RUSSIA'S USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS draft

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/russias-new-strategy-for-nuclear-war/

Zelensky called for pre emptive nuclear strikes on Russia.

You have to trawl through hundreds of years of history to get the real deep sense of russophobia 

and this will help to understand why one side or the other will take the entire world with it rather than surrender

Still, look on the bright side, we do have a choice of suicides - not gun, jump off cliff or gas yourself - it's nuclear oblivion, economic the industrial ization and collapse into starvation, then there's climate wipeout, or Civil War.

A last martini anyone?

Well that's an interesting point that the USA won't let Russia out of this war and isn't interested in negotiating a peace.

Russia does have nuclear weapons as one of a number of strategic tools for use in the case of threats to its existence. That existence now includes these four regions.

America knows this but has no way of taking out Russia's  nuclear deterrence other than regime change.

So seems like Russia is protected.

Is Ukraine protected from Russian advances and retaliation? Russia's just scatter-bombed the country and all that's happened so far is name-calling.

It's true that Putin has been too timid and too hopeful. He undermanned. He avoided the nerve centres (I dont know why, maybe I'm wrong, I don't understand why he pulled his punches).

But now the cavalry is on the brow of the steppe, the brave 300,000. Plus new generals with steel in their veins and lead in their pencils.

"As I said many times" the best thing that could happen to Europe is if Ukraine loses this war. Make friends, turn on NS2 and get back to work. Kick out those awful oversexed Americans. It's surely the turn of the shiny new currency, the Euro.

Is it too late? Probably.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/11/nato-chief-says-long-planned-nuclear-exercises-to-go-ahead

There's an awful lot of news every day on this war but that should not distract us from focusing on the one importent thing which is 

the nuclear threat.

I read what Kennedy said after the Cuban missile crisis. He said that man thinks that he's in control, but there's always room for an accident and in general we forget in our arrogance the part played by chance.

"I have seen something else under the sun: 

The race is not to the swift 

or the battle to the strong, 

nor does food come to the wise 

or wealth to the brilliant 

or favour to the learned; 

but time and chance happen to them all.

How mad is that?

Putin is intending detonate nuclear weapons two or three hundred kilometers from Moscow

America to deploy nuclear ready b52s to australia......bombing Indonesia or Samoa????

[ https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945-50Intel/d292

[

You don't have to be a Putinist to tell stories of covert CIA operations against Russia - just read America's own official archive.

One interesting point coming out from reading that is to realise that not simply will America refuse all negotiation with Russia, no, the idea is that America will never permit Russia to have any zone of influence whatsoever in Eastern Europe, period.

[01/11, 07:52] Peter: MY GRIMMEST CONCLUSION TO DATE

Since Russia considers that attempts to take from it Ukraine - or at least Eastern U (Germany having "stayed behind" in the West from summer 1944 to the present) - are rather like an attempt to pull out its front teeth, and that America can permit no Russian zone of influence along mackinder's fault line in Eastern Europe, as inherited by George Kennan, we can see that this conflict can only really lead to total defeat of one side or the other, and that in turn seems to imply a war that can only be won using nuclear weapons.

(Sorry, long sentence.)

Plus, I guess that any delay by America in achieing this objective is simply the time it takes for America to catch up with with Russian nuclear technologies and to develop a means to knock these Russian systems out before they can be fired.

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ON THE INELUCTABLE PATH TO NUCLEAR WAR

1 November 2022 

1. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A PUTIN APOLOGIST TO...

You don't have to be a Putinist to believe stories of covert CIA operations to defeat Russia - just read America's own official archive:

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945-50Intel/d292

One interesting point coming out from reading that and similar doc.s - such as RAND_RR3063.pdf - is to realise that not simply will America refuse all negotiation with Russia, but that America in the first place will never permit Russia to have any zone of influence in Eastern Europe. This is non-negotiable and has been so going back decades.

In days of yore, before the GFC, Trump and populism, Covid, this war, we used to begin by answering the question "where are you coming from?". These days, rational, calm, objective debate has been shut down; to be replaced with "likes", emotionalism, "fake news", short term "one-step thinking", group think, propaganda from once-fair-minded respectable institutions. Proof we are at war.

1. We need to understand nazi history and German-Russian history to understand how the people of Russia and Donbas feel. 

Let us remember that 27 million Russians died at the hands of German nazis, that 13 million Russian soldiers were killed, that 1.8 million Ukrainians from the West of that country died fighting Russians on behalf of the nazis. 

And we should try to imagine how Russians feel today when they see these parades of Ukrainian soldiers wearing makeup German Nazi uniforms and flying German type swastikas and burning the Oriflame. That is not the Ukraine imagined by the people from the east of the country.

We should not forget either the "Holocaust by bullet", as it's called.

2. Ukrainians from the east of the country, over the period 2005 to 2008, were prepared and happy to go along with the idea of being Ukrainian, though they also had feelings for Russia, which after all built and established and populated the Eastern provinces in the late eighteenth century.

If it was Catherine II who built the East of Ukraine, Novorossiya, it was the West, the Americans, the CIA, who interfered with the Orange Revolution and the Maiden coup and this turned the people of the East against Kiev, particularly when the shelling started in 2014, because here was a a German-sympathising regime that was trying to bounce them into joining NATO, and an EU led by Germany, when all they were really interested in was peace and neutrality.

But then these later events have changed them from being ready to play the game and stay with Ukraine, to now a preference for Russia, because at least things would be clear. And this is evident in the referendums that have been held recently.

So to understand where are a reasonable person's point of view would come from, there is no need to go back to the very beginning, just set the clock at the last world war, as background; and roll it forward, through 1991, through 2008, through 2014 and 2015 and now to late 2021, January and mid February, to 24th February 2022, to know how the people fee today in their relations with Kiev. I'd imagine, given the shelling and 14,000 deaths, none too happy.

Not forgetting the many many speeches that Putin has made trying to explain to western decision makers that NATO entering Russia's "near abroad", despite promises made to the contrary; and the utmost strategic importance of Ukrainian neutrality; were perceived as real threats to the security and very existence of Russia.

3. Then it is also worth remembering that at one time, at the beginning of his office, Putin was expressed interest in being part of Europe, NATO and the EU. Perhaps he was the last Russian leader to be ready to turn towards the West because young Russians are very much against the West, for the West's suspicion of Russia after 1991. But he was rejected by The West.

In fact and in reality, Russia - at least as concerns Moscow and St. Petersburg and indeed 80% of the population, is in Europe. So when we talk of Europe, we are not talking of the same thing as "the West" or "Eurasia". Europe is Europe from from the Urals to the Atlantic. Too many historians Europe is a 17th century construct intended to harmonise the different powers in the face of Protestant and Catholic conflict and war.

The West is that part of Europe which developed particular philosophical ideas on sovereigty, liberty and freedom of the individual, the "social contract", democracy; and sowed those ideas across the Atlantic to America and also to Australia and on to Japan, South Korea...

If we talk of Eurasia, this is Russia part of which is in Europe, but also that part which stretches out 4,000 miles and 11 time zones  away to Vladivostok in the East. Here we are talking of the Russian Steppe which stretches through to the west of Russia and, it could be argued by some, past the Carpathians and on, into the European plain.

2. GRIMMEST CONCLUSION TO DATE

Russia resists attempts to bounce Ukraine from neutrality into NATO*. America can permit no Russian zone of influence along along what it sees as a geopolitical fault line in Eastern Europe. So this conflict can only really deliver one result: the defeat of one side by the other. And if that in turn implies a war of existential importance, last-man-standing, probably requiring nuclear weapons.

Plus, I guess that any delay by America in achieing its objective is simply the time it takes for America to catch up with Russian nuclear technologies and to develop a means to knock out all these Russian systems, before they can be fired. (Russia has thousands of nuclear and some must be working, not dummies...but which ones?)

3. WHY THIS WAR

Donbas is to Ukraine as Transnistrie is to Moldova (Bessarabia). The Carpathian mountains are one of nine gateways along the "fault line" described by Mackinder, and adopted by George Kennan as the basis of his containment policy, the Marshall Plan, the refusal to help Russia in 1991, the Cold War, the creation of NATO, the support for the creation of what was to become the EU, its duplication on China.

Russia has been invaded through these gateways over 50 times. So Moldova takes care....Russia is taking care.

And America's relentless aggression continues, the last piece to fall being Donbas.

Point being, Russia has no natural defences within its own territory. This - geography and the history of invasions, the advance of NATO, its encirclement - is what drives Russia to be "an expanionist power" ... or always on the defensive, you could say.

Maybe the best way of dealing with Russia is to include it in Europe - on pure economic grounds, this is enough justification, best for Europe, but the EU would need to remove America....seems unlikely though tensions with Germany are mounting.

And this of course is what America fears the most, for a "Europe from the Urals to the Atlantic", as per de Gaulle, would wipe the floor with America.

* or at least Eastern Ukraine, Germany having "stayed behind" in West Ukraine from summer 1944 to the present.

** George Kennan is author of the Truman policy of containment of the Soviet Union, itself inheritor of czarist Russia's empire founded in 1721 (a policy now also being applied to China) and since 1991 The Russian Federation.

 The reasoning behind this policy - which I believe goes back to Halford MacKinder's famous lecture "The Geographical Pivot of History" and book, published in the same year that Kennan was born, 1904 - needs to be understood if any counter arguments are to be developed. 

Counter arguments, based on cooperation rather than conflict could be inspired by De Gaulle's phrase, " Europe from the Urals to the Atlantic", and consequent ways and means found, if we are to avoid another world war. Worth noting that Kennan himself argued for a co-operative stance in his later years.

Kennan argued that Russia is condemned to be an inherently expansionist regime. It is mostly flat open steppe, whose only natural defences (mountains, rivers, seas....) against multiple invasions by Western "imperialists", lie to its West, over Mackinder's fault line in other words.

Russia's influence must be "contained" as it is a threat to Europe which is, or was, America's most strategically important area of the planet.

So although towards the end of his life he repudiated his earlier writings, Kennan did play a major role in the development of the Cold War, the Marshall Plan for Europe and what today is called the European Union.

***Here is some reading on The Heartlands Theory.

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2019/01/halford-mackinder-father-geopolitics

https://youtu.be/MkrLUFAcjH0

(view from place 4'27")

The right-wing ideologue Aleksandr Dugin

https://youtu.be/TrafXfDL2CA

Peter Zeihan

https://youtu.be/rkuhWA9GdCo

Mackinder saw Russia as Britain's adversary (this was 1904...Br handed over to the States).

His famous sentence which has resonated down through the decades, to be picked up by Alexandr Dugin in the 80s (Dugin who lost his daughter to a car bomb from Kiev earlier  in 2022):

“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; 

Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; 

Who rules the World Island commands the World.

For a cooperative stance is perhaps best argued today by Jeffrey Sachs.

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TURBULENCE AND UNCERTAINIES : RISHI'S CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES

29 October 2022

Today, let us look at what Rishi, new PM UK, calls the “profound economic crisis” that he faces, the monsters he must slay - soaring debt, wild inflation and near-certain recession. Overlooked is our demographics.

Ramin is very good on this this week:

https://youtu.be/aeJRtKfzZhk

Rishi's already said that only Growth can save us. But he also was appointed to get back Stability.

The public and business need financial support. QE and the concentration of wealth has made beggars of three quarters (?) of the popn. Gov.ts have no choice but to stuff the wallets of the poor, in order to keep money circulating in the economy and to keep the beggars off the streets. Where's the money to come from? Growth? Printing? Tax rises? Service cuts? Hmm...

It's a really tough challenge. As Rishi knows, govt.s must govern or they're out - he is PM nbr 3 this year.

The goals are surely growth and stability. Gov.ts must deliver strategies that convince markets and animate policy-makers to go-for-growth and tackle sources of instability in the economy and on the streets.

The indicators of economic instability are inflation in energy food and mortgages/rents stuck at 10%, interest rates rising to 5%, GDP shrinking by 2% and unemployment expected to increase from 3.5 to 5.5% by 2024. These are the effects. 

For business, profits are in a pincer  between rising costs and taxes; and falling demand - only essentials and brands can advance their price points to deal with inflation. Unilever for example.

Those are the effects, but what re the causes (for our model!)? The causes are principally in the piles of ages-old debt built up since 1971 I'd say, and poor productivity I read compared with our competitors, more recently there's been  lingering covid-related supply chain issues, obviously America's fondness for wars and commercial bullying, and difficult to talk about is low-quality immigration.

But surely the first battle-front is the debt, as Rishi says, he "does not want to leave a legacy of debt for future generations to settle"... “because we were too weak to pay for it ourselves”. Reducing debt would reduce interest payments (though not rates) and help business and reassure markets. We should hear that in the Fiscal Statement due in a couple of weeks now. If we hear it, so should the BoE and markets. That's gonna be good for a stronger sterling and the FTSE 250.

Thing here, the challenge, is to shrink debt without strangling growth (growth needs investment and investment needs borrowing); or too much belt-tightening ("Austerity" is really out of fashion). 

So as to tax increases, I read, increase corporation tax and dividend tax, but forget the National Insurance rise, or forget it for basic-rate taxpayers at any rate.

And for spending cuts, we'd without doubt cut out the war and foreign aid, and reduce much social spending and personally I'd narrow the scope or the public for spending on the nation's health. 

Then there's the chop for subsidies to most NGO outfits and chop moral and ideological "re-education programs", unless Christian, national-socialist or traditional practises like square-dancing. Maybe workhouses for the poor, the elderly, the unemployed? 

Focus instead on the UK's physical and digital infrastructure; support building companies that have established programs in low-cost housing; skills training; state subsidies to create strengthen and channel UK poles of competence in eg aeronatics, finance, defence, electronics, AI, film, journalism, tourism, renewables, regional cuisine. 

What else would you have govt.s spend money on - x?, y?, z?... other things we daren't discuss?

What do you think would help and what are the UK's chances?

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NATO ENTERS UKRAINE

24 October 2022

In the event of Ukraine's failing, will America's 101st enter Odessa from Romania?

How would Russia respond to these NATO troops in Ukraine?

The picture is always changing and evolving. My original understanding was that Russia would be looking at the full line of intersection with East Europe and in particular at those nine weak spots and seeking to take those weak spots to ensure its future security.

However it does seem that its target area reduced to Ukraine  It started with Kiev, but is now focusing on the Russian-speaking Donbas. This is the ostensible reason for its intervention.

Now however, it looks like what it's really after is keeping the Black Sea, in which case it's going to need Odessa.

Russia is seeking to cut off the West's supply lines through Poland and is reinforcing its presence with several hundred thousand additional troops. It is massing on the Belarus border and I guess this is with the intention of blocking re-supply by the West.

If blocking off resupply and reinforcing its own forces succeeds, then it looks like Ukrainian forces are in for a real pounding. Zelensky would have the options of negotiation or defeat.

However ...and here I am coming to the question! At last, hurrah!!

It seems that America has sent its 101st airborne light infantry division into Romania, which is right next to Odessa. This suggests that before Kiev Falls, JIT, America will enter Ukraine at Odessa (not entering territory newly annexed into the Russian Federation) with the intention of running a buffer along the Dneiper up to Kiev and the Belarus border, separating  West from East Ukraine, while giving a rump Ukraine access to the sea.... and of course claiming victory (but never mind about "victory" or not for the moment).

So this is Plan B: NATO sending troops into Ukraine at Odessa. If Russia is unable to prevent this entry, and remains in place, NATO will be directly fighting Russia, in Ukraine.

How could this scenario be avoided?

How would Russia respond?

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EU-CHINA SUSPICION AND MISTRUST GROWS

23 October 2022

The EU, as with other trade blocks, is forever updaing its ways-and-means industrial strategy plan. This war as a trigger to that process, but also after the COVID-19 pandemic induced bottlenecks in supply chains that sped up the process of de-globalisation.

The European Commission, which runs the EU with von Leyen as chief, is always tuning its industrial strategy and its plans and programs for the supply to its membership of raw materials, batteries, pharma, hydrogen, semiconductors and cloud and edge technologies. The huge bureaucracies running trade blocks - in this case, the bureaucracy supporting "fortress EU" - exist for the purpose of managing ways-and-means to achieve the goals of the political leadership, and enormous amounts of time and people-resources go into this, of course.

So let's take a look at the current worry in the mainstream media around the EU's intention to reduce its dependency on China. First, is there anything new to this? Then, how does America control its empire? And finally, what does this decline mean for the rest of the world?

https://www.rt.com/news/565119-eu-china-technology-dependence/

This intention goes back a long way:

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/eu-unveils-plan-cut-dependency-china-others-2021-05-05/.

At least when there is a big bully in the school playground everyone is careful to keep in their place and there is a high level of order. But our very own global godzilla, America, is aging and weakening - why? And what are the consequences?

The seeds of self-destruction are in the mechanism controlling the rise and fall of empires, so well described by Ray Dalio. As the dollar strengthens, more and more countries store the profits from trade in the global currency of exchange ie America is awash with other peoples' money and living off this excess fat.

If America's abandonning the gold standard in 1971 wasn't enough of a warning of trouble to come, certainly the financial crisis of 2007-08 was. The other side of of this American, and Western, indebtedness to the countries at the other end of their supply chains - as producers of raw material and energy inputs, as partners in global manufacturing, and as consumers of Western high-end goods and technologies -  was the strengthening of these economies of the global South.

This is why the American trade set-up of global bodies (ie, rules) for global governance, established after the war, began to weaken and why economies have been de-integrating. 

I don't know if this is true or not, but it is the picture that I have of deglobalization. Just as trade and communication fosters dependency and a certain trust in mutual prosperity, so de-globalisation is fostering suspicion and protectionism.

As to the EU, whether you like it or not, and putting aside the ineptitude of EU sanction regime, though they are a top-down democracy, they do have a clear goal - a federal Europe - and through treaties between member states are slowly getting there, although at great cost and with huge and increasing risks to the plan.

What I hadn't realised until this war was quite the extent to which America controls Europe, how it does it, and the consequences of American global dominance, including America's fears of losing its grip. 

As bluntly described in earlier posts here, America's tools for controlling its empire are the dollar, trade and violence, soft and hard power if you prefer. The global South led by the BRICS, as fast as their economies mature and diversify, is pulling out of this arrangement and moreover producer nations are now throttling the global North by cutting back on supplies and raising prices, all in the name of redressing the balance of power in a world which is no longer unipolar.

Mutual suspicion is forcing the EU to modify its plan - it's got this clear mission of achieving a federal Europe; it has a clear vision of a fortress Europe protected from outside competition and inside supported by the free movement of goods & services, capital and people; it's got strategies for achieving that goal such as its ever-evolving Industrial Strategy.

The EU has always had plans, and it is pretty flexible, if undemocratic in a historic sense, as it evolves the moving parts of its mission. 

But also, it is subject to this constraint that America is the boss - many argue that today's EU is the descendant of a body created by America, as part of its post-war plan for "world domination"! 

As to the future, if deglobalisation means Europe reducing its dependency on China - Russia too evidently - then it ought to be at the same time thinking about reducing its dependency on America, so that a multi-polar world be an explicit goal of the EU (...on its way to World Domination).

FOR PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY!

FOR EUROPEAN INDEPENDENCE!!

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LEADERSHIP OF TORY PARTY

22 October 2022

It's true that the Conservative Party membership have a love affair with Boris, but I don't think it goes any further than that - not into the country and certainly not into the financial and investment districts.

If it's true that investors are calling the shots these days, then it looks like Rishi. Or if it is the Tory "men in grey suits", then surely re-electing Boris with all his pranks is a further help to Kier Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, already 30% ahead in the polls. Or the public: re-elect the person who led the UK out of the European Union and who strongly supported Ukraine and flew to Kiev to warn Zelensky against  negotiations in the war.

A process for lying to parliament is pending against Johnson and if convicted then as an MP he must resign, leading to the fifth UK prime minister since Brexit.

It was always a myth to think that politicians of yore were there to serve the national interest, even if "the national interest" could be defined. No, politicians have always been out for themselves... but what of Rishi?

Because there is reason to think that his political self, his page in history, may be more interested in serving the country; rather than his financial self whose pockets are already very well lined.

Whoever, it's the last throw of the dice for the Conservative Party.

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WHEN THE BOMBS COME RAINING DOWN

22 October 2022

When the bombs come raining down on Western heads, when Western economies collapse in ruins, only then will European leaderships, MSM and publics,wake up to realise the terrible blunder it has made in supporting America against our own main supplier of energy and raw materials.

When did Russia ever aggress Europe? On the contrary.

What a terrible mess the American neo-cons have made of everything. Long ago it was South America. Then the Middle East. Now it's Europe and Russia.

Our best national interests are served by linking cheap inputs to our industries from Russia, with our skills and technologies. Just think how powerful and prosperous would be such a New Europe.

...And America knows this. Which is why it is doing what it is doing. It is the old trick of create chaos and disaster and divide and rule.

===

"Most politicians are stooges of America’s Military Industrial Complex. The Ukraine war is a massive financial opportunity for defense establishments and they will ensure the conflict prolongs as long as possible."

That is true, but it goes deeper. It is geopolitics first, then economics.

Far as I can understand, this fear of Russia, it seems like you could trace it all the way back to The Great Schism.

If that seems to fanciful, at least look at Versailles and Yalta to see that Russia was cut out, but also that Russia came back. And again now, Russia is back after 1991.

Or if you want a smaller picture, take a look at those American promises in 1991 to keep its distance; look at America's 2008 promise to include Ukraine in NATO (this is real-world power politics...how do you imagine the Kremlin felt about NATO tanks rolling up its "near abroad"?)

Look at the Minsk Agreements of 2014/5, the American-orchestrated coup in 2014 in Maidan when the far-right and its corrupt oligarchs got into power in Kiev, the shelling of the East (the Russian speaking Donbas,  created by Catherine II and Potemkin (*) in the late 18C) by Kiev, subsequent Russian warnings and American funding, the annexation of Crimea (again! 1783, 1953, 2014), the intensification of Kiev shelling and eventually the Russian riposte on 24 February.

I regret to say this, because what is best for Europe is a reformed American Order, but the American elite are a pack of mad dogs - no negotiations or off-ramps, all bridges burning and Ukraine an abattoir in a suicidal war against Russia. Is this any way to behave? Or is it state-sponsored terrorism?

Consider: decades of Cuban sanctions for their revolution, the Contras in Nicaragua, death squads in El Salvador and  Guatemala; the horrors of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan; now it is the turn of Russia and soon it will be China. Do we want this? What will be left of mother Earth?

And the bombs keep falling.

* Potemkin founded Novorossiya - the towns of Kherson, Nikolayev, Sevastopol, new Odessa and Ekaterinoslav. Ports in the region became bases for his new Black Sea Fleet.

Potemkin was a remarkable figure, all the more so as he was probably bi-polar:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigory_Potemkin

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UKRAINE: SEA POWER v. LAND POWER and THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ECONOMIC CRISIS THIS HAS CREATED

19 October 2022

https://youtu.be/ss1M1fC7J3I

Easiest thing is to listen to the Americans' founding-father liberal espousals, then look at the neo-con actions of their elite.

What I conclude is that we are subjected to "the manufacture of consent"; but reality is, America is knobbling potential rivals, be they in Europe (Berlin and Moscow) or Beijing, in the usual bellicose strategies of a sea-power.

The Europeans are a pathetic lot. Their national interests align around the cooperative strategies of a land-power focused on peoples, technologies, resources and capital. Well enough to knock Washington out of the ring...and they know it.

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REGIME CHANGE IN THE UK

15 October 2022

I'm a bit more optimistic about the British economy in the light of recent events around debt issuance, interest rates and potential currency collapse.

REGIME CHANGE IN UK

As I was saying, it looks like  the British "deep state" is looking for "regime change" in the government. (You might call it, ie that part of govt that is permanent and responsible for continuity between elected govt.s and so long-term planning.)

- now the trouble with saying "the BoE seeks regime change" is obviously the scurillous language: " regime change" makes it sound very political, where in fact what the BoE are going for is in its mandate: price stability & full employment, which in practise in this case means reversing unfunded tax cuts ie forcing (an unelected - so easy target) government to balance the books

- Truss is unelected, has little support even in her own parliamentary party "outside Maidenhead", which is a dog's bottom of a place; and is regarded as mentally inadequate not on grounds of policy objectives but general inept incompetence and lack of contact with reality

RETURN TO SANITY?

So anyway, reason for being optimistic is that there should be a return to a sane long-term fiscal policy and with any luck discussion around this should take place as part of a 

GENERAL ELECTION?

And with a huge dollop of good luck, perhaps the public will have come to realise

END OF WAR?

 the stupidity and pointlessness and cost of this idiotic war, as part of a General Election campaign, and even the

AMERICAN OUSTER FROM EUROPE

 key role of America in creating this war (simply to weaken Europe and Russia).

Dream on!

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POST APOCALYPSE WHERE DO YOU WANT YOUR ASSETS?

11 October 2022

Looks like the American Order and the dollar world economy is breaking. Firstly since America came off the golden standard and began building a seemingly unlimited debt pile, currently 31 trillion USD. And secondly from the use of its reserve currency for political purposes in the form of sanctions. What does this suggest for preserving your wealth?

Reviewing the American Order since it was set up after the last war, it looks like things went okay until the 70s, when they had to drop the gold backing for their currency. Fact was, the Fed couldn't have honoured a run on the dollar, and anyway with 80% of world trade, specially in energy, in dollars, they didn't need gold anymore for investor confidence. So now America could borrow and print to their hearts' content and the capital markets and corporate credit were flush.

But the sheer chutzpah of what has happened since is breathtaking, because look: America has borrowed money from the rest of the world ever since Nixon's speech in 1971, and printed dollars to pay the interest and to buy all the things that they no longer bothered to manufacture. 

So that was a really good deal for the States. The rest of the world were happy too as they got mostly prosperity, especially when China was admitted shortly after, they got safe navigation on the high seas, open borders for

free trade and the FTAs behind.

This is globalisation, which is cheap commodities being shipped around and built up, in long supply chains, eventually turning up on Amazon as iPhones etc. (But at the same time de-industrialising America and creating a knowledge economy founded in high-tech, and the stock markets and associated financial derivatives, that left a few very rich and most in poverty and modern slavery.)

So everyone that mattered (sic) was doing really well, making money, and that money was stored safely in the world's reserve currency, in Fort Knox if you prefer ...where the gold used to be once upon a time haha.

So that was audacious move number one: use your naval power to dominate the shipping lanes and give everyone paper money, protection and services; in exchange for goods and real, hard, assets.

But then things started to hot up, what with the financial crises in 1997 and 2008, and there were rumblings in the empire ... and how did America respond?

By stirring up chaos and bombing anyone who objected to their world domination. As an aside, note that America is a sea power, perfectly safe at home with oceans West and East and Canada and Mexico as neighbours. Contrast with Russia, a land power with 1,500 kilometers of difficult-to-defend borders making up its western flank.

But here's chutzpah number two. They've started putting sanctions on the money they'd been printing and dishing out so freely and even confiscating the foreign reserves of other countries ... this is a real cheek! And now it's coming back and it's biting them in the bum with this proxy war in Ukraine.

So anyway, for those who can free their minds from this perpetual drizzle of propaganda, here's an otherwise accurate article describing the current planetary suffering:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/09/observer-view-global-escalation-russias-war-ukraine

Looking beyond that article, we can see very well that the current fiat currencies have a remaining lifespan of maybe 18 months to 2 years max, before they are burnt up in inflation and money printing, despite high interest rates and Fed pivots and public spending cuts. Everyone will be selling the Eurodollar and Americans' PPP will crash. Further attempts to sow chaos and divide-and-rule, both abroad and at home, will not work anymore - there'll be real military and civilian pushbacks, new alliances and currencies, bonds and equities will tank, the people in western democracies will defy their gov.ts' increasingly fascistic controls and revolt against highly contentious austerity programs.

How can the decline and collapse of the American Order be reversed? What needs to be done? Or maybe it is too late - the lead rooves on your houses will melt, there'll be rain thunder and hurricane, the fields will fill with locusts...but the rest of the day will be bright with sunny spells? Or maybe in the abscence of a capable rising power, we are entering a divided or multipolar world - what does this mean for peace, prosperity and our way of life?

So here's the thing: given these two failure points, of the financial system itself, and from sanctions and potentially WW3, if you were certain that the dollar and the euro and the pound would be wiped out by inflation and panic selling in the next couple of years, where would you want to have your assets? 

That's my question today.

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GOOD SUMMARY OF EFFECTS OF UKRAINE WAR

9 October 2023

This editorial from The Guardian is an excellent summary of the effects of the American-Russian war in Ukraine (strip out the pro-Western slant and focus on the content).

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Putin’s plague has put the entire postwar consensus on life support

Sun 9 Oct 2022 06.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/09/observer-view-global-escalation-russias-war-ukraine

Albert Camus’s 1947 novel La Peste (The Plague) is often described as an allegory for the struggle against fascism during the Second World War. But it may also be read in a more straightforward way, as the moving tale of how ordinary people deal, or fail to deal, with a sudden, lethal threat to their existence.

The story so far of the war in Ukraine satisfies both readings – although, sadly, the war is no fiction. Ukraine’s citizens were unexpectedly thrust into a life-or-death struggle with a brutal foe bent on their extinction as a nation. Recent battlefield successes reflect the admirable way they have met that challenge, at terrible human cost.

Yet the murderous onslaught unleashed by Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, can also be viewed as a new, modern-day form of fascism that seeks to impose its totalitarian will at home and abroad – the antithesis of democracy. Like the Covid-19 pandemic, it is a pestilence whose spread threatens the entire world. Ukraine is not its only victim.

When Putin attacked in February, he dubbed his invasion a limited “special military operation”. But the repulse of that initial assault and subsequent Russian failures now fuel escalation upon global escalation. Putin, typically, is doubling down. And the disease he embodies inexorably spreads.

A conflict on the edge of Europe has gone on to shatter the authority of the UN, undermine the climate change fight, inflate global food prices, create a huge refugee emergency, bolster Europe’s and America’s far right, spark cultural and sports boycotts and harm international cooperation as far away as outer space.

The decision by Opec plus Russia to cut global oil production could greatly exacerbate Europe’s problems this winter

President Joe Biden’s warning last week that the world is close to nuclear Armageddon is, perhaps, the most shocking illustration of this escalation. Putin’s repeated threats to use a nuclear weapon reflect his criminal recklessness and growing desperation.

It still seems unlikely that, detached from reality although he appears, he wants to deliberately provoke a suicidal nuclear confrontation with the US and Nato. Biden may be loudly raising such fears in order to deter him. But such rationalisations offer scant consolation in a profoundly irrational situation.

Shockwaves from Putin’s war are rocking global energy supplies and markets in previously unimagined ways. Last week’s decision by Opec plus Russia to cut global oil production could greatly exacerbate Europe’s problems this winter, causing serious hardship. Yet EU attempts to cap gas and oil prices are bedevilled by national differences.

The geopolitical impact of Opec’s decision may be more momentous still. At political cost to himself, Biden had personally appealed to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf exporters to boost output. Now, the US angrily accuses Opec of backing Russia’s war. Most of its members are supposedly western allies. Have they switched sides?

If that is the case, it would exacerbate another troubling symptom of Putin plague: the separating out of leading countries into two opposing camps. In one corner, China and India, which continue to buy Russian oil and refuse to impose sanctions, plus likeminded authoritarian regimes such as Iran. In the other corner, the US, UK, other members of the G7 and the EU.

In this developing confrontation, much more is at stake than Ukraine’s sovereignty. On life support, it seems, is the entire postwar consensus underpinning global security, nuclear non-proliferation, free trade and international law.

The US accuses Opec of backing Russia. Most of its members are supposedly western allies. Have they switched sides?

The war’s spreading economic impact sickens the world. As global recession beckons, stock exchanges turn bearish, inflation and debt levels rise, Ukraine’s grain exports are threatened by a resumed Black Sea blockade and climate targets are jettisoned wholesale amid a panicky stampede back to fossil fuels, typified by the UK.

For Kyiv, Putin’s war machine is not the only problem. It is running out of money. The US has pledged $1.5bn a month in non-military aid. But the IMF calculates that Ukraine needs $5bn a month just to keep its economy going. Washington and Kyiv accuse the EU of failing to do its bit. Of €9bn promised by Brussels in May, only €1bn has been paid out.

Disagreements over sanctions and military supplies to Ukraine also strain internal EU relations and transatlantic ties. Once again the US is in the lead, providing $16.8bn in security assistance so far. In contrast, France and Germany are accused of holding back vital weaponry. Pro-Russia Hungary, meanwhile, actively sabotages EU unity.

All this has cast a shadow over French president Emmanuel Macron’s vision of a self-sufficient, “strategically autonomous” Europe. Nato has been strengthened. US leadership appears indispensable once more. And, in a small way, Britain is back, hence Liz Truss’s warm welcome at last week’s inaugural European Political Community summit.

Just as the pandemic affected everyone, so the war’s fallout poisons all it touches. Nowhere, ironically, more than in Russia itself, where shaming military failures, alleged war crimes, a discredited Kremlin narrative and chaotic mobilisation plans have damaged Putin’s standing, split the ruling elite and dismayed ordinary Russians. The Kerch bridge fire in Crimea is but the latest humiliation.

If the Putin plague is ever to be eradicated, if the war is ever to end, such developments inside Russia, presaging a change of leadership, full military withdrawal from Ukraine and a fresh start, represent the best hope of a cure.

Where will it all end? The conflict in Ukraine appears further than ever from resolution. Nuclear threats, mass graves, the sense that both sides are “all in”.

[End of Guardian editorial of 9 October 2023]

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