A for what it’s worth item…
Article found at RT site:
“Erdogan among ‘greatest anti-Semites in history’ – Israeli FM”
“Türkiye is the world’s largest supporter of terrorism due to its backing of Hamas, Israel Katz has claimed”
https://www.rt.com/news/594018-erdogan-israel-gaza-netanyahu/
Surely this will raise the levels of love in the region.

Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Mar 10 2024 15:58 utc | 4

@Posted by: NemesisCalling | Mar 10 2024 15:41 utc | 2
The Western elites have no shame, and never have. The European elites spent hundreds of years massacring each other, for example:
– The 100 years war from 1337 to 1453 between the British and French monarchies
-The 30 years religious (Protestants vs. Catholics) war from 1618 to 1648 during which up to 8 million people of the relatively small populations of the day died. Parts of what we now call Germany saw 50% falls in population.
Plus many, many other wars between monarchies, between religions, between monarchy and religious authority, and wars of liberation. Then of course we can add the widespread genocidal and ethnic cleansing nature of the Western colonial projects in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania; which only concluded in the nineteenth century with either brutal final subjugations (e.g. the Amerindians) or horrific failing colonial violence against liberation struggles. Mass holocausts in the Americas (including the most recent ones in the 1980s in El Salvador and Guatemala), South West Africa, Australia, India etc. Then we can add on the slaughterhouses of WW1 and WW2, and the biological and chemical warfare practised against South Korea and Vietnam.
They have no shame, the elites will pick “liberal democracy” when that works, “fascism” when it doesn’t, and mass slaughter when it suits. The only thing they understand is money and power. Brenner gets it right when he says:

Western leaders are experiencing two stunning events: defeat in Ukraine, genocide in Palestine. The first is humiliating, the other shameful. Yet, they feel no humiliation or shame. Their actions show vividly that those sentiments are alien to them – unable to penetrate the entrenched barriers of dogma, arrogance and deep-seated insecurities.

But he misses the trait of psychopathy, which is richly rewarded within the capitalist elite. Feelings of superiority also allow the elite to view others as not-worthy untermenschen to be eradicated as one would eradicate cockroaches. Fascism never left after WW2, it just sat in waiting in the minds of the elites and on the periphery (Portugal, Spain, Pakistan, Indonesia until recently, South Korea until relatively recently, Taiwan until relatively recently, the 1970s/1980s South American dictatorships, African dictatorships, what India is slowly becoming).
Now, as the Western populations become more resistant to the hegemonic culture, fascism returns – just as Gramsci would have predicted. The West, including my own country of Canada, has become increasingly fascistic over the past few decades predominantly under the banner of “liberals” and “social democrats”. When the internationalist elites complain about Trump they are simply projecting. Social spending and freedoms must be cut at the cost of maintaining the “Western Way” and the freedumb to be protected against the danger of our own agency and stray thought patterns.
This is why the coalition centred upon China, Iran and Russia is so important as change will only come from without, not from within. No matter how many demonstrations and shaming events are held, how did that work for the Iraq War? Brenner asks:

What of the puzzle we noted as to the near complete absence of feelings of guilt or shame – especially over Gaza, of being humiliated in the eyes of the world? In conditions of nihilism, matters of conscience are moot. For the implicit rejection of norms, rules and laws frees the individual self to do whatever impulses or ideas or selfish interests impel it.

He is blind to the reality that the Western elites are doing what they have always done! For them there have never been “norms, rules and laws” apart from “might makes right”. Then he dissolves into the pseudo-science of social science psychology and the ridiculousness of Freud so that he can stay away from the psychopathic reality of the capitalist elites that rule the West. So typical of such liberal thinkers, they can identify the problems but like the proverbial monkeys “can see no capitalist oligarchy, can hear no capitalist oligarchy, cannot speak of any capitalist oligarchy”.

Posted by: Roger | Mar 10 2024 16:21 utc | 6

Re the “quietly fraying” article:
I have always thought in the past that Israel was very lucky in its past wars (56, 67, 73) until the 80’s war in Lebanon that the Arab armies played its game of short and sharp tech-war, rather than forcing the small nation into extending itself in months and years of war. That seems to be a lesson that Hezbollah and the Houthis have learned and promulgated: never surrender and keep the conflict going until you achieve results.
It’s a very damaging/destructive way to do war, as the US/Israel airpower can indeed damage infrastructure and kill many civilians. However, it’s the only way to win against technologically more advanced but casualty and numbers-poor enemies.

Posted by: Caliman | Mar 10 2024 16:56 utc | 8

@Roger
Blaming this on “Conservatives” or “Liberals” is wrong.
Trump and Bush perverted Conservative ideas to help the psychopaths rip everyone off, while Obama and Biden pervert Liberal ideas even now for the same goal.
Trump and Biden are fighting for their families to be the ones that get to further the agenda of the psychopaths.

Posted by: Woke American | Mar 10 2024 17:05 utc | 10

The voters of Rochdale stood up in opposition to genocide on Feb. 29. I intend to vote for Jill Stein in November. How many others will do the same?
Posted by: Lysias | Mar 10 2024 16:08 utc | 4
I hope that she will win and become the second female American President (handler), after Jill Biden.
Sorry, but it was too tempting

Posted by: Paul from Norway | Mar 10 2024 17:13 utc | 12

@ Roger 5
That Czech philosopher with the lisp and the ticks, the Marxist/Hegelian or Marxist-Hegelian, says he views our era as that of neo-Paganism, post-Christianity and he registers disgust with it.
I don’t know who is pulling the levers right now, but soon the plebs will need some blood sacrifices to soothe their newfound troubled lot in life.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Mar 10 2024 17:23 utc | 14

I hope that she will win and become the second female American President (handler), after Jill Biden.
Sorry, but it was too tempting
Posted by: Paul from Norway | Mar 10 2024 17:13 utc | 11
____
You’re forgetting Mrs. Woodrow Wilson.
I’d be tempted to add Nancy Reagan to the list, but in her husband’s senescence it was more likely Nancy’s astrologer who exerted any influence.

Posted by: malenkov | Mar 10 2024 17:32 utc | 16

(1) What’s her foreign policy?
(2) What’s her program to crush the oligarchy of the west?
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Mar 10 2024 17:20 utc | 12
______
ad (1). Google is your friend.
ad (2). Hardly matters because she won’t garner more than a small fraction of the votes, but let’s pretend she somehow manages to win. She would accomplish nothing because both the “elected” and unelected Beltway bureaucracies would eat her for lunch.
She’s still worth a protest vote, but one should entertain no illusions that protest voting would accomplish anything.

Posted by: malenkov | Mar 10 2024 17:47 utc | 18

“That Czech philosopher with the lisp and the ticks, the Marxist/Hegelian or Marxist-Hegelian, says he views our era as that of neo-Paganism, post-Christianity and he registers disgust with it.
I don’t know who is pulling the levers right now, but soon the plebs will need some blood sacrifices to soothe their newfound troubled lot in life.”
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Mar 10 2024 17:23 utc | 13
———————————————————–
I think you mean Slavoj Žižek – who is Slovenian not Czech – and Gabriel Rockhill wrote a most excellent evisceration of that “court jester” of capitalism.
There really are more fake Marxists than real ones. And that, of course, begs the question as to why so many would want to imitate an ideology that is allegedly so “out of date”. ha ha.
In fact to ask this simple question is to answer it, to paraphrase the old mole himself.
See Capitalism’s Court Jester: Slavoj Žižek
Rockhill: ” [as a] … poster child for the global theory industry. Žižek could take the most reactionary political positions imaginable, have them broadcast around the world by the capitalist cultural apparatus, and still be presented as a towering intellectual of the Left. As a matter of fact, he has done precisely that.”

Posted by: N Hanrahan | Mar 10 2024 18:04 utc | 20

The EU adopted a new strategical initiative that calls for members to spend at least 50% of their defense acquisition budget for toys made in EU by 2030. – Here’s the full Pressemitteilung from the German side, it can be read in many languages.
I picked up the info from my local news aggregator, who ran it with the headline „Europe first vs. America first“. Sign of the times, methinks.

Posted by: persiflo | Mar 10 2024 18:29 utc | 22

@ 16 James
Completely concur with your thought here. Shame as a popular phenomenon is no longer acceptable. Talk to any modern therapist or paychologist and they will tell you they do not advocate a proper understanding of shame. Indeed, they rail against it. This nihilistic apathy that we all sense in the west is a result of being told that self-gratification (which is usually pleasure borne from objectifying the other) is the sole purpose. This is idolatry.
At least we are here railing against it, however powerlesz we may appear to be. But remember that something is working inside you right now.
@14 David
Sin/guilt/shame is an interesting study. Certainly essential though when attempting to understand culture and history.
Have you ever read Rene Girard? Sacrifice is the singular essential element in all culture. Where we channel this energy is what makes us asleep or conscious.
If we can not understand that we can not exist with the other without the intercession of God who reveals to us this need for reconciliation with the Father, it produces shamelessness which is precisely the absence of consciousness of sin/guilt.
Instead of spiritual attunement through shame, modern humanism teaches us to quiet this internal anxiety through material ends, physical science and technology.
@ 19 Hanrahan
The fact that he thinks Russia is the aggressor is all I need to know about who butters his bread..

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Mar 10 2024 18:54 utc | 24

@Roger | Mar 10 2024 16:21 utc | 5

He is blind to the reality that the Western elites are doing what they have always done! For them there have never been “norms, rules and laws” apart from “might makes right”.

That is patently false. You keep repeating the lamentation against the (so called) West, so dear and central to the Neo-Liberal totalitarian thought. You could earn yourself a Critical Race Theory master degree, honoris causa.
—
@N Hanrahan | Mar 10 2024 18:04 utc | 19
Žižek’s philosophy is messy and quite shallow, but the list of Žižek’s sins from that Rockhill’s article includes: “[t]his top-tier pundit also endorsed Donald Trump for president in the 2016 election”. Wow! What a sin. As for the rest, it is just a bunch of out of context citations, often misrepresenting what Žižek really meant (which is usually quite messy).
An example, Rockhill’s article reads:

[H]e explicitly positioned himself to the right of the notorious warmonger Henry Kissinger by accusing the latter of “pacifism” and expressing his “full support” for the U.S. proxy war in the Ukraine, claiming that “we need a stronger NATO” to defend “European unity.”

In the linked article by Žižek we read:

“we need a stronger Nato – but not as a prolongation of the US politics.
The US strategy to counteract through Europe is far from self-evident: not just Ukraine, Europe itself is becoming the place of the proxy war between US and Russia, which may well end up by a compromise between the two at Europe’s expense.”

It is OK to criticize Žižek, but not with something which is more shallow than Žižek’s thought itself.

Posted by: SG | Mar 10 2024 19:12 utc | 26

The fact that he thinks Russia is the aggressor is all I need to know about who butters his bread..
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Mar 10 2024 18:54 utc | 23
Fair enough. If you went back in time, then Zizek’s support of brutal neo-liberalism in the former Yugoslavia (along with the NATO bombing) is also a pretty strong “tell”.
However, a mix of opinions, as with the juggling balls of a court jester (Rockhill), is more effective in mis-leading people. And that’s exactly what Zizek does.
By the way, Rockhill admits in his article noted above that he was also sucked into the glittering, shiny BS of Zizek as a young academic.

Posted by: N Hanrahan | Mar 10 2024 19:30 utc | 28

Michael Brenner begins:

Western leaders are experiencing two stunning events: defeat in Ukraine, genocide in Palestine. The first is humiliating, the other shameful. Yet, they feel no humiliation or shame. Their actions show vividly that those sentiments are alien to them – unable to penetrate the entrenched barriers of dogma, arrogance and deep-seated insecurities.

One shouldn’t forget that one consequence of the managerial revolution is the shift in historical patterns of leadership. Political leaders no longer require the criteria of birth, class, and wealth that once gave them the (perceived) leisured aloofness from ‘interests’ to be able to embody their emerging nations. Across the 19th and early 20th c. Capital required government to be management of its interests; as owners receded from control to become passive shareholders, Boards and Executive Officers emerged as a new ruling class, as much in bureaucracy, academia and government as industry, banking and mining.
Now, of course, it is a truism that only ‘certain kinds of people’—sociopaths—ascend to the top positions. It requires a cunning, brutality, lack of empathy, a single-minded view of power as its own end, complete moral vacuity, ruthlessness, shallow and opportunistic relationships with others and, above all, a willingness to leave a trail of bodies. They often also possess a shameless belief in their own infallibility. They respect only greater force and domination. The upper management of all contemporary institutions show these traits in spades. Biden, Trump, right, left, everywhere.
They are in these positions precisely because they are incapable of experiencing either shame or humiliation. The only way to free ourselves is to treat them all like malignant tumours. Our contempt for them must be stronger and purer, not individual, but collective, not personal, but messianic and righteous, not to understand them, but to burn them out, root and branch.

Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 10 2024 19:43 utc | 30

@Posted by: N Hanrahan | Mar 10 2024 18:04 utc | 19
Rockhill shows a great deal of humility for the mistakes of his life (believing in “French theory” and the court-jester Zizek etc.), and is the real deal of actually being a Marxist; a rarity among the so many fake ones plus the self-defeating Trotsky tribe for which no communist revolution will ever be pure enough. His take on the history of post-WW2 “critical” theory is spot on.
@Posted by: SG | Mar 10 2024 19:12 utc | 25
More ahistorical garbage then the attempt at a slur! Zizek is a self-serving bloviater who is all about selling his brand, and most certainly not a Marxist. Very supportive of Western hegemony whilst he “attacks” it. He is allowed to be a “critical” intellectual superstar because it serves the capitalist oligarchy for him to act as an intellectual sheep dog.

Posted by: Roger | Mar 10 2024 20:05 utc | 32

@Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 10 2024 19:56 utc | 30
Please stop with the anti-semitic BS. There is a large segment of the global Jewish community who are anti-Zionist, and therefore your use of “the Jews” as some perfectly homogeneous aligned group is utterly misleading and anti-semitic. Did Norman Finkelstein start a “War on Hamas”? It is the Zionist regime of Israel that started a war, and not on “Hamas” but on the Palestinian people.
The use of simplistic tropes and the misidentification of the real antagonist and real victims only leads to religious hatred and misdirection. The vast majority of the Zionist leaders were/are actually non-practising Jews, they were/are nationalists who stole religious phrases etc., as well as the suffering of the European Jews during the Shoah, to push their supremacist agenda.

Posted by: Roger | Mar 10 2024 20:12 utc | 34

Sin/guilt/shame is an interesting study. Certainly essential though when attempting to understand culture and history.
Instead of spiritual attunement through shame, modern humanism teaches us to quiet this internal anxiety through material ends, physical science and technology.
@ 19 Hanrahan
I am not en expert but as I have understood it, Peter Thiel was a student of Girard, he even spoke in Girard’s funeral.
Girard use the witch- hunts too show that a few in a community are the victims. Thiel inverted Girard’s work, and claimed someting like this: we the rich are the victims.
Thiel was the first investor in Facebook and are working with CIA/FACE/GOOGLE…..
He is the topdog in Silicon Valley- Sauron with his Palatir

Posted by: Paul from Norway | Mar 10 2024 20:27 utc | 36

Posted by: bevin | Mar 10 2024 20:32 utc | 34 & 36
Excellent posts. It’s a shame Brenner doesn’t name it: historical Capitalism.

Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 10 2024 20:35 utc | 38

bevin | Mar 10 2024 20:32 utc | 36
On the orphans, children shipped to Canada – what years was that. I know about the emigrant schemes for the poor of the mid 1800’s, most I think were shipped to Australia and I assume some went to Canada. One of my forebears was shipped out as a 14 year old servant girl. I know one forebear was a widower with children and he had to be married to be eligible so he went to the poor house and found a wife. Looking at the ships lists of the various ships my forebears came out out, the bulk were married couples families. I think there would be some single men in the front of the ship, families in the middle the some single women housed at the rear of the ship.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 10 2024 21:26 utc | 40

While reading other posters here and also Brenner’s article I am thinking: Our politicians here in Canada, in the US and in Europe all support unconditionally whatever Kiev is doing to it’s own population in Ukraine and whatever Tel-Aviv is doing in Gaza. It seems that all those actions are acceptable to our Western elites — assuming they are actively listening. They will complain about the Xinjiang, of which they know not much about, but they are complicit to the sordid depravation that rules Kiev and Tel-Aviv which the whole world can witness.
Our elites will treat us in the same way when the opportunity comes.

Posted by: Richard L | Mar 10 2024 22:09 utc | 42

https://www.unz.com/kbarrett/will-redemption-through-genocide-end-the-golden-age-of-american-jews/
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/redemption-through-genocide/
First references the second.
About the usual (zabatean) suspects….

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 10 2024 22:42 utc | 44

Posted by: Melaleuca | Mar 10 2024 22:45 utc | 43
Re: airborne laser scanning – https://en.supercam.aero/services/laserscaneng
Not really that surprising. Note the Russian videos at the bottom.
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/eros/science/usgs-eros-archive-aerial-photography-aircraft-scanner
The “authorities” should be more transparent about their scanning activities, but there’s no evidence for directed energy weapons. The YouTube video mentions “opt out” and “space lasers” which is to some degree basic fear mongering and influencer/click peddling.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 10 2024 22:53 utc | 46

Roger @5
Correction: the 100 Years War was between the English, not British, and the French monarchies. It does make a huge difference. Also, Burgundy (then an lidependent state) was involved. Furthermore, while it is correct to say that, as far as Germsny is concerned, the 30 Years war was between Catholics and Protestants,the latter supported by Lutheran Sweden, they were also allied with Catholic France.

Posted by: AJ | Mar 10 2024 22:56 utc | 48

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 10 2024 21:26 utc | 39
My ancestor was shipped from Skye to Taree, NSW in the 1850s after falling victim to late enclosures. Booted out of his tenancy he took up the offer of passage in exchange for a 5 year term working the land in northern NSW (John Dunmore Lang was the landowner at this end, a sympathetic presbyterian Scotsman). His sons would eventually make a decent living shipping timber from Taree down to Sydney via coastal routes. All of early Australia was built on slave (convict), forced or indentured labour. Huge numbers of children too no doubt.

Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 10 2024 23:13 utc | 50

Posted by: juliania | Mar 10 2024 23:24 utc | 49
May your garden thrive and forever be a place of solace and quiet. It’s all we humans need: the love of friends (humans and animals), books, a place to lie down in the shade, growing things, good conversation. A garden covers much of that.
Good luck with your potatoes!
P.

Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 10 2024 23:29 utc | 52

Posted by: Roger | Mar 10 2024 20:12 utc | 33
I’m with Hoarsewhisperer on this one. Since October I’ve been wrestling with whether to blame the Gaza holocaust on “the Jews.” I’ve come to the conclusion that the good Jews aren’t doing enough to confront the genocide Jews. If the good jews see themselves being blamed for the genocide then maybe they will up their game. I would like to see a Jewish civil war develop. It would be best for all concerned if the Jews cleaned their own house.

Posted by: Chas | Mar 10 2024 23:40 utc | 54

Posted by: Morongobill | Mar 10 2024 16:59 utc | 8

Thanks for sharing. That video brings back old memories. I was doing that kind of things during the week-ends a long time ago on the many rivers we have around here. It was before the Internet. I was drinking the Kool-Aid back then as far as World Affairs are concerned :-). My grand-daughter now uses the canoe.

Posted by: Richard L | Mar 10 2024 23:59 utc | 56

All of early Australia was built on slave (convict), forced or indentured labour. Huge numbers of children too no doubt.
Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 10 2024 23:13 utc | 48
I traced back the names of all four grandparents and it was their grandparents that came to Australia. All came out on the Emigration scheme and barring the servant girl, all found there own way about once arriving. One, a convict was granted parole within a week of arriving and a year later a complete pardon. The servant girl, I don’t know if she was indentured or what but it didn’t as on receiving full pardon in WA, he was free to travel outside the western colony which he immediately did, catching a ship to Adelaide. There he met up with the servant girls and they headed to Victoria telling everyone they were married. They ended up marrying about fifty years later after having raised a large family. Generally farmers, wood cutters ect, one bought an ox wagon and carted freight to the goldfields (his son borne on the boat out ended building it into a relativity prosperous freight business, another ended up as a publican at the goldfields.
For the majority of that first generation, it was a hard life but better than what the had before. They all came out in the fifties, one couple may have been very early sixties.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 11 2024 0:11 utc | 58

I came across this in my feeds. Although I have seen some push back against former Men playing in women’s sports, I really expected more.
“Sign the petition to save women’s sport
Tell the National High School Sports Federation, the National College Athletic Association, and the International Olympic Committee to
SAVE WOMEN’S SPORTS”
https://www.prageru.com/save-womens-sports
I noticed it’s also going to the international Olympic Committee so it might benefit every country.

Posted by: David G Horsman | Mar 11 2024 0:42 utc | 60

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 10 2024 18:43 utc | 22
That is good to hear, psychohistorian, thank you!

Posted by: juliania | Mar 11 2024 1:08 utc | 62

persiflo | Mar 10 2024 18:29 utc | 21
*** The EU adopted a new strategical initiative that calls for members to spend at least 50% of their defense acquisition budget for toys made in EU by 2030. – Here’s the full Pressemitteilung from the German side, it can be read in many languages.***
Which raises two questions —
first, who would really own the manufacturing companies?
and
second, would a small amount of final assembly work followed by attaching an “EU product” sticker instead of one that said “US made” or “Made in China” be what actually happened?
The EU and its ‘leaders’ are just puppets of the US-empire and its corporate entities.
Whatever they do will be what the controllers of that empire want.

Posted by: Cynic | Mar 11 2024 1:30 utc | 64

Posted by: Chas | Mar 10 2024 23:40 utc | 52
The problem that you haven’t adressed in your postulations is that the “genocide Jews” are fully backed by the “genocide non-Jews”. Far too many of the western “gentiles”, especially in the Anglosphere, are resolutely supportive of the genocide taking place in Gaza and for that matter the general ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians in the West Bank too. That includes the slimy vermin who clutch their pearls while support the ongoing material and economic aid for the Israeli genocidaires.
This is why I insist that Zionism is no longer simply a theory of Jewish supremacism, but of western supremacism in general. This is particularly true in the Angloshpere, whose elites promote this type of messianic chauvinism even before the Balfour Declaration and the creation of Israel, elites that of course include Jewish oligarchs as well. It is fundamentally the accepted form of western imperialism and the key factor is class.
And no, this is not some squeemish concession to any phoney anti-racists, but a recognition that as long as people continue to feel hounded by the ever insidious Jewish Sith lords, they will always miss the culprits of the horror shows that emerge, those misanthropes who maintain their hellbound course, irrespectively of their ethnic or religious affiliations.

Posted by: Constantine | Mar 11 2024 1:42 utc | 66

Refinnejenna | Mar 11 2024 1:04 utc | 58
Thanks for that. I had been unaware of that program. Seems to go hand in hand with the stolen generations.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 11 2024 2:06 utc | 68

Roger | Mar 10 2024 20:12 utc | 33
***… use of “the Jews” as some perfectly homogeneous aligned group is utterly misleading ***
Really? Yes there are a *comparatively small* number of dissidents.
But does it not strike you as odd that “Jewish” is (by their own (assertion) an *inherited* characteristic? Does that not make it rather more of a claimed “race” than a “religion”?
And as a religion …. well, considering the fanatically hate-packed parts of theirs which are certainly not made known to the general (non Jewish) public — but have, at least in part, become quite blatant with regard to Gaza — do you really think anyone could nowadays seriously subscribe to most sects of that religion without them having a rather dangerous, even if suppressed, attitude problem?

Posted by: Cynic | Mar 11 2024 2:28 utc | 70

@ unimperator | Mar 11 2024 3:04 utc | 68 about US/Western financial futures…
I was reading on Friday about how because inflation is still high there will be stagflation again instead….who knows?
I am behind us going through the crash option door currently.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 11 2024 3:15 utc | 72

@ 35 Paul from Norway
Greetings!
I think perhaps Peter Thiel is saying that scapegoats can be anywhere and in any revolution or reactionary movement as antagonist.
Sometimes, even though the peasants storm the castle to kill the king, the king is indeed innocent. It was just a bad harvest or a more powerful external enemy that revealed the fragile and tenuous stability of a people.
I am thinking of Barbet Schroeder’s film “Terror’s Advocate” where the director interviews a notorious French lawyer who represented some of the worst (from a western prism that is). I remember the stinger for that film’s trailer where the lawyer said he would even “represent George Bush.”

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Mar 11 2024 3:27 utc | 74

Posted by: Chas | Mar 10 2024 23:40 utc | 52
(Reply to Roger’s rant at #33)
Bullseye!
And let’s not forget that jews, wordwide, call “Israel” the JEWISH STATE. So one may safely assume that they did so to facilitate describing themselves as “Israelis” and not jews.
Chutzpah? Cringe? Or a clumsy blend of both?

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 11 2024 3:52 utc | 76

@ unimperator | Mar 11 2024 3:24 utc | 70 about paper versus physical gold price difference narrowing.
I mentioned on a previous thread about how the Shanghai gold exchange price is about $30 higher than the London exchange price and I see it it as dragging the London price higher and narrowing the gap difference between them which can also be gamed and I saw at $75 dollars difference at one point a bit ago.
You are correct about the shorts getting caught and they deserve it, IMO.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 11 2024 4:39 utc | 78

unimperator | Mar 11 2024 3:04 utc | 68
Which is why they want to confiscate Russia’s frozen billions …
It’s only a short term salve, but they’ll grab at any flotation device while drowning.

Posted by: Melaleuca | Mar 11 2024 4:50 utc | 80

ZH has a posting up reporting on what I consider a noteworthy situation developing in the US Senate
Rand Paul Teases Senate GOP Leader Run – Musk Says “I Would Support”
The quote

Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul on Friday hinted that he may jump into the race to become the next Senate GOP leader, and Elon Musk was quick to support the idea. Republicans must find a successor for periodically malfunctioning Mitch McConnell, who recently announced he’ll step down in November, though intending to keep his Senate seat until his term ends in January 2027, when he’d be within weeks of turning 86.
….
In a testament to the extent to which the establishment recoils at the libertarian-minded Paul, mainstream media outlets — which have been quick to report on other developments in the majority leader race — pretended not to notice that Paul had signaled his interest in the job. More than 24 hours after Paul’s test-the-waters tweet-fest began, not a single major outlet had brought it to the attention of their audience.
That may be his strongest endorsement yet.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 11 2024 5:02 utc | 82

re Peter above 80 —
AI cannot express emotions, as it doesn’t have any. This means it also can’t even fake them, because there is no genuine understanding them. All it can do is swing garlands between punctuation marks.
This can lead a long way, of course. And I’m with those here that see this bar as quite a playground for troll tactics and technique, which would include AI too. I’d expect we get AI supported pro trolls, who built up username credibility instead of drive-by dropping, as once common. My list has at least two suspect cases.
As to the point Peter remarked – how to spot them? – I would like to insert my personal hobby horse here: telepathy is very real! and actually common, though usually very faint, so it seldomly reaches the conscious I.
This means that getting to know someone includes an aspect of telepathic bonding (I call the “strings of light” with their ancient name, the lihme), which doesn’t send blog comments to and fro via the US Postal Service, but connects deeper strata of mind, and come across much like the strange “logic” of our dreams. Affections are transmitted fairly readily, as is presence of mind. The most stark instance I’ve seen is where a nature filmer sets up a Go Pro at an owl’s nest, and the owl looks straight, fiercely so, into the lens, and after thinking a few seconds, smashes it over with her wing. — encounter with the other is the mode of what’s happening there. Think about meeting a dog.

Posted by: persiflo | Mar 11 2024 6:12 utc | 84

the way up is the way down
using AI to fake genuine voices will only lead to corruption/corrosion/destruction of verbal language.
That’s nothing new. At least with Edward Bernay’s token idea of “sensible” understanding, the path is taken. It is affirmed by classics of MoA quote like “We’ll know our mindfzck works when everyone is only ever repeating the evening news”. Though the root problem appears much older, it shows in the nominalist position towards the nature of Begriffe.

Posted by: persiflo | Mar 11 2024 6:26 utc | 86

The amount of jews publicly protesting the jewish genocide of Palestinians compared to the numbers that come out to publicly support the genocide can can be carried through the entire Jewish population.
Decent jews must still be separated from genocide jews, but I will no longer seperate that religion as if Zionists are a separate entity. Zionism is Judaism. That is mainstream not an extremist offshoot.
A prerequisite for CIA Islamic extremism is conversion to wahhabism. Judaism is no different to wahhabism.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 11 2024 6:34 utc | 88

Heat is a bit of a problem for the doggy world.
That goat running in the heat was real hard. Had to keep them off food for 24 to 48 hours before hand to help preventing them from overheating. They would run till they died if we did not keep a good eye on them. A number of times, when the first trembles started it was a mater of dropping everything and getting them to the nearest water and physically submersing them to get the body temp down as fast as possible. Leave it a bit late and they will suffer brain damage, leave it a little longer and they will die.
Two days if the going was tough and they had to constantly block, block, block – the pads on their feet would be getting thin due to the stony ground and the gidgee burr would begin to penetrate. Third day there was no need to chain them up at home. They would lay exhausted for a day or two and when they went to the water trough, it was very gingerly on very sore feet.
But the heat. Yep that is hard on dogs.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 11 2024 7:21 utc | 90

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 11 2024 5:02 utc | 79
Rand Paul the biggest idiot and liar of them all. A money scarcity guy who should still be hiding after 2008. Who blamed it on the banks ( it is always somebody else’s fault) rather than his own ideology that put the banks in the position that allowed them to carry out their fraud.
What do you think Rand Paul is going to slash and try and privatise ? Using this myth below
Here:
http://www.bondeconomics.com/2024/03/the-debt-crisis-is-here-conference.html
As he waves his ideological placards and shouts his ideological slogans like a 5 year old. Ladder curve trickle down. Why communities and the world is in the mess it is in.
It’s been tried and caused 2008 and Rand Paul still pushes this nonsense 24/7. An ideological driven buffoon. We should be trying to rip democracy out of the bankers hands not keep it on a silver platter for them.
2 places the voters get their money from elected government or unelected banks. Destroy the first one because of same failed gold standard, fixed exchange rate ideology then we are only left with the second option.
Here:
https://michael-hudson.com/2017/03/why-deficits-hurt-banking-profits/
Elon Musk isn’t some hero of the working man. He’s just another greedy cunt like all the rest of them. Why he supports the basic income guarentee. We just had a basic income guarentee during the pandemic.Getting paid for sitting around doing nothing and look at the inflation it caused.
Basic income – Thief of time and exploiting others.
Here:
https://new-wayland.com/blog/basic-income-thief-of-time/
Sums up Musk perfectly.

Posted by: Echo Chamber | Mar 11 2024 9:10 utc | 92

“Our national debt is currently slightly over 100 per cent of GDP, which means we are not only depriving our little ones of the unique care of their mothers, but we are also dumping a deficit on them that they will spend their lifetimes repaying.”
Why do people repeat this arrant nonsense without thought?
There is no national debt, only national savings. That is, after all, what a Gilt is. A gilt edged saving certificate.
And like all savings it disappears when the person owing it stops saving and starts spending. Servicing such spending is, of course, how other people earn an income.
Stop and think. Ask if you are being lied to.Y et you have no rational response, only an emotional one.That tends to happen when a core belief is shattered by facts and logic.
The ‘cost’ of government borrowing is zero, by default, and always has been. When you own your own bank it can’t be anything else. Nobody who owned their own bank would borrow from anywhere else, so why does your government?
Paying out interest is therefore a political choice – in this case the adoption of the “full funding rule”. That can be scrapped, at which point the other mechanism will kick in – as described every year in the Debt Management Office Annual Review (2021-22, p32).
Automatic transfers from the government Ways and Means (II) account at the Bank of England would offset any negative end-of-day balances, though it is an objective to minimise such transfers.
Monetarist policies are funded by an increase in mortgage rates. They intend to swap the Inflation Tax for the Monetarist Mortgage Tax – poor people pay over more interest that is then given to rich people for safe keeping, as interest on their deposits. That is supposed to reduce aggregate demand.
Eliminating further government debt interest payments by simply stopping issuing Gilts will remove the oversupply of Gilts in the market at present (which is what is causing prices to fall and yields to go up) and reduce the income ‘people with money’ get from them. That then reduces the size of the Mortgage Tax required to stop inflation.
In reality there is no government borrowing, just National Savings. Consolidate everything to NS&I and suddenly we’ll find that there is no debt, just Banks, Pension Funds and individuals with sizeable ‘in credit’ deposits.
It’s determined entirely by how much people decide to save rather than spend – since those are the only two choices everybody has. Outside major crises, it will always be about 90% of whatever government spends because that’s the saving propensity of the UK population.
The UK has no national debt, only National Savings, because the ‘debt’ is denominated in our currency – Sterling. Government borrowing isn’t begging, it’s a balancing item in the government accounts.
All entirely voluntarily. If we stopped selling Gilts and paying interest on reserves tomorrow everything would continue as before – except that banks would quickly stop getting free money from government.Why would you want to pay welfare to banks rather than people?
If anything owning the instrument with the coupon is more inflationary as that gives the holder more interest income.
And as soon as somebody decides not to save, but to spend that generates *additional* taxation, causes somebody else to earn an income – more taxation – and then spend – more taxation – and so on. Sum up that geometric series and you’ll find that it matches the ‘debt’ precisely, for any positive tax rate.
Government debt, and the Gilt savings it consists of, are a store of taxation that will precisely pay off the debt.Each time, every time.
Time to stop fretting about money and start concentrating on the real problems – energy and food security and the lack of productivity due to poor investment and cheap foreign labour.
Generally, you can’t change people’s minds, but you can back them into a corner and make them show a “tell” for cognitive dissonance. That’s essentially a white flag that says, “I have no logical argument, so I will say something ridiculous and act as though it is not.”
I’ll take that as a win.

Posted by: Echo Chamber | Mar 11 2024 9:21 utc | 94

persiflo | Mar 11 2024 9:12 utc | 90
I would very much like to put up some thoughts there and toss a few things around with you but for some reason I cannot comment on substack. karlof1’s substack I filled out the box to comment there and nothing, tried again with yours and the same.
Such is life when one is too tired to ferret a way around the issue. I have to content myself with assuming a gentlemanly posture at the bar and trying to refrain from kicking stray dogs and stamping on cockroaches.
Much appreciate your thoughts you put up here even though we differ on some.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 11 2024 10:30 utc | 96

persiflo | Mar 11 2024 10:48 utc | 94
The roman world. That is what differentiates the west from the rest. Borrell’s garden – the utopia we dwell within.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 11 2024 10:57 utc | 98

What a thumping re-boot of the Narratives and their sheepdogs around here.
Something going on !
For our 5-eyed dwellers – seriously chaps and chapesses? – are you only just discovering your histories of colonialism by Transportation?
If you are a Yankee , you were first engaged in some Christian sect , then subjected to ‘persecution’ and thus encouraged to ‘escape to freedom’ to the US.
If you were an employee of the Company, you were sent to manage its plantations and slaves. Encouraged to breed with local worthies and form a new class of natives
If you were a plantation owner and slave masters – it was considered a duty to impregnate as many slave girls as possible during your stint to create the mixed races, that would somehow retain their slave mentality but also have ‘loyalty’ to their fathers even if by their name.
How else to control the Sugar and Spice monopoly for ever?
That is still being played out in Haiti and South Americas as we can see by the decades of counter revolution, death squads, coups against elected leaders … criminal gangs and mercenaries under the guidance of the Old Families of Europe – many now cloaked in the bloody sheepskin disguises of ‘Charities’ – these obscene, multinationals!
That fool people at home whilst wrecking havoc upon their old slave colonies. Oxfam, Christian Aid. Greenpeace ! The scum aristos and their six figured salaries, running death squads, engaging in sexual exploitation and keeping the poor poor – now engaged in the latest new religions of Climate, Carbon, pandemics, crypto and same old Malthusian nonsense of saviours of humanity , except they get to be part of the saved and the rest can get jetssumed- plus ca change.
Various methods were employed to deploy colonists to the various corners for the Imperialists who financed it all – aa always.
For instance many such managers were often Scottish!
How did that come to be ?
Here’s a clue –
The Bank Of Scotland was nearly as old as the Bank of England – but it ‘suffered’ some catastrophic bankruptcy with some South Sea Bubbles.
This caused many a merchant , semi noble , educated Scotsmen etc into bankruptcy’s , owed to the City. Which was then parlayed into a debt repayment scheme by servitude to the Company to pay off such debts and re-acquire some wealth in the process.
A master plan of such genius by the Financiers of Europe born of the Silk Roads and their avarice of the Ages – which is finally being ‘de-railed’.
Mostly the bankrupt Scottish grandees, indentured their sons. Their education, skills and health sold into service – by supplying them as sailors, pirates, soldiers and managers first to the Subcontinent, then further to New Zealand and all the other now Eyes – they at least went in their male female groupings and churches as it seemed too far to transport slaves to.
Many as I say went West – the Caribbean and Americas, running the plantations.
Ultimately they forced more migrants from the ‘homelands’ – many Irish white slaves , that’s what they have largely been , the labourers who built the canals and railways and were kept down through the religious persecutions in Northern Europe. (I have a unsubstantiated yet pet theory that the Masters at the Vatican and it’s bankers , when drawing up the world between Portugal and Spain had agreed to hand Northern Europe to their latest whiz the Protestants – to take the furthest reaches and continental land masesss of North America – oy vey a deals a deal ?? – the Oirish Catholics were sold !)
Anyway.
Children were needed , women of breeding stock, the Courts were ordered to hang or Transport as the choice for any misdemeanour- the poor houses were filled and orphanages grew …
So you can see that a lot of woe was brought by the financial bankruptcies of the Scot’s as a peoples from which they have still not recovered their senses, look at how many can’t accept that independence would actually mean less public money instead of more!
Nor have they acknowledged their guilt as prime movers and shakers in the 5 eyed colonisations largely under various forms of Protestantism ! A schism invented to drive imperialism after the Vatican had stolen most of Northern European wealth …
Now that is just a skim of how they ‘suffered’ but let’s not forget that the native lands and natives they invaded , genocided and or enslaved suffered the most. The ones we now so ‘revere’ in NZ as Māoris and their yakka , Aboriginal DreamTimes of Oz etc as if the European settler are actually such natives! USAians grotesquely revere the native Indios!
It is nauseating hypocrisy . That such barefaced reimagining of history has been inculcated and does not even cut through the skin of many ‘right thinking peoples of the 5 Eyes’. Psyche and memory.
I guess I’ll stop there for now. I didn’t even get around to Zionism and Judaism! Or sentient AI emotions.
There’s. Something . Going on. Around here!

Posted by: DunGroanin | Mar 11 2024 11:51 utc | 100