WHY ISRAEL MEDDLES IN UKRAINE (RUSSIA)

23 November 2022

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/israel-gives-russia-ultimatum-over-iranian-arms-supplies---r

Israel. A very small country in the Middle East. But it seems desperate to get involved in Ukraine, which is very far away. Telling Russia what to do. Why has Israel such a global reach? Why does it seek to meddle in so many countries?

Israel is a Western power yet bows to Russia? Why?

In this post, let us consider only relations between Israel and Russia.

a) RUSSIAN INFLUENCE IN SYRIA AND TURKEY.

Israel has pbs with Syria, its neighbour, having stolen Syrian land, 

 Russia is the dominant force in Syria,   where Israel has pbs, and Israel has pb.s with Turkey and Erdowan and again Russia has influence over Turkey. 

b) KURDS IN SYRIA ARE A PB FOR TURKEY.

N Syria is Kurds, hated by Erdowan, supposedly Kurds are allies of (treacherous) America....should Israel support them as they are enemies of Syria, like Israel, but also enemies of Turkey.

c) SYRIA IRAN SHIA CRESCENT.

Syria is Shia Muslim, which is Iran. Iran is sending weapons to Syrian/Lebanese Hezbollah who want their land back. If Israel wants to go bomb Hezbollah in Syria, Israel needs Russian agreement.

It's also a problem for Russia because Iran supplies it with drones, will be joining the BRICS and has an oil deal with Russia; while Israel supplies Ukraine with intelligence on the drones (which are more likely made in Russia rather than bought from Iran).

d) ISRAEL'S STRATEGY.

Russia is on Ukraine's doorstep, Russia is also effectively, via Syria, on Israel's doorstep : Russia-in-Syria - Israel doesn't want to poke Russia-in-Syria in the eye, like Ukraine did, but equally it does not want Russia feeding its enemy Iran with business and political.

e) ISRAEL IS A RUSSOPHILE. OK the above. But consider: there are many Jews with Russian passports and there's a lot of business going on between Israel and Russia. 

Israeli Jews can travel freely to Russia, no visa needed.

Remember czarist and soviet russia didnt like Jews, the pogroms, the Elders of Zion was a Russian scam from ? 1920s, but Putin likes Jews so they (Israel) likes Putin and Russia...

CONCLUSION

Although Israel is a staunch Westerner and even Israel is the 51st state, Israel for security, business and personal reasons is friends wirh Putin and Russia..

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ORIGINS OF THE UKRAINE WAR

21 November 2022

A few ideas - three - for understanding what's going on in Ukraine. 

One is, it would be quite useful to look up Mackinder's Heartland as the timeless backdrop:

Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland

Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island

Who rules the World Island commands the world.

Two, is to realise that this is actually America wanting to stamp on any potential rival as it has always done since the last war ...in this case the rival is Russia, but Germany is a big rival as well and can you imagine some sort of an alliance between Germany (and Europe) and Russia and the exchange of capital and technology, for commodities and Manpower? This would certainly be enough to flatten America and China. America setup a fantastic system where basically it guarantees the trade routes and and open borders and all the rest, but instead of using co-operative means, it chooses conflict every time.

Third angle, would be to look at the history of this conflict which you can take back as far as you want to the great schism if you like but really it's enough to go back to 1991 and the promises made by America to Russia saying that they would keep Russia's new near abroad neutral but of course they didn't and all these countries were admitted into NATO and the EU, so Russia's security at its border was thretened ... bear in mind that Russia has been invaded over 50 times in its history through one of the 9 gateways along that Geographic pivot).

The next step would be 2004-8 and then with the Maidan coup in 2014, the civil war now started in ernest, Kiev outlawing the Russian language and launching missiles that over the next eight years killed 14,000 people in the east.

Then take a look at the Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015 and ask why Kiev sign them but did not implement them ; and indeed why Germany and France who arranged this did nothing to see its implementation.

Late 2021, Kiev's missile attacks intensified and beginning of February 22 there was a rain of missiles and by this time Russia had built up sufficient troops on the border to go in and protect its Russian speakers to the east and that was the start of the war

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CHIANG MAI LUANG PRABANG

BOAT

1.  Mekong river the first job is to get to the river... you would catch a minivan from Chiang Mai it takes about 6 hours or you would alternatively get a van to Chiang Rai.

 Stay overnight there and then by Green bus which takes two to three hours and the hotel where you are staying - they're all the same - will fix you up for a van ride to Chiang Khong, which takes 2 hours.

2. So you leave Chiangrai at 6 in the morning and the van will drop you off at the boat 2 hours later, where you meet everyone else... there are about 70 people travelling on the boat.

3. The first day on the boat takes about seven hours and takes you to a place called Pat Bang. You arrive about three to four pm and all the guest house people will be there to meet you.

4. Spend the night at the guest house.

5. Next morning back on the boat for 7 to 8 hours and you arrive at Luang Prabang.

FLIGHT

The alternative is to take a flight from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang on Laos Airlines. It costs 110 US dollars each way and takes about 1 hour 10 minutes, they provide you with a roll in The Hostess Arms and a coffee.

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ECKHART TOLLE

15 November 2022

https://youtu.be/Ko_peK-7I5A

"Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge."

"Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have."

"Life is an adventure, it's not a package tour"

~Eckhart Tolle

MAIN POINTS

Maybe you know Eckhart Tolle? Certainly you know Russel Brant.

Eckhart is a bit of a messiah- or prophet-type distant figure, can seem patronising as he orders you into his idea of space and time, not an everyday person and you will rarely see him with other people or everyday objects, he sees himself as an Olympian.

 I take seriously, sample this video, many find him a "life-changing" or intellectually moving figure.

His special insights are that: 

a) Intelligence can be very stupid, education does not necessarily make us wise. Knowledge is transformed to wisdom when you are in contact with the great unitary force and aware of the permanent reality of existence

b) Ego is the root cause of the world's problems as it blinds awareness - the malevolent force is within

c) while he advocates cosmic awareness, he also advises us to live in the present and go with the flow.

Tolle is very highly respected by many seeking a more spiritual understanding of the meaning of life.

SUMMARY

The correct attitude is to see the big picture and to be emotionally detached.
not become emotional
not think that all evil is planned
not worry if people say you believe in conspiracies
see the big picture which includes secondary effects.

Intelligence without Wisdom can be foolish and dangerous
there is a deeper stupidity than a low IQ
highly intelligent and educated people can be really stupid because they lack awareness,
because their ego stops them from seeing the greater life force
it is their ego which stops their awareness of deeper purposes
it is ego rather than some evil malevolence
wisdom and awareness: not evil, only ego

"Forgive them, father, because these people do not understand what they are doing"

We need
individual awakening
connect to the unitary force
connect to permanent reality, this is your foundation
not change your position because of temporary changes in circumstances

We are now experiencing a period of great turmoil and collective madness
it has happened before

Stay connected
don't criticize crazy people, our crazy leaders, because if you criticise, you will lose connection to them, they won't listen to you
don't deny their "facts"
...you don't have to agree with what they say either
just listen and ask questions
don't demonise those you disagree with
keep a connection to these crazy people to keep your influence
"If you gaze into the abyss long enough, the abyss gazes back into you", Nietzsche
don't listen too much as you might become a monster yourself!

Wisdom will save us
wisdom is the one thing that will save us
"the great reset" will happen, but not as they imagine

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CLIMATE CHANGE

14 November 2022

The West wants The Global South to join it in a forward-looking project to decarbonise the world. So why does it try to offshore its own energy production? The rules let you offset by eg buying up farmland. This is more plea-bargaining.

DEFINITIONS

"The West", "The Global South" > philosophically, this is the spread of European ideas on freedom and democracy to The US, Australia and after WW2 Japan, S Korea and Taiwan. Economically, which is what matters here, this is splitting the world into developed, developing and emerging markets.

Forward-looking > means "overlooking", overlooking the historic origins of much greenhouse gases in Western economies. Should they pay for historic damage? Is it even possible to work out a tab for each nation showing historic contribution to a world "carbon balance sheet"?

So a responsible set of globally-acceptable policies would include polluter-pays, border taxes and country-credits, to catch historic wrongs, dumping and circumnavigations.

The whole project looks like cakeism: how can you expect to maintain living standards while re-setting, it's impossible. 

"Offshore" ie stop extracting fossil fuels at home, instead buy in from nations whose economies rely on commodities.

"Offsetting" is buying indulgences. A good example is Bill Gates who owns the most farmland in the United States. He can use this to offset his carbon bill in his technology-based companies.

"Plea-bargaining" are negotiations to get to a win-win that takes account of each nation's special needs and wants, while ignoring those of the planet.

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ARE THE UKRAINIANS BEATING THE RUSSIANS?

12 November 2022

Sell out of a losing position, crystallse lossses, is a hard thing  Difficult to bring oneself to accept defeat, always hoping that the story one believed in at the start will pass through this period of turbulence and confusion and turn out to be true.

It must be like that with Zelensky. If we are to believe post-Kherson propaganda, the Russians are re-arranging their pieces in preparation for a long war, with no negotiations expected, which is just as America planned it from the start.

Except short of a third world war, Russia will grind down everything opposing her in the east, in her New Russia, which includes Odessa and might even stretch up Transnistria, who knows?

Zelensky's got the choice to hold or fold - to accept the loss of a hundred thousand men from his army, from his people, to save 80% of his country and maybe keep an access to the Black Sea. Or if he goes on fighting, he'll lose more territory, lose his economy, lose the support of his people and eventually The West. Maybe his country will turn out to be landlocked.

That's assuming that Western supplies do not prevail over the extra quarter of a million men and machines arriving from Russia. I'd imagine the American and NATO troops massing on the border are waiting till the Russian army in Ukraine is destroyed, before entering and cleaning up.

So I'd imagine that the retreat from Kherson, which began with evacuation of the Russian civilians in that city, is not as important as Western propaganda would have us believe.

I can sympathise with Zelenski having to accept that his share in Russian Eastern Ukraine won't get any better; and so he should sell, ie negotiate and go and be happy to have saved something of his country.

Wishful thinking perhaps.

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WILL PUTIN ATTEND THE G20 IN BALI?

7 November 2022

Now here is a puzzle for us and maybe a bigger puzzle for me only because I am closer...

I m very curious about G22 next week. Zelensky has refused to attend if Putin is there. Other leaders have said that Putin's hands are covered in blood and our MSM tell us that no-one wants to be at the same table as him.

I think Putin will not come to Bali.

Actually I am very curious. Bali is closer, I am not like you as that war is far away...well, further from my reality.

Concerned but less tense than Europeans, Europeans are waiting for the bombs to fall.

So, tell me, will Zelensky and Putin meet in Bali? Or will Putin want to avoid what could be a public relations disaster?

That is the question... what do you reckon?

Here is one answer:

🤣🤣🤣 Reckon Putin won't attend. The Western leaders will use the conference to try and humiliate him. Loads of PR opportunities for those leaders to show how virtuous they are. Even inviting Zelinsky tells you all you need to know about the agenda.

FOLLOW UP

WILL RUSSIA BE LISTENED TO AT THE BALI G20?
AND IS SO, BY WHOM?

So 15 of the countries invited to attend the G20 at Bali, 15 out of the 20, won't attend Iif Putin does because - so they say - Putin has blood on his hands. That's remarkable. Even more remarkable is there all diplomat's and politicians and so people who believe in the value of listening and negotiating.

But we also know that these are the 15 followers of America out of the 20 - and we also know that 135 out of 195 countries who were asked to vote at the UN either  abstained or voted in favour of Putin.

So it looks like it may not be a vote simply about this war, but more an ideological vote of the Developed North vs the Underdeveloping Global South.

Very worth noting that the Indonesian Prime Minister who is hosting this is keen that Putin should attend and his country is a member of the global South

What I think is important to say is that the north, its ideology is Liberalism. This is important as the North appears very  hypocritical.

LIBERALISM

What is liberalism?

Liberalism is about freedom of expression, open borders, market economies, the rule of law, international law.

And importantly here, Liberalism is about tolerance of the other. In its original form, Liberalism only required the state, the state to be there as Judge, to intervene in cases of a dispute between two parties who couldn't resolve a matter on their own - in other words, Liberalism meant tolerance and respect for the freedom of others.

The idea of liberalism is that every man and every woman should be free - free to have their own beliefs, religion, orientation... and that colour and other charscteristics should make no difference.

And that these Human Rigjts are Universal, the same the world over, which unfortunately means these blimming Americans go around trying to impose their universal human rights on everyone and bombing them flat if they don't accept!

Point being that the very same people who believe in universal human rights are also the people who now discriminate against anyone with a Russian passport and "cancel" anyone who doesn't agree with them.

So for reasons of hypocrisy no Putin will not be listened to and that's because he won't be there to talk, excluded, "cancelled" by an ideological unthinking woke culture

WHAT IS "WOKE"

Here some quotes and then my opinion....

The word woke became entwined with the Black Lives Matter movement; instead of just being a word that signaled awareness of injustice or racial tension, it became a word of action," according to Merriam-Webster. "Activists were woke and called on others to stay woke."

But the meaning of woke evolved again with the rise of "cancel culture" -- as the two terms saw increased use, they became intertwined in the public consciousness. Often, someone gets canceled after they say something insensitive – something not woke.

So in addition to meaning aware and progressive, many people now interpret woke to be a way to describe people who would rather silence their critics than listen to them.

And the activism side, which means shutting up your critics, goes into all areas of social policy like education and health, even story books for children, and is also adopted by all the personnel departments in large private companies.

So now "Woke"no longer so much a racial term, as an ideological term. 

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EUROPE, THE WEST AND EURASIA

6 November 2022

One thing I like to start with is clarity over definitions.

So it is really important to understand the importance of balance of power geopolitics and to distinguish between Europe, the West and Eurasia.

EUROPE, THE WEST AND EURASIA

EUROPE, of which the EU is but a part, includes 80% of the Russian population. It is in De Gaulle's words "Europe from the Urals to the Atlantic". But Europe is divided east and west by a line joining the Adriatic to the Baltic, a line that is also a zone of struggle between the Teutonics (Germany) and the Slavs (Russia), or in mackinder's speak between the powers of the sea and the powers of the land, or in mythological terms between the sky and the earth, with no established balance of power.

THE WEST is that group of countries in Europe, Great Britain France and Germany, that defined certain concepts around democracy, liberalism, individual freedom, the rule of law and a functioning state, capitalism and these days a market mixed economy ; and spread these ideas to America and Australia ; and after the last war to Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan (China's eastern seaboard).

EURASIA is from the Bering Straits across thousands of miles of Russian steppe, over the Carpathians Mackinder's East-West fault line, possibly taking in the Caucuses and the Baltics, then on down across the plains of Europe.

I might have got this wrong, between heart- and rim-land, but if you think that geography is the number one determinant then this is quite a useful view from which to start thinking about International Relations.

THE WORLD ISLAND THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

We have considered this theory by Halford Mackinder from 1904 in an earlier post. Very important as it was the basis of the thinking of Spykman, George Kennan and handed to Harry Truman became the basis of the theory and practise for containing Russia i.e. the naval power of the US containing the land power of Russia. 

The US seems to work to four action imperatives.

1. Dominate the seas for open trade and you dominate the world.

2. Break the domino chain, by which the fall of a non-communist state to communism would precipitate the fall of non-communist governments in neighbouring states.

3. Divide and conquer, from chaos theory and the power of nationalism.

4. Create international institutions to set the rules for a heavily militarised America to run its dollar empire.

The world Island theory and the domino theory for South America, implemented through a strategy of divide and rule by creating chaos (war, invasion, colour revolutions) to break up large power blocks into many smaller, weaker, pieces that you can then set against each other, is how America dominates an area, and the world. 

It explains capitalist American Russophobia.

It explains how the capitalist West (America and NATO) has contained Russia and the global South or BRICS, or what we used to call the Communist world. And why NATO must be expanded to Asia.

Worth noting that maybe the peoples of The West, through their elite's propaganda machine, feel a hatred of Russia and all Russian people, but the elite, the American military-industrial-government power elite, is guided by this cold logic of power and money and this strategy of conflict rather than co-operation.

Also it is somewhat bewildering to see Europe on the end of America's skewer with no idea what to do. Germany in particular is staring at its forthcoming deindustrialisation and impoverishment.

MACKINDER WAS NOT THE FIRST

Mackinder argues that the heartland with all its resources would eventually come to dominate the rimland and thus the world (unless something is done to contain the heartland):

“Whoever rules East Europe, will rule the  Heartland,

Whoever rules the Heartland, will rule the World Island.

Whoever rules the World Island, will rule the world.”

His theory is much criticised today, with the railways, manned flight, the re-emergence of China and its new silk road. The fundamental idea that the heartland with all its resources should eventually win the planet, but note that the expected outcome - a win for the land power, was not always thus.

Geopolitics is essentially about finding a balance-of-power in the never-ending struggle sea power v. land power. This statement by Sir Walter Raleigh must have been the template for Mackinder's.

"For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; 

whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world

and whosoever commands the riches of the world, commands the world itself."

SIR WALTER RALEIGH, 

“A Discourse of the Invention of Ships, Anchors, Compass, &c.,” 

The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh, vol. 8, p. 325.

Raleigh tells us how globalisation, or the establishment of safe maritime trade routes, will continue to suppory the United States as the world hegemon.... unless China can break out of its containment within the first island ring of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (Hong Kong is gone).

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EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT BRITAIN'S LDI CRISIS

5 November 2022

https://www.ft.com/content/f4a728a5-0179-48bd-b292-f48e30f8603c

Far as I can ever work out, that film "Margin Call" didn't really tell the whole story of the Sub Prime crisis. The scam was bigger than portrayed in the film. To understand it it is necessary to understand how the bond markets work and how they are the absolute core of the entire financial system - any problems in bond markets and the financial system teeters on the brink of collapse. That's exactly what happened with the subprime, Lehman went bankrupt and if the Fed hadnt bailed out the banking system, the whole economy, the whole world economy, would have collapsed. 

And that's what happened again with the LDI crisis in the UK.

So today let's take a look at both of those events : one back in 2008, the subprime crisis that provoked the Great Financial Crisis; and the other UK PM Truss' mini-budget crisis in September 2022.

SUB PRIME CRISIS

Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac were setup many decades ago in America to help Americans acquire their own homes. Private sector mortgage companies were issuing mortgages and then Freddie May would come along and buy these mortgages and would take on the responsibility for collecting the interest and capital repayments. The private sector companies with the profit they made from these were supposed to issue more mortgages. So far, so good.

But then the trouble started, as I recall, under President Clinton, who wanted to get the support of the poor by making mortgages easier to obtain. Thus, Freddie and Fannie were encouraged to encourage - with government underwriting, private sector lenders - to lend to people who would never have had sufficient credit score to borrow on their own honest record. These were sub prime risk people.

Then Freddy and Fanny were wrapping these mortgages up into a kind of fund and selling parts (shares) in the funds to mainly European banks, who sold them on to their customers. 

Maybe I'm not getting things quite right, but as I understood things, the next step was that these funds - mortgage backed securities, MBS - which were just a big bag of individual mortgages, were then sorted and grouped into tranches, tranche A, tranche B and so on, according to perceived lender risk on each mortgage; and an insurance against default was slapped on top. These very sophisticated assets are called collateralised debt obligations, CDOs, and the banks could buy shares of different risk tranches at different prices, and use these assets - now marked to market - as collateral for various leveraged operations of their own (hence the name of the film, as lenders require a certain loan-to-value, LtV, percentage and if the value of the asset drops, then the borrower is called upon to to restore, or top up, his collateral margin to the required LtV level) on behalf of their clients.

This was not so good, because it turns out that the risks were assessed using a completely felonius method and furthermore the insurance slapped on top turned out to be worthless as well. All because these funds had been calibrated according to assessed risk, but now the risk exceeded the min-max expectation as the mortgagees were not the people described in the application forms. "Liar loans", they called it.

The film Margin Call tells the story of how an imaginary bank (not dissimilar to Lehman) collected these mortgage-backed securities into the CDOs, which it then sold on to its clients. Important to note at this point that the repackaging process took some time, possibly a month according to the film, during which processing time the bank held these assets and could become victim of a markdown because high delinquency levels, and subsequent margin call. What if it didn't have the money to top-up its collateral?

The problem was that the time it took them to parcel up and sell on, which ie was the time they were holding these assets, and it turned out that the scam of accepting these "liar loans" in the subprime market was being discovered and once "outed", could devalue by at least a quarter and possibly a half, the value of these bank assets. If so, this would leave the bank bankrupt as it's borrowing, its liabilities, would then far exceed its assets.

Well, the bottom did fall out of the mortgage market when it was realised that large percentages of these mortgages were money lent to hopeless cases.

But how the guys in the imaginary bank in the film managed to shift all that CDO in the space of 24 hours is totally amazing and that's what the film is all about. Lehman didn't manage it and Lehman quite rightly went under. This film rewrites the story and the bank shifts all its "shity assets CDOs".

That is the extent of my (possible mis)understanding, I might have got things a little mixed up, feel free to correct me in the comments, I don't know, but Lehman went bankrupt, collapsed and triggered the most awful financial crisis whose unresolved consequences we live with today.

MINI BUDGET CRISIS

And so this film Margin Call, made in 2011, is particularly relevant today, because on September 23 the UK experienced a crisis in its bond market, triggered not by subprime lending but by Liability Driven Investment strategies (LDI).

Again, as I understand it, what this crisis was about was the defined pension benefit guarantees, DB Schemes. In the low interest rate climate resulting from the subprime crisis, the pension companies found themselves unable to match their future fixed liabilities, year on year, to their pensioners. 

The expected result from high delinquency in the massive mortgage market was frozen interbank lending, bailout by Paul Volcker, consequent QE money printing to lower interest rates and raise asset values (for those with assets), that would ultimately materialise into high inflation as demand chases supply into inflation, and possibly despite raised interest rates, a currency collapse and recession ...we await that.

The pension companies' liabilities to pensioners can easily be calculated, year on year, that is not the problem. It is matching those liabilities to the pension companies income streams in a low interest rate environment that is the problem. Traditionally, the company would assure its liabilities from interest payments on government bonds, known in the UK as gilts (the paper certificates once had a gilt border to insist that this was a rock solid, risk-free loan to the UK government).

 Guarateed pensions maybe, but in the low interest rates we've had for many years, pension companies couldn't match to their liabilities and they turned to riskier assets, like shares or non-govt bonds, and derivatives; and for reasons of security, ironically, they leveraged trades and as leverage means borrowing, they hedged against big moves in interest rates using swaps and options.

A leveraged trade is a trade made with money that you have borrowed against your assets. Now here's the thing ...

Truss announced unfunded tax cuts of 45b GBP that put the willies up the bond markets. The bond market "vigilantes" (so-called because they are vigilant as to the rates of return on the money they lend) don't have to accept BOE interest rates, they can hold the Bank of England to ransom by refusing to lend at rates rates they consider are not commensurate with the risk of weakening the currency in which they will be repaid. 

Lenders were not prepared to lend money any longer at those old rates, given the impending disaster to the economy from these unfunded cuts, on inflation and the value of the currency.

Ie, lenders pushed up rates at which they were prepared to lend, and therefore pushed down the value of bonds themselves. 

But these bond assets were the collateral that the pension funds were using to support their leveraged deals and when the value of the assets went down the insurers, such as Legal & General, were not prepared to underwrite at that level of risk. They demanded that the pension funds top up the value of their collateral, i.e. restore the margin of of loan to value, which obliged pension schemes to sell their bonds to raise cash and that, reducing demand, in a particularly vicious circle, pushed down bond prices and thus upped gilt yields still more.

So that in the space of just three days, the 30-year gilt put on 1.4%, which is quite extraordinary.

Interest rates determine the absolute amount the government must pay to service its debt, so more interest to pay means more borrowing, but also business lives off debt for investment purposes (let's say) and their rollover rates would have increased quite dramatically, pushing the UK economy even faster into recession.

So in what is seen by many as a coup to remove the PM and her Chancellor for pursuing policies unacceptable to the markets and ruling elite, the governor of the Bank of England was forced to buy up the mortgages of these pension funds in order that they could meet their margin calls.

The PM and her chancellor were sacked and replacements brought in returned government policy to austerity and markets to calm.

[END]

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HOW MUSK COULD REGULATE TWITTER

4 November 2022

https://youtu.be/SHpusaIBQyI

Russel Brand and Jordan Peterson, both themselves pretty inflammatory personages, discuss anger and love and freedom in the online Town Square, and how Elon Musk might constrain these online "demons spewing toxic waste into the landscape", now that he is running Twitter. 

The problem is that online, there aren't the normal social controls that would mean if you said that kind of stuff down the pub you'd just get punched.

Instead, online, the "demonic force" gets millions of "likes", stirring up hatred; where what the world needs now is love, sweet love ... and some of Russel's "comedic criticism". (We should ask ourselves, "what would Christ do?", otherwise what is the point of Christianity?)

Social media needs a regulation that sets the right tone between acceptance and control, from a freedom-loving kind and compassionate starting point, and that comes from paying attention to the real needs of the audience.

What these two observe is that users split into two ossified camps: those who are real verified human beings; and then there are the anonymous demons - what's needed is some "cartilage" between them and this should be recognised in the platform interface. Isn't this what Musk is going to do anyway, I ask, with his Blue Tick at $8 a month? 

Real people can visit the Demons' hell, but at least if this split can be embodied in the online interface, JoJo is warned before crossing the Styx that it may not be easy to get back, get back to where they once belonged.... especially if they've been to the Tavistock on the way.

Because Jordan, who is banned from Twitter, observes that there's a link between an adolescent girl's emotional disposition and her body image, and this can be the cause of great confusion in the girl's mind...as well as get you banned if you talk about it. What makes Jordan angry is that the Tavistock didn't understand this, with the result that thousands of young people's lives have been permanently damaged. Thankfully, that awful clinic is now shut, with 5% of its customers suing the doctors for medical malpractise.

It's not just girls that suffer from this intense confusion (me speaking now), but boys too, awash with testosterone this time, boys are also in a process of self-discovery. By the mid-20s, most girls and boys return to something like what their parents wanted for them, updated for today, so it is very very wrong to wield the knife or blocker drugs in this period of natural, if disturbing, transition.

More love and understanding, less anger and control from our leadership, that's what's needed.

====

Talking about social media

Oh my God… it is 2 side of knives right? It can be bad. It can be good. You use it for good cause? It is an effective tools. You use it for manipulation? It is an effective tools too.

Regulations? I have no idea. Can you regulate this freedom world?

Slander, defamation, lot and lot here…

Smartphone in the hand of not smart person ….

They don’t know is it right news or defamation…. They just swallow what their favourite person and their favourite public figure say.

Whatever they say…

It become “guidance”….

way of life

I don’t know

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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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