Re: Dangerously radio-active 8mm x 6mm pellet which fell off a truck in outback Western Australia has been located.
The interesting factoid for me is that it was detected by an highly sensitive instrument installed in a vehicle travelling at 70 km per hour, and was only 2 metres from the paved surface of the highway.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Feb 1 2023 16:31 utc | 3

Interesting read from Helmer (and Olga Samofalova) on Russia’s internal issues and conflicts in moving oil and coal to the east for export to the expanding markets in China and India.
http://johnhelmer.net/the-vladimir-kuts-long-distance-effect-sanctions-and-geography-are-replacing-the-russian-oligarchy-with-state-planning-producing-a-better-growth-rate-than-the-us-germany/#more-70597

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Feb 1 2023 17:10 utc | 5

There’s been much useful discussion, hereabouts lately, of the most misunderstood word in any language, originally coined by Raphael Lemkin and disputed ever since: genocide. I’ve acquired some interesting angles on that word via Ward Churchill’s excellent, groundbreaking A Little Matter of Genocide. (That title derived from a Russel Means epigram: “there’s a little matter of genocide that’s got to be taken into account right here at home.”)
From an American indigenous perspective, talk of Nazis in Ukraine rings somewhat shallow, at times. We see definitively genocidal policies from Ukrainian nationalists, wherever 404’s magnificent corruption allows the formation of any policy at all. Whether or not Nazi insignia are currently in play, the real meat of the matter is who’s committed to genocide, and why.
Sartre (in the context of the Russel Tribunal’s examination of genocide in Vietnam), equated genocide with colonialism — you can’t have one without the other. Here in USA this winter, we’re suffering another outbreak of deadly internal colonialism. We sometimes call it police terror. Ward Churchill had this to say on internal colonialism (Little Matter, pg. 421):

Robert Melson provides a crucial analytical tool by focusing attention, not just on the dynamics of internal colonialism, but on that more particularized variation known as the “settler state” — a structural innovation evidenced most plainly in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel (as well as the Hitlerian notion of territorial expansionism known as Lebensraumpolitik) — in which an invading group quite literally supplants the indigenous population on its own landbase. Since wholesale displacement, reduction in numbers, and forced assimilation of native people is virtually a requirement for the existence of any settler state, Melson suggests they are properly construed as being inherently rather than potentially genocidal in their makeup.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Feb 1 2023 17:48 utc | 7

@ Posted by: drsmith | Feb 1 2023 17:27 utc | 6
Both working here in Canada.

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Feb 1 2023 17:50 utc | 9

Unz available all day in Eastern Canada 2PM

Posted by: William White | Feb 1 2023 18:09 utc | 11

Saker is available in this corner of the imperial homeland (10:45 PST).

Posted by: robjira | Feb 1 2023 18:46 utc | 13

MoonOfAlabama mentioned:
The link below is about the latest from the Twitter Files. The Hillary For America advisor *Laura Rosenberger, and Marco Rubio counselor Jamie Fly, invented “Hamilton 68” which lumped together 644 mostly pro-Trump Twitter accounts as “Russian agents”.
It was run by former FBI agent Clint Watts, now a “disinformation expert” at MSNBC.
They were cited countless times by major media like CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones (14 times making a story solely based on H68 claims) and WaPo. And cited by “fact checkers” Politifact and Snopes as a source.
https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton

Not one answered. They’re all going to pretend this didn’t happen. The few reporters who got this right contemporaneously, from Glenn Greenwald to Max Blumenthal to Miriam Elder and Charlie Wurzel of Buzzfeed to sites like Moon of Alabama, can take a victory lap.

For example, Mother Jones would write about “Trump flash mobs” created by Russian bots. Or that Devin Nunes or Tulsi Gabbard were being promoted by Russia. H68 was a “research institute,” and when you have an ex-FBI agent that sounds impressive in leftist circles. Or they’d get some other former FBI/NSA/CIA guy to say “sure,” to boost a Hamilton 68 claim.
Twitter KNEW THIS WAS FAKE. *Samuel Roth wrote internally that H68’s list of 644 accounts should be published, and that it was mostly simply ordinary conservative accounts, like a 73-year-old retired woman in Florida. But they did nothing.

Posted by: Tenet | Feb 1 2023 19:41 utc | 15

Aleph_Null | Feb 1 2023 17:48 utc | 7
GENOCIDE
I don’t see much misunderstanding of the word “genocide”. What I see is the intent to sow ambiguity. I prefer to call a spade a spade and use the United Nation’s definition:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The most recent example of a genocide discussion takes place in Brazil.
On Jan. 22, president Lula used the term in a tweet. Meanwhile, indigenous children are evacuated from Yanomani for urgent medical treatment. The government obliged the only air taxi company in the area to carry out the transports. see article here.
2 days ago, the supreme court ordered a genocide investigation into the Bolsonaro government.
Right so. I side with Sartre.

Posted by: OttoE | Feb 1 2023 21:21 utc | 17

The Cradle has a very informative article dealing with the state of Iraq’s development, “Iraq’s Silk Road: Port and canal project set to transform Baghdad’s geopolitical clout”, that I highly suggest. Clearly, Iraq is still enmeshed in the snare remaining from all its encounters with the Outlaw US Empire and is still unstable politically. The plans the article describes are bold and potentially transformative, but many basic issues must be solved first that the article mostly mentions–the most important issue is the need to eject the Outlaw US Empire form the region as no in-depth development can occur with it there. In many respects, Libya shares the same issues.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 1 2023 22:07 utc | 19

https://rairfoundation.com/pharmaceutical-whistleblower-covid-and-the-toxic-vaccines-are-bio-weapons-created-by-u-s-department-of-defense-video/

The weapons to which Watt is referring are threefold; first was informational – the use of propaganda and censorship. The second was psychological – the use of fear and terrorism. The third was chemical and biological – the widespread use of pharmaceuticals and vaccines, in reality, toxins and pathogens.
“This project has been going on for centuries: globalist and central bankers and many related organizations have been trying to get entire control of people through military and banking programs,” asserts Watt. “They kicked the public health aspect of it into higher gear in the 1930s and 1940s. In the mid-60s, we saw them inducing suicide and homicide by fraudulently labeling poisons as medicines, or as vaccines, or as prophylactics and telling people that submitting to that poisoning process was their civic duty. We saw that during covid with the shorthand for ‘do this or kill your grandma message.’”
The financial control starts at the top with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and cascades down through the financial system, says Watt. “The cornerstone is the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO is not a health organization but a military organization. It is the military arm of the One World Government they are trying to set up. Basically, the International Health Regulations, currently going through another round of amendments to make them worse, called on national governments to strengthen their own domestic laws to fund more programs for surveillance, testing, detention and quarantine, physical control, and forced treatment during international outbreaks of communicable diseases. The pretext they used – it was bankers doing this – was that they needed to protect international trade. The real intent was to transfer sovereignty for government from the national state to the WHO and BIS automatically when a public international health emergency has been declared. Congress and U.S. presidents complied.”
Over time, Congress and one U.S. administration after another have brought in laws, amendments to these laws, and executive orders to whittle away at citizen freedoms. Examples include the Patriot Act, The Homeland Security Act, the National Vaccine Program, the Emergencies Use Authorization, the Public Health Emergencies Platform, and the Chemical and Biological Weapons Program, to say nothing of the use of OTAs (Other Transactions Authority) to issue contracts, all designed to create a legal framework for controlling our lives.

Posted by: Scorpion | Feb 1 2023 22:26 utc | 21

according to a comment at Craig Murray (Secret Power), Sweden is blocking a joint investigation into the Nordstream pipeline sabotage, along with Germany and Denmark. whatever, we know who the poodlemaster is, whichever poodles peformed the trick.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Feb 1 2023 22:34 utc | 23

The US went from needing 99% of the people working to grow our food to less than 1%, and manufacturing jobs are down to only 7% of the labour force. And yet the remaining 90% of us are not all unemployed, as jobs have proliferated in the service sector, where most of those jobs are now considered to be better jobs than the lost agricultural and manufacturing jobs.
Nor has a trade deficit in the US necessarily resulted in higher unemployment or lower pay. In 1999, for example, they had record imports with unemployment under 4% and inflation under 2%, and students were getting recruited for good paying jobs well before graduation.
The answer to sustaining high levels of employment and pay is fiscal policy. If for any reason, including more imports, weak demand at home is keeping unemployment too high or wages too low, the appropriate policy response is fiscal relaxation- either a tax cut or spending increase, even if that increases the public debt- and not to tax or otherwise drive up the cost of imports.
Unfortunately however, the policy that allows all of us to pay the lowest prices for imports and have good paying jobs to replace those lost because of imports has been taken entirely off the table by both Republicans and Democrats. By introducing tarrifs and sanctions.
Consequently a very good thing for America- lower prices of imports- has been turned into a very bad thing- unemployment, and all because of the fake news about the public debt that is supported by Republicans and Democrats.
The US public debt is nothing more than the dollars spent by the federal government that have not yet been used to pay taxes.
Those dollars spent and not yet taxed sit in bank accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank that are called ‘reserve accounts’ and ‘securities accounts’, along with the actual cash in circulation. Treasury securities (bonds, notes, and bills) are nothing more than dollars in securities accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank, functionally the same as dollars in savings accounts or deposit accounts at commercial banks.
Think of it this way- when the government spends a dollar, that dollar either is used to pay taxes and is lost to the economy, or it’s not used to pay taxes and remains in the economy.
Deficit spending adds to those dollars that were spent but not yet taxed, which is called the public debt. And what’s called ‘paying off the debt’ (as happens to 10’s of billions of Treasury securities every month) is just a matter of the Fed shifting dollars from securities accounts to reserve accounts- a simple debit and a credit- all on its own books. (No tax payers or grand children required…)
The ‘ability to pay’ is always there- it’s just a debit and a credit to accounts on the books of the Federal Reserve Bank. The fear mongering about the US running out of money or constraints by foreigners is simply not applicable to today’s monetary system.
And if you are worried about inflation, the Presidents direct policy of tariffs or sanctions is to raise the prices all Americans will have to pay for imports.
Point is, once it’s understood that
1) the public debt is nothing more than what can be called the net money supply
2) there is no risk of default
3) there is no dependence on foreign or any other lenders
4)there is no burden being put on future generations
The President will be free to make everyone winners by being their shopper in chief who works to get them the lowest possible prices.
Neither Trump or Biden understands that when it comes to foreign policy. There was no need to introduce tariffs on China or sanctions on Russia as the US were winning the trade war.
China were sending the US goods and services working in terrible conditions up to 16 hours a day in factories. All they got in return was US treasuries in their account at the FED.
Paid in $’s that were swapped for US treasuries. So what can they spend those $’s on ? Anything sold in $’s aka more American goods and services.
Which allowed the Americans to concentrate on producing other things and play more golf and have more leisure time.
It WAS a win, win for the US. Now look at the state they are in.

Posted by: Derek Henry | Feb 1 2023 22:51 utc | 25

Derek Henry @26–
Relying on government issued economic statistics is very risky business as much is falsified. Inflation, Unemployment and GDP are three that merit high amounts of skepticism and retooling.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 1 2023 22:56 utc | 27

Stoltenberg has spoken in Japan and Global Times has produced an editorial in response, “Why Stoltenberg’s speech was so blatant in Tokyo”. Here are the opening paragraphs:

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg delivered a speech at Keio University in Japan on Wednesday. If we are to describe this speech, it would be labeled with “poor level, bad influence, and insidious intentions.” It was not worth mentioning, but the negative trends of NATO and Japan exposed from its content deserve the high vigilance of the entire Asia-Pacific region. It can be said that the speech is full of “ominous omens.”
Before visiting Japan, Stoltenberg went to South Korea. Although he also played up the “China threat” in South Korea and tied China, Russia and North Korea together with malicious intent, his words were far less straightforward and blatant than in Tokyo. Facing the Japanese audience, Stoltenberg spent a lot of time attacking China. He said in a sensational tone, “What is happening in Europe today could happen in East Asia tomorrow.” He also said unctuously, “China is not our adversary,” but what he said later was basically to smear and slander China. He accused China of “substantially building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons, without any transparency” and said that China (the Chinese mainland) is attempting to assert control over the South China Sea, and threatening Taiwan.
Stoltenberg’s words and actions in Japan and South Korea are very different, which reflects many deep-seated problems, indicating that the two countries play different roles in NATO’s strategic design. In Seoul, he mainly spoke to the South Korean side, which was the target of his persuasion and incitement, while in Tokyo, he spoke to the entire Asia-Pacific region, and the Japanese authorities stood by as accomplices and co-conspirators.
A joint statement was issued after talks between Stoltenberg and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on January 31, in which the common stance against China and Russia was very prominent, and the intention to interfere in the situation across the Taiwan Straits was very strong. These will undoubtedly create risks of camp confrontation and division in the Asia-Pacific region. The role NATO is playing is exactly the same as it has played on the European soil. In other words, it is actually NATO itself that is promoting the idea that “what is happening in Europe today could happen in East Asia tomorrow.”
A wolf whose base camp and activities have been in the far west for a long time has found a foothold in East Asia with great ambitions. Japan is the one who lured the wolf into the house, and also seeks a high-sounding reason. As the secretary general of NATO, Stoltenberg is not qualified to dictate East Asian affairs, not to mention even giving outrageous statements. To some extent, Japan created such an opportunity for him and NATO. Stoltenberg did not hesitate to speak sweetly about Japan, saying that among NATO’s partners, none is closer or more capable than Japan. He also praised Japan’s substantial increase in defense budget and revision of its security strategy, behaviors that have been widely questioned in the Asia-Pacific region. NATO and Japan formed a vicious mutual reinforcement.

Like Germany, Japan is captured and lacks sovereignty. Only its people can alter the situation, which is the same formula for Europe. IMO, NATO will likely last through the 2030s, although it will likely shrink to just the Outlaw US Empire, Canada and UK, and perhaps Denmark and Netherlands. Once Russia establishes its new security arrangements, it will become clear there’s no longer any need for NATO within Europe. But as with its evil twin the EU, it will take time for its complete demise.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 1 2023 23:10 utc | 29

A meme my wife shared: Gas prices are rising again because China stopped its Covid crackdown. Of course, that’s 100% absurd. China has noted it and this op/ed is a result, “Blaming China’s economic recovery for global inflation? More nonsense from US media”:

For years, the Western perception of the Chinese economy has alternated between two extremes: either the Chinese economy is at the cusp of collapsing – the “China collapse” theory – or the Chinese economy is rising so rapidly that it poses a threat to the world – the “China threat” theory. There is virtually no middle ground between the two totally contradicting narratives, though both serve the same goal – smearing China’s socialist market economic system. Western media outlets switch between the two narratives at different times to best serve that goal.
Such a twisted, malign practice cannot be clearer than what we have seen over the past several weeks, as China moved to downgrade its COVID response, went through a COVID infection peak and embarked on a rapid economic recovery in such a short time span. The transitions happened so swiftly that the shift in Western media outlets’ narrative of the Chinese economy could barely catch up. Before the Chinese Spring Festival holidays, many foreign media outlets made grim predictions about China’s epidemic situation and economic recovery. Bloomberg on January 20 predicted a “COVID catastrophe” during the Chinese New Year, while CNN on January 18 claimed that a “COVID-19 tsunami” was brewing in the countryside amid the holiday travel rush.

And of course, China’s Spring Festival is a smashing success.
Some of the info provided would make great material for comedians; Carlin would make much of the narrative swap. What’s happening is NEVER the fault of the West; it’s always somebody else’s fault. I’m reminded of the Family Circus cartoon and the “Not Me” ghost. Bill Keane was very insightful with that.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 1 2023 23:22 utc | 31

My last note today about China: Within this decade, China, Russia and India as well as other nations will cease being technologically dependent on the West, “Top meeting urges expedited establishment of new pattern of development”:

China will ramp up efforts to stand on its own feet in science and technology and solve the issue of foreign stranglehold in the sphere, as part of a push for the country to become a global forerunner in key technological areas, according to key takeaways from the top leadership on Tuesday.
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, has stressed the efforts to accelerate the establishment of a new pattern of development and enhance the security and initiative of development when attending the second group study session of the Political Bureau of the 20th CPC Central Committee on Tuesday afternoon.
As the country eyes expediting the establishment of a new pattern of development, technological self-sufficiency and competitive yet secure supply chains will become all the more important, industry observers said, citing the US-led technology decoupling from China….
On top of that, the country will take accelerated steps toward science and technology self-sufficiency and self-strength and address foreign “stranglehold” issues, Xi said.

The actions by the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals that began decades ago to thwart development within the Global South has finally blown-back onto their economies as becoming sovereign in all areas is now the goal of all Global South nations and is a Movement that will not be beaten back again as it was in the 1950-60s when it was first attempted. Recall that nobody holds a patent on Nature’s Secrets; they can be discovered by anyone and used. The Global South holds a big advantage over the West in STEM grads and better economic models to follow to promote that advantage.
What remains to be seen in the future is the Global South’s behavior towards the West: Can the urge to put the West down and trample on it as the West did to the Global South be resisted? Can Xi’s vision of a Win-Win world of a shared human destiny triumph? Only Time will tell.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 1 2023 23:44 utc | 33

Karlof1
Problem is, the “names” in the mainstream economics profession on both sides of the Atlantic, have been positioning themselves for over a year now, to say look didn’t our models do well. Just like they did after 2008. That’s how they have used Twitter to fool people. No surprise there.
It’s the voting public that needs to be convinced there is an alternative and they’ve been carpet bombed with nonsense from a 1000 feet. To the point, the majority still believe money is scarce and needs to be found and holes are in the budgets like that of a household so sacrifices have to be made. Sacrifices being a framing tool that will allow neoliberal reforms to continue faster than ever. Allow the forward planning of the FIRE sector to keep allocating both skills and real resources. Private investment will remain the key words over government spending making sure the rentier class stay in charge.
This is after everybody watched in real time in front of their TV dinners how things really worked up close. They still cannot connect the dots and will continue to vote against their own interests. Running alongside all that nonsense you have The rise of the moral elite.
Very few people are happy with the politics that we have. Few wouldn’t like it to be different than it is. Disillusion with democracy is high. Everything seems nasty all the time. This is is often explained as a result of the polarisation of political opinion between right and left, one that is seen as unbridgeable.
But is that really a sufficient explanation? There has always been a sharp polarisation between left and right thinking and it has seldom really been bridged. And the division, anger and nastiness we are currently seeing is ecumenical – liberals fighting liberals, left fighting left, right fighting right. Some of the greatest hostility is between people who share a broad political outlook.
So what is going on? How did we get here and, perhaps most importantly, how do we get back out of this again? Given that the start of 2023 (certainly in Scotland) seems more angry and divided than ever.
To begin with, how did we get here? To understand that it might be worth briefly familiarising yourself with a new philosophical theory recently espoused by a Professor at Cambridge University. You can summarise that theory quite easily. It goes as follows:
People define themselves through their decisions. It is the process of making decisions that enables us to find out who we really are. To deprive someone of the full agency to make those decisions entirely on their own without influence is to deprive them of their right to become who they are. Therefore if you offer advice to your friends or family you are acting immorally by removing their agency.
In other words if you think a friend is developing a problematic relationship with alcohol or has entered a toxic relationship and you say so in any form you are removing from the other person their right to make those mistakes and in so doing uncover their true self.
At first glance this seems nuts. Second glance too. We make our decisions based on information and the opinions of our loved ones is surely a useful piece of information? Surely it does not remove someone’s agency to offer them an opinion they are free to reject. Is NHS 24 immoral for removing people’s agency to discover their own cures? What if your friend asks you whether they should drink bleach? Let them find out for themselves?
This thesis is so detached from our normal understanding of how society (and a relationship) works that it seems odd it exists. But it isn’t – sadly it is a logical conclusion of where intellectual pursuit in the social sciences has been going.
The seeds of the change are sown in the 1960s as the progressives and social reformers started to deify individual liberty as the fundamental unit of a new, better, fairer world. ‘Be yourself’ as a revolutionary act in and of itself became a dominant idea.
This initially influenced culture more than it did politics or the social sciences, but then the post-war political settlement starts to unravel in the 1970s. By the time we get to the 1980s the idea of individuality has taken on an all-encompassing new importance. Collectivism is out of fashion; individualism conquers everything as the revolution grinds to a halt and the shopping begins.
(Of course, the irony is that this was happening during a major structural attacks on a large section of the population which was only partially able to defend itself through collective not individualist actions, but this is a swansong for collectivism for a decade or two.)
It is at this point that we reach the crucial moment – this accelerating trend of analysing society mainly from the individualist perspective is codified into an intellectual theory known as poststructuralism.
Without dwelling too long on social theory, the dominant model of understanding society from the Marx/Freud intellectual revolution onwards was structural. Society had big mainly (but not exclusively) economic and political structures which defined most human experience.
The arrival of the poststructuralists (Foucault, Lacan, Derrida) in the late 1970s and 1980s began to shift this focus. Rather than looking at the underlying structures of power, these theorists begin to analyse the way that power shapes and is shaped by individual identity. Rather than working out what made the elite the elite they instead focus on how the elite defend their position through language and control.
This means that rather than trying to show who has wealth and how they got it (for example), sociology in particular turns to an obsession with who controls what things mean and how they use that power to control society.
This was my primary focus when I was at university and I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to understand how power exerts control through language. But there is a condition – this is the study of how power works, not why power exists as it does. If you give up on examining the underlying structures of the economy, no amount of linguistic analysis will properly explain poverty.
But during the 1990s that is exactly what the social sciences do; they give up on structuralism altogether (not least in the pointless detour into that most useless of intellectual cul de sacs, postmodernism) and everything becomes obsessed by the ways we interact with each other, the language we use, the subtle sign-systems which are everywhere in our lives.
This has massive consequences. Where before you understood social oppression largely in terms of who has economic and political power and how they use it (structuralism), now you understand it as an accumulation of individual social actions (poststructuralism). Society becomes an atomised system of individual behaviours.
Which in turn means that we are now viewing the world through the lens of who you are and how others behave towards you. In combination with hypercapitalism and the ‘shop because you’re worth it’ shift, who you are (your identity) becomes the fundamental building block of how you’re meant to see the world.
This leads a major shift from class politics to identity politics, from equality to diversity (where inequality is basically fine so long as the elite contains a fair representation of race, gender and sexuality), from negotiation to the concept of ‘validity’.
Validity is a concept impossible to see as anything other than the retrofitting of a justifying theory to what is little more than solipsism. This argues that whatever you think or feel, it is ‘valid’. Even if what you think is measurable, factually wrong, your feeling of it is ‘valid’, the experience of your thoughts and feelings is real for you. So if someone challenges your feelings, those feelings are being ‘invalidated’. Your truth has been devalued; you have been oppressed.
This opens up vistas of unrestrained relativism. You can define a kind of bespoke morality which has, fundamentally, inviolably, you at its centre. (Though please note that, what do you know, your ability to impose that bespoke morality on others is of course directly related to your economic power, almost as if economic power was still the real defining feature.)
And of course this new poststructuralist model of society is incredibly attractive to elites. If structural economic injustice is now secondary to individual moral action and you are in a position to define morality, you’re in an unassailable position.
The professor of sociology who used to have to acknowledge that their generous salary made them part of the problem could now keep their economic power and redefine themselves as the heroes by adjusting their individual actions. Corporations and financial elites absolutely love this stuff – the second they learned that activists would stop asking tricky questions about their use of sweatshop labour so long as they ran a special promotion for Pride Week they were all in.
Centrist politicians adore this shift too – put a statement of pronouns on their email footer and they can privatise the hell out of the public realm and yet still be progressives. And generations of activist students who used to have to reconcile their privileged economic position with their professed ethical position, well, didn’t have to bother any more.
In the next article I will make clear that there are important positives which have come out of the greater awareness of the social implications of language and sign systems, but the overwhelming impact has been to whitewash power and inequality and legitimise a neoliberal economic order by draping it in the language of individualised morality.
And from that point onwards, from the point that the elite rebrand themselves as the good guys through a tortured philosophical process which is in itself elite and exclusive, we are on an inescapable path to the nonsensical theories of a Cambridge professor who thinks the only moral world is one where we exist entirely isolated from each other in bubbles of our own making.
From there, perpetual and total conflict is inevitable.

Posted by: Derek Henry | Feb 1 2023 23:56 utc | 35

@Aleph_Null | Feb 1 2023 22:57 utc | 29
I see your point and agree: An isolated (as in “no other motifs and agenda) “intent” to destroy a group of people probably never applies to the many instances of genocide. If one substitutes “intent” with “ipso facto”, then many policies which accept such destruction deserve the label “genocidal”.
I include the (questioned in your OP) fate of the Native Americans explicitly in this perspective. On Nov.03, I posted (#80) a pertinent anecdote:

…loosely related to US immorality: I got a letter from a charity two weeks ago, begging for money for Native American children. In Germany. What a shame with all that money in God’s own country. What decay / neglect / robbing history behind this attempt alone!

Posted by: OttoE | Feb 2 2023 0:20 utc | 37

Blissex,
What right does a US private healthcare company have to steal both the skills and real resources of the NHS. That the NHS needs. Just so the rentier class can put a toll on healthcare instead of free at the point of entry.In my view it is a morale and ethical question decided by the community.
In my world view The way to approach government procurement is as follows:
There are physical people in a nation. They all have labour hours for sale. Some are worth more than others because of skills and experience. A legislature is elected by those people to achieve an end. That legislature decides it needs some of those people to achieve that end, and it debates to set a price it is willing to pay. It sets that price relative to the labour hour of the unskilled individual.
If there are sufficient people who wish to choose public service over private fortune, then great, pay them the designated wage and off we go. They’ve crowded themselves out of the private sector and no further action is required.
If sufficient people don’t turn up, then the legislature needs to make people unemployed until the public service jobs get filled at the wage it is willing to pay. It does that by banning things and raising taxes, which crowds out the private sector in real terms.
Tax has one operational job† – releasing resources that the public sector wants to hire as part of its democratic mandate. Those of which they promised to do in their manifestos.
Government, on behalf of the legislature, then hires all those crowded out:
* those who were planned to be hired, via permanent public sector jobs.
* those who end up unemployed, because taxes and bans are not precise instruments, via the Job Guarantee.
The private sector is similarly imprecise and is incapable of clearing the labour market on its own. The Job Guarantee handles the fallout from the imprecision of both private and public sector activity.
This approach represents a completely different way of looking at the task of constructing a national economy. The private sector is the meat in the sandwich between the required public sector, and those who would otherwise be left unemployed.
Looking at the system people-first ensures everybody who wants to be hired in the monetary economy for wages gets a wage. This allows the economy to operate at a greater level of output than any other competing way of organising one. Yet, thanks to the stabilising and anchoring effects of the Job Guarantee, all while retaining stable prices.
Tax also has a functional task of driving the denomination across a currency area, but we’ll assume for the purposes of discussion that there is a large enough public sector here that the operational tax will do that job too. We’ll leave ‘how to do tiny government’ for another day. The false belief that there is ALWAYS a private sector with the cheque book open ready to hire ALL of the unemployed.

Posted by: Derek Henry | Feb 2 2023 0:37 utc | 39

The level of paranoia within the Outlaw US Empire is closing in on insane, “Pentagon Claims Proposed Chinese-Owned Mill by North Dakota Air Base Poses ‘Significant Threat’”, which as we learn is a corn mill. The people of the town that were looking forward to the very much needed employment will continue to collect welfare or worse. That a corn mill presents a threat to national security is a titanic howler reminding me of Dr. Strangelove.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 2 2023 0:50 utc | 41

@ Derek Henry
smoke this.. michael hudson from jan 29th..
Inflation’s Drivers on The Geopolitical Hour

Posted by: james | Feb 2 2023 1:09 utc | 43

Major African bloc refuses to follow Outlaw US Empire diktat, “African nations resist US by taking non-aligned stance in conflicts outside continent: The summit in Windhoek was attended by the heads of state and government of Zambia, Lesotho, Namibia, Eswatini, and South Africa, as well as relevant ministers from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mozambique.”
Here’s the entire TASS report:

The Southern African Development Community (SADC), which brings together 16 states in the southern part of the continent, has called on its members to stick to a non-aligned stance on conflicts outside Africa, including the crisis in Ukraine. The decision was taken at the extraordinary summit of the SADC Organ Troika on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, held on January 31 in the Namibian capital of Windhoek.
“[The] summit <..> reaffirmed the stance of Non-Alignment on conflicts outside the continent and the region at multilateral forums,” the sides said in a final communique, published on Wednesday on the website of South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation.
With that in mind, the summit adopted the draft African Union Declaration based on the US House of Representatives’ ‘Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act’. According to the African News Agency (ANA), the SADC criticized the US government for trying to unduly influence African foreign policy by imposing punitive measures on those who support Russia in the current crisis in Ukraine.
The summit in Windhoek was attended by the heads of state and government of Zambia, Lesotho, Namibia, Eswatini, and South Africa, as well as relevant ministers from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mozambique.
On April 27, 2022, the US House of Representatives passed the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act by a bipartisan vote of 419 to 9. It has been sent to the Senate. The ANA notes that the bill is worded carefully to allow the US State Department to attempt to interfere with Russian policy in Africa, including military assistance and any actions that Washington deems a ‘malign influence.’

The continuing efforts at extraterritoriality will not accomplish what Congress envisions and will only serve to push other nations further away–something they are clearly too blind to see. Note the lockstep in the vote. Almost the entire Congress is Imperialist yet imagine themselves to be democratic.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 2 2023 2:00 utc | 45

Concerning the increased escalation in NATO’s war against Russia, AND US generals statements of the coming war with CHINA!
We must stop this madness by helping bring into being a new security and development architecture for ALL nations: Tune into Feb 4th Schiller Institute Online Conference “The Age of Reason or the Annihilation of Humanity?”.
https://schillerinstitute.nationbuilder.com/conference_20230204
Program Panel 1: How Nuclear World War III Can Be Avoided 10:00 am EST; 4:00 pm CET) Panel 2: The Name of Peace: A New Security and Economic Development Architecture 2:00 pm EST; 8:00 pm CET speakers include :Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), Founder, The Schiller Institute: H. E. Donald Ramotar (Guyana) former President of Guyana,Former US Amb. Chas Freeman (United States),Diane Sare (United States), candidate for U.S. Senate (New York); Nick Brana (United States), National Chairman, People’s Party; Angela McArdle (United States), Chairwoman, Libertarian National Committee: “Can Americans Put Aside Their Divisions to Stop Nuclear War?” and leaders from Europe,Asia,Africa, Latin America

Posted by: Marty | Feb 2 2023 2:22 utc | 47

I think nobody notices an unexpected and unprecedencet removal of Vietnamese president.
Indian Punchline has a short analisis of the situation and claims that it’s related to purge of NATO fraction by Chinese fraction.
Vietnam won’t be next Ukraine, hopefully, then.

Posted by: Martin | Feb 2 2023 2:59 utc | 49

@ karlof1 | Feb 2 2023 1:51 utc | 45
. . .re: Lavrov in Algeria. . .also in the area. . .
The US, with France and Spain, have long had close ties with Morocco, on Algeria’s western border.
. . . .yesterday, from State:
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke today with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita on shared priorities in the bilateral relationship and efforts to advance regional stability. Secretary Blinken also discussed his recent travel and engagements with Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian leaders, during which he called for deescalation and an end to the cycle of violence. The Secretary commended the Foreign Minister for Morocco’s commitment to promoting peace and security in the region, including through Morocco’s participation in the Negev Forum. . . .here
Blinken called for deescalation and an end to the cycle of violence! . . .We can’t make this stuff up.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Feb 2 2023 3:11 utc | 51

@ karlof1 | Feb 2 2023 0:50 utc | 42
Corn has ears.

Posted by: John Kennard | Feb 2 2023 3:23 utc | 53

@ Martin | Feb 2 2023 2:59 utc | 50
Existing communist states in the world are in China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. Gotta stick together, if petty differences can be overcome.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Feb 2 2023 3:37 utc | 55

@Walt | Feb 2 2023 4:20 utc | 57
Yes, China was an ally against Japan. At the Potsdam Conference On July 26, 1945, came the Potsdam Declaration including:
The “Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and such minor islands as we determine”
Then in September 1951 came the Treaty of San Francisco, also called the Treaty of Peace with Japan which re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers on behalf of the United Nations by ending the legal state of war and providing for redress for hostile actions up to and including World War II. It was signed by 49 nations on 8 September 1951, in San Francisco, California. But the new China government was not invited, and all the islands between Japan and China were granted to Japan, a reversal of the Potsdam Declaration which still alarms China.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Feb 2 2023 4:35 utc | 57

Posted by: Don Bacon | Feb 2 2023 4:52 utc | 59
What a disappointment. I thought Marcos would have more backbone. I guess they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
I have long regarded the Philippines, and Palawan island (it’s not a location like the other spots, it’s the name of the whole island) in particular, as a refuge from the ongoing madness, but now it too will be dragged into it. If that blob on the map has any accuracy then they have picked on the nicest spot on the west coast, the sheltered harbour of Port Barton, to ruin. Well I’ll be back there in a few months, we’ll soon find out.

Posted by: Walt | Feb 2 2023 5:20 utc | 59

The US has secured access to four additional military bases in the Philippines . . .here . . .image here
Posted by: Don Bacon | Feb 2 2023 4:52 utc | 59
it is just sickening to watch the US continue to play this ugly game in the face of so much war and suffering already happening. Just this Philippines move alone makes it clear there will be no cooler heads prevailing in Washington. While the US MIC is still making record profits nothing will change. Currently these parasites are absolutely NOT losing the war in Ukraine.
There are a few old timers here at the bar who remind everyone regularly that the US apparently losing a war is not the measure, the measure is in the corporate profits. This is why it’s no simple matter for Russia or any country in the axis of resistance. Every war makes the MIC stronger, no matter the outcome.

Posted by: K | Feb 2 2023 6:27 utc | 61

@ Don Bacon | Feb 2 2023 4:52 utc | 59
@ Walt | Feb 2 2023 5:20 utc | 60
Oh fark. Had been hoping Marcos was genuine in his stated position, wouldn’t cave. Obviously they managed to leverage/coerce him. Now, 125 years since we betrayed, slaughtered, occupied, exploited and interfered & ‘used’ the Phillipinos throughout for our own ends through to the current day, we’re going to drag them back under & screw ’em over badly yet again, re China. 🙁

Posted by: Outraged | Feb 2 2023 7:55 utc | 63

karlof1 | Feb 2 2023 1:51 utc | 45
Re: Brics and Algeria etc.
Thanks as usual for the information!
It strikes me that the “BRICS+” itself could form the basis for a new (rival) currency/financial system as well as a political union. Not only to the dollar, but also to the touted CBDC’s that are supposed to be issued in the future by the IMF, WB and the BIS controlled “central” Banks system.
Any form of “currency” or cryptocash issued by already existing organizations will be under US control and beneficial to them. In fact, the “basket” of currrencies would be used to support the dollar at a certain level. Something that should not be considered the “best” solution. Alternatively a BRICS+ based currency unit (I am not refering to any specific type of currency medium) would have certain advantages for it’s participants, as it would exclude (could be made to exclude?) the Central Bank monopoly and the “tied to an International rules based grouping”.
**
Algeria and others would NOT surrender their individual currency sovereignty to Washington, but would have standing in a freely associative alternative, where their sovereign rights could be more accurately calculated. It would also reduce, if not completely eliminate financial pressure from the US to “conform” to US-istan’s objectives.
Well – only a suggestion!

Posted by: Stonebird | Feb 2 2023 9:33 utc | 65

I was just looking at my World map, and – I’m in Canadia – particularly Alaska. And remembering something about Russia leasing Alaska to the US for 99 years, over 100 years ago. And did a little search.
“Alaska was leased to the U.S. for 99 years… What?”
https://www.rbth.com/history/329176-alaska-was-leased-to-us-99-years
Now I know well enough not to take any internet source for granted. So does anybody know the skinny on this ? And how likely is anything to come of it ?

Posted by: Featherless | Feb 2 2023 11:44 utc | 67

they have picked on the nicest spot on the west coast, the sheltered harbour of Port Barton, to ruin. Well I’ll be back there in a few months, we’ll soon find out.
Posted by: Walt | Feb 2 2023 5:20 utc | 60
——————————-
Bombs over Bikini: The World’s First Nuclear Disaster
Bob Hope, 1947

“As soon as the war ended, we located the one spot on Earth that hadn’t been touched by war and blew it to hell”

———————————————————–

Trouble in paradise_
Three people arrested in Gangjeong, South Korea, protesting naval base construction
Counterpunch ..
When the Pentagon Kill Machines Came to an Okinawan Paradise »
NVSE — Paradise Invaded The U.S. Navy Bombs Puerto Rico
John Pilger
Diego Garcia,
Paradise Cleansed
Bikini island, THE POISONED PARADISE
over 5,000 animals for radioactive experimentation
Palawan,
Ph, paradise turned into ugly gringo base
Another one bites the dust…
Vicenza, paradise in northern Italy appropriated by USAss

Tip of an iceberg
I might’ve missed some.

Posted by: denk | Feb 2 2023 13:26 utc | 69

@ Walt | Feb 2 2023 5:20 utc | 60
@ K | Feb 2 2023 6:27 utc | 62
@ Outraged | Feb 2 2023 7:55 utc | 64
I wouldn’t give up on Marcos
(1) It’s only “access” to bases
(2) Marcos needs China for BRI investments
VOA
Philippines’ Marcos Vows to ‘Strengthen’ China Ties on Beijing Trip

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos said Wednesday he hoped to strengthen ties with Beijing on his first state visit to China since taking office.
China and the Philippines are at odds over the hotly disputed South China Sea, with Marcos expected to sign a deal in Beijing this week to establish direct communication on maritime issues.
Manila considers it “of primary importance to… strengthen the relationship between China and the Philippines”, Marcos said in a meeting on Wednesday with top Chinese legislator Li Zhanshu.
Marcos, who is also expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, said he hoped for “partnerships that will stabilize and strengthen all of our economies”.
Up to 14 bilateral agreements are expected to be signed during Marcos’s visit, which ends on Thursday.
The Philippine government said last week both sides would sign a communication agreement to “avoid miscalculation and miscommunication in the West Philippine Sea”, referring to the part of the South China Sea that it claims. . .here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Feb 2 2023 13:32 utc | 71

Jimmy Dore to fucker carlson

China is not our enemy you dickhead !

courtesy REPORT ON CHINA.
hehehehe

Posted by: denk | Feb 2 2023 14:08 utc | 73

@ Posted by: Derek Henry | Feb 2 2023 0:37 utc | 40
Job guarantee… Is precisely how the USSR worked, for a couple of generations, according to the nostalgia of my domestic partner. Naturally, she and her parents were near the top of the socialist hierarchy.
Much of what you say is correct.
However, I worked in the public sector for a decade and a half in the last century. There is a significant number of employees who are worse than useless, i.e. they prevent or obstruct useful work from getting done in a timely manner. From what I hear from people today, the ratio of new workers who are capable of production, as opposed to those who are obstructive is declining, at least in North America.
So we import the good ones (via student visas and points based immigration here in Canada) from abroad, which in turn hinders development and growth in those countries.
Then there is job loss due to automation and cheap energy. The latter appears to be ending. The benefits of automation are unevenly distributed.
So paying people not to work has benefits to the people who are capable of work, even if the producers resent it. And a job guarantee becomes basic income guarantee.

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Feb 2 2023 14:49 utc | 75

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 1 2023 23:44 utc | 34
Dear @karlof1,
Thank you for your post, quite informative as always. I’ll add (and sorry if I’m late and another barfly has already done it..) that pursuing technological self-suficiency as much as possible, altough not so explicit, is one amongst the objectives of the PRC’s state initiative “Made in China 2025”, made public in 2015.
For the ones interested in, a brief overview of this initiave can be found in this report from then (and still) PRC’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/201503/912272.shtml

Posted by: C Khosta y Alzamendi | Feb 2 2023 15:16 utc | 77

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov seems to be on a roll today. Several TASS articles quoting him seemed worth mention here. The first (going by TASS’s article timestamp), Final solution to the Russian question? German politicians eye revival of Fascism — Lavrov, includes the following:

According to the top diplomat, in its pursuit of “the final solution to the Russian question”, the West is gunning to hand Russia “a strategic defeat so it won’t recover for a long time.” “Is this not racism, is this not Nazism, is this not an attempt at the ‘final solution to the Russian question?” he pondered. “Yes, not yet in gas chambers at this point. There are still a lot of decent people in Germany who won’t permit the revival of Fascism but there are also those who wouldn’t be against it at all,” he insisted.
The Russian foreign minister noted that now, just like during the Great Patriotic War, Nazi dogma is being used against Russia.”Why do people refuse to see the Nazi ideology that lies at the heart of the Kiev regime?” he wondered. “And all these statements voiced by its enthusiasts and puppeteers are impossible to be perceived as anything other than an attempt at the final solution to the Russian question,” he stressed.
“This is why we are in the epicenter of a geopolitical battle,” Lavrov stressed. “There is no sense in doubting this and those who are confronting practical tasks on the frontlines are doing the most important thing. They are heroes and the feats they perform are feats for the sake of mankind’s future,” he added.

Posted by: David Levin | Feb 2 2023 15:36 utc | 79

Not only Lavrov, Putin’s address during Stalingrad’s aniversary, while the European US servants visit Kiev promissing more sanctions. Germany is asking for it, and it might get it, again.
http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/70434

Posted by: Paco | Feb 2 2023 15:40 utc | 81

The fourth and last passage from Lavrov in my micro-series, from Western politicians deserve peace prize if they promote equality of countries — Lavrov, includes the following:

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin explained in detail the goals, reasons and inevitability of our special military operation,” the minister continued. “Moreover, he did it not just suddenly, but after long eight years, even longer than that, starting from the Munich speech of 2007. For many years he explained to the West that they were steering in the wrong direction and undermining everything that they themselves committed to enforce, including the indivisibility of security in Europe.”
According to Lavrov, “the US and all Westerners, whom the United States has subjugated, depriving the European Union of the last signs of at least some independence, understand democracy as their right to impose their understanding of democracy on everyone else.”
“And as soon as you talk to them about the need for democratic approaches in resolving international issues, they don’t show any enthusiasm,” the minister said.

Posted by: David Levin | Feb 2 2023 15:58 utc | 83

is derek henry a bot?

Posted by: james | Feb 2 2023 16:46 utc | 85

Further trouble, “US’ illegal confiscation of Xinjiang products destabilizes global supply chain, will ultimately harm itself”:

The US’ use of the non-existent “forced labor” issue as an excuse to illegally confiscate products from China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region destabilizes the international supply chain, and will ultimately harm the interests of the US itself, said the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday, warning that China will take necessary measures to defend the rights of Chinese enterprises.
The remarks were made after Bloomberg reported Thursday that the US is beginning to confiscate imports of aluminum products suspected of “being made through forced labor,” particularly from the Xinjiang region, quoting one of the world’s biggest shipping firms Maersk.
The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has begun issuing confiscation notices on aluminum products under the so-called Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), according to a notice through Maersk’s official website.
A spokesperson from Maersk told the Global Times on Thursday that the notice is just a routine notification to remind customers of the latest legislation from the US.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Thursday that the US is once again using the non-existent issue of “forced labor” in the Xinjiang region as an excuse to politicize normal economic and trade cooperation.

The pukes in Washington and fucking insane. IMO, China ought to suspend all exports to the Outlaw US Empire for 90 days to teach it a lesson about its degree of geoeconomic dependence on China. Yes, I know China’s not politically ready to take that step, but it ought to make a public statement that it’s thinking about such a measure.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 2 2023 17:16 utc | 87

@ karlof1 | Feb 2 2023 17:16 utc | 87
Insanely utterly self-defeating. Nuts.
Thank you for your labors & posts. Cheers.
Peace
@ james | Feb 2 2023 16:46 utc | 85
Ye are not alone … how difficult would it be to train an AI bot specifically targeting this forum using multiple socks.
Beep-whoot-ping?

Posted by: Outraged | Feb 2 2023 17:32 utc | 89

I want to make one comment that explains the current situation in the U.S. and in Ukraine and in the world:
The basic reason why the neo-cons have been attacking and demonizing Russia for the past years is because they do not want the two most powerful Christian nations to become friends. In order to understand this reasoning, you have to understand that all the central banks of the west are privately owned by jews, and that it is these international jews who actually have all the power and control everything in the west. The fact that you are not allowed to criticize jews in the west should tell you something. The second you do: you are labeled as an anti-semite.

Posted by: Indrek Pringi | Feb 2 2023 19:06 utc | 91

Speculation suggests that this current geostrategic escapade is not going to end in the way that some of the more partisan, vociferous constituents think it is going to end. Certain individuals will certainly not welcome such an observation and the conclusion it portends, but both history and the current reality seems to suggest such an outcome, i.e., a political/economic status quo that reinforces both the dominant economic mythology and a hierarchical structure that substantially benefits both monied cliques and cartels. In other words, there appears to be obvious divergences, skewing, and blurred lines between the objectives of the professional political class and the professional economic monied class. Or, it seems to be that for some individuals patriotism, along with any ethical or moral considerations, apparently ends where the bank account and private profit begins. Because, it has already been pointed out that:
“Western business is still sustaining Russia’s war”
as it was the case in past conflicts, for example:
“Credit Suisse scandal is nothing new for bank that helped Nazis”
Because, “The histories of all these men show that while countries go to war, and millions lose their lives, finance and capital will keep channels across the front lines, while planning a future that will safeguard their interests and profits.”
“Nazi blueprint for postwar integration”
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/june-2020/nazi-blueprint-for-postwar-integration/
Again because,
The driving force is just the basic logic of capitalism as Clark points out, “so this idea that they just handed Hitler cash is silly, they were interested in reaping more profit, merely industrial interests that’s all, any company or corporation is going to do that.”
Deanna Spingola and V.K. Clark – Freemasonry, Communism, Illuminati, Hitler and the Reichstag Fire
cf.,
https://archive.org/details/sutton-wall-street-and-hitler
Or, “One of my Ph.D. students recently completed an excellent dissertation about the role of GM, IBM, and Ford in rebuilding the German economy in the 1930s, and helping directly, in the case of GM and Ford, with German rearmament. They were willing to do things to support the German military they were not willing to do to rearm in the United States during this period. And they stayed involved in ways that really defied U.S. law up until the war actually began. And then during the war their subsidiaries in Europe continued to produce, continued to make profits, which they were able to accrue after the war ended. In fact, GM and Ford were able to sue the U.S. government for millions of dollars for reparations for their plants that the U.S. bombed and destroyed in Europe during the war that were producing for the Nazis. So American business had a shameful record.”
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/americas-forgotten-support-for-adolf-hitler/
All of which supports the following observation that is the basis for the current, ongoing dominant global economic mythology:
“Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to society. He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.”
The only correction might be, is that the promotion and self interested pursuit of an advantageous end is entirely intentional in this case, and in the past instances. Or so it appears.

Posted by: deliriumtremens | Feb 2 2023 21:05 utc | 93

Oppertunity knocks
” Job guarantee… Is precisely how the USSR worked, for a couple of generations”
No completely different, the job guarentee is a transition job that allows workers to transition between the different sectors of the economy. Into private sector work.
Forces capital to compete for Labour for the first time in 6 decades. This forces increased productivity on reluctant players that lifts all boats.
I’ve worked in the private sector for 40 years and believe me. The exact same problems exist in the private sector as in the public sector.
Perhaps the mental blockage is the horrible realisation that an awful lot of private sector activity adds about as much real value to the economy as a government furlough payment did. We have the paradox of productivity.
The neoclassical Keynsian, monetarist and Austrian view still believes that the economy tends to fix itself. If we just sit back economic growth will go back to its maximum.
Unemployment will drop to 2% what we consider full employment but it might need some help now and then. The Paul Krugman mainstream view. That There are no business cycles. Remember that when the globalist neoliberal war mongers claimed the business cycle is dead.
However, you could have the purist free market economy in the world but still have big unemployment numbers because the system tends to move towards breakdown.
Why ? Why does the system tend to move towards breakdown ?
Why can’t it be that higher wages force firms to invest in better management techniques and the most advanced technologies in order to get the most out of their higher cost labour?
That’s known as the paradox of productivity. Productivity improvements just lead to falling prices, so firms try to avoid doing productivity improvements and prefer to try and obtain monopoly power instead. That’s what a ‘market niche’ is. Oh boy have we seen this monopoly power as the public sector was transformed into rent seeking monopolies.
Higher wages will ultimately lead to some firms failing, which releases people onto the labour market, driving down wages. If you try to hold those jobs up, and force losses onto the other side you end up with an investment strike and the whole house of cards collapses into stagflation.Remember those privatised public services threatening the government with investment strikes last year. I do.
Failing to match higher wages with higher product *must* result in *both* investment capital and the demanding wage earners taking a cold bath. The economic system is a referee. It must not favour either side in the football match.
And why would firms in a competitive capitalistic system ever try to avoid productivity improvements? Simple-
Compare the cost of a concert violinist to a loaf of bread in the 19th century vs today. That’s what productivity increases do over time – because it takes less human time to produce an item, and time is really what everything ends up being priced in.
That’s the paradox of productivity. Productivity improvements ultimately leads to cheaper prices not increased profits. Because that’s what competition is there to do. The profits can go further – in that they can buy more stuff. But capitalists like to accumulate units of account.
In essence the dynamics of pure competition leads to an oversupply in the market which brings prices down until firms start to go bust to eliminate the oversupply. Therefore market players try to stop competition happening by constantly seeking a monopoly perch on which to extract rent.
Oh boy we have we seen this happening time and time again.
The myths of free market beliefs say it all sorts itself out. It clearly doesn’t. The system has to force competition onto essentially reluctant players, and eliminating the clarion call of “what about the jobs” is one way of doing that – let bad firms go bust.
A company that can produce more with the same inputs (costs) is going to do that if there is a market for their product. That’s the huge problem, there isn’t. Because the costs is the income that is used to buy the product (in aggregate).
If you expand output then you are selling to the same income which implies the price must go down to shift the increased amount of stuff. Theoretically their competition will eventually learn how to do the same and the excess profit will disappear.
Not theoretically. That is exactly what happens. The dynamics of market share maintenance then kick in and prices go down. You get a short uplift and then a nosedive. When you’ve been in business long enough you know that getting into a niche is better than constantly trying to run up the down escalator. Because items are ultimately priced in person time used to create them. We all make plans but when it boils down to it actual demand must match actual supply at the point of effective demand – whatever the plans were.

Posted by: Derek Henry | Feb 2 2023 21:57 utc | 95

@karlof1 | Feb 2 2023 17:16 utc | 88

Yes, I know China’s not politically ready to take that step, but it ought to make a public statement that it’s thinking about such a measure.

Even though President Xi keeps saying to get ready to fight (鬥爭), a lot of people in Chinese government, academia, and “think tanks” are either “afraid” to confront amerikkkans or just amerikkkans-in-spirits. These people don’t think China has a chance to fight amerikkkans and it will be better for China to “surrender” sooner rather than later. When Trump started the trade war, a lot of such people said China should yield. IMHO, these people understand neither their own Chinese culture nor the true nature of the anglo-saxon (or to a wider extent the west). So they become half-here-and-half-there with delusional thinking that all Chinese things are inferior and all amerikkkans are good/superior. So it may be some sort of struggle within China to clear these people out of the way before dealing with amerkkkans.

Posted by: LuRenJia | Feb 2 2023 23:06 utc | 97

karlof1 @ 88

US’ illegal confiscation of Xinjiang products destabilizes global supply chain, will ultimately harm itself”

It’s not unwarranted punishment or gangster economics, it’s bait, provocation-escalation, in search of a casus belli, part of the manufacturing consent for war with China just like the step by step sanctions and Russophobia since 1997 was the manufacturing consent for war with Russia.
Tariffs, boycotts, sanctions, impounding goods and ships is exactly how wars start, remember Medvedev’s words to yapping ninny Le Mare’s idiotic but forthright “we are waging a total economic and financial war on Russia,” Medvedev: “Don’t forget that in human history, economic wars quite often turned into real ones.”
Medvedev is keen but he missed the point, real war is what the west wants and what it got. Mark my words, the march to world war is on, like in 1929. The west never recovered after 2008 they swept it under the rug, Eurolandia is a straight jacket, monetary failure, and an institutionalized downward drag on the European economy, Brexit was a duel where both parties mortally shot each other, the coup de grace was covid. Last year was 1929 but with the social safety net in place in the modern day west they could hide it from you, for a while anyway – 2023 it’ll come light.
“…illegal confiscation of Xinjiang products destabilizes global supply chain, will ultimately harm itself…”
The USA wants the harm, they need the domestic rancor and are feeding it, like in 1929 they need to pit one half the working class to kill the other half, at home and across the globe so it doesn’t turn on them, all the while getting rid of their vaunted and imagined Russian and Chinese adversaries.

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Feb 3 2023 0:11 utc | 99