@ Steve | Jul 7 2022 14:59 utc | 2
yes, that is interesting isn’t it… same thing happened with the yellow vest movement… crickets…

Posted by: james | Jul 7 2022 15:34 utc | 3

@ Carl | Jul 7 2022 16:23 utc | 4
you probably already have a good idea of the answers to your questions…. this is why some religions banned usury… it is more central then the central banks to the present day system of finances we have in the world today… oh and bankers go to church too, lol… but they all practice the religion of money regardless of the optics..

Posted by: james | Jul 7 2022 16:31 utc | 5

@ Carl | Jul 7 2022 16:23 utc | 4
I sense some frustration coming from you about the current social contract in the West and serious anger toward this “Privileged Class” you write of.
Might that Privileged Class you write of be the same God of Mammon global private finance elite that I write about here regularly?
Yes, the practice of creating unlimited credit to buy houses does drive up the cost of houses. but since money is free for the Privileged Class, inflation is only for losers.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 7 2022 16:35 utc | 7

@ James
Color me befuddled. In the early going it seems they’d gotten lockdowns out of their system and moved on.

Posted by: Dale | Jul 7 2022 16:55 utc | 9

Posted by: Carl | Jul 7 2022 16:23 utc | 4

You appear to be math challenged. If I buy a million dollar home with a “real money” $200k down payment and 5% interest for 5 years.
After 5 years at 8% average annual growth (the 25 year average where I live) the house is worth $1.47 million dollars and my “loan” is now $708k. I will have paid $187,230.45 in interest and another $91,939.95 in equity. If I sell the home and retire the debt I have over $770k “real money”. After deducting interest/principal payments of $280k I have still made more than double my original down payment.

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Jul 7 2022 17:02 utc | 11

We are headed for a reset. Compound interest is a scam. Anything with a doubling period is an exponential function. If Jesus had invested 1 dollar at 7% interest, it would today (in coins) weigh more than the observable universe. Try =FV(0.07,2000,0,1) in a spreadsheet. Increasing exponentials are unstable – ask any controls engineer. The only long term stable growth rate is zero.
Albert Bartlett was right when he said the inability of the human race to understand the exponential function was its greatest failure.
Remember the story about the man who asked for one grain on square one of a chessboard, two on the next, then four? The king found out quickly he was scammed because the doubling period was a day. For us today, the doubling time is several years, so we don’t catch on.

Posted by: Peter | Jul 7 2022 17:24 utc | 13

@Peter
Thank you for understanding.
Please copy my original comment into a note pad, and paste it into comment sections acrthe interwebs so other people are informed of this untenable system and the actual source of “inflation”. (Since “inflation” is the issue of the day)
Or maybe you can type a better demonstration of the scam and I would gladly copy paste it as opportunity allows.
If most Americans knew a privileged class makes so much for doing so little (remember, he sold the loan to Fanny-May, so he is NOT taking any “risk” for which he might legitimately expect a little profit.)
If I, and us, post this type of stuff enough, we can change the World!

Posted by: Carl | Jul 7 2022 17:43 utc | 15

At the risk of starting a war here, I was interested in an offtopic post at the Ukraine thread:

@james #22
I don’t agree. One reason the BoJo insanity went on so long is because of the evisceration of the Labor party to take down Corbin.
I am 100% certain BoJo and the Conservatives felt they were the UK political hegemony a la US in international affairs in 1991.
However, the scale and speed of the deterioration of the UK economy is threatening a far more damaging and longer lasting casting of the Conservatives as “the party that destroyed Britain”.
That’s existential as opposed to Labor’s medium term tactical takedown.
Posted by: c1ue | Jul 7 2022 17:04 utc | 31

For the life of me, I can’t understand how this is a reasonable response to james’s post, the last phrase of which is: “…win, win for humanity…one clown down and the one in Ukraine next.”
In fact, I can’t even understand the post as it stands. Perhaps, c1ue, you can explain what you meant there, what part of James’ post you don’t agree with, and also why six minutes later you are able to parse a lenthy post on usury @ Carl#4 here and pronounce that “wrong” also.
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din. Takes me at least ten minutes to get from one read to the next, let alone compose my thoughts — though I will admit james is admirable in keeping things brief and to the point.
I try not to be offtopic on the Ukraine thread, but it’s easy to fall into traps laid there. In future I’ll try to transpose my answers to the answers to me that tail off that way as brief as b always asks us to do, and transfer them to this thread. Let the wars be here, not there!

Posted by: juliania | Jul 7 2022 17:47 utc | 17

Posted by: Carl | Jul 7 2022 17:19 utc | 12

If you wish to operate in a primitive Calorie Counting Economy I suggest you time travel back to 8,000 BC or so, or move to the upper Amazon. The Laws of Thermodynamics say energy is a zero sum game. Modern Economics is not a zero sum game. Working smarter will always use less calories than working harder.
I have family and friends who work in Finance and Real Estate from a lowly Mortgage Broker up to Senior Vice President. Like me, they started adult life with nothing, yet you insist on calling them/us a “privileged class”. We saved, then we used debt prudently as leverage, and are now able to live comfortably. We help others through charity and non-profits.
I understand how money created as debt works, as offsetting journal entries. I can read a balance sheet. When the debt is retired it is gone on both sides of the ledger. There is no earth shattering mystery there, nor with the Fed’s “balance sheet”.
The interest on a loan is not “compound interest” only the interest on savings is. Since the interest on savings is negative relative to inflation, we are currently rewarding borrowers and punishing savers. That has caused asset inflation as people rush to get out of “cash”.
I detect an undercurrent of frustration in your posts, perhaps you have been unable to make the current system work for you. Perhaps you have a new and better system you would like to impose.

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Jul 7 2022 17:56 utc | 19

@juliania #17
James was saying that nothing wil change.
I pointed out that a major reason for BoJo arrogance is that the Labor takedown to get Corbin made BoJo and the Conservatives feel like the US did when the Soviet Union fell: the unipolar hegemon in UK politics.
And that they (the Conservatives) don’t feel this way anymore: the enormous anger over the state of the UK economy threatens to make the Conservatives the equivalent of Jimmy Carter in the US.
Jimmy Carter is a byline for incompetence in the US; it took Bil Clinton’s conversion of the Democrats to the party of ivory tower and banisters to turn the situation around.
This view may be wrong, but it is a mistake to think BoJo fell due to scandal. If the UK economy was making so, the scandals would have rolled off BoJo’s back as they have been for many years. It is this tide of rising anger which led this particular scandal to stick, not the scandal itself.
As for “6 minutes later”: I read fast. And since I have exhausted my physical bookreading list for the moment, I am reading/posting from my cell while riding the bus to/from the grocery store – which I normally don’t do because I am so much slower posting from the phone…

Posted by: c1ue | Jul 7 2022 18:05 utc | 21

@ juliania | Jul 7 2022 17:47 utc | 17
thanks juliania, but i can’t even find that thread where c1ue and i said all that!! point me to the thread! must be an older one, and not from today.. as you can see – i am losing track, lolol..
@ c1ue | Jul 7 2022 18:05 utc | 22
i was thinking of how the takedown of corbyn played into all of this… i think bigger economic forces are at work here and although this will just be like changing chairs on the deck of the titanic, it is mostly irrelevant… the western led dumbocracies by usa-uk, is on its way out… but, i am an optimist and maybe a bit of realism is warranted!

Posted by: james | Jul 7 2022 18:18 utc | 23

c1ue@22
There is a lot of truth in your post. Add to it the fact that with the Starmer party they knew that they were no longer playing for high stakes: if the Tories lost not much would be lost, theie replacements would be pro-NATO, imperialist, neo-liberals ready to impose another round of austerity on the economy.
The Security Services and military could relax, so could the US Embassy and Mossad- there was no longer even a remote and theoretical threat of change.
On the other hand it also means that the UK is on automatic pilot, nobody is at the tiller because nobody thinks that course can be changed. And there is an iceberg in the shape of post imperial order which they are certain to run into. And soon.
The economic reality is that most of the changes have already taken place, the underlying economics are already multipolar- not only manufacturing but cutting edge technology and research has already left the metropole and taken root in the peripheries that were.
The imperial system is already dead, the military no longer frightens anyone and the ‘financial capital’ card has just been played, and it wasn’t a trump. What comes next is the decline of the dollar and nobody knows what form that will take, if only because the decisions are being taken in Tehran, Moscow, Delhi, Beijing and elsewhere.
The people of the NATO lands-most of them formerly the centres of empires- are going to find themselves in a very painful period of adjustment in which the decline in the value/productivity of their labour, which has been taking place over an extended period, suddenly becomes undeniable.
Neo-liberalism has served its purpose.

Posted by: bevin | Jul 7 2022 19:18 utc | 25

once more into the uterus!
i love how the boy scouts, southern baptists, the operators dei of the RCC, vel sim, are cultivated by the same forces fomenting and nourishing the Azov battalion. the same dred scott forces that are so concerned about the law that you are returning us to the plantation.
independence for ukraine! and the fetus!
don’t those stupid women know they can just drive over to the next county to find some liberal gay soros-funded jew doctor to murder kids for them and spew lies about climate change while warning them of gun violence?

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Jul 7 2022 19:49 utc | 27

slaves. 250 years ago, a ben franklin would have taken it for granted that 1) women abort babies regularly 2) and it’s a private matter.
Posted by: rjb1.5 | Jul 7 2022 19:55 utc | 29

… Possibly, but if he knew, he neglected to pass that knowledge onto Thomas Jefferson. 😉
If the US government had not made abortion illegal in the 19th century, Roe v Wade would not have happened. But they crossed the Rubicon and now we have an entrenched nanny state. So we are faced with the prospect of paying for abortions or paying to raise unwanted children.

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Jul 7 2022 20:06 utc | 29

“…or other reproductive matters…”
rjb1.5 | Jul 7 2022 20:13 utc | 31
scratch that, since the state controlled and controls marriage along lines of race, citizenship, gender, etc., and most importantly, inheritance.

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Jul 7 2022 20:16 utc | 31

Posted by: bevin | Jul 7 2022 19:18 utc | 26
“The people of the NATO lands-most of them formerly the centres of empires- are going to find themselves in a very painful period of adjustment in which the decline in the value/productivity of their labour, which has been taking place over an extended period, suddenly becomes undeniable. Neo-liberalism has served its purpose.”
First: that sounds about right. Am curious though: how long do you see this process playing out until those countries ‘get it’ and climb down off their pedestals?
Second: what will that climbing down end up looking like do you think?
Third: what does that last sentence about neo-liberalism mean?

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 7 2022 21:20 utc | 33

@ c1ue | Jul 7 2022 19:09 utc | 25
i really don’t think it matters in the uk whether it is cons, or labour, or in the usa – dems or repubs at this point.. same deal libs and cons and ndps in canada.. the whole system has gone for a complete shit thanks the way the financial system is set up and politicians readiness to rubber stamp corporate greed starting with the banks and moving out….. when i say ”on the way out” – of course it is going to take some time…. where the world is at now in terms of the financial ponzi scheme, is completely unsustainable… yes, a bubble can go longer then people think… i suppose we can all return to being serfs or slaves too, to this same exploitative class of predators and their hangers on as well – the politicians… lets hope that isn’t where we are headed, but at present if it continues as it is – more people on the streets, homelessness, drug laden problems in our cultures and etc etc – with no end in sight for any of this because…………. because the money and kleptocracy have to keep on running things apparently, while we maintain this joke about freedom and democracy…
the usa and those countries under its so called leadership, will become more and more irrelevant as time passes…. that is what it looks like to me… to simplify – all the above is what i am saying.. cheers.. and – of course i could be more cynical, but i am trying to tone it down for you, lol!

Posted by: james | Jul 7 2022 22:03 utc | 35

Remember the story about the man who asked for one grain on square one of a chessboard, two on the next, then four? The king found out quickly he was scammed because the doubling period was a day. For us today, the doubling time is several years, so we don’t catch on.
Posted by: Peter | Jul 7 2022 17:24 utc | 13
So true Peter, With our extraordinary housing bubble in Australia people are always telling me that property always “goes up”. My personal memory is that prior to about 2000 property in the areas I am familiar with was almost static for 20 years, not entirely but growth was very very slow. Then boom and everyone lost their minds and memories.
Opport Knocks tells of selling his house for a profit as if most people can do that. No, most of us just want a home that is affordable not an investment vehicle. The way that successive Aus governments have turned housing into investment has ruined housing affordability in Australia.
In a capitalist system not everyone gets the same opportunities and not everyone is equipped or able to make use of them even if they come along.
In an organised entity called a nation state, housing is a basic human right, its enshrined in the UNCHR with all UN members a signatory. How can basic human rights like food and shelter be allowed to trade on stock exchanges, futures and commodity markets?

Posted by: K | Jul 7 2022 22:19 utc | 37

Yesterday, the issue of Revolution within the Outlaw US Empire was raised yet again since attitudes are clearly changing as poll results indicate. Here’s another, “Nearly 90% of Americans unhappy with the nation’s direction”:

Most Americans are hurt by inflation and gas prices, believe the federal government is only making things worse, and are pessimistic about where things are going, with a whopping 88% saying the US is on the wrong track, a new opinion poll indicates.
The level of concern about the direction the US is heading is the highest since 2013, the year the Monmouth University Polling Institute started asking the question, it said as it released the results of the latest survey on Wednesday. Just 10% approve of the direction, down from 42% in January 2021.
The performance of Joe Biden as president is perceived in an increasingly negative way, with 36% approving of the job he’s done and 58% disapproving. Congress is doing even worse, with a whopping 78% disapproval rating….
Federal government policies in the last six months have hurt the situation regarding their most pressing concerns, according to 57% of Americans. Just 8% say the policies have helped, and 34% say Washington does not have any impact on the issues that concern them most. One year ago, 31% said government policies were improving things, and 34% said the opposite was true.
Just 23% expect the government to do better and help them out over the next year, while 45% believe it will only make things worse.

The end of the article links to two other recent polls that show similar results. The Congressional report card is ominous. My district has a good opportunity to elect a third party candidate, which is a move in the right direction. The policy report card doesn’t jibe with Biden’s performance rating which ought to be much lower given the reported results.
I completely expect Congress to be turned on its head, although not enough of the dead meat will be cleaned out, meaning Congress will continue to perform very poorly which will make the 2024 election even more volatile than it already looks. As for the states, I expect to see many populists get elected as voters revolt against the Duopoly. Only four months to go, while economic conditions continue to worsen weekly.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 7 2022 22:48 utc | 39

In an organised entity called a nation state, housing is a basic human right, its enshrined in the UNCHR with all UN members a signatory. How can basic human rights like food and shelter be allowed to trade on stock exchanges, futures and commodity markets?
Posted by: K | Jul 7 2022 22:19 utc | 38

I have never flipped homes for profit, it was an example to illustrate the flaws in Carl’s sophomoric arguments. The fact remains that if you purchase a home with a mortgage for an extended period of time it is more profitable for the borrower than for the lender. Yet he claims the lenders are the privileged class acting as parasites on the rest of us. There are historic times where that is not true, but those are not the norm.
As for the housing crisis it is easily solved as well. Take the money from the entertainment and defense industries (both create useless and destructive crap) and allocate it to housing. All the time wasters posting and reading online and give them hammers, shovels and 3-d printers. Problem solved.

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Jul 7 2022 22:56 utc | 41

The Saker site appears to be down here in Ireland. Anybody else experience this?
Posted by: Sean | Jul 7 2022 21:08 utc | 33
Saker is down in California right now, too.

Posted by: Ric Brin | Jul 7 2022 23:06 utc | 43

Looks like The Saker web site is down.Does anybody know it it has been hacked or under maintenance?

Posted by: M. | Jul 7 2022 23:11 utc | 45

No Saker in Oz🙁

Posted by: Nick | Jul 7 2022 23:16 utc | 47

One aspect everyone will either ignore. Or, deliberately overlook.
Legally speaking. Canceling the Roe Vs Wade decision. This hallmark decision means that SCOTUS can at any future date over turn every decision made by SCOTUS from foundation day……….
In other news, George Floyd’s convicted murderer. Dereck Chauvin was found guilty in a Federal Court. For violation of civil rights. The sentence is to run concurrently with his previous State Murder conviction of June 2021…
Under the plea agreement, Chauvin will serve his sentence in federal custody and will not be eligible to work in any law enforcement capacity following his release.
Do the crime do the time. Also applies to armed and very dangerous homicidal policemen. In rare high-profile cases though.

Posted by: Bad Deal Motors On | Jul 7 2022 23:37 utc | 49

Can anyone tell me where you can still buy a home for $300K near any major US metropolitan city that actually has jobs and/or manufacturing? Maybe an apartment or small condo. Or maybe in a more rural setting. The market has cooled noticeably since interest rates started going up, but I don’t see any price reductions or longer-than-expected time on-market bringing down the cost enough to allow previously excluded individuals – or more importantly familes – to participate in home “ownership.” (the bank owns the house until the last mortgage payment is made, unless you’re rich)
Most of the homes we’ve seen being lowered are also already owned by a corporation. They’re simply looking to off-load inventory at this point after having swooped in and sucked up many of the previously available houses.
Interest hikes also hurt the middle class even more than the investor class. The monthly payment on a $450K home purchased now is significantly more than it was before the rates went up. I don’t see any ‘correction’ coming that might actually help families like mine, much less those households who make less money and have more kids.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 7 2022 23:51 utc | 51

The Saker is down from here in Texas too.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 7 2022 23:52 utc | 53

Maybe this belongs in Ukraine thread. Anyway, it’s the conclusion of Dmitri O’s latest piece on my friend’s site. He’s behind a paywall now (very reasonable price):
“Really, the US should probably just retreat to within its own borders and think hard about weighty issues such as abortion, gun control and national bankruptcy. While the G7 and NATO still make a show of listening to it, the rest of the world is no longer so attentive.
Take, for instance, president Joko Widodo of Indonesia, which is the next host of the G20 gathering. Biden asked him to expel Russia from the G20 in response to the Special Military Operation. Instead, Widodo flew to Moscow and signed two major deals: one is a $13 billion deal to building an oil refinery with the help of Russia’s Rosneft and another is with RZhD, Russia’s national rail company, to build 190km of track.
The ability of the US to order the whole world around is over. The unipolar world is dead; the world is now not multipolar; it is non-polar. Nobody particularly cares to crisply define any of the new poles. Countries are no longer along a spectrum or even on a map: they are in a multidimensional mesh.
Look at the state of all the great Western projects. The idea of a transition to green energy to fight global warming is dead; apparently, coal is the new hydrogen. (Maybe it’s Obama’s “clean coal.”) The Great Reset went the way of the coronavirus. Build Back Better has turned into Break Back Faster. All of that nonsense is dying a long and painful death on the ashes of the former Ukraine. A big chunk of the old world order fell off the landing gears of a jet taking off from Kabul, Afghanistan. The rest will be swept away when the Kiev regime finally keels over and dies.
Even thoroughly Westernized countries are discovering, one by one, that the American way is a road to nowhere. By now, the question of maintaining Western unity amounts to an age-old question: “If all your friends jump off a cliff, would you jump too?”
By now the proper background music to any talk of “Western unity” is a funeral dirge.
Source: Club Orlov”
https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/3944f1ac-1be9-40aa-b1d4-848de609cb4f
Roger adds: ‘I highly recommend subscribing to Dmitry’s site. You pay in rubles. It costs less than $2(US).’ His site is http://www.sitrepworld.info with subtitle:
A Chronicle of the Decline and Fall of the Western Empire
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dmitri feels the whole Reset thing is done and dusted. I’m not so sure because seems to me like everything is vectored to effect economic and political collapse in the West which is the prerequisite condition before entering the Build Back Better phase.
But I hope Dmitri O is right!

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 8 2022 0:20 utc | 55

Np problem withThe Saker here in Ontario:
HTTPS has been disabled … use http://thesaker.is to access our site

Posted by: bevin | Jul 8 2022 0:47 utc | 57

Thoughts ?
Posted by: Dale | Jul 7 2022 16:33 utc | 6
Twitchy occasionally goes off the rails, like when he asked to be disbarred.
The US did their lockdowns after seeing the Chinese do it successfully.
Hillbillies on oxy-contin were no match and failed.

Posted by: McCoy Tyner Hatfield | Jul 8 2022 0:55 utc | 59

i think i will live my next 100 lives working towards this if that is what it takes and reincarnation is a fact… this madness has to stop at some point..
@ karlof1 | Jul 7 2022 22:25 utc | 37 // 39
HA ha. Acc. To Buddhist doctrine reincarnation IS a fact but, except for exceptions to the rule, the ‘me’ you think you are now is not that which reincarnates. Go figure!

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 8 2022 1:10 utc | 61

@ james | Jul 7 2022 22:56 utc | 41
Tangentially to the body of your comment…
You are probably using this term “reincarnation” loosely, colloquially, but I can’t stop myself from responding.
As a point of clarification, rebirth and reincarnation have distinctly different in meanings in Buddhist teachings.
Rebirth is what most sentient beings experience. We circle endlessly in samsara, a realm of cause-and-result of mostly suffering where understanding and realization of that understanding is unknown, thus not transcended.
Reincarnation, otoh, is mind-directed rebirth. It is foundational in and for benefitting others. Reincarnation, unlike rebirth, is a result of virtue, merit and wisdom awareness, and entails conscientious work aspiring to benefit all sentient beings regardless. One, of course, need not be “Buddhist” to realize, attain this beneficial work. This is a matter of reality nature, not ideology. This is how reality nature works. Method, not ideology.
Self obsessions result in rebirth, not reincarnation. The latter requires discipline, application, perseverance o.s.v., according to the teachings from which these terms derived thousands of yrs ago and which are still being taught.
The former is an endless recycling through ever-increasing dark realms created and dominated by cynical, lying, self righteous, virtue signaling, murderous, now often well-funded and connected highly cerebral misguided ones, self proclaiming pseudo righteous illusions to behold and wickedness to do — not.

Posted by: suzan | Jul 8 2022 1:22 utc | 63

What is this Scorpion@34, the Third Degree?
“..how long do you see this process playing out until those countries ‘get it’ and climb down off their pedestals?..”
The current regimes-the duopolies, the media presstitutes, the Establishment- will have to be pushed aside. It won’t be too difficult when people are burning their furniture to keep warm and eating the landlords to live and there isn’t anything else to do.
“Second: what will that climbing down end up looking like do you think?”
A Corbyn (Lafontaine, Melenchon ) government working to ensure that people have the basic necessities and the opportunity to build on them. Very mild socio-economic reforms which really aren’t controversial. Bear in mind that the late and unlamented Bojo promised leveling up. His predecessor May, talked of social justice, in a serious way. Even Cameron knew that “We’re all in this together” Everyone understands what the minimal objects of government are…
“Third: what does that last sentence about neo-liberalism mean?”
Neo-liberalism, which was well advanced before either Reagan or Thatcher came into office, was all about privileging the marketplace above all. Putting a price on everything and creating profit centres where services had been. This meant new layers of profit taking throughout the economy- profits that implied either or both price rises and lowered labour costs. (Hence the gig economy.)
This was a complicated business but it involved, firstly, the radical ‘reform’ of institutions like Trade Unions which were firstly intimidated by a few well publicised terror campaigns like the Miners Strike in 1984 and then the imposition of a new and complex legal structure that incentivised the Unions to become corrupt bureaucracies (see the UAW) assisting in the lowering of labour costs.
And then, of course, there was the process of de-industrialisation, involving the switching of investment away from the ‘metropolis.’
Interestingly this had been going on in the UK for a long time- domestic industry was starved of investment from the 50s onwards.
I think the point is that there isn’t going to be “a great reset”.
Because it took place years ago, when the rust belt got its name, when the coal mining industry, with its millions of people, its rich and varied cultures, its massive infrastructure, built painstakingly over centuries, the mills of Halifax and Todmorden, Burnley and Bradford etc- and their equivalents in the Ruhr, on the Franco Belgian frontiers, in the FIAT factories of Turin, the railway systems (Dr Beeching as the pioneer neo-liberal!) the entire weft and warp of what are now the NATO countries, was systematically dynamited and replaced by a system that is essentially impermanent, temporary, jury rigged, not meant to last with just in time supply chains and globally dispersed parts sourcing. All of which is in the process of collapsing because it was meant to collapse after diverting the popular gaze from the demolition going on around them so that there was no resistance to the transfer of steelmaking from Scunthorpe, Middlesbrough, Ebbw Vale, Pittsburgh, Gary, Clermont Ferrand, etc etc to Indian and Chinese plants, in which there is every chance that the accumulated profits of Ebbw Vale, Pittsburgh etc formed part of the capital..
But I’m just thinking aloud. There are much more knowledgeable people here with light to shed on the subject.

Posted by: bevin | Jul 8 2022 1:32 utc | 65

@ Scorpion | Jul 8 2022 1:30 utc | 65
Could you rephrase your question? It does not make sense for me.
If you look at Buddhist texts, this distinction between rebirth and reincarnation is what one repeatedly finds.

Posted by: suzan | Jul 8 2022 1:52 utc | 67

I believe in re-incarnation. (I’m not Buddhist so i’m just using the english meaning of the words. There are a lot of different concepts of karma and rebirth so its not like saying this means the same thing to all people.
Most ancient spiritual traditions teach a from of reincarnation, with the Tibetan book of the Dead being the most famous and extensive that i am aware of. (i’ve only read a few excerpts)
Similar to how I respect the Chinese Culture and other Asian cultures too, for their long and rich history of education, medicine, art and politics, I am also inclined to respect the wisdom of thousands of years of spiritual teachings.
It is said that the the self awareness in this human life is not carried on till the next life, so its not like you wake up and remember anything. its more mysterious than that.
For many reasons including how i observe life and death, reincarnation just makes sense to me.

Posted by: K | Jul 8 2022 2:41 utc | 69

The greenback will in the short term be counted as a safe haven (strengthening dollar). But this comes as the empire’s periphery have crisis after crisis forging a bloody trail back to the source: the U.S. economy, which will be the last to fall.
So hold on to your dollars for right now, purchase some precious metals because they are cheap currently, and watch for, first, deflation, then soon after runaway inflation when the world economy really craters leading to the crisis of the greenback as reserve currency.
The rug pulled out from underneath us will reveal what I have known for quite some time: we are dangling over an abyss, but, will have a great opportunity to seize and rekindle the philosophical torch that global trchnicity always seeks to extinguish.
Like I have said before, I can’t wait for my parents’ 401k to lose all value.
We do need a reset in the U.S.. it’ll be tough, but the cream will once again have the ability to rise to the top, and the pstriots will lead the way.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jul 8 2022 2:59 utc | 71

Abe is down. Who’s next among former or current national leaders?

Posted by: Jim | Jul 8 2022 3:10 utc | 73

james & c1ue, my apologies for leaving you in the lurch. Here’s what I got fascinated by, thanks to Links over at nakedcapitalism.com:
https://news.mit.edu/2022/electron-whirlpools-physics-0706
Amazing stuff.

Posted by: juliania | Jul 8 2022 3:18 utc | 75

Wow, I never though Shinzo Abe would be assassinated, off the top of my head I would think the assassin would be some radical left winger (Japan had a bunch of bombings and assassinations way, way back in the 1970’s and 80’s by communist group that targeted former officers of the imperial military. But honestly those old “Red” forces are a spent force, most of them would be in their 60s and 70’s now and I think the last one was released from prison more than 10yrs ago. The other option would be extreme rightwing elements, but honestly Shinzo was probably their best ally in government in the past 20yrs with all of the military and naval reforms he supported. Going way, way, way back to the 1910’s-1940s I remember Japan had a huge problem with members of rival sects in the military and the navy assassinating politicians and the officers from other branches of the military as a way of undermining attempts to divert funding (the Imperial Army tried to assassinate admiral Yamamoto several times in the years leading up to WW2 because they didnt want the navy to take away funds from their war in the Chinese mainland for a possible war with the US). It’s hard to see that as a possibility here, but when it did happen, traditionally those types of assassins freely admit why they committed their crime, what they hoped to achieve and were given a formal platform to release their statements so we might get something like that soon.

Posted by: Kadath | Jul 8 2022 3:40 utc | 77

@ Scorpion | Jul 8 2022 1:10 utc | 62
yes, that is probably true.. who am i, anyway? tough question to answer without getting into a lot of trouble, lol…
@ suzan | Jul 8 2022 1:22 utc | 64
thanks suzan… i am not all the knowledgeable about the buddhist tradition… i am mostly ignorant… but i do read books.. i have one on the go at present by stephen bachelor ‘living with the devil’… its a pretty good book.. the title reminds me of the van halen song – runnin’ with the devil but the parallels end their, lol…. i probably know enough to get myself in trouble.. i think i know what is meant about the difference between the idea of reincarnation and rebirth although that doesn’t get discussed much.. my brother pointed out to me the difference between climate change and pollution as an example of two ideas that might seem related, but they aren’t… maybe that is another superfical parallel like the title of the book and song i referenced a moment ago… but i am interested in any response you offer @ Scorpion | Jul 8 2022 2:50 utc | 71 thanks for going into this more both of you and K is along with the ride as well… thanks..
@ juliania | Jul 8 2022 3:09 utc | 73 / 76 / 77
thanks juliania, but it is not the current ukraine thread.. it must be the previous one which i haven’t looked at today!! its all good either way and glad you got caught up with whirlpools and physics! i had a rehearsal and some other things going myself…
i am sorry to hear of the shooting and death of the japanese ex pm – abe… that is discouraging to hear of this…

Posted by: james | Jul 8 2022 4:01 utc | 79

Shinzo Abe’s death has not been confirmed by Japan’s emergency services (TASS, July 8, 2022 — in Russian)

TOKYO, 8 July. /Corr. TASS Kirill Agafonov/. Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is “in a state of cardiac and pulmonary arrest” but his death has not been confirmed. This was reported to a TASS correspondent on Friday by a representative of the fire department of Nara prefecture, where the politician was attacked.
“Yes, he is in a state of cardiac and pulmonary arrest, but death has not been confirmed,” the department that performs the functions of the Ministry of Emergency Situations noted. “The emergency number 119 received a call that shots had been fired,” he added, referring to the state in which the politician was taken to the hospital.

My understanding is that after 5 minutes of cardiopulmonary arrest the person is almost guaranteed to be dead.

Posted by: S | Jul 8 2022 4:15 utc | 81

Posted by: Kadath | Jul 8 2022 4:43 utc | 83
gee they are blaming communism already, that was fast 🙂

Posted by: K | Jul 8 2022 5:04 utc | 83

Posted by: Sushi | Jul 8 2022 5:24 utc | 85
It is late here and my spelling is off.
गते गते पार गते पार संगते बोधि स्वाहा
Gate gate para gate para sam gate bodhi swaha

Posted by: Sushi | Jul 8 2022 5:30 utc | 85

Posted by: Grieved | Jul 8 2022 5:49 utc | 87
@ Grieved, Suzan, Aleph, Sunny Runny Burger, and others thinking of rebirth, quantum physics and other such wonderments.
The always entertaining Richard Feynman has a nice 388 word piece:
Feynman on atoms
Me? I’m just hoping to spin around again as something of a higher order than a radish.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Jul 8 2022 7:28 utc | 87

@ waynorinorway | Jul 8 2022 7:28 utc | 88
Golly, you’ve made my Friday already, thanks so much!
I didn’t know lively Richard Feynman got so poetic! I know and love him as another quantum compatriot of mine, perplexed and unimpressed by all this superstring stuff:

I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! … So perhaps I could entertain future historians by saying I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. … I don’t like it that they’re not calculating anything. … why are the masses of the various particles such as quarks what they are? All these numbers … have no explanations in these string theories – absolutely none! … I don’t like that they don’t check their ideas. I don’t like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation—a fix-up to say, “Well, it might be true.” For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. Well, maybe there’s a way of wrapping up six of the dimensions. Yes, that’s all possible mathematically, but why not seven? When they write their equation, the equation should decide how many of these things get wrapped up, not the desire to agree with experiment. In other words, there’s no reason whatsoever in superstring theory that it isn’t eight out of the ten dimensions that get wrapped up and that the result is only two dimensions, which would be completely in disagreement with experience. So the fact that it might disagree with experience is very tenuous, it doesn’t produce anything.

— interview published in Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? (1988)

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jul 8 2022 8:01 utc | 89

Posted by: sam | Jul 8 2022 8:47 utc | 91
How is Abe viewed in Japan, especially against the current background of current escalating economic hardship, with the free falling yen and rising inflation? Is Abe viewed more through this economic lens or is his right-wing nationalist profile more significant?
In your opinion, how likely is it that anger over his economic legacy was the motive? Interestingly, the shooter was apparently a former military serviceman, who has stated (to investigators) that he “was dissatisfied with the former prime minister and intended to kill him.”

Posted by: Unnamed | Jul 8 2022 8:56 utc | 91

Posted by: Unnamed | Jul 8 2022 8:56 utc | 92
What Abe destroyed is too extensive and the motive of the murderer too difficult to pinpoint.
At least it was not for economic reasons. Since Abe stepped down, two of his successors have come to power.
Abe is a political prince, and because of his lineage, the conservative class worships him without thinking, but he is hated by the majority of citizens.
This is because he was a fascist rather than an ideologue, and also because he was too stupid and destroyed Japan at large.
They have falsified official documents, falsified statistical data that should be the basis of national politics, censored the press, drastically reduced the budget for basic research, sold out the safety of food seeds, lost disputed land to Russia, spread building falsification (a serious problem in an earthquake-prone country), made the Fukushima nuclear power plant less safe, caused the accident, and were even responsible for the nuclear He has continued to harass Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who played a heroic role in the nuclear accident.
He has held banquets during disasters, accelerated heavy taxation, collapsed pensions, revised laws, made no attempt to hide the fact that he is in league with the Yakuza, is the king of the corruption mountain, acts like a bad boy in Congress, ridicules and arrests citizens who actually campaign against him, and reveals an intelligence that is almost too embarrassing for other nations to display. He has continuously tried to turn Japan’s military into a subcontractor to the US.
During Abe’s tenure as PM, the total number of suicides, mysterious deaths (assassinations), and missing persons in Japan exceeded the WW2 death toll.
It is too much to write about. Which of these is the motive of the perpetrators, I do not know.
In our country, Shinzo Abe will go down in history as the worst and least foolish king in the history of constitutional government.
I am ashamed that we, as Japanese, gave birth to him. We are sorry for our ancestors.

Posted by: sam | Jul 8 2022 9:37 utc | 93

It’s probably time to quote Alan Moore in V for Vendetta, even it if sounds a bit like an unhinged US far-right militia talking point:
“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government, governments should be afraid of their people.”
Maybe, Abe’s fate and the coming economic shitstorm will make some Euro leaders realize it’s time to stop the current madness and to change course as far as US, NATO and Ukraine are concerned. Unless they actually want Abe to be a trend-setter, the first in a long line of “Western” leaders who get removed and punished for their neo-liberal ultra-capitalist foolishness.
As far as I’m concerned, in any Euro country who actually face energy, food or fuel shortage in the coming months, the citizens should be legitimately able to lynch, shoot, hang or guillotine their government, due to treason.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Jul 8 2022 10:32 utc | 95

News Update: Canada has sent Nord Stream 1 Turbines to Germany, however during the sea trip the ship was stopped by the Russian Navy and escorted to a Russian port. The Germans and Canadians demanded a reason as to why the Russian Government did this. The Russian Government’s response was that the sending of the turbines was in violation of sanctions and the Russian Government was just enforcing the sanctions against Russia.
(Corrected post)

Posted by: Joe | Jul 8 2022 10:54 utc | 97

From Ostashko News through Donbass Insider:
🇺🇸 The test of the Minotaur II + launch vehicle used by the Pentagon to launch satellites ended in an explosion
The US Air Force announced the failure of the test launch of the Minotaur anti-satellite missile.
“Just 11 seconds after liftoff, during a test launch at Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara, a Minotaur II+ rocket exploded, pouring debris around the launch pad and starting a fire at North Base. There are no reports of casualties in the incident. It is currently unclear what caused the explosion, and an investigation is underway,” writes Newsweek.
These missiles were developed by the Department of Nuclear Weapons under the control of the US Air Force. In narrow circles, the Minotaur was called the “rocket of the future”.

Posted by: Arganthonios | Jul 8 2022 11:06 utc | 99