Netanyahoo's "Iran Files" are Well Known, Old and Purloined from Vienna
The dog and pony show the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahoo provided yesterday (video, slideshow) was not based on material Israeli secret services acquired in Iran, but most likely from data Iran provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) during the implementation period of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, pdf).
Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the Crisis Group, was the first to propose this thesis:
Ali Vaez @AliVaez - 18:06 UTC - 30 Apr 2018
5/ It appears to me that what Israel has done is that it has probably hacked the @iaeaorg and gathered some new details from what Iran responded to the agency to close the outstanding issues in 2015: IAEA Board Adopts Landmark Resolution on Iran PMD Case
Several nuclear proliferation experts point out that there was nothing new in Netanyahoo's presentation:
Jeffrey Lewis @ArmsControlWonk - 00:14 UTC- 1 May 2018
Let's go through Netanyahu's dog-and-pony show. As you will see, everything he said was already known to the IAEA and published in IAEA GOV/2015/68 (2015). There is literally nothing new here and nothing that changes the wisdom of the JCPOA. 1/10
All the graphics, pictures and technical details Netanyahoo quoted were known to the IAEA and the negotiators of the agreement with Iran.
The tale the Israelis provide to explain how they got access to the files does not fit to the content of the "highly theatrical" presentation:
The senior Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a secret mission, said that Israel’s Mossad intelligence service discovered the warehouse in February 2016, and had the building under surveillance since then.
Mossad operatives broke into the building one night last January, removed the original documents and smuggled them back to Israel the same night, the official said.
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, a political scientist at Columbia University, points to this slide and satellite picture in Netanyahoo's presentation:
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The pictured slide claims that Iran moved files to that location in 2017. But the Israeli sources tell the NYT that the Mossad detected the warehouse in early 2016. Why, if no nuclear files were there at that time, did the Mossad put a random warehouse in Tehran under observation?
Most likely both claims are false.
The slide above shows a screenshot of a satellite picture of Shurabad, a warehousing district in south Tehran. The coordinates are 35.494257. N, 51.356535 E.
By comparing changes in the pictured buildings and a Google Earth historic timeline of satellite pictures Batmanghelidj finds that the picture Netanyahoo showed in his slide must have been taken between September 2014 and November 2015.
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Other researchers confirm this analysis. Batmanghelidj notes that this time frame corresponds to the 'implementation period' of the JCPOA which began in January 2014 and ended in July 2015. During the period Iran provided, as agreed in the JCPOA, information about its nuclear research and gave IAEA inspectors access to all relevant locations and source material.
Israel claims it detected the archive site in early 2016. How does that fit with a satellite picture in the presentation that was then already replaced by newer ones and only available in a historic timeline view?
Presumably the satellite picture was part of the stash the Israelis acquired. But:
- Iran had no reason to give the IAEA such a picture. It gave the IAEA inspectors physical access to its sites and did not hide anything.
- The IAEA uses (pdf) Wikimapia, Google Earth and other open source tools to pursue and to document its work.
- It is thus very likely that the IAEA made that screenshot of a satellite picture at the time it inspected the site during the 2014 and 2015 period to document its work.
There are more inconsistencies in Netanyahoo's stunt. One of his slides shows the potential position of a nuclear device in a missile as drawn in a well known 2003 sketch by Iranian scientists. He later claims that current Iranian missiles with a longer range could hold such a device.
That is wrong. The new Iranian missiles use a "baby bottle" nose cone that is too small to hold a device like the one researched by Iranian scientist 15 years ago. No current Iranian missile is capable of carrying such a nuclear device.
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Following Netanyahoo's scaremongering show the IAEA provided this statement:
In December 2015, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano presented the Final Assessment on past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear programme to the IAEA Board of Governors.
...
The Agency’s overall assessment was that a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device were conducted in Iran prior to the end of 2003 as a coordinated effort, and some activities took place after 2003. The Agency also assessed that these activities did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities.
...
Based on the Director General’s report, the Board of Governors declared that its consideration of this issue was closed.
Iran did feasibility studies to assess what was needed to start a nuclear weapon development program. It never started such a program. The feasibility studies were related to a potential Iraqi nuclear weapon program which would have threatened Iran. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 the potential danger of a hostile Iraq dissolved and Iran shut down its studies. The shutdown in 2003 was confirmed in a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate in 2007 and by the IAEA.
Netanyahoo presented old material of Iran's old feasibility studies. Everything he presented was already well known and the technical details had long been discussed at length.
The claims of how and when the Israelis intelligence acquired the files do not make sense. The Mossad fairytale is that its agents broke into a warehouse building in Tehran, opened two dozen combination lock safes (slide 8 in the show), hauled out half a ton of materials and put those onto a plane to Israel in the very same night. Even Hollywood would reject such an implausible script.
The folders Netanyahoo presented were all empty.
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The 2014/15 satellite picture used by Netanyahoo in his slides is a further indication that the material was not obtained in Iran but from a (digital) archive at the IAEA in Vienna. The "half a ton" material of "55,000 printed pages" and "183 CDs" that Netanyahoo implausibly claims was smuggled out of a "warehouse" in Tehran are most likely just a bunch of old data-files from the 2014/2015 IAEA investigation copied from a digital IAEA archive in Vienna. They likely fit on a SSD drive or a handful of USB sticks.
Netanyahoo presented nonsense and lied just as he always does.
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But the show was not in vain. As for its purpose we again refer to Ali Vaez:
Ali Vaez @AliVaez - 18:06 UTC - 30 Apr 2018
9/9 So all is all, this is a pretty clear attempt at recycling old info to create new hype and push @realDonaldTrump to pull the plug on the #IranDeal and push Iran and the US into a military conflict to weaken and contain Iran. Read more here: The Iran-U.S. Trigger List
The show was coordinated with the White House and unnecessary to convince Trump who has, by all accounts, already decided to blow up the JCPOA deal. It might help though to increase public support for that decision.
Posted by b on May 1, 2018 at 16:26 UTC | Permalink
« previous pagepaulmeli 201 - so you are telling me that MMT addresses the fact of the even exchange of work being justice and justice being crucial to human survival??
Posted by: Mother of God! | May 3 2018 14:38 utc | 202
South Africa had a lot of help from Israel in building its nukes. They had a quid pro quo deal: Israel provided technical expertise, while South Africa provided uranium for Israel to build further nukes. The 2010 book "The Unspoken Alliance" discusses the deal.
Posted by: lysias | May 3 2018 15:26 utc | 203
South Africa had a lot of help from Israel in building its nukes. They had a quid pro quo deal: Israel provided technical expertise, while South Africa provided uranium for Israel to build further nukes. The 2010 book "The Unspoken Alliance" discusses the deal.
Posted by: lysias | May 3 2018 15:26 utc | 204
man, the room goes dead silent when somebody dares suggest that failure to recognize that equal exchange of work is justice and failure to do justice is ultimately fatal to the human species. But what is more perfect good sense than thinking if wealth is only created by sacrifice then only sacrifice should get pay? Only sacrifice justly deserves pay because only sacrifice produces pay – what is more sane than that? Where is the rational argument against that sound idea? is it that hard to see that injustice drives violence? can I spit in your face without getting a punch in the nose? is it hard to see that theft is injustice whether it is legal theft or illegal?
So what if Adam spends his hour working on production or provision of a good or service that has a higher profit margin than does the workproduct Barney contributes his hour to? So what? How does that pertain to, let alone negate, the fact that each worked the same, each sacrificed the same? I repeat: I do not see where MMT has addressed these crucial vital essential points.
If Adam works twice as long as Barney justice pays him twice as much not anywhere from a thousandth as much to a million times as much - which is VERY different from what we have now, with WW3 looming and E=mc2 not being a fact subject to emotive persuasion...
Posted by: Mother of God! | May 3 2018 15:29 utc | 205
sorry I was typing too fast. first line should read "...suggest that equal exchange of work is justice and failure to..."
Posted by: Mother of God! | May 3 2018 15:40 utc | 206
Grieved @190 et al.
I am happy to be able to agree with Grieved's excellent articulation of debt capitalization as the irrational and yet for most of us (apparently) "natural" foundation of contemporary Western economies.
Grieved's analysis is not some harebrained theory cooked up by disgruntled internet soreheads. It rather represents the first and most fundamental insight of the classical understanding of political economy. Aristotle makes the same point that Grieved does in Book I of his *Politics* Any activity directed to money-making is inherently irrational because its end is never achievable: unlike the activity of medicine, for example, whose qualitative end is health, the activity of banking has no qualitative end, but only a quantitative one: making more money. And no matter how much money you have already made, there is always still *more* money to be made, and this goes on to infinity. So money-making is, for Aristotle, literally a pointless endeavor.
If the activity of money-making is irrational, then the issuing of interest-laden debt for the purpose of money-making is doubly so. This is because to charge interest on a loan is to misunderstand the function of money in a given political community. Money is not to be used as (for example) a "tool of [private] wealth-creation". The social-political "value" of the convention of money is not that it is somehow able, like a pair of rabbits, to reproduce itself over time; rather the "value" of money resides in its social-circulatory use as a convenient token of debt repayable in the last instance on the basis of the productive capacity of the political community taken as a whole.
For a good account of the 17th-18th century re-theorization of money, and political economy in general, in defense of what came to be called the new "commercial republics" of mercantilist and colonialist Europe, leading eventually to our bizarre contemporary association of "political freedom" with that useful fiction "market freedom", see Eric MacGilvray's *The Invention of Market Freedom*.
Posted by: WJ | May 3 2018 16:00 utc | 207
@181 paulmeli and @186 jen.. thanks for your response to my comments/ questions.
@192 grieved... thanks for sharing.. i think the IMF is part of the problem though, as it favours certain countries over others.. it is another byproduct of the bretton woods agreement which gave undue power and control to the usa.. the special drawing rights SDR would change nothing as i understand it.. the same players would hold power over others due the way the IMF was structured..
@194 mauisurfer.. bill mitchell keeps on coming up in regard to MMT.. paulmeli and a few others linked to his blog here.
@lysias - thanks for the overview on israels role in relation to @198 dans comments on south africa and nuclear weapon development..
Posted by: james | May 3 2018 16:04 utc | 208
@lysias 204
Yes, they both were apartheid states, and felt they had a lot in common, but its more complicated than that. Israel could easily have got fuel from elsewhere, and S.A had already began its research in 58. They did at one point exchange a few grams of tritium for a few hundred kilos of S.A uranium, but mostly I think they helped each other through the technical difficulties of testing. Israel could never test a nuke in a state the size of a big game reserve in S.A without being detected, so they cooperated, but in order for that to happen they both had to be at the same point in atomic evolution. It served Israels interest in that they could deny everything, and get away without signing the necessary treaties later on.
By the way, South Africa has recently broken off diplomatic relations with Israel, I think the only non-muslim state to do so yet. Relations have been souring for quite some time, and I wouldn't be surprised if they have some real dirt on each other considering their heinous relationship prior to 94...
Thank god thats over.
Posted by: dan | May 3 2018 16:26 utc | 209
Michael Hudson talks more about his upcoming book. Several discussions that differ from the interview I previously linked. Here's one topic:
"[T]he linguistic origins of the words 'debt' and 'sin,' and how understanding the connection can bring a different view to Christianity and Jesus’s teachings."
Hudson also says: "So you had debt and credit before you had money."
Sorry this topic has eclipsed b's initial article content; but I aver money and the power that stems from its control is at the root of this entire problem, and the article does mention The Merchant of Venice, so there is a contextual link.
Posted by: karlof1 | May 3 2018 16:28 utc | 210
Israel's Dirty Syrian Airstrikes Revealed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A2LvXTv9kw&t=5s
Posted by: ron | May 3 2018 16:39 utc | 211
the only thing that backs money is work. all the money in the world = all the work in the world = all the workproducts. no work = no workproducts = the money worth nothing. all discussions of money, wealth, and economic systems that ignore the most basic fundamental fact of human existence are part of the problem, not part of the solution. If you do not begin with and proceed from the indisputable fact that work is the first and most fundamental fact of staying alive and that work = sacrifice of the only currency humans really have to spend - the hours of our lives - then you are not building your econ castle nor your society on solid ground.
“If there were but one person in the world, it is manifest that he could have no more wealth than he was able to make and save. THIS is the natural order.” - Henry George.
the fundamental situation we find ourselves in as beings living in human bodies is no different than the fundamental situation of bears and birds. Bear no pickee berries, bear no eatee berries. Bird no catchee worm, bird no eatee worm. we sacrifice our hours to getting food, shelter, etc or we don't survive. we cannot survive without our basic needs met and money is the symbol or ticket used to get our food and shelter and education and medicine and etc etc, yet people are saying that pursuit of money (money-making) is pointless. that is a truly ridiculous statement. the insertion of 'money' between work and eat does not change the fundamental situation. in a state of nature we fish and eat a fish. in the economic dystems we have created we have legal thefts that leave 99% worse off than in nature and a society and an economics that does that, that leaves us worse off than we were in a state of nature has nothing to recommend it.
"Emancipation from error is the condition of real knowledge.” -Henri Amiel 1821 – 1881
“If, while there is yet time, we turn to Justice and obey her, if we trust Liberty and follow her, the dangers that now threaten must disappear, the forces that now menace will turn to agencies of elevation. Think of the powers now wasted; of the infinite fields of knowledge yet to be explored; of the possibilities of which the wondrous inventions of this century give us but a hint. With want destroyed, with greed changed to noble passions, with the fraternity that is born of equality taking the place of the jealousy and fear that now array men against each other, with mental power loosened by conditions which give to the humblest comfort and leisure; who shall measure the heights to which our civilisation may soar?
"The rise of wages, the opening of opportunities for all to make an easy and comfortable living, would at once lessen and would soon eliminate from society the thieves, swindlers, and other classes of criminals who spring from the unequal distribution of wealth...
"Industrial changes imply social changes and necessitate political changes.
"Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes.
"For every social wrong there must be a remedy. But the remedy can be nothing less than the abolition of the wrong.” -Henry George 1839 - 1897
"Iniquity, committed in this world, produces not fruit immediately, but, like the earth, in due season, and advancing by little and little, it eradicates the man who committed it. ...justice, being destroyed, will destroy; being preserved, will preserve; it must never therefore be violated." -Manu 1200 bc
Ruth Benedict, pioneering anthropologist, mentor of Margaret Mead, speaking of primitive economic orders that “fall into two main types”:
“The first of these I shall call the funnel system. All that the community produces you are to imagine going into the large end of a funnel, which collects everything and channels it toward the richest persons. The collective wealth has only one prime destination, the person who already has valuable possessions. This system depends upon certain men’s claims to the labor of others, or upon ownership and the right of favored persons to corner certain articles of wealth. It reaches its highest development where there is interest and where wealth can be used to obtain forced labor.
The second great pattern of economic orders is one I shall call the syphon system. This is the economy where wealth is constantly channeled away from the point of greatest concentration – from any point of concentration - and spread throughout the community. The syphon system ensures great fluidity of wealth. Since everyone is provided for, poverty is not a word to fear, and anxiety, which develops so luxuriantly in funnel societies, is absent to a degree that seems to us incredible. These are preeminently the societies of good will, where murder and suicide are rare or actually unknown. If such societies have periods of great scarcity, all members of the community cooperate to get through these periods as best they can.
When one is studying aggression in different cultures, therefore, one of the things one looks for is the degree to which economic distribution is set up according to the syphon method or the funnel method.”
Posted by: Mother of God! | May 3 2018 17:10 utc | 212
WJ @207--
"If the activity of money-making is irrational...," then isn't a money-based economy as equally irrational? What is the purpose of money? We're taught it's required for commerce as barter's unwieldy. Hudson insists that debts were initially repaid on "threshing room floors" at time of harvest, which suggests payment in kind--barter. He provides this discussion about "Palatial Credit: Origins of Money and Interest" that's very educational!
Posted by: karlof1 | May 3 2018 17:17 utc | 213
lastly before I go away and let the discussion of the myriad very negative CONSEQUENCES of allowing overpay underpay go on ad infinitum:
money is not the root of all evil.
the love of money is not the root of all evil, either.
the love of having the chance to have the money that someone other than you earned is the root of all evil.
the amount any individual can contribute to the pool of wealth is limited by nature's decree.
yet we allow unlimited withdrawals from that pool of wealth.
strike the root or go extinct.
Posted by: Mother of God! | May 3 2018 17:18 utc | 214
Back to thread's original topic: Iran's nuclear program. At b's twitter base is this excellent thread about info always omitted from western media about Iran's nuclear program. Iran's honest; the West has always lied. As Iran's leadership has said, what needs to happen is US compliance with Iran Deal, not appeasement of Trump's feelings about it.
Posted by: karlof1 | May 3 2018 17:55 utc | 215
Mother of God! @214--
Ah yes, most certainly: Envy and Greed and trying to continue living a life of leisure and ease at other's expense.
Posted by: karlof1 | May 3 2018 17:58 utc | 216
karlof1 @213,
"If the activity of money-making is irrational...," then isn't a money-based economy as equally irrational?
Yes, in fact, it is even more irrational. In some non-trivial sense, of course, there is no such thing as a "money-based economy." For every economy--even ours!--is in reality "based" on human political and productive activity. But some illusions can be very powerful.
Posted by: WJ | May 3 2018 18:07 utc | 217
Karlofi @213
Also, Hudson is right. There is zero historical evidence in support of the 18th-century myth that money originated in the bartering among (what amount to) members of one and the same political community. David Graeber's book on the history of debt is devastating on this score.
But "money" was often used to facilitate trade between (relatively) distant and distinct political communities. It is easier to transport that a bunch of sheep, etc. But note that trade does not equal barter. And note also that, almost universally throughout history, the normal practice of political communities has been to protect and segregate its local economies of production and use from the somewhat "artificial" (because comparatively unembedded) markets of foreign trade. See Polyani for a fascinating and rich account of how they managed to do so.
Posted by: WJ | May 3 2018 18:34 utc | 218
WJ @218--
Thanks for your replies. Yes, I do recall that segregation learned somewhere long ago. Maybe when I first read Polyani. Much policy formulation from both D&R Parties can be distilled to: Your destiny is Debt-Peonage as they deliberately transfer ever more wealth upwards. And yes, the revolt over that is currently small but will likely explode with the next financial meltdown.
Earlier, I linked to Crooke's paper about China that linked to an essay based on a presentation given by Rosneft's CEO Igor Sechin, but that essay contained no link to it. Here's the link to the PowerPoint presentation and here's the pdf for his actual speech. The maps discussed by Bruno Maçães's article are at the end of the PowerPoint presentation.
Posted by: karlof1 | May 3 2018 19:06 utc | 219
Nethy wants to finish the seven nations to destroy game for the 911 false flag. Deut. 7:1-2 is where this seven to destroy idea comes from.
Posted by: Bonton | May 3 2018 19:24 utc | 220
WJ--On Polanyi
In Hudson's end notes for his Palatial Credit: Origins of Money and Interest, is a reference to an unpublished anthology The Enduring Legacy of Karl Polanyi by Radhika Desai and Kari Polanyi Levitt, eds, Hudson contributed to: “From Polanyi to the New Economic Anthropology.” I'm sure many of us will find that work of great interest. Oh I do miss so very much having a university library nearby to haunt.
Posted by: karlof1 | May 3 2018 20:51 utc | 221
That anthology has no business being unpublished. I will try to hunt down Hudson's piece in it. If I find it I will let you know.
Posted by: WJ | May 4 2018 0:29 utc | 222
WJ
Sorry, I omitted the yet to be part of unpublished. I presume later this year.
Posted by: karlof1 | May 4 2018 1:08 utc | 223
Hudson:
if you didn’t cancel the debts, you wouldn’t have anyone to fight in the army or perform the corvée labor that Egypt and other countries depended on to build their basic infrastructure.
Why not decrees to suspend debt repayment while laboring on "public works"? Perhaps jubilee & conscription appeased the rabble revolting under private expropriation? Wouldn't this rather be a stage in governance - the turn to expansion or "development" to thwart rebellion?
Hudson:
The reason there wasn’t an abstract discussion was that there was no Milton Friedman or Margaret Thatcher to advocate a libertarian free-enterprise economy. [...] it never occurred to them to develop economics and an individualistic explanation of thingsHA HA HA. Perhaps, instead, this mode of mass bamboozlement was untenable before "mathematical" mal-education enabled such comprador stupefaction and technological baffle could mask ongoing immiseration. Hudson acknowledges that the Romans were able to stall rebellion by intrigue and assassination - is this terrorism not the developing mode in the capitalist miasma?
Hudson:
We are still in the 2008 debt crisis, and it cannot be resolved until the debts are written down. There’ll just be more and more poverty and more and more economic polarization.Sure,but there is also a piratical end to the austerity. The goal of the empire is to delay write-down until the empire controls sufficient assets that no revolt or opponent can control it - or exterminate all trying.
Posted by: Indian Jones | May 4 2018 1:37 utc | 224
An Observation:
There has been presented here, one brilliant recitation of the dissent catechism to neoliberal economic mumbo-jumbo. All the fine words, well constructed phrasing, brilliant retelling that constructs the thought vessel upon which you embark, all of it goes to the bottom, holed beneath the waterline on the shoals of 'Why?'. The timbers of your thoughts, seemingly sound are rotted, their substance weakened, unexamined, with the woodworms of unoriginality, not a nail of comprehension or consideration binds the timbers together. But that is for you to figure out, you all are such a bright crew, maybe before you get your feet wet. Bon Voyage!
Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | May 4 2018 3:28 utc | 225
What a fascinating and instructive discussion on money. I'm surprised and dismayed that psychohistorian hasn't joined in.
Here's my favorite money.
Posted by: Daniel | May 4 2018 4:53 utc | 226
Mother of God. I won’t indulge in quibbling on the details, you are right that MMT (+ other offshoots) don’t tackle frontally or in detail the issues you mention.
Sidebar. I know of one cooperative where work was paid =, as measured in time. This co. is is not esoteric, they specialise in painting (industrial), restoration of surfaces, sometimes some really nice projects (churches..) etc. (France.) Manual/tech/ etc. labor. Competition between workers on ‘results’ was frowned upon and profits were simply split equally, ventilated each year. Everyone who worked there lived very well, as they do today. 50 years now, still going strong.
Just one ex. in a particular socio-cultural setting (in an activity that expanded over time, as related to buildings. *Note* - I wrote of ‘profits’ .. and of course this Co. was in competition with others..) Typical concrete ex. 'isolated' application of MoG type principles as I glom them.
But !!… missing is the earth, its ressources, the natural backdrop, and its exploitation, which substitues for human labor, in the sense of decoupling it, and allowing some to do nothing, others to do in one day 20x or 100x what they did before, etc. (The tractor replaced the slave.) You do refer to nature’s decree (post 214), OK, right, but an integrated effort at any kind of reasonable economic model is far off. Perhaps not an accident. A great pity. I respect Hudson, etc. but it is obvious the heart of the matter is not gone into, MMT a good ex.
Posted by: Noirette | May 4 2018 13:57 utc | 227
Noirette @ 227
MMT is descriptive and just meant to describe how the money system works. It tries to cut through the smoke and mirrors of Congress/Fed/Treasury to state that basically a country that 'prints' its own money (being understood that most money is actually created electronically) doesn't have to fund expenditures by taxation. How that money is used is another story.
People who talk about MMT often seem to like to see that money used in a way FDR would have wanted in his economic bill of rights which includes things like employment security.
Second Bill of Rights
J.D. Alt does a great job of talking about ways this money can be used such as
Posted by: financial matters | May 4 2018 14:26 utc | 228
@226 daniel... try carrying one of those in your pocket, lol!
Posted by: james | May 4 2018 15:35 utc | 229
| Metaphor continued:
In the chartroom of your vessel, all navigation maps have been cut to pieces, shredded, and reassembled as collage images to suit the fancy of the moment; cardinal points asunder, information contents nullified, useless to purpose.
Greater disarray is the navigator, supposed master of navigation; neglectful of responsibility, slovenly of speech, shy of responsibility, holder of fraudulent certification of competence, obtained through counterfeit Cliff's notes allowing appearance of study. The navigator, an imposter, using deceptive authority of knowledgeability, leads those dependent on direction into uncharted waters where dragons dwell among the shoals to their detriment.
Then there are the Captains of this vessel, striding the decks in their full authority of command (by committee). Splendid indeed are these, encrusted in gold and glory, wealth and esteem, peacocks of power, fearful of encountering water itself, the weight of their splendour assuring their immediate drowning.
Finally there are the owners of the vessel and those investing in it, removed from direct management, assured of income, promised comfort and fully ignorant of the needs required to operate that vessel, command its crew or direct its journeys, all done by others in their employ, no need there to be involved in the least, their income assured, their wellbeing looked after, all their contracts honoured, their gods of status quo remain in the heavens to look out after their interests.
Above mentioned are your: neoliberal MBA approved economic theories (the vessel); the charts (records of experience and knowledge, a.k.a. libraries); the navigator(s), those who teach (or attempt to); the Captains, the best of the best, the elites and their accumulated wealth; and the owners, but you can figure out what is happening there for yourselves, all you need is a mirror to see yourselves, what is there and what isn't.
A lifetime of reading and curiosity sometimes gives a vantage that is not available otherwise, as in seeing the promised land (of old myth). The future will take care of itself for better or not. Enjoy your voyage there.
Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | May 4 2018 18:22 utc | 230
T-Bull {formerly T-Bear) lashes his timbers with metaphorical comprehension and navigates into the funk.
Posted by: Indian Jones | May 4 2018 22:43 utc | 231
James @229. Quite right. I bet bank robbery has never been a problem on Yap Island.
Posted by: Daniel | May 5 2018 3:45 utc | 232
The comments to this entry are closed.
Mother of God @ 197
Apparently you missed a lot. MMT ignores nothing of what you wrote.
MMT is focused on the monetary side of the equation, and it is an equation, because little would be produced if income, i.e. claims on production, was not produced along with it.
MMT is a description of how that system operates, a framework.
MMT clearly states that the constraint on spending is the availability of real resources, and that the state has the power to bring production that would otherwise go unsold (including labor) into the public sphere.
The World is leaving much of it’s most important resource - human labor, idle and unsold.
Posted by: paulmeli | May 3 2018 14:31 utc | 201