Ukraine… all examples of “smart power” I suppose.

In the end, Hillary failed in Russia just like Obama has finally failed in Syria. She didn’t bring in the jackals though, like she did in Libya and Obama did in Syria. Russia is a nuclear state after all. More care must be taken in such circumstances. That’s one of the reasons they hired the Pussy Riot destabilization roadshow, called Proxy Poseurs by another writer a couple years ago.

Pussy Riot was perhaps the dumbest, most sophomoric bullshit destabilization psyop to ever get hatched by the neoliberal think-tanks that think they run the world. It was absolutely infantile in it’s conception and beyond pedestrian in it’s performance.

Protection Against Toxic EMF Damage – Smart Meter Covers

I wrote about their staged “beatings” scenes repeatedly in the run-up to the Russian elections. The fingerprints of George Soros and his ilk were all over it like those of a drunken uncle on his nieces underwear.

On February 20th, not even a month ago, I wrote about a poorly scripted and badly staged street-theater performance in Sochi performed by the Western backed agitation operation known as “Pussy Riot™ ”

Their hasty little performance was designed to demonize Russia under Putin since we all know, Russia under the neoliberal drunkard puppet Yeltsin was such a better place for the oligarchs and the international bankers.

It involved members of the “band” (if you wish to call them that) setting up under a Sochi Olympics sign in a parking lot and immediately being attacked by actors wearing what is supposed to look like Russian military or police uniforms.

The video was such a joke, it reminded me of that “news story” CNN did during the Gulf War where two reporters in a studio pretended to be reporting live from a hotel as scud missiles rained down on their heads. The first Pussy Riot™ video is almost as bad.

The latest Pussy Riot™ beating video is actually worse.” Scott Creighton, March 2014

For a broader understanding of the nature of our efforts to undermine democracy in Russia during those months, read the following:

Today’s Ridiculous Pro-Regime Change Propaganda – What’s Old is New Again
“Pussy Riot” is re-Branding – Will Form “Human Rights” Group (a.k.a. “destabilization NGO”)
Pro-Putin Rally Lambasts ‘Orange Trash’

With a recorded and unquestionable history like this, one could hardly blame Russia for trying to influence a U.S. election in which Hillary Clinton seemed to be the shoe-in candidate chosen by our own oligarchs. Turn about is fair play after all.

But they didn’t. Or at least, no one has presented a single shred of credible evidence to suggest they did at this point.

And after all, when you think about it, all someone really did was expose just how unqualified Hillary Clinton was for office. I mean it wasn’t like they hired a band of untalented misfit hookers to show their private parts in a church or something and then promote a global campaign against the outrage of them being arrested for doing so.

Whoever did it (my guess is a leaker from within and perhaps a branch of the CIA or even the NSA who were pissed off about the “Snowden” psyop?) simply told the truth, which I guess is a revolutionary idea these days and a treasonous one.

American exceptionalism aside, it is never acceptable when nations attempt to influence the democratic process of other countries though that has been the staple of our State Department’s diet since day one. And I know that it is all the rage these days to hate on Russia in both venues of the One Party System we laughingly call a democracy these days but I still cannot seem to get on board with that kind of bandwagon thinking.

No. Russia did not hack our democracy or attempt to thwart it like Hillary Clinton did back in 2012 to them. They didn’t have to. Hillary sucked so bad on her own, all they had to do was sit back and laugh and that probably pissed them off more than anything else.

Nadalia is a child of dark, one of the abyss spawn, a compounded quintessence of Manus and his Dark Soul. Like her sisters; Nashandra, Elana and Alsanna, Nadalia is a fragment of Manus’ emotions. She represents solitude and loneliness. Also like her sisters, Nadalia travelled from a foreign land in search of a King. She came to the land of the Old Iron King, but arrived too late, the King had already been killed and his castle subsumed by flame.

Nadalia entered the Old Iron King’s tower, the seat of his power and wandered its halls seeking her King. She came to the bottom of the tower, shaped like a gigantic kiln. She found the Old Iron King’s crown and his death was confirmed to her. Upon finding the land kingless, it is said Nadalia renounced her flesh. In the act of dancing, Nadalia was transfigured as smoke. It seems that her physical body was burnt up and that her actual being became smoke, fog and ash that infused the tower. Upon defeating the Fume Knight the remnants of her body can be found at the base of the Brume Tower, hunched over and ash-like. From this we can take it that she burned herself to death, in the act of dancing, the Bride of Ash was transfigured as smoke. The act of dancing is a metaphor for being burned alive. The same metaphor is used for the Pyromancy Dance of Fire where it says: “The fire seems to dance, and makes its victims dance with it.” So we can guess that she was burned alive in the chair we find her in, clutching the crown of the old iron king (note the theories section on why Nadalia might have done this – taken from Pariahdigm Shift’s youtube channel)

Having forsaken her flesh, Nadalia’s smoke enticed people to the Tower and it became known as Brume Tower which means “mist or fog”. Perhaps opportunists saw the tower’s smoke and presumed it was burning or had fallen, making it a beacon to the brave adventurers seeking to tap the replete stores of iron. But upon arriving at Brume Tower, all but the most steadfast were defeated, and their corpses were reanimated by the black fog, or left as ashen husks. The black fog of the tower brought the tower to life. Its statues became possessed and attacked any intruder, the soldiers of the Old Iron King were resurrected as defenders and the Ashen Idols began to appear.

The Ashen Idols were statues made of ash. Nadalia, having renounced her flesh, entrusted her soul to these statues and it was through them that she was able to defend the tower. Approach of these statues yields different results, some fill the area with pillars of black fire, enhance the strength of the defenders and some heal the defenders. The Idols resemble Nadalia, but often have 4 or more arms. They can only be destroyed by driving a smelter wedge into the heart, a process that splits the Soul of Nadalia from the Ashen Idol. It is interesting to note that the wedges are made of smeltered iron, as if the only means to the Bride of Ash’s heart was found in the iron the Old Iron King was so notorious for.

After some time it seems, a knight of Drangleic called Raime came to the tower. Raime was one of King Vendrick’s most trusted and powerful knights. He is described as an agile swordsman, who after his defeat at the hands of Velstadt, resigned his post and was considered a traitor. Raime came to Brume Tower in search of greater strength. When he arrived at the tower, he became infatuated with Nadalia, the Bride of Ash. Instead of choosing to expunge her from the tower as he could have done (most likely by destroying her Ashen Idols as we do), Raime chose to live alongside Nadalia and support her efforts. He became her champion of the Dark. It may have been that when he left Vendrick, Raime sought greater strength in which to defeat Velstadt, but upon becoming infatuated with Nadalia, he found a new purpose in life.

What Nadalia’s purpose is in the tower is unclear. It seems that the Sisters of Dark all seek power, and try to gather as many souls as possible. Alsanna may be an exception to this, but we know that both Nashandra and Elana seek power. Nashandra seeks the great soul that is strong enough to power the Throne of Want and Elana gathers souls in anticipation of revenge. Nadalia too may have transfigured herself for the purpose of drawing those with powerful souls to the tower, in hopes of collecting those souls. Alternatively, Nadalia is known as the augur of solitude, and perhaps she simply sought to be alone, which is a theory that does not account for the presence of Raime. Or perhaps Nadalia awaits her King and more specifically the Old Iron King. When we first destroy an Ashen Idol we hear some dialogue from Nadalia indicating that she may have us confused with the Old Iron King. To gain access to Brume Tower, one must defeat the Old Iron King so it may be that Nadalia senses that soul upon us or that we have gained it at some point and believes us to be the Old Iron King. But whatever the case, we are told that Nadalia condemned herself to a fate most wretched.

Marx Avenue (Russian: Проспект Маркса) is a highway in the center of Moscow, named after Karl Marx, that existed from 1961 to 1990. The avenue had a curved shape and went around the Kremlin from Dzerzhinsky (Lubyanskaya) Square to Borovitskaya Square. It was made up of three historical streets: Teatralny Proyezd, Okhotny Ryad and Mokhovaya Street. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the General Plan for the Development of Moscow provided for the connection of Marx Avenue with the Ostankino Television Center by building a high-speed highway with the conditional name “Northern Ray”. It was planned to include Neglinnaya Street, Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Soviet Army Street and Sheremetyevskaya Street into the highway. The project was not implemented.

I keep on thinking that my next post will be a list of my favorite anime, but I keep on making posts about something else instead. It seems that whenever I begin to write about something, it’s not easy for me to stop. This post too will be about something else. Since many of my followers follow my channel and my blog because of my videos and posts about history and sociology, some of them want me to post something about current events. Well, since I haven’t posted anything about current events for a while, I might as well do so now. The Canada convoy protest took place at the beginning of 2022, but some people still want to know what I think about it. I wasn’t keeping track of this protest, but I do know some of what happened in Ottawa. I have a few things to say about this so-called Freedom Convoy. This protest was simply a reaction to the mandates and the restrictions that got introduced in the country. In Canada, like in other Western states, capital and the government work together. Actually, I can even say that the government works for capital. Therefore, the mandates were enforced by the government and by businesses, especially by big business. As some people have said, COVID-19, the disease itself, is an artificial creation. The virus was probably created at the Lugar Research Center in Georgia, which is an American client state. The disease had been taken advantage of by Western oligarchs and by the World Economic Forum. Andrei Fursov, for example, made an hour-long program in which he talked about the WEF and about Klaus Schwab’s books. Before that, when the lockdowns got introduced, Fursov said that when an economic crisis appears in the capitalist system, capitalists usually attempt to organize a big war because wars result in population loss, in economic and social disruption, and then in economic recovery. But, nowadays, with all of the nuclear weapons that exist in the world, a big war would lead to catastrophes and even to the possibility that the instigators will be judged and executed. The virus and the lockdowns, according to Fursov, are solving some of the problems that a big war solves. The virus didn’t kill a large percentage of the population in Western countries because it wasn’t designed to be very deadly, but, together with the lockdowns and the so-called vaccines, it still caused some people to die. One of the big objectives for Western oligarchs in the last several decades has been population reduction, or at least a fall in the birth rate. It’s a typical oligarchical policy. Economic growth in Western states has been slowing down for the last several decades, but the population has continued to grow. And people without jobs or good prospects rebel. The larger the number of such people, the more dangerous they become for the establishment. So-called female empowerment, the promotion of gay relationships and marriage, and various distractions do have an effect, but they can’t lead to a big fall in the birth rate. Well, COVID-19 had been useful for the oligarchy in this respect. It didn’t cause a large number of deaths, but it still caused some deaths and it disrupted the economies of Western countries. There are reports pointing out that some rich people got even wealthier during the pandemic. Perhaps in the future a deadlier virus will be released. But it’s clear that the oligarchs don’t want to go that far yet. Anyway, since opposition to the mandates and to the restrictions in Western countries was mild and ineffective, nothing was changing and tougher mandates were being introduced. Fursov said that the people in the West, especially in Western Europe, have become so fearful and so obedient that he didn’t expect for any serious resistance to take place. In the last several months, Fursov also had a few tough words to say about people in the West. He said that if these people are told to get jabbed, they will get jabbed, and, if they’re told to hate Russians, they will hate Russians. He called them walking stomachs. Perhaps this means that he thinks of them as brainless. Leftist parties, at least the ones that still exist, didn’t do anything because, since the fall of the Soviet Union, they’ve been broken up, rendered innocuous, or completely demoralized by the establishment. Therefore, the task of resisting fell to some good old boys, like some of the truck drivers. Obviously, these people aren’t affected by the torrent of anti-leftist and anti-communist lies and propaganda, and they had the bravery and the resolve to travel to the capital and to make themselves heard, at least after they realized that their agitations on websites like Twitter have little or no effect. The authorities in Canada attempted to paint them as right-wing extremists, but they were only holding a peaceful protest. Eventually, there was a crackdown and the protesters got dispersed. Still, results were achieved. The Freedom Convoy and the peaceful protests that were taking place in other Western countries at the same time convinced the authorities and the WEF that it’s time to cancel the mandates and the restrictions in order to prevent more protests and unrest. The Canada convoy protest didn’t interest me much. I wasn’t for or against the protest. When the mandates and the restrictions were being enforced, they didn’t affect me much. But I’m glad that some of them got abolished because, after some time, they could have affected me in a serious and harmful way. Soon after the operation that’s called the COVID-19 pandemic came to an end, the war in Ukraine began. This war allowed the Western establishment to quickly shift focus to something else and to make many people forget about the virus and the hardships that were created because of it. The war in Ukraine has gone on pretty much the way I expected it to go. The Russians have had some successes, though probably not as many successes as they had hoped for. So far, the Russians have been successful in driving the Ukrainian Ground Forces and the Ukrainian Nazis out of the south-eastern provinces that had been under attack. These provinces are actually still under attack because the Ukrainians continue to fire missiles at the urban areas of these provinces, thus killing more people. The anti-Russian regime in Kiev, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the head, hasn’t given up because it receives military support, financial support, and intelligence support from the USA and from other NATO members. Because of this, the Ukrainian government and the armed forces have held out and have continued to resist the Russians. The Russians, of course, haven’t captured Kiev, and this is the big reason why the anti-Russian regime in Kiev has continued to resist. Perhaps it was never Vladimir Putin’s intention to capture Kiev. There was an offensive toward Kiev by the Russians at the beginning of the special military operation, as Putin has called the intervention, but the Russians pulled back not long after they got close to Kiev and began to focus only on liberating the south-eastern provinces. Perhaps the offensive toward Kiev was carried out in order to shock the Ukrainian government and the armed forces or perhaps it was carried out in order to pummel the Ukrainian armed forces in the north of Ukraine and to divert them from the south-eastern provinces. Or did the Russians really intend to capture Kiev but then pulled back after incurring unwanted losses? I don’t really know yet. Whatever the reason was, this offensive toward Kiev allowed the Western media (propaganda apparatus) to portray the Russian intervention as a real invasion and conquest of Ukraine by the Russians at the beginning of the intervention. The Russians probably never intended to capture Kiev because they wanted to avoid serious street fighting and because it was never their intention to conquer Ukraine. Frankly, I never thought that the Russians would be able to conquer Ukraine even if they had attempted to do so. The Russian Federation, which is pretty much a banana republic, still has little or no effective offensive power. Ukraine is also a banana republic, but at least it’s getting support from the West. It’s pretty obvious that Putin wants to continue to please the Europeans, especially the Germans, because they’re the big buyers of Russian raw materials, and these raw materials are very important because they’re the only large source of income for the Russian state and for Russian oligarchs. This is why Russian propaganda always features reports about the Russian gas pipelines to Europe and about Russian oil and gas exports. The Russians have almost nothing else to export. Therefore, the few interventions that Putin has conducted so far, his reactions to American imperialism and encroachment, have been limited and short. I think that he doesn’t want to conquer Ukraine because he doesn’t want to bring irreparable damage to Russian relations with the Europeans. At this time, and for the foreseeable future, he wants to continue to profit from Russian raw material exports to Europe. Therefore, he doesn’t want to be seen as a conqueror and as a real threat to the European Union. Of course, there’s also the fact that Russia is an oligarchical state that isn’t capable of conquering all of Ukraine and of holding on to it. But Putin couldn’t simply ignore the plight of the Russians that live in the south-eastern provinces of Ukraine. Accordingly, he launched his “special military operation” in February of 2022. I think that this operation hasn’t gone as well as he had hoped. David Petraeus, who has provided his analysis of the conflict, his hopes, and his deceptions, has pointed out that the Russians have lost more soldiers in the few months of fighting in Ukraine than the Soviets lost in the ten years of fighting in Afghanistan. I’d say that the losses of the Russians in Ukraine haven’t been massive. For example, the Soviets lost about 80,000 soldiers in the Battle of Berlin alone. Still, for a sickly, right-wing oligarchical state such as the Russian Federation, the losses have been heavy. The losses for Ukraine have been heavy too, but the Ukrainians have done a better job of mobilizing their forces and they’re fighting on home soil. Therefore, in September of 2022, Putin announced a partial mobilization. As some people have said, this is something that he didn’t want to do. This mobilization has produced a predictable reaction from the Russian masses. The Russians have begun doing what they do best, which is to surrender or to run away. It seems that many men in Russia began running to neighboring countries in order to evade the mobilization. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russians have lost faith in the government and in the army, for obvious reasons. The new regime carried out many disastrous policies, and things haven’t improved much after Putin came to power. Naturally, the people in Russia are demoralized and they have little or no faith in the Russian authorities. Of course, Russians also don’t want to get killed or captured in Ukraine, where the Ukrainians engage in torture and in humiliating prisoners of war. Even before all of this happened, however, there were reports of thousands of wealthy Russians and Russian cultural figures fleeing Russia for the West, for Israel, and for other states when the intervention in Ukraine began. Many of these people disseminated anti-Soviet and anti-communist lies and propaganda, and they were pretty much pro-Western Russophobes that used to work and often live in Russia. The fact that there were many of them in Russia, the fact that many of them are famous, and the fact that many of them held high posts in Russia show what a sickly state Russia is. And the ones that have been able to flee Russia so far are only a portion of the pro-Western Russophobes that live in Russia. I wouldn’t go quite as far as to call the Russian Federation a basket case (or maybe I would), but it’s clear that there are many traitors and potential traitors in the country. The education system in Russia is bad, there is widespread poverty and misery, there is widespread corruption, there are widespread diseases, there is widespread alcoholism, Western culture and products are promoted and supported in Russia, Soviet culture and history are demonized, and the Russian economy is in the toilet, as some American “analysts” would say. And these are only some of the serious problems that exist in the Russian Federation. Well, what I’m getting at is that the poor performance of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine and the problems within Russia itself didn’t come as a surprise to me. Still, the intervention in Ukraine hasn’t been a complete failure so far. The Russians have at least succeeded in liberating the south-eastern provinces of Ukraine, where the Russians have been aided by local separatists. I think that Putin’s big mistake has been to use nationalism in order to rally the Russian masses. He should have used something more effective, like McDonald’s or The Coca-Cola Company, which are companies that have been operating in Russia since the very beginning of the 1990s. Russians would never fight and die for their country, especially for an embarrassing country that’s only thirty years old. Russians would, however, fight and die for a McDonald’s Big Mac, for a bottle of Coca-Cola, or for a Louis Vuitton bag. In fact, the flag of the Russian Federation should have featured a McDonald’s Big Mac, a Coca-Cola bottle, or Boris Yeltsin’s drunken face in the center. This would have been a flag that the Russians could have rallied behind. Unfortunately for Putin, these and many other Western companies have pulled out of Russia soon after the conflict in Ukraine began. I guess that all of that extensive privatization and all those attempts to favor Western companies haven’t worked out well. I didn’t plan on making another post about the conflict in Ukraine. This is something that I didn’t really want to do. However, I recently spent several hours on watching American news reports and interviews. This is unusual because I almost never watch the news. I was definitely entertained. The Americans sound hopeful now because they think that Putin has bitten off more than he can chew. A few of them even say that the recent failures of the Russians in Ukraine will eventually lead to the fall of Putin. Well, I don’t know about that. But the Americans certainly shouldn’t soften their offensive at this critical time. It seems that they realize this because they recently got Luke Skywalker to talk to Zelenskyy and to voice his support for the Ukrainian president. That’s good, but I personally would have preferred to see Optimus Prime talk to Zelenskyy and voice his support. Well, maybe Optimus Prime isn’t available at this time. However, Luke Skywalker shouldn’t stop after only one brief talk. He should repeat what he did in the good old days, when he destroyed the Death Star and vanquished the evil Galactic Empire. He should get in a TIE fighter and lead a squadron of TIE fighters piloted by Ukrainian Nazis all the way to the Kremlin in Moscow. Then he should open fire and blast the evil Putin right out of the Kremlin. Then he should land his TIE fighter near the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center, where a crowd of pro-Western Russian neoliberals and Western news reporters will be waiting for him, and receive yet another medal for his heroism. I know that Luke is old now, but I’m sure that he’s capable of accomplishing such a mission. After all, he does have the Force on his side.