Friday, May 13, 2022
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
Scott Ritter ‘The Greatest Generation’
The Greatest Generation “This is a letter by Scott Ritter, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. It was published on RT as “An Open Letter To The American People – as Russia celebrates its WW2 victory over the Nazis”, but since RT is mostly banned in the west, I’ll post it here. It absolutely deserves that.” says Raúl Ilargi Meijer. But it is available in Australia:
Tuesday, May 10, 2022
A prescient speech by George W.Bush from 1991
The vindication of George H W Bush “not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.”
Monday, May 09, 2022
Saturday, May 07, 2022
Friday, May 06, 2022
On China’s economy
Gulzar Natarajan summarises the problems which relate the slowdown of Chinese economy to its COVID policies: China update - The Bad Emperor problem hastens even as economic prospects dim
Michael Pettit sees more familiar structural problems The Only Five Paths China’s Economy Can Follow
“ Once it is recognized that China’s surging debt burden is a function of nonproductive investment, and that this investment must eventually be curtailed, it turns out that there are a limited number of ways the economy can continue growing. Any economy broadly speaking has only three sources of demand that can drive growth: consumption, investment, and trade surpluses. For that reason, there are basically five paths that China’s economy could take going forward.
- China can stay on its current path and keep letting large amounts of nonproductive investment continue driving the country’s debt burden up indefinitely
- China can reduce the large amount of nonproductive investment on which it relies to drive growth and replace it with productive investment in forms like new technology
- China can reduce the large amount of nonproductive investment on which it relies to drive growth and replace it with rising consumption
- China can reduce the large amount of nonproductive investment on which it relies to drive growth and replace it with a growing trade surplus
- China can reduce the large amount of nonproductive investment on which it relies to drive growth and replace it with nothing, in which case growth would necessarily slow sharply
Wednesday, May 04, 2022
Michael Hudson with Katie Halper and Aaron Mate transcript
portion of the Michael Hudson podcast with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté ‘ The transcript below is only of the portion of the Michael Hudson podcast with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté that is outside their paywall, but Michael assures me that the rest was almost entirely a personal chat. ’ says Yves Smith.
Tuesday, May 03, 2022
An interesting article by Jonathan Haidt
WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID
A summary by Gulzar Natarajan “ A few days back Jonathan Haidt wrote what he calls his most important essay in The Atlantic. It's a must read in terms of a compelling diagnosis of several disturbing symptoms arising from the pervasiveness of social media that we see in societies across the world.”
Latest report from Gilbert Doctorow
America’s ideological blinkers and the Ukraine war
“ First, the Russian ‘special military operation’ is a millstone that grinds slowly but grinds fine. It is working. The Russians are crushing the Ukrainian forces. It is improbable that any amount of deliveries of foreign equipment to Kiev can make a difference on the outcome of this conflict. Indeed, while critics of the US-led intervention in the conflict claim, correctly, that the deliveries are drawing out the war by encouraging Kiev to fight on, it is also true that the Russians have no problem with that: the longer it goes on, the more territory they can seize, with a view to controlling and ultimately annexing the entire Black Sea littoral. They would thereby ensure that what survives of the Ukrainian state can never again pose a military threat to Russia, with or without NATO help.
Second, the Ukrainian army indeed has NATO trained officers and skilled professionals who may be admirable fighters, as the Western media insist. But it also has a lot of cannon fodder. By cannon fodder I mean overaged recruits dragooned into the forces and also volunteers who are useless to any modern military and are no longer trainable. Most of the prisoners of war shown on Russian television were in their late 50s and even late 60s; they had no prior military experience. One of the latter, with haggard face and scraggly beard down to his chest was asked why he enlisted to fight. The answer came back: “There was no work. So I signed up just to make some money.” After seeing their mates shot dead, is it any wonder that such soldiers raise their arms to surrender at the first opportunity?
The question not being asked is where are all the young and able Ukrainian males? How have they evaded the draft? Given the widely acknowledged corruption in Ukrainian government and society, would it not be strange if some just buy their way out of the war? Are they among the 5 million Ukrainians who have gone abroad since the start of the hostilities? Are they the ones now driving their high priced Mercedes with Ukrainian license plates around the streets of Hamburg? Who in the West records this or really cares about it?”
From another source https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1520446668331790337.html
Monday, May 02, 2022
Interview with a Ukrainian academic Olga Bashya
UKRAINE: The Real Zelensky from Consortium News.
An excerpt:
“ What about neoliberal reforms initiated by Zelensky? You can judge on their popularity by opinion polls – up to 72 percent of Ukrainians did not support his land reform, the flagship of Zelensky’s neoliberal program. After his party approved it despite people’s indignation, Zelensky’s rating fell from 73 percent in Spring 2019 to 23 percent in January 2022. The reason is simple: a deep sense of betrayal.
In his unofficial election platform — the show “Servant of the People” — Zelesnky-Holoborodko [Holoborodko was Zelensky’s character in the television show – NB] promised that if he could rule the country for just one week, he would “make the teacher live as the president, and the president live as the teacher.” To put it mildly, this promise was not fulfilled. People realized that they were duped once again — the reforms have been carried out in the interests of not Ukrainians but global capital.”