After listening to the hour and a half of Pepe Escobar and Danny Haiphong my brain has been churning over a number of things covered and one is the coming BRICS+ meeting and what might be said/done about the finance alternative. Pepe was quite adamant that no specific money was going to be announced but only the clearing of BRICS+ members trade in the nations local currencies which is the first step toward creating a common “trade-between-nations” level money for clearing trade imbalances.
The point I want to make here is that the intention is to base any new money created on gold or breadbasket of stuff. From what I am reading both China and Russia now support their currencies exchange with gold. With that in mind, read the following from a ZH piece

Translated from the original Zoltanese:
Banks have been using rehypothecation for decades fearlessly with approval of global governments who in turn promised them Gold would never be used as a settlement medium—i.e. have a practical use — again.
Stated as a bank trader once said: Gold? We can short it until the cows come home. Why? Because not only is it unconsumed/indestructible, it isn’t used for anything anymore. Its price is how much more USD money we have to pay you to delay delivery. It’s a collectible, a pet rock, and nothing else. Short it. Government can’t let it back in as an MOE [Medium Of Exchange]. If they did it would destroy them. If we go under, they go under.
Zoltan is telling us indirectly what Banks and Nations fear about this Gold-as-settlement-medium concept.

That is why I keep writing at MoA about how significant I think that this BRICS+ summit has the potential of being relative to precipitating a Western financial crisis. The China/Russia axis may not be entirely ready for the crisis they are setting off but crashing “early ” is likely another holding on strategy of dying empire…..its called FUD Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt and has been used successfully by many over the centuries…..sigh. Luckily we have the China/Russia axis that has good memories of God Of Mammon abuse.
It will be a crazy period because both sides will claim they own the world, through financial derivatives of a rules based order or by legal edict of sovereign nations.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 31 2023 6:33 utc | 104

@gT | Jul 30 2023 19:51 utc | 56
I dont think Hudson meant to say the jews invented it. The important thing Hudson raises is what was being practised. Forgiveness of debt.
The way I look at things it seems to me the normal behaviour of merchants is to go for win-win. When this is not the case they are most likely partners with a powerseeking oligarchy.
Or they have to get along with bands of criminals.
For their own survival they may have to join them. It wouldnt be enough to arrange intermarriages because on next business trip they would encounter another band etc.
I believe it is a permanent feature among those who seek to make profits from trade in wide areas. That they have to be part of something bigger. More organised. The mere problem of the transfer of wealth will be a huge difficulty. Later the templars used documents instead of carrying gold. But they needed forts and the sword. So how did less well protected merchants sort things out? Did they very early on have some secret arrangement with certificates and secret collaborators along the routes?
I think the way banking and usury has evolved is related to the practical difficulties of safe trade, necessitating a network of people that raises costs.
The phoenicians were traders with the sword. Yet they apparently collaborated with bands of criminals.
I interpret that to indicate that they joined the robbers rather than having to fight them. Much later Sir Francis Drake and his band of anglosaxon pirates in the service of the English monarchy, may have made the merchants collaborating with spain realise that England might offer better protection.
When the venetian oligarchy was transplanted to England this would have been part of the analysis. Had the spanish armada won the venetians might have opted to transplant to Spain.
(Venetian intel agent Contarini had already prepared for that eventuality by launching/controlling the jesuites but also the Calvinists)
If the mod removes this coment I wont be too upset 🙂

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Jul 31 2023 7:17 utc | 106

Canadian Patriot Press yarns up the perfidious nature of Albion.

In this episode of How to Kill a Sacred Cow, host Jay Henehan speaks to Matt Ehret about the true causes of America’s internal rot by going back to the British imperial stay behinds who remained in the USA after the revolution of 1776 in order to destroy the USA from within. The leading figure of this poisonous operation was none other than Aaron Burr whose story is told at length in this program.
Follow How to Kill a Sacred Cow here: howtokillasacredcow.com

It needs a dedicated hour and seventeen minutes. It will reward your efort but enter in an alert state of mind and leave the grog aside 😉

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 31 2023 8:54 utc | 108

South Africa will be jumping ship soon.
That really going to hurt the west.
Game over.

Posted by: Mark2 | Jul 31 2023 9:47 utc | 110

CHINA / DIPLOMACY
France opposes ‘decoupling’ after economic talks with China
Beijing welcomes clarification on ‘de-risking,’ hopes Paris to be stabilizer for EU ties
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202307/1295337.shtml

Posted by: Don Firineach | Jul 31 2023 10:20 utc | 112

Time will tell with this escapade but you can bet the Anglos will be furious if all that Cecil Rhoades shenanigans is sundered under the foot of Putin who just 24 hours ago went to extraordinary lengths to woo the African new world order. I would like to see that.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 31 2023 9:33 utc | 111
There is an onging battle to access the rich resources of African continent ..
Whether a new form of colonisation or respectful cooperation as in BRI we wait and see. African people could certainly do with a break and receive some of wealth – which due to corruption most do not ..I’ve experience In both Southern and Northern Africa abd there is huge potential …

Posted by: Don Firineach | Jul 31 2023 10:37 utc | 114

@Chris Cosmos | Jul 30 2023 16:43 utc | 28
All the talk of other dimensions I believe is due to the nonreal appearance of such sightings.
This could be due to it being optical illusions.
Such as reflections or other virtual images.
If the observer were to see it through a window there might be some light source projecting an image as a reflex from the window
Like somebody playing with a laser pointer.

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Jul 31 2023 11:40 utc | 116

Well done dunegroanin @ 119
Very informative comment.
There is so much happening only just below the surface and its nearly all posative regarding the multipolar fare world.
The more countrys that stand up against the unipolor world the more will have confidence to do like wise.
Mexico ? Turky may well yet jump. I hope. Thanks for your post.

Posted by: Mark2 | Jul 31 2023 12:13 utc | 118

I wonder if Sweden makes it in before NATO crumbles

🇭🇺❌🇸🇪🏁 The Hungarian Parliament was unable to approve Sweden’s entry into NATO due to the boycott of the ruling parties.

https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/75333

Posted by: Norwegian | Jul 31 2023 14:13 utc | 120

@78bevin. “He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
Who is that? Wow just wow. Can u imagine all of us getting Rae Dawn Chonged in our personal quests for fire?
That was good. Bravo.

Posted by: Tannenhouser | Jul 31 2023 14:44 utc | 122

Posted by: wagelaborer | Jul 31 2023 13:56 utc | 194 (Ukraine thread)
A scientist who worked at Paris Island on tickborne diseases stated that it was his belief that Lyme Disease had escaped from that lab.
======================================
I believe you mean Plum Island, the closest town to which is Lyme, Connecticut. I have Lyme Disease so read up on all this years ago when it hit hard, but I don’t recall many details (Lyme side effect!). There’s a whole book on it called Lab 257…* Of course, it has been widely debunked but the book did offer several facts as I recall among them:
1. Plum Island is a military biolab.
2. Several of the early scientists there were Op Paperclip ex-Nazis who had worked on delivering tick-born pathogens to Russia. One plan had been to kill all the cattle. The plan was rejected because the famine that would cause in Russia would make it too hard to run the country assuming they were victorious. In any case:
3. They worked on tick-born pathogens.
4. The rumor is that they combined a bacterial (borrelia) and a viral (swine flu).
5. There were stories about a roof collapse or leak in the 70’s a year or so after which children in Lyme got seriously ill one summer. No proven connection but if ticks got onto birds – which they are known to do as they nest in trees or bushes to sleep at night – then a hop to Lyme only 10 miles away, though not proven, is entirely feasible.
It took an inordinately long time (about a decade) to uncover what later was named ‘borrelia’ even though an Indian lab technician could have spotted it in a $10.00 test. (We don’t test that way; we only test for what a doctor prescribes, never just look and see what is there; much more profitable.) Borrelia is a sophisticated spirochete, but a typical Lyme Disease transmission via tick contains about 10-50 different pathogens of which borrelia is just one.
An interesting factoid about Lyme: for years – perhaps even now for all I know – they printed out maps for doctors showing the estimated spread of the disease from Lyme year by year using the theory that ticks only travel a few yards in their lives (which is true if they don’t attach to a victim). People outside those shaded areas weren’t tested for Lyme Disease because ‘the science’ so many people now worship told them it was ‘scientifically impossible’ for them to have been infected with it. Those calculations completely ignored how far deer, mice, cats, dogs and songbirds travel, with of course the latter crossing entire continents and more, making those maps worse than ridiculous. And so for decades tests were not done in California until recently because of those criminally stupid maps. (That said, Inxi labs there give the most accurate results; that’s where I had my test done even though I lived on East Coast of Canada where the tests are useless except at veterinarians for some reason, though not back then.)
As with all such issues nowadays, opinions are divided between those who claim this is all innocent stupidity and those who project a more sinister motivation. There’s much more than I can put in a short comment of course, but one thing is for sure: there have been many lies and omissions in the Lyme story including a record of decades of misdiagnosis and misinformation, no end of ineffective treatments which do more harm than the disease (just like with covid in the US), control of regulations and policy by many shady insurance policy boards and so on. Mixing Intelligence, Military and Medicine is an abomination which civilized nations should abhor. Though probably none of them do.
In any case, my default opinion – which is only a guess of course – is that Lyme Disease escaped accidentally from the Plum Island biolab but the government spent decades denying and obfuscating research about it to deflect blame because of which tens of millions have suffered from this and, sort of opposite to covid, died from it though the autopsies read things like cancer, stroke, MS or whatever since it induces auto-immune system disorders which exacerbate no end of other conditions, some fatally so.
So it’s yet another example of government corruption messing with peoples’ lives in unfortunate ways. The developed-world West is broken; and so it goes…
* Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Germ Laboratory. More has been uncovered since it was written.

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 31 2023 15:10 utc | 124

DunGroanin @123, And here I thought that the reptilians were already in control. What do I know?

Posted by: Immaculate deception | Jul 31 2023 19:22 utc | 126

Thank you, Scorpion, I did mean Plum Island. I was told by a friend (who comes from Canada) that a doctor who had worked on the disease said later that he thought that it had escaped from the lab. And, as you say, Lyme, CT is close by. He told me the name of the doctor, but he also mentioned that google, and other search engines, had scrubbed the references, so I didn’t even try to find it, since I can’t remember his name anyway.
It’s all in the spin, isn’t it? The anthrax attacks were hyped for about a month, causing widespread panic and fear in the population, but when it came out that it wasn’t Iraq, the whole propaganda campaign was dropped, and people don’t even remember it now.
9-11, of course, was not as scary to the rest of America, confined as it was to two places, but the hype on that continues, and no one forgets.
Lyme Disease is pretty much ignored, except by people who have it, but the covid fear campaign was world-wide, and continues to this day, as if pandemics can last for years. Since when? Since 2021.
No wonder the US thinks it can win in Ukraine purely with PR.

Posted by: wagelaborer | Jul 31 2023 19:55 utc | 128

Posted by: bevin | Jul 30 2023 19:32 utc | 52
Well said, as usual.

Posted by: Cherrycoke | Jul 31 2023 20:24 utc | 130

Good one for you here, Cherry Coke. We’re not as original as we all think.
“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”
John Maynard Keynes

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 31 2023 20:31 utc | 132

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 31 2023 20:26 utc | 133
Adorno and Horkheimer in “Die Dialektik der Aufklärung” basically tried to save the enlightenment/reason from itself. They also tried to make sense of National Socialism. Certainly, from a radical Marxist point of view, their work may be seen as watering down Marxism. I do not have a radical Marxist point of view.
Whatever the merits of your criticsm, however, I object to you calling these people “rats”. This is the language the Reichspropagandaministerium used for Jewish intellectuals.
‘Frankfurt, post mods, crits: today’s woke and the liquidation of all genuine left politics today. “Leftists” ready for nuclear war with Ukraine ffs!’
Agreed, except for “Frankfurt” (and presumably you meant “Russia” instead of “Ukraine”).

Posted by: Cherrycoke | Jul 31 2023 21:39 utc | 134

Hard liners on the up in US Admin …
Caitlin Johnstone: Biden Promotes Hardliners
Virulent Russia hawk Victoria Nuland and virulent China hawk Charles Q. Brown are being elevated to lofty positions by the White House.
The Biden administration looks set to become even more warlike if you can imagine that, with virulent Russia hawk Victoria Nuland and virulent China hawk Charles Q. Brown now being elevated to lofty positions by the White House.
Nuland, the wife of alpha neocon Robert Kagan, has been named acting deputy secretary of state by President Joe Biden, at least until a new deputy secretary has been named. This places her at second-in-command within the State Department, right behind Tony Blinken.’
[…] In a 2015 Consortium News article headlined “The Mess That Nuland Made,” the late Robert Parry singled out Nuland as the primary architect of the 2014 regime change operation in Ukraine, which, as Aaron Maté explained last year, paved the way to the war we’re seeing there today. Hopefully her position winds up being temporary.
In other news, the Senate Arms Services Committee has voted to confirm Biden’s selection of Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replacing Mark Milley. A full senate vote will now take place on whether to confirm Brown — currently the Air Force Chief of Staff — for the nation’s highest military office.’
[,,,] Back in May, Moon of Alabama flagged Brown’s nomination in an article which also noted that several advocates of military restraint had been resigning from their positions within the administration, including Wendy Sherman, the deputy secretary of state replaced by Nuland.
It’s too soon to draw any firm conclusions, but to see voices of restraint stepping down and proponents of escalation stepping up could be a bad portent of things to come.’
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/07/28/caitlin-johnstone-biden-promotes-hardliners/
‘

Posted by: Don Firineach | Jul 31 2023 22:20 utc | 136

Gonzalo Lira on the run, sort of, more weirdness, maybe he’s pitching a movie idea, briefer than the elevator pitch, the twitter pitch – Jason Bourne meets Adrian Monk. Trying for crowdfunding?
https://twitter.com/GonzaloLira1968/status/1686140766685384704
If I was on the run I’d keep my mouth shut and throw my phone in the trash.

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Jul 31 2023 23:38 utc | 138

Peru, Bolivia update
It’s been 7 months since US backed the coup in Peru. Castillo is still in prison. Support for him has grown but the movement is much deeper than one person and, while widespread throughout the country, appears to be strongest and most developed in the south near Bolivia. Puno (borders Peru on Lake Titicaca) and Cusco (Machu Pichu) are Peru’s version of Donbass- natives have been there a long long time and they plan on staying. Recently they initiated a 3rd occupation of Lima, currently ongoing. Support for imperial class is diminishing to single digits, paralyzing the country. It appears that a Bolivian style movement is forming but not yet able to take power.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Protests-Against-Boluarte-Continue-in-Peru-20230729-0001.html
https://orinocotribune.com/peru-chronicle-of-the-third-takeover-of-lima/
Meanwhile, Bolivia continues to solidify power in the MAS based government, while a split is emerging between Arce and Morales. President Arce is a Marxist economist and, like Evo, is shunning the West. Under him Bolivia is developing their lithium resources and forming trade with non-imperial countries like Iran which is scaring the pants off the aristocrats, including the pro-Israel Argentina lobby who are screaming about this.
https://orinocotribune.com/us-allies-on-alert-after-lithium-rich-bolivia-inks-defense-deal-with-iran/
bottom line, Bolivia’s government is still strong but risks destruction from the fracture between Arce and Morales. My guess is that Morales support is solid and hopefully, Arce will acknowledge that and let Evo run for president in 2025. The right wing is still alive and plotting. Both factions of the MAS know that.
https://orinocotribune.com/bolivia-catastrophic-standoff-and-dual-power/

Posted by: migueljose | Aug 1 2023 0:22 utc | 140

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 31 2023 4:38 utc | 101
Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Aug 1 2023 2:48 utc | 156 (from 404 high losses thread)
Russia–Africa Summit transcript Big changes going on.

Posted by: lex talionis | Aug 1 2023 4:30 utc | 142

Peru, Bolivia update
It’s been 7 months since US backed the coup in Peru. Castillo is still in prison. Support for him has grown but the movement is much deeper than one person and, while widespread throughout the country, appears to be strongest and most developed in the south near Bolivia. Puno (borders Peru on Lake Titicaca) and Cusco (Machu Pichu) are Peru’s version of Donbass- natives have been there a long long time and they plan on staying. Recently they initiated a 3rd occupation of Lima, currently ongoing. Support for imperial class is diminishing to single digits, paralyzing the country. It appears that a Bolivian style movement is forming but not yet able to take power.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Protests-Against-Boluarte-Continue-in-Peru-20230729-0001.html
https://orinocotribune.com/peru-chronicle-of-the-third-takeover-of-lima/
Meanwhile, Bolivia continues to solidify power in the MAS based government, while a split is emerging between Arce and Morales. President Arce is a Marxist economist and, like Evo, is shunning the West. Under him Bolivia is developing their lithium resources and forming trade with non-imperial countries like Iran which is scaring the pants off the aristocrats, including the pro-Israel Argentina lobby who are screaming about this.
https://orinocotribune.com/us-allies-on-alert-after-lithium-rich-bolivia-inks-defense-deal-with-iran/
bottom line, Bolivia’s government is still strong but risks destruction from the fracture between Arce and Morales. My guess is that Morales support is solid and hopefully, Arce will acknowledge that and let Evo run for president in 2025. The right wing is still alive and plotting. Both factions of the MAS know that.
https://orinocotribune.com/bolivia-catastrophic-standoff-and-dual-power/

Posted by: migueljose | Aug 1 2023 13:15 utc | 144

This story REALLY angers me. I even sent this message to a couple of Youtube news channels with more than a million followers:
Hey Jimmy/Megyn/Tim! Great work. Check this story out. Please do a show on it.
https://basedunderground.com/2023/08/01/usda-must-end-dont-ask-dont-tell-policy-on-gmo-vaccines-in-organic-livestock-watchdog-group-says/
They are about to start putting the vaccines into produce, even organic meat. It must be exposed by people like you with a following for it to be stopped.
Well-meaning people like Roger Boyd on his substack can pontificate about how sad they are having to deal with ‘climate deniers’ (a loaded, ignorant and deliberately disrespectful term borrowed from tribal activists that resulted in my immediately unsubscribing without reading past the opening sentence) but meanwhile basic fixable things like this are ignored because everyone is too busy virtuously ‘saving the entire planet’ to deal with such smaller, more particular matters.
The single best way to ensure that pollution, including toxins in the food supply and farming methods, isn’t addressed is to keep harping on about ‘global climate change.’ It seems to be more over-arching, more important, more caring, more wise. But in fact it’s a huge bait and switch that fools most of the people, even very smart ones, most of the time. (My 2 cents, but this story makes me angry even though it’s not a fully detailed report!)
And of course it’s more. It’s an over-arching driving argument for global governance and since the multipolar leaders, Russia and China, both support this sort of push in UN and other organizations, and also support the increase in powers for the W.H.O. an unelected body about to trump national governments if a global health emergency is declared, it is a politically pernicious notion. Discussing it as only a scientific issue is either stupid or malicious.
Meanwhile, we wait for the Alien Invaders to be trotted out. Probably they have got their AI and holographic tech up to speed such that they can soon present convincing video footage showing interviews with Ambassadors from Advanced Intergalactic Civilizations urging us to join the planet together as one and eliminate cash money, or perhaps presenting as enemies (more likely) so that we have to join together as one and eliminate cash money.
Sorry. That meat article set me off! Will be transitioning to shopping 100% local soon, though am partial to the organic hamburger have been buying from the nearest Costco an hour away… very tasty….

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 1 2023 14:30 utc | 146

@Cherrycoke | Jul 31 2023 21:39 utc | 136
The Frankfurt School has made huge contributions in many areas ….
I have huge respect for them … and have been influenced by some of the School’s thinkers in many areas of thought.
Respect is the word that comes to mind.
Posted by: Don Firineach | Jul 31 2023 22:26 utc | 137
Ok, Cherry. Who in the Frankfurt School do you have tremendous respect for? I’m interested now.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Aug 1 2023 15:56 utc | 148

@ migueljose | Aug 1 2023 0:22 utc | 140
and etc.. obviously there is some malfunctioning of your system as your posts aren’t coming thru.. hopefully it gets resolved, as i’d like to read what you have to say.. cheers james

Posted by: james | Aug 1 2023 16:18 utc | 150

I’m wondering whether all this focus on electric cars, rechargeable battery factories, and recharging stations is because we’re fixated on individual transport. There is already a way to travel electrically. It’s called train, subway, tram, trolley bus. These forms of transport work, have been working for more than a century, and work without batteries.

Posted by: Passerby | Aug 1 2023 17:35 utc | 152

And to think that the nearest electrified means of transport is only a piddling 50 miles away from me…
Posted by: malenkov | Aug 1 2023 17:43 utc | 153
If you live in the UK: Thank Thatcher for that.
If you live in the US: Thank General Motors for that.
If you do not live in UK or US: You lucky bastard.

Posted by: Passerby | Aug 1 2023 18:04 utc | 154

addendum to previous:
It’s superbly ironic that my in-laws, who live in a developing country that shall remain nameless (hint: most heavily bombed country evaah) live within walking distance of an electrified high-speed rail line, whereas the nearest one to me in God’s Own Country, the US of A, is literally thousands of miles away.
As for the in-laws, well, if I can channel my neighbors: hit wuz thim durty chinks wut diddit.. Maybe I should pray for a Chinese invasion here?

Posted by: malenkov | Aug 1 2023 19:46 utc | 156

Re: UFOs & Speculation

“As highly speculative accounts of possible doom from space began to take precedence in the 1960s, the accounts of the original contactees were being derided and dismissed, and increasingly they were portrayed as mystics who were trying to peddle some new kind of religion to the gullible.
“While corporate interests are attempting to tighten their grip on governments and policies to secure their power and wealth, disclosure of any kind at this time would have to be met with the same suspicion of a hidden agenda as the initial cover-ups of extraterrestrial visits and the subsequent disinformation campaign.
“As a result of this widespread disinformation, these days UFO researchers and enthusiasts are not just faced with derision
among the general public and the mainstream media, but with rampant speculation about the extraterrestrial presence from
within their own ranks as well.
“This volume, therefore, provides an indispensible approach to untangle the facts from the mass of speculation and disinformation about the extraterrestrial visitors. It shows how the information coming from the original contactees, confirmations from various sources and disciplines, and the application of logic and common sense, may help us separate the chaff from the wheat ourselves.
“It also gives some striking examples of this approach with regard to questions that have baffled researchers for decades, such as the ability of UFOs to appear and disappear at will, and the intentions of the visitors from space. It is hoped this will make it easier for readers to navigate their way through the current maze of theories and suppositions.
Gerard Aartsen
Before Disclosure: Dispelling the Fog of Speculation,
http://www.bgapublications.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Before-Disclosure.pdf

“A corrupt judge does not carefully search for the truth.”
Horace (65BC – 8BC), Satires, Book II
“Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.” Francis Bacon
“Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities — the political, the religious, the educational authorities — who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing — forming in our minds — their view of reality.”
Timothy Leary (1994) How to Operate Your Brain .

Posted by: Toby C | Aug 1 2023 20:27 utc | 158

The prospect of ECOWAS armed intervention is unclear. The combined military might of ECOWAS is not much larger than that of one single member, Nigeria. Thus
1. For Nigeria, intervention is logistically simplicity itself, not surprisingly, it is a neighbor, Niger is kind of sandwiched between inhospitable regions of Sahara and Nigeria.
2. Communication with Nigeriens is easy for northern Nigerians, exactly same main ethnic groups.
But
3. If the intervention turns from triumph to morass, Nigeria will be most exposed.
3a. If the intervention is highly unpopular in Niger, Hausa speakers of Nigeria can be sympathetic.
3b. If law and order breaks down, Boko Haram and similar extremist groups will rise, and they operate across border (including Nigerian) anyway.
3c. Considering the location and ethic ties of Niger, participation of other ECOWAS members is bound to by symbolic, so any mishap will be blamed on Nigerian government, by Nigerian people. Compare with a morass created by “democratic” intervention in Haiti, far away from Brazil etc., and concerning people that, de facto, nobody cares about in Brazil etc.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Aug 1 2023 22:46 utc | 160

This is going to hurt

Ratings agency Fitch on Tuesday downgraded the U.S. government’s top credit rating to AA+ from AAA, citing an expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years as well as a high and growing general government debt burden.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Aug 2 2023 3:33 utc | 162

Posted by: Ghost_of_Tom_Q | Aug 2 2023 3:44 utc | 163
Oh Ghost, please tell us what it looks like down there from beyond. Many’o dead haven’t been able to come back and tell us. 🙂
re La Bella Luna, I didn’t realize it when I wrote earlier: Happy full moon barflies, ok, ok, barfleas (TM, SB/PH) as well. It’s the most beautiful full moon too.

Posted by: Sakineh Bagoom | Aug 2 2023 4:40 utc | 164

The “Moscow Times” is published in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Two Moscow Times articles in which a former official is interviewed by the Moscow Times “on condition of anonymity”, a.k.a. please believe us, this time we’re not lying.
former U.S. official agreed to speak on condition of anonymity:
“Putin is the major block to all progress,” he said. “The U.S. administration has made at least one attempt to speak with the Kremlin but Putin himself refused.” For this reason, he argued, Washington “should begin reaching out to the anti-war Russian elite and begin making progress with them.” If there was support among the elite for another leader, he said, “ousting Putin would not be impossible.” .
former European Union official told The Moscow Times on condition of anonymity:
Gutteres also attempted to persuade the EU to fulfill at least some of the terms of the memorandum with Russia — but Brussels refused, the former EU official told The Moscow Times. “The EU said ‘no way.’ Because in terms of sanctions, it would be a step backward. Our principles are more important to us than what will happen with Ukrainian grain,” the source said, citing internal EU discussions.

Posted by: Passerby | Aug 2 2023 9:33 utc | 166

The “Truckers Protest” was not a strike nor did it make much sense. But that doesn’t mean that it excuses the proto totalitarian reaction of Canada’s Establishement.
“Trudeau’s and Freeland’s Fear and Loathing of Canada’s Continuing Freedom Convoy
The Ingredients of a Serial Epidemic of Crime Fraud in the Case of Four Coutts Protesters Kept in Jail Without Any Conviction for Over 500 Days on the Bogus Charge That They Conspired to Kill Cops”
by ANTHONY JAMES HALL
“The Coutts fiasco is emblematic of the political capture of Canada’s now-mostly-dysfunctional criminal justice system. The latest “pre-trial” phase of this major scandal in- the-making, unfolded in late July in a Lethbridge Alberta courthouse. There is a process sporadically underway based on the government’s accusation that four men at the Coutts protest conspired to murder members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police…”
Hall’s analysis is on substack.

Posted by: bevin | Aug 2 2023 13:29 utc | 168

@ Posted by: psychohistorian | Aug 2 2023 6:04 utc | 165
There is just so much wrong with that.
To begin: Something that you use and need is not an “investment”.
Then: Buying 2nd home as investment – Blackrock would agree with you. How about building homes as source of income.
China is just mimicking western finance, which is valid to a point.
How about all loans (liens) are held by and interest is paid to the government (tax payers / citizens) and banks originate and service loans.
No private entity can own real property – it belongs to the king.
see: Michael Hudson.

Posted by: jared | Aug 2 2023 13:52 utc | 170

Posted by: psychohistorian | Aug 2 2023 6:04 utc | 165
Interesting info about buying a house in China.
Buying a house is the best investment, provided you live in it.

Posted by: Passerby | Aug 2 2023 14:48 utc | 172