The MoA Week In Review - OT 2023-323
Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:
- December 24 - Merry X-mas
Palestine:
- December 28 - Biden Needs To Come To Israel's - And His Own - Rescue
Related:
- The Israel Supporter And The Sandwich - Caitlin Johnstone <--- Recommended!
- It’s Time to End the ‘Special Relationship’ With Israel - Foreign Policy
- For the Safety of Jews and Palestinians, Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism - Harvard Crimson
- IDF fighting new kind of war, making military history - Ynetnews
- Scoop: Biden in "frustrating" call told Bibi to solve Palestinian tax revenue issue - Axios
- Israel's Netanyahu bows to far right's demands on postwar Gaza as US frustration grows - AL-Monitor
- Egypt proposal to end Gaza war would see Hamas relinquish control to technocrat government - Majallah
- Netanyahu says Gaza war on Hamas will go on for ‘many more months,’ thanks US for new weapons sales - AP
Ukraine:
- December 28 - U.S. Is Pushing Kiev Into Admitting Defeat
- December 30 - Ukraine SitRep: Strikes On Ukrainian Weapon Production - Air Defense Lacking
Related:
- Putin lifts the fog of war in Ukraine - Indian Punchline<
- Russia Retakes Some Land Hard Won by Ukraine During Counteroffensive - New York Times
- Russia’s electronic warfare tactics are helping it turn the tide against Ukraine (archived) - Telegraph - The Russian Armed Forces deliberately hit a Kharkov hotel where a meeting of American generals and intelligence was planned - Pravda EN
This WSJ journo is staying at interesting places -->
Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof - 18:09 UTC · Dec 30, 2023By now, seven hotels where I stayed and four restaurants where I had eaten in Ukraine have been struck by Russian missiles. Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, Pokrovsk ...
---
Other issues:
RIP:
- John Pilger dies - Dorset Eye
- Farewell to John Pilger - Craig Murray
2023:
- PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Mess They Made of 2023 - Consortium News
- How Geopolitics Might Crash a 2024 Soft Landing - Bloomberg
Empire:
- Why ‘Bidenomics’ is falling flat with voters - The Hill
- The biggest foreign policy losers of 2023 - Responsible Statecraft
- The Global South does not like the West's “rules-based order” - Inter Affairs
Europe:
- Jacques Delors destroyed the European Left - Unherd
- Mass graves, grave questions: Britain’s secret Srebrenica role - Grayzone
- Serbian Maidan Attempt a 'Desperate Flailing Response' by NATO to Ukraine, Red Sea Failures - Sputnik
Russia:
- Vladimir Putin is running Russia’s economy dangerously hot - Economist
- Moscow’s anti-sanctions tsarina: What the woman leading Russia’s Central Bank says about economic war with the West - RT
- Factbox-What and Where Are Russia's $300 Billion in Reserves Frozen in the West? - US News
China:
- Why the American technological war against China could backfire - The Conservation
- Chinese automaker Nio develops 5nm chip, claims a 4x advantage over Nvidia's Drive Orin X processors - Tom's Hardware
- ‘Fighting spirit’: Xi Jinping reveals China’s push for global power after rare foreign policy meeting - SCMP
- Chinese Spy Agency Rising to Challenge the C.I.A. - New York Times
> At the same time, as spending on China at the C.I.A. has doubled since the start of the Biden administration, the United States has sharply stepped up its spying on Chinese companies and their technological advances.
...
Though the U.S. intelligence community has long collected economic intelligence, gathering detailed information on commercial technological advances outside of defense companies was once the kind of espionage the United States avoided.But information about China’s development of emerging technologies is now considered as important as divining its conventional military might or the machinations of its leaders. <
Use as open (not related to Ukraine and Palestine) thread ...
Posted by b on December 31, 2023 at 13:28 UTC | Permalink
next page »The Telegraph foresees the end of the neoliberal EU.
‘Beginning of the end’ for EU in current form as hard-Right parties surgeEuro 2024 elections seen as a battle to end Brussels overreach into national sovereignty
Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orban will lead their hard-Right parties to victory in next year’s European parliament elections, polls have predicted.
Their parties are expected to be the largest in the Netherlands, France, Italy and Hungary after the EU-wide vote in June, which is seen as a battle to end Brussels overreach into national sovereignty.
Nationalist parties from Poland, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Slovakia and Cyprus are also expected to return the most, or equal most, MEPs to Brussels and Strasbourg.
More than a third of all MEPs are predicted to be at the very least critical of the EU in a European parliament that has long been dominated by pro-EU groups – up from around 25 per cent a decade ago, excluding the UK.
Within that group, hard-Right parties, firmly opposed to Brussels and often anti-migration, are predicted to make gains of up to 25 per cent of MEPs, compared to just 11 per cent a decade ago.
continues ==> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/12/31/beginning-of-end-for-eu-hard-right-surge/
Posted by: too scents | Dec 31 2023 14:36 utc | 2
” This WSJ journo is staying at interesting places…”
Imperial spooks and mass media presstitutes tend to cohabitate. It is unseemly and best unseen by ”polite” society, but it’s how empire works and sausage is made.
Posted by: William Gruff | Dec 31 2023 14:37 utc | 3
With the 800 US bases world-wide enforcing compliance, it should be called the "Base Ruled Order".
Posted by: Dadda | Dec 31 2023 14:41 utc | 4
About Srebenica.
What the SAS were doing in the area is well known since the mid '90s: they were preparing propaganda materials to frame the Serbs, the same actions they did in Bucha, in Syria, in Kosovo and so on and on (fun fact: James Le Mesurier was deployed to Yugoslavia when the Kosovo war broke out). There is a very interesting Dutch documentary about the Milosevic trial, which exposes much of the blatant propaganda about Kosovo and Bosnia, which was blatant already at the time.
Israel and Hamas ostensibly tried to srebenica each other on the 7th October, Israel sacrificing a bunch of junkies attending a rave party, Hamas sacrificing the whole Gaza. However Hamas is in the pocket of Qatar, so the sacrifice of Gaza is not for the benefit of Palestinians (how could it be?).
Posted by: SG | Dec 31 2023 15:03 utc | 5
By now, seven hotels where I stayed and four restaurants where I had eaten in Ukraine have been struck by Russian missiles. Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, Pokrovsk ...
@b
Let me guess the hotels and restaurants patronized by nato advisors and mercs
Posted by: Newbie | Dec 31 2023 15:24 utc | 6
"...Russia equally failed to play along - even when they were given the family of European monarchy grand wizards to lead them down the path. They were stood on stage in front of their curtains and invited to the European Court Ball.
"The Romanovs balked at that trap and had to be exterminated. The Bolsheviks were created to do that. As the fake religions of Capitalism/Anti-capitalism was invented and perfected to take over from the dying superstition of traditional god othering that kept us slaves in our place.
"Their monarch cousins across Europe could only watch in awe at the Power of those who they also serve! The ‘Dark Hand’ as even the aged QE2 admitted in her last years..."
DunGroanin you are obviously stoned.
At least I hope so, for your sake.
Apart from the truism that there is a ruling class, almost everything you tell us is nonsense: the idea that the Bolsheviks were agents of some mysterious agency assigned to punish the Romanovs is sheer insanity.
The European ruling classes lived in fear of the potency of the Communist experiement for decades, it dominated their thinking and their actions, it led to fascism as a specific remedy and it shaped the response to fascism in and after the war.
As to the power of the Monarchs of Europe it is almost non-existent, what royalty there is serves as nothing more than a totem for the corporations' oligarchy which is desperately, as you indicate, trying to preserve the status quo even as it is rapidly changing. King Canute could have explained it to them.
Posted by: bevin | Dec 31 2023 15:49 utc | 8
DunGroanin | Dec 31 2023 14:22 utc | 1
Extermination is their final solution for those who stand against their Power or refuse to conduct a cull of their own peoples. If that is the only language they understand, then their extermination will be the only action that will stop this endless history of misery for the majority.
that is pretty harsh....I don't think many people would be comfortable saying or thinking that
Posted by: dan of steele | Dec 31 2023 16:11 utc | 9
John Pilger was one of the few with integrity, brain and heart. He will be remembered.
RIP
Posted by: Norwegian | Dec 31 2023 16:17 utc | 10
From the South China Morning Post article (archive link at end):
Xi also hailed the Belt and Road Initiative, his signature foreign policy and outbound investment project, as “the world’s most broad-based and largest platform for international cooperation,” and said Beijing had “shown the way in reforming the international system and order”.The meeting came on the heels of Xi’s remarks on Tuesday hailing Mao Zedong’s legacy and vowing “to build China into a stronger country and rejuvenate the Chinese nation on all fronts by pursuing Chinese modernisation”.
Xi, who has become China’s most powerful leader since Mao after securing a third leadership term last year, also pledged on Tuesday that “the motherland must and is bound to be reunited”, just days ahead of the presidential election in the self-ruled Taiwan.
Zhiqun Zhu, an international relations professor from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania said, “This is part of the CCP’s efforts to further centralise decision making, to highlight Xi’s contribution to China’s diplomacy in the new era, and to elevate Xi’s political status to the level of Mao”.
He said it was clear Xi called the shots on all important matters, raising some concerns about whether the party had completely departed from collective leadership.
“It’s unclear what Chinese diplomats can do to address serious external challenges. The party’s total control over foreign affairs leaves professional diplomats with little room to manoeuvre,” Zhu said.The readout made no mention of former foreign minister Qin Gang and former defence minister Li Shangfu, whose removal this year grabbed international headlines, while the men are yet to be accounted for.
Nice to see hints of critical perspective aired in a Chinese publication.
Dadda @ 4 - “Base ruled order” — Great call, very witty and of course true!
Posted by: Pundita | Dec 31 2023 17:01 utc | 12
It's gonna be fireworks well into the new year:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/houthi-rebels-boats-yemen-red-sea-attacks-85mxc6gzt
"Waiting for a joint statement from the United States, Britain, and an unknown European country, announcing that it is making final preparations for a large-scale military operation against the Houthis in Yemen, which includes launching hundreds of missiles and air strikes against pre-planned targets."
We can expect the 'unknown European cuntry' (aka fascist entity fronting up for Israel's genocide) to be le petit roi's France, because nothing says paying back Biden for stealing your submarine deal with AUKUS like joining him in some more useless military depravity.
I am sure bombing even more poor muslims will go down well in Paris and Marseille.. wouldn't want to have my car parked on the street there this week.
Posted by: Rubiconned | Dec 31 2023 17:13 utc | 13
thank you b... thanks to the many posters here too.. happy new year!! i hope 2024 brings peace in some way, shape or form..
blame it on my youth - keith jarretts
Posted by: james | Dec 31 2023 17:32 utc | 15
Man... Check out the comments at the UnHerd article about the French left Bunch of brainwashed cretins, hasbarats or genocidal lunatics. IOW scumbags.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Dec 31 2023 17:41 utc | 16
@ b
Thank you! Keep up the good work and the very best for 2024.
Posted by: Don Firineach | Dec 31 2023 17:45 utc | 17
Let me guess the hotels and restaurants patronized by nato advisors and mercs
Posted by: Newbie | Dec 31 2023 15:24 utc | 6
I am at loss how such suspicion could arise. Hotels are usually filled with the mix of tourists, business travelers, professional meetings etc., and why it should be different in Ukraine? From my limited perspective, the only ads I have seen about Ukraine are either for contributing to buy military equipment or to get a bride. But who says that what you see on YouTube or Twitter is representative? Absence of evidence is not evidence of the absence (of visitors not related to military efforts in Ukrainian hotels).
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Dec 31 2023 18:04 utc | 18
@b
Thanks for all that you do, and the forum.
Happy new year to you and the barflies.
May we see the end of hegemony in 2024.
RIP John Pilger.
Posted by: Sakineh Bagoom | Dec 31 2023 18:24 utc | 19
John Pilger's death is an irreplaceable loss. In mourning...
Posted by: Pnyx | Dec 31 2023 18:26 utc | 20
RIP John Pilger. I’m glad you outlived that son of a bitch Henry Kissinger. You’re Year Zero helped radicalize me when I saw it in the early 80s.
Posted by: KMRIA | Dec 31 2023 18:58 utc | 21
Thank you b for all your work here.
A healthy 2024 to you and everyone here. Let us remain hopeful for justice and peace.
RIP John Pilger. A great journalist.
Posted by: Lev Davidovich | Dec 31 2023 19:00 utc | 22
" Why ‘Bidenomics’ is falling flat with voters - The Hill"
He's just another George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. He's given us more wars, more poverty. Claims that "Trump is worse!!!" don't amount to much. When your choice is between death from syphilis or death from cholera, why bother?
Posted by: lester | Dec 31 2023 19:00 utc | 23
"Why is China hated ?"
They are a big, successful, non-Western civilization which has never been conquered by a Western colonial power (unlike, India,for example). The government is not submissive, the way Japan is, and the people are getting richer, not poorer, the way most in the USA are.
For a readable account of American fantasies about remaking China in it's own image, read James Bradley - The China Mirage; The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia, Little, Brown and Company (2015).
Richard M. Gibson with Wenhua Chen,The Secret Army: Chiang Kai-shek and the Drug Warlords of the Golden Triangle, 2011 by John Wiley & Sons (Asia) will give an alternative account of Taiwan trying to attick mainland China. Again, it's pretty readable.
Posted by: lester | Dec 31 2023 19:22 utc | 24
@ Bevin. You know my position on Marx, and the ism that he crafted.
No need to rehash it here. (Which is actually my preferred poison when available btw)
Apparently royalty is still big news for some Europeans. Something rotten in Denmark is the biggest story currently on the BBC web site.
The Crown as THE perma state exists in the U.K. and is still the most powerful controlling group through the privy council.
Shall we agree to disagree for the rest of the year?😁
@ Posted by: dan of steele
Maybe you don’t quite get what I meant. Should the ideas of Nazism or cannabiilsm or some such anti human philosophy be allowed to fester on? to rise again some generations down the line? Those who aim to exterminate me or mine or others I will never meet. They are looking at 19 out of 20 peoples to cull!
What possible solution is there to such a lethal danger to the majority of humanity?
Is there a vaccine???
I am not talking about a religion or ethnicity if that is what you think.
Pilger
The BBC puts up a late notice to him. Just 4 hours ago and under their Australia tab!
Along with some lame history , but creditably the editor has snuck in these morsels :
“He was in the same room when Robert Kennedy was assassinated ”
“In recent years, he was a high-profile supporter of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange - who is currently in Belmarsh Prison, fighting extradition to the US on charges related to the publication of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011.
He has described Assange as a "truth teller who has committed no crime but revealed government crimes and lies on a vast scale". “
“In a 2014 article for The Guardian, he wrote that President Vladimir Putin was "the only leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe".
He also told Russia's state-run international broadcaster, RT, that the Russian nerve agent attack in Salisbury in 2018 was "a carefully constructed drama in which the media plays a role".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-67853392
Posted by: DunGroanin | Dec 31 2023 19:53 utc | 25
Sorry, DunGroanin [1] but there is no happy global outcome. Marxism identified the class war but not the solution. That class war is increasingly brazen and too many of the Western conservative middle class find themselves as victims. They don't know the solutions but they know that even they are not safe. Sadly, ultra Right governments fill the gap: more tax cuts to the rich, domestic poverty and foreign wars. Sustained popular resistance is offered as a solution but, as evidenced in the divided social response to the Julian Assange case, with Brexit, and Palestinian genocide, it is unlikely to overcome the entrenched Conservative forces, a cabal of nut jobs still living with the mentality of a post WW2 world and possessing a certifiably deranged reliance on weapons of mass destruction. Only natural forces such as climate change and universal covid can force change on the Establishment-MIC global hegemony. These political realignment drivers all ride on the back of the most powerful political driver on our planet: global overpopulation. This is killing our natural resources, our environment and nature's species. There will never be enough I-phones much less gas-guzzling SUVs for 10 billion people, only nations in turmoil fighting over decreasing economic resources. A dead, concrete and deeply economically divided planet is all we can look forward to with our current model. Wars and politics won't save us but climate change and covid likely will. In all of this the Haves and the Have-Nots will still be with us. Still, we all hope for a good year and good will to others.
Posted by: damien | Dec 31 2023 20:25 utc | 26
@lester | Dec 31 2023 19:22 utc | 24
"Why is China hated ?"They are a big, successful, non-Western civilization which has never been conquered by a Western colonial power (unlike, India,for example).
They are socialists, that's why.
Posted by: SG | Dec 31 2023 20:56 utc | 27
The western corpress MSM is truly disgusting. Not a single mention of Pilger or his passing on CNN, NBC, Drudge, or Fox. Not exactly surprising, but rather confirming of their fall to utter baselessness and promotion of death and greed at the expense of humanity.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Dec 31 2023 21:13 utc | 28
Below is a quote from a ZH posting about the most popular postings in the past year at ZH
Finally, the top post of 2023 was one which also closed the loop on the top story of 2020: with nearly 1.1 million reads, the most popular article of the year was the "CDC Finally Releasing VAERS Safety Monitoring Analyses For COVID Vaccines." While the article offered lots of data, the bottom line is that the vaccine which the CDC claimed was safe and effective was neither safe nor effective.
The posting title if interested.....not a recommended read...too much right/left bias
2023 Greatest Hits: The Most Popular Articles Of The Past Year And A Look Ahead
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 1 2024 0:20 utc | 29
I admired John Pilger. RIP you great man.
Happy New Year - I have my doubts.
The Issue of the Day
The human enterprise is in overshoot, depleting essential ecosystems faster than
they can regenerate and polluting the ecosphere beyond nature’s assimilative
capacity. Overshoot is a meta-crisis that is the cause of most symptoms of
ecosystems destruction, including climate change, landscape degradation and
biodiversity loss.
The proximate driver of overshoot is excessive energy use and material
throughput serving the non-stop exponential growth paradigm underpinning the
global economy. Both rising incomes (material consumption) and population growth
contribute to expanding the growing human eco-footprint into overshoot, but
increasing throughput due to population growth is the larger factor at the
margin.
The egregious and widening inequality is a separate socio-political problem but
persists at global scales demanding it also be addressed equitably and morally.
Carbon emissions and overshoot of planetary boundaries are unlikely to decrease
as long as energy consumption, world GDP, and population continue to increase.
Mainstream approaches to alleviating various symptoms of overshoot merely
reinforce the status quo. This is counter-productive, as overshoot is ultimately
a terminal condition. The continuity of human civilisation will require a
cooperative, planned, ethical, evidence based contraction of both the material
economy and human populations over generational timescales.
A systems view of the meta-crisis is essential. Beginning with a personal to
civilisational transformation of the fundamental values, beliefs, assumptions
and attitudes underpinning neoliberal/capitalist industrial society. This
implies that a global civilization paradigm shift is urgently required.
Posted by: Lavrov's Dog | Jan 1 2024 0:36 utc | 30
@1 and DUN
And then you wake up.
This will NOT happen unless those technology magicians can be coerced/forced into turning their backs on their masters and turning their backs on ALL the delicious rewards they get.
Posted by: bisfugged | Jan 1 2024 0:43 utc | 31
@18 Pete
Just like Israel these days, there is NO tourism anywhere in Eastern Ukraine at this time. I would have thought that that was something of a no-brainer dude. We have seen time and again spectacular missile shots of destroyed hotel complexes that once catered to tourists but now show endless pics/video of people in uniforms or casual military clothes and sporting tattoos of units, fav nazis and ugly girlfriends stumbling around dazed or helping first responders.
Posted by: bisfugged | Jan 1 2024 1:01 utc | 32
The Issue of the Day 2/2
Quoting DR. WILLIAM REES"I think it's really interesting to look historically at this whole question of Growth because for all intents and purposes there was none for 250,000 years. Yet in just the last 200 years we've seen more change than in the previous entire history of human beings. Only 10 generations of human beings out of thousands have experienced this phenomenon of Growth. That's growth in population, growth in technology, (growth in consumption, growth in energy use, growth in wealth and constant economic growth) in sufficient quantity so that these recent generations would notice in the course of their lifetimes.
So it's really a very very recent phenomenon. But because all of us alive today and for the past few Generations have been embedded within this growth dynamic (paradigm) we take it (for granted) to be the norm and therefore we project ourselves into the future as if it can continue forever - (because we assume it's just the way things are - it has been normalized instead of being understood for what it is: Exceptionally unique and temporary!)
But the fact is that this is the single most abnormal period in human history. It is completely unprecedented. It has never occurred before and can never occur again."
Dr Bill Reese is a population ecologist, an ecological economist, originator and co-developer of ecological footprint analysis.
William Rees | Confronting Overshoot: Changing the Story of Human Exceptionalism
1hr 30m podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MVmkIYy9aI
Sharing this not because it's the best or only good explanation of the meta-crisis but because it was handy and topical, reasonably up-to-date from Dec 6th. There are other good sources one can find about these kinds of issues and global systems perspectives.
Posted by: Lavrov's Dog | Jan 1 2024 1:10 utc | 33
DunGroanin | Dec 31 2023 19:53 utc | 25
What damien | Dec 31 2023 20:25 utc | 26 said.
I can accept that you did not mean any particular religion or race but one could easily infer one. What I see as unpleasant is your use of extermination. That never works and can never work because there will always be those who take power over others. Most of that power is freely given by all of us....usually because it is the path of least resistance.
I think it was in the American Sniper movie where they spoke of people falling into three categories; sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. there will always be wolves that like to eat sheep. The best the sheep can hope for is a friendly dog to keeps the wolves away.
In our own optimistic way, I believe that is what most of us think we are doing by pointing out the wolves' plans and encouraging the dogs to do something about it.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 1 2024 1:24 utc | 34
Ilan Pappe asked in the recent ConsortiumNews interview with John Pilger about the film on Palestine, “Did I do enough yesterday?” as a measure of one’s integrity in working for justice and peace.
John Pilger, may he rest in peace, did.
~~
There’s also this interview with Michael Hudson in which he reviews his view of the global divisions occurring.
Transcript provided. Young people, look East.
https://globalsouth.co/2023/12/30/prof-michael-hudson-world-predictions-for-2024/
Posted by: suzan | Jan 1 2024 1:46 utc | 35
Thank you, b, for the Harvard Crimson editorial piece by Bernie Steinberg. I quote:
Let me speak directly to Jewish students at Harvard.I know that it’s alienating and hurtful to so many of you when campus Jewish organizations, like Hillel and Chabad, take positions that exclude your voices. To those students, I say: The Jewish tradition is much deeper than any organization. No one has a monopoly on Judaism.
Continue to learn Torah, Jewish history, and our ethical traditions. Continue to draw from these sources — your sources — to find yourself, to build community, to build your own power, and even to build your own Jewish organizations.
Be boldly critical of Israel — not despite being Jewish, but because you are. There is no tradition more central to Judaism than prophetic truth-telling, no Jewish imperative more urgent than bravely criticizing corrupt leadership, starting with our own..."
Posted by: juliania | Jan 1 2024 2:30 utc | 36
Ha! Happy new year. Friends and Foes. And some AI not?
You hate thriving humanity? You are my enemy.
You think you know how many humans should exist? You are my enemy.
You believe you know better than anyone else what humanity and life in this world is? You are my enemy.
Bring it!
Otherwise you are my friend.
HNY.
Posted by: DunGroanin | Jan 1 2024 2:35 utc | 37
You hate thriving humanity? You are my enemy.
You think you know how many humans should exist? You are my enemy.
You believe you know better than anyone else what humanity and life in this world is? You are my enemy.
Bring it!
Otherwise you are my friend.
HNY.
Posted by: DunGroanin | Jan 1 2024 2:35 utc | 37
Thank you, DunGroanin! I was wondering how to segue into a small segment of Book VI of The Republic dealing with Socrates'(and Plato's) opinion of 'the masses,' and here -- coming up on midnight across this country -- you are!
I said in my short bit last open forum that Socrates/Plato are of a mind that the city created in speech though not any city present to their day was still,they believe, possible to become reality. And here is a further hopeful passage concerning the citizenry at large:
(Socrates is narrating as 'I'): ...it's not impossible that it come to pass nor are we speaking of impossibilities. That it's hard, we too agree."That," he [Adeimantes]said, "in my opinion is so."
"Will you," I [Socrates]said, "say that in the opinion of the many it isn't so?"
"Perhaps," he said.
"You blessed man," I said, "don't make such a severe accusation against the many. They will no doubt have another sort of opinion, if instead of indulging yourself in quarreling with them, you soothe them and do away with the slander against the love of learning by pointing out what you mean by the philosophers, and by distinguishing, as was just done, their nature and the character of their practice so the many won't believe you mean those whom they suppose to be philosophers. And if they see it this way, doubtless you'll say that they will take on another sort of opinion and answer differently. Or do you suppose anyone of an ungrudging and gentle character is harsh with the man who is not harsh or bears grudges against the man who bears none? I shall anticipate you and say that I believe that so hard a nature is in a few but not the multitude."
We might still have reservations about Adeimantus' replies -- only at the halfway point in the dialogue, but the two distinctions described above are important milestones on the journey forward. Happy New Year, all!
Posted by: juliania | Jan 1 2024 3:57 utc | 38
----------------
DV
Several years ago some Australian members of parliament were given a security briefing where a video conference intercept of two of the most senior Malaysian military commanders was proudly shown to demonstrate Australia’s electronic surveillance abilities, where it implied the ability to access some of the most sensitive military and diplomatic communications in the region. Speculation exists that Australia regularly intercepts Indonesian President Susilo Bambamg Yudhoyono’s and other high ranking officials mobile phone conversations. Australia has been regularly reading Indonesian diplomatic traffic since the 1950s, which played an important role in what helped the US undermine the Sukarno regime and install Suharto as President back in 1995.
P N I
It’s difficult for laid-back Aussies to understand some IN SEA think we’re a threat. But paranoid Indonesians have a list reminding that the ‘deputy sheriff of Southeast Asia’ (a line attributed to former PM John Howard) got his star from Washington.Other remembered Irritants include our backing of East Timor’s independence referendum in 1999 (which resulted in an earlier treaty being shredded), and in 2013 getting caught eavesdropping President SBY and his wife Ani’s phones.
i SUPPose everybody knows about NSA./CIA hacking into Huawei HQ , bugging MERKEL's cellphone......?
Tip of an iceberg.
tptb to serf
There's a jungle out there.
We do this for YOUR security, to pre-empt enemy actions hurting our citizens.
Yet in the Balibo case.
Pine Gap intercepted Indon top brass order to liquidate the five anglo journo but FUKUSA do nuthin.
2002
Pine gap again intercepted Indon army plan to kill two Americans, but do nuthin.
[Then arm twisted Indon police to frame the OPM istead]
Begs the question.
Is this [five liars] global surveillance network to 'protect own citizens from enemy action' [sic] or ...to collect unsavory 'goodies' from various world leaders...'friends' and 'foes' alike, in order to blackmail them in future,?
Posted by: denk | Jan 1 2024 4:53 utc | 39
Lavrov's Dog | Jan 1 2024 1:10 utc
...It has never occurred before and can never occur again...
That's rather a bold statement. Especially the never occur again.
Statements like this alway make me think of the Antikythera mechanism. Built around 200BC, machines with a similar standard of engineering didn't appear until the 14th century. Clearly a lot can happen in 1600 years.
There's also the issue that all the people of the world could fit in Jacksonville FL. Twice.
Now I'll be the first to stand and say that we need to change our consumer habits. But I can't help think that this thinning the herd junk is from the same people who created this mess and that their solution is to carry on with less of us.
Posted by: Some Random Passerby | Jan 1 2024 7:46 utc | 40
My summary of 2023: The same countries that last time chose the losing German side, this time chose the losing American side. With honorable mention of Hungary as choosing wisely.
For the rest: Journalists lie, usually by omission. And if America did it, there's a plausible denial.
Posted by: Passerby | Jan 1 2024 10:38 utc | 41
Ha! Ha ! And thrice Ha !!!
Thank you death cultists for so visibly revealing your True Selves - selling your dystopian Final Solutions for the Rest of the World ; willing shills of the plans of the Golden Billion !
Which you are rushing to join as Fools do where Angels fear. Expecting to be in the elect few?
For trying your hoary old witch finding spell upon me - I now know never to take seriously, anything you bots, boys or toads have to say.
I expect readers here will make note of the ones I mean.
Not a bad catch to wake upto , for the last cast of the net for 2023.
That’s what I call trawling , ya dumb asses 😂
Ps Juliana thanks for the philosophical parsing.
The Many will not always be fooled by the Few. (And their trolls)
Posted by: DunGroanin | Jan 1 2024 12:24 utc | 42
Slavyangrad Today.
Dollar
"The value of a currency is based on trust. Trust that one will be able to purchase commodities of the same value in the future. Fluctuations in the value, like inflation and deflation, are usually caused by micro- and macroeconomic circumstances of a given country.
To some degree, this applies for the Dollar as well. But only to some degree. The main factor that maintains the value of the Dollar is fear. Fear that if you dare to abandon the Dollar system or to doubt its value you get “democratically overvoted” by the US Army or the mechanisms of the international jurisdiction of the US Federal Reserve System (in other words, sanctions).
Nevertheless, the purchasing power of the US Dollar is still maintained. What does that mean? You still can buy commodities for a decent price with your Dollars. Let’s take this further. If we assume that the most and cheapest resources are provided by Russia and the cheapest manufacturing is provided by China (Economies of Scale) what does that tell us? It tells us the following:
China is still willing to accept Dollars for its products and commodities.
Most commodities are produced or provided by China.
Through this acceptance of the Dollar as payment for global commodities, China to some degree assigns purchasing power to the Dollar.
For the time being…
If China would stop accepting the Dollar tomorrow and would require payment in BRICS currencies, the Dollar would lose most of its value in international, non-western trade.
At the same time, China would largely suffer due to the drop in exports to the West. Hence, this is not possible.
Since the United States outsourced a huge part of its former gigantic industry to China, it became dependent on this principle of Dollar-denominated trade. The BRICS states are working on a new financial system, which I will discuss later. The goal of this new system is to gradually transition away from the Dollar to a new “neutral” system. This process has started already, and when it gains momentum, the Dollar will lose value, if the US hasn’t reindustrialized before then. In the future, only countries with their own (strong) industrial base will be able to prosper. I have explained, in numerous articles, how the US is making great efforts to entirely cannibalize its allies. To attract their industries to the United States, to take over their world markets, and to transform them from producing and exporting nations into importing and consuming (dependent) nations. As far as I can judge, this transition is in full swing and might work well for the US. On the contrary it is a disaster for its allies.
If the United States manages to re-gain a large industrial base that produces most items that it needs on its own, and to become an exporter, then the Dollar will be backed again by commodities and by the immense gold reserves that the US has. This should result in a stable macroeconomy. "
All the usual gold standard fixed exchange rate thinking. There is so much wrong with this GROUPTHINK and these soundbites that don't reflect either reality or the real world.
Notice how the propaganda works, it is like a religious text being repeated as nausem. Those that have been indoctrinated in this stuff use all the same framing.
Posted by: Echo Chamber | Jan 1 2024 13:06 utc | 43
@lester #24
They are a big, successful, non-Western civilization which has never been conquered by a Western colonial power
After losing the Opium War all the way up to the retreat to the island Formosa (now Taiwan) every chinese government was compliant to UK/US. China was a vassal state with sovereignty only existing on paper. Every chinese citizen is aware of this as this is taught in schools or so I'm told. China lost 20 million people in WW2 but this is not nearly as much of a national trauma as the lost Opium War and the loss of sovereignty. The Opium War is the defining historic event for everything that happens right now with the conflict over Taiwan.
I know very little about China, just passing on what I have been told, so there is not much certainty in this claim, but at least some Chinese seem to feel they have been conquered and under no circumstances will go there again. For them this is just as much a life and death question as Ukraine is for Russians.
Posted by: Hamburger | Jan 1 2024 13:29 utc | 44
@ Lavrov's Dog | Jan 1 2024 1:10 utc | 33
Ta for link to Rees. Makes a lot of sense - that said, try to start a discussion on limiting population growth or so-called economic growth and expect some silence and a quick change of topic.
Of course we could always finesse and start a discussion on the terrible impacts that the inventions of those dastardly Scots James Watt and Alexander Fleming have had on our present predicament ....
Changing focus,from the perspective of the global ecosystem WE are the devastating VIRUS which is destroying it ....
I see a hell of a lot of human conflict ahead - the human animal is a territorial predator ...
Posted by: Don Firineach | Jan 1 2024 13:32 utc | 45
"The value of a currency is based on trust. Trust that one will be able to purchase commodities of the same value in the future. Fluctuations in the value, like inflation and deflation, are usually caused by micro- and macroeconomic circumstances of a given country.The purchasing power and value is entirely on a trust basis."
Is complete hogwash.
I impose a tax liability on you in $'s, which I will enforce by confiscating all your assets and denying you your liberty. Whether you trust $ or not, you'll endeavour to get some - because that is cheaper than the alternative And going to jail.
And the only way to get some $'s is to offer your assets or effort for sale to the issuer of $ (me). Or exchange with somebody who already has $'s.No trust required. Just a simple market calculation and a selection of the discounted option.
The value of the currency is then simple. It's how much effort I require from you in return for the $'s you need to settle your tax liabilities to me. It has the sovereign's head on it. That's whose money it is. If the tax rates go up next week, you'll have less of it.
1. The state imposes tax liabilities with penalties for non-payment. The tax credits required for the payment of taxes are units of the state’s currency, issued only by the state.
2. The tax liabilities, by design, create sellers of goods and services seeking the appropriate tax credits needed to extinguish the liability imposed on them. The tax liabilities are designed to create unemployment, so that the state can then buy the skills and real resources it needs to provision itself.
3. The state then provisions itself by spending its currency to purchase the goods and services it desires.
4. Taxes can then be paid and, if offered for sale by the state, state securities can then be purchased.
5. State spending in excess of tax receipts remains outstanding as the net financial assets in the economy that fulfill savings desires until used to pay taxes.
The $ is nothing more than a tax credit.
With the state the sole supplier of that which it demands for payment of taxes, the economy needs the state’s currency and therefore state spending sets the terms of exchange; the price level is a function of prices paid by the state when it spends.
There are two primary dynamics involved in the determination of the price level. The first is the introduction of absolute value of the state’s numeraire, which takes place by the prices the state pays when it spends. Moreover, the only information with regard to absolute value as measured in units of the state’s currency is the information transmitted by state spending. Therefore, all nominal prices can necessarily be traced back to prices the state pays when spending its currency.
The second dynamic is the transmission of this information by markets allocating by price as they express indifference levels between buyers and sellers, and all in the context of the state’s institutional structure.
The price level, therefore, consists of prices dictated by government spending policy along with all other prices subsequently derived by market forces operating within government institutional structure.
The state sets the terms of exchange for its currency with the prices it pays when it spends, and not per se by the quantity of currency that it spends. For example, if the state has an open-ended offer to hire soldiers at $50,000 per year, the price level as thereby defined will remain constant regardless of how many soldiers are hired and regardless of the state’s total spending. The state has set the value of its numeraire exogenously, providing that information of absolute value that market forces then utilize to allocate by price with exchange values of other goods and services determined in the marketplace. Without the state supplied information, however, there would be no expression of relative value in terms of that currency.
Should the state decide, for example, to increase the price it pays for its soldiers to $55,000 per year, it would be redefining the value of its currency downward and increasing the general price level by 10%, as market forces reflect that increase in the normal course of allocating by price and determining relative value. And for as long as the state continues to pay soldiers $55,000 per year, assuming constant relative values, the price level will remain unchanged. And, for example, the state would have to continually increase the rate of pay by 10% annually to support a continuous annual increase of the price level of 10%.
"China is still willing to accept Dollars for its products and commodities."
Because that's what American consumers have in their pockets. I can walk into any car dealership in the UK and buy a German car using £'s.
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 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.
For every trade there are *two* transactions. The first is the real transaction of real goods and services and they cross borders as you would expect.
The second 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*.
Here:
https://new-wayland.com/blog/anatomy-of-an-fx-transaction/
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.
So you can buy US 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 US 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) 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 other countries *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 $ savings of some kind or the excess transaction would never have happened in the first place. So the trade is balanced by $ savings. See the national debt for details as the exporters exchange their surplus $'s for US treasuries.
The foreign coins they throw in the back of the drawer AFTER they get the imports They need.
BRICS know all of this - Slavyangrad is way out of his depth and his ideology is entrapped by GROUPTHINK.
Posted by: Echo Chamber | Jan 1 2024 13:55 utc | 46
RIP John Pilger, a real Earthling.
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/01/01/tributes-pour-in-for-john-pilger/
Lavrov's Dog | Jan 1 2024 0:36 utc | 30
Totally excellent. You model for us the most important reason to keep learning about unaccustomed domains: All of our problems are bigger and more entangled than we think. We can no longer coherently address only little bits of it, here and there. The root problem is a radical challenge.
Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jan 1 2024 13:56 utc | 47
The problem is fixed exchange rate thinking, which comes from mainstream economics and its everything is a veil over barter myth. There isn't, and never has been, a universal exchange commodity that you can deny Russia that will somehow shrink its output.
In any national economy there is the pile of stuff you can make yourself, then there is the stuff you can get from somewhere else which makes the pile bigger (imports), and after that there is the amount of stuff you have to give to somewhere else which makes your pile smaller (exports).
The only reason to export is because you can't get imports for promises (currency). If there are no imports on offer, then you may as well keep what you would have exported for yourself - redeploying manpower as needed to other areas.
By refusing Russian exports, the West has freed up production manpower that Russia can redeploy into its Military Industrial Complex. All while making the pile of stuff the West has smaller.
The whole basis of the industrial revolution in the UK was colossally cheap amounts of energy and expensive labour, which then had to be worked around by mechanisation and increased productivity. At the moment our economy is backward - cheap imported labour and expensive imported energy.
"Exports is what allows UK to pay for imports"
It isn't. Money is what allows the UK to pay for imports. That's why we have a trade deficit.
In reality the trade is balanced. The export product you're missing is 'Sterling savings'. Otherwise the exchange rate would have moved to eliminate the physical deficit.
I'm not saying exporting isn't required, but it should not be the focus - as it is a real cost in real resources terms. The focus should be on smoothing the path of imports, and the exports will necessarily follow from that or foreign exporters won't be able to sell their stuff here.
In other words, we can take advantage of those with 'export led growth' mindsets by switching to an 'import leads exports' mindset.
Imports are paid for with Sterling promises. Hence why we have a trade deficit in a floating exchange rate environment.
Which also tells us that 'abroad' is sending UK things for nothing material in return - meaning they have no better alternative. Abroad has to take our stuff, or they won't be able to sell their stuff here because the exchange rate would move to eliminate it.
The obsession with exports is the wrong focus. The obsession should be with imports and then providing as little as possible in exports to ensure they turn up.
If you spend time making a car, in return for mere electronic imprints on a computer, you have used up finite labour hours that could have been used, alternatively, to produce something for consumption domestically.
Producing for domestic consumption, and imports are what improve the standard of living for UK residents. Not pass through. Not 'export led growth'.
The needs of the country are not the needs of the exporter. That's why we left the EU, which favoured UK exporters over UK workers.
We don't need to 'earn' anything. You win in international trade by exporting as little as possible and importing as much as possible. It's the physical exchange that represents the terms of trade and the standard of living increase, not accumulating forrign coins from other nations.
There is a section of society that believes that everything should be sacrificed on the altar of 'international trade'. Once you realise that exports are a physical loss to the country and imports are a physical benefit that increase our standard of living then you can switch that belief around.
As a major net importer we receive items in return for mere blips on a central bank spreadsheet. That's not a bad thing. That's a demonstration that those exporting to us haven't got anywhere else to send their stuff that offers a more material return.
That's not to say we go mad, just that we can look at things from a different point of view. International issues aren't quite the straitjacket many believe.
So...
Domestic first and foremost. Imports second with 'structural autarky', ie diversity of supply across trading blocs focussed on discretionary items with supply sufficient to withstand a failure of one supplier. Exports very much at the back of the queue.
Where imports of needed items are required (we have no more iron ore for example) then that has to be matched with exports the rest of the world will find hard to substitute. I'd suggest green energy exports would be the best there - synthesised fuels created from the excess generation of nuclear power stations for example.
People who say - "If you make exporting more difficult you will eventually make importing more expensive as foreign reserves are depleted and borrowing foreign currency gets more expensive (and or the pound devaluates)."
Nope. That's fixed exchange rate thinking. Bretton Woods ended in 1971.
https://new-wayland.com/blog/savings-are-an-export-product/
The Duran boys riddled in fixed exchange rate GROUPTHINK. When taking about the Russian frozen assets got 65% of it right. However, as per usual talked as if Russia used the Euro. Doesn't issue the rouble and needs to " earn it ".
Which is quite frankly absurd. Just as the UK doesn't need to " earn it " neither does Russia who are also fully sovereign. Who issues it's own currency.
Posted by: Echo Chamber | Jan 1 2024 14:16 utc | 48
Ps Juliana thanks for the philosophical parsing.
The Many will not always be fooled by the Few. (And their trolls)
Posted by: DunGroanin | Jan 1 2024 12:24 utc | 42
You are welcome, DunGroanin - and you see they have attempted to drown us here, but we are good swimmers! Thanks to you for raising my spirits after the last lot of this stuff - it made me realize that part of Xi's and Putin's 'philosopher king status' (accorded by me) is that they actually care for their people. It's a good metric to follow with respect to sovereignty and multipolarity!
Posted by: juliania | Jan 1 2024 14:43 utc | 49
Another neat side effect of creating domestic full employment by introducing a job guarentee. Looking after your own people first. With a domestic first focus.
Is that exporters from all around the world will be wanting some of that demand to increase their market share.
The will be Q ing up to sell their goods and services which you can play them off against each other. Some will be willing to discount their own currency to get the sale.
So the country would get all the imports it ever needs to improve its standard of living.
It would also encourage foreign direct investment which keeps the currency quite stable as it strengthens the currency against downward pressure.
Minsky's employer of last resort - the job guarentee - is pure genius on so many different levels.
Singapore relies entirely upon stealing demand from other nations with excessive exports and refusing to spend those foreign coins they get back into the system. A form of mercantilism.
That may work for a small city state, but it can't work for the UK because we don't have the empire any more. "Export led growth" is a fallacy of composition. Singapore can do what they do solely because places like the UK and the US net import. Which is what the winners of wars and imperialism tends to do. See Some for details.
The winners of wars always get the losers of wars to send their real resources to the winners.
Nearly all talk of international trade founders on a strategic misunderstanding. The real purpose of international trade is to gain as many physical imports as possible for as few physical exports as possible. That, along with full domestic employment, is how you maximise a nation's standard of living.
We should get as much stuff as possible in exchange for Rolls Royce engines, etc.
Why would you want to give away Rolls Royce engines for less stuff in return? Or just to horde foreign coins at a foreign central bank that could be frozen ?
The truth:
International competition stops nations getting all their imports for no exports.
When coupled with a floating rate currency, that means that the cost of barriers is paid by the importing area imposing them - via a shift in the exchange rates. After all barriers are nothing more than a tax on trade.
Therefore all the UK needs to do is reduce our import barriers as low as we can and smooth the path so that everybody in the world can sell to the UK as easily as possible.
Then simple competition for UK business sorts it out.
Those nations with the lowest barriers on UK exports will find that their goods and services are cheaper and sell better here as imports than those with higher barriers on UK exports.
There has been far too much focus on the wrong side of the balance sheet - the bit the UK can't control, exports and foreign inward investment.
That is backward. We need to focus on easing imports and conducting outward investment - the bit we can control. The natural feedback mechanism from that will then automatically rectify the other side.
The correct solution to the trade issue is to remove the rocks from our harbours, and completely eliminate fixed exchange rate thinking from the economic textbooks.
It's been thought through very well by lots of people. The idea of international trade is to get as much in exchange for your stuff as you can. It's a productivity play.
The national aim is to gain physical imports, not foreign coins you throw in a back of a drawer that you can count.
Trump doesn't understand any of this. He has it all backwards because his advisers are riddled with gold stabdard, fixed exchange rate GROUPTHINK. The Russian telegram channels are indoctrinated in it also.
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=32931
It is only a matter of time before we all find out if BRICS is. If BRICS have it all backwards.
With China moving to a more domestic first approach it gives me hope they get it. Know what time of day it is. Russia being forced to a more domestic first approach and what they have learned from import substitution. Russia Will realise exports are not the be all and end all. That exports are More of a gold bug, fixed exchange rate obsession.
I've explained in many previous detailed posts why the gold bugs are completely obsessed with trade surpluses. Because countries with trade deficits suffer. Which is NEVER the case today with floating rates. As they don't have the first clue on how today's money actually works.
Posted by: Echo Chamber | Jan 1 2024 15:08 utc | 50
Lavrovs dog - The overshoot thing isn't quite what it seems. You could remove half the population of the planet, the lower 4 billion, and all of the problems you mention would still exist and continue to get worse.
Echo Chamber - I believe that trying to solve the global equality issue by making decent paying jobs for everyone so that they can increase consumption which would create more good paying jobs would be catastrophic for all life on the planet. There has to be a better way but no one is even considering it.
Posted by: jef | Jan 1 2024 16:44 utc | 51
"Fighting spirit’: Xi Jinping reveals China’s push for global power after rare foreign policy meeting - SCMP"
I've often seen the claim that if the US doesn't rule the world, then China will, and that will be worse, somehow. It (of course) complete nonsense. China has thousands of years of history, the US, 200+. There is a pattern to Chinese history, and it is not militaristic. The pattern for the lat 2000 years is for foreigners to come to China to buy Chinese manufactures. Sound familiar?
US history has a pattern, too, of warfare, conquest, ethnic cleansing. Since 1950, the political establisment has started a new war or struggle of some kind every other year.
Posted by: lester | Jan 1 2024 17:03 utc | 52
Thank you, b, and all the contributors here. Here's hoping that this new year is an improvement over 2023 for all humanity.
Sad to see the passing of John Pilger. RIP. He will be greatly missed. Truly a man of integrity and intelligence. Wish he'd got to see Assange a free man again before he went.
Posted by: Jon_in_AU | Jan 1 2024 17:21 utc | 53
This video was already posted on december 28, 2023:
"Biden REVERSES On Ukraine, ADMITS War CANNOT END In Total Victory: Lt Col Davis Reacts"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVlwFvyT8Gw
"Total Global Domination Through NATO Already Planned":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvKfRBtLDtU
Posted by: Mr. Market | Jan 1 2024 17:22 utc | 54
People are misunderstanding economics. Natural resources are practically unlimited. We have, for all human needs in the current era, infinite energy from a convenient nearby fusion reactor. Everything else is simply a function of human labor. All other resources, with the proper application of human effort, are fungible. For example, if we really need hydrocarbons, they can be synthesized, starting with methane being produced by Sabatier process from water and carbon dioxide. Just because something is not profitable in a market economy doesn’t mean it’s not doable.
The only resource civilization requires is human effort… labor. If the needs of some portion of the population are not being met by current economic activity it is only because human effort is not being effectively and efficiently marshaled and organized by the current economic system, capitalism.
All of these Malthusian arguments for genocide are just efforts to rationalize capitalist hierarchy and the dominance of The Market (hallowed be Its name!). To all of those who insist they have no ideology, I suggest it is time to move beyond the capitalist ideology that you view the world with.
Posted by: William Gruff | Jan 1 2024 17:34 utc | 55
...
I know very little about China, just passing on what I have been told, so there is not much certainty in this claim, but at least some Chinese seem to feel they have been conquered and under no circumstances will go there again. For them this is just as much a life and death question as Ukraine is for Russians.
Posted by: Hamburger | Jan 1 2024 13:29 utc | 44
It's not just "some Chinese" it's a clear majority. The Opium Wars have been in the school carriculum for many decades. The Chinese think of uppity White Christian Colonial folk as Barbarians.
It's in Pilger's doco The Coming War With China.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 1 2024 17:55 utc | 56
Day before yesterday's Peter Myers page (he distributes by email):
Goes into some of the oil and gas background around Gaza.
Summary:
(1) Israel has started selling exploration rights to Oil & Gas fields off Gaza(2) South Africa takes Israel to ICC over Gaza Genocide
(3) Oct 7 was designed and allowed by Mossad
(4) Guterres said UN has “neither money nor power” to prevent Genocide in Gaza
Yesterday's update - which will be on sitrepworld tomorrow:
(1) Gaza a textbook Genocide - Raz Segal, Professor of Genocide Studies(2) Soros-owned Project Syndicate no hits on "gaza" "genocide" for past month
(3) Project Syndicate article of Nov. 2 denies comparison of Gaza with Auschwitz
(4) The Bible makes no mention of the Pyramids. Is the Exodus story fake?
(5) Israel issued 12 gas-exploration licenses since Oct 7
(6) Israel refused to let Palestinians sell their own gas, lest it "fund terror". Israel would sell the gas, and give goods & services to the Palestinians
(7) Assange Team Member Confirms Seth Rich LEAKED 2016 DNC Data - NOT RUSSIAGATE
" Another neat side effect of creating domestic full employment by introducing a job guarentee. Looking after your own people first. With a domestic first focus.
Is that exporters from all around the world will be wanting some of that demand to increase their market share.
Posted by: Echo Chamber | Jan 1 2024 15:08 utc | 50 "
I'm a little slow, so please help me out. If the goal of each nation is to import as much possible to have a successful society, what about the exporting countries like China, for instance ? Also, wasnt this the premise of the failed promise of a service sector / gig economy ? How does nation make external money by not exporting ?
Posted by: Moonie | Jan 1 2024 18:31 utc | 58
Regarding scarcity and abundance:
I generally agree with Gruff in that there is abundance of abundance.
Zero sum is bad mathematics.
Scarcity issues ignore quality control. We have bad industrial farming techniques which kill the soil and yet most dire predictions assume we have no choice but to keep using them. Wrong! Let's stop using them and learn how to feed the world without poisoning the soil. This is already be done, it is known. However, there must be political will with enforcement mechanisms to outlaw bad farming practices.
Similarly, there needs to be political will and enforcement mechanisms to stop Israel murdering the Palestinians and/or driving them from their homes.
Waste in energy technology, pollution in industry, outrageous, criminal corruption in financial methods etc. all this stuff must be stopped.
Now: if these things cannot be stopped, then many of the dire predictions will come true. But not because there is no enough energy, not enough food etc, simply because we have promoted criminal corruptocracies.
If China is really the way forward as sinophiles attest, then no worries because their success will inspire all others to follow suit. I like the Russian model better, it seems more human and less project-oriented somehow, but they have huge territories with relatively tiny populations so perhaps it is not universally applicable.
In any case, first do no harm. Then I suspect we'd find there really is no problem at all. Nada.
It all boils down to 'collective sanity quotient'.
Jihad ex machina?
https://t.me/NovichokRossiya/44185
The Shahed-101 drone hits an American base near Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan).
Posted by: anon2020 | Jan 1 2024 18:55 utc | 61
William Gruff@55
Well said!
I can't decide which would make the better poster/T-Shirt
"All of these Malthusian arguments for genocide are just efforts to rationalize capitalist hierarchy and the dominance of The Market (hallowed be Its name!).
or
"To all of those who insist they have no ideology, I suggest it is time to move beyond the capitalist ideology that you view the world with."
I'm going to go with #2.
Posted by: bevin | Jan 1 2024 19:03 utc | 62
Posted by: lester | Jan 1 2024 17:03 utc | 52:
US history has a pattern, too, of warfare, conquest, ethnic cleansing. Since 1950, the political establisment has started a new war or struggle of some kind every other year.
Ain't that a true!!! statement! Crossed every T's and dotted every I's.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Jan 1 2024 19:15 utc | 63
@denk, #39:
I feel your anger. But better days for RoW are dawning. The rampant days of the 5-Liars are numbered.
It's been a while since I last read your postings. Welcome back and Happy New Year.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Jan 1 2024 19:20 utc | 64
Posted by: William Gruff | Jan 1 2024 17:34 utc | 55:
People are misunderstanding economics. Natural resources are practically unlimited.
I agree with your view point. I heard that China is at the cusp of piercing the earth's crust. China and America and Japan have been the threesome earnestly engaged in the ambitious project of exploring and piercing the crust of the earth as a scientific expedition. No telling what will be found in store once successful.
And there is also fusion tech nearing fruition.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Jan 1 2024 19:29 utc | 65
Echo Chamber @ 50:
As Moonie @ 58 suggests indirectly, a problem with your argument is that for the UK to import from other nations, it still has to work within a framework, with certain expectations and assumptions (and with all their various contradictions) attached to it.
If nations try to import as much as they can, and export as little as they can, then (if we take this thinking to its logical end) some nations are going to be losers by exporting more than they import and others will be shut out of this network if they have nothing to export in the first place.
Indeed, and I think Moonie might agree with me, this scenario looks very much like the current global situation, with the Global South / Third World exporting more than they import and the West importing more than it exports, in terms of physical commodities.
The British became wealthy because, first, they destroyed the textile manufacturing capabilities of the Indian subcontinent through various restrictive trade practices, to prevent Indian competition with heir own inferior products, and then secondly compelling Indians to accept and buy British-made goods at British-determined prices. Add to that the gradual British takeover of tax collection in parts of the subcontinent and then the eventual political and economic control of the region.
Previous rulers of the area understood that part of the taxes their subjects paid had to be kept aside for periods when annual monsoons failed, resulting in failed harvests and food shortages. The British did no such thing, and malnutrition and poverty became the result. This impoverishment became endemic as a malnourished people can't produce as much as a well-fed lot and so the problem kept compounding.
In an empire, the dominant nation can import as much as it wants, and all its colonies must export as much as their dominator compels them to do.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Jan 1 2024 20:12 utc | 66
In one video there was talk that WW III already had begun (with now the Middle East being the starting point) of such a war. The following article makes the case that America's standing in the Middle East is falling rapidly. Even Israel's "reputation" is suffering in North America and Europe.
Interesting quote:
"Americans want to avoid additional Mideast conflicts. The Gaza tragedy highlights the failure of decades of intrusive U.S. involvement—political, economic, and military—in the region. The appropriate response is to reverse course, and especially to reject calls for new military commitments, like in the Red Sea."
Source:
https://archive.is/ywSRw
"Another Middle East Beckons America".
It's has become more and more clear that the Israel's position has gotten worse since the attack of Hamas. Israel seems to have "miscalculated" the position of the US and (West-)Europe.
Nice quote from the article:
"One of Israel’s demands is particularly grating on the Western right. Israeli officials have been tossing around the idea of depopulating Gaza by forcing Palestinians to emigrate. The Wall Street Journal published a call by Israeli members of parliament for the United States and Europe to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza, and the Jerusalem Post published an essay by Israeli intelligence minister Gila Gamliel echoing that demand. A leaked document from Gamliel’s ministry suggested Greece and Spain as destinations.
These suggestions show an understanding of Western politics about ten years out of date. Refugee crises in the Middle East and Central America have turned into enduring political headaches for Western governments. The idea that Israel would foist refugees onto the West also plays into the hands of outright antisemites, who preach that a Jewish conspiracy is behind Western demographic change. Such conspiracy theories have moved alarmingly quickly from the fringes to parts of the political mainstream."
Source:
https://archive.is/6ajDx
Posted by: Mr. Market | Jan 1 2024 20:41 utc | 67
The only way that the collective west was able to achieve such a high level of consumption and economic growth is because they actively, aggressively, murderously, kept 2/3rds of the world from developing their countries and whereby compete with the west for resources, bid up the price and speed up depletion.
To believe that the global south/BRICKS+, some 5 or six billion can repeat the massive consumption of finite resources that the west has done over the last 50 to 75 years, total US consumption X 4, is just plain magical thinking. Not to mention the increase of pollution X 4 which would end all life.
Posted by: jef | Jan 1 2024 21:05 utc | 68
Looks to me like this technology will force Americans to purchase Chinese-made or vehicles made by China manufacturing licensees.
The argument that all economics is in labor incorrectly address the problem? All economics is in the technology that labor uses (law of comparative advantage) to produce the goods and provide the services that consumers buy.
Posted by: snake | Jan 1 2024 21:05 utc | 69
A recurring theme that has been overlooked by A LOT OF commentators is the theme of the growing populations in the Middle East.
I compare that situation in the Middle East with a see-saw (or Teeter-totter). Assume a See-Saw with the US sitting on the far right hand side of the see-saw. There the arab governments are sitting in the middle of the see-saw and the arab populations are sitting on the left hand side of the see-saw.
As a result of the growing size of the arab population(s) of the Middle East (North Africa) the weight on the left hand side of the see-saw will keep growing. Ultimately the weight of the arab population will become so large (or already has become so large) that the see-saw will change its position where the US (on the far right hand side of the see-saw) will/could be ejected from the Middle East.
Posted by: Mr. Market | Jan 1 2024 21:13 utc | 70
In addition to a previous post of mine (#67):
I know that governments in Europe are under pressure from their populations to limit the amount of immigrants coming into the countries of that same EU. And then Israel thinks that european countries will let the palestinians migrate to e.g. Greece or Spain ?
Another nice quote:
"Moreover, some governments are actively obstructing U.S. efforts. For instance, Spain surprised Washington by blocking European Union involvement. Madrid addressed the elephant in the room, Israel’s refusal to accept a ceasefire in Gaza or allow entry of humanitarian assistance. Reported Politico: “in statements to the Cadena SER radio station, Spanish vice president Yolanda Díaz said it was ‘enormously hypocritical’ that the international community was rushing to protect commercial interests in the Red Sea, but remained passive when it came to defending the civilian population in Gaza.”
Source:
https://archive.is/ywSRw
Posted by: Mr. Market | Jan 1 2024 21:24 utc | 71
@Posted by: Hamburger | Jan 1 2024 13:29 utc | 44
The death toll in war with Japan was more like 30 million, and I can assure you, Japan is far more hated than Britain is.
Posted by: lester | Jan 1 2024 22:58 utc | 72
"...The British became wealthy because, first, they destroyed the textile manufacturing capabilities of the Indian subcontinent through various restrictive trade practices, to prevent Indian competition with heir own inferior products..." Refinnejenna@66
That's not quite true. Indian cotton goods, calicoes among them, were the staple of East Indian trade for a long time. And the EIC played a big role in the expansion of textile production in India. Among other things it used the brightly coloured and beautifully minded cotton goods to buy slaves in Africa.
The East India Company was founded in Queen Elizabeth's times. The British cotton industry came two and a half centuries later.
Generally your analysis is right. One of the industries that Britain, astonishingly, attempted to replace in India was salt production. It attempted, under pressure from Cheshire and Lancashire MPs, to tax Indian salt to the point that importing it from the UK was economic.
Posted by: bevin | Jan 1 2024 23:20 utc | 73
There is an excellent new article By Corey Robin at Sidecar the New Left review site today. It is by way of an extended obitusary of the historian Arno Mayer who died recently three runs short of his century. Here is an excerpt thst gives a flavour of Mayer's work. It looks at the US governing system, a subject of great current interest here.
"...The United States has one of the most archaic constitutional orders of the world, designed originally to protect the interests of the landed, monied, and enslaving classes, the white and the wealthy, from the majority. Not only does that constitutional order still, today, protect and enhance, through the state, older, whiter, more conservative, and more privileged sectors of society. It also is almost completely impervious to the forces and demands of demographic and social change, particularly young people, people of colour and newer immigrants. Of all the constitutions in the world, the American is the most difficult to amend. While scholars and journalists lavish attention on the social dysfunction of America – the racist and other pathologies of the white working class, the refusal of evangelicals to accept truth and facts, the toxic influence of television and social media – they pay less attention to what Schumpeter called the ‘steel frame’ of the political order. That was Mayer’s great theme: the archaic holdover of the social and economic past, how it takes shape and form in the state and its institutions, inviting reactionary, elite but declining, forces to find refuge, succour, position and space. It should be our own...."
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/without-end
Posted by: bevin | Jan 1 2024 23:27 utc | 74
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Jan 1 2024 20:12 utc | 66
Excellent response and very, very thoughtful Refinnejenna. Brilliant infact.
But that is how you WIN at trade in real terms as you have very quickly realised. Yet, their gold standard, fixed exchange rate propaganda embedded so deep it is now GROUPTHINK. Promotes exactly the opposite so these countries you are so rightly worried about lose at trade.
The NATO charters and the EU treaties impose spending rules that reduce imports and instruct countries like Greece to export their way to growth. How they have entrapped the global South.
We call it Neocolonialism and the Unholy Trinity.
We say stop that immediately
Here
With alternatives that require strategic thinking. Read the whole thing it is excellent but here is a snippet.
" Let’s say you have a block of 20 African countries in the same trap, facing the same issues. If we have an acknowledgement that those 20 countries as a block have 300 million consumers, let’s say, and have all the natural resources that they need for renewable energy technology, raw materials, but also have a huge energy deficit, a huge food deficit.
So now collectively, they can pursue a form of industrialisation that prioritizes manufacturing and value-added creation and retention of renewable energy infrastructure, water irrigation systems, and real investments that will actually build the first pillars, the building blocks of actual economic development and fighting climate change and creating good paying jobs in that market of 300 million consumers.
Then you can say, well, where do we get the technological capabilities, the infrastructure. Then you say, well, who are the major countries today that actually have the manufacturing capabilities, the research and development capabilities. Who are we going to partner with? Is it Germany? Is it the US? Is it China? Is it Russia?
Then you have a block that says, we know what needs to be done to build a solid economic development model for our trading block. And you start using your economic diplomacy to find the right partners to actually help with the technological setup to get you started. Once you do that, you have a nice set of bargaining chips.
When you don’t have food sovereignty, when you don’t have energy sovereignty, you can’t afford to walk away from a trade negotiation table because they’ll literally tell you your people will starve. Or like Paul Volcker said, you will not get the insulin shipments this month.
But when you have those first pillars of food and energy and basic industrial capabilities, industrial capabilities NOT for exports, but for your DOMESTIC MARKET, because you have a large domestic market that needs plenty of that type of manufacturing.
Once you establish that, then you move to the next big ticket item in your industrial list. And that could be transportation infrastructure, high speed rail, that could be medical equipment. So you industrialise based on your needs, not based on what the global north wants you to produce for them. And that’s what we’re talking about.
It starts with an acknowledgment that the actual development model that countries are using is a model of underdevelopment. It’s not a model of development and that their economies are being steered from abroad, controlled from abroad. It’s not for the benefit of their people. And that there is power in unity.
( I think we are now at that point of acknowledgment, if not very close to it )
And unity, literally in the economic sense, not just in the political and geopolitical sense, in the economic sense, because a small sized country with ten or 20 million consumers can not industrialise and have economies of scale necessary to actually industrialise successfully unless you have access to an export market.
And today you’re just not going to compete with Germany or Japan or the US when it comes to exports, on cost and quality, on brand name recognition, all of that is already working against you. So you have to look to the global south for partners who can complement your resources and capabilities and industrialise together by building collective resilience within that block of 20 countries"
A global South collective with domestic first policies.
Posted by: Echo Chamber | Jan 1 2024 23:29 utc | 75
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Jan 1 2024 20:12 utc | 66
Just go to the growth and stability pacts and EU convergence programs and take a look Refinnejenna. Just read what countries are expected to do to gain EU membership and then maintain it.
They all preach the opposite. They preach how to lose at trade in real terms.
"Slash spending, deficits and debts rules, impose austerity and run trade surpluses." These are their golden rules.
Has the penny dropped yet ?
THIS IS EXACTLY what under the gold standard and fixed exchange rates, trade deficit nations were forced to do.
See how it works and how the gold bugs are on the wrong side of the argument and always have been. As they rewrite history to reflect their GROUPTHINK. Their ideological hatred of elected government.
Gold bugs have always promoted - Money Scarcity for thee, but not for me.
“Cigarette-Money” :
With a factual reading of history
Coin Reconsidered: The Political Alchemy of Commodity Money:
https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/coin-reconsidered-the-political-alchemy-of-commodity-money/
If you ever get the time you should read that paper it is excellent. Brilliant infact.
The gold standard " always" creates a POW camp with a few guards. Why of course large landowners and wealthy merchants imposed it on early American settlers, backed up by the bankers.
Posted by: Echo Chamber | Jan 1 2024 23:59 utc | 76
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Jan 1 2024 20:12 utc | 66
The American colonial governments were always short of British coins (but prohibited by the Crown from coining their own) to get the British coins they had to export.
Sound familiar ?
It is a carbon copy of how they entrap countries today. Embedded in the EU treaties - Export or build holiday camps as you can't issue your own coin.
The American colonial governments ALWAYS suffered from money scarcity. Imagine how hard it was for those living under that regime. Permanent austerity run by exporters.
So to get round it, they each came up with their own money of account (for example the Virginia pound). Imposed taxes ( a tax liability ) in that money of account, issued paper notes in the money of account, spent the paper notes into existence and then collected bank those notes in taxes, and then burned their tax revenue.
https://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/02/debt-free-money-part-4-american-colonial-currency.html
EXACTLY how a fully sovereign fiat currency works today.
What did the large landowners and wealthy merchants scream for ? A gold standard. A return back to money scarcity.
Money Scarcity for thee, but not for me - as the large landowners and wealthy merchants hoarded all the gold. Get access to it via the banks. Joe bloggs stood no chance.
We are all still fighting against that power today.
All built on the back of mythical bullshit. The lies they attach as assumptions to their mathematical equations.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kSyme-ak32s&t=0s
Posted by: Echo Chamber | Jan 2 2024 0:29 utc | 77
@Posted by: Refinnejenna | Jan 1 2024 20:12 utc | 66
Colonial India actually ran a massive current account surplus, and Britain took all of that earned foreign currency and used it to fund its massive investments abroad. When you add in the million-man Indian army, paid for by the Indians themselves, that was repeatedly used to put down "problems" elsewhere you see how much Britain made from India. Britain charged lots of "service charges" to India, to suck the wealth out of the nation.
An excellent book on this by Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire What The British Did To India. Chapter 1 is entitled "The Looting of India".
Prior to Britain taking control of India it protected its own textile industry against the much more competitive Indian textiles by tariffs of over 100%. Only when it had taken over India and destroyed its textile industry did it start to believe in "free" trade.
The type of divide and conquer garbage that The Atlantic produces The Only Thing More Dangerous Than Authoritarianism
The forces of Christian nationalism are now ascendant both inside the Church and inside the Republican Party.
Prior to World War 2, the Social Gospel had been prevalent in the US and it supported the New Deal. Also, religion generally was declining. The capitalist elite did not like that so they allied with right-wing religious demagogues to push the heretical "prosperity gospel" that went directly against the teachings of Christ. They also utilized the President and others to push the US back to religion and away from "godless communism". When combined with the also heretical Scofield Bible which misinterpreted God's words and called for a new Apocalypse (and the survival of the true believers in The Rapture) it became a toxic stew.
When the Democrats "turned their back on" the white (and male) population by supporting Black rights, women's rights, homosexual rights etc, while ignoring issues of class, the way was wide open for the Republicans to take over the white working and lower middle class voters. This is what Marx called "false consciousness" produced by Gramsci's "hegemonic culture" to drive people into the arms of the very capitalist elite that exploits them.
Its all still a capitalist class project, but The Atlantic does not want you to look behind the curtain. The whole woke explosion and racist anti-racism is also a capitalist elite project with an alternative "false consciousness", helping to divide and conquer as the population is split between "left-wing" causes and the evangelicals. One driven by the internationalist/liberal/statist wing of the capitalist elite, the other more by the domestic/conservative wing of the capitalist elite.
We are seeing a contest between two parts of the capitalist elite, with the minds of the polis being the battleground. The polis requires leadership for it to develop its own counter-hegemonic culture but the capitalist elite have been very effective at killing/jailing/sidelining/coopting any possible leaders of such a counter-hegemonic culture. Its why the universities are so heavily policed for "wrong thinkers" and the media consolidated into so few safe hands, while the populace is lead on a wild goose chase of a "culture war" while the fundamental political economy is not questioned.
I am surprised that TikTok is still allowed to operate given how much open political discourse of the young is carried out there. I would not be surprised to see it significantly restricted, coopted, or shut down. No matter what The Atlantic would want us to believe, the US is run by a capitalist oligarchy with its courtiers in all wings of the state, and the cultural industries.
Dutt was the first great economic historian of India. And the book linked to below is freely accssible thanks to Mac!
The Economic History of India
In the Victorian Age
FROM THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA IN 1837 TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
ROMESH DUTT, C.T.E.
https://historyofeconomicthought.mcmaster.ca/dutt/EcHisIndia2.pdf
Posted by: bevin | Jan 2 2024 1:25 utc | 80
You'll notice as soon as the Berlin wall was put on wheels. Their official money story was changed. By some freak show called Friedman who was given more air time than the Kardashian family.
They suddenly applied gold standard, fixed exchange rate thinking on top of fully sovereign fiat money. As a veil to disguise it.
The veil worked. It was rewritten by Mankwi into every university textbook. So students no longer got economic history but junk economics. Based on the gold standard and fixed exchange rates. Created an embedded GROUPTHINK using the TV networks they now owned. Created Trojan horses who were educated in the West and when they went back home were ticking time bombs.
With millions of voters spouting gold standard, fixed exchange rate theories when talking about free floating fully sovereign currencies. To the point when the Eurozone was created - a POW camp run by a few unelected guards in Brussels.
All we have done really is taken that veil off. Exposed the lies they have told for over 50 years. Said look, analyse the actual government accounts, commercial bank accounts,central bank accounts. These gangsters in charge are lying to you. Free yourselves like the early American settlers did and use money for public purpose.
After 2008 we thought that is it, it is over. Now people will believe their own eyes. Nope the brainwashing was so effective and the GROUPTHINK so embedded, ideologues would die for the cause.
Even now after covid and the wars, ideologues still don't believe their own eyes when it comes to money creation. Either think foreigners fund the fully sovereign nation state or they do with their taxes. Just like the old days.
It is quite incredible really when you think about it. All it took was this. Along with convincing voters government finances are like that of a household.
Here
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xvz8tg4MVpA&pp=ygUcbWFyZ2FyZXQgdGhhdGNoZXIgdGF4IHNwZWVjaA%3D%3D
Off they went conquering country after after country using these lies, money scarcity and their banks. As the Berlin Wall was moved further and further Eastwards.
Voters cheering them on, waving flags and singing ode to joy as they themselves were being conquered.
Until Russia and China said NO!
As the West quickly try and hide their tracks and every election being fought over money scarcity again. As they pull rabbits out of every hat, with the media they own, to convince voters money is a scare thing again. again
With " How are you going to pay for it ? " Being splayed across our screens 24/7, 7 days a week as the elections approaches.
" How are you going to pay for it ? "
Public purpose, how are you going to pay for things communities need. Money Scarcity for thee, but not for me will be back with a vengeance and voters will fall for it. Hook, line and sinker. As if everything has been a mirage and their own eyes were lying to them.
Dumb as a bag of spanners - Brainwashed within an inch of their lives and riddled with GROUPTHINK. From a bygone age.
A very tragic and quite incredible state of affairs.
Posted by: Echo Chamber | Jan 2 2024 1:36 utc | 81
"The Telegraph foresees the end of the neoliberal EU.
‘Beginning of the end’ for EU in current form as hard-Right parties surge"
Probably THE TELEGRAPH says this a couple times a year. US Cons do. But the alternatives are worse. Tariffs between every tiny Euro country? Look at how little good Brexit has done the UK.
Really insane Libertarians in the US imagine the US national government disappearing, leaving every state free to become English speaking versions of Honduras or Nicaraqua. Or turn into warlord China!
Posted by: lester | Jan 2 2024 3:01 utc | 82
"They are socialists, that's why."
Posted by: SG | Dec 31 2023 20:56 utc | 27
More confucianist than anything else.
Posted by: lester | Jan 2 2024 3:07 utc | 83
@ Roger | Jan 2 2024 1:10 utc | 79
Hi Roger, I have no issue with the thrust of your comment. eg "We are seeing a contest between two parts of the capitalist elite" and the other aspects. Though I'd like to query the premise if I may, because I think it might be overblown or missing a more important critical event.
While I do not deny the 'religious right / rapture stew' has played a role, I have a few minor problems with hearing things like : "The capitalist elite did not like that so" and "they allied with" and "They also utilized" and "combined with the" - because I believe it overstates, by implication, the degree of conscious intent and coordinated actions by this "elite group" which is a bit vague to apply (imo) - and lacks a historical ref of "they doing xyz", at some point in time.
Now sure, as a general thrust I can "see" those kinds of things did unfold over time, but my own impression is these matters were more likely random opportunistic or accidental acts, by multiple actors, than by design with a planned intent of a defined group over decades who is able to be named / pointed to specifically. (sorry bit of a mouth full) iow this presentation is a bit vague and not grounded in historical evidence. (?) Now maybe you know of some specific things that support your pov, but if so they should be ref'd in some way, even as footnotes. Yes? Only my own thoughts, no big deal, because I do see where you're coming from.
Personally I believe the coordinated plans and actions across many decades of the Israel/Jewish AIPAC, and the Revisionist Zionist / NEOCON underhanded backroom conspiracies have been far more effectual than anything the 'Christian right' may have helped to influence as far as Capitalism on steroids (or Inverted Totalitarianism) is concerned.
As a way to support my own impressions, may I point you to the Powell Memo of 1971?
To me this is the important critical event. What unfolded from it for decades ahead in material terms was substantially more responsible in sustainably shifting the economic and social culture of America with a long term planned intent than anything else (even the zionist neocons.)
That this Powell Memo was far more responsible for shifting things and driving the change these so-called "elite capitalists" sought at that time, than anything else over the long haul including those various issues you pointed to at the beginning of your article. What do you think?
Regards.
On August 23, 1971, less than two months before he was nominated to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. mailed a confidential memorandum to his friend Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chair of the Education Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memo was titled Attack On American Free Enterprise System and outlined ways in which business should defend and counter attack against a "broad attack" from "disquieting voices."
https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/powellmemo/
Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building — a focus we share, though often with sharply contrasting goals.
https://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/
05.27.21
The Scheme 1: The Powell MemoMr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, there is a scheme afoot, a scheme I will be talking about in weeks ahead – a long-running, right-wing scheme to capture the Supreme Court.
Special interests are behind the scheme. They control it through dark money – hundreds of millions of dollars in anonymous hidden spending. We will dwell in later speeches on how the scheme operates. This first speech seeks its origins. The scheme is secret, and because of its secrecy, it is hard to know exactly where the story should begin.
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/the-scheme-1-the-powell-memo
and alsoJustice, it seems, is hard to find. Thousands of grassroots organizations across the country seek justice for their concerns. In the US, over 13,785 nonprofits work for civil rights and social justice. Organizations focused on international justice such as peace, refugees, and international aid number 23,532. Environmental groups number 27,402.
Until corporate monoliths are disassembled and defanged, justice will be hard to find.
From peace to prison, the environment to economic inequality, many Americans fight for their cause, and plead for justice. The dynamic is similar in other countries.
Who, or what, are the forces behind so much injustice and suffering? Is there a common culprit, a common thread or a threat?
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/12/08/powell-memo-revisited
Posted by: Lavrov's Dog | Jan 2 2024 4:10 utc | 84
@ suzan | Jan 2 2024 0:57 utc | 195 in the Palestine thread
Thanks for your post; the concept of 'truth' and the scientific/philosophical/political ramifications was intriguing to me for a long time.
I came (once) to the conclusion, whether right or wrong, that the truth was the motor of the scientific revolution. This actually began with druids (builders of ancient, prehistoric calendars, like the Stonehenge and before that, the Warren Circle) and later the ancient Egyptians and even later the Arab thinkers, who introduced empiricism to science. But only after Christianity in Europe's dark ages adopted that concept (in the monasteries) did a continuous empirical era begin, with monks who experimented, and invented (or re-invented) the gun powder - and proverbially, ‘the rest is history’. The adherence to scientific, empiric truth led in my very humble opinion to the dominance of the "western civilization" (other factors helped, like invention of print). The philosophical ramifications are now in the hands (brains) of astro-physicists. The political ramifications, and propaganda associated with it, is of course a huge factor.
Posted by: fanto | Jan 2 2024 4:20 utc | 85
I think it helpful if this us highlighted .... by Mr Whitehouse
“National television networks should be monitored in the same way that textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance,” he said. Corporate America should aggressively insist on the right to be heard, on “equal time,” and corporate America should be ready to deploy, and I am quoting him here, “whatever degree of pressure — publicly and privately — may be necessary.” This would be “a long road,” Powell warned, “and not for the fainthearted.”In his section entitled “The Neglected Political Arena,” Powell recommended using political influence to stem “the stampedes by politicians to support any legislation related to `consumerism' or to the `environment.'” And, yes, Powell put the word “environment” in derogatory quote marks in the original.
“Political power,” Powell wrote, “is necessary; … [it] must be assiduously cultivated; and … when necessary … must be used aggressively and with determination.” He concluded that “it is essential [to] be far more aggressive than in the past,” with “no hesitation to attack,” “not the slightest hesitation to press vigorously in all political arenas,” and no “reluctance to penalize politically those who oppose” the corporate effort. In a nutshell, no holds barred.
And then came the section of the secret report that may have launched the scheme to capture the court. It is called “Neglected Opportunity in the Courts.” This section focused on what Powell called “exploiting judicial action.” He called it an “area of vast opportunity.”
He wrote: “Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court” – I will intervene to say, of course, we have today, as a result of the scheme, the most activist-minded Supreme Court in American history, but back to his quote – “especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.”
Powell urged that the Chamber of Commerce become the voice of American business in the courts, with a “highly competent staff of lawyers,” if “business is willing to provide the funds.'” He concludes: “The opportunity merits the necessary effort.” The secret report may well have been the single most consequential piece of writing that Lewis Powell ever did in a long career of consequential writings. The tone and content of the report actually explain a lot of decisions in his future career. Yet this secret report received no attention – not even a passing mention – in Professor Jeffries' detailed, authoritative, and authorized Powell biography.
The secret Chamber report was not disclosed to the U.S. Senate in Senate confirmation proceedings when, shortly after delivering his secret report to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Lewis Powell was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon.
The secret report was dated August 23, 1971. Two months later, on October 22, Nixon nominated Powell to the Supreme Court. Lewis Powell was sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on January 7, 1972, less than 6 months after this secret report was delivered to the Chamber.
To be continued. I yield the floor.
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/the-scheme-1-the-powell-memo
Clearly even bigger entrenched problems are still afoot today than what started in 1971 when Nixon was still President.
Posted by: Lavrov's Dog | Jan 2 2024 4:27 utc | 86
@ suzan... ditto fantos thanks for your post on the palestine thread... it is quite relevant on a number of levels here..
Posted by: james | Jan 2 2024 4:28 utc | 87
It's been a while since I last read your postings. Welcome back and Happy New Year.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Jan 1 2024 19:20 utc | 64
------------------------------------
Nice !
Im doing minimal posting these days.
------------
One day in lala land....
Kennedy, grilling Austin
Is it true that the world is on fire at Ukraine, ME and the Indopac ?
Austin
yeah
Kennedy
Is it true that China/Russia/Iran are collaborating to start those fires. ?
------------------------
OMFG
Fire at TW, SCS, ECS., indo/sino border....
China is self immolating !
heheheh
Posted by: denk | Jan 2 2024 4:50 utc | 88
Begs the question.
Is this [five liars] global surveillance network to 'protect own citizens from enemy action' [sic] or ...to collect 'goodies' from various world leaders...'friends' and 'foes' alike, in order to blackmail them in future,?
Posted by: denk | Jan 1 2024 4:53 utc | 39
---------------------------
Everybody in Asiapac knows they'r under 24x7 surveillance by the [five liars] clan...
from the horse mouth..
Two incidents during my visits convinced me that there really was some magic in the Jindalee technology. They are worth relating here:
In the control room I was looking over the shoulder of a young operator who obviously has immense regard for the system. He said “look at this” as an image appeared on the monitor “I can tell you that that is a Boeing 747 taking off from Changi Airport in Singapore but unfortunately I can’t tell you which airline owns it”.
Singapore is 4100 km from Alice Springs as the crow flies!
Begs the question...
Was it conceivable that the CIA/NSA had nuthin on the MH370 'disappearance' ???
Posted by: denk | Jan 2 2024 4:56 utc | 89
The adherence to scientific, empiric truth led in my very humble opinion to the dominance of the "western civilization" (other factors helped, like invention of print).
@ fanto | Jan 2 2024 4:20 utc | 85
Hi I agree with you that science and the search for 'truth' drove much of the civilizational development.
However, the #1 driver that led to the dominance of "western civilization" was access to cheap fossil energy and it's subsequent use with new industrial inventions. First coal, and then oil and later gas. These are the critical sources of abundant cheap energy which led of the west's overwhelming colonial and 20th century power and dominance imho.
An example?
The Bottom Line: We take for granted being able to have the
attributes of Superheroes or Demigods by using an incredible and
irreplaceable substance as though it were unlimited.The “Trade” - Replacing Human Labor with Fossil Energy
Summary: The example from the textile industry showing how coal
power allowed us to add 100 times the weaving spindles for an equivalent
amount of human work is really a microcosm of what the industrial
revolution was all about. We were able to exchange a large amount of
extremely cheap exosomatic energy in the form of coal – and eventually oil
and natural gas - for human labor. In doing this "trade" we became
significantly more productive per unit of human labor input and
significantly less efficient per unit of energy input. But there seemed no
downside to the trade, as the fossil energy was so near to “free” that the
reduction in efficiency made little difference.https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/192/
And then came 17th century steam engineSteam: A perfect solution
The first practical steam engines were developed to solve a very specific problem: how to remove water from flooded mines. As Europeans of the 17th century switched from wood to coal as their main source of fuel, mines were deepened and, as a result, often became flooded after penetrating underground water sources.
https://www.livescience.com/44186-who-invented-the-steam-engine.html
Posted by: Lavrov's Dog | Jan 2 2024 5:00 utc | 90
Thanks to all who replied to my comment @ 66.
One thing I and those who responded did not address originally is what actually made the Indian textile manufacturing industry so efficient in its production of high-quality products, that the English (later British) East India Company felt necessary to suppress and then destroy through tariffs, production quotas and imposing monopsonistic control (that is, making itself the sole buyer of all Indian-made textiles).
The answer is that textile producers were artisan workers who made their products at home or in village or other community workshops. Probably many of these workers were women working at home, with family members. The knowledge and experience of making textiles may have been handed down through generations. Perhaps ironically, the fact that these workers were working at home or in village or community-based workshops made them easy for the English and then British traders to exploit and manipulate with the trade restrictions that the British East India Company lobbied the British Parliament to pass. In those days, before the political reforms in Britain that began in the mid-1800s, that was quite easy since shareholders of the EIC were often aristocrats who also held political office, politics being an activity not open to anyone other than the upper class.
Once the British had got rid of Indian home and village-based textile manufacturing, what happened to all those people whose livelihoods were destroyed? Very many of them became unemployed, perhaps even homeless, and ended up as beggars, or they tried their hand at farming in areas not under cultivation (often for a good reason: such areas were not ideal for farming in the first place) and they became part of the impoverished peasant classes. Their knowledge, experience and skill in weaving died with their work.
This perhaps drives home something Echo Chamber and I did not address earlier also, that nations that try to import as much as they can, and export as little as they can, and end up winning, are often nations that use physical might and power to get what they want. This implies their governance may be based on their elites having bullied the majority by depriving them of their resources and stealing their labour at the local level. (Bear in mind that a lot of England's early wealth in the 1500s and early 1600s was based on ongoing series of land enclosures that started in earlier centuries and continued through the 1700s and 1800s, and on the conquest of Ireland.)
In an ideal (if perhaps unrealistic) international trading network, everyone starts out as an equal in exporting whatever they have, that is surplus to their own needs, and imports whatever they need that they cannot produce themselves or cannot produce enough of themselves. This extends not only to physical commodities but also commodities that have symbolic value, such as cultural products (music, literature, films, art). No-one would be allowed to be a freeloader.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Jan 2 2024 5:26 utc | 91
Britain, India, textile industry, colonialism and theft .... and now post-colonial period still more theft
@ Echo Chamber | Jan 1 2024 15:08 utc | 50
@ Refinnejenna | Jan 1 2024 20:12 utc | 66
@ Roger | Jan 2 2024 0:43 utc | 78
Yes!
Some handy refs
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/19/how-britain-stole-45-trillion-from-india
Colonial global economy: towards a theoretical reorientation of political economy
Gurminder K. Bhambra
Pages 307-322 | Published online: 20 Oct 2020
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2020.1830831?src=recsys
Rich countries drained $152tn from the global South since 1960
- Imperialism never ended, it just changed form.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/5/6/rich-countries-drained-152tn-from-the-global-south-since-1960
Plunder in the Post-Colonial Era: Quantifying Drain from the Global South Through Unequal Exchange, 1960–2018
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13563467.2021.1899153?journalCode=cnpe20
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/12/the-age-of-imperialism-is-not-over-but-we-can-end-it
https://newint.org/features/2021/08/09/money-ultimate-decolonizer-fjf
The South’s losses outstrip their aid receipts by a factor of 30.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X
The (anti) politics of central banking: Monetary policy, class conflict and the limits of sovereignty in South Africa
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03085147.2021.1841931?journalCode=reso20
Posted by: Lavrov's Dog | Jan 2 2024 5:33 utc | 92
It's been a while since I last read your postings. Welcome back and Happy New Year.
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Jan 1 2024 19:20 utc | 64
"Nice ! Im doing minimal posting these days."
Posted by: denk | Jan 2 2024 4:50 utc | 88
Denk, I echo OV's greetings.
Heavy news days since the SMO started and now Palestine boiling
but don't give up the fight, you're on the right side of things.
Posted by: waynorinorway | Jan 2 2024 5:58 utc | 93
imo a very good series which gets to the nettle of today's dynamic (fragile?) energy issues – written for the layperson, avg joe.
Energy Destinies – Part 8: Hurtling towards a pitch-dark future?
Our current civilisation was founded on both the past and the future. It was built on stored energy from sunlight. All of it will soon be consumed and cannot be replaced in the span of our species.
Published: 31st July 2023
By Satyajit Das
EXTRACTS
Abundant and cheap power is one of the foundations of modern civilisation and economies. Current changes in energy markets are perhaps the most significant for a long time. It has implications for society in the broadest sense. Energy Destinies is a multi-part series examining the role of energy, demand and supply dynamics, the shift to renewables, the transition, its relationship to emissions and possible pathwaysParts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 looked at patterns of demand and supply over time, renewable sources, energy storage, economics of renewables, the energy transition and the inter-action between energy policy and emissions. The last two parts outline the energy endgame. Part 7 examined the framework that will shape events. The final part 8 looks at possible trajectories.The world simultaneously faces two problems — dwindling fossil fuels and emissions. These can be addressed by reducing demand as well as increasing or managing supplies including the shift to lower emission renewable sources.
Demand modification
Energy demand is function of a number of factors: population, energy consumption per capita, and energy density relative to GDP. A critical externality is the emissions per capital or unit of GDP.
Unfortunately, there is little impetus to manage many of these variables. Political constraints around forced population control and expectation of perpetual improvements in living standards mean curtailing demand is not on the policy agenda.
Fossil fuel driven internal combustion engines have a thermal efficiency of around 40-50 percent for a petrol engine and slightly higher for a diesel.
Land, sea and air transport combined have an average efficiencies of around 20 percent.
Power generation is similarly inefficient. US coal- and gas-fired power plants achieve average thermal efficiency of 32 percent and 44 percent respectively. ……………………… ?
Energy pathway – Stage 1 deals The emphasis was on obtaining agreement without understanding of energy markets, physics and economics.
Energy Pathway – Stage 2: Disillusion and desperation the lack of progress on slowing emissions and climate change are exposed.
Energy Pathway – Stage 3: Disorder and divides Stage 2 drifts into disorder as the ability to meet expectations of energy supplies and prices fracture. The forces identified in the previous stage intensify.
Energy Pathway – Stage 4: Decline In the final stage, energy demand must fit available supply, from whatever sources are available, as radical conservation is dictated by circumstances.
The dynamics of Stage 4 depend on the speed of implementation and success of earlier actions to secure energy sources, such as nuclear power plants or fossil fuel supplies. To the extent that countries have failed to secure adequate energy supplies, emergency measures to balance supply and demand may entail restrictions on usage or out-right power shutdowns.
If the per capita energy rations are lower than current levels and the cost significantly higher, then living standards and lifestyles will need to adjust.
Whether our national and international political systems are capable of managing such stresses remains unknown.
Endgame
Just as the ready availability of cheap energy underpinned the rapid growth and improved living standards of the last two centuries, reduced supplies and higher costs will force a retrenchment.
At the same time, since the 1970s, modern economies have relied on ever larger amounts of debt. Such borrowings accelerate current consumption and spending against the promise of repayment. As debt levels have risen, more and more future income must be committed to paying it back. Higher levels of debt helped fund demands on available real resources, which are, in some cases, reaching the limits of supply.
The simultaneous pressures from the world’s energy and debt trajectories now shape the future. There is a subtle difference between the resource and financial economy. The former may decline gradually as supplies are used up. In contrast, the financial economy which inherently deals in current values of future cash flows discounted for timing may feel the pressures much earlier.
Author Jared Diamond, writing in 1999, argued that the worst mistake humans made was switching to agriculture. The addiction to fossil fuels and profligate energy consumption may prove equally catastrophic. It benefited a cohort of lucky sperm who were able to enjoy its bounty but leaves behind a toxic and uncertain legacy.
Former malapropism-prone Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdim’s prognosis may be fateful:
“We will live so well that our children and grandchildren will envy us!”All ages ultimately die by their own hand.
© 2023 Satyajit Das All Rights Reserved
https://www.newindianexpress.com/web-only/2023/jul/31/energy-destinies-part-8-hurtling-towards-a-pitch-dark-future-2600494.html
Posted by: Lavrov's Dog | Jan 2 2024 6:01 utc | 94
From Xinhuanet there is this posting title
China's CNPC replaces U.S. oil giant as lead contractor for Iraq's West Qurna 1 oilfield
They took it away from Mobil in spite of military occupation
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 2 2024 6:39 utc | 95
Posted by: Lavrov's Dog | Jan 2 2024 6:01 utc | 93
Very interesting.
What is the HUGE difference between funding the transition with
a) Private sector companies who take out bank loans.
Or
b) Government, when taxes don't fund spending and a fully sovereign nation state doesn't need to make a profit or earn anything.
Posted by: Echo Chamber | Jan 2 2024 8:31 utc | 96
@ Echo Chamber | Jan 2 2024 8:31 utc | 95
I have no idea Echo.
I leave such matters to @ProfSteve Keen and listen to his advice even though I don't understand it most of the time.
Posted by: Lavrov's Dog | Jan 2 2024 8:43 utc | 97
I am not gonna waste time or mental energy jawing about Desmet.
If you don't see through the guy, not my problemo.
Posted by: Jane | Jan 2 2024 4:05 utc | 206
When Desmet first came to light during Covid I too thought he was on to something.
But reading his speech (Suzan | Jan 2 2024 0:57 utc | 195 - Palestine thread)
left me thinking it was Scorpion or Persiflo or some other idealist talking. Just blather.
Now, in the interest of 'sincere speech', I think he's a fraud and agree with Jane's sentiments.
CJ had some words about it:Mass Formation?
Posted by: waynorinorway | Jan 2 2024 9:05 utc | 98
The Telegraph foresees the end of the neoliberal EU.
Posted by: too scents | Dec 31 2023 14:36 utc | 2
As lester | Jan 2 2024 3:01 utc | 82 says, this is just insane and unrealistic Brexiter stuff, that has been voiced by such as the Telegraph for 40 years or more. Europeans could not live without the EU now, in their daily life. But the Telegraph doesn't know it. Only foaming EU hatred is what you get from the Telegraph.
I quite appreciate the EU is not popular among the North Americans on MoA, but then they're not in contact with the reality of European events. I note that Italy hasn't left the EU, in spite of the newly elected far right government.
Posted by: laguerre | Jan 2 2024 9:07 utc | 99
"To go against the prevailing narrative is one of the best ways to waste your time, because narratives are what human beings unconsciously use to survive. Which is why we don't ever want to change our mind!"
#ExceptionsProveTheRule
Posted by: Lavrov's Dog | Jan 2 2024 9:12 utc | 100
The comments to this entry are closed.
Ah thanks b , we seem to have done it again! I’m posting elsewhere as the new thread goes up!
Thanks for your outstanding site and work and hope you have health and happiness n store for the coming year. We are all going to need it.
I’ll just repost my last comment here and leave it at that.
What following the trail reveals is that a few ‘Olympian’ masters set themselves up above the whole of humanity and the resources of the Earth to do with as they please. They have done this with varying success and scope over millennia.
THEY are the shapeshifters.
They consider most of humanity to be their slaves to be disposed of as they like.
They can never let enough of these slaves rise to usurp their Power.
They do this by raising some of the slaves up to be master of the rest of us slaves, mostly the psychopaths, who don’t mind killing their own for the Owners.
Why is China hated ? Because in 50 years they have RAISED their poorest to the higher standard every year in every aspect of human existence. They in turn are helping the rest of humanity to do the same.
The subcontinents Overlords don’t like that example - they want to keep the Old system!
They have succeeded for Millenia in keeping most of us slaves down or culling us to avoid ‘unnecessary mouths to feed’. Not because there isn’t enough food but because we have to be culled so WE will not demand the same security as enjoyed by the Old Owners our Masters.
Russia equally failed to play along - even when they were given the family of European monarchy grand wizards to lead them down the path. They were stood on stage in front of their curtains and invited to the European Court Ball.
The Romanovs balked at that trap and had to be exterminated. The Bolsheviks were created to do that. As the fake religions of Capitalism/Anti-capitalism was invented and perfected to take over from the dying superstition of traditional god othering that kept us slaves in our place.
Their monarch cousins across Europe could only watch in awe at the Power of those who they also serve! The ‘Dark Hand’ as even the aged QE2 admitted in her last years.
The culmination, the high water mark, is actually the establishment of the illegal Apartheid entity and this final attempt (please) to take EurAsia via the yet again proxy of the Ukrops.
To take their ancient lands which straddles the trade routes of the world.
Extermination is their final solution for those who stand against their Power or refuse to conduct a cull of their own peoples. If that is the only language they understand, then their extermination will be the only action that will stop this endless history of misery for the majority.
I expect the Chinese, Iranians, Russians along with the rising global south free peoples will deliver such a blow - directly into the palaces, islands, estates , bunkers and super yachts! The technology allows that - most of the populations wouldn’t even know of any such actions!!!
And voila humanity will finally be free to pursue its full potential.
Happy New Year barflies.
Posted by: DunGroanin | Dec 31 2023 14:22 utc | 1