News & views (not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine) …
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April 5, 2024
Open (Neither Ukraine Nor Palestine) Thread 2024-098
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“Death of empires: History tells us what will follow the collapse of US hegemony — RT Business News”
https://www.rt.com/business/594432-financialization-death-empires/
“Occupying a central place in his theory is the notion that the cycle of rise and fall of each successive hegemon terminates in a crisis of financialization. It is this phase of financialization that facilitates the shift to the next hegemon.
…
In each case, the cycle is shorter and each new hegemon is larger, more complex and more powerful than the previous one. And, as we mentioned above, each terminates in a crisis of financialization that marks the final stage of hegemony. But this phase also fertilizes the soil in which the next hegemon will sprout, thus marking financialization as the harbinger of an impending hegemonic shift. Essentially, the ascending power emerges in part by availing itself of the financial resources of the financialized and declining power.”
This is a fascinating theory although I will have to leave it to the finance people here at the bar to comment on its validity.
Posted by: David G Horsman | Apr 5 2024 13:24 utc | 1
This period feels more and more like the “interregnum” that Gramsci described where the Old is dying but the New cannot yet be born. The Old is the 500-year European Empire that was extended through its US settler colony when the European nations committed fratricide over a 30-year period. It is now dying but has much ability to harm the New and delay its birth, while creating a fascistic reality at home. Gramsci understood this process, having been the head of the Italian Communist Party as Mussolini came to power; and then of course jailed until his death by Mussolini’s legal henchmen.
The New is China, and to a lesser extent Russia, Iran and others. Without them the New cannot be born, as the citizenry of the Old are so well enslaved and enraptured by it, and that is why the Old strives so hard to crush and to limit the New.
Sadly, many on the left and those on the bourgeois progressive “left” actually utilize parts of Gramsci, cherry-picking the bits they like, while rejecting his core message. The Trotskyists (e.g. WSWS) and other such lost people cannot bring themselves to acknowledge China as a socialist country, ridiculously stating that it is simply another capitalism. Such people even stretch to accusing Stalin of bringing back capitalism while creating colossal lies about his period of rule. The bourgeois progressive “left” use Gramsci’s terms such as “hegemony” while stripping them of the core historical materialist characteristics so that they can simply play with them as “cultural” things within their “critical” theory, akin to a great dish stripped of its main constitutive ingredient.
It is important to understand actually what Gramsci said as against the many, many misrepresentations. I created a blog post in an attempt to do this, and to show Why Gramsci Is So Relevant Today.
“…The New is China, and to a lesser extent Russia, Iran and others. Without them the New cannot be born, as the citizenry of the Old are so well enslaved and enraptured by it, and that is why the Old strives so hard to crush and to limit the New…”
Posted by: Roger | Apr 5 2024 13:30 ut
And we have ‘new’ here — thank you, b! I wouldn’t say either greater or lesser, nor would I say hegemony, but this is a clarification, Roger, so thank you as well. I like the concept of financialization as a final stage needing a new beginning. Oh, and I also would disagree with the ‘enraptured’ part. Once the divisions became clear between haves and have nots any rapture in the lower but increasingly larger group disappeared rapidly.
It’s not rocket science. Happy New Day, everyone!
Posted by: juliania | Apr 5 2024 13:42 utc | 3
De-basing the currency is the hallmark of all failing empires.
The only Empire that held off de-basing its currency was the Byzantines whose coinage wasn’t debased for 1,000 years.
Posted by: Exile | Apr 5 2024 13:42 utc | 4
“Arrighi dates the origin of this cyclical process to the Italian city-states of the 14th century, an era that he calls the birth of the modern world.”
Posted by: David G Horsman | Apr 5 2024 13:24 utc | 1
The above quote is fom the RT article you provided.
Actually, some scholars believe that the Italian Renaissance was launched by perhaps the world’s richest man: Muslim Mansa Musa from Timbuktu:
“.Musa became ruler of the Mali Empire in 1312, taking the throne after his predecessor, Abu-Bakr II, for whom he’d served as deputy, went missing on a voyage he took by sea to find the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Musa’s rule came at a time when European nations were struggling due to raging civil wars and a lack of resources. During that period, the Mali Empire flourished thanks to ample natural resources like gold and salt…” (1)
Musa , a Muslim, was on a pilgrimage to Mecca. (1332-1337) he spread around so much gold that he may have personally financed the Italian renaissance.
” Now heralded as the wealthiest man to have ever lived (some estimate that Mansa Musa was worth over $400 billion), Mansa Musa is just one of many historical figures who demonstrate that African civilizations profoundly influenced (whether it be culturally, intellectually or economically) Europe and the wider Islamic world. It has been widely documented that Mansa Musa went on Hajj in the year 1325, using his wealth to give zakat (charity), trade and build mosques, houses and other forms of infrastructure across North Africa and Arabia. There are even scholars who believe that Mansa Musa inadvertently helped to finance the Italian Renaissance, pulling Europe out of “the dark ages” into the cultural and intellectual period of the European Renaissance. ” (2)
2.https://bmtimesuk.wixsite.com/mysite/single-post/2016/03/04/mansa-musa-of-mali-transforming-our-perceptions-of-african-and-islamic-history
My ex-wife has worked at the DPA for more than 15 years and she is still active in Brussels. Sometimes we talk on the phone and I get some background information, no details, just the atmosphere in the halls of the EU parliament and Berlaymont.
We’ve been talking on Easter Monday and she told me that the panic there is palpable – from the top level right down to the room attendants / cleaners. Apparently, the atmosphere is extremely tense and nervous. Well, not surprising…
What’s more interesting is that there are apparently two factions fighting right now: one in favor of more weapons and even troops and one that would rather focus on diplomacy. And here Scholz (together with German industry) seems to be the central, blocking point. According to her they are already working on discrediting him and ultimately getting rid of him. Take that with a grain of salt though, we will have to watch the media…
Anyway, if you want to know what is going on in the background, you can read the following report by the German Marshall Fund:
LINK GETS BLOCKED – WILL TRY in a second posting
As these reports are not public, I have simply copied it to the above location, please excuse any formatting issues. It is very revealing how pressure is exerted behind the scenes on Germany and Scholz in particular. Really worth reading even if it is more about trade with China you will get an impression how the various interests are being brokered etc.
Posted by: Multipolar Panda | Apr 5 2024 13:50 utc | 7
Testing link to GMF report:
https://shorturl.at/mvTWX
Posted by: Multipolar Panda | Apr 5 2024 13:52 utc | 8
“Death of empires: History tells us what will follow the collapse of US hegemony — RT Business News”
This is a fascinating theory although I will have to leave it to the finance people here at the bar to comment on its validity.
Posted by: David G Horsman | Apr 5 2024 13:24 utc | 1
If you’re interested in this then there’s a good book on this topic, and it’s even free as a PDF:
https://www.economicprinciples.org/DalioChangingWorldOrderCharts.pdf
Just have a look at the diagrams on the first view pages, it’s fascinating.
Posted by: Multipolar Panda | Apr 5 2024 13:55 utc | 9
Posted by: canuck | Apr 5 2024 13:44 utc | 5
Thanks for sharing that bit of history; very interesting. I hope you didn’t have a hangover this morning.
You know after posting that comment I gave quite a bit of thought to whom I posed the question to. Why had I directed it to the finance people instead of the historians? Conversely, do historians have the requisite business skills?
It really requires a cross domain analysis to do it justice doesn’t it?
Posted by: David G Horsman | Apr 5 2024 14:06 utc | 10
On a personal note, the local branch of my credit union frogmarched me through the process of using an automatic teller inside the bank. I was confused and let the kind person walk me through it. I have always done my very simple transactions via a person in the past – okay, so far he was that, in putting my details into a machine. So, that felt okay, but what then occurred with the machine itself cogitating and dispensing into a pit my cash was the first time for me to have to reach down into that machinery to retrieve it.
That was unsettling — I know, so many of us have ‘moved on’ to being able to quickly come and go, and I have in some respects also. Except, for me, one more personal interaction was being curtailed for the sake of what? Profit to the bank in not being required to hire that extra smiling person behind the counter. But more, too. That piddling amount is my savings, my precious! It deserves respect. Machines can’t give that, ever.
It has made me have second thoughts about the entire banking process.
Posted by: juliania | Apr 5 2024 14:07 utc | 11
Posted by: Multipolar Panda | Apr 5 2024 13:55 utc | 9 Thanks, will do.
Posted by: David G Horsman | Apr 5 2024 14:09 utc | 12
@ David G Horsman | 1
Financialization as an end-of-empire phase ?
I don’t believe it. That RT item makes the simple assertion but doesn’t offer any examples or other evidence. I”m pretty sure the Spanish, Roman and Persian empires never had any banking system which could do financialization as we generally know it today. Empires could perhaps go into unpayable debt to private banks. We know kingdoms often did – just before losing a big war. Just ask the Fuggers, who lost their big bank by backing the wrong horse(s). But financialization is more than usury; it involves making money more than just through a simple creditor-debtor dyad.
As the meme goes, “Cool story, bro.” Anyone is free to prove me wrong, of course.
Posted by: JessDTruth | Apr 5 2024 14:28 utc | 13
“You know after posting that comment I gave quite a bit of thought to whom I posed the question to. Why had I directed it to the finance people instead of the historians? Conversely, do historians have the requisite business skills?
It really requires a cross domain analysis to do it justice doesn’t it?”
Posted by: David G Horsman | Apr 5 2024 14:06 utc | 10
Yes I think you are right – the subject becomes clearer when one utilizes ‘cross domain’ analysis.
I don’t have a hangover, but I am certainly not my usual perky self…
Reuters has a posting up about Yellen’s trip to China and the title is
Yellen says China is too big to export its way to rapid growth
China is not responding to its economic gyrations like empire wants because China retains control of finance and the PBOC is deciding who takes the losses instead of private interests forcing governments to cover their financial bets, like in the West….and rapid growth internally is not China’s goal, stable world growth is.
I expect China to school Yellen in just that scenario of privatizing profits/socializing losses that is staring the US in the face, again…..rampant social/financial abuse of humanity by the God Of Mammon cult and its supporters like Pope Frank and his Catholic church.
What right does Yellen have to preach anything to China? I have saved a 6 page story from somewhere about Yellen’s trip last year dated April 25, 2023 and we will see what the comparisons are as the circus show unfolds.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr 5 2024 14:54 utc | 15
“As the meme goes, “Cool story, bro.” Anyone is free to prove me wrong, of course.”
Posted by: JessDTruth | Apr 5 2024 14:28 utc | 13
Yes you are incorrect. I could give examples of all the above but I will just do one:
I will use one finalization example that led to a downfall of an Empire: Phillip II of Spain. With the gold and silver coming from the Americas to Spain in the 16th century one would assume Spain’s treasury would be full-no just the opposite: Phillip II started large wars in Europe (expensive) , the hidalgos (nobility) didn’t have to pay taxes the bankers refused to lend on 60 year term juros (bonds) the Spanish Empire went bankrupt and their Empire floundered:
“The regularity of the payments stops by Philip II, in 1557, 1560, 1575, 1597, indicates
that they were features of a working system. This paper focuses on the main crisis that
began in 1573 and led to payment stop on contracts (asientos) with Genoese bankers
between 1575 and 1577 and shows that the fiscal system rested on three features. First,
the asientos were backed by the domestic bonds, juros, and could be refinanced by
juros. The service of a large fraction of the juros was controlled by the cities. Their
contribution which had to be voted in the Cortes, imposed a de facto ceiling on the
domestic debt and therefore on the capability to refinance the asientos. Second, the
government was fragmented: the cities could resist an increase of their contribution and
oppose some new taxes. Third, asientos were largely financed by internal commercial
credit between fairs. In 1575, Philip II stopped payments on the asientos that were
signed with Genoese bankers in order to pressure the cities to agree to an increase of
their contribution and to lift the ceiling on the domestic debt. In doing so, he triggered a
credit market freeze in Castile that stopped the commercial fairs and damaged trade.
Eventually the cities relented and accepted the doubling of their contribution and the
payment stop on the asientos was removed immediately after. The game has some of
the elements of the recent showdown between the US legislative and executive
branches. (1)
1. https://www.bu.edu/econ/files/2012/11/Castile-140330.pdf
Mexico vs the Empire (the good guys are winning)
Mexico’s June 2 election matters as Amlo’s movement toward sovereignty and multipolar international networks faces a test: will Mexico prevail against the U.S. attempt to derail its successful transformation? My guess… Mexico will prevail. x
Lots of issues:
trade- Mexico is US’s largest trading partner, not China. One huge issue is corn. Mexico has outlawed gmo corn and beans, US big ag is fighting that big time. The fight’s not over. Claudia Scheinbaum, Amlo’s ally and former mayor of Mexico City, has a strong pro environment and pro worker background and she’s 20 points ahead in the polls. She will stand firm on gmo and also on strengthening state owned Pemex which was created during Lazaro Cardenas’s presidency in the 1930s. Message to Texas oilmen: stay in Texas.
migration/cartels- This is the big one. Amlo’s approach is similar to Putin’s with the oligarchs: recognize their power, pick your battles. When I was in Mexico in the 1970s the drug trade was run by local street gangs, mostly teens and 20 somethings, mostly weed, which had a long history of use similar to alcohol along with peyote and mushrooms in a few areas where indigenous elders took part. California surfers inundated little beach towns looking for weed and alienating the locals as “la mota” transmorphed into a party drug for the rich yanquis. La Cucaracha got hijacked.https://oldtimemusic.com/the-meaning-behind-the-song-la-cucaracha-by-a-b-quintanilla-iii/
Fast forward from the 1970s to the 1990s and the gangs grew into cartels as their success was supercharged by the sellout of local politicos and numerous Faustian deals like NAFTA as Bill Clinton bragged about Mexico’s bright future. By 2014 all Mexicans knew NAFTA had gutted Mexico and massively accelerated everything bad: immigration, corruption and cartels. Blue collar Americans left the dems while the blue team smarties stayed with Obama, Biden and Hillary.https://www.epi.org/blog/nafta-twenty-years-disaster/
Enter Amlo in 2018. like putin in 1999. 6 years later, 70%+ approval. The Empire is worried but also very busy with bigger crises.
This short, bare bones Bloomberg piece introduces the 3 candidates and gives a tiny amount of information beyond pictures with the poll numbers with a pretty graph.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-mexican-election-poll-tracker-sheinbaum-leads-before-debate/
This one from Rania Kalek is over a year old, introduces Kirt Hackbarth who lives in Mexico and gives valuable reports, he also writes for Jacobin (don’t discount him for that).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7Nn0-7O8ZE
Here’s a new piece from Kalek with Hackbarth, lots of good history and info on what’s going on now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro0WT7Tx3_s
Posted by: migueljose | Apr 5 2024 15:03 utc | 17
“What right does Yellen have to preach anything to China? I have saved a 6 page story from somewhere about Yellen’s trip last year dated April 25, 2023 and we will see what the comparisons are as the circus show unfolds.”
Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr 5 2024 14:54 utc | 15
Perhaps that old, senseless munchkin won’t be eating ‘magic mushrooms’ like she did last time (1) and then bow to Xi.
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/08/16/did-janet-yellen-accidentally-eat-psychedelics-in-china-what-to-know-about-the-sold-out-dish-cooked-with-hallucinogenic-mushrooms/?sh=108b54ce7c04
MK Bhadrakumar has a new column today which touches on the Yellen trip and Sino American economic matters,
“..The enormity of the crisis in the US economy cannot be shoved under the carpet much longer. The US national debt today, estimated at $34 trillion, is almost equal to the combined value of the economies of China, Germany, Japan, India and the UK.
“Enter China. China’s steady monetary policy has created policy space and tools in reserve for Beijing to cope with any new challenges lying ahead in the global financial system, while its foreign exchange market has become more resilient….
“…China can become a safe haven for international capital. Its economy is on an upward trend and given the tools at its disposal to ensure financial stability, China’s foreign exchange market is expected to maintain a relatively stable performance at a time of increasing uncertainty in the global financial market.
“Why is this a big deal? The heart of the matter is that as the global price of gold soars, a rate cut cycle begins and financial risks deepen, China gets more options in the management of its assets portfolios and this could affect Beijing’s holding of US Treasury bonds…”
https://www.indianpunchline.com/biden-reaches-out-to-xi-jinping-with-eye-on-financial-stability/
Posted by: bevin | Apr 5 2024 15:16 utc | 19
https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/four-scenarios-rand
FOUR SCENARIOS BY RAND
GEOPOLITICS
05.04.2024 Leonid Savin
The RAND Corporation released an intriguing analytical report “Planning for the Aftermath: Exploring U.S. Strategy Options Towards Russia Post-Ukraine Conflict,” crafted by the Center for U.S. Grand Strategy Analysis in February 2014, that examines four scenarios for the post-war Ukraine.
This short article overviews the conclusions from a recent RAND study, obviously articulating a Western/US point of view, for their Russian/Eurasian readers.
On same geopolitika site, various interviews with Dugin hosted with English dubbing. This talk: “Interview with Russian thinker Alexander Dugin on the relationship between Western thought and colonialism and Eurocentric understandings.”
https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/studio/dugin-colonialism-was-present-all-stages-western-political-thought
One just has to laugh at any panic in Brussels or the White House or similar, they would have all disappeared one way or the other years ago if they had any real clue about anything 🙂
It’s funny that they think they can win and even more funny that they think they must win 🙂
And tragic of course (the ancient Greeks knew).
· · · · · · · · ·
Russia’s Tetrahedron looks suitably sci-fi 🙂
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240403/watch-russias-tetrahedron-electronic-warfare-system-being-tested-in-special-op-zone-1117715348.html
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Apr 5 2024 15:23 utc | 21
Posted by: migueljose | Apr 5 2024 15:03 utc | 17
Thank you for your report about Mexico. Have you followed the Banda revolt which started last week in Mazatlan, triggered by the owner of Coppel and now featuring a 24/7 three month protest by banda musicians on the main beach and hundreds of protesters?
I think it’s hilarious, and very, very Mexican.
But also a sign of frustration with their northern neighbour, including too many places where there are too many gringos who tend to assume that the locals should provide the sort of globalist-generalist culture that Americans, especially, are used to and presume is desired by all people world wide. I gather people are upset in several neighbourhoods in Mexico City, for example, with many digital nomad types settling there during and after covid and driving up prices, pushing locals out etc.
Posted by: canuck | Apr 5 2024 15:02 utc | 16
I will use one finalization example that led to a downfall of an Empire: Phillip II of Spain.
Looks like bankster BS to me. Revenge for 1492 expulsion?
And we wonders, Precious: where did all the Spanish gold end up? In Genovese banks? The Vatican? Or Asia?
The Catholics were big in China and Japan no? Or was that mainly the Portuguese, not the Spanish? Or Jesuits rather than any particular Catholic nation state?
Most European gold, according to Gunder Frank, ended up in Asia since the West had no quality manufactures to trade in return for Asian goods, which were many. Indeed, it was partly to effect Asian trade as the world opened up thanks to better maps in the 1440s that the gold was mined so desperately in the first place.
It seems the gold came from (brutal) Latin American slave labour to Spanish galleons, some of which pirated by the Brits boosting their maritime Empire, but most going into various bankster vaults (and from there to Jesuits?).
IF Gunder is right, how did all that gold make its way to Asia? Which were the leading trading houses behind that trade and were they connected to age-old Jewish trading networks, many of which were active for centuries before European expansionism and whose leading families had mansion set up in China long ago.
(My knowledge of Asian history in this regard mainly comes from reading Shogun fifty years ago so not all that reliable!!)
In any case, your report looks like bankster shenanigans to me! And looks like the 1492 expulsion backfired!
It’s not a surprise that both Japan and Germany are being de-industrialized. Both are WW2 foes of America and remain occupied by the American military today.
The costs of losing a great conflict echo through history for decades and decades.
Both civilizations are weaker than ever after having been subjugated and made into vassals of the United States. Their cultures are degenerating, and their birth rates are plummeting. Like touching a leper, they are diseased and have a long agonizing future in front of them.
The stakes for Iran, China, and Russia are enormous. All 3 have had empires throughout history, and they seem to have learned how too much power corrupts any nation that holds it.
America too will learn this lesson one day.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 5 2024 15:56 utc | 25
“”…how did all that gold make its way to Asia..”
The East India Company(ies). Most of the precious metal went to Amsterdam and later London.
Begin with Fernand Braudel’s Mediterranean Sea in the Age of Philip II, a book* in its seventies or eighties but still an amazing tour de force.
One interesting aspect of the drain of precious metals east was the fact that in China the ratio of silver to gold was five to one- which meant that the gold came back to Europe and the trade became largely conducted in silver (until opium etc came along) where the ratio was 15:1. Remember the Bryanite call for free coinage of silver at 16:1.
The current ratio is in the high eighties about 87:1. That is likely to change.
* and then there is his three volume Capitalism and Civilisation in the C15th-C18th.
A god newish book is The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitav Ghosh.
Posted by: bevin | Apr 5 2024 15:59 utc | 26
CBC News the National’s The Moment was when an octopus squeezed a BC woman’s leg
https://youtu.be/O3MSd5HEfcU
US Ambassador to the UK Jane D. Hartley posts about the anniversary of NATO
https://x.com/USAmbUK/status/1775828266613420348
(On that octopus thing, what exactly is that power couple Radoslaw Sikorski and Anne Applebaum up to these days??)
Mike Mihajlovic posts about NATO providing intelligence for Ukraine’s attacks in Russia
https://x.com/MihajlovicMike/status/1775868856076022194
Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Apr 5 2024 16:00 utc | 27
The fight’s not over. Claudia Scheinbaum, Amlo’s ally and former mayor of Mexico City, has a strong pro environment and pro worker background and she’s 20 points ahead in the polls.
Posted by: migueljose | Apr 5 2024 15:03 utc | 17
¿What es el big plan de la Jewish “Mexican” to queer los pandilleros y otros hombres de Mexico? She must know that that won’t go over well, not even if Senator Chuck (D-Israel) starts bellowing from the far shore of el Río Bravo del Norte. Assuming that the feminist wins the election, why believe that the yenta will outlive her term of sex years? Mexican men aren’t as effete as “conservative” clowns up north.
Posted by: Drive-By Shooter | Apr 5 2024 16:18 utc | 28
But financialization is more than usury; it involves making money more than just through a simple creditor-debtor dyad.
As the meme goes, “Cool story, bro.” Anyone is free to prove me wrong, of course.
Posted by: JessDTruth | Apr 5 2024 14:28 utc | 13
Correct. Financialization is a purely capitalist endeavor.
As for the freedom to prove you wrong, they also have the freedom to fly to the moon on a bicycle.
Posted by: Honzo | Apr 5 2024 16:36 utc | 29
Posted by: scorpion | Apr 5 2024 15:36 utc | 24
No, it was finalization: the bankers were Genoese and Phillip ran the biggest budget since Imperial times. By running out of credit Phillip asked the Genoese bankers to fund him for 60 year juros/bonds and they refused; trying to extend traditional debt terms from 30 year to 60 years is a form of finalization; same thing happened in late 80’s Japan where house prices got so high that they have 100 year mortgages. That’s finalization.
I don’t think it was a revenge for the Reconquista but perhaps you can persuade me
@multipolar panda 7
Quote “It is very revealing how pressure is exerted behind the scenes on Germany and Scholz in particular. Really worth”
The whole war is to destroy both Germany and Russia. This is what enish pirates planned. In fact 3 years ago the head of Mi5 said openly that Germany will bear bad consequence because germans refused to accept British conditions in Europe.
So you have gas pipe line bombed. Remember both world wars were plotted by English cowards to destroy both Germany and Russia.
Sadly Russia is too thick to realise that Russia fights the wrong party Rather than destroying England. Even here 4 months ago Putin was talking about mending good relation with England! He reallly is unfit to be a war leader-wrong enemy, and expert in turning almost won war into a bogged down quagmire.
Posted by: Sam | Apr 5 2024 17:04 utc | 31
Everyone (who’s curious about it) likely beat me to it. But — from the X account of UK ambassador to Poland, Anna Clunes:
I guess yesterday she hosted a lunch with the Polish Diplomacy in English team. Whoever that might be. Fish ‘n’ chips on the menu!
https://x.com/AnnaClunes/status/1775830921951727885
Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Apr 5 2024 17:15 utc | 32
@canuck | Apr 5 2024 13:44 utc | 5
Actually, some scholars believe that the Italian Renaissance was launched by perhaps the world’s richest man: Muslim Mansa Musa from Timbuktu
Among all the batshit insane theories floating around here this one really stands out.
Historical records about Mansa Musa are so slim and untrustworthy, that he would be regarded as a semi-legendary figure, if it weren’t for decolonized history, a.k.a. woke history, a.k.a. ugly fairy tales.
As a matter of fact, nobody knows when he was born, when he exactly ascended to the throne, when he died and, generally, what he did in his life. We only know a few trivia, as reliable as the pop column from The Sun tabloid, about his pilgrimage to the Mecca.
By the XII century the maritime republics of Italy were already major powers. By the end of the XIII century, Italian cities were already major financial centres. When Musa travelled to Mecca, it was far too late to have any effect on the economic rise of Italy in the Middle Ages, and far too early to have any plausible consequence on the Renaissance.
—
@canuck | Apr 5 2024 16:49 utc | 30
Spain continued to be the main power of the world until the thirty years war, when it was beaten and surpassed by France. The economic problems of Philip II were the overextension of his empire, the economic dependancy on the colonies, coupled with a lack of funds for all those foreign policy activities. He did not destroy his country’s economy through finance, which is, instead, what happened to England and the USA in the last century (even though financialization is not their only problem).
Japan was not destroyed by financialization, but by the (criminal) Plaza Accord. The need to not be bullied to sign some new Plaza Accord led to the creation of the E.U. and the Euro. If anything, Japan in the 80s played the role of the sacrificial victim to save the declining US economy, especially its manufacturing. It did not succeeded in that regard, because the problems of the US manufacturing are structural (and among them the financialization of the US economy).
Posted by: SG | Apr 5 2024 17:58 utc | 33
@Multipolar Panda #8, excerpt from the linked GMF report:
US pressure on allies to rein in the servicing of chip-making equipment already sold to Chinese clients is a massive ask, particularly of the Dutch, whose outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte visited President Xi Jinping in Beijing last week at an especially sensitive time. In what read like a veiled threat, Xi told Rutte that severing industrial supply chains would lead to “division and confrontation”.
Amazing example of delusion. The U.S. is blackmailing its European vassals, demanding that they break their promises to their Chinese customers, Xi points out the obvious—that such actions would lead to “division and confrontation”—yet it’s Xi making a “veiled threat,” not the U.S. destroying a business relationship between Europe and China that has been working great so far.
Posted by: S | Apr 5 2024 18:10 utc | 34
@canuck: I cannot persuade – too ignorant – but a good question still remains perhaps you can answer: where did all that gold end up and via which parties? Spain dug up a huge amount of it from the Americas, no? Where did it end up? My speculation based on your interesting reportage is that it ended up in bankster coffers and if so probably wended its way to China to purchase Asian goods for subsequent resale back in Europe.
Meanwhile, VICTORY for FARMERS in EU jurisdiction.
An article in last week’s Times Age about how the EU had watered down its environmental policies in the wake of farmer protests told me that the European farmers had won what had been a one-sided battle.
There had been farmer protests throughout the EU over some of the crazy environmental restrictions that had been proposed.
The protests were, in some cases, violent, with local farmers at their non-negotiable best. You would have seen it on television. There were motorways blocked by tractors, manure spread over streets and burnt hay bales, among other activities.
It would seem that common sense won the day, with the EU abandoning two-thirds of its excessive and impractical environmental rules. Just as importantly, smaller farmers won’t have to comply with any of the ridiculous rules and regulations, and that’s the majority of EU farms.
https://times-age.co.nz/rural/eu-farmers-win-important-battle/
https://www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk/opinion/24229962.european-farmers-green-lobby-back-foot/
This resonates nicely with a Dugin piece on one-world-government freemasonry-derived Western liberal thrust wherein at the end he offers us, the normal people, as the natural awakening resistance to this ghastly, hegemonic development in Europe the past few centuries:
https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/directives/humanity-lodge
Posted by: Drive-By Shooter | Apr 5 2024 16:18 utc | 28
My Mexican wife, who when younger was a fairly typical university-educated feminista type like most educated women her age world-wide, has matured over the years – as most of us do. A while back she was an enthusiastic supporter of AMLO as are most of her friends and same generation family members to this day. But she says she now think he’s a total sell-out posing as a man of the people. His family members have reportedly all got filthy rich whilst he was President. Apart from pushing the train link from Salina Cruz to the Gulf which will handle overflow traffic from the Panama Canal (and could perhaps one day rival it according to some), he hasn’t done much according to many. And he gutted funding for the arts and culture-related community development, which is her particular bailiwick (and probably bias).
Maybe they will get rid of the GM corn – a very important thing – but it hasn’t happened yet and using Big Ag find ways to get their way. The main drink for most working class Mexicans is still Coca Cola which depletes water tables and sends people to an early grave with diabetes and should be outlawed.
Anyway, have no idea if my wife’s opinion is all that realistic – and nor does she for politics is not something she likes to follow much – but her impression is that he’s just another performer, like most political leaders in ‘democracies’, all of which are disguised oligarchies.
Oops:
and using Big Ag find ways to get their way …
should be:
and USUALLY Big Ag find ways to get their way ….
Posted by: David G Horsman | Apr 5 2024 13:24 utc | 1
I’ve been posting on the world-systems theory of cyclical historical capitalism, represented by Wallerstein’s students, who include Arrighi and Jason Moore, for years. Those who say “but what about Persia, Rome, Ottoman etc” are morons: their theoretical observations only concern historical capitalism, i.e. European colonial expansion and imperialism, wars and markets, industrialization and financialization since the 15th century (Moore argues that Black Death was the watershed moment which blew apart the core of the feudal order).
But sure, post about it like the wheel was just discovered.
Posted by: Patroklos | Apr 5 2024 19:17 utc | 38
Posted by: canuck | Apr 5 2024 13:44 utc | 5
I wrestled with myself whether to respond to this nonsense. But sometimes you just have to call ‘enough’. Obviously this takes a while to sink in, but once more for Canuck: factoids from random websites are not history.
Posted by: Patroklos | Apr 5 2024 19:26 utc | 39
Sounds almost like a joke
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147831
“The Assembly called on all Member States and stakeholders “to refrain from or cease the use of artificial intelligence systems that are impossible to operate in compliance with international human rights law or that pose undue risks to the enjoyment of human rights.” (such as staying alive??)
“The same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, including throughout the life cycle of artificial intelligence systems,” it affirmed.”
Posted by: Minaa | Apr 5 2024 19:27 utc | 40
Posted by: canuck | Apr 5 2024 14:54 utc | 14
Hangover lol. Who can afford that with an effective tax rate of 52% in Canukistan. Ive probly had my last.
Posted by: Tannenhouser | Apr 5 2024 20:16 utc | 41
Another compelling interview by Garland Nixon
He interviews a US professor sacked for being ‘anti-semitic’ i.e. supporting Palestine. Danny Shaw – a very interesting and well-read fellow, expert on Haiti, Latin America, and anti-imperialist struggles around the world. Great insight on Haiti.
90 minutes. Perfectly intelligible at 2x speed during chores..
https://youtu.be/watch?v=1kpwd9ZA95U
https://invidious.lunar.icu/watch?v=1kpwd9ZA95U (adfree)
Posted by: Browser | Apr 5 2024 20:52 utc | 43
Canuck @ 5:
Mansa Musa’s generosity, particularly in Egypt, would have had its downsides, especially in the price of gold and any possible hyperinflation in the Egyptian economy as a result of his lavish gift-giving. To say nothing of the fortunes of local merchants and business people ruined by his largesse.
Incidentally on his return trip from Mecca to Mali, Mansa Musa’s entourage met with disaster (the nature of which is not known) and Mansa Musa had to borrow money from Egyptian money-lenders to feed his retainers and others whom he hired to build and staff the mosques and madrasahs he would establish back home.
MM ended up taking as much out of Egypt culturally and financially as he did spreading his gold in the first place.
His rule did benefit the people of Mali and other parts of western Africa ruled by the Mali empire for at least two centuries.
It is doubtful though if MM had much influence on the Italian Renaissance. You would have to demonstrate that Egypt under the Mamelukes had trade and banking relations with Venice, Genoa and Tuscany during the High Middle Ages and the period of the Crusades. Far more likely that any Middle Eastern influence and impetus for the Italian Renaissance actually came from Sicily, which in those days was a mixed Christian / Jewish / Muslim society governed by mostly tolerant rulers of Norman descent.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Apr 5 2024 21:24 utc | 44
“Japan was not destroyed by financialization, but by the (criminal) Plaza Accord.”
Posted by: SG | Apr 5 2024 17:58 utc | 33
Pegging currency rates is that not a form of ‘financialization’?
Amateurs tend to think that being the reserve currency is a 100% benefit because they can print more money without as much devaluation because of its ubiquitous use in commerce. That is true.
However, the other side of the story is that if a country is going to have reserve currency they have to always run deficits so the money can circulate over the world. So the seeds of default are written in that idea-always have to run bigger and bigger deficits the long term the deficit get so big, $35.6 trillion today-with all future liabilities are over $125 trillion-and it is unsustainable confidence has been lost and just like Phillip II your Empire is fading the banker from Genoa told him to f off..
The Triffin Paradox -probably better than my explanation:.
“The Triffin dilemma (sometimes Triffin paradox) is the conflict of economic interests that arises between short-term domestic and long-term international objectives for countries whose currencies serve as global reserve currencies. This dilemma was identified in the 1960s by Belgian-American economist Robert Triffin, who noted how the country whose currency is the global reserve currency, that foreign nations wish to hold as foreign exchange (FX) reserves, must be willing to supply the world with an extra supply of its currency in order to fulfill world demand for these FX reserves, leading to a trade deficit.[1]
The use of a national currency, such as the U.S. dollar, as global reserve currency leads to tension between its national and global monetary policy. This is reflected in fundamental imbalances in the balance of payments on the current account, as some goals require an outflow of dollars from the United States, while others require an inflow.
The Triffin dilemma is usually cited to articulate the problems with the role of the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency under the Bretton Woods system. John Maynard Keynes had anticipated this difficulty and had advocated the use of a global reserve currency called ‘Bancor’. Historically, the IMF’s SDRs has been the closest thing to the proposed Bancor but they have not been adopted widely enough to replace the dollar as the global reserve currency”
It has made me have second thoughts about the entire banking process.
Posted by: juliania | Apr 5 2024 14:07 utc | 11
Keep thinking 3rd, 4th, 5th thoughts about leaving it, Juliana! It has long puzzled me why people “give” their money to banks, CUs. I’m a home banking man! Bank interest is a pittance; the supposed electronic convenience is a con; THEIR profiteering from YOUR money is outrageous.
Withdraw cash every time there’s a deposit into your account. Change to a system of well hidden wallets (or boxes) in various locations. Resist like the plague the looming cashhess society. One day it will bite us on the bum.
Posted by: Jake Blanchard | Apr 5 2024 22:49 utc | 46
Posted by: migueljose | Apr 5 2024 15:03 utc | 17
I have actually been wondering the meaning of la cucaracha for the past few weeks, but never enough to look it up. Now I know.
Posted by: UWDude | Apr 5 2024 23:53 utc | 47
Going through my substack inbox, which is now too much for me to keep up with, I found this little gem from N.S.Lyons from a few weeks ago. About the US Constitution.
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/why-the-constitution-wont-save-you
In the naïve schoolhouse view the Constitution remains a sacred, quasi-magical text spelling out our rights and protecting them by limiting the powers of government. The words on its pages have been elevated to semi-transcendent status, as if they were a form of scripture endowed with their own sovereign authority. This authority sets the rules of what is permissible, and the robed wise men of our courts interpret, sola scriptura, these national tenets to determine if new laws and practices conform to or have overstepped the authority granted to them by the Constitution. In this sense the Constitution forms the foundation for the rule of law.
Adherents still holding to this view may further believe that the words of the Constitution’s text also established the foundational character of the American nation, becoming the enduring wellspring of our unique national culture and way of life. Finally, they are likely to assume that it is precisely the fact that the American Founders took the step of codifying well-reasoned, difficult-to-change ground rules in writing that is what has made the United States an exceptional nation inherently more resistant to tyranny than those which failed to develop clear written constitutions.
Sadly, in recent years some of us have had to come to accept (not without discomfort) that everything about this view is wrong. It is a comforting myth, but a myth nonetheless…….
[Later section:]
“Only when the society is already constituted, without it being possible to saw how, it is possible to declare or to explain in writing certain particular articles” of a particular society’s true, unwritten constitution, he argued. But attempting to capture these principles in writing is largely pointless. In fact, he believed that such “writing is invariably a sign of weakness, ignorance, or danger,” in that “every written law is only a necessary evil” that “is of no authority at all unless it has received a previous and unwritten sanction,” and in “so far as an institution is perfect, it writes less.” (Here he echoes that famous motto of Tacitus, pessimae reipublicae plurimae leges: “the more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state.”)
Hence he scorned the “profound imbecility” of “those poor folk who imagine that lawgivers are men, that laws are a piece of paper, and that nations can be comprised of ink.”
To summarize, Maistre declared four propositions:
1. That the roots of political constitutions exist before any written law;
2. That a constitutional law is, and can only be, the development or sanction of a pre-existing and unwritten right;
3. That what is most essential, most intrinsically constitutional, and truly fundamental, is never written, nor even can be, without endangering the state;
4. That the weakness and fragility of a constitution are precisely in direct proportion to the multiplicity of written constitutional articles.
These days I suspect he was right, and that his insight can help explain a lot about the degeneration of society and governance that has since occurred in the United States (and various other Western nations as well).
When the Founders drafted the Constitution, they were giving expression to an essential constitution of the American nation that already existed in unwritten form, and which continued to endure for a long while. But in time, even as the written Constitution continued to reign in official law, the spirit that governed the American people changed as they changed, and the corresponding unwritten constitution withered away and was replaced by a new intrinsic constitution. In fact it’s probably accurate to say this happened multiple times, or in multiple stages. Yet in any case the unwritten constitution animating the American state today bears almost no resemblance at all to that preserved in the historical relic of the Constitution.
Here what is being critiqued is mental materialism in the form of excessive conceptual formulation. As the Enlightenment progressed, of which the creation of the American Nation and the related French Revolutions were prominent thrusts, the ability of societies to share collective perspectives diminished steadily beyond the ability of ever more amendments to stitch together.
If organic life forms are in any way analogous to the life of nations then we have to consider this hard, simple truth: they are born, they live for a while, then they die. Now maybe civilizations are more like species wherein multiple generations continue an overall line despite individually dying themselves. But that assumes a clear genetic template being transmitted whole and healthy from one generation to the next. Is that what we have in the West? I think not.
This article brings up good food for thought – like nearly all his pieces.
Posted by: Patroklos | Apr 5 2024 19:17 utc | 38
“Those who say “but what about Persia, Rome, Ottoman etc” are morons: their theoretical observations only concern historical capitalism, i.e. European colonial expansion and imperialism, wars and markets, industrialization and financialization since the 15th century (Moore argues that Black Death was the watershed moment which blew apart the core of the feudal order).”
Yes. There is always ‘more to the story’.
I attended an interesting presentation many years ago where it was postulated that a combination of policy and nature led to a famine in England. Wheat was sourced from the Upper Nile; rats free-loaded with the wheat, along with their flea companion passengers – and the rest is history.
I don’t know whether this is the correct explanation, but there are a number of alternative scenarios where The Plague could have been avoided (without requiring the wisdom of hindsight).
Posted by: General Factotum | Apr 6 2024 0:37 utc | 49
Escobar recommends this and this is the place to discuss it.
“…. According to data from the Financial Stability Board (US Supervisory Authority), to date shadow banking assets amount to 218 trillion dollars, approximately 50% of global financial assets. These are mostly highly leveraged securitisations and repurchase agreements (repos), which constitute the essence of today’s financial system: debt structured into more debt; a forward flight of debt-based speculation without real underlying value. The fragility of this mechanism is intrinsic, since the insolvency of a single player would cause the entire pyramid to collapse, subsequently triggering large-scale economic contagion. For this reason, the financial sector (“a house of cards built on a pool of petrol”) is perpetually thirsty for liquidity. It is therefore fairly easy to predict what comes next: in a setting already dominated by a QT policy (reduction of the central bank balance sheet) that is essentially bogus – as it is offset by fixed-term emergency programmes like BTFT – the Fed (and associates) will soon need the lever of new major emergencies to justify cutting interest rates to inject freshly minted liquidity into the system.
“It is interesting to observe how Western political and economic institutions, even when harshly criticized, are depicted by the media as if in a painting from the early Middle Ages: without context. They exist eo ipso, in a self-referential metaphysical aura that immunizes them to the relationship with their real environs. Individually, of course, politicians and technocrats are regularly reprimanded and ridiculed. Their governing institutions, however, which in principle are responsible for carrying out tasks of public interest, remain untouchable, for they supposedly embody the highest point in the scale of “best possible worlds”. Yet, especially in light of today’s events, it should be easy to see how the quasi-sacred character of liberal-democratic governance hides its total dependence on the movements of financial capital. The moral pillars on which liberal power is built are, more obviously than ever, an extension of the amoral drive of capitalist profitability.
“The Western middle classes are prisoners to their past, convinced that post-war liberal-democratic capitalism, as a model of social organization, is not only fundamentally just, but also eternal and unquestionable. This optical illusion, which up to now has led to an almost unconditional trust in our institutions (even when harshly criticised), is understandable: the Western middle classes have for years been the object of big capital’s most loving attentions, in the context of a profitable social contract organised around mass wage labour and growing consumption habits. Capital, in other words, has shaped and at the same time exploited a work society modelled on the “ideal standard” of the worker-consumer gratified by the dream of upward social mobility. But these were the days of the baby boomers, who still delude themselves that they are ontologically relevant, while in truth they were always opportunistically engineered into a post-war economic boom that, incidentally, resulted from the “creative destruction” of two world wars. And the point is that such a “world” lasted, in the capitalist centre, for about thirty years, which are like the flutter of a hummingbird’s wings when compared to the centuries-old history of a mode of production that, in Marx’s words, comes into the world ‘dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.’[i]
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/trust-in-institutions-and-the-war-dividend/
General Factotum | Apr 6 2024 0:37 utc | 49
Patrokolos’ comment interested me. The Wallerstein- World System- school was consciously derived from Braudel’s pioneering work. And none the worse for that.
Regarding the Black Death this has been seen, by English economic historians such as Rodney Hilton as a key moment in the breaking of feudal ties and the development of the rural economy which led straight to capitalism. I was unaware of the Egyptian theory, the traditional view saw the plague as having come from Crimea. And the rats, fleas et al, from central asia. It has been many years since I studied the matter.
Posted by: bevin | Apr 6 2024 1:21 utc | 50
Posted by: bevin | Apr 6 2024 1:21 utc | 50
Also worth looking at the work of a guy at Johns Hopkins I’ve been chatting with for a few years: Sam Chambers. Key books of his include Bearing Society in Mind, Money Has No Value and Capitalist Economics; this last one carries further your quote above (“They exist eo ipso, in a self-referential metaphysical aura that immunizes them to the relationship with their real environs.”). He is a Marx and Rancière specialist.
The Black Death is discussed in Jason Moore’s work on feudal ecological malpractice (Jason refutes the mythology of an idyllic medieval agriculture in harmony with nature and shows how clearing and monoculture wrecked the environment). He argues that the increased use of arable land for more profitable commodity grazing (wool, etc) in the 14thC damaged the robustness of the peasant immune response in Europe as a consequence of resulting malnutrition. This is in contrast to China where a better-fed peasantry were afflicted less catastrophically by the plague.
At any rate, the results were uneven (see Tuchmann’s Distant Mirror), but two lasting effects were the catalysis of serf-lord relationships and the ‘liberation’ of free labour—for a brief period (a generation of so) surviving peasants and artisans could write their own tickets to upward social mobility. Nevertheless, as expected, the ruling classes reasserted themselves over labour in due course, but did so now in a changed set of labour relations in which customary and traditional relationships were dissolved. Such relationships had protected peasants from being over-exploited between the 11th and early 14th centuries, and also worked well for manorial estates by providing the ideological continuity for periodic indentured and obligatory labour (corvée).
Thus, the Black Death effectively ‘disenchanted’ or de-secularized the feudal relationship, which, as Marx correctly observed in a famous footnote in Capital Vol. 1, rested on a religious foundation and was guaranteed by the moral authority of the Church. One key outcome then was the ’emancipation’ of the labour, providing one of the preconditions under which labour would eventually be fully alienated from the individual in the wage-relation.
Posted by: Patroklos | Apr 6 2024 2:21 utc | 51
Far more likely that any Middle Eastern influence and impetus for the Italian Renaissance actually came from Sicily, which in those days was a mixed Christian / Jewish / Muslim society governed by mostly tolerant rulers of Norman descent.
For thousand years Constantinople was a “center of Universe”. It was conquered in 1204, struggled to survive for couple more centuries and finally lost its shine in 1453.All those bright minds had to seek refuge somewhere.
In my simple mind they went west and brought with them what we call the Renaissance.
Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 2:24 utc | 52
As an aside to #51 above, Jason Moore also makes a great observation: the depopulation of South America in the 16th century (75-80% of the indigenous pop. died as a consequence over the course of the Conquista 1492-c.1600) led to a massive regrowth and expansion of the Amazon rain forest. This in turn led to the absorption of huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere triggering a mini Ice age in Europe at the beginning of the 17th century which overlapped, coincided with and exacerbated the Thirty Years War, in turn reshaping European geopolitics for three centuries. Be careful what bugs you kill…
Posted by: Patroklos | Apr 6 2024 2:27 utc | 53
The mamsa musa led to Renaissance tale makes no sense.
An increase in food makes more sense, both via mini ice age ending, and plague freeing up land and letting workers keep more of their value.
I just dont see how gold could free up more people to explore education, art and science. Only food and drink, and safer travel could do that.
Plague itself continued until 1665. But i could also guess plague hurt the reputation of the church, as it could not save the people from young, mass death, so alternative theories of health and science were explored, since essentially during the dark ages, the church was the authority on “the science” as they say today.
Posted by: UWDude | Apr 6 2024 2:37 utc | 54
Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 2:24 utc | 52
There’s something to that insofar as the book trade in Greek texts flowed out of Constantinople through Venice. But supply is one thing, demand another. The ‘re-birth’ emerged from a home grown humanism prompted by the city-state culture of northern Italy. It was primarily driven by the humanist appropriation of Latin literature and the breakdown of the Church’s monopoly over classical texts, or, put differently, the secularization of Latin.
Posted by: Patroklos | Apr 6 2024 2:38 utc | 55
@Posted by: Patroklos | Apr 6 2024 2:38 utc | 55
The ‘re-birth’ emerged from a home grown humanism prompted by the city-state culture of northern Italy.
“a home grown humanism” of money grab banking houses?
Hmmmm …
Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 2:44 utc | 56
Posted by: bevin | Apr 6 2024 1:21 utc | 50
Escobar recommends this and this is the place to discuss it.
“…. According to data from the Financial Stability Board (US Supervisory Authority), to date shadow banking assets amount to 218 trillion dollars, approximately 50% of global financial assets.
I don’t pretend to understand these things well, but recall during the 2008-9 financial crisis that the over-the-counter Credit Default Swaps totalled 1.5 quadrillion. This is an additional level of derivative financialization leveraged on top of the 400 or so trillion ‘real wealth’ including shadow banking you referenced. Now that was back in 2008, no doubt that amount is much higher now.
As to the baby boomers, have always assumed / feared that they will get fleeced at some point because they are biggest sitting duck financial prize in human history, but it hasn’t happened yet and if it doesn’t happen soon it will be too late.
PCR may have got it all wrong, but he has predicted all along that Putin’s reticence to go hard-line on the West will encourage them to assume he doesn’t really have any red lines. It’s a good point and thus far events seem to bear him out. Time, of course, will tell, but the nuclear tock is ticking…
Putin’s Never-ending-War Is Going to End in Nuclear Armageddon.
The United States government, speaking through the mouth of Secretary of State Blinken, defied all of Russia’s warnings this week with this declaration:
“Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership.”
By Putin’s refusal to use the necessary force to deal with the dangerous situation and by continuing to insist that the conflict is nothing but a limited operation to clear Ukrainian forces out of the Russian provinces, not an invasion of Ukraine, Russia will soon find herself at war with NATO. https://tinyurl.com/222q9cg5 [zero hedge link]
I have warned consistently without effect, only to be denounced by idiots as “bloodthirsty,” that Putin’s unrealism about the conflict, like his previous unrealism about the Minsk Agreement and his unrealism about the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in the so-called Maidan Revolution, is a direct path to World War III.
The minute Ukraine becomes a member of NATO, Putin will find himself at war with NATO. Russia has only a short time to knock out Ukraine, destroy the government, occupy the country and build a wall around it.
The ascension of Ukraine to Nato “is literally how the nuclear apocalypse movie starts,” says Elon Musk, one of the few remaining intelligent Americans.
Putin’s “limited military operation” has achieved nothing but two new NATO members–Finland and Sweden–attacks on Russian civilians inside Russia, mounting deaths from Western weapon system after weapon system supplied to Ukraine along with NATO military personnel to operate them and Western intelligence to target them. All the while Putin has been unable to comprehend that Russia is at war. Putin’s lack of response to mounting provocations has convinced Washington that Putin’s warnings are meaningless. Putin’s failure to enforce his red lines has caused Washington to loose belief that Putin has any red lines.
Just as Putin was forced into his “limited military operation” by the insulting cold shoulder Washington gave his plea for a mutual security pact, Russia will be forced into wider war with NATO by Washington’s defiance of Putin’s warning that Russia will not allow NATO membership for Ukraine.
Putin has a few months to end Ukraine’s existence, a country that never existed until Washington created it, before Putin’s inability to act brings on World War III.
Despite the dire situation, Putin remains unable to come to terms with reality. The Russian government continues to demonstrate to Washington weakness and irresolution by repeating its willingness to negotiate. Here we see Putin’s failure as a war leader. It should be Washington and NATO pleading with Putin to negotiate.
We are traveling along the road to Armageddon exactly as I predicted. One ignored provocation leads to another and worst provocation, and then to another and another, and now we have reached the red line that Putin cannot ignore. At this point the only way Putin can avoid World War III is to surrender or to terminate the existence of Ukraine before Washington elevates Ukraine to NATO membership. There is no other choice.
The previous thread had a lot of posts related to religion but I missed the opportunity to ask something I am struggling to understand for a long time.
About two years ago I had an opportunity to see (what is left of) the statue of Constantine the Great. The shape of his nose prompted me to do some research and as it usually goes instead of getting some answers it just opened numerous new questions and after a while I gave up.
People with little or no knowledge tend to simplify things in order to make some sense of it. Here I did the same.
A long time ago karlof1 gave an advice to one of the posters: If you don’t know something ask the bar.
Here is my simplification and I am asking the bar to educate me.
1. Christianity got its name by Jesus meaning there was no Christianity before him.
2. Jesus himself did not preach a new religion. He was rather a reformer of the existing (his) religion.
3. According to Encyclopedia Britannica term “Christianity” was used for the first time at the end of the first century. I am struggling to understand what name apostles and believers have used to describe “their religion” during the first hundred years. Is there any other option than Judaism?
4. Constantine’s mother was a Christian and there is a reason to believe he was a Jew. He was the one who legalized Christianity as a state religion (for his selfish reasons) and effectively changed religious beliefs of Europe.
And that’s how, due to lack of better understanding, I came to the simplified conclusion that Christianity is a branch of Judaism and that Europe was converted to Judaism under the name of Christianity.
So here I am asking to be educated. Just please don’t direct me to read this and that because I have already tried and it didn’t work.
Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 4:08 utc | 59
@Posted by: scorpion | Apr 6 2024 4:06 utc | 58
we have reached the red line that Putin cannot ignore. At this point the only way Putin can avoid World War III
I do not find PCR interesting enough to read his texts and I didn’t bother to read more from what you have posted.
I have just two comments:
1. It takes two for tango (WWIII)
2. If “Putin does not have red lines“ how he ended up in Ukraine?
Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 4:34 utc | 60
One thing I’ve noticed is that Americans now lack a sense of humor. I’ve been around since the Vietnam era and one thing we did was criticize through humor. Now, everything is a micro aggression and no one can say what they really feel. Yeah, I know shit is hitting the fan, as usual, but we always soldiered on. Now, not so much.
Posted by: Immaculate deception | Apr 6 2024 5:13 utc | 61
2. If “Putin does not have red lines“ how he ended up in Ukraine?
Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 4:34 utc | 60
######
Great point.
One thing I like about the Russians and Putin, in particular, is that they don’t bluff or BS a lot.
Americans love to talk big. The European countries love to posture and moralize about high globalist ideals for the garden.
Russia never tells you that it is fighting to save “democracy”, for climate change, or for the right to sodomize one another.
They own it and say, “It is in our interest to fight here” and they go do it. You can agree or disagree but they tell you what they are thinking and follow through. More often than not, they acquit themselves well.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 6 2024 6:25 utc | 62
Reuters is the only source I can find for news on the 6-day Yellen trip to China and their posting title is
Yellen calls China meetings “productive”, seeks level playing field
Since when has empire ever provided a level playing field for anything?
the quote
“The U.S. seeks to create a level playing field for American workers and firms, as well as deeper cooperation on illicit finance, climate change and other priorities,” Yellen said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Her post did not directly mention her top priority for her four day visit to China: to try to persuade Chinese officials to rein in excess production capacity for electric vehicles, solar panels and other clean energy technology that are threatening competing firms in the U.S. and other countries.
Chinese state media pushed back on her excess capacity arguments, calling them a “pretext” for protectionist U.S. policies.
Yep, Yellen is trying to tell China how to run their economy to maximize empire profits
Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr 6 2024 6:31 utc | 63
Mexico suspends diplomatic relations with Ecuador, after Quito police literally invade Mexico’s embassy to arrest a refugee. I’ve never heard of such a thing before, but I’m not the sharpest dart in the dartboard.
It’s interesting to see another erosion of diplomatic standards so soon after USUK48’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria (but before Iran’s promised retaliation).
Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 6 2024 7:20 utc | 64
Patroklos | Apr 6 2024 2:21 utc | 51 / 53
Thanks for that and the and the reference to Rancière about whose work I will know more tomorrow than I do today.
(That’s an example of why you are not allowed to leave this blog’s comment section:-)
never enough time…sigh
Posted by: waynorinorway | Apr 6 2024 8:19 utc | 65
“Christianity”
It is a late term, but nevertheless the term used by the Roman police “Christians” is very ancient, from the same origins (ca. 40-66) to designate “the school-current of the Nazarenes”.
There were five currents: 1) Sadducees 2) Pharisees 3) Essenes 4) “the fourth philosophy”, 5) “the school-current of the Nazarenes”.
The orthodox Christians just at birth (ca. 150/200) are defeated, because are defeated those who, led by Marcion, logically want to break with the bloody, drunken and genocidal tribal god of the Old Testament.
Posted by: Simon | Apr 6 2024 8:36 utc | 66
@ David G Horsman | 1
Financialization as an end-of-empire phase ?
I don’t believe it. That RT item makes the simple assertion but doesn’t offer any examples or other evidence.
Posted by: JessDTruth | Apr 5 2024 14:28 utc | 13
——————————————————-
You mean this article?
https://www.rt.com/business/594432-financialization-death-empires/
I thought it was very good, a s summary review of the core issues. Maybe you should read up on Giovanni Arrighi (1937-2009) ?
Or Lenin in 1916? – https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/
or this this in January
Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage
https://thetricontinental.org/studies-on-contemporary-dilemmas-4-hyper-imperialism/
Research for this document has been conducted collectively for over a year and has received contributions from many scholars and socialist practitioners. This document was compiled with data and charts provided by Global South Insights (GSI), with editing and coordination by Gisela Cernadas, Mikaela Nhondo Erskog, Tica Moreno, and Deborah Veneziale. The data and charts for Part IV of the document rely heavily on published research by economist John Ross.
Cheers
Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Apr 6 2024 8:46 utc | 67
So-called Christianity (1033-) is simply the fusion of Roman imperial ideology and bloody Aramaic fantasies.
This fusion has been renewed again and again until the last version (1967-) when the grandchildren of the Ukrainian-Polish Yiddish people (of italo-Roman maternal origin and Persian-Iranian, Turkish, Greek, Syrian and Phoenician paternal origin) took over the reins of the imperial Beast.
Posted by: Simon | Apr 6 2024 8:53 utc | 68
The religion of the Romans was very simple: we are the ones chosen by the gods to dominate the world.
The religion of the Romans and their cult of War, Victory and Domination had very little literature.
In this matter there is no need to be confused: that the god H has slept with the goddess X was in the theater “the only tolerated form of criticism of the powerful” as the most lucid of the Romans said.
The bloody Aramaic literature says that on the one hand there is “a people” of dominant overlords, what we would call in German a “HerrenVolk” and, on the other hand, there are “the people of the land” of “the land of Canaan” to be subdued, enslaved, exterminated or expelled
And the Romans said: -OMFG, This is indeed the true religion.
The so-called Christianity is Zionism on a large scale, on an imperial scale, that’s why in the last Fusion (1967-) of the old Mental Software it has only been necessary to adjust a comma or an accent.
Posted by: Simon | Apr 6 2024 9:38 utc | 69
Interesting aggregate of healthcare worker shortage stories worldwide.
Apparently there is a massive doctors’ strike in South Korea.
https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/healthcare-is-disappearing-all-around
Posted by: UWDude | Apr 6 2024 9:42 utc | 70
The Russian ruling class suffers from the same blindness that Kaiser Wilhelm II suffered from, unable to assume that he for a hard core within the London ruling class was not part of the people of the overlords, but of the people who must be dominated.
It is the same Anthony who sends tons of ammunition to kill Russians and Palestinians.
The Russian ruling class is unable to accept and assume that the ruling class of the US-Israeli empire see them as Palestinians.
Posted by: Simon | Apr 6 2024 9:57 utc | 71
Posted by: canuck | Apr 5 2024 13:44 utc | 5
I wrestled with myself whether to respond to this nonsense. But sometimes you just have to call ‘enough’. Obviously this takes a while to sink in, but once more for Canuck: factoids from random websites are not history.
Posted by: Patroklos | Apr 5 2024 19:26 utc | 39
Patroklos Unmoored from Reality
Patroklos, wrestling with his inner strife,
To engage or ignore Canuk’s retort.
His presence tethered to the Ivory court,
Detached from realms where real battles rife.
A fool, perhaps, ensnared in Marxist dreams,
Yet Canuk’s words strike chords of truth profound.
For Patroklos, truth’s grasp remains unfound,
Lost in the echo of his arrogant schemes.
With each rebuttal, Canuk stands firm,
His arsenal not of rhetoric alone.
But facts, like stones, against Patroklos thrown,
Exposing hubris, leaving pride to squirm.
Thus Patroklos, in his silent defeat,
Finds Canuk’s wisdom, irony complete.
“One thing I like about the Russians and Putin, in particular, is that they don’t bluff or BS a lot.
Americans love to talk big. The European countries love to posture and moralize about high globalist ideals for the garden.
Russia never tells you that it is fighting to save “democracy”, for climate change, or for the right to sodomize one another.
They own it and say, “It is in our interest to fight here” and they go do it. You can agree or disagree but they tell you what they are thinking and follow through. More often than not, they acquit themselves well.”
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 6 2024 6:25 utc | 62
Great post.
“Yep, Yellen is trying to tell China how to run their economy to maximize empire profits..”
Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr 6 2024 6:31 utc | 63
The ubiquity of American arrogance is one of the prime reasons the Empire is failing…
Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 4:08 utc | 592.
**Jesus himself did not preach a new religion. He was rather a reformer of the existing (his) religion.**
(Simple terms)..I find Jesus had more connection towards the Buddhism (Sanskrit) religious teachings… Debatable.
Question I find myself asking ” Do most Christians today actually know what Jesus’s message was and what he was passing on to the people.” (The message I feel has been lost through organized religion.)
Do I know the answers…No… but when one has some kind of “devine intervention” (Life/Death changing episode)… It will change ones ways,how they view the world. (Universe)
Posted by: heavymetal101 | Apr 6 2024 11:18 utc | 75
Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 4:34 utc | 60
we have reached the red line that Putin cannot ignore. At this point the only way Putin can avoid World War III
I do not find PCR interesting enough to read his texts and I didn’t bother to read more from what you have posted.
I have just two comments:
1. It takes two for tango (WWIII)
2. If “Putin does not have red lines“ how he ended up in Ukraine?
Re Question 1: Just as Putin was forced into his “limited military operation” by the insulting cold shoulder Washington gave his plea for a mutual security pact, Russia will be forced into wider war with NATO by Washington’s defiance of Putin’s warning that Russia will not allow NATO membership for Ukraine. There’s your two tangoing.
Re Question 2: Just as Putin was forced into his “limited military operation” by the insulting cold shoulder Washington gave his plea for a mutual security pact… The red line was first crossed in 2014 with a staged coup and now the West is proposing Ukraine joins NATO. You make a good point viz the SMO, but is it not a tad minimalist, especially given Putin’s recent invitation to negotiate?
Now I happen to suspect this whole business is part of a neo-communist Reset making the SMO kinetics one of many facets in a globally waged asymmetric war, thus somewhat performative; but that is speculation. If roughly right, there is less risk of escalation because the US elites are involved; if wrong and NATO really does want war, then when Ukraine joins NATO they will get it.
However, almost certainly there are internecine struggles within Western elites so all bets are off. The neocons want war and they pull many strings in the MIC. So PCR, knowing how the latter operate, is urging Putin to land knock-out blows now leaving no Ukraine to join NATO later; ergo no war to be fought. Not unreasonable.
The text was the entire article. PCR writes short pieces; he’s pretty old and has been doing this for many decades now moreover with real-world experience negotiating with the USSR.
Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 2:24 utc | 52
“There’s something to that insofar as the book trade in Greek texts flowed out of Constantinople through Venice.”
Patroklos
You should maybe pontificate less and read more history.
The Greek texts did not ‘flow out’ of Constantinople they were pillaged in 1204 by the cynical 4th Crusade led by the blind, old (97) Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo. This betrayal sowed the seed of the death of the Eastern Roman Empire than finally fell in 1453.
“With the fall of Constantinople in 1204, the victorious Venetians pillaged and plundered the defeated city. One of the crowning jewels of the collection was the Hippodrome’s four bronze horses. The four horses were dismantled and shipped to their new resting place atop St. Mark’s Basilica as a symbol of triumph.”
@canuck | Apr 5 2024 22:00 utc | 45
Pegging currency rates is that not a form of ‘financialization’?
Financialization according to Wikipedia:
Financialization (or financialisation in British English) is a term sometimes used to describe the development of financial capitalism […], in which debt-to-equity ratios increased and financial services accounted for an increasing share of national income relative to other sectors.
[…]
Financialization is tied to the transition from an industrial economy to a service economy, as financial services belong to the tertiary sector of the economy.
Financialization according to the Handbook of Economic Stagnation:
Financialization or finance-dominated capitalism—the terminology is used interchangeably in this contribution—as a dominating trend in developed capitalist economies since the 1980s has been analyzed from several perspectives: the deregulation of the financial sector and the rise of shadow banking, rising gross indebtedness of the private sector, the ascendance of shareholder dominance at the firm level, the financialization of everyday life, and the emergence of several macroeconomic regimes under the dominance of finance, among others.
One of the results of financialization is the weakening of the manufacturing and other low yield, investment intensive economic enterprises. That was not the situation of Japan in the early ’80s, when it was the manufacturing power house of the world, with high productivity and a high investment ratio in the secondary sector.
—
@Patroklos | Apr 6 2024 2:27 utc | 53
This in turn led to the absorption of huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere triggering a mini Ice age in Europe at the beginning of the 17th century which overlapped, coincided with and exacerbated the Thirty Years War, in turn reshaping European geopolitics for three centuries.
Sigh! I think that Mansa Musa is a better explanation for the little Ice Age than carbon dioxide. According to the climate scammers, the concentration of CO2 almost doubled since antiquity (+100%), while during the little Ice Age there was a blip of minus one or two percents.
—
@2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 4:08 utc | 59
1. Christianity got its name by Jesus meaning there was no Christianity before him.
Obvious.
2. Jesus himself did not preach a new religion. He was rather a reformer of the existing (his) religion.
In a sense yes, but Christians were historically OK with that. After all they never tried to hide that their God is the same God of the Old Testament. Some Christian heresies disagreed, at least partly, with that.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica term “Christianity” was used for the first time at the end of the first century. I am struggling to understand what name apostles and believers have used to describe “their religion” during the first hundred years. Is there any other option than Judaism?
That is very gullible of you. What makes you think that “Judaism” is actually a more ancient word than “Christianity”? What makes you think that back then they needed a word to describe their religions? Read the Acts of the Apostles and find an answer to you question.
4. Constantine’s mother was a Christian and there is a reason to believe he was a Jew. He was the one who legalized Christianity as a state religion (for his selfish reasons) and effectively changed religious beliefs of Europe.
She was probably of Greek origin. Her name was pagan: Helen. Faithful hebrews would have never used a pagan name.
And that’s how, due to lack of better understanding, I came to the simplified conclusion that Christianity is a branch of Judaism and that Europe was converted to Judaism under the name of Christianity.
That would be like saying that Arabia was converted to Christianity under the name of Islam. The philosophical basis and the religious organization are profoundly different. For Christianity, at most, you can say that it is a fusion between neo-platonic philosophy, old (Mosaic) Judaism (which was no more practiced by Hebrews at the time of Jesus), Roman culture and Hellenistic ideals.
Posted by: SG | Apr 6 2024 11:30 utc | 78
“I find Jesus had more connection towards the Buddhism (Sanskrit) religious teachings…”
Posted by: heavymetal101 | Apr 6 2024 11:18 utc | 75
There is a tradition (and I am a convert) that Jesus travelled to the East between the ages of 13 and 30 as many of his teaching seems to have a ‘connection towards the Buddhism teachings’, as you adroitly noted: of course the idea is quite controversial::
“In 1887, Notovitch, a Russian Jew converted to Greek Orthodoxy and a war correspondent (possibly a spy), visited the city of Leh, capital of the district of Ladakh on the border of India and Tibet. He had a toothache and sought treatment at a Moravian mission station there. But his imagination got the better of him, and in 1894 , he wrote a book which told a new and much improved version of the story. Now it seemed he had visited the Tibetan lamasery (monastery) of Hemis (also spelled Himis). Here he mentioned folk legends he had picked up about a prophet named Issa, who sounded strikingly like Jesus (in fact, it’s the Arabic for Jesus). He was informed, he said, that the Hemis monastery itself housed a two-volume manuscript called The Life of Saint Issa! He hesitated to ask for access to the sacred book, but announced he would return. This happened sooner than expected, however, when he fell from his horse and broke his leg. Carried back to the monastery, he arranged to have Saint Issa read aloud and translated for him as he recuperated. As the story unfolded, his initial suspicions were confirmed: this could be nothing less than a hitherto-unknown chapter in the career of Jesus. He listened carefully and made copious notes. He reorganized much of the material to make it suitable for Western readers and he finally produced The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ (1894). The book created an international furor.” (1)
1.https://www.westarinstitute.org/editorials/jesus-in-tibet
The director of the recent Climate The Movie documentary did another one earlier called ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’
written about in this article: https://www.theepochtimes.com/entertainment/climate-alarmists-battle-to-censor-film-exposing-climate-crisis-scam-5617778
Am having a sleepless in Seattle night so watched it. Again, many many scientists contribute their opinions. His wife urged him not to make the second one because they lost so many friends after the first one.
Somebody remarked in one of these films that it’s the establishment narrators that keeps cancelling and closing down debate. (Some even suggest jailing dissenters.) A telling point, IMO. The West is headed down the same path the Russians took after 1917. Very strange….
It would be so nice if we could move on from this huge psyop and address real problems involving both pollution and modernity. But I doubt I will live to see that level of sanity in public affairs especially with Russia and China so invested in the UN, the main agent tasked with pushing this eco-political fentanyl.
Posted by: @2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 4:08 utc | 59
Posted by: canuck | Apr 6 2024 11:39 utc | 79
Check this chap out:
https://www.jesusisbuddha.com/
[From Intro:]
“The use of this method of “transcreation” from Sanskrit and Pâli into Greek has been firmly established by Christian Lindtner.” (Michael Lockwood, Buddhism’s Relation to Christianity, Chennai (India) 2011, p. 250) [available online]
“… it is worthwhile to look at the work of Christian Lindtner, Ph.D., author of The Secret of Jesus. Lindtner, a Sanskrit scholar, believes he has proven that much of the Gospel material is anticipated in earlier Buddhist scriptures. There are other noted scholars who agree.” (Tom Harpur, Canadian writer and theologian of New Testament Greek. The Pagan Christ.)
“Indisputably the Sanskrit-linguist, Lindtner has done more to establish the literary dependence of the Christian Gospels on Buddhist literary traditions than any other living scholars – and Michael Lockwood´s noble enterprise one step further.” (Prof. em. Zacharias Thundy, author of Buddha & Christ. Nativity Stories & Indian Traditions (Brill. Leiden 1993), in Brahmavidyâ. The Adyar Library Bulletin, Volumes 78-78 (2014-2015), p. 726.)
Christianity is Buddhism for the West
You become a Buddhist by receieving initiation (uapasampadâ), and by confessing your faith in the Trinity of the Buddha, his teaching and his order. In the Christian version you become baptized (baptisma), and confess your faith in the Trinity Father (Buddha), his son (bodhisattvaa) and the Church of holy men.
The Apostles´s Creed (Symbolum Apostolicum) can be traced back to Buddhists sources. Christian tradition traces it back to Peter, Andreas and the remaining ten apostles. They are all Buddhists: Putras, Aniruddhas, etc.
It was the task of the Buddhist apostles to promote the Dharmacakram all over the world. Mainly responsible for doing so were Peter and Paul. These two are to be traced back to the Lotus Gospel, chapters 3 and 8. Putras becomes Petros, and Pûrnas becomes Paulos or Saulos (= 901 = ho Pûrnas).
Names are slightly changed for the source has to be kept secret. Hence the secret of Christ and the “mystery” of the Kingdom of God, i.e. Buddhism. Even the titles of the main Buddhist gospels can be found in the Greek text of the NT, provided you know how to look and listen and count words and syllables.
The main figure in the NT is the new Tathâgatas, the kathêgêtês, or teacher of Matthew 23,10. There are about 20 puns on Tathâgata(s, sya) in the NT. Indeed, the New Diathêkê is a sûtram about a new Tathâgata. The Sanskrit sûtram is a synonym of the Greek euaggelion. It is thus the duty of serious scholars to trace the Buddhist sources that, combined with Old Testament sources, form the celebrated but little understood mosaic: The New Tathâgata.
From the very start, Buddhist missionaries, mostly unknown, assimilated their promotion of the Dharmacakram to local circumstances, working in several languages simultaneously. It is the same picture in all the countries where Buddhism expanded, typically – and most successfully – by way of “skilful means”, or pious deceptions (frays pia). The concept of skilful means is typical of Mahâyâna, as is prayer and confession of sins.
It is in this sense that I claim that Christianity is Buddhism (Mahâyâna) for the West.
Emperor Ashoka sent various missionaries to the Middle East around 250 BC. There was no doubt great back and forth between the Levant, Persia and Western India. Egypt was no longer a vital center of spiritual learning, but if Jesus did wander and learn, most likely he spent time not only there (if at all) but also with Mahayana masters within his own region and as far afield as India. A century earlier, many of Alexander the Great’s army basically gave up fighting and settled down in areas of Persia and India. They helped revolutionize Buddhist Sculpture creating the school known as Gandharvan which to this day are the most exquisite Buddha statues made, with the possible exception of later Japanese ones which clearly modelled that style.
We have one world culture today, attributed to modern technology shrinking the world, but they had one culture long ago too somehow. Just as the whole world was in endless tribal conflict during certain eras, in others it was into high civilizations such as during the Axial age, from which came Mahayana Buddhism, Zoroastrism, Christianity, Confucianism, all emphasizing wisdom and compassion and finding ways to structure societies around them as guiding principles and praxis. Whether or not the Gospels were transcriptions of Buddhist texts or inspired equivalents reproduced partly from memory, Lindtner’s work is substantive and scholastically establishes an undeniable connection between the teachings of Jesus and Mahayana Buddhism, obvious when reading the gospels to any familiar with the latter.
Decentralized Buddhism, BTW, easily blends into other cultures.
Battle of the Atlantic — Pacific ??
Canada’s CBC The National’s The Moment — when an elephant seal moved to the suburbs to moult (in BC again)
https://youtu.be/vRR6JcMQPrI
Interestingly, DFO while referring to Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, also refers to this online video game outta South Korea. Where there are elections.
The Guardian warns that according to a Microsoft report China will use AI to interrupt them. … … it’s just that— I mean. But, moving on.
To the East Coast! Lego takes over Newfoundland’s biggest museum [of course it does]
https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/lego-takes-over-newfoundland-s-biggest-museum-1.6835719
Webcam, St. John’s Harbour (spring snowstorm, not too bad out)
https://ntvplus.ca/st-johns-sky-cam/
Brazil?
From the Daily Mail: “How Lulu still looks fabulous at 75, from her skincare ‘golden rule’ to refusing to take lifts – as star reveals she won’t utter a word before 12pm everyday”
A little more official news from Brazil —
https://x.com/LulaOficial/status/1776389149848744105
Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Apr 6 2024 12:26 utc | 82
The formal Western Christianity set up by Constantine may well be a political ploy to coopt a growing spiritual movement to benefit Empire. Certainly the Old and New Testaments are very different, Jesus’s God the Father feeling very different from the vicious tribal war god Yahweh. Quite possibly their being combined into one Bible was an attempt by the Phariseean Old Guard to take control back from the Levantine Mahayanist-Christians and now here we are are with karlof1 lamenting the West’s predilection for supremacist-obsessed pleonexia.
From time to time for the sake of balance I like to recommend Joseph Atwill’s “Caesars Messiah”, a scholarly work that shows Jesus was a Roman Court construct, a fiction created
in the War against the Jews. Loved by Atheist’s, hated by the Churches because his documented work rings so true exposing perhaps the greatest flag flag ever!
http://www.iri.upc.edu/people/thomas/Collection/details/18165.html
Posted by: SwissArmyMan | Apr 6 2024 13:16 utc | 85
I believe that the reason the establishment is pressing so hard for WWIII is partly because of the upcoming elections and also because their covid agenda failed. Covid lockdowns and the vaccine passport system were their big play to create a permanent authoritarian environment with the ability to crush conservative groups that refused to submit. And no matter how you slice it they didn’t get what they wanted. World war is the natural Plan B.
It’s important to understand that every crisis created by globalists is meant to destroy the freedom minded. The true target is not Russia or Iran; they are peripheral. These events are designed to create an environment conducive to tyranny, they act as cover for engineered economic collapse, and they act as cover for the REAL war against those people that still defend liberty.
You could say that WWIII has already started, at least in economic terms. I also highly doubt that the end game for the globalists is a worldwide nuclear exchange; why spend decades building a massive control grid only to vaporize it all in seconds? I do think the danger of kinetic warfare is skyrocketing and that US and European citizens will be directly affected. It will take a sizable resistance movement to change the path we are being forced to follow, and things will get much worse before they get better.
ZH article about WWIII already underway: https://tinyurl.com/24a23no6
As I’m frying up the last potatoes from last year’s crop, and I don’t have a root cellar, I thought Id share a storage tip, first time try for me.
Basically card board boxes, and wood shavings that are sold for per bedding. A layer of chips, a layer of potatoes and so on. Beside the insulative property of the box, the wood chip also provide a similar effect and block out most light. I have potatoes at the bottom with no eyes sprouting and a little sprouting on the ones near the top.
Cheers M
Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Apr 6 2024 13:49 utc | 88
SwissArmyMan@85….just more of the same tripe from the same people, Jesus was fake Roman propaganda….. divide and conquer, nothing to see here move along….
See: Scorpion@83
Mr Atwell wouldn’t happen to have sheckles in the race….well he got published….hmm. btw, also a top down controlled medium.
Cheers M
Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Apr 6 2024 13:58 utc | 89
I see the Alabama moon as a group of “Christians” (ca. 40-250)
Funny how old lies about “the Nazarene” have been replaced by new (1967-) lies
The clash between “the Nazarene” and the Sadducean priestly oligarchy is not a fiction, but a local story with universal significance, a story very similar to that of Tiberius Gracchus.
Posted by: Simon | Apr 6 2024 14:02 utc | 90
Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Apr 6 2024 13:58 utc | 89
The man’s name is Atwill, he was educated in Ancient Greek by Jesuit Priests growing up
in Japan, his references are to original writings.
Posted by: SwissArmyMan | Apr 6 2024 14:06 utc | 91
I see the Alabama moon as a group of “Christians” (ca. 40-250)
Funny how old lies about “the Nazarene” have been replaced by new (1967-) lies
The clash between “the Nazarene” and the Sadducean priestly oligarchy is not a fiction, but a local story with universal significance, a story very similar to that of Tiberius Gracchus.
Posted by: Simon | Apr 6 2024 14:02 utc | 90
Both the Gracchi (Tiberius and his younger brother Gaius) attempted to secure arable land for the Roman peasants but both were executed by the Optimates-the aristocratic Senate party..
To me, the deaths (circa 130 BC) of these virtuous brothers was the real end of the Roman Republic not when Caesar, Pompey, Crassu et al finally ended it 80 some years later.
Posted by: scorpion | Apr 6 2024 12:30 utc | 83
Lol. That’s quite the vocabulary you’ve got there son.
Pleonexia, sometimes called pleonexy, originating from the Greek πλεονεξία, is a philosophical concept which roughly corresponds to greed, covetousness, or avarice, and is strictly defined as “the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others. Sometimes referred to as Judaism.
Posted by: David G Horsman | Apr 6 2024 14:28 utc | 93
Posted by: SwissArmyMan | Apr 6 2024 13:16 utc | 85
################
Jesus (Isa AS) was a West Asian, not a European. Most European analyses of his life are flawed from the outset because they overlook many cultural records outside their linguistic ken.
It’s like reading the New Testament and ignoring the Quran, which has more to say about Mary by many factors than the New Testament does. Working from incomplete texts makes it inevitable that one may arrive at a bizarre conclusion.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 6 2024 14:33 utc | 94
@ SG | 33
Yes, the Plaza Accord of 1985 was a major revelation. Japan committed economic suicide. And it had 20 more years to undo the suicide after the damage was revealed. But that never happened.
There is a seriously good explanation of what did happen: “Princes Of The Yen” is both a book and a professionally produced 45 minute video based on the book, and it’s on Youtube. Princes Of The Yen shatters all illusions about any sovereignty of America’s colonies. Not ancient history, it shows the “normality” of Germany killing itself on Washington’s command.
Posted by: JessDTruth | Apr 6 2024 14:39 utc | 95
Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Apr 6 2024 13:49 utc | 88
Good points, sean – impressive. This year I am trying different test areas on my small plot.
Posted by: juliania | Apr 6 2024 14:44 utc | 96
It should be noted that the mother of Tiberius Gracchus was Cornelia, daughter of none other than (drum roll) Scipio Africanus.
It is simply mind-boggling: a laureate and acclaimed son of the Roman aristocracy discovered Rome.
And the resemblance between the Gracchus brothers and JFK and his brother is enormous.
Posted by: Simon | Apr 6 2024 14:48 utc | 97
I wanted to comment a little on the CFA Franc, the colonial currency that France introduced to its African colonies decades ago. My favorite current African leader, Ibrahim Traore, has announced (“We will break every tie that has kept us in slavery.”) Burkina Faso is participating in creating a currency and rejecting the CFA Franc to finally be free of colonial slavery (money tends to be used as a control on people more than violence).
With France regulating the monetary policy of those countries, they could limit their ability to establish trade ties beyond their master. I assume the French could print money out of thin air to buy resources and pay for labor in these colonies, essentially shopping “for free” as they had absolute control of the regulation of the CFA Franc.
This is huge news for the Sahel region. France was supposedly going to rebrand the CFA Franc into the “Eco” (after ECOWAS, Economic Community of West African States, a black EU with all of the democratic/bureaucratic negatives of the same) however they keep delaying that, which has prompted Traore and others to take action now.
Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali have all withdrawn (after being suspended for overthrowing “democratic” leaders) from ECOWAS to form ASS (Alliance of Sahel States) which is a military alliance at this time. Those three states are working together on the new currency, which is slated to be called the “Sahel”.
Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 6 2024 14:53 utc | 98
The truth
The truth of Rome is Tiberius Gracchus and his followers beaten to death. The truth of Jerusalem is the crucified Nazarene. The truth of Washington is bullets through JFK’s skull.
Posted by: Simon | Apr 6 2024 14:53 utc | 99
@Posted by: scorpion | Apr 6 2024 12:18 utc | 81
Thank you for your kind response but this is over my paygrade. I am not trying to learn theological or philosophical aspects of Christianity but rather a bare historical facts.
Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 6 2024 14:53 utc | 100