The Decline of Search Engines

 The Internet allowed anyone on the Internet to see public files on any other computer on the Internet. If, of course, one knew they were there and their address. So, early on, they came up with a search engine called Archie. But early Internet computers were mid-range with hundreds of users and with an Admin who decided what programs to install, so I never saw Archie. There were maybe 100 computers on the Internet back then, so one hoped for e-mails giving the address of a research paper one might find useful. Then there was the Usenet where people could post links to their research papers and I used Usenet heavily. There were sections devoted to very esoteric research, and sections devoted to humour and just about everything else. It was useful when I first found it, but then it got overwhelmed with, among other things, the very first spam, a couple of lawyers looking for clients who flooded the Usenet with their adverts.

Then came the World Wide Web, with browsers and servers and it seemed like everyone and his dog had a website, but finding the ones with information one needed seemed impossible. So someone developed Lycos. Lycos didn't want you to miss anything. So if you searched for 'date' it would find data and rate and dare and etc. and etc., just in case you misspelled your search term. My boss had a son who had to do a paper on 'date rape'. So I typed in 'date rape' and got lots of important dates, 4th of July websites, 25 December, 1 January, etc., etc. plus the dates grown in Saudi Arabia plus, plus, plus. Too many papers about date (or close to date) so it never got to date rape. So I tried rape date, and got papers about rape (but not date rape) and papers about rap and rep and reap and and and but nothing about date rape. So useless.

Then came Yahoo. Yahoo asked people to put their information on Yahoo and then did searches based on conjunction. If I asked for 'date and rape' I got only papers about date rape. GREAT! (but too late for my boss's son's high school paper). As long as Yahoo was a student project.

Then they graduated and venture capital took over. Everything on Yahoo was ranked by how much money the person paid. I was asked to find coin dealers in New Orleans. I got coin dealers in Chicago that paid to be listed, and restaurants in New Orleans that paid, but no coin dealers in New Orleans, since none had paid enough to be listed.

Then came Google. Pages ranked by how many other pages pointed at them. Scammers created lots of fake sites whose only purpose was to point to a site so it would get a higher rank. But Google tried to program the search engine not to use such faux sites in making its ranking. One could find just what one wanted, if it was anywhere on the Internet. But that was while they were still students, and Google was a student project. Actually, that's not quite fair, Google used that same model for several years. But after they became a commercial project, they blocked lots of sites. I found a site about the US war to colonise the Philippines. Then it went from detailed history to just one page: "this site is now blocked by Google, so we can't make any money and we're taking the site down". They said they asked, "Why?" and got no reply. So Google could kill a site they did not like. But still, if they didn't hate the site you were looking for, Google would probably find it for you.

But I looked for a good walker for an elderly man who has some disease his doctor said starts Al something or other, but I can't remember what the doctor said or why I went to see him. Anyway, a couple of years ago, I found lots of walkers, many of which looked much better than the one I'd just bought, but  I really didn't need another walker.

My walker is getting old, and I'm looking for a new one. I looked. Not much turned up. Then a florist told me: Google has gone the same as Yahoo right after they went public: sites are ranked by how much they pay Google. Pay enough, your site gets ranked first, in bold, 'This is the page you need!' even if it has nothing to do with what you're looking for. Build a page, leave it floating, it won't turn up on Google even if it's a perfect match for what you're searching for. So I found very few walkers, and all overpriced and not nearly as good as the ones I could find before. Google is now almost worthless if you need to find the best page to answer your query.

If one is looking for the best walker, Google will always point to the walker that paid the best to Alphabet, and they gave their money to Alphabet, they did not waste it building the best walker because paying Alphabet is a better way to have great sales.

Russia's Problem

 The US found some nations engaged in horrible, criminal activities, especially wanting to squander the profits from their natural resources on their own people when everyone must know that, with the demise of the USSR, all the world's resources belong to the US (with a little for US allies France and the UK).

When Iran claimed Iranian oil in 1951, the US sent the CIA to remove the government that stole the oil and put in the Shah who promised all the oil would belong to the US. When the Shah stole the oil, the US put in an obscure cleric who only cared about stoning women who didn't wear proper Islamic dress. But then the Ayatollah failed to hand over the oil, so the US would have destroyed Iran except there was no strait path to that destruction, so the Ayatollahs continue to refuse to hand the oil over to the US, and the US forbade the world from buying any Iranian oil. Of course, other evil nations have defied the US and bought Iranian oil, so their destruction is in the planning stage: buying Iranian oil is only one of many PRC violations of the Rules-Based Order, i.e., the US make all the rules and give all the orders.

Of course, Iraq tried to claim Iraqi oil, and Libya tried to claim Libyan oil, so the US destroyed both countries, carpet bombing the cities, killing as many of the men, women, and children terrorists as possible, destroying all their illegal infrastructure: water processing plants, electric plants, schools, hospital, & etc., all built with stolen US oil money.

This was easy and went very well, since they had no defences that could stand up to the US of A: no air defences, no real army.

But Russia do not hate the Ukraine the way the US hate any country that steal their natural resources that all belong to the US, and then squander the money on their own citizens. Russians have friends and relatives in the Ukraine.

Putin wants to demilitarise and denazify the Ukraine while minimising civilian casualties and damage to Ukrainian infrastructure, and this is much more difficult than US 'shock and awe' campaigns.

Obviously, Putin has no idea what he's doing, and is committing a heinous crime: the Ukraine and all their resources belong the US, and no one else.

So how to demilitarise and denazify without killing civilians or doing much damage to infrastructure? And why would anyone want to do that?

Putin does not seem to have a good answer to that problem.

Shortly after the invasion, the Russians took over much of the Donbass, Kharkov, and Kherson and held them for five months, until the Ukraine, given more advanced US weapons, forced the Russians out of Kharkov and out of about a third of Kherson, the first major Russian losses.

Does this mean the US have finally given the Ukrainians weapons with which they can drive the Russians out of the entire Ukraine? Or are Russia just trying to minimise Russian casualties and pulling back to more defensible positions which the Ukraine will attack with limited success and massive losses?

The US 2022 Elections, Sunday 13 November

 Yesterday, the Democrats and Republicans had 49 seats in the US Senate, or 2 short of the total, since 2 races had not been decided.

Today, The Democrats have 50, so a majority, when the polls the day before the election said the Republicans would probably take the Senate. But now the Senate has a Democrat majority, and may have a Democrat majority of 51 after the Georgia runoff.

All the anti-war Republicans who had to run lost (there are a few Senators who did not have to run in the 2022 elections, every election elects just 1/3 of all the Senators, so some of the very few Republicans who are anti-war did not have to run; lots of those running were anti-war, but they just about all lost).

Yesterday, the Democrats started with 201 members of the House of Representative, but that rose to 204, while the Republicans stayed at 211. Today, the Democrats still have 204, and the Republicans gained one to 212, just 6 away from having a majority of the House. The polls said the Republicans would have a comfortable majority, but now it is not clear if they will get a majority. Yesterday started with 19 races still undecided, and 3 of the four decided went to Democrats and one to a Republican. If this continues, the Democrats will have the House and Senate, just as they do now. Fifteen seats in the House still undecided. The Democrats need 14 more to win the House, and the Republicans need just 6 more. Will the Democrats get 14 out of 15? Quite possibly. And every last Democrat wants war with Russia and the PRC that will destroy both countries and split them into a bunch of unarmed, independent nations that cannot challenge US hegemony.

The US 2022 Election

 The US had an election for the legislative branch, not quite a Parliament, but the closest US equivalent, on Tuesday, 8 November (it has to be on the first Tuesday AFTER 1 November). We still have no idea who won.

Before, the Democrats had a majority in the House and the Senate. After 5 days, we have no idea. Neither party have a majority in either the House or the Senate, since we have no idea which party won.

A month before the election, the polls said it was 60% certain the Republicans would win in the House, and 60% certain the Democrats would win in the Senate. A week before the election, the polls said the Republicans would have a comfortable majority in the House, and the Senate was 50-50.

To win in the House requires having at least 218 members, and neither party have that many yet.

To win in the Senate, the Democrats need 50 Senators, the Republicans need 51, and both now have 49.

The Republicans are slightly ahead in the House, with 211, and the Democrats have 201, sorry 202, sorry now it's 204: the Democrats are gaining, and no one knows which will end up with the majority.

The Senate is almost certain to go to the Democrats, who might go from their current majority of 50 to a majority of 51.

The anti-war candidates did not do well. Most Americans listen to their leaders that Putin wants to rebuild the Warsaw Pact, then expand it to Western Europe, the UK, the US, and Canada, so he must be stopped. Not stopping Putin in the Ukraine would be as bad as Chamberlain appeasing Hitler at Munich.

Only the story about Chamberlain and appeasement came when the UK wanted a scapegoat and Churchill gave them Chamberlain.

In 1938, the year of Munich, Britain and France wanted war with Germany in 1939. Neither were ready for war in 1938. France wanted to complete the Maginot Line, and France would not join Britain in a war against Germany without that Maginot Line. So Chamberlain pretended that he only wanted 'Peace in our time' and so gave Germany the Sudetenland when he was really buying time.

Britain wanted to complete a radar system, which was Top Secret, so Churchill's demonisation of Chamberlain said the UK won the Battle of Britain with carrots, not radar, which was completely false. The radar meant that the RAF knew when and where the Luftwaffe were coming and were waiting for them, so Luftwaffe losses were unacceptably high, the Luftwaffe lost too many bombers, and the UK won the Battle of Britain. But Churchill said the RAF could see the Germans coming and shoot them down because they ate a lot of carrots, nothing else.

Since Churchill warned about appeasement, the US went to war in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, the Yemen, Syria, and probably a bunch I forgot and a bunch that never made the media, since war is always better than appeasement.

But now the US want to take on Russia and the PRC, which are not at all like any war the US has ever fought before.

So the US threatened to put nukes and ABMs in the Ukraine, and said there was nothing Russia could do about it, so Russia did something, and the US say Russia must be totally destroyed, broken up into several small, independent, unarmed states. A state for Dagestan, a state for Chechnea, an independent state for all the Russian Republics. Then those states will be no more of a problem for the US than Grenada.

But Russia are NOT Grenada, so this war is unlikely to go like the War against Grenada.

But every US Democrat and the senior Republicans all say we cannot appease Putin, we must totally destroy Russia before they can conquer the world. Only a few Republicans say they want to stop the war and go back to cheap petrol and low inflation. All the rest say, 'No appeasement!!!'

As for the election, 'It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes.' And those who count the votes are making sure enough of the anti-war Republicans lose that a comfortable majority will continue to support the endless US wars.

Scott Ritter says Russia are winning. What next?

All of NATO are against Russia, determined to win, and all the Western media must reiterate the official Western narrative: Putin's invasion of the Ukraine was the biggest mistake any Russian ever made, the Ukraine, with advanced US weapons, destroyed the "outmoded and inept" Russian weapons, shot down every Russian aeroplane, destroyed all the Russian tanks, killed just about all the Russian troops that invaded. And the sanctions completely destroyed the Russian economy, which was entirely based on selling oil and gas to the West and using the money to buy everything Russia needed from the West.

However,  Scott Ritter et al. report accurately about the war in the Ukraine, and the Western narrative is not altogether accurate. Mr Ritter, who has accurate information about the Ukraine and refuses to abide by US/EU law that one must always reiterate the official Western narrative, says that Russia are winning in the Ukraine. And anyone who can count knows that the Russia economy has survived the Western sanctions, selling to the East and South, making more money than before the sanctions, having the world's strongest currency.

The war in the Ukraine has, as its objective, the complete destruction of Russia. Russia must lose badly until Putin is overthrown and the new regime agree to all NATO conditions: Russia must be broken up into several small, unarmed states, all Russian energy resources must go to US oil and gas barons as reparations. A beneficial side effect is the complete economic destruction of Germany: Germany's prosperity was entirely based on cheap Russian energy, and with energy from the US oil and gas barons at four or more times the price, Germany is no longer competitive, no one can afford to pay four times what they were paying to buy German output, so the German economy is already collapsing, and things will only get worse. German industries can only survive if they can relocate to the US where they will be able to buy affordable energy. Maybe.

The raisons d'etre for NATO were 1) to keep the US in, and almost all of Europe are now a US neocolony, so the US are in as neoImperialist; 2) to keep the USSR (now Russia) out, and the neocolony of Europe are now prohibited by law from any economic interaction with Russia, the only allowed interaction is to support the US military conquest of Russia, so Russia are out; and 3) to keep Germany down, and the German economy is imploding without access to the cheap Russian energy that gave Germany their competitive advantage.

So it is win, win, win for NATO!

Except that Russia are winning in the Ukraine. The US as World Hegemon is under severe threat.

So will the US decide that having no World at all is better than losing their World Hegemony? Do the US leadership figure their bunkers will be safe from Russian retaliation? The US president says Armageddon is upon us, and he should know.

A Tale of Two Narratives

 Patrick Cockburn was once an excellent foreign correspondent, covering what the US call the "Middle East", which the UK used to call the "Near East" before, but now use the American term. 

The Greeks always said the East started at the Hellespont, but the US figure Western Europe is still East, not as far east as the Hellespont, but still East. So Europe are the Near East for the US, and the area just east of the Hellespont is the Middle East for the US. And the US is rich enough and powerful enough that most now call the area just east of the Hellespont the "Middle East".

Mr Cockburn wrote that, with Russia in severe decline, the idiot Putin got the idea of invading the Ukraine, for some inexplicable reason (if the Ukraine want to kill all the ethnic Russians in the Ukraine, they have every right to do so, that's national sovereignty). Of course, Russia lost badly, easily defeated by the Ukrainians, and complete collapse and regime change should happen in a few more weeks, at most. Mr Cockburn wrote that Russia had just 55 aeroplanes, and the Ukrainians destroyed all of them.

Mr Cockburn now reads the Western media which reiterates the Western narrative, but reporters actually in Eastern Ukraine report that Russia are mostly winning, with few losses, while the Ukraine lost huge numbers of draftees in their offensive that recaptured some areas formerly held by the Russians, while the Russian forces managed to escape with very few losses.

Of course, it still looks bad. The ethnic Russians left behind are now being murdered. Why Russia invaded the Kharkov oblast when they should have known they could not hold it against a Ukrainian attack, leaving the ethnic Russians now in much worse state than before, is not clear.

Russia admit that about 6,000 of the Russian army soldiers that invaded the Ukraine have been killed. Of course, the ethnic Russian army in the Ukraine joined with the Russian national army to fight the anti-Russian Ukrainians, and together they were slowly advancing. Until they weren't. And the ethnic Russian Ukrainian army lost far more soldiers than the Russian army, but no one counts them. So no reliable numbers for Russian/ethnic Russian Ukrainian losses.

Meanwhile, the goal of the US is the complete destruction of Russia, a continuation of what happened to the USSR thanks to Gorbachev and Yeltsin: breaking Russia up into several, perhaps many, small, unarmed countries that must do whatever the US demand or be totally destroyed similar to Iraq and Libya. The US want a similar fate for the PRC. Then the US will continue to be World Hegemon with no competitors. And the Western media all say this is going very well, following the US plan perfectly, destroying Russia and soon the PRC as well.

But independent media are not so sure, they figure the US will lose to Russia in the Ukraine, where Russia have all the logistic advantage.

And the US will lose to the PRC, which have all the advantage in numbers, technology, and leadership.

But my question remains: will the US decide that having no world at all is better than giving up World Hegemony? It's certainly looking like it. Jens Stoltenberg says that NATO must not lose in the Ukraine, no matter what it takes to prevent a loss.

Russian or Western narrative?

From the day Russia began the "Special Military Operation", the Western Narrative was that the Ukrainians, with advanced US weapons, had completely destroyed just about all of the Russian forces. The Russians were using Soviet era tanks and aeroplanes that were "outmoded and inept" according to the Western press, and easily destroyed by those advanced US weapons. In a few weeks, Russia had lost more than 80,000 dead and the rest badly wounded and/or captured, so just a handful of Russians sneaking where the Ukrainian military could not find them and shelling undefended cities and villages, doing a lot of damage to the civilian infrastructure but not doing any damage to the Ukrainian military.

The reporters in the Russian controlled areas produced many videos showing that the Russians were winning, slowly advancing and doing massive damage to the Ukrainian military. No actual Russian losses. The US had built a series of impregnable, mostly underground fortresses. No conventional bombs, no artillery shells, nothing could penetrate the layers of cement and steel, so the Russians had to starve out the Ukrainian military, and those fortresses were stocked with months of food and water, so all was going slowly, but the Russians were advancing. For six months.

Then, two weeks ago, Russia lost the entire oblast of Kharkov. Russia say they are now mobilising, and held referenda where four oblasts voted to rejoin Russia. The Western narrative was that armed Russians forced a few unarmed civilians to vote to join Russia, but the overwhelming majority of the Ukraine hate everything Russia. The Ukrainians see great prosperity and freedom in the EU and NATO and abject poverty and oppression in Russia. The abject poverty when Russia are selling huge amounts of energy to Europe sounded a bit unlikely, but the West insisted their reporters, who could see clearly from their desks in New York and London and Paris and Berlin, checked and verified the veracity of the Western narrative.

And then the Russians lost Liman, after holding it for 6 months.

So the Western narrative, that the Ukrainians have worn down the Russian military pretty much completely is starting to sound as if it might have some truth to it. Not, as they've been claiming for 6 months, that the Russian military were completely destroyed the first week, since that was obviously false, but the Russian claims of losing only 6,000 men is starting to look equally false. An oblast and a piece of another oblast, held for six months that the Ukrainian military could not make any progress, suddenly, the Ukrainian military are easily able to evict the Russians from part of the Ukraine, something they could not do for six months, but are now finding rather easy. If this continues, the Ukraine will eventually evict the Russian military from the entire Ukraine.

Two wins in two weeks might be less than they seem, but six months of nothing but losses by the Ukrainian military followed by two rather big wins indicate that something might have changed.

The West finally giving the Ukraine much more advanced weapons? The Russian forces slowly but steadily worn down until they no longer have the wherewithal to stop the Ukrainian counteroffensives they once easily stopped?

And what's happening to the Russian 'recall of reserves'? The Western narrative is that every man in Russia is hiding, trying to emigrate, knowing if they are sent to the Ukraine it is certain death. Could there be some truth in the Western narrative? A lot of obvious lies in the Western narrative, but could those lies contain a kernel of essential truth? The recall is going slowly, and the Ukraine are able to take more and more territory that was Russian-controlled for six months.

The reporters in the Donbass report that the ethnic Russians, being killed by the Ukrainians for 8 years, are desperate to be part of Russia, to have the protection of the Russian military from the Ukrainians who want to kill them, and they have video and a lot of evidence that this is correct, but we see no evidence that Russia still have the wherewithal to protect them. It is looking like the Russian force, easily able to stop Ukrainian counteroffensives for six months, was slowly being whittled down until they are no longer able to stop those counteroffensives, and Putin was hoping the referenda and promise of major Russian retaliation for any attacks would cause the Ukraine to pause.

Instead, the US, fearful of uprisings in Europe, destroyed the Russian pipelines. So now, even if ordinary Europeans could overthrow their governments (unlikely, since those governments are supported by the US military), they still won't have any gas to heat their homes, so no point. The German government will not allow Russia to repair the pipelines, since they are US puppets. So there will never again be any pipelines, no Russian gas in Europe, and the German economy destroyed. Europeans will have to use Norwegian, Qatari, and American gas, all much, much more expensive than Russian gas, so many won't be able to heat their homes, energy intensive industries must close or relocate to the US.

So US in, Russia out, and Germany down: NATO still successfully accomplishing everything they were intended to accomplish.