Freedom of speech only exists when nothing you say will have an impact.

Posted by: Colin | Sep 10 2023 13:49 utc | 3

It’s very clear that Occupied Palestine is becoming increasingly Totalitarian as Crooke reports in his al-Mayadeen column:

The strategic goal is to reshape the Israeli state, so as to assert Jewish primacy over all of “Israel” and over the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. This would mean attenuation, or even elimination, of Palestinian civil rights.
Finance Minister Smotrich has taken to referring to the two-state solution as a ‘fantasy’ — one that must be crushed “willingly or by force (i.e. ‘with deeds’: through a massive increase in settlements).” Thus, to “make it clear to all, … [he underlines] the Arab dream of a state in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] – is no longer viable.”
Co-minister Ben-Gvir has amplified, “My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs.” This is the consolidation of apartheid in occupied Palestine.
To further make his point, Ben-Gvir provocatively invited ministers to oversee the demolition of houses in an impromptu Bedouin village in the Negev: “They should understand that we govern here – and that this country has a landlord.” (There are 100,000 Bedouins in Negev – there, from the days before Turkish or British rule).
Again, to underline the point about ‘who governs,’ Smotrich has moved quickly to urge government agencies to prepare for an additional 500,000 settlers in the West Bank – which would bring the current estimated population of 700,000 settlers up to more than 1 million within the next decade.

Thus, there’s no reason for ANY Arab state to have “friendly” relations with Apartheid Palestine, or for any other Global South nation as what’s happening is clear Colonial Conquest. The big question is how will Russia and China react? And then there’re those Arab nations bordering Palestine; their territory will surely be targeted next given the ultra-radical nature of the Zionists. The continuing assault against Syria is proof of that behavior.

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 10 2023 13:52 utc | 5

The Tooze “Chartbook 238” piece, and the background paper it references is great. Thanks!

Posted by: too scents | Sep 10 2023 14:01 utc | 7

“Freedom of speech only exists when nothing you say will have an impact.” Colin@2
Unless those who have the power to suppress free speech are forced to concede it.
Which is what has happened again and again in our histories- the examples are too numerous to need mentioning.
So what Colin is telling us is that if we do not want to be exploited, misled, lied to and lied about, mistreated and left to die young we had better learn to do what our ancestors did when they built the Unions, cut the heads off their Kings, expelled the invaders or moved to places where they would be better treated.
Except that Colin would probably say that resistance is hopeless, the truth will never prevail and that we are all doomed (DOOMED). Which he is at perfect liberty to do.

Posted by: bevin | Sep 10 2023 14:02 utc | 9

there’s no reason for ANY Arab state to have “friendly” relations with Apartheid Palestine
Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 10 2023 13:52 utc | 3
—
The Berliner Morgenpost reports that a portrait of Golda Meir hangs behind the desk of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
https://www.morgenpost.de/politik/article239391359/aussenministerin-annalena-baerbock-todesangst-ukraine-gruene-interview.html

Posted by: too scents | Sep 10 2023 14:12 utc | 11

too scents: I guess that means she saw the movie.

Posted by: malenkov | Sep 10 2023 14:15 utc | 13

Posted by: bevin | Sep 10 2023 13:37 utc | 1
By contrast, it was obvious that the Rose article is just a repeat frothing-at-the-mouth anti-EU rant, which as usual fails at ever identifying the advantages nearly all EU states have benefitted from. Even UK is on its knees now begging to be let back into the Horizon Europe scheme.

Posted by: laguerre | Sep 10 2023 14:24 utc | 15

happy sunday! thanks b and the informed posters of moa… much appreciation from this poster..

Posted by: james | Sep 10 2023 14:45 utc | 17

“…the Rose article is just a repeat frothing-at-the-mouth anti-EU rant..”
laguerre@8
Let others be the judges. Read the article and decide for yourself: Is it frothing at the mouth or superb analysis ?
laguerre is right about one thing though: the widespread feeling in the UK that it ought to apply to rejoin the EU is an accurate measure of the utter lack of imagination, courage or reasoning ability in the Establishment and its echo chambers.
Leaving the EU implied an alternative plan and a social consensus for the future, in particular an alternative to neo-liberalism, from the very society which had come to grips with the appalling meaning of economic liberalism before most of the world knew what it was.
Putting the BRIT in BRICS is a far more hopeful course than trying to jump back onto the good ship Brussels before it sinks into the foetid excrement on which it floats.

Posted by: bevin | Sep 10 2023 14:50 utc | 19

“China’s missing foreign minister Qin Gang may have a companion now. Xi Jinping’s defense minister is also missing and in trouble. Even Xi’s most trusted person in the PLA, Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia, is rumored to be implicated. Their cases are tied to the Rocket Force fiasco. What has happened to the Rocket Force? Why does Xi Jinping fear the PLA elite troops so much?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ_82CAmexU

Posted by: Antonym | Sep 10 2023 15:00 utc | 21

MoA’s science junkies will want to read my latest substack, “Vladimir Putin Met with Young Scientists and Specialists of the Russian Federal University Nuclear Center at Sarov’s All-Russian Research Institute Experimental Physics (RFNC – VNIIEF)”, as will those curious about Russia’s policy in several areas of higher education and its progress on implementing its security goal of replacing all Western computer software by 2025. The discussion is mostly led by the young Acadamian researchers and IMO is quite stimulating.

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 10 2023 15:30 utc | 23

Insurance turns out to be the exact point of collision between capitalism and a collapsing global ecosystem, little-noted, though happening in the plain sight of public filings out here in California, where towns burn down and insurance companies clear out. They’re also pulling out of Florida, out of homeowner’s insurance entirely…
Very few thinkers have really thought through the implications of this collision, but it’s already getting very difficult for young folks to buy a home.

It’s a fact. The US property and casualty industry suffered losses of $5 billion in 2021, which ballooned to losses of $26.5 billion in 2022. There have already been 15 confirmed weather/climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each in the US as of August 8, 2023. That was before Hurricane Idalia, the damage costs of which are still being calculated. Losses are almost certain to exceed 2022 amounts.
Yet the Treasury has been lackadaisical in its efforts to require the insurance industry to disclose information related to climate change-related disasters. Consequently, regulators have incomplete information to draw upon when supervising and regulating firms. All of this leaves consumers uninformed about their real estate risks. The letter reminded the FOI that withdrawals of insurers from natural disaster-prone states are merely a preview of the climate crisis threat and its potential to upturn the long-term economic health of communities around the country.

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/09/07/the-climate-crisis-is-wreaking-havoc-on-the-insurance-industry/

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Sep 10 2023 15:54 utc | 25

MoA’s science junkies will want to read my latest substack,
Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 10 2023 15:30 utc | 12

Hi Karl. I’m looking forward to reading it.
I have a suggestion/request. If you plan to write about the elections in Russia, could you provide some information about how remote voting is conducted, with regard to registration, security, etc. Thanks.

Posted by: David Levin | Sep 10 2023 16:15 utc | 27

Posted by: bevin | Sep 10 2023 14:50 utc | 10
so what was there in the Rose article that was new? The EU is not particularly a neo-liberal institution, though a common accusation. It is or has been markedly protectionist of European economies. That is not neo-liberal, rather nearer to what a socialist would want. (That is until the EU foolishly allowed Tony Blair to persuade them into admitting the East Europeans). Lots of countries benefitted enormously from subsidies bringing regions nearer to European norm. The Greeks suffered because of the criminal irresponsibility of their government, not bothering with taxing anyone: there’s a limit to which you can get Germans to agree to fiscal irresponsibility. Frankly I would have thrown them out of the EU, but there is no mechanism to do so. The only part he got right was where he recognised the folly of submitting to US foreign policy, which is in no way beneficial to European interests. But that is a very recent thing, and one can still hope things will change in the future (though I’m not convinced).
By the way, I quite understand that you haven’t lived in Europe for decades. Have you actually visited Europe recently?

Posted by: laguerre | Sep 10 2023 16:15 utc | 29

Thanks to b for the weekly reading list.
Two other suggestions:
Young English-speaking Chinese broadcaster with short, detailed takes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TynMo7nHIk
Birmingham going bankrupt. More to follow. China and US similar issues. After this quick survey I got the distinct feeling that a worldwide depression is inevitable. The plunge in British exports last year is extraordinary. The debt in the US seems designed to brings things to a painful, unworkable point. China also has issues. (He is not anti-Xi as far as I can tell.)
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-china-convergence
An Aug 3rd 30,000 (!) word essay on how the managerial class has emerged from the Industrial revolution and, albeit in somewhat different ways East and West, is converging to the quite likely ruin of us all. Definitely worth reading.
He writes in depth and with great understanding both of political theory in history and in the present, with much attention to both the US and China, whose history he knows well. Publishes articles slightly less than once a month; substantive and deeply original thinking. Am particularly looking forward to the one entitled: “A Prophecy of Evil: Tolkien, Lewis, and Technocratic Nihilism.”
Here is a paragraph about the sixties in the US in a section about ‘self-governance’:

The counter-culture revolution of the 1960s and its “anti-authoritarian” quest to “liberate” the self from restraints therefore served the managerial regime perfectly. It swiftly broke down traditional informal bonds of stable, resilient communities that had for centuries helped to shelter individuals, and tore up moral norms that had helped them structure and discipline their lives without the aid of the state. So liberated, the self-expressive individual was made a king in name, but left far more isolated, alone, and vulnerable in actuality. Such an atomized individual proved far easier pickings for the mass corporation, which swooped in to offer all manner of ready-to-purchase replacements for what was once the social commons, and for the state, which acted on demand to guarantee the sovereignty of these liberated selves and protect them from their own choices. Their capacity for self-governance thus degraded, and encouraged to think of themselves as reliant on the state for their freedom, the public’s demands for management by a higher authority then only increased relentlessly.
Not surprisingly, the 1960s produced a great explosion of bureaucratic administration in America, with the state happily taking on a series of grand social management projects, including the War on Poverty, the Great Society, and Civil Rights law. These not only turbocharged the growth of the administrative apparatus, but also proved fundamental to propelling the managerial system’s expansion beyond the confines of the state, greatly enhancing the managerial role of non-profit organizations and compelling the creation of such innovates as the modern Human Resources department, which now serves essentially as a compliance arms of the managerial state within nearly every private sector firm.

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 10 2023 16:27 utc | 31

Michal Krupa on Poland’s subservience and its geopolitcal ambitions
“…Professor Stanisław Bieleń, eminent University of Warsaw scholar of internationals relations, is a case in point. Bieleń can rightly be considered Poland’s leading voice of foreign policy realism in the academic world. His research is focused on Polish Eastern policy, i.e. regarding the nations of the former Soviet Union, especially Russia.
“Much of what comes out of Poland currently from official channels is usually nothing else than a repetition of Washington talking points, such as President Andrzej Duda’s recent blunt admission to The Washington Post that “right now, Russian imperialism can be stopped cheaply, because American soldiers are not dying.” Seems some lives are worth more than others. In this light it is especially crucial to give Western audiences a feel for what a serious Polish scholar has to say on the matter.
“In recent days, Bieleń has penned an article for the conservative weekly Myśl Polska, about what he calls, Polish “imperial obsessions”. Bielen’s observations should be considered a foundational diagnosis of the hubris of the vast majority of the Polish medial and political elites, which became more severe after February 24 2022.
“After giving a theoretical and historical overview of the phenomenon of empire, as manifested in different national forms, Bieleń states: “Telling Poland that in the context being Ukraine’s most generous protector, it has become a mighty power in the Eastern European region, is nothing more than being harnessed to the chariot of US hegemonic policy. America has taken advantage of Russia’s weakness and found new spaces for imperialist expansion in post-Soviet areas. It needs several obedient states to pursue its strategic interests. Poland, still stuck in a satellite mentality, hostile to Russia, sniffing out treachery and threats from everywhere, lined with fear, has become the perfect executor of instructions coming from overseas….”
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2023/09/06/subservience-to-washington-does-not-a-superpower-make/

Posted by: bevin | Sep 10 2023 17:20 utc | 33

Posted by: laguerre | Sep 10 2023 16:15 utc | 15
Have you read the maastich accords? The EU is neoliberal to the core, not by accident but by law.

Posted by: Jörgen Hassler | Sep 10 2023 17:37 utc | 35

laguerre@15
An interesting reply- Yes the EU’s predecessors were protectionist and did pursue the socialist reforms that were characteristic of the post war era.
But, as you note, that has channged. The EU is now very much a neo-liberal institution. It not only imposes neo-liberal measures but uses its influence and power over member states to eradicate traces of the old ‘social contract’ days where it can. Which, of course means in the most vulnerable states, the poorest and the nost open to bullying.
As to Blair’s role in the opening up of the EU to the east this was consistent with the adoption by the EU of measures whose only beneficiaries were in the White House and among the corporate oligarchy.
Neo-liberalism marched alongside subservience to imperialism.
It seems to me, as someone who once harboured hopes that the EU would develop into a social federal structure strong enough to slough off the malign influence of the Empire and NATO, that you refuse to admit that times have changed and that the EU is very different from the EEC and the Common Market. Just as Macron is very different from de Gaulle or Mitterand.
Perhaps you do not get away often enough.
For my own part, to answer your question, I am lucky to be able to visit the UK quite regularly and to spend a few weeks in France on the winter. I have relatives working in several European countries and, to be honest, with the exception of some High Tory in laws who were enthusiastic supporters of Boris, they were all dead against leaving the EU.

Posted by: bevin | Sep 10 2023 17:39 utc | 37

Karlof1 @ 12:
Really enjoyed this conversation with Putin and young Russian scientists–thanks for pulling it together. As a retired person once associated with research institutions in the West, I simply cannot imagine a conversation around initiatives of this sort–the sense of being part of a grand adventure and projet de societe–in any Western country today.

Posted by: Paul Damascene | Sep 10 2023 17:48 utc | 39

Karlof,
The tragedy of the Jewish State is the Likud chose a strategy of establishing-facts-on-the-ground in the heady days following June 1967. Plenty of Israelis warned at that time that the Likud’s strategy would inevitably lead to what we see now – a insecure Jewish state whose leadership becomes ever more extreme nationalistic – embarrassingly so as those quotes you posted sadly show.
The best hope for a secure and lasting peace for the Jewish State remains UN resolution 181. It also happens to describe the sole internationally recognized borders of the Arab and Jewish states. Everything else is a temporary ceasefire line – hence the Likud’s manic insecurity.
Tragedy which could be easily averted.

Posted by: Exile | Sep 10 2023 17:52 utc | 41

@bevin | Sep 10 2023 14:50 utc | 10
Rose’s article, fourth line:

This comes as no surprise as the sole goal of Europe’s neo-liberal political class and corporations is an inexorable income distribution from the bottom upwards, which we see not only in the increasing inequality, but also in the failure to stop climate change.

There it is, right at the start. The mark of the woke beast: “failure to stop climate change”. I am not surprised that Rose, being American, is imbued in neoliberal wokism. I am surprised that he is given credit.
Another idiotic statement from that article:

In many East European nations one recently established political party replaces the other in government. Their corruption is boundless, their obedience to the EU impeccable, their citizens disillusioned.

East European countries are all but obedient to the EU. If anything they are obedient to the USA.
In fact, now the EU is about half way to a recover: they kicked out foreign agent, neoliberal on steroid UK, now they need to kick out the Eastern Europeans, starting from the Baltics and Poland. Let Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the Ukraine, maybe Romania and Bulgaria have their US-led, neocon commonwealth. That would only be to the benefit of the EU.

Posted by: SG | Sep 10 2023 17:53 utc | 43

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 10 2023 15:30 utc | 12
[Key to Time Travel: A reproducible, applied method of slowing time.]
*A gift from a real American to the good people of Russia for it’s sacrifice leading mankind forward. Your understanding of truth, requires this invention, deserves your preservation, you gave humanity hope, direction and purpose; as western monopolies steal, harm and will always bury innovation…11/22/23🐾

Posted by: Merlin | Sep 10 2023 17:57 utc | 45

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 10 2023 13:52 utc | 3
Either the occupiers leave or the Palestinians leave. There is no other possible solution there. Israel is ‘agreement-incapable’ when it comes to living with the Palestinians, especially given the entirely unworkable (no doubt by design) geographical configuration of the original territories.
Initial 1937 proposal with two separate and distinct territories:
https://israeled.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/part-july-1937.gif
Agreed-upon arrangement with split and surrounded Palestinian territories, obviously designed for future absorption.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/images/israel49.gif

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 10 2023 18:21 utc | 47

@ Exile | Sep 10 2023 17:52 utc | 21
The only tragedy is the Palestinians’: that a Jewish state was imposed on their lands in the first place.

Posted by: malenkov | Sep 10 2023 18:32 utc | 49

@ laguerre | Sep 10 2023 16:15 utc | 15
perhaps you could explain the rationale on the part of the eu for this… maybe you are unable to read rt? germany in particular seems particularly hostile to the russian people wanting to punish them for decisions that germany and the eu are unhappy with from russia’s leadership.. just how infantile can the eu be here?? apparently, a lot..
EU allows seizure of phones, cars from Russians

Posted by: james | Sep 10 2023 18:56 utc | 51

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Sep 10 2023 15:54 utc | 13:

Insurance turns out to be the exact point of collision between capitalism and a collapsing global ecosystem, little-noted, though happening in the plain sight of public filings out here in California, where towns burn down and insurance companies clear out. They’re also pulling out of Florida, out of homeowner’s insurance entirely…

Excellent post!
But in my opinion it is too hasty to conclude insurance’s predicament is due to climate change. It’s not blatantly obvious that hurricanes are visiting Florida more frequently, nor wildfire catching up in California. The extent of damages and the costs of recoveries, however, are!!! Mother Nature is not guilty of imposing higher costs to recover from natural disasters, human beings are!!! Back in the mid-60’s, one mile of Interstate Freeway costed approx. $1 million; it’s now closer to $100 million even in scarecely populated regions. Used to be cleanup of aftermaths are handled professionally and by workers with genuine compassion, now the first stage of aftermath cleanup is finger pointing, redtapping, and take-advantage-of-crisis thinkings.
Insurance business model are still largely the same as 50 years ago, but we as a society has changed. Half century ago people like Biden/Trump/McConnel/Newsome et alia couldn’t possibly get elected, but now these and only these type gets elected because they have thicker skins/more malicious minds/craftier at tricks. Half century ago there was still a modicum of meritology in staffing and administrating, now all in charge seem to be cynics. Half a century ago retail worked well on an honor system, now retailors are clearing out of cities due to blatant shoplifts and lawlessness.
Yup! Insurance business model is evolving due to something. That something has a lot to do with what most of MOA barflies moan about here on daily basis. What Insurances are doing is just an inevitable along the way of Empire’s decline to oblivion.

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Sep 10 2023 18:57 utc | 53

SG@22
I do not share your view that Climate Change is not a real and dangerous phenomenon. I wish that it was not but, in common with all the other environmental and social dangers brought by capitalism and the absolute sovereignty of profit hunget corporations, it has to be recognised and dealt with by people awoken from their slumber.
Suggesting that climate change is part of a ‘woke’ programme advanced by an unnamed interest group- it wouldn’t be the capitalists who are fighting tooth and nail to preserve their investments in, interalia, fossil fuel industries- is anti-socialist propaganda.

Posted by: bevin | Sep 10 2023 19:31 utc | 55

“Agreed-upon arrangement with split and surrounded Palestinian territories, obviously designed for future absorption…” Scorpion@ 24
What is meant by ‘agreed upon’? This map was certainly never agreed to by the British government, the League of Nations or any Palestinian authorities.
I’m afraid that Israel missed the boat on partition, firstly, in 1948 by over reaching and expelling, employing terrorist methods, the inhabitants and then, when it was in a position to impose its demands on a corrupt and supine PLO and Palestinian Authority, insisting, as it currently does, on the expulsion of all Palestinians from the land.
What is going on currently is nothing less than genocide and those ruling Israel are openly genocidal.

Posted by: bevin | Sep 10 2023 19:43 utc | 57

“Half century ago people like Biden/Trump/McConnel/Newsome et alia couldn’t possibly get elected”
sure they could get elected. i don’t remember a glorious time of competence and integrity in the political class in the US. i mean Biden was first elected to the US Senate in 1972.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Sep 10 2023 20:20 utc | 59

@ Oriental Voice | Sep 10 2023 18:57 utc | 27
Muchas gracias for your thoughtful reply. The salient feature of any climate-related disaster trends is that such trends can reasonably be expected to keep getting worse. Reasoning about expectations is the kind of thing actuaries do, in order to intelligently calibrate premiums. In a recent chat with my own insurance agent (working for State Farm), I told her this ongoing exit of insurance companies from homeowner’s insurance is the gravest financial turmoil I’ve ever seen. She told me they have to pull out because they’re not allowed to charge what they need to charge. That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.
As regards insurance business models, it seems to me the whole idea of insurance, in the first place, is to distribute isolated risk among a general population. That model fundamentally makes no sense in the context of more or less nationwide disasters, such as the depredations of a collapsing global ecosystem. There will be no well people to bail out the hurting, you see.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Sep 10 2023 20:52 utc | 61

those ruling Israel are openly genocidal
@ bevin | Sep 10 2023 19:43 utc | 29
Sadly, not just Israelis, and not just rulers. What about your friends and neighbors? I recently had to part ways with a lifelong family friend, now prone to openly genocidal bigotry (of the Russophobic variety). Very hard times we’re living in, in 2023.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Sep 10 2023 21:04 utc | 63

Thanks for the replies on Crooke’s report and my substack on Putin’s discussion with the young scientists. But another piece was also done today, and that’s Lavrov’s meeting In Bangladesh with friends of Russia/USSR which begins as a reunion-like discussion that morphs into a very long answer to a very complex question: “How do you see the solution to the problem of Ukraine? A year or two later? When can we say the World is Safe?” Readers will discover new details to the overall answer.

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 10 2023 21:11 utc | 65

David Levin | Sep 10 2023 16:15 utc | 14–
I’ll do what I can to honor your request, but currently the #1 source site–Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation–is blocked to me in both English and Russian. But currently I’m visiting my daughter in Tennessee, so my home ISP might not have those sites blocked. I’ll know in ten days.

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 10 2023 21:15 utc | 67

Posted by: bevin | Sep 10 2023 19:43 utc | 29
“Agreed-upon arrangement with split and surrounded Palestinian territories, obviously designed for future absorption…” Scorpion@ 24
What is meant by ‘agreed upon’? This map was certainly never agreed to by the British government, the League of Nations or any Palestinian authorities.
======================================
Maybe I made a mistake in my search. I thought this was the official first map of Israel in 1949. Is this one better? From the Jewish virtual library?
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/images/israel49.gif
I don’t see any difference myself but don’t have them up side by side..
The very simple point is that the shape of the two nations is ridiculous, especially when compared to the 1939 proposal. The 1949 one has two split Palestinian zones surrounded by Israeli territory. Clearly designed to fail.

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 10 2023 21:18 utc | 69

Posted by: bevin | Sep 10 2023 19:31 utc | 28
“Suggesting that climate change is part of a ‘woke’ programme advanced by an unnamed interest group- it wouldn’t be the capitalists who are fighting tooth and nail to preserve their investments in, interalia, fossil fuel industries- is anti-socialist propaganda.”
I warmly recommend N.S. Lyons’ magisterial “The China Convergence” at https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-china-convergence#_ftn14. I have never in my life read an article which so clearly explains what is really going on, not only with ‘woke’ business but capitalism, democracy, modern societies and more, both in the West and China. And zero conspiracy theory. It’s fascinating, insightful and for me a profound relief. Puzzling contradictions along with bafflegab like ‘left’ ‘right’ ‘fascist’ ‘democracy’ and so on which I find rarely make sense these days are clearly explained.
He posits that the modern view’s materialist underpinnings lead to inevitable dead ends whilst throwing up, starting in the 1800s what he calls the ‘managerial class’. This is a natural evolution which has displaced previous notions like socialism and communism to which so many are still wedded. ‘Managerial class’ is a deceptively simple term but a fascinating, complex and overpowering beast, doomed to fail, but meanwhile threatening to devour us all. He believes China has a hard form versus the West’s softer form, but essentially they are the same. He also explains ‘woke’ as part of a neomarxist/materialist dialectic creating a Maoist style ‘Extreme Center’ to create not only ongoing revolution pushing resistance to a persecuted fringe but also an increasingly docile, infantilized citizenry. The persecution of the Deplorables (aka traditionalist who value family and religion) fits in with this approach perfectly.
I also learned that communism in China was sparked by the visit of John Dewey, aka Dewey Du Wei!

Mr. Science and the New Man
Psychologist, instrumentalist philosopher, and foremost American progressive educationalist John Dewey landed in China on May 1, 1919. It was three days before the outbreak of the May Fourth Movement, an anti-traditionalist wave that would grow out of student protests in Beijing and become a crusade to radically transform the nation. It would give birth to the Chinese Communist Party two years later, in 1921. The student movement’s slogan called for China to embrace “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy,” and with Dewey’s appearance it seemed Mr. Science had arrived. Chen Duxiu, co-founder of the CCP, said he thought Dewey embodied the whole spirit of the movement. Mao Zedong thought his educational theory “well worth studying.”[8] Adored as a progressive and modernizing hero, Dewey would remain in China for a tour that lasted more than two years, delivering over two hundred lectures to crowds of thousands of adoring fans. Many of those lectures were then translated into best-selling books distributed across the country. He was lauded as a “second Confucius” and nicknamed Dewey Du Wei, or Dewey the Great.

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 10 2023 21:39 utc | 71

#16 etc.
theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-china-convergence
I see this mentioned again.
It is an abominable pastiche of century old reactionary tropes, regurgitated with that comical and pseudo-prophetical style which apparently never ceases to impress American readers, since the time of Walt Whitman…
The sequence of delirious categories, starting from “Technocratic Scientism” and culminating with “Homogenizing Cosmopolitan Universalism” is straight out of Mussolinian rhetoric about the “Demo-Plutocratic-Bolshevik-Judaic-Masonic” conspiracy.
Empty mentions of the always misunderstood (and in any case terribly overrated) George Orwell are also perfectly fitting…
A further “denouement” of the true fascist nature of several well-respected and “authoritative” posters here.
I always wonder how they feel about that Brecht quote…

Posted by: MoaMetal | Sep 10 2023 21:52 utc | 73

BORIS JOHNSON: Britain will NEVER, repeat NEVER, rejoin the EU. Instead of appearing embarrassed by Brexit, the Tories need to champion it, exploit its benefits – and explain why leaving was brave, remarkable and right
The EU is evil and rejoining it would be a disaster for the UK… The EU is the only future and joining it is essential for Ukraine. BTW Super-Genius Bojo was in Ukraine the other day getting an honorary doctorate.
Clownworld hits liquefy on the Osterizer, they are playing us for imbeciles and maybe rightfully so, we are so far down the path of dystopia that cognitive dissonances no longer leads to ennui but to a sense of fulfillment.

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Sep 10 2023 22:24 utc | 75

Posted by: MoaMetal | Sep 10 2023 21:52 utc | 37
#16 etc.
theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-china-convergence
I see this mentioned again.
It is an abominable pastiche of century old reactionary tropes, regurgitated with that comical and pseudo-prophetical style which apparently never ceases to impress American readers, since the time of Walt Whitman…
======================================
Hit a nerve, eh?
Are you a marxist by any change? Just curious…
I wish you could have provided an example or made a clear point other than hurling invective. I would be interested to know what you think is so off. But maybe you would rather not say, eh?

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 10 2023 22:47 utc | 77

Posted by: bevin | Sep 10 2023 19:43 utc | 29
“Agreed-upon arrangement with split and surrounded Palestinian territories, obviously designed for future absorption…” Scorpion@ 24
What is meant by ‘agreed upon’? This map was certainly never agreed to by the British government, the League of Nations or any Palestinian authorities.
=====================================
Why don’t you please explain what is such a big deal about the map? I don’t get it. Hasn’t Israel been a recognized nation with borders for quite some time? Can a map not show the original territory? Is there something misleading about the one I picked – from dozens which come up when doing a search.
What’s the fuss? Do you disagree with the point that the two territories were configured badly. Who cares about exactly which map is being used? If you care, why not explain the problem instead of raising cryptic objections.

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 10 2023 22:58 utc | 79

RE: “Effects remain, especially in the mindset of their would-be successors.”
Posted by: Cynic | Sep 10 2023 23:10 utc | 108
I see what you see, this generation is seeing perilous times.
But remember we’re not the only ones. Think of what the World looked like to the average person in WW2… they were probably absolutely certain Hitler was going to run the World. And all his associate collaborators with whatever names they gave their various organizations.
Again, evidence “against” that megalomaniac ideology exists of a one World Dictatorship. Not “for it”.

Posted by: Trubind1 | Sep 10 2023 23:26 utc | 81

All of this foreboding about the abandonment of the US dollar does not seem to be showing up anywhere that you can put your hand on.

Posted by: arby | Sep 10 2023 23:28 utc | 83

On the topic of “the climate” this article from Jonathan Cook just landed in my inbox.
https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/were-rearranging-the-deck-chairs
In which he addresses a critic of his previous article.
The critique:
https://plagueonbothhouses.substack.com/p/a-rebuttal-of-jonathan-cooks-climate
I honestly haven’t had time to do a deep dive, nor was I aware of the “rebuttal” until now, so same for that. Just figured the bar might find it interesting.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 10 2023 23:30 utc | 85

To my previous–
Gold is roughly the same price it was over two years ago
The ruble has done a face plant over the past few months
the S&P is up close to all time highs after the covid and repo smack down a couple of years ago

Posted by: arby | Sep 10 2023 23:33 utc | 87

Linked within the Jonathan Cook article above is this recent essay at the LRB regarding, among other things, the uncertainties in modeling.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n17/geoff-mann/treading-thin-air
I have nothing else to offer at this time, and I’ve just taken on a new contract that will consume a lot of bandwidth over the coming weeks, so it’s unlikely I’ll ever get around to the LRB essay. But again, just placing here for others. Apologies if it’s already been discussed in another thread; haven’t been keeping up.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 10 2023 23:35 utc | 89

Below is the summary quote from the Adam Tooze link about US treasuries

Whether you regard the denouement – direct Fed stabilization – as a disaster depends on your worldview. It depends on how squarely you are willing to face the historical fact that our modern monetary and fiscal constitution profoundly entangles the state and the private financial system and it is the central bank that forms the ultimate backstop. You can reasonably advocate for a system that is even more transparently backstopped by the central bank. You can also reasonably prefer a new iteration of public-private partnership with new rules, new participants and new backstops. What Menand and Younger’s wonderful essay shows to be a fantasy is any idea of a fiscal and monetary system based on rigid separation, a “free” capital market, or a “privatized” money supply.

I got upset looking at the posting’s Table 3. Percentage of Public Debt owned by Commercial Banks and the Fed. It shows a massive increase in Fed ownership of Treasuries since 2020 and a slight increase of bank ownership but the gap between the two looks like the largest its ever been….banks at less than 10% and Fed at about 30%.
What that says to me is that global private finance is getting out of US Treasuries because they are about to be proven of much less “value” then they currently trade at relative to value….the adjustment back to a value associated money will be difficult for the US money system which has been the tool of private finance since at least 1913.
Then what happens to all the global debt that is denominated in US dollars? Does it get downgraded to some realistic amounts? Or some/most forgiven entirely?

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 10 2023 23:42 utc | 91

“about to be” Is sort of like “the world will end tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
My guess is that the dollar’s demise is showing up disguised as inflation.
They blame everything else but inflation started at roughly the start of the SMO and the sanction routine.

Posted by: arby | Sep 10 2023 23:52 utc | 93

Trump survived impeachment. Biden may not be so lucky
The president is desperate to hide his secret emails to Hunter Biden. Why?
By Charles Lipson
https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57816.htm
Talking of Jonathan Cook-see Tom Q Collins @45-he argues that “The West’s blueprint for goading China was laid out in Ukraine”:
” The West is writing a script about its relations with China as stuffed full of misdirection as an Agatha Christie novel.
“In recent months, US and European officials have scurried to Beijing for so-called talks, as if the year were 1972 and Richard Nixon were in the White House.
“But there will be no dramatic, era-defining US-China pact this time. If relations are to change, it will be decisively for the worse.
“The West’s two-faced policy towards China was starkly illustrated last week by the visit to Beijing of Britain’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly – the first by a senior UK official for five years.
“While Cleverly talked vaguely afterwards about the importance of not “disengaging” from China and avoiding “mistrust and errors”, the British parliament did its best to undermine his message.
“The foreign affairs committee issued a report on UK policy in the Indo-Pacific that provocatively described the Chinese leadership as “a threat to the UK and its interests”.
“In terminology that broke with past diplomacy, the committee referred to Taiwan – a breakaway island that Beijing insists must one day be “reunified” with China – as an “independent country”. Only 13 states recognise Taiwan’s independence….”
https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57819.htm

Posted by: bevin | Sep 11 2023 0:38 utc | 95

@Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 10 2023 22:47 utc | 39
Your comment to MoaMetal:

Are you a marxist by any change? Just curious…
I wish you could have provided an example or made a clear point other than hurling invective. I would be interested to know what you think is so off. But maybe you would rather not say, eh?

The “Are you a marxist …” is straight out of the McCarthy Era playbook. The article you reference does in fact pretty much match the MoaMetals comments and is deeply flawed:
1. Its asserts that “At the same time, many citizens automatically assume everything the regime says is a lie. Officialdom in general is a Kafkaesque tragi-comedy of the absurd, something only to be stoically endured by normal people. Yet year by year the pressure to conform only continues to be ratcheted higher…” accurately describes the Chinese government model.
– Independent surveys have shown extremely high levels of trust by Chinese citizens in their government, for example: Cunningham, E., Saich, T., & Turiel. J. (2020, July) Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time. Cambridge, MS: Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation Harvard Kennedy School.
– The Chinese Party-state has been responsible for the forty-plus years of growth that has lifted China from the level of sub-Saharan states to an average income level of approaching that of southern Europe, with real incomes growing by 4.5% last year while they stagnated and fell in Western nations. This can hardly be characterized as a “tragi-comedy”. For the average citizen the Chinese government has created a miracle in their lifetime, no wonder they treat it with great respect and support – certainly not stoically enduring it!
2. The article states that “There are limits to this similarity, of course: the Chinese Communist Party is a brutal regime that has in the past killed tens of millions of its own people and still rules over them with an iron fist”. A “brutal regime” where the police are not armed, people are free to leave the country at any time, and the population enjoy ever increasing living standards? The “killed tens of millions” is the classic cold war trope which utterly misrepresents the Chinese Famine of 1958 to 1962 while also completely ignoring the incredible increases in average life expectancy of the previous decade.
3. The article states that both nations are converging on “totalizing techno-administrative governance”. The US has always been a bourgeois oligarchic-dominated country, the administrators are simply the courtiers of those with real power. Mistaking the courtiers for the powerful has always been a major error of so many commentators which serves the ownership-class wonderfully, as it makes them invisible. It also makes it possible for some of the courtiers to be sacrificed to make it look like things are changing. We may swap bourgeois liberal progressivism for bourgeois right wing populism, but nothing will have really changed about who rules the US. China is ruled by a revolutionary Party-state, displaying a “continued resilience through earned legitimacy” (Cunningham et al) which inhibits the development of a bourgeois oligarchy. The two nations could not be more different in this respect.
4. The author fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the managerial revolution, which was an increase in the size and complexity of the courtier class to better manage the plebs both within corporations and within society in general (i.e. to manage the cultural hegemony of the plebs). The ownership class took in some of the more successful entrepreneurs but these were not managers, plus some senior executives who managed to extract wealth from their corporations. The US is fundamentally run by the owners, not the managers. Look at the top 10 media companies, how many are owned/dominated by individuals or individual families? Plus so many other corporations. Blackrock etc. serve to concentrate ownership class wealth and power, and stock options were designed to make the managers serve the owners. After that the author wanders of on a whole bunch of generalizing assumptive nonsense about some supposed managerial ideology when the reality is that we have neoliberalism in the raw. In the Party-state the bureaucracy is dominated by trained scientists and engineers who focus on solving problems (especially NOT woke bullshit) within a still strong Marxist tradition (heavily reinvigorated by Xi).
5. After later page after page of badly structured, unsubstantiated assertions and tangled logic the author then makes the fundamental error of seeing fascism as at odds with liberalism. As Gramsci so well identified, fascism is what the ownership class utilize when liberalism has failed to manage the consent of the plebs. It is in no way at odds with liberalism, as the saying goes “just under the surface of any liberal is a fascist”. There is a lovely story fed to the plebs that the two are at odds, but this is just fantasy to conceal the true nature of power in bourgeois society. Divide and conquer has always been the rule of the US elite. Now that outright racism etc. cannot be used we have identity politics and culture wars.
6. The Chinese Communist Party has 96 million members and relies on the ongoing support and legitimization of the Chinese people as it cannot hide behind some facile performative notion of democracy to provide it with legitimacy – like the US governments that continuously work against the interest of the plebs. “Capitalist liberal democracy” is specific to a given period of Western bourgeois hegemonic dominance, trying to argue that other nations are bad because they don’t conform to this is civilizational supremacism as has been practised by the West for hundreds of years.
I have to admit that I gave up before the end, my brain could just not stand such an expanse of fatuous and highly misleading nonsense hanging off some core threads of fact. So I totally agree with MoaMetal’s comments.

Posted by: Roger | Sep 11 2023 0:50 utc | 97

@ arby
read this and tell me if it doesn’t emphasize that things are changing and not for the better for the west..
Europe’s Leaders Are Paying a High Price at Home for Supporting Ukraine

Posted by: james | Sep 11 2023 0:59 utc | 99