James I agree with you.
I do not see Iran acting with animosity to the US. I only see Iran as refusing to bow. Iran, IMO, just wants the US to fuck off out of the ME.
Also I only see animosity from the US as a small part of its motivation. The larger by far motivation seems to be Israeli wishes, with the US desire to put down all defiant countries,and a finishing off of their plan after 911 to take out 7 countries.
Of course you have to stir in military money as a motivation and other such things as showing everyone how tough they are.
The problem seems to be that the world has changed. Russia stuck her nose in Syria. Suddenly it is much more possible that starting a war with Iran could erupt into something that only might last for half an hour BUT could be unimaginable horor.
Hopefully there are some Generals and guys who make the decisions realize this.

Posted by: arby | May 22 2020 0:14 utc | 104

thanks arby… i agree with your additional commentary too regarding the usa being israels bitch boy… until something changes, that is how it looks to me.. meanwhile russia and china don’t want to respond aggressively but are preparing for such and as you note in syria – it is not a slam dunk how things move forward here…
iran wants to be treated with respect and dignity and on an equal footing.. this the last thing the usa-israel want… they want slaves who go along with what they want – domination…
i was talking about a book i am reading ‘solitary’ by albert woodfox… the guy is locked in solitary confinement for over 40 years and in jail for longer, but ”they” didn’t break him.. it is an incredible story from the point of view, he didn’t back down to the bullshit thrown his way and survived to tell the tale of his life in this book… the usa prison system had it in for blacks back in the 60’s when he first went to jail… the lies and deceit poured on the public and dished out to the blacks is a story of how racial issues lie just beneath the surface of so much in the usa, but in particular the prison system and who does or doesn’t have the power… usa-israel would like to do the same to iran as the usa has done to black people in the usa, with throwing them in prison one of the first approaches to breaking them.. mind you, angola the prison woodfox was in, was a slave plantation, before it became a prison and it was ran this way up into the 70s or 80’s before much of any change happened… they would frame you for a crime you didn’t commit on a regular basis… doesn’t that sound like what the usa is doing here with iran or venezuala?? same fucking bullshite… it is about power and trying to intimidate, shame and demean anyone who gets in the way of there desire for absolute power, devoid of any compassion or human understanding… for those who want dignity, one has to stand up against this… that is what iran and venezuala are doing.. good for them… fuck usa..

Posted by: james | May 22 2020 0:58 utc | 106

@ john, arby and other canucks.. Francois-Philippe.Champagne@parl.gc.ca
send him an e mail and tell him what you think…

Posted by: james | May 22 2020 1:46 utc | 108

I recommend people read Eric Blair/George Orwell no matter what he might or might not have been; the value of books and the value derived from books depend mostly not on any author but on the reader and a vast majority of people should be able to understand and think about the core messages of both 1984 and at least Animal Farm.
If it was a Mea Culpa doesn’t that make them even more valuable? If it wasn’t a Mea Culpa and was some attempt at manipulation in favor of the things it speaks against how is that supposed to work?
People need to train their own thinking skills, reading anti-dogmatic books can be a good start.

Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | May 22 2020 1:53 utc | 110

May 2020: What Covid means for India’s itinerant internal labor population:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNFy2739j7g

Posted by: gm | May 22 2020 2:26 utc | 112

I just read that the National People’s Congress in China is going to meet for 7 days instead of the earlier reported 2 days
Below is a link to the agenda for that meeting
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-05/22/c_139076652.htm

Posted by: psychohistorian | May 22 2020 3:59 utc | 114

My first introduction to Blair/Orwell was at school as I’m sure it was for many others.
I was in form 2 (Intermediate school in Aotearoa) I was 11 yo. Although we were all loaned copies of the book it was a group setting where we would take turns at reading the damn thing aloud with the chalkie continually interrupting to reinforce any of the less didactic more subtle pieces of this propaganda he thought any of us may have missed.
I regarded the entire episode as being propagandistic & wasn’t the only one. That year was kinda messed up as our regular chalkie got crook & we had a substitute for like a term & a half.
That bloke didn’t seem to teach us anything off any curriculum. The principal would come in for 3 periods a week & teach us Maths (he was head of the Auckland Maths Society – whatever that was) & cos the school was heavily streamed & we were meant to be the stream, the principal took great delight in catering to those boys (it was a co-ed school with some smart females with good maths brains but he ignored them. He was a real creep around pupils mothers too) who lapped up pure maths. That wasn’t me, gimme history, english, hell even geography n I lapped it up, same with maths problems that had a bit of a story attached but a straight equation/algorithm or wtf & my eyes glazed over. Oops big digression.
I occasionally have wondered if the “Animal Farm” thing may have been a set up. Our school was attached to the Teacher’s College so teaching academics did test stuff out on us. Most of that was leftie stuff though.
There was a conservative party government in power & the substitute teacher who got us into ‘Animal Farm’ later went on to become a high level official in that party.
The area we lived in, ie the school zone, was chocka full of university academics, writers & stuff so if that was the case they picked their target.
Unfortunately for them it didn’t take. I remember one morning getting into a debate with the chalkie, I was supported by one of the ‘maths head’ girls, about how unrealistic it seemed.
For example a bloke who the right wing press were always telling all he was “the most powerful man in NZ” was the president of the “Federation of Labour” which was the confederation of all trades unions.
He had got into the union game by way of the musicians union (he had been a flautist) & even though he had a hectic job which probably kept him to a mere 80 hours a week plus all the responsibility, he was paid the award wage for a musician. That was the deal back then, union officials were only paid whatever the standard rate of pay their members collected.
He lived in a state house (which was a rental from the government for working people) and caught the bus to work. Didn’t own a car.
When I pointed out to the chalkie that did not seem to be pig like behaviour, or that these ‘communists’ cos back then most Union officials were communists so the media claimed, actually seemed to be determined to live the same life as the hoi polloi.
Chalkie got quite upset saying Orwell was writing about ‘Russia’ (not the Soviet Union, but Russia he said) I still remember.
So then a female maths head leapt in saying “Really where does it say that in the book?” Of course it didn’t, there was some reference to the USSR in the publisher’s intro, but that wasn’t Orwell’s words. Looking back now, he probably didn’t have the balls to say what he meant.
All we had succeeded in doing was provoking another lecture on the meaning of ‘allegory’ – yawn.
I have just had a quick gander at the book while writing this and I have to say that the fact Orwell/Blair named one of the boss pigs Napoleon, is a total giveaway.
If Blair/Orwell had actually been a socialist, Napoleon Bonaparte wouldn’t have been considered a derogatory figure.
The man single-handed introduced enlightenment values for all citizens’ having inalienable rights to just about all of Europe.
He didn’t succeed with england, where King George III freaked out at the notion of a head of state not being chosen from within his own chinless inbred clan of ‘royalty’.
Consequently many millions of pounds grabbed off englander taxpayers was wasted on bribing Russia, Prussia, Austria & Portugal into opposing Bonaparte with their armies.
Sure the englanders finally had a win, after 15 years, at Waterloo but that was far too late, by then the word was out, serfdom was abolished pretty much everywhere but Russia.
Plus monarchs everywhere but england were realising they were all past their use by dates.
Blair/Orwell by choosing Napoleon as a name for his evilest protagonist shows that he wasn’t a socialist’s arsehole. Blair/Orwell revealed himself to be a high tory english monarchist whose assertion of socialism was just a wedge to drive open a gap to put his nasty propaganda tosh through.
“Animal Farm” was used the world over by reactionaries to try to convince young people that an egalitarian state was unattainable lies promoted by greedies.
Since Aotearoa was proud to claim to be egalitarian (which it wasn’t, racism ensured that) the chalkie’s effort wasn’t that successful.
However I suppose it went over big in parts of amerika back then (early 1960’s).

Posted by: A User | May 22 2020 6:36 utc | 116

james, that solitary experience book must have somewhat related to our ongoing strange experiences with the virus here. I don’t know how it is up ion the nw of Canada but nature goes on pouring out its lushness here, in spite of hot winds and unpredictable temperature spikes. I am reading a book my youngest daughter sent – “The Wrong of Rudeness” by Amy Olberding. It was hard getting into it because I kept inwardly disagreeing with her attitude, but going further in to her observations of what the Confucians were all about, I have started to connect.
I haven’t finished the book yet, rather not in a hurry to do that, which is a sign of a good book. She makes the point that the Confucians, with Confucius himself as a prime example, were as they were in the midst of a violent world, and that their ‘way’ was in contrast to the Taoists ‘way’. I’d never thought of that before, but can see it is true. Here are two Confucian thoughts helpful to dwell upon:
Behaving well-disposed is a capacity that will increase as it is exercised.
The initial trust in realities unknown can summon those realities into being.
Also, I’m not well informed on the Canadian question of Security Council admission – is it that they are to take over the helm there, as New Zealand has done in the past? It might, in the Confucian terms expressed above, be a good thing for Canada to have to do that, to assume such a role?
Thinking about solitary, which we all have been in, to a better or worse advantage than before, the US has, it would seem, entered a kind of voluntary solitude, in which it most definitely has swung worse; time for better.

Posted by: juliania | May 22 2020 14:04 utc | 118

I think that some of you would appreciate some levity. Poland is in the midst of campaign for the office of nation’s President. Until recently, the incumbent had passing chance to win in the first vote (50% required) and a very good chance in the 2nd. However, public opinion in Poland is more volatile. A catchy slogan can save or doom a campaign.
A sentence from a video of PAD (acronym for the incumbent, a bit derogatory) suddenly makes huge rounds
“Nobody asks your name when you fight sharp shadow of fog”
Very poetic, if you ask me, but the response is dominated by cheap derision, and the polls collapsed. Not that polls of Poles are reliable…

Posted by: Piotr Berman | May 22 2020 14:54 utc | 120

“U.S. prepared to spend Russia, China ‘into oblivion’ to win nuclear arms race: U.S. envoy”
Isn’t this what Reagan did? Lose/Lose, what a philosophy.
loser

Posted by: arby | May 22 2020 16:23 utc | 122

juliania | May 22 2020 15:18 utc <-- thanks for the link To continue the levity theme, Duran has an article about an American politician I have never hear about "Why Klobachar is Biden't best bet". Apparently a female, and the article refers to her several times as Klobachar. I only checked the matches of "klob" so I do not know what is so great about her, but I guess it helps if nobody can remember her name -- no risk to overshadow the top of the ticket. One can use Paul Robeson song and change it a little, "They misremembered my name" Is it a sister? No and no! Is a brother? No and no! They misremembered my name.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | May 22 2020 17:00 utc | 124

“Ollie Vargas
@OVargas52
·
23h
Bolivia’s govt is preparing a Fujimorii style ‘self-coup’ to close the elected congress and end the possibility of any elections. The aim is to establish a full dictatorship until the state companies have been privatized & Indigenous movements crushed.
Quote Tweet
Kawsachun News
@KawsachunNews
· 23h
Bolivia’s coup president Añez is trying to push through promotions within the military without congressional approval. The move comes as the regime attempts to secure their backing in the face of calls for democratic elections.”

Posted by: arby | May 22 2020 17:12 utc | 126

arby@124
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Canada’s government- sticklers for democratic forms as any Haitian, Venezuelan of Honduran will attest- to protest against this quick transition from a popular democracy (including that rarity an indigenous Head of State) to a plain old military dictatorship.
All those yummee mining concessions and all that state property to be had!
I hope that the socialists in Bolivia make it plain that everything stolen now from the people will be taken back, together with the sum of any exported profits, without any compensation when, inevitably, the revolution comes. As to those responsible they will be thieves and liable to be treated as such.

Posted by: bevin | May 22 2020 17:32 utc | 128

@Posted by: vk | May 22 2020 14:34 utc | 119
I suspect that there is still a fundamental difference in the creation of the Chinese and US monetary supply.
The US monetary supply is not owned by the Treasury but by the private Fed and the private bankers. The Chinese internal monetary supply is created by the Chinese themselves. China then has the power to erase their own internal monetary debts, the US does not.
Interest in China is also paid to the government, interest in the US is paid to the private bankers, and the interest streams are the ‘honey’ in the national hive.
Beware then of privatizing the monetary supply!

Posted by: Ric G | May 22 2020 18:26 utc | 130

@ Posted by: Ric G | May 22 2020 18:26 utc | 130
I’m aware the USA is the only country in the world with a private central bank.
However, from the point of view of sovereign debt and fiat currency system, it really doesn’t matter. A central bank still has to behave like a central bank; this is not optional for capitalism.

Posted by: vk | May 22 2020 19:00 utc | 132

WG @ 131
“People who pretend to not have an ideology are just people who are ignorant of their own ideology. The default ideology that people possess without being aware of it is whatever ideology is fed to them embedded in the media that they consume. ”
Good one. I get in debates with people who say they have no opinion, but it turns out that they very much do and seem to be unaware that it is an opinion. They see these things/opinions as self evident.

Posted by: arby | May 22 2020 20:04 utc | 134

Well, James, New Zealand went through a pretty nasty stage as I understand it, with John Key and others. (I was down there briefly when Muldoon was in, and he was pretty awful as I understand, though my father loved him. He was ill at the time, so I don’t blame him too much.) The Russians with Yeltsin, and so it goes… I read a book on travels in Siberia during the Yeltsin years and it did seem things would never change, conditions very turgid, but they did.
Yes, I have been enamoured of the Tao also, so learning about Confucius with this book is interesting. I love what Laotse has to say about the power of water. I wouldn’t say the two are incompatible, just different.

Posted by: juliania | May 23 2020 0:04 utc | 136

Just discovered two excellent new interviews by Useful Idiots that has restored my faith in their work.
First one is with Aaron Mate at 31 minutes
and second Jimmy Dore. To skip the preamble if you wish then Jimmy Dore commences at approx 51 minutes
Both are worth the time for the entire production.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | May 23 2020 7:15 utc | 138

In reply to Ric G | May 22 2020 11:01 utc | 117
The same end can be had by setting the interest rate to zero, in other words ‘free money’. There lacks incentive to invest money, time, effort etc. It’s also based on the presumption that we’re willing to be paid by debt, thereby assuming that an entity which simply erases it is an unreliable source of income. Technically we can’t erase debt without erasing the money supply since it’s based on debt. It becomes a circular arrangement like “I’ll spend more money so I can make more money to spend.” USian policymakers call it ‘economic stimulus’. While we thought we had $1, we found that weighted value to be much less than face value when we considered all the expense incurred in the transaction processes. So we only have $.5 value compared to the $1 face value. I’m referring to the middlemen of course.

Posted by: Curmudgeon | May 23 2020 9:38 utc | 140

One cannot have “thought” absent a framework for understanding. If that were possible then dogs and cats would be philosophers. One cannot have “any nuance of thought” without first disassembling and reassembling the framework for understanding that one is employing to build that thought. Without full knowledge of one’s own ideology then one cannot really even have genuine thoughts, much less nuanced ones. What passes for thoughts are for such a one little more than sensations that percolate up from the subconscious accompanied by fragments of recycled dialog. Labeling such experiences “thought” very much cheapens the endeavor.

Posted by: William Gruff | May 23 2020 14:50 utc | 142

while we waste time here, under-the-radar people like Bob Langer will turn fear into massive wealth.
I have a poem for Bob, and for a Joe who actually has some guts to do something about censorship.
Covaxitastic patent man
Bob, from MIT
didn’t get the axe
for awkward ties to Epstein
his colleague in the media lab,
Joi Ito, had to quit
but Bob survived the scandal
because his patents are the shit
a chip to turn fertility off
and on by remote control?
you’re in their science fiction now
just try to break their hold
so Rogan has gone rogue
and throws down against Big Tech
lets Alex break the story
going for their neck
maybe there’s some fight
left in people’s spine
that the lockiNazi control zombies
cannot quite out-shine

Posted by: lizard | May 23 2020 15:24 utc | 144

@ Posted by: Curmudgeon | May 23 2020 9:38 utc | 140
The greatest treasure in the nation is the monetary supply. Why then do we swap our monetary supply for debt, why do we line up with our national treasures and swap these treasures for the debt banker’s debt confetti, created with no intrinsic definition, measure, or value?
History, assuming that there is one left to live, will ponder this strange economic psyche, lost into the madness of debt.
It is a monetary system fit only for the ignorant, the insane, and the psychopathic.
Some people wonder where humanity went wrong, with 40,000 nuclear warheads pointed at each other. For a reason, look no further than the monetary system.
@ Posted by: vk | May 22 2020 19:00 utc | 132
I would consider all central banks to be privately owned or controlled. They are all just pizza franchises connected to the Domino’s HQ of the BIS, the franchises where the nations go to trade their treasures for debt!

Posted by: Ric G | May 24 2020 0:02 utc | 146

@ Posted by: Curmudgeon | May 24 2020 4:53 utc | 147
History will be fascinated by us, as if we have been possessed by devils and witches.
I am sure this possession started way before, but AD1694 is a good place to start, the birth of the privately owned Bank of England, the time the pawn brokers began to seize control of the world with their instruments of debt!

Posted by: Ric G | May 24 2020 6:45 utc | 148

In reply to Curmudgeon
Ah, yes, the extinct species, leaving the rest lamenting, ‘do not fight the world, life is hard enough as it is’!
Here is a simple asset monetary system, runs in the same way as hydro lakes create electricity.
http://theq1.org/index_htm_files/Tao%20of%20Money%20Petition.pdf
But only the dwindling near-extinct species will even contemplate it, and then only for a moment!

Posted by: Ric G | May 24 2020 11:05 utc | 150

In reply to Curmudgeon
An asset-hydro banking system, connected to Cyclos banking software, is a multi-billion dollar business waiting for an enterprising group of people, an idea which makes Facebook look as though it is a 10 cent lemonade stand!
However, standing among the hypnotised debt sheep, the ignition point seems as far away as ever!

Posted by: Ric G | May 25 2020 5:24 utc | 152

There is surprisingly little risk in creating an asset-hydro monetary system. The only missing element is either a large email list of people who can be rapidly transferred to ‘seed’ the marketplace, or alternatively, a clever marketing campaign. The first 50,000 members are the hardest hurdle to climb over. The next 500 million will be effortless.
The problem with our debt system is that it is a swindle. The debt banker/pawn broker monetises the customer’s collateral as an asset owned by the bank, creating the capital for the loan as a reflection of collateral in a financial mirror.
The banker then charges compound interest upon this reflected capital, backed by the banker’s deception that the customer is borrowing valuable capital, supplied by the ‘third party’.
If the customer has no collateral, the banker has no capital, and it is the act of loan creation which creates the capital for the loan!
And the customer would be reaching for his pitch fork once he realises that he is paying interest upon a reflection of his own assets!

Posted by: Ric G | May 25 2020 6:35 utc | 154

@ Curmudgeon
Money is whatever your government will accept in payment for taxes, and when the monetary supply of those banknotes, those debt instruments, is controlled by a small cartel of debt bankers, operating from international Debt HQ, then your concept of freedom and choice is the choice of which wall in a two square metre prison you choose to lean against!
Welcome to the slave plantations, where the dark treasure we call money is debt!
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Posted by: Ric G | May 25 2020 9:06 utc | 156

The bankers seize the interest streams as their profits and the government is as poor as a church mouse as it cannot create its own sovereign monetary supply. According to the debt bankers, this would be ‘money printing and inflationary’.
The government then is just a tax collector for the debt bankers and the government gives the legitimacy to the debt which the debt bankers need, or the people would rebel.
The identities of the debt bankers then are protected even more than the nuclear codes!
Henry Ford. “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

Posted by: Ric G | May 25 2020 10:34 utc | 158

You see. So while we attempt to separate the currency manipulators from the government we find they are one. It’s a handshake. Two hands, certainly, make up one handshake. On the lighter side, I’d surmise it not to be Satanism but MAGAism. :^)

Posted by: Curmudgeon | May 25 2020 11:06 utc | 160