THE MANAGEMENT OF DISSENT

23 September 2022

I don't know about you, but I find that everywhere, current affairs gets a more and more insistent pro-western gov.ts swing.

What used to be my preferred channels are dishing up gov.t slops, whereas I used to find them interesting. Even the data is just wrong!

We are being pushed into an opposition anti-Western camp, where I become cynical, but this is not at all where I want to be. I have big interests in proper order and progress in the West, where I live. I want a democratic government which is focused on its existing people - not on the next election, not on the rich, not on other global players, not on outsiders. A government with a vision and a convincing strategy for getting there and not just governments full of crisis managers going for double or bust with absurd foreign policies like integrating Ukraine into Nato and the EU, or defeating Russia if necessary with nuclear.

What's all this about Truss' "dash for growth" and Kwarteng threatening a (nominally) independent Bank of England, and at the expense of the environment and net zero too? You can reduce taxes and regulations and for a time prolong the aire of prosperity, but the only way to get authentic growth is through productivity and there's no plan I've seen for that.

To cover their policy failures and true intentions, they dice us into numerous identity camps and distract us by then setting us against each other with the politics of  division.

This all seems to ultimately to go back to the American elite and their ideas that we in Europe have adopted, perhaps forced to adopt, of attempting to postpone the end of its cycle and using antagonistic methods, from outright war to cancelling, and its war against adverseries like Trump and criticising those whom he represents, the castouts. What do you expect from such provocation if not to trigger retaliation?

End of rant. What do you think? At least we are permitted certain channels like Alexander Mercouris for example, or Jordan Peterson, or Mearsheimer or even that awful Piers Morgan

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WHY DID AMERICA START THIS WAR?

19 September 2022

...as told through the war in Ukraine. Or better still, as told by Putin himself.

https://youtu.be/rm5icaLbUMA

PROBLEMS

It looks to me as if the real problem is the end of the American Order, as precisely described by Ray Dalio. The goal is to assure continued American hegemony - this is pretty obvious, it is about security and survival, nothing more important.

Another reading is that the suffering the Jews endured during the last war due to the failure of the Western powers to protect them has produced a philosophy where they seek to be the hammer rather than the anvil by sheltering in a dictatorship that will protect them because this dictatorship runs the world. "Better to be Hitler than Hitler's victim."

STRATEGY

However you explain the goal of world hegemony, the strategy seems to be for America to continue taking advantage of its reserve currency for borrowing, while sowing disorder in the other trade blocks so as to nip potential rivals in the bud. 

It is only now, very late in the cycle of the rise and decline of empires, that Jerome Powell at the Fed is seriously dealing with the problem consequent on America's massive debt. This debt is 130% of GDP, which is similar to the figures for Italy, Greece and Lebanon. However, the US Dollar is for the moment the world's trading currency and safest haven, allowing it to borrow and print as it likes, with little thought for tomorrow.

But the risk with excessive debt - ie expansion of the money supply M1 - is that it will eventually produce high inflation. If left unmanaged, runaway inflation will lead to a run on the dollar and collapse of the currency. Managing inflation, on the other hand, ie bringing it back to the two to three percent range, requires overarching interest rates, which can push an economy into recession. 

So with a failing economy, America seeks to prolong its empire by, let's call it, asymmetric means.

INITIATIVES

We've seen these asymmetric initiatives before, going back to the Dulles brothers in S. America, passing by Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and now finally the script is being run on Russia, it is Russia's turn to bleed, along with the peoples of The Ukraine. 

To better understand the history Russophobia, read "A brief history of the Roman Church".

The idea is to create chaos that will divide and reduce a people to poverty, disenchant them with their govt, weaken the state in a low-intensity civil war or proxy war, so that the people rise up and overthrow and install a regime or several regimes through dismemberment, favourable to American interests.

This makes it easy for America to divide and rule rival states.

The new Western-oriented regime in Ukraine was promised a place in NATO and by implication the EU (even though in 1991 Gorbachev was promised by Secretary of State James Baker, that Russia's near abroad would remain neutral) if it provoked Russia to attack, with the guarantee that sanctions would quickly bring the Putin regime to its knees. 

Then the process of dismemberment was sure to follow, as practised on the Yugoslavian communist regime, could run its course. The CIA / DoD produced maps and strategies (RAND-RR3063, and the second RAND report) authentic or not doesn't matter because I have to say these presentations seem highly accurate.

The one thing America definitely did not want to happen was the symbiotic relationship Russia-Germany to be strengthened into treaties such as Russia joing the EU or NATO! Imagine the strength and output of a German power house, feeding on Russian inputs - this is the nation responsible for three major wars and the holocaust and now rebuilding a super army, albeit buying American equipment and supplies.

Maidan, and then the shelling by Kiev, was supposed to have been resolved in the Minsk agreements, but when these were not implemented, Russia took Crimea and in retaliation the EU first imposed sanctions (from which experience it learnt nothing).  This "annexation" was the reason given by America for arming Ukraine, back in 2014.

 So as I read it, the American strategy to avoid the end of the American Order - or call it Empire - has not been, until very recently at least, to deal upfront with the foreseeable problems created by its mountain of debt - because let's remember QE raises the value of assets, making the rich richer; but also as the poor get poorer in a democracy, money has to be thrown at them to keep them off the streets - to sow mayhem and murder amongst larger nation states in other trade blocks, incite ethno-religious groupings to demand their independence, divide and rule, and re-draw the maps in the interests of America's govt-industrial-military complex.

So QE at home, chaos abroad.

RISKS

However!!!...various risks were overlooked!!!! 

Perhaps Europe failed to realise how much greater was its dependence on Russia than Russia's on Europe, particulary for energy the basic resource that turns all wheels in an economy. 

Perhaps Ukraine believed the American plan (where we know American plans always lead to disaster, each greater than the last) and seriously expected the Putin regime to collapse and so it was not ready for war.

Whatever, each is happy with this low-level war of attrition and is re-arming and expecting the other to throw in the towel first. 

Ha ha, what dolts they the leaderships everywhere are, (though we-the-people everywhere get the pain). 

Are the Europeans blind, stupid or simply corrupted by American soft power?

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ROMAN CHURCH

20 September 2022

Go back to Diocletian's decision to divide the empire into the Western and Eastern wings in around 286,  two domains—the Western Roman Latin-speaking empire and the Eastern Greek-speaking empire. Constantine founded Constantinople on the existing city of Byzantium in 330. This Wrst-East split was made permanent on the death of Emperor Theodosius in 379. This split separates what we call the Rome of Antiquity from Medieval Rome and the sacking of Byzantium by the Ottoman Turks marks the end of the so-called Middle Ages.

Or back more recently to The Great Schism of 1054 when the Christian church itself split into the Orthodox church in the East and the Roman Catholic Church in the West because the West claimed jurisdiction over the East, which the East refused. After this, the East split again into Greek and Orthodox churches. Things would have been OK, but in 1204 crusaders of the Fourth Crusade mutinied and captured Constantinople. Byzantium (Constantinople) migrated to Moscow starting a war of Christian v. Orthodox. 1854 found protestant Great Britain in alliance with Catholic France and Muslim Turkey, against Orthodox Russia - the same setup when Russia annexed the Chanet of Crimea 260 years later.

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PROBLEMS OF THE UK ECONOMY

14 September 2022

KNOWLEDGE

To understand what's going on in the economy at the moment you need a basic understanding of economics ...which I don't have!

INDICATORS

What's needed is to understand the relation between GDP growth, productivity, employment and wages, inflation, interest rates and the supply of money and credit.

With this knowledge you can build wonderful models of the economy and pretty little gearings linking the chains of cause and effect.

Without this knowledge, we are left swimming in a pool at night.

GOALS

We can say that what we want is strong growth and low employment on the one hand and a suitable inflation rate on the other.

PROBLEMS

What's stopping the UK is:

Low productivity - stagnated since the financial crisis and one of the poorest in the G20.

Low investment - Brexit, covid-19 and the war are all huge disincentives for businesses to invest in, for example and especially, new technology.

Low growth - As a result of poor productivity and low investment, calculates the OECD, the UK will have the lowest growth rate in the G20.

Burdensome taxes - The share of government tax take in the GDP has been increasing since the nineties and increasing strongly with those three brexit covid and this war.

POOR RESULTS

But how has this increased burden helped us? Because the NHS is still in an awful state and declining health care and welfare, and education is failing the country, and the cost of living crisis puts further pressure on Social Security spending.

Low wages - It hasn't helped real income which is pretty much unchanged since the financial crisis. If you thought cutting off labour from Europe would raise wages locally, you'd be wrong - stagnant productivity and bargaining power have meant wages have grown patchily at best.

Real wages means wages net of inflation and so the supply problems caused by covid and this war raise inflation and reduce real wages.

Industrial action - And now we have industrial action with for example transport staff going on strike and doctors quitting their posts.

Devaluing currency - the currency has devalued by 16% since Brexit and that has resulted in more costly imports just adding to home inflation. This devaluation has not helped with the spiralling cost of energy, imported food and resources. 

Devaluation is supposed to help exports, but there's little evidence of that I don't know why.

Record public debt - how much longer will lenders support public debt? Who wants to invest in this economy previously that would be buying up of assets developed in the UK and saving in UK Banks It was over 8% of GDP in the last quarter and yet according to Maastricht commonsense, it's supposed to be 3%. 

But this is an obvious contribution to perhaps hyperinflation.

And reduced capital flows in put further pressure on the currency.

STRATEGY

What should be done about all this?

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WHAT COULD BE PUTIN'S OBJECTIVES?

14 September 2022

Putin's primary concern is the security of his country and that means not letting NATO into Ukraine, which is the weakest link in that long and costly-to-defend Western frontier of Russia's with Central Europe.

Security should include Transnistria for sure, and also to be safe Moldova and Romania - the latter being impossible without starting a third world war.

Sentimentally, Russia should be looking to recover Novorosia, which takes it further West from Kherson to Odessa. I wouldn't wager much money on it, but I think that possibly the people of this Eastern part of Ukraine - Orthodox Slaves of Russian descent and hated as such by Eastern Catholic Nazi-leaning Slavs - are sympathetic more to Russia than to the EU....maybe.

Putin wants to concentrate on purely military targets but that will be difficult considering that the Ukrainian military has installed itself in civilian areas. All he could do is to implore them to temporarily leave while he shells the area flat and they can rebuild upon their return at Russia's expense. A pretty mighty operation all told!

Back to the map and North of Ukraine is Belarus, which is already Russia's.

And North again are the Baltic States which he has via the Sawalki gap. Kaliningrad is absolutely bristling with the latest Russian hardware, all pointed at Europe, so unlikely that NATO will interfere there. 

Beyond that is Finland and Sweden - Sweden a historic enemy that has invaded twice but has probably learnt its lesson from its 1708 defeat that ended its ambitions as an Empire  - so I cannot see these two inviting NATO to set itself up militarily in their country, so they are not much of a threat.

So really Crimea has gone and it is now down to taking back New Russia, with its ethnic Russian population dating back to the time of Catherine II, and closing off Ukraine's access to the Black Sea via Odessa and closing the security gap in Transnistria - the Carpathian Mountains.

That should satisfy Russia militarily, sentimentally and economically. How to achieve all this is the subject of another Post...

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FRENCH NUCLEAR POWER

13 September 2022

Golfech Nuclear Power Plant on the Garonne river, providing the water for its cooling plant, 90 kms upstream from Toulouse and 30 kms downstream from Agen*.

"France is heavily dependent on nuclear power for its electricity needs, while Germany is planning to shut down its last three reactors this year and until recently relied strongly on imports of Russian gas."

The history of nuclear power in France is full of myths and misunderstandings.

There was a plan in France to replace all coal oil and gas with nuclear and build 170 nuclear power stations. In the end, 56 got built - as a result largely of another war, the 1973 Yom Kippur War - almost all not to French design but to Westinghouse designs and all relying on imported uranium.

Maybe only a third of planned got built, but the French nuclear program was a huge success and resulted in large overcapacity, which was sold to Germany and thus Germany and France from an energy point of view became intertwined.

Then the Greens, Fukushima and Chernobyl caused a turnaround in nuclear policy, with France joining Germany, Germany to decommission all its plants by 2022 and France to drop from 75 to 50% nuclear by 2025.

This is the reason why half of France's nuclear power plants today are out of action and many fear restoring operations is impossible because of a loss of staff with the knowledge to maintain and run France's nuclear infrastructure. 

But the French now have this plan to bring back online one nuclear power station a week ...

*The station was designed by the French (P'4 design). It has two pressurized water reactors. The plant has two 178.5-metre-tall cooling towers that draw water from the Garonne to compensate for evaporation - it is a closed cooling loop, meaning water is never released back into the river.

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CHANANG

11 September 2022

These banana leaf boxes of offerings are scattered everywhere and fresh every day.

There are temples big and family size, thousands, and the people light ajoss stick or two every morning and say a prayer.

It's estimated these rituals take up 40% of their income and their time, which is extraordinary.

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FAMILYNESS

This is what I just sent to my kiddies:

"Incidently, very pleased that you are setting goals, making a budget for things - like renovating the apartment, like the move to the new job - and making and monitoring a work plan to achieve what you want, within your resources.

I do think that over time you will start generating quiet considerable amounts of money and the thing there is to know how to invest so as to a) preserve what you make and to b) create further wealth.

So you are independent, standing on your own feet, and successful. You are happy in what you do and in your family. You've got friends and contacts for social and professional reasons who can always advise if needed and do you a favour.

"Familyness", that's what we want. It means you two share missions and support, and learn from your successes and your mistakes too.

Then the last bit of this is to know how to pass that on to your own kids, which sometimes might mean that you put them into situations where they have to sink or swim ie they have to learn for themselves, which generates in them great self-esteem and you as a parent can be confident your kids will succeed and pass on the baton to their kids. Even though you're always there in support, you don't takeover ... that's your legacy work.

(Remember we always had four things : successful, happy, network, legacy.)

On a different subject ...

I look forward (still) to hearing the three-part story of how you fit into the team; how the team fits into the company; and how the company fits into the industry. That's bottom up, or you can tell it top down, whatever, but I look forward to seeing the whole jigsaw puzzle please."

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UK ENERGY BILLS, PER ELECTRICAL APPLIANCE

8 September 2022

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THE PRICE CAP

7 September 2022

Officials from the U.S. Treasury and the British cabinet look at oil and gas futures and see them lower and stable, and conclude that markets are already anticipating that the price cap will work.

The idea of the cap is to keep Russian oil gas and refined products flowing but at a lower price so as to reduce the Kremlin's profits.

Countries will have an incentive to co-operate not just because the cap will lower prices, but because the sanctions will cover shipping, insuring and financing.

The multinational companies will want to co-operate because otherwise they will suffer American sanctions. And it will be better for all companies, big and small, to co-operate rather than trying to find workarounds, than to risk an outright ban on all purchasesfrom Russia. If any companies do find ways around, they will suffer financially from higher prices for insurance etc so they'll have an incentive to co-operate.

Neither is it expected that Russia will make any profit greater than break-even (which is twice the break-even point of Saudi) by increasing output as its creaking supply infrastructure will reach its limits pretty quickly. 

And Moscow cannot cut off the oil to those who participate in the cap because it would deprive itself of the income that it needs to pay the rising costs of this war.

Well, if you believe any of that...! We know without even having to examine the arguments or the data that this will be yet another American disaster of - for it, and for us - global proportions.

The takeaways from this particular American adventure and debacle are that it is best to keep governments small and avoid undue interference in market mechanisms and any grand schemes for sudden change. It demonstrates why globalisation and making economies dependant the ones on the others as reducing the risk of war, is a wise course: we are seeing what happens if America does not follow its own post WW2 policy aim and instead provokes war with Russia.

So when we look at oil and gas futures and see them lower, we can conclude not that markets are anticipating the success of the price cap in reducing the costs of oil and gas to the economy, but that demand is falling off a cliff because a major recession for the global North is on the way.

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WILL THE OIL PRICE CAP BRING RUSSIA TO ITS KNEES?

4 September 2022

As to the Western plan to cap the price of oil, we remember that the original idea was to weaken Russia and have a colour Revolution that would put out Putin and put in a government sympathetic to the West.

The three strategic axes have been military, economic and network. 

MILITARY DEFEAT STARING AMERICA IN THE FACE

The military looks like a big failure for Ukraine, with Russia gradually encrcling,  kettling, cauldroning or drag-netting and howver it is described, destroying the ukrainians - though I fear direct NATO / American involvement.

TABLED TURNED ON SANCTIONS

Russia has turned the table on sanctions by hooking new customers and old suppliers.

a) Russia is cutting off all supplies to Europe apart from the Turkman line - this will de-industrialise Europe, especially Germany ... it already is.

Plus America cannot replace with LNG as it has shortages of its own to deal with even if Europe have the infrastructure built and in place to re-gasify; Saudi can't or won't increase output and sees the price cap as a method to wrest control of pricing from OPEC; India is most unlikely to cooperate as it currently resells Russian oil to the West through numerous back-channels; Iran and Venezuela?....try.

b) New pipelines are being built out to China, meanwhile Lloyds of London will go down the pan because tanker owners will find other ways to insure the tankers, notably through Indian insurance and through Russia itself - although here I worry very much that the insurance will be a sham and in the event of an environmental disaster (clear-ups cost billions), there will be no money to clean up the mess.

c) Alternatives to Swift and bank cards have been developed and customers freely pay in roubles. This is weakening the need for US dollars as a reserve currency and safe haven in times of trouble.

ONE-WORLD NETWORK BROKEN

Networking is the fundamental point as the whole of the post World War II arrangement was designed to provide countries with safe navigation for imports and exports and if you start trying to politicise that, reducing its practical transactional value, then all those countries - the Global South - will turn against you and this is what's happening with the surprising addition of Argentina and  Saudi Arabia to the BRICS. 

So here's a rival system to the dollar and American world hegemony and there's no reason at all why any of Russia's new customers should agree to a ridiculous idea of a price cap when they're perfectly satisfied with the arrangements they have with Russia and do not need so much any more to kowtow to American pressure.

THE FUTURE

So where does this leave the West? It's in a position where the only positive progress possible out of this hole it's dug itself into is to concede some form of victory to Russia.  

It has lost Russia as a partner and it's China that has taken Russian resources in our place. I cannot see how Europe can find back the energy it needs to run its economies.

So it is Europe that is permanently weakened with the loss of Russian cheap energy; and its politicians lying prone before America, will be / are being kicked out of office.

Ukraine is run by thoroughly corrupt oligarchs and will never get into NATO or the EU - despite Zelinsky's maudlin and aggressive pleadings - and will find itself landlocked, cut off from the Black Sea as Russia takes back Novorossiya and the Khanet of Crimea. 

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