Open (Not Ukraine) Thread 2023-136
News & views (not related to the war in Ukraine) ...
Posted by b on June 8, 2023 at 13:06 UTC | Permalink
next page »Chronicles of Democracy.
Member of the Moldovan Parliament from the PAS party Oazu Nantoi called Russia "a fascist state with a defective genetic code".
It's always fun to hear stuff like that. An obvious fascist with a mental defect (Russophobia is a disease, a mental deviation, like anti-Semitism, Sinophobia etc.) calls Russia - the country, anti-fascist in its very essence - a fascist state. Alternative reality, surrealism. People like this deputy are people with defect, inferiority of the brain. But they call others inferior. This is a kind of psychological compensation for one's own inferiority. Call others what you yourself are in essence, blame others for what you yourself do. Ugly alternate reality. Bastards, fascists and liars, projecting their disgusting essence onto others, thereby "cleansing themselves". Ugh.
Posted by: ThusspakeZarathustra | Jun 8 2023 13:53 utc | 1
Yes and now they get more inflation, higher grain prices, higher fertilizer prices, and higher energy prices thanks to their support of the Z-man and his terrorist clowns.
Posted by: Ghost of Zanon | Jun 8 2023 14:10 utc | 3
"Edward Snowden has warned that surveillance technology is so much more advanced and intrusive today it makes that used by US and British intelligence agencies he revealed in 2013 look like child’s play."
"In an interview on the 10th anniversary of his revelations about the scale of surveillance – some of it illegal – by the US National Security Agency and its British counterpart, GCHQ, he said he had no regrets about what he had done and cited positive changes."
"But he is depressed about inroads into privacy both in the physical and digital world. “Technology has grown to be enormously influential,” Snowden said. “If we think about what we saw in 2013 and the capabilities of governments today, 2013 seems like child’s play.”"
Be careful out there.
Posted by: ThusspakeZarathustra | Jun 8 2023 14:11 utc | 4
Looks like New York City is getting a dose of what we see in the western us every year without fail. In the western us late July through mid-september is the worst time of year. The smoke is everywhere and it is unbearable. This is caused by wildfires from California all the way to Canada. The wildfires become massive in size because the land has not been managed. That is the second and third growth forests are restricted from being managed. Firelines could easily be cut in all the forests so that fires could more easily be fought and mitigated. Dead standing and undergrowth could be collected year-round and used in biomass energy production, which is a very efficient source of electric, and jobs. Night vision and technology can be used to fight fires at night when they are easily visible and burning at their lowest. As it is now we fight fires during the day when they are the most active and the most dangerous. All of these land management and logical technologies have been available for years. The federal government's moratorium on logging and management of federal lands is now annually coming home to roost in massive devastating fires throughout the West. These fires have no end and they burn extremely hot and they burn everything. Movements like 'forever wild', result in a blast furnace effect burning entire small towns. This is just lazy bland management by government. We have to pay the air quality board for any vehicles that we drive yet they can't guarantee the air quality and we breathe smoke over 2 months out of the year. No remorse for the East enjoying their nice good smoke.
Posted by: Diego | Jun 8 2023 15:02 utc | 5
Hi. Can anyone give me an update on Russian progress in Sudan. I believe Russia's involvement in Sudan will be a welcome long-term stabilizing entity in that area. There has been a blackout in Western MSM since USA was kicked out. Thx
Posted by: Diego | Jun 8 2023 15:12 utc | 6
Hi. Can anyone give me an update on Russian progress in Sudan. I believe Russia's involvement in Sudan will be a welcome long-term stabilizing entity in that area. There has been a blackout in Western MSM since USA was kicked out. Thx
Posted by: Diego | Jun 8 2023 15:12 utc | 7
I see very little about Sudan, just occasional stories with little new information. My impression based on that inadequate information is that nobody is happy with the war except the warlords. Uncle Sugar hates it in particular because it is interfering with his plans for the Horn. On the other hand it is very destabilizing, so not all bad.
I haven't seem anything about the Russians since the first few days of the war there. But they are busy elsewhere in Africa.
Posted by: Bemildred | Jun 8 2023 15:52 utc | 7
USA Decay Report
Supply chains close to breaking down again:
Another mass shooting event:
Bankruptcy filings piling up fast:
Collapse-o-meter reading: 95/100
(Higher means more likely to suffer a catabolic collapse.)
Posted by: Ghost of Zanon | Jun 8 2023 16:43 utc | 8
Diego | Jun 8 2023 15:02 utc | 5--
Dude, there are currently no wildfires in California. You hurt your credibility when lying--FYI.
I know the bar has a number of Kiwis as members along with ex-pat juliania. In her weekly briefing yesterday, Zakharova updated us on the situation of New Zealand's Maori and their quest for compensation from the UK for the crimes they endured:
On the crimes of the British colonialists against the MaoriThe cruelty with which the British (who now teach everyone, demand something, ascribe to themselves the right to moral assessment) carried out their colonialist policy is well known to the peoples of the world. At least, it was known to those who were interested in it.
The vast colonial empire was literally an inexhaustible source of fabulous enrichment for the ruling classes of Britain. Mainly due to the ruthless exploitation of the conquered territories, the successful socio-economic development of the country was ensured. For many of these crimes, London has not yet apologized. What can I say, about material compensation.
Historians remind: faced with the resistance of indigenous peoples, the British colonialists in the past were often forced with them, if not to negotiate, then at least to seriously revise their line. One such example was the Maori in New Zealand.
The British, who began in the first quarter of the XIX century to the active development of the New Zealand Islands, were interested in local fertile lands. As expected, this led to disagreements with the Maori, who resolutely stood up for the lands of their ancestors. The British colonialists, who were initially in the minority, far from the metropolis and bases with weapons, decided not to aggravate the situation and, veiling their predatory colonialist plans, tried to give them the appearance of legitimacy.
In February 1840, in the Maori village of Waitangi, an agreement was signed, according to which, in exchange for recognizing the authority of the British crown, the Maori received land documents and the rights of British subjects in the courts - from a human point of view, by the way, a very revolutionary solution for that time, which did not fit into the brutal colonialist policy of the British in other parts of the world. However, this was just another "screen". The same dramatization that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wrote about in an article for the Izvestia newspaper in July 2022. London did not ratify the document at that time, which is indicative of today's policy of the "collective West", and the British courts declared it null and void. How convenient it is to deceive the local population, and in the metropolis to disavow all this.
Having received a temporary respite, the British colonialists then began to actively appropriate the lands of the indigenous people, which provoked a national uprising. As a result of the so-called New Zealand land wars of 1845-1872, more than 2.1 thousand Maori and almost 800 Britons died. The most dramatic episode was the Titokovaru uprising (from June 1868 to March 1869). When it was suppressed, the British did not limit themselves in methods, acting with their characteristic cruelty, pitting the Maori tribes against each other. Although as a result of these wars, London achieved its goals - about 16 thousand km² of fertile land belonging to the Maori were confiscated in favor of the colonial administration, units of the British army were recalled from New Zealand. Subsequently, London was forced to return to the Waitangi agreements and begin the procedure for paying compensation, which has not yet been completed. It's a great story.
The very people who are now demanding compensation, reparations, came up with a tribunal. You settle accounts with the Maori. They have been waiting since the 1840s. I address official London - as soon as you settle accounts with the Maori, immediately proceed not to us, to the Iraqis. It is also necessary to repent to them, apologize and also begin compensation payments. Then we will discuss the claims in our direction. We will have something to show London.
In our opinion, something else is important. The warlike spirit, courage and perseverance of the Maori allowed this people not to repeat the fate of many other victims of the British colonialists, in particular, the completely exterminated aborigines of neighboring Tasmania. Or the Indians of North America expelled by the Americans to the reservation. Through a determined struggle for their national independence, Maori have achieved significant rights for themselves. Today in New Zealand they make up almost 17% of the population (850.5 thousand people out of 5 million of the country's population). They protect their way of life, preserve their language and culture, and have guaranteed representation in the country's legislative bodies. Māori hold senior positions in the New Zealand Government.
Maori also support anti-colonial initiatives, incl. aimed at obtaining financial compensation for the peoples affected by the arbitrariness of the British colonialists. One of the last such petitions demanding an "official apology" and "reparations" signed by representatives of 12 countries was addressed to King Charles III of Great Britain in early May this year.
We are convinced that the time has long come for official London to admit the mistakes of its colonial past. It's time to get down to business.
Lots of material as usual was covered at yesterday's briefing. Set aside at least an hour to review it all.
Diego @ 5
In California your arguments have merit. The current fires are far north, in areas where fires are left to burn. Unfortunately there is management (=bad management) and logging very far north.
There was an extreme early heatwave in Canada. Look at jetstream circulation. Completely deformed with jetstream crossing the equator and generating circular eddies all over the map. Not normal weather at all. El Nino is getting organized, temperatures are going up. Expect a lot more smoke all summer. Not a little more, a whole lot more.
Posted by: oldhippie | Jun 8 2023 17:04 utc | 11
Posted by: Diego | Jun 8 2023 15:12 utc | 6
Diego, nice name you've got, Spain's Apostle. Maradona is another famous Diego.
There was a brief mention of Sudan by Prigozhin today, answering to a few questions by AlMayadeen. Machine Translation.
https://t.me/Prigozhin_hat/3639
"1. I think that the events that are currently taking place at the front are the beginning of a counteroffensive by Ukraine, which is currently systematically increasing its efforts. How Russia will cope with this, we will see in the near future. I hope that we will cope successfully. I'm counting on it.
2. The role of the Wagner PMCs in Africa is very great. The Wagner PMCs shows the African peoples that they can fight external aggression, as well as the actions of terrorists and gangs on the territory of Africa. PMCs Wagner proves that African peoples can be protected. The UN and other states are not engaged in this in any way. They only think about how to suck out the African bowels.
3. Differences between the Wagner PMCs and Western PMCs. Western PMCs are private military companies. PMCs "Wagner" – conventionally named by the word "PMCs", just, as they say, was stuck on us. The Wagner PMCs is a full–fledged army with airplanes, helicopters, air defense and so on. If a conflict needs to be stopped somewhere or someone's aggression needs to be stopped somewhere, the Wagner PMCs can easily cope with this in territories comparable to the territory of the Congo, Sudan and other large African countries."
Posted by: Paco | Jun 8 2023 17:19 utc | 12
Roger will find this last Q&A from Zakharova's Briefing of interest, as will other historians, given his recent writings, On Russia's "secession from the USSR":
Question: On the occasion of Russian Language Day and Russia Day, there have been more and more statements of this type in discussions on the media, including abroad: they say that there is no need to accuse other countries of seceding from the USSR, Russia also seceded from the USSR, that is, it was involved in the collapse of the USSR. The day before yesterday at the Rossiya Segodnya news agency at the press conference "The Unity of the Russian Nation - a Guarantee of National Security", a question was also asked, which contained the statement that "Russia seceded from the USSR." This is an extremely important position, far from theoretical. The Russian Federation is the heir to the USSR, and this is a connection, not a break with the Soviet Union.What is the Foreign Ministry's interpretation of this issue? Do you think it is true that "Russia seceded from the USSR"?
Maria Zakharova: There are a number of dimensions to this question. The first is legal. Our legal personality is enshrined in our Constitution. There is a clear wording. This is a global level. There is a legislative level, entire textbooks have been written on this subject. But the main dimension is legal. It is clearly enshrined in the Constitution of our country.
The second dimension is historical. It involves a combination of all factors: both historical realities and facts that are still being revealed. Much of what happened just now is coming to light. This includes the legal aspect, which is also considered not only in the context of modern history, but also in the historical process.
There is a third dimension – the human dimension. How many people have experienced this moment. Since we are all contemporaries of those events, there will be so many answers to the question. Regardless of legal formulations and historical facts, everyone will have their own feeling of that period. Believe me, I think you know this from communicating with your compatriots, for you this is an unpassable topic, how many people there will be, so many perceptions and corresponding "sentences" of that period.
I am sure that you know very well that people who survived those events reconsider their views over time. Optimists who rejoiced at events and interpreted them in one way, decades later, became pessimists and would gladly return to that time to change something. And, on the contrary, at that time, taken by surprise by the elements of the historical movement, they adapted and survived difficult and incomparable times at that time, and evaluate it from a personal point of view, while understanding that for many it was precisely a tragic moment. But they coped with this situation.
Here are just three dimensions. I think there's a lot more. For example, the dimension of the future that is now taking shape. We are experiencing a situation that is not just an echo, an echo, but is directly interconnected with those events. Call it what you want: it is a detonation, a consequence. How many experts there will be, there will be so many opinions. Therefore, there is still a future dimension to this situation.
I'm not sure if this is a difficult question in the sense that it's insidious or tricky. It is difficult because it is a matter of long, repeated and in-depth study and discussion.
Yes, discussion of that topic could consume a week or more. And as she notes, important relevant facts continue to be made known. IMO, Wolfowitz would never have had the moxie to write what became the Wolfowitz Doctrine which became the Full Spectrum Domination policy if the USSR hadn't imploded in the manner it did. And that's crucial now since the Outlaw US Empire still continues to fulfill that policy goal despite the amount of opposition it's generated.
oopsi, some freezing in a tropical country brasilia :
German FM Baerbock hasnt meet with president lula or her colleage FM of brasilia those days...
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/baerbock-in-brasilien-lula-hat-keine-zeit-18946319.html
Posted by: gpc | Jun 8 2023 17:36 utc | 14
JUST IN: Biden postpones tonight's pride month celebration at the White House due to the Canadian fires. Nobody wanted a smoky cocktail weenie.
Posted by: GT Stroller | Jun 8 2023 17:38 utc | 15
Jonathan Steele, who appears to have escaped the intellectual debilitation of Kathh Viner's MI6 Guardian, writes about Syria in Middle East Eye today
"... for motives that smack of utter cynicism, the US would maintain anti-Syrian sanctions and keep a contingent of some 900 troops in northeastern Syria in alliance with Syrian Kurdish forces.
"This negative US policy now has a Ukrainian dimension, according to William Roebuck, a US diplomat who was recently embedded with US forces in Syria.
“The US wants to stay in Syria and keep troops there in order to deprive Assad and Putin of any sort of win,” he told a Quincy Institute webinar last week.
"Joshua Landis, a professor at the University of Oklahoma and a well-known expert on Syria, told the same webinar: “The major thrust of American policy is not to allow Syria to rebuild. The Caesar sanctions are designed not to allow companies and outside foreign investment to rebuild the electricity grid, repair schools and rebuild the state, but to keep Assad weak and hurt the Russians and the Iranians.”
"Ten years ago, Saudi Arabia was financing and helping to arm the opposition to Assad. Its U-turn is remarkable...
"...Twelve years later, the balance sheet is grim. Six million Syrians are refugees. Another six million are homeless inside their own country. More than half a million have lost their lives. Towns and cities have been destroyed. Nothing positive has been achieved.
"Yet there is now the faintest glimmer of hope. If the Arab League governments, with their immense oil and gas wealth, are really willing to help Syria rebuild and not just host Assad for summit meetings, the chance for a new beginning is at last in place."
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/syria-arab-states-assad--u-turn-massive-game-changer-why
Posted by: bevin | Jun 8 2023 17:39 utc | 16
Karloff, New York is experiencing smoke from fires to the north in Canada and west probably from northern Michigan. What you see in the pictures of New York City is what it looks like here in Idaho in August is what I'm saying. California Oregon Washington Idaho Montana, and western Canada will have fires in late July through mid-september, as they do every year and the western us will be smoked out for a month and a half. We have already had a week of smoke from Canada so far this year due to the dryness of the winter in western Canada. Of course we do hope the fires are mitigated this year due to the wet winter experienced out here in the West. Best
Posted by: Diego | Jun 8 2023 17:41 utc | 17
Think that dude speaks of California years past. Last 3 summers, Reno, Carson city, Dayton, Silver Springs, and Virginia City were covered in Smoke. Have a nice Cigar Jew York.
Posted by: Sherevport Joe | Jun 8 2023 17:52 utc | 18
The guest this week on Sputnik Globe's New Rules Podcast is Micheal Hudson, who is also scheduled to meet with his Patreon sponsors today. An article based on the podcast by Ekaterina Blinova has also been published, "Michael Hudson: Biden Admin Waging 'Class War' Against Working Americans". An interview covering part of this conducted by the Chinese Observer Network was published last week at Hudson's website, "Buying US Debt Subsidizes Imperialism". I've yet to digest them all, but the topics and basic gist ought to be known by those closely following Hudson.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 8 2023 17:54 utc | 19
"Chinese Observer Network was published last week at Hudson's website, "Buying US Debt Subsidizes Imperialism". I've yet to digest them all, but the topics and basic gist ought to be known by those closely following Hudson."
Backs up everything I have explaining over the last month. But don't tell Mr gold standard, fixed exchange rate Paul Greenwood who posts on here. Who after debating money either morphs into gold standard or fixed rate exchange rates every 5 mins depending his mood.
National debt myth explained ✔
Deficit myth explained ✔
Tax payer money myth explained ✔
George Galloway should be tied to a chair and forced to read it. GROUPTHINK is strong inside the Borg.
Posted by: Derek Henry | Jun 8 2023 18:27 utc | 20
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 8 2023 17:54 utc | 19
Best of it is Karlof1 in any debate you can use the Borgs GROUPTHINK against them and win any debate within 25 mins.
They say " Taxes fund government spending AND control inflation "
An Oxymoron if ever there was one. They never think things through. So you just play along and ask them how do taxes control inflation if as they say they are immediately respent. back into the economy. What was the point of taking the money out of the economy in the first place.
Apart from just showing them the actual balance sheets that take place. There's a million and one ways to skin that cat. Resistance is futile.
Posted by: Derek Henry | Jun 8 2023 18:37 utc | 21
Or the Borg invade an Island to assimilate it and scrap the old currency and introduce their own new currency which they call " farts ".
Borg say to the citizens give us your " farts" so that we can spend.
The citizens say we haven't got any " farts" to give you. You have to spend time b m first so we can get out hands on them to pay our taxes in " farts"
The Borg are so riddled with GROUPTHINK they still won't get it. Will be looking in their vaults for bars of gold or foreign exchange reserves lol.
Posted by: Derek Henry | Jun 8 2023 19:01 utc | 22
Listened to Hudson's Sputnik podcast, and it's very good. The last five minutes becomes radical. But do listen to the entire program as there're little bits added throughout that even close followers can learn from.
Consider what the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth fund owns - just as an example. Shares, property, bonds in Sterling. When it receives the coupons, dividends and rent it then buys more Sterling assets with them. What does that do? It just forces up asset prices in the UK focussing the economy on producing assets, rather than actual stuff.
So the profit outputs go to those who trade assets to those who hoard assets. Also known as 'rich people'.
If you want to encourage saving,
(i) why do it with an instrument that is permanently tradable in an infinitely liquid market backed by HM Treasury as buyer of last resort?
(ii) why do it with an instrument that can be held by business and banks and gives them a risk free income for doing nothing? Basic income for rich people.
Surely if you wanted to encourage saving for whatever reason you'd do it with five year Granny bonds at National Savings that can only be held by individuals in the domestic private secror?
Gilts are there so that government can pretend private pensions are private and not a state pension/tax collection system in disguise. Index linked gilts were specifically brought in at the request of the pension industry.
The rest are used as collateralisation instruments in the finance industry which is why, as Bill mentioned in one of his many blog posts, the Australian finance industry begged the government to continue issuing government bonds when Australia was running a budget surplus. Again this is so that we can pretend that the banking system is private and not a state franchise.
There is, and remains, no need for government bonds. It is just a corporate welfare payment and a left over from the Gold Standard.
https://new-wayland.com/blog/the-only-bonds-we-need-are-granny-bonds/
Once Hudson gets his head around this idea he will be all for it.
Posted by: Derek Henry | Jun 8 2023 19:17 utc | 25
As an example imagine a population where some are looking to move from spending to saving and some are moving from saving to spending.
If you have tradeable saving instruments in a forced liquid market then nobody's behaviour is changed at all. You're relying entirely upon the idea that the price of saving will change minds 'at the margins' and there will be no networked feedback loop between the individuals.
In other words you're assuming advertising and Facebook don't exist.
Posted by: Derek Henry | Jun 8 2023 19:19 utc | 26
If you are a member of a pension scheme then the savings of the current generation, plus the interest on Gilts and any income from the other assets owed pay the pensions of the current generation of pensioners. They are all, in effect, private taxation schemes that circulate money around the system.
You'll note that when there was a threat of people failing to save in pensions, the government introduced compulsory retirement saving - which is of course a privatised hypothecated tax.
So in essence rather than the assets of a pension scheme being used to purchase Gilts, the assets would be used to purchase an annuity from the government dedicated to an individual. The result is that rather than the private pension receiving Gilt income from the state, to then pass onto the pensioner, the state would cut out the middleman (and their cut) and pay the pensioner directly as an addition to the state pension.
So it's all roughly the same thing, but it makes the accounting look better to those bears of very little brain. Granny bonds are the perfect instrument.
There's a whole private pension industry out there literally doing absolutely nothing of any real value. They can't provide a guaranteed income in retirement without STATE backing in the form of Gilts. So what is exactly the point of having them?
Every savings portfolio manager will ask what is your risk profile. 60/ 40 stocks/ bonds, 70/30, 80/10 , etc. All of them use STATE bonds to balance risk. Get rid of all them they are a waste of space. Use your skills and real resources to do something far more productive.
Just in compliance costs alone it's worth doing.
Posted by: Derek Henry | Jun 8 2023 19:27 utc | 27
It becomes easier to see if you think about it from the point of view of a net exporter to the rest of the world.
If you export to excess you gather foreign currency. You have no choice because there is insufficient imports to swap all your earnings to the local currency.
So how - as a net exporter - do you pay all your staff who want local currency?
Answer: you sell the foreign currency to your bank who then creates the local currency for you in return.
This is obvious when you think about it. Foreign currency is an asset - a loan to a foreign nation. Once the bank has hold of it in the asset column it can just mark up your local currency account and 'credit' you with the exchange value.
And this is how net exporters work in aggregate. They hold foreign currency hostage (or foreign currency bonds if they can get them) so they can discount the correct amount of local currency against it. It makes the accounting look good at banks and central banks and has the added advantage of draining domestic circulation abroad making more space for your goods and services exports.
Now think about it in terms of multi-national banks.
If I'm banking with HSBC there will be a local branch in Japan and a local branch in the UK.
If a Japanese company has an excess of Sterling it needs Yen for, then the local branch in Japan will move the Sterling to its account at the UK branch (HSBC Japan - Sterling Asset a/c) and then mark up the Japanese company's account in Yen.
The Sterling then becomes just an intra-company loan of no significance to the overall accounts. If there is a build up of Yen on the UK side, the bank can do an internal swap to eliminate the currency on both sides and shrink the balance sheet (which reduces the liquidity ratio requirements on both sides).
So if you eliminate interest paid on UK government assets and force foreigners to hold just currency, they will likely continue to hold it within their banking system as the offsetting asset to local currency creation.
Because that's what you have to do to continue being a net exporter in a floating rate currency (the alternative is to get 18 other countries to sign up to use your currency Eurozone style).
They may have to go through a cycle or two of excessively high currency rates (and therefore we have low currency rates) and trade collapses before they get the message. It all depends how astute the foreign politicians are and whether they care about their own economy or some other political end.
Posted by: Derek Henry | Jun 8 2023 19:32 utc | 28
What's very important to remember is ...
For every trade there are *two* transactions. The (1) is the real transaction of real goods and services and they cross borders as you would expect.
The (2) is the finance transaction in the opposite direction.
In every finance transaction that happens the buyer gets to use what they want to pay for the transaction, and the seller receives what they want to receive for the transaction. Everybody has to get what they want in finance terms *or both legs of the transaction would never have happened in the first place*.
The job of the finance sector is to match the mismatches, allow more finance transactions to complete and scrape a bit off for enabling that process.
As shown beautifully here:
https://new-wayland.com/blog/anatomy-of-an-fx-transaction/
So you can buy UK goods and services with anything you want - bottles of wine, even Bitcoin and your friendly neighbourhood finance sector will sort it all out so the seller at the other end gets what they want.
So if I'm in the UK and I'm an anarchist with a deep distrust of government, I will want Bitcoins. I may even charge for my stuff in Bitcoins. Then I'd use a finance invoice processor (like coinvoice etc) which allows buyers to pay with whatever they fancy and I'll get Bitcoins.
However at some point I'm going to have to pay my tax Bill and so I'll use another payment processor to pay my tax bill with Bitcoins.
But none of this is magic. The finance sector is just doing the exchanges in the background. If somebody pays me with dollars and I want Bitcoins, then that gets matched with somebody paying in Bitcoins and wanting dollars. And what happens in effect is the person paying with Bitcoin pays me, and the person paying me in dollars pays those wanting dollars. It's a simple swap transaction that redirects the currency flows back into the currency area.
Matching those flows is what moves the currency prices relative to each other until everything matches up.
The key point is that in every transaction the buyer pays with what they want to pay with and the seller gets what they want to receive. Otherwise the transaction will never happen. So all that nonsense about the UK *needing* dollars to pay for things is rubbish. If we have Sterling we pay for things in Sterling and the exchange system matches that up. If there is no match. If liquidity dries up then the *transaction fails* and never happens.
What that tells you is that the 'trade deficit' is a result of transactions that have succeeded. Therefore the other side must have wanted Sterling savings of some kind or the excess transaction would never have happened in the first place.
Why a lot of the "Hoo Haa" around de dollarisation is lion witch and the wardrobe stuff. The foreign debt is the issue when borrowing in a foreign currency.
Posted by: Derek Henry | Jun 8 2023 19:45 utc | 29
FINALLY - has I have harped on long enough using English to try and explain the actual accounting that takes place in the real world.
Switch yourself around to the point of view of a Chinese producer. Put yourself in their shoes.
Then what happens is this.
There is insufficient demand at home to keep your factory going. Just not enough orders coming in. So you either close or you entertain these orders from a foreign nation offering funny green bits of paper that are worthless to you.
So you have a word with your local PBC branch and they let you know that they'll take the funny green bits of paper and give you real money in exchange. And they can even tell you how much real money you'll get.
That reassures you and off you go producing safe in the knowledge that you'll get real money for your output which you can spend in the shops in China.
So how does the PBC do that.
Again, put yourself in the shoes of the PBC. In the hands of a bank foreign currency is a loan asset. It's collateral. What does a bank do with collateral? it discounts it for the local currency.
The transactions are DR Foreign currency assets, CR local factory owner's deposit account
Now read that again. What has happened?
The bank has gained ownership of a valuable foreign asset *and created local money against it*.
This is how foreign export-led economies maintain circulation of their local money in the face of the drain to savings. They hold foreign currency assets to make the balance sheet look good. It is far, far easier politically to discount against so called 'hard currency' than it is against the apparently nebulous 'taxpayers equity' asset. Even though functionally it has precisely the same effect - injection of local money into the economy.
Let's take another example of of Norway.
You're an oil producer in Norway and you earn in US dollars. But the Norwegian government taxes you heavily in Krone to avoid a 'Dutch disease' issue and to 'save' for future generations.
So what happens?
The government pays the tax amount, in Kroner, into the Government Pension Fund using the usual mark up routine. It charges the oil funds the tax amount (as corporate taxes and licence costs). To get the Kroner, the oil company swaps USD for Kroner - effectively with the Pension Fund. The Oil company now has the Kroner and can settle its tax bill.
The Pension Fund now has USD which it uses to buy equities from abroad and that approach drain more USD in income (and Euros, GBP, etc). The fund puts a huge 'hard asset' on one side of the national balance sheet which can be discounted quietly by the Norwegian central bank to maintain the circulation of Kroner in the face of the drain to savings.
You can do much the same with Denmark - except that the pension funds there are privatised.
So the bit most people miss is that exporters are not just making money. They are generally wanting to make the local money in export-led nations, and it is the finance system that does the saving in foreign currency bit - all the way up the pyramid to the top if necessary.
The Borg riddled with gold standard, fixed exchange rate GROUPTHINK will never get it. I sincerely hope my rantings has helped those with a brain who can think for themselves to get a better understanding of the accounting that actually takes place.
Posted by: Derek Henry | Jun 8 2023 19:59 utc | 30
Is the first test in Economics 101 today or tomorrow?
Posted by: SwissArmyMan | Jun 8 2023 20:14 utc | 31
I wonder why Mercouris seems more skeptical than usual about reports of deaths and losses in the Ukrainian offensive. If anything, I would think a huge disparity between opposing sides would make more sense now than ever before. Ukr forces are crashing into deep, carefully prepared multiple defensive lines. It's a form of suicide. The Hollywood plot that 'they know you're coming' is a death sentence.
Posted by: Eighthman | Jun 8 2023 20:53 utc | 32
EU countries strike major deal on migration rules
...
a system of "mandatory solidarity" that gives member states two options: accept asylum-seekers, or pay €20,000 ($21,500) for each rejected applicant
Posted by: Passerby | Jun 8 2023 21:11 utc | 33
Putin’s “thoughts” are- if he is sincere – these:
Russia is neither “white” nor non-white. He doesn’t think in these categories. For instance, he’s constantly drumming against Western imperialism, which he thinks began with the Age of Exploration.
His chief devil is not very well defined, but it seems to be a combination of Western Christianity (Catholicism & Protestantism) & now, perhaps, Anglo-Saxonistan which is, in his fantasies, dominated by WASPs. It is not clear how he treats other Europeans, but his image of the West is confusing- it seems that “West” is a combination of Poles, French, Germans & Swedes, Russia’s historical invaders; on the other hand, he easily switches between centuries & mixes the 17th C with the 21st C.
Putin’s narrative is also contradictory. It is not clear whether historical invaders of Russia (Poles, French, Germans) are now the threatening & potentially Russia-conquering West, or just puppets of the global WASP power. Anyway, all Western Christians, from the Portuguese to the English, are racists. Putin’s version of the contemporary world is that “good guys” are colored races (China, India, Africa, blacks in the US,..). Russia, in his view, is not “white” (whatever this may mean).
As far as religious culture goes, Western Christianity is the enemy. It is only Eastern, Orthodox Christianity that he thinks of “defending”. Also, his reinterpretation of history is laughable: he states that historical “friends”, buddies in Russia are Eastern Orthodox, Jews and Muslims (with a smattering of Buddhists).
For anyone who knows anything about the history of Russia- this is absurd. Before Communism, Jews and Muslims were considered irreconcilable aliens & enemies. He’s lying about trivial facts.
Then, his fantasies about WASPs, now, have nothing to do with reality. He fantasizes that tranny, gay & Globohomo ideology is basically WASPy, or “white” tool for domination over colored races, Russia & a sword wielded by US “whites” to conquer the world & to exploit it.
Globohomo ideology is, in his definition, the invention of globalist Anglo-Saxonists to subdue Africans, Asians & other coloreds- and, of course, Russia, which is a natural ally of the East and South.
His world-view is simply idiotic.
It can be easily decoded if one reads his last two big speeches & watches short videos (when he says, in translation, Christianity, he means only Eastern Orthodoxy; also, when he talks about races, and white race especially, he doesn’t include Russians in the definition).
Putin’s core world-view is that of an Eastern Orthodox Euro-Asian Jihadist- basically, this is the same as Dugin- consumed with hatred of not just post-modern Globohomo West, but of the historical European identity.
And, let’s be frank: Eastern Orthodoxy was a cultural Sahara in comparison with Western Christianity (first Catholic, then Protestant, too). There was not one even close Eastern Orthodox equivalent to Aquinas, Dante, Petrarch, Hildegard of Bingen, Lassus, Descartes, Mozart, Bach, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Velazquez,… (I am only mentioning those creators somehow connected to religion). From sonnet to polyphony, from perspective to mathematical & musical modern notation & calendar- it’s all West.
Perhaps Western Christianity got more people. Perhaps Eastern Orthodox peoples were just historically unlucky. But, the imbalance is evident, whichever the reason.
Eastern Orthodoxy is typologically closer to Judaism, and in some aspects to Islam than to Western Christianity.
Posted by: Bardon Kaldian | Jun 8 2023 21:24 utc | 34
Derek Henry: the topic of money is obviously very dear to you, so please try to learn to express the relevant points in a few paragraphs in a way that a non-autistic person would care to read it. You're writing as if the reader is already supposed to know all your jargon, theory, insider quips, and your gigantic non-sequitur drunken leaps of reasoning and narrative.
Posted by: Mike | Jun 8 2023 21:27 utc | 35
It would be ok if Econ101 was actually worth knowing, but it is just the first step to a Law Degree which is just the first step to Politics.
Posted by: SwissArmyMan | Jun 8 2023 21:40 utc | 36
@ Bardon Kaldian | Jun 8 2023 21:24 utc | 34
Russia, in his view, is not “white” (whatever this may mean)
It means multiculturalism. RF is held together with a respect for minorities and ethnicities.
Somehow that multi-culti style Western Church doesn't really teach sincerely, but Holy Church defenders and colonizers are rather cynical in exploiting it.
It is also a Federation, just not like the USA which is fueled with old money, promoting business ventures of the paid mil-econ mercenaries and those are not really good people at all. And they are all very white. Kaffertjes there are just a sidekick.
So, for the country of 11 timezones being Euro-Asian to say that it is not white seems correct.
Posted by: whirlX | Jun 8 2023 21:57 utc | 37
@ whirlX | Jun 8 2023 21:57 utc | 37
Yep, the RF _is_ the Eurasian Union.
Posted by: John Kennard | Jun 8 2023 22:28 utc | 38
Posted by: Bardon Kaldian | Jun 8 2023 21:24 utc | 34
We might take this rant a little more seriously if it contained a link or links in each paragraph to the respective Putin quote allegedly being analyzed.
I'm not saying they don't exist, but your comment certainly doesn't point to them if they do.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 8 2023 22:35 utc | 39
@ Bardon Kaldian | Jun 8 2023 21:24 utc | 34
Understandably, Western Christianity is Putin's enemy probably because western Christians are his (and many others) enemy both inside the US and elsewhere in the world.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Jun 8 2023 22:53 utc | 40
"Wildfires" The premier of Alberta has brought in outside arson investigators to check the unknown cause of 171 fires in the province. At first the top dog at Alberta forestry was stating that the cause of most fires was lightning (Later that was retracted) One could check out FIRM/NASA and conclude that many of these fires started at the end or along forestry/Oildpatch roads. Also One has to understand the correlation to fire starts and Native reservations in the province. Also some are prestarted burns from forestry/parks that have just got away due to the ignorance of the officials in charge. As one old trapper in the Yellowhead/Alberta area once stated "Forestry tried to burn me out."
Posted by: heavymetal101 | Jun 8 2023 23:54 utc | 41
I'm pretty certain someone from RT monitors what's commented upon here. Please inform your editors that the militant group known as Antifa is NOT "Leftist" as your article about the Glendale, California event reported. Antifa is itself a semi-fascist organization whose job is to further the ability of the elite to Divide and Rule.
ZH has a posting up with the title
Japan Begins Secretly Releasing Irradiated Water From Fukushima Disaster Into The Ocean
The quote
Tokyo Electric Power Company (better known as TEPCO) started releasing irradiated seawater from Monday afternoon into an underwater tunnel that has been built to release Fukushima nuclear contaminated water into the sea, Japan's public broadcaster NHK said on Tuesday.According to TEPCO, the tunnel will be filled with some 6,000 tons of seawater by around noon on Tuesday.
The process, according to China Daily, was carried out "secretly" on Monday because Japan's unilateral decision of dumping more than 1.3 million metric tons of treated but still radioactive water into the ocean provoked consistent protests from neighboring countries, such as China, Pacific Island communities and civil society groups in the most affected prefectures such as Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi.
We must be getting to max crazy that says to someone that while all the rest is going on in the world lets pollute the ocean with our "rush for profit" effluent and maybe none will notice....sigh
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 9 2023 0:22 utc | 43
psychohistorian | Jun 9 2023 0:22 utc | 43--
Not very secret was it since all the regional nations are in the know about it and are very pissed off.
ZH has a posting up with the title
Rickards: The Coming Shock To The Global Monetary System
The quote
Yet all these arrangements may soon be superseded by a new BRICS+ currency, which will be announced in Durban, South Africa, at the annual BRICS Leaders’ Summit Conference on Aug. 22–24.The currency will be pegged to a basket of commodities for use in trade among members. Initially, the BRICS+ commodity basket would include oil, wheat, copper and other essential goods traded globally in specified quantities.
In all likelihood, the new BRICS+ currency would not be available in the form of paper notes for use in everyday transactions. It would be a digital currency on a permissioned ledger maintained by a new BRICS+ financial institution with encrypted message traffic to record payments due or owing by participating parties. (This is not a cryptocurrency because it is not decentralized, not maintained on a blockchain and not open to all parties without approval.)
The latest information from the BRICS working groups is that this basket valuation methodology is encountering the same problems that John Maynard Keynes encountered at the Bretton Woods meetings in 1944.
Keynes initially suggested a basket of commodities approach for a world currency he called the bancor. The difficulty is that global commodities included in any basket are not entirely fungible (there are over 70 grades of crude oil distinguished by viscosity and sulfur content among other attributes).
In the end, Keynes saw that a basket of commodities is not necessary and that a single commodity — gold — would better serve the purpose of anchoring a currency for reasons of convenience and uniformity.
Based on the impracticality of commodity baskets as uniform stores of value, it appears likely that the new BRICS+ currency will be linked to a weight of gold.
This plays to the strengths of BRICS members Russia and China, who are the two largest gold producers in the world and are ranked sixth and seventh respectively among the 100 nations with gold reserves.
.....
That’s because the BRICS+ currency offers the opportunity to leapfrog the Treasury market and create a deep, liquid bond market that could challenge Treasuries on the world stage almost from thin air.The key is to create a BRICS+ currency bond market in 20 or more countries at once, relying on retail investors in each country to buy the bonds.
The BRICS+ bonds would be offered through banks and postal offices and other retail outlets. They would be denominated in BRICS+ currency but investors could purchase them in local currency at market-based exchange rates.
Since the currency is gold backed it would offer an attractive store of value compared with inflation- or default-prone local instruments in countries like Brazil or Argentina. The Chinese in particular would find such investments attractive since they are largely banned from foreign markets and are overinvested in real estate and domestic stocks.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 9 2023 0:31 utc | 45
As a follow on to my comment # 45 I want to add that ZH has a posting up with the title
China's Persistent Gold Accumulation: A Seven-Month Surge In Holdings
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 9 2023 0:34 utc | 46
@ karlof1 | Jun 9 2023 0:22 utc | 42
Antifa is itself a semi-fascist organization whose job is to further the ability of the elite to Divide and Rule.
Not in Europe. Anti-fa is very left anarchist movement rooted in antiglobalism translated to todays multipolarism. In Genova they fought together with sindicates from all over Europe against police. In Germany anti-fa prevented NeoNazis taking the public space, thus preventing the reach. Italian anti-fa Tutte Biance were defending people in Chiapas, Maxico. Since 70's anti-fa was slowly infiltrated by various intels, but they never managed to suppress it. Alas, very long tradition in The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Denmark and some others more or less sympathetic to it.
I indeed have impression that American anti-fa is somewhat different.
Posted by: whirlX | Jun 9 2023 0:49 utc | 47
ZH has a posting up about Tucker Carlson EP 2 with title
Tucker Talks Taboos After MSM Ignores Instagram Kiddie-Porn Bombshell
I don't agree with all that Carlson believes but he is asking the right questions, IMO and saying clear things about the fucked up way things "work" now
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 9 2023 0:52 utc | 48
@ Bardon Kaldian | Jun 8 2023 21:24 utc | 34
Surely we can't just let this pass: "And, let’s be frank: Eastern Orthodoxy was a cultural Sahara in comparison with Western Christianity (first Catholic, then Protestant, too). There was not one even close Eastern Orthodox equivalent to Aquinas, Dante, Petrarch, Hildegard of Bingen, Lassus, Descartes, Mozart, Bach, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Velazquez,… (I am only mentioning those creators somehow connected to religion). From sonnet to polyphony, from perspective to mathematical & musical modern notation & calendar- it’s all West."
Sorry, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. No objectivity can ever be claimed in making such judgements; another person can claim quite the opposite and be unimpressed with all those named. Western scholarship and people in general have always ignored and disparaged the accomplishments of non-westerners. Would the writer even know or be able to name any modern or late medieval Muslim, Indian, or Chinese composers, for example? Yet, they and their music existed and continue to exist, and there is no basis whatever for considering their accomplishment inferior.
Arnold Toynbee the historian in his A Study of History identified four areas of human accomplishment: politics, science, art, and religion. In two of these, religion and science, there had been progress, and in the other two, politics and art, there had been none. Art in particular could not be judged to be better or worse, only different.
Even if we accepted the writer's claim of the superiority of Western accomplishment, that would apply only to those greats of the past as individuals and would bestow no superiority whatsoever on the masses of ordinary Western people. Are my peasant ancestors, because they lived in Western Europe, to be judged superior to the peasant ancestors of any Chinese or Indian person alive today? And most of the civilized ancestors of all people were only peasants.
And there is more: Even if one acknowledged the superiority of an earlier phase of Western civilization -- which I do not -- there is the problem that civilizations rise and decline. What about the writings of Jacques Barzun (in his From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, or Lewis Mumford, or Emmanuel Todd, or Oswald Spengler?
The writer's claim shows a belief in progress that is hardly justified by our current condition, threatened as we are by various forms of decadence and destruction, at the head of them the real possibility of nuclear annihilation. Our material manifestations of civilization, built of concrete, glass, and steel, seem not only to express power over all (full spectrum dominance again) but also to exhibit permanence and self-confidence. But do they really? Our current consumption of the world is unsustainable by any measure. In 1900, the mass of all human-made constructions equalled 3% of the biomass of all living things; today, it is 120%, and it is doubling every 20 years. How long do you expect that to go on?
Should civilization collapse, I can easily imagine that survivors capable of transmitting tradition, if any, would really dump on the concepts of growth, progress, and technology, maybe to the extent of lynching any purveyors of those things they still found alive, blaming them for their destruction and misery. I doubt that technical civilization would end up being much celebrated then, and who then would have the last word?
There is also no basis for the writer's statement: "Eastern Orthodoxy is typologically closer to Judaism, and in some aspects to Islam than to Western Christianity," because different religious traditions have too many facets to be compared in that way by sweeping generalization.
Posted by: Cabe | Jun 9 2023 1:38 utc | 49
whirlX | Jun 9 2023 0:49 utc | 47--
Thanks for your reply and the European background whose reputation was usurped here.
@ karlof1 | Jun 8 2023 19:15 utc | 24 with the link to Michael Hudson't interview at Sputnik....thanks
I have just listened to it. His summary of recent empire history is short, brutal and should be consumed by all.
What Michael does not address, and it may be premature to do so, is the readjustment of various nations currencies to the new "Reserve Currency" and specifically the US dollar that has been inflated to the hilt since 2008.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 9 2023 3:51 utc | 51
Today is the anniversary of Israel's intentional, brutal, and in some ways sanctioned by the highest levels of the American government, attack on the USS Liberty.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/06/08/the-uss-liberty-a-well-planned-accident/
Remember the Liberty! (My wife's great uncle survived it!)
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 9 2023 4:04 utc | 52
Remember the Trucker Convoy in Canada that gripped our attention and ignited new hopes across the west? We tend to think it was crushed, but here is a wonderful review that claims it was the most successful protest in Canada's history, and one of the world's best.
The fact is that the convoy worked and changed policy, as commentator Kulak relates on her substack:
"People remember Trudeau's crackdown...What people don't remember is what happened in the immediate aftermath: The government caved on absolutely everything within a week for the most important things, and then a month or so for the rest."
It's a pretty quick read that tells a fascinating and compelling story, and Kulak details the parliamentary and political aspects that I had never seen.
In the (VERY) cold of winter, across four thousand miles, and supported by cheering people every freezing street and highway along the way, the convoy turned the entire nation around, essentially in an instant.
"Within 1 month the trucker convoy had effected a hostile overthrow of the Governments of Alberta and the official opposition, the Conservative Party of Canada, from pro to anti-lockdown, and crushed the moderate wing of the conservative movement."
We didn't hear the story told much as a success, to me it seemed to end when the trucks were forced out of town, and that was it, I thought. But Kulak tells the real impact in her story here and concludes with the reason we thought it was a failed initiative:
"They HAVE to play off the Truckers as a failure... Trudeau had to declare victory then cave on every single individual policy.... because they can't let people see what it was:A premonition of the great Class War to come."
Lovely story - I recommend.
Posted by: Grieved | Jun 9 2023 4:18 utc | 53
More on America's economic terror campaign against Syria--and how the Syrian people have still survived in spite of this latest American crime against humanity.
How Syrians Survive America’s Economic Siege
https://syria360.wordpress.com/2023/05/17/how-syrians-survive-americas-economic-siege/
Also, a video on how an American-controlled "Islamic" advocacy organization called the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) advocates for the United States's draconian sanctions against Syria that have "driven 90% of Syrians below the poverty line and caused mass starvation."
Islamic Group in Washington Conspires with the Neocons against Syria
https://syria360.wordpress.com/2023/06/02/islamic-group-in-washington-conspires-with-the-neocons-against-syria/
Posted by: ak74 | Jun 9 2023 4:22 utc | 54
@Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 8 2023 17:30 utc | 13
Yes, discussion of that topic could consume a week or more. And as she notes, important relevant facts continue to be made known. IMO, Wolfowitz would never have had the moxie to write what became the Wolfowitz Doctrine which became the Full Spectrum Domination policy if the USSR hadn't imploded in the manner it did. And that's crucial now since the Outlaw US Empire still continues to fulfill that policy goal despite the amount of opposition it's generated.
Absolutely, the US would not have had the global dominance if the USSR had managed to stay together. Very much a story of the "national" leaders driving disintegration for their own benefit, against the wishes of the majority of Soviet citizens and against the interests of those citizens. Would the West have dared to destroy Yugoslavia if the USSR had not disintegrated and the resulting Russia spun into economic collapse? Yeltsin was reduced to an unhappy bystander.
I am coming to the collusion that we will not have a EurAsia, but rather an integrated, peaceful and expanding Asia (including Russia, Belarus and Ukraine after Russia has won the war) and a declining European archipelago (I think it was Diesen who first used such terminology) geographically connected to it but very much a separate entity. With the UK island in even worse shape off its shores. A sad declining Japan will be off the eastern shores of Asia, joined by Australia off its southern shore.
The state has always needed to outright own, or very tightly control, the banking sector to stop financial elite dominance and rentiership. From 1935 to 1975, Canada funded a very significant amount of government expenditures through funding direct from the Bank of Canada, until Trudeau's dad put a stop to it. That was a period of rapid economic growth and rising incomes, as Canada played catch up to the US and implemented the free healthcare system.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 9 2023 0:22 utc | 42
Can you really still call it "Antifa" when it's a group of thugs looting and burning small businesses in black neighborhoods? Anybody can dress up in black and run around and break things, but it doesn't follow that they are anti-fascist. So the oligarchs purportedly funding these thugs got a 2-for-1, divide-and-conquer AND the discrediting of actual anti-fascist leftists.
P.S. - Were you yourself earlier, accusing Diego of lying after misreading the forest fire post? Hope that was an impostor! If not, perhaps a humble apology would be in order? Recognizing that all of us can misinterpret and overreact sometimes.
Posted by: TM | Jun 9 2023 6:18 utc | 56
I haven't had a chance to watch Tucker Carlson's second Twitter show yet, but the first was a fascinating mix of themes. In particular, he starts out with a Ukraine discussion that MOA would largely agree with (though he couldn't quite say the U.S. blew up the pipeline, for example). He follows that up with - ALIEN SPACESHIPS!!! WTF? What in the world is going on here? Compounding that, how is he allowed by the "Deep State" to say these kinds of things to such a massive audience? Something smells fishy to me. How is he not someone's tool, somehow? But sticking with the aliens for now - while I don't know what the deal is here, there are some general categories of possibilities. Option 1: there are real aliens buzzing around, and the USG really has the bodies and crashed spacecraft. Option 2: the release of the alien spaceship story is a massive military psy-op. Carlson is right, this is a bombshell - either the biggest news story this century or what might be the biggest head fake.
Regardless of which option you prefer, the timing of this announcement is very suspicious, just a week or two before the big NATO air exercise that walks and quacks just like a big NATO air attack on Russia. After all, even if the story about super-secret government agencies studying MULTIPLE crashed ships and bodies is true, nobody is saying that this just suddenly happened this week. It would have been going on for over 50 years. Why make it public now? Then for option 2, the CSM (corporate state media = fascist media - I kind of like BLM too, big lie media, but that acronym is taken) has gone into overdrive on the psy-op articles since the end of 2021. What is the purpose of this new super-psy-op, and why now? Now for some total speculation on my part. Please join me and add some more! A) The U.S. is trying to make Russia think they have secret alien technology in their weapons. If option 1 is correct, they might even actually have such technology, miraculously hidden all these years from everybody else. Hoped for result? Russia backs down when attacked by NATO next week, and doesn't nuke anyone. B) Carlson and others like him are being fed these ridiculous stories to discredit him and the other "conspiracy theorists" like MOA commenters, making them a laughingstock and even less believable to the sheep-herd majority population.
I followed up on Carlson's show by reading the original article in TheDebrief, which also had some interesting elements. The article has the gloss of being professionally researched and written, complete with multiple levels of fact-checking and analysis, but...in a tiny low-budget journal I've never heard of before? The so-called "whistleblower" seems very well treated and well-respected by his colleagues, despite the enormity of his revelations. This is not how a true whistleblower is treated by a bureaucracy. Yes, it says he suffered a bit for going public, but it also says he submitted the material to the DOD for pre-approval before releasing it. And they approved it! Really? How exactly does that make him a whistleblower? Doesn't it sound like he was recruited to get a particular deep state narrative out there, in a somewhat deniable way?
Posted by: TM | Jun 9 2023 7:02 utc | 57
Posted by: Diego | Jun 8 2023 15:02 utc | 5
Be interesting to observe Respiratory Illness as a consequence - Northern Italy - which "they" used as the "terror scenario" to force lockdowns is in fact:
a) the most polluted air in Western Europe
b) location of the predominantly elderly population
That is why "Covid" looked so terminal there - together with inefficient hospitals run down by years of EU Austerity
So we can expect people in New York to be protected by face masks and mRNA vaccines ?
Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Jun 9 2023 7:06 utc | 58
Option 3: (From a right-wing article I didn't finish reading, included for completeness) The aliens narrative is to get Christians confused about the imminent Second Coming.
Posted by: TM | Jun 9 2023 7:08 utc | 59
Georg Soros, through his partly owned Project Syndicate:
"The Ukrainian army has put up heroic resistance and, with strong support from the US and Europe, turned things around. The Russian army is a paper tiger, badly led and thoroughly corrupt. The Wagner Group, a private mercenary army, propped up the invasion for a period, but in the end, they too failed to defeat Ukraine. ...
I believe the counterattack will be successful. The target will be the Crimean Peninsula, the home base of the Russian Navy. By destroying the already damaged land bridge with Russia, Ukraine could turn a strategic asset into a strategic liability, because Crimea has no water. With the land bridge destroyed, Crimea will depend on Ukraine for water. Many parts of the Russian Federation are already chafing under President Vladimir Putin’s despotic regime, and this development may cause them to reject it altogether. "
I love it. Nobody has told grandfather things are not working out as expected.
Posted by: Passerby | Jun 9 2023 7:15 utc | 60
Psychohistorian @45:
On Keynes' difficulty with the basket of commodities and specifically the mention of 70 different grades of oil:
A possible solution might be to use energy units as a "virtual commodity". Instead of barrels of oil, cubic meters of gas, etc. you would use Joules or BTU. Since our understanding of chemistry has improved so much since Breton Woods, it may be possible to accurately determine and tabulate the energy value of all the different forma of petroleum, gas, coal, etc. I'm not sure if this helps with petrochemicals not used for energy though.
One potential benefit of this approach may be that it can stimulate efficiency in energy production.
Posted by: Palm & Needle | Jun 9 2023 7:32 utc | 61
I’m an old man and no longer get a kick out of reading stultifyingly anthropomorphic stories about space aliens that have bodies (let me guess: with arms and legs and heads that breathe oxygen through nosed), and who have technologies unimaginable to us that enable them to travel for countless light years . . . and yet just can’t manage to land their shops successfully, and manage to have their accidents in desolate parts of the USA. They must have been jonesing for some Hatch chiles and gotten distracted, I guess.
Posted by: malenkov | Jun 9 2023 10:54 utc | 62
@ TM | Jun 9 2023 7:02 utc | 57 about the aliens thing
How about
1. the option where Russia/China have actually discovered some properties from the alien samples they have and turned those properties into military tools
2. the aliens have been watching and are now actively helping the non-bully side of our species.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 9 2023 11:41 utc | 64
psychohistorian | Jun 9 2023 11:41 utc | 64
A fair summation.
Looking at the belligerency of the major powers that have run the show for the last 500 years, maybe even the last thousand years, to the detriment of the vast masses of humanity.
No extra terrestrials would be supportive of that, as they would require peace in their own space so as to have the confidence that over vast time scales, that they could roam the Universe but still have a home to return to.
No one wants to know us, as we are in a stage of belligerence that marks us as being dangerous.
We are being watched. We are not alone.
I know it sounds a bit flaky, but there is so many many examples of weird things happening that I think that we are still being assessed and so far we are found wanting
Posted by: ZimZum | Jun 9 2023 13:40 utc | 65
Russia is currently the world's sixth economic power. Germany is in recession and hasn't a sufficient quantity of cheap energies for its industry - This wouldn't be positive for its economic prospect and the possibility that Russia overtaking Germany within few years is plausible and, possibly, overtaking Japan, which had been economically stagnating for years, as well. Overtaking India would seem unlikely at this point - Russian elites should've invested in Russia as early as 1992 for this.
Russia's major problem would be its falling labour force but robotization and artificial intelligence could help until the pronatalist measures would kick in. Migration policies are far too risky - More than 70% of Russia's population should be Slavic to prevent separatist movements in the future.
Russian parliament should introduce measures to make this difficult for young graduates to leave the country, too.
Posted by: Beauté Slavique | Jun 9 2023 14:56 utc | 66
Thanks, Alex Cox @100 on the Media thread - since the forest fires and speculations about movement of military ships (etc) in NA were raised earlier in the thread, I thought I’d post those links there.
So - Iceland! State visit to Canada, President gets screeched in (couple minutes video):
https://youtu.be/dN54kN7QcDI
Now Iceland is closing its embassy in Russia, first time since 1954
https://www.icelandreview.com/politics/iceland-to-close-embassy-in-moscow/
And a walrus followed this fisheries researcher to work. The walrus is on live feed.
https://www.icelandreview.com/nature-travel/walrus-follows-man-to-work-in-iceland/
Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Jun 9 2023 15:24 utc | 67
Re wildfires, I find this site very useful
https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/
Posted by: 2+2=5 | Jun 9 2023 15:57 utc | 68
Calling 81192 ...
Return to base !
Ode to Wang-Wei
Raimondo RIP
https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2001/04/09/ode-to-wang-wei/
Posted by: denk | Jun 9 2023 15:57 utc | 69
@ psychohistorian | Jun 9 2023 11:41 utc | 64
the aliens have been watching and are now actively helping the non-bully side of our species.
Oh. If that were the case, I reckon that it'll be over by now, according to alien power tech advertised by Hollywood.
But there are no aliens as in extraterrestrials, I am afraid.
However, there is a third side to a conflict, sure.
It is just not allowed to interfere.
Posted by: whirlX | Jun 9 2023 16:17 utc | 70
https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-taiwans-acer-ships-computer-132956119.html
Taiwan's Acer ships computer hardware to Russia after saying it would suspend business -data
Filipp Lebedev and Gleb Stolyarov
Thu, June 8, 2023 at 9:29 AM EDT·4 min read
By Filipp Lebedev and Gleb Stolyarov
(Reuters) -Taiwan-based computer manufacturer Acer supplied at least $70.4 million worth of computer hardware to Russia between April 8, 2022 and March 31, 2023, according to customs data seen by Reuters, after saying it would suspend its business there.
While not illegal, Acer's actions contrast with those of key Western rivals such as Dell and HP which ceased shipments in February and April 2022, respectively, following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, customs records drawn from a commercial trade data provider show.
The records show equipment produced by Acer was supplied to Russia both through Acer's wholly-owned subsidiary registered in Switzerland and a number of delivery services by order of that subsidiary.
As the shipments originated outside Taiwan, they did not violate Taipei's sanctions against Russia. Nor did they involve items restricted at the time of export by Switzerland's sanctions regime, which mirrors that of the European Union.
Posted by: Babel-17 | Jun 9 2023 17:05 utc | 71
Posted by: TM | Jun 9 2023 7:02 utc | 57
It really isn't that big a deal. Carlson was referring to a headline from a few days earlier where a so-called whistleblower from the US government came forth and claimed that the US has in its possession extra-terrestrial technology of some type which they are allegedly reverse engineering. Personally I think it's bullshit. Especially considering it was mainly in the tabloids.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/whistleblowers-worked-secret-government-program-30153119
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 9 2023 21:02 utc | 72
I think b might have even included one of these articles in last week's Week In Review, but I could be mistaken.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/03/ufo-crash-materials-intelligence-00100077
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 9 2023 21:04 utc | 73
French firefighters (like from France) arrive in Quebec. Slightly different style than the South Africans, which I’ve reposted here. This is becoming quite the coalition of the willing. Where’s there smoke… as the saying goes.
https://twitter.com/s_guilbeault/status/1666989782059171841
https://twitter.com/MadelnCanada/status/1666881353348939788
Thanks 2+2=5 for the useful link at 68!
Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Jun 9 2023 21:06 utc | 74
RE: the Trump indictment. Couple of things come to mind.
a) Ironic that he was indicted under the ridiculous Espionage Act which is exactly what his administration used to charge Julian Assange. Poetic justice?
b) If what is being said pans out re: his desire to "attack a certain country" and that "certain country" is Iran, then I feel vindicated in my stance in debates with those who claim that Trump was a peacenik or didn't (plan to) take us to war against Iran in his 2nd term that didn't come to be.
c) If the "nuclear secrets of another country" end up being about Israel, then I also feel vindicated in my belief that it was Israel who "interfered" in the 2016 election and not Russia - which all of us at MoA have known for a long time was utter bullshit and a major psyop against his presidency and the people - and that Trump truly was the #MIGA president. His actions toward that country speak for themselves, however.
d) It could all just be bullshit of course. It certainly has been in numerous recent Espionage Act persecutions such as Assange and the Teixeira kid.
e) I know there's a major war going on in Ukraine, but I am at least a little surprised that there has been very little if any talk about this set of indictments here at MoA.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 9 2023 21:16 utc | 75
RE: my previous comment, item (c) - Forgot to add that Trump not being allowed a 2nd term likely changed the calculus in the relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. I'm sure the conniving Bone Sawdis had also been clued into an attack scenario involving Iran and were prepared to let the US go through with it, but that once they knew Trump wouldn't be back in 2020, began looking toward more peaceful approaches to regional security which has borne out in the headlines of the past few weeks.
This is not to lay any of the larger blame for de-dollarization and hastened decline of US global hegemony at Trump's feet. He was, in that respect, another American president in a long line of them that - as Putin and Lavrov have said - was not agreement capable.
Who knows what his motivations were for ALLEGEDLY removing secret (from what I've read NOT "top secret") classified documents from the White House. It's even possible he took the Iran plans as a means of PREVENTING the next administration from carrying through on them, although that's pretty unlikely given the context of his dealings with the Iranians vis-a-vis tearing up the JCPOA and assassinating Gen. Soleimani, among other more indirect things like his Israel-Iran policies.
As anyone here who has read my comments on Trump over the years knows, I loathe the guy, the person that is Donald Trump. He's a slimy scumbag opportunist and a megalomaniac with corrupt tendencies and a very unhealthy and poisonous public stand on certain issues. Thing is, so is the Biden (and Bush and Obama and Clinton) Crime Family Syndicate, but the difference is that the latter is less overtly authoritarian about it and IMO speaks in a less divisive tone - which is exactly what TPTB/ruling elite 'consensus' prefers - hence their ability to "govern by consensus" which they felt they could not have with Trump. So of course they did everything they could to sabotage his presidency, with the not unrelated goal of distracting from the Biden crimes, which the Ukrainian war is definitely being waged to bury and/or memory hole for all of time.
I often wonder if Trump has learned any lessons about who he surrounds himself with should he win a second term. Would he bring in a different set of neocons to replace the Boltons and Abrams? Shut out his corrupt son in law? What I do know is that he's tripled down on some of his divisive rhetoric (with the exception of calling out DeSatanist for his "anti-woke" platform), and would probably bring in people like Flynn and other grifters the next time around.
It also should go without saying that I will never vote Democrat for president with the unlikely exception that RFK Jr. (I have complex thoughts on him too, so it's not like I think he's 100% the "solution") is allowed to take the nomination. I find it almost impossible to believe that Joe Tzu has two brain cells left to rub together within 1.5 years. Kamala is an absolute non-starter for many people including loyal Democrats. Bernie's time has come and gone. So what do the Dims do here? IMO running with Sleepy Uncle Hair Sniffer poses a huge risk to the optics of Empire and the ruling classes. He's so far gone that it will be blindingly obvious that it doesn't matter if the President is literally an empty suit, prone to face planting when his handlers (and elder abusers) let him appear in public. Could anyone imagine what a debate would be like between Biden and any other person in the world, including Trump? He'll be taken apart in embarrassing fashion. So I guess I have no choice but to get the popcorn ready and watch what the Managers of The Club do in 2024. Things could get really interesting.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 9 2023 21:34 utc | 76
Recent from Pepe E via Lou Rockwell:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/06/no_author/russia-bashing-blowback/
Russia-Bashing Blowback The Birth of the International Russophile Movement (MIR) By Pepe Escobar Telegra.phJune 9, 2023
Subheadline: Archbishop Vigano, Sergei Lavrov, and other luminaries kick off a promising new global grassroots movement which could get very, very big. Russophiles from 40 countries gather in Moscow.
It is my pleasure to present the first comprehensive, detailed report in English, written by an insider, about the International Russophile Movement, launched last month in Moscow.
This project, supported by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, aims to counterpunch the relentless waves of Russophobia and cancel culture unleashed by the usual suspects since the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine in February 2022.
As readers will be able to verify, this is a multipolar information project that can become an inspiration for the Global South. The idea is to counteract arrogance and intolerance with an affirmative stance that is deeply rooted in culture, civilizational values and the vision of a more equitable system of international relations.
It’s time to change the narrative. Enjoy the ride (P.E.)
...
An Irishman is seen dancing a jig on the crypto exchange floor.
The SEC is coming to get the crypto gang and leaves the Irishman to dance on.
Of course it could all be a figment of imagination for those that believe the SEC is a functioning regulator rather than just another gatecrasher at the performance.
Time will tell.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jun 9 2023 23:35 utc | 78
@ Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 9 2023 21:34 utc | 76
Yes, Trump. Bigger than Earth and the Moon.
Let us deal with first things first. Moral and industromilitary defeat of this system is automagically a "sudden death" of Trump alikes and IOU forever economy.
They will not matter anymore.
The USA and its has to seriously rethink its democracy, not recycle its worse parts, really.
But it needs a thorough shake up to heal.
I saw some t-shirt with a slogan:
Make America Great Britain Again. Excellent.
Posted by: whirlX | Jun 9 2023 23:50 utc | 79
A small logic exercise: The One China Policy acknowledges China's possession of the island of Taiwan, which China deems a rebellious province. Therefore, the proper term for China to reassert its rule over its rebellious province would not be "invasion" as said by Anti-China Hawks but the arrest and subsequent rehabilitation of the province since the province is breaking Chinese law by being rebellious. China itself describes this overall process as Reunification and Rejuvenation which was began by Sun Yat-sen in 1911 and has since been a Chinese national goal irrespective of political party or ideology. Reunification referred to the return to China of all Colonized lands of which in 1911 were several including what was 臺灣 / 台灣 or Taiwan, which "became official as early as 1684 during the Qing dynasty with the establishment of Taiwan Prefecture centered in modern-day Tainan." Taiwan's been part of China longer than the Outlaw US Empire has existed as a nation.
So, boneheads in the Empire's Senate want to impede Chian's Reunification and Rejuvenation by saying China will be "invading" Taiwan as if Taiwan is another nation when it clearly is not. Here's the basic meat of the matter as reported in this article, "US Senate panel shows war-like mentality in pushing new bill provoking China on Taiwan Straits":
The US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has approved a bipartisan proposal that would require reports from US government agencies to prepare for and counter a Chinese mainland "invasion" of the island of Taiwan. Chinese experts said the bill shows a warlike mentality from some US hawks, who are trying to force the Chinese mainland to take strong countermeasures through provocations and thus seek more evidence to strengthen their "China threat" narrative. However, playing with fire on the Taiwan question will eventually harm US interests.Dubbed the "Taiwan Protection and National Resilience Act of 2023," the bill was initially put forward by anti-China senators Marco Rubio and Gary Peters on March 30, 2023.
The bill, which still needs full Senate and House reviews and the president's signature before coming into law, requires several US government agencies including the US Department of State, Department of Defense and the Department of Commerce, to propose "non-kinetic options," including sanction strategies against the Chinese mainland, according to media reports.
It also asks leaders of the relevant agencies to provide reports to Congress on the sources of leverage that Washington would have against Beijing and to reduce its trade reliance on the Chinese mainland.
China has every right to impede weapon and other imports into Taiwan as it's a Chinese territory. It also has the right to bar the entry of persona non gratas, like the sponsors of the above legislation. The reality differs very little in what those same Hawks want to do on the Texas and other borderlands with Mexico. Thus, they are not only illogical but also hypocrites, which is par for the course for most Congresscritters. The linked article provides feedback from Chinese commentators.
I don't think that its been mentioned, at Andrei Martyanov's site a commenter provided a link to an interview with Maria Z. She is interviewed by a journalist from anti-spiegel. It looks like her German is as good as her English.
Posted by: stratus | Jun 10 2023 2:09 utc | 81
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 9 2023 21:34 utc | 76
An up and coming young alternative media pundit like Tim Pool, Styx weighs in. He's a good writer who makes clear points well.
https://tarl.substack.com/p/the-trump-indictment-the-lines-are
At this point, you're either with the Republic, or you support marching goose-step style off a cliff into the maw of oligarchic, stagnating, boring, perpetually uniparty-bound tyranny. A tyranny all the more tyrannical because it presents the facade of freedom while strangulating it, and the facade of upward mobility, while persecuting those who have attained it.As I always say; I know the media is corrupt. I know the bureaucracy is corrupt. I know the corporations are corrupt. I know the banks are corrupt. I know most politicians in DC are corrupt. I have seen it for years in their actions. So when all these observably corrupt people tell me Trump is uniquely corrupt and a threat to "democracy", I laugh, ignore them, and assume he's far less corrupt than any of them.
PCR has a similar perspective. He forecast Trump's demise early in 2017 after Flynn was fired, basically saying that he and Bannon lacked the experience needed to function in the snake-pit of DC. He was right. But he also thinks that supporting Trump at this point is the only way to have a chance at restoring the Republic which right now has been taken by a coup.
I like RFK Jr - though not his voice. But he has to reform the Democrat Party first and get over pretending it's a basically good organization with a couple of good people with bad policies he disagrees with at the top. Yes, corporate fascism is a terrible scourge, but have you heard or read him say one word about reforming the banking-financial system as he says he will do for the CIA? No, he is assuming that the US Body Politic is fundamentally good and with a few well-administered surgical cuts and slices excising occasional non-malignant tumors here and there he can return her to pristine health and glory.
Has he not paid any attention to what happened to his father and uncle? And more recently to Trump? Does he have an answer to this which he can share with the American people or is he running as another hopium + 4D chess candidacy? If not, he is not qualified to lead a movement to restore the Republic, because that is what is on the ballot. With Trump, as decidedly imperfect as he is, you know that is (at least ostensibly) on the ballot. But not yet with RFK Jr who has yet to demonstrate he can manage his own party.
That is is first test, going up against and displacing the Swamp-sponsored leadership in the Democrat Party which he can then, reformed, lead in Congress. This is a very tall order. Only if he can fulfill that can he be taken seriously as a candidate for President. I for one will be delighted if he can succeed in that, but I fail yet to see how he can take on the Democrat Party by only offering polite objections to current policies and always talking about Biden as his 'good friend.'
That said, if he can do all that, his candidacy has the possibility to lead a genuine - and competent - reform administration which fundamentally transforms the political space of the nation. A truly historic role. IF he can first conquer the Democrat Party machine which is dead set against him.
A worthy challenge.
Posted by: Scorpion | Jun 10 2023 2:31 utc | 81
But that's actually my point. Trump is a grifter and profit maker, not a justified change actor in the system.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 10 2023 6:45 utc | 83
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 9 2023 21:34 utc | 76
(Trump bad)
I can understand people not liking or trusting Trump. But he's much smarter than everyone else in US Politics. I think he under-estimated the power/influence of the Swamp/Shadow Government.
He won me when he and Putin locked themselves away from observers and translators for circa 2 hours for a private chat. Reaching out to North Korea, with all the unresolved perpetuation fakery suŕounding that country, was pretty impressive too.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jun 10 2023 6:48 utc | 84
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jun 10 2023 6:48 utc | 83
RE: Trump Bad - someone who cannot read for comprehension. Laughable.
Trump - Indicted Assange where Obomber didn't.
Trump - Murdered Soleimani.
Trump - Was planning to attack Iran in a fool's move.
Trump - Was aided by Israeli interference then acted to benefit the farthest right Israeli Zionists throughout his term.
Trump - Employed the most nepotistic nonsense cabinet of neocons, family and losers/murderers since Bush.
What else do you need to hear? Did or did not Trump issue the death warrants for Soleimani and Assange at the very least?
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jun 10 2023 6:52 utc | 85
Martyanov posted a small little detail about Blinken's visit in Saudi Arabia. Hilarious, while remarkable and game-changing all at once!
Posted by: unimperator | Jun 10 2023 8:21 utc | 86
https://www.rt.com/news/577809-snowden-trump-classified-documents/
Snowden has railed against the US government’s abuse of secrecy since 2013, when he exposed the widespread NSA spying on American citizens. He was forced to seek refuge in Russia after Washington annulled his passport mid flight, eventually becoming a Russian citizen.
Asked on Friday what he’d do if he were the US president, he said, “I’d surely reduce the number of things we classify by more than 99% – and you would not find the remainder in my bathroom or behind my Corvette.”
I think abuse of secrecy is the single largest barrier to trust in the government existing today..none of the problems which are often expressed in the bar here would be problems if state secrecy were eliminated. IMO.
Posted by: snake | Jun 10 2023 9:05 utc | 87
Yeah they never liked Acer did they :)
· · · · · · · ·
Carlson's point might just be that such a statement from any part of a government would —if true— be among the biggest stories in human history so where is the serious reaction? Ie. not the "aliunz stule ma bebbii!" reactions (on print or elsewhere, and those could be true and serious too of course but they just shouldn't be all the reaction there is).
Carlson in the second episode also pointed out a different case of "missing response".
[I've never watched him before but out of curiosity I've seen the two first "Twitter episodes" elsewhere on the net (I don't use Twitter, read some many years ago when it was accessible without jumping through all sorts of hoops).]
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Jun 10 2023 9:19 utc | 88
On european AntiFa - I would concur that the german org is indeed "semi-fascist" to use the expression that started this topic at 42 Karlof1 and then 50 whirlX. Yes, they fight neo-Nazi gatherings, but I'm certain that this very attribute is handed out inappropriately at times, and I have heard credible reports that the police is in on it, as they gave orders to stand back from AntiFa violence against targets.
AntiFa is also not completely coherent. There is the Anti-Deutschen flavour, for example, whose trademark is to stand with Israel. In a press conference on the conclusion of a parlamentary examamination into this org by the city-state Hamburg, it was hinted that they are an asset.
This asset has been used to infiltrate and then break up the german internet party a while back, in concert with the BigLie media holding Axel Springer Verlag, as one forensical paper claimed (which I unfortunately can't find now).
In my city, the left alternative managed to squat a substantial place of old buildings with the support of the public. They were given long-time guarantees, but also got bought out with city and EU money injected to renovate the buildings. Now it is an ostensibly leftist counter-culture space, where AntiFa-related groups are acting as a thought police. They promote wokeism, covid lockdowns and vaccinations, and form political militias ("awareness teams") to enforce right think at their parties. It's painful double think in fact, as those teams should be taught basic policing skills, which shows in their conduct (cue identity politics), but the parties are still good.
Posted by: persiflo | Jun 10 2023 10:16 utc | 89
As an addendum to the BigLie Axel Springer Verlag media holding, which shaped post-war german media in a most influential and controversial way - it is said that their presstitute employees in papers such as BILD and Die Welt are obliged by contract not to question Israel's right to exist. This is true, as I can attest, since I questioned one of them myself one day (though actually they said this was true of the "older" contracts, and not current anymore).
Posted by: persiflo | Jun 10 2023 11:00 utc | 90
I know the bar has a number of Kiwis as members along with ex-pat juliania. In her weekly briefing yesterday, Zakharova updated us on the situation of New Zealand's Maori and their quest for compensation from the UK for the crimes they endured:On the crimes of the British colonialists against the Maori
The cruelty with which the British (who now teach everyone, demand something, ascribe to themselves the right to moral assessment) carried out their colonialist policy is well known to the peoples of the world. At least, it was known to those who were interested in it.The vast colonial empire was literally an inexhaustible source of fabulous enrichment for the ruling classes of Britain. Mainly due to the ruthless exploitation of the conquered territories, the successful socio-economic development of the country was ensured. For many of these crimes, London has not yet apologized. What can I say, about material compensation.
Historians remind: faced with the resistance of indigenous peoples, the British colonialists in the past were often forced with them, if not to negotiate, then at least to seriously revise their line. One such example was the Maori in New Zealand.
The British, who began in the first quarter of the XIX century to the active development of the New Zealand Islands, were interested in local fertile lands. As expected, this led to disagreements with the Maori, who resolutely stood up for the lands of their ancestors. The British colonialists, who were initially in the minority, far from the metropolis and bases with weapons, decided not to aggravate the situation and, veiling their predatory colonialist plans, tried to give them the appearance of legitimacy.
In February 1840, in the Maori village of Waitangi, an agreement was signed, according to which, in exchange for recognizing the authority of the British crown, the Maori received land documents and the rights of British subjects in the courts - from a human point of view, by the way, a very revolutionary solution for that time, which did not fit into the brutal colonialist policy of the British in other parts of the world. However, this was just another "screen". The same dramatization that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wrote about in an article for the Izvestia newspaper in July 2022. London did not ratify the document at that time, which is indicative of today's policy of the "collective West", and the British courts declared it null and void. How convenient it is to deceive the local population, and in the metropolis to disavow all this.
Having received a temporary respite, the British colonialists then began to actively appropriate the lands of the indigenous people, which provoked a national uprising. As a result of the so-called New Zealand land wars of 1845-1872, more than 2.1 thousand Maori and almost 800 Britons died. The most dramatic episode was the Titokovaru uprising (from June 1868 to March 1869). When it was suppressed, the British did not limit themselves in methods, acting with their characteristic cruelty, pitting the Maori tribes against each other. Although as a result of these wars, London achieved its goals - about 16 thousand km² of fertile land belonging to the Maori were confiscated in favor of the colonial administration, units of the British army were recalled from New Zealand. Subsequently, London was forced to return to the Waitangi agreements and begin the procedure for paying compensation, which has not yet been completed. It's a great story.
The very people who are now demanding compensation, reparations, came up with a tribunal. You settle accounts with the Maori. They have been waiting since the 1840s. I address official London - as soon as you settle accounts with the Maori, immediately proceed not to us, to the Iraqis. It is also necessary to repent to them, apologize and also begin compensation payments. Then we will discuss the claims in our direction. We will have something to show London.
In our opinion, something else is important. The warlike spirit, courage and perseverance of the Maori allowed this people not to repeat the fate of many other victims of the British colonialists, in particular, the completely exterminated aborigines of neighboring Tasmania. Or the Indians of North America expelled by the Americans to the reservation. Through a determined struggle for their national independence, Maori have achieved significant rights for themselves. Today in New Zealand they make up almost 17% of the population (850.5 thousand people out of 5 million of the country's population). They protect their way of life, preserve their language and culture, and have guaranteed representation in the country's legislative bodies. Māori hold senior positions in the New Zealand Government.
Maori also support anti-colonial initiatives, incl. aimed at obtaining financial compensation for the peoples affected by the arbitrariness of the British colonialists. One of the last such petitions demanding an "official apology" and "reparations" signed by representatives of 12 countries was addressed to King Charles III of Great Britain in early May this year.
We are convinced that the time has long come for official London to admit the mistakes of its colonial past. It's time to get down to business.
Lots of material as usual was covered at yesterday's briefing. Set aside at least an hour to review it all.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 8 2023 17:01 utc | 10
thanks for posting that Karl. I think that is quite an impressive broadbrush take on some of NZ's history. I wonder what caused it to be expressed. Like many good (Russian) diplomatic moves it seems to have multiple purposes eg sticking it to the British, praising Maori but also bringing up Iraq..
Posted by: Ново з | Jun 10 2023 11:39 utc | 91
This seems Orwellian and smacks of RNZ (New Zealand State-owned broadcaster) being forced to assume the contrite position for Reuters.
RNZ investigating after publishing stories including false account of events in Ukraine
6:49 pm today
RNZ advised Friday that it had become aware of instances of inappropriate editing of several wire service stories relating to the war in Ukraine published on its website.
RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson initiated an immediate investigation and has today announced an external review of RNZ's processes for the editing of online stories to ensure these are robust.
The outcome of the review will be made public. The terms of reference for the review and the external experts will be confirmed as soon as possible.
RNZ is continuing with a detailed audit and analysis of all stories with the potential for inappropriate editing of wire service stories on the website.
While there is still work to complete, to date it has identified 15 instances of inappropriate editing going back to last year. These stories have been corrected and an explanatory note added to each article.
Here are the links to the corrected stories:
Increasing talk of 'war' in Russia worrying sign of escalation
Residents trapped as Nova Kakhovka dam's destruction wreaks havoc in war zone
25 killed in biggest Ukraine air strikes for nearly two months
Top Ukraine cleric accused of glorifying Russian invasion under house arrest
Putin says Moscow to station nuclear weapons in Belarus
Ukraine commander visits besieged Bakhmut as Medvedev warns of 'apocalypse'
G20 starts in Bali as Ukraine war, raging inflation top agenda
Fighting 'deadlocked' ahead of visit by UN chief, Ukraine says
Ukraine denies shelling near nuclear plant and calls for new Russian sanctions
UN again trying to evacuate civilians from Ukraine's Mariupol
Ukraine says Russian strike knocks out Odesa airport
Russian strikes pound Ukraine on eve of new EU sanctions
Ukraine war: Putin warns against foreign intervention
Russian forces disperse pro-Ukraine rally, tighten control in Kherson
Serbia accuses Ukraine and unnamed EU country of Air Serbia bomb hoaxes
RNZ is checking other stories and continues with a thorough analysis which may take some time.
As indicated previously an investigation is under way into the alleged conduct of one employee relating to this matter. That employee is on leave and does not have access to our computer systems.
RNZ is treating this issue very seriously and will keep you updated.
Posted by: Ново з | Jun 10 2023 11:48 utc | 92
@ persiflo | Jun 10 2023 10:16 utc | 87
Yes, you are right, and provided a good response in pointing out the present situation.
I was writing more general and where this Anti-fa, Black block etc. were actual in 90's and early 2000's.
Now, I also mentioned that many branches have been penetrated by various intel agencies. Also, ideologically penetrated by various crazy positions, discussed forever and never justified as Anti-Deutsche and currently vegan, woke, outed ...you name it.
Dutch, German, Italian etc. squatting movement at the end of 90's were a bit more coherent, yet also anarchic in its base, too.
I guess in the USA such tradition is not vast, and in the minds of many people the world revolution started in the "battle of Seattle" in 1992, which is just a one-sided look at the antifascist movement and very wrong.
One also should understand that if something is seen as “left” in the USA, it certainly is perceived pretty much far right in Europe.
Posted by: whirlX | Jun 10 2023 12:06 utc | 93
Now an addendum to my previous addendum - sorry for taking such pains to be correct, but the whole thing is mind boggling if you think about it, and also someone might use the information to draw on conclusions of further reach.
The contracts of Axel Springer presstitutes stated that they would be reporting Israel-friendly at all times, as was confirmed by my source.
Posted by: persiflo | Jun 10 2023 14:56 utc | 94
"... Did or did not Trump issue the death warrants for Soleimani and Assange at the very least?"
Tom_Q_Collins@85
No doubt that he did. And he should be prosecuted for doing so.
But that isn't the point, which is that the legal moves against Trump are a glaring example of the partisan politicisation of the 'Justice' system, the DoJ and the whole range of intelligence and 'law enforcement' agencies.
And all this at a time when the President of the US has half the world involved in a war one of whose purposes is to cover up the corrupt dealings that he has with the Ukraine's oligarchy.
We are on the brink of a war which could end human life, in anything resembling its present form, because Biden wants to distract the world from the reality that this is a war to defend kleptocrats and fascists who paid Biden protection money.
Now there is a need for more distraction in the form of charges that Trump retained documents in his possession- a charge that appears to be ludicrously unlike the treatment that other former Executives have received in similar situations. Besides which most of the documents should never have been classified on the first place.
Never mind Trump: all eyes should be on one of the greatest crimes in history. A crime which is wholly attributable to the cynicism and immorality of Biden and his gang who were so determined to have a war with Russia that, under the sign of the swastika, they killed thousands of innocent people over a period of eight years to provoke the current bloodbath.
It says much about the public that condones such behaviour, as it did the serial massacres in muslim countries, from Afghanistan to Somalia and Libya, that it regards Trump's legal problems as of more significance than ten million or so killings post 2000 and a threat to life itself.
Posted by: bevin | Jun 10 2023 15:02 utc | 95
Bias: I guess I'm still somewhere on "the far out alternative right" which perhaps translates to just being a weird person that doesn't really fit in anywhere.
Imo Anti-FA consists of violent assholes in Europe as well, I see no difference. Of course there are also plenty of other violent assholes here, including their favorite enemies. In essence Anti-FA wants to do whatever they want, control what you and anyone else thinks, and have or gain power over others, and using violence if and when they feel like it. It's street level/bottom rung fascism one level below municipal politics with its plethora of "front garden Hitlers" and similar control freaks (very often women but the men are just as bad) :P
Their main accomplishments is to ruin demonstrations and attack or inconvenience ordinary people and daily society. And yes of course: tarnish others by their implied and perhaps even imaginary association.
Not much different than Azov, just less guns and torture (but they would if they could). Their "we are the good guys" (and socialism/communism/anti-racism etc. bullshit) is the worst excuse in the world, it is a non-logic typical of the US, EU, and NATO as well as mostly everything else in politics, religion, and ideology. It is the basic trap —the very basic— the non-western world will have to avoid both now and in the future.
They represent no real substance unless one considers a knock to the head progress :P (and to contradict myself: yes for some it is).
Has Anti-FA made any noise about ex-Ukraine and all the nazis running about? None that I've heard over the din of MSM propaganda.
Have they made any noticeable public show of support for Russia and Putin (neither of which is communist nor socialist) or China, or Iran, or ....?
Some of their enemies have! AfD has! "Far right" politicians have! Orban has! Erdogan has!
Maybe that says it all?
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Jun 10 2023 15:35 utc | 96
@ bevin | Jun 10 2023 15:02 utc | 95 who wonders why Trump prosecution is happening.
Hollywood "Wag The Dog" movie type producing is going on now that is the bull-in-the-China-closet approach.
Why isn't the MSM running with the Biden corruption with Burisma instead of the Trump story?
The Wurlitzer of empire is spinning at top speed and parts are falling off like US political "leadership" on both sides of the Money Mafia duopoly sold to the public.
And meanwhile the RoW is building another way in spite of all the Might-Makes-Right bluster and screeching.
If the neutron bomb of a BRICS+ Reserve Currency really is going to become reality in August then this is end game time and we all get to watch.
The shit show continues until it doesn't
Maybe after August politics in the West might due a phase shift of sorts as the curtain hiding empire control continues to be lifted and defeated globally for all to see.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 10 2023 16:17 utc | 97
Ново з | Jun 10 2023 11:39 utc | 91--
Thanks for your reply. IMO, Ms. Zakharova's motivation is to remind the world of the UK's crimes of which they're many. That motivation comes from the longstanding rivalry between Russia and the British Crown that of course include the lies about the Skripals and those who came before and after that unfortunate pair who are most likely dead.
Pepe Escobar's newest, "The Hegemon Will Go Full Hybrid War Against BRICS+" asks us to focus on the Outlaw US Empire's next set of enemies it will try to attack: BRICS+. A new stink tank has appeared just in time to announce this new policy drive:
U.S. Think Tank Land – inebriated by their self-created aura of power – always telegraphs in advance what they’re up to. That was the case with Project 9/11 (“We need a new Pearl Harbor”). That was the case with the RAND report on over-extending and unbalancing Russia. And now that’s the case with the incomingAmerican War on BRICS as outlined by the chairman of the New York-based Eurasia Group. [Three links at original]
Here's one barflies will find to be a Howler, The Eurasia Group with their "Top Risks" mumbo-jumbo. They're the same sort of cretans Crooke refers to in his short essay I linked to on the current Ukie thread. With Empire advisors having their collective heads buried so deeply inside their large intestines, why should anyone worry? Well, worry is warranted because others that are just as clueless listen to them as they are all part of the same Group-Think Circle. As Pepe writes,
"It’s always painful to suffer through the intellectually shallow Think Thank Land wet dreams masquerading as 'analyses' but in this particular case key Global South players need to be firmly aware of what awaits them."
Amen to that!! To be forewarned is to be forearmed. The Saudis are already well out of the Empire's camp as the now famous picture of Blinken meeting MBS without the US flag in the background exemplifies. The pressure must be kept on meaning building new institutions and widening the solidarity circle.
Despite it being Saturday, Russia's MFA has posted two important notices related to court cases dealing with Ukraine that I'm posting here in full instead of on the current Ukie thread where they'll just be ignored. Here's the first, Decision of the International Court of Justice on the entry of states as third parties in the case of Ukraine's claim against Russia under the Genocide Convention:
On June 9, the International Court of Justice announced an unprecedented decision in the history of the Court to admit 32 states as third parties in the proceedings on the claim of Ukraine against Russia under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of December 9, 1948. Not all judges supported this decision. Thus, Judge Xue Hanqin (PRC), who voted against, submitted to the Court a detailed justification for the incorrectness of his position. Judge Dalveer Bhandari (India) criticized the Court's lack of attention to the unparalleled mass nature of the admission of "third parties", which seriously burdened the process.At the same time, the Court granted the request of the Russian Federation and unanimously refused admission to the case to the United States of America. At the time of the decision, the President of the Court, American J. Donohue, was forced to withdraw from the presidency.
All states admitted as "third parties" take a pro-Ukrainian position and belong to the Western camp. Under the pretext of interpreting certain provisions of the Genocide Convention, they are trying to put pressure on the Court in order to force the highest body of international justice to make an unjustified decision in favor of Ukraine, despite the obvious absurdity of the accusations made by Kiev. The Russian Federation considers such an "avalanche-like" entry into the case of states that are not related to it, in favor of one party to the dispute as an unacceptable violation of the principle of equality of the parties and an abuse of procedural rights.
The Russian side is disappointed with the Court's decision, which was taken contrary to the evidence presented to the Court that such practice contradicts the Court's rules and the general principles of justice.
This decision of the Court will be used against the International Court of Justice and all international justice. The policy taken by the "collective West" to politicize the system of international justice and turn it into an instrument of reprisals against undesirables threatens to undermine the entire system of peaceful settlement of disputes, which is the basis of international relations. It is quite obvious that such schemes will continue to be used both against Russia and against other states opposing Washington's hegemonic aspirations. This is the whole point of the so-called "rules-based order" imposed by a narrow group of Western states: justice is not for everyone, but for the elite.
Here's the second, Statement by Russian representatives at oral hearings at the International Court of Justice in the case of Ukraine v. Russia:
On June 8, representatives of the Russian Federation responded at the oral hearings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on the dispute initiated by Ukraine in 2017 with Russia over the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (ICBFT) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). Representatives of the Kyiv regime voiced their claims on June 6.Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Kingdom of the Netherlands Alexander Shulgin outlined the genesis of the Ukrainian crisis, stressing that the current events in Donbass are a direct consequence of the coup d'état in Kiev in 2014. He recalled Kiev's demonstrative non-compliance with the Minsk agreements, which it used exclusively to build up military power with the support of Western patrons in order to forcefully return Donetsk and Lugansk under its control. He parried the cynical calls of the representative of Ukraine about Russia's alleged involvement in the undermining of the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, which sounded two days earlier. He made it clear that the Kiev authorities are responsible for this criminal act.
Ambassador-at-Large Gennady Kuzmin highlighted the absurdity of Ukraine's insinuations regarding the mythical "financing of terrorism" by our country in Donbass. He unequivocally pointed out that stigmatizing Donetsk residents fighting for their lives as terrorists is cynical, inappropriate and immoral. He recalled the numerous barbaric shelling by the Ukrainian military of the settlements of the people's republics and the atrocities of Ukrainian neo-Nazis against opponents of the illegitimate "Maidan" regime, including the tragedy in the Odessa House of Trade Unions. Separately, he emphasized the legal and factual inconsistency of Ukrainian claims in connection with the crash of flight MH17, drawing attention to the falsification of evidence and concealment of important circumstances of the case from the Court.
Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN Maria Zabolotskaya clearly demonstrated the groundlessness of Kiev's slanderous fabrications about the alleged "deliberate campaign of racial discrimination" of Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians launched by the Russian authorities in Crimea. She drew the Court's attention to the neo-Nazi nature of the current Kiev regime, whose representatives do not hesitate to call themselves followers of Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and other accomplices of Nazism during the Second World War. Claims of discrimination a priori cannot come from the lips of admirers of Hitler's ideas and his henchmen. At the same time, Kiev itself, in the spirit of its idols, grossly violates the rights of the Russian and other "non-titular" peoples of Ukraine.
The legal arguments of the Russian side were developed by a multinational team of international lawyers from Russia, China, Great Britain, Iran and Congo. They convincingly refuted the arguments of American lawyers acting on behalf of Ukraine, led by a former legal adviser to the US State Department. Briton M. Swainston cited evidence of errors and fraud in the investigation of the MH17 case by the Dutch authorities and the "joint investigation team". Chinese scholar Xinho Yi explained that in a situation of armed conflict, international humanitarian law should apply, which determines what can be considered terrorism. Russian lawyer K. Udovichenko testified that the actions of the DPR troops were aimed purely at military purposes. Iranian H. Azari and Congolese J.-S. Chikaya presented evidence of the absence of any "racial discrimination" in Crimea against the Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian population.
The hearings will continue on June 12-14.
IMO, the international legal system will need to be rebuilt after its undermining by the Western nations. That must closely follow the building of new international financial institutions as they will need to be supported by the new legal structure and its institutions since finance, trade and contracts are all need legal bases to function properly.
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"Eurozone sinks into recession as cost of living crisis takes toll"
"GDP shrank 0.1% in first quarter of 2023 and final three months of 2022 after revisions to earlier estimates"
Wow!!! I wonder who us to blame.
Posted by: ThusspakeZarathustra | Jun 8 2023 13:53 utc | 1