China Launches Attack on "US Hegemony", Nigeria's Failing Cashless Economy, The "National Divorce Delusion", Greek or Macedonian?, Robert Johnson and the Devil
Feb 25, 2023·edited Feb 25, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Hungary spearheaded contactless payment (in the early 2010s, you could amaze foreign tourists by using it), and overall, despite the privacy concerns, digital payment is better for any country that is middle-trust like Hungary or lower. It erases the black economy.
It's either this, or we go the way of Greece.
I personally only have a single coin in cash, to use it with the shopping carts.
I understand the libertarian appeal of cash, but in this part of the world (and most of the world) the less anarcho-capitalist society is, the better.
Love Hungary though have not seen much outside Budapest. Nephew lived there for 9 years. Very self-aware as a nation of their unique Magyarness, unique in Europe. Horrible to see the disgusting Samantha Power appearing there to "help democracy" I e. to organise a coup. Orban embarrasses many European leaders in his failure to become a US bitch.
She is doubly repulsive as 'wearing the green jersey' posing as a sort of neutral Irish person, but is an able successor to Victoria 'Fuck the EU' Nuland and Madelaine 'We think 500,000 Iraqi children dead due to danctions is worth it' Albright.
Not to worry, our national lickarses are doing thei best to sabotage our longstanding policy of military neutrality to get a pat on the head from Brussels and DC, just as they sold out the country every opportunity they have had over 30 years. Sugar beet quota to Germany - yessir. Bail out unsecured bond holders to prevent bank contagion spreading in Europe - yes boss (47% of public debt assumed to contain 2008 Euro collapse was paid by Ireland, to our usual friends - BNP, Landsbanks, Goldman etc). Fisheries policy? We'll 'give' you a miniscule quota and the rest of the annual 2 bn harvest to your 'EU partners' - yessir. Etc ad nauseum. There is an old irish expression 'sleveens', slave minded creeping Jesus types. They run the show now. Worse to any state is not the bad man but the weak man.
PS An irish comic actor used to say that I'm saying nothing bad about the deceased, but he is going where he will light his pipe with his finger - hope that Albright enjoys lightingher cig with her finger. Evil knows no sex boundaries.
Greek and Macedonian friends, please do not scream at me. My comments aren't meant to be an attempt at a rigid analysis. I'm just introducing the thorny subject to casuals and novices.
Thank you for your comments. When I lived in Yugoslavia, I asked my mother why we needed a visa for Greece, and not for any other European country. She told me that the Greek government did not want Yugoslav Macedonians to freely go to Greece and hang out Greek Macedonians--to prevent them from planning irredentism. I have met Greeks who do not know that Slavic speaking people exist in Greece.
There are many taboos regarding ethnicity in the Balkans. For example, I did not hear in school anything about mediaeval Bulgaria, but Bulgarians tell me they learn in school that Bulgaria used to consist of present Northen Macedonia and most of Serbia. This is an excellent substack. I always liked it but almost did not subscribe because of its unappalling name.
My friend used to be married to a Basque woman whose family members in Franco's Spain were told by police to "speak Christian." Reference to the Basque language being ancient Indo-European and HEATHEN
Feb 25, 2023·edited Feb 25, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
How concerned are you that the conflict will expand beyond Ukraine (and maybe later Taiwan) into a full blown WWIII?
Also, I don't think the main concern with CBDCs is privacy, although that is a concern. It is that they give governments way too much power. Participate in an untoward protest against government? Good luck accessing any of your money (i.e. paying your bills and eating)! While I think crypto was way oversold and in most cases a scam, it does have real utility as a hedge against potential financial system-enabled authoritarianism of CBDCs.
"Participate in an untoward protest against government?" Been there, done that -- last year's Canadian truckers convoy, et-al. (and forget about GoFundMe)
Things are so changeable now that who knows what will be an offence in 10/5/2 years time. We all have seen the pileons when some time-rich scold digs up an insensitive tweet from 2011.
Who wants the future government to know we once financially contributed to the activities of, say, a Balkan trader in illicit tobacco.
It's a cliche but it's true - the Stasi could only ever dream of this level of surveillance
I'd take it even a step further and wonder what happens when they find out we financially contributed to an independent pseudonymous Balkan political commentator whose writings definitely fall outside the accepted orthodoxy. I feel only mildly paranoid in thinking this, quite honestly.
Heading towards cashless in the Gulf as well - I hate it. I’m sure there it just makes sense as a mechanism of control, how can you keep any secrets from the state if every purchase you make is tracked? Ultimately terrible for what little remaining privacy we have.
And loved the way you ended it this week, fascinating to see what people will sell their souls for...
I simply can't enjoy it....it's too archaic in its own way, much like any popular western music prior to the mid-60s. I feel the same way about old Country music as well: I am fascinated by it from a historical-cultural perspective, but that's about it.
I like how the Blues influenced what became Rock'n'Roll and Hard Rock....but I do not like the white guy Blues purists who sprung up in the 60s and still torture us to this day.
Clapton and Beck always bored me stiff, but there's always Hendrix and Led Zep and "Exile on Main Street" may be the best blues-rock record ever...Keef rules!
Likewise. The reason blues survives is white fans. I love Americana/Appalachian music in that as a fan and lover of Irish trad music and songs, many of the songs and tunes are familiar. It seems that people seek out authenticity in culture as an antidote to modern anomie.
My reading has taught me that in the early 20th century, there wasn't much of a difference between Blues and Country, except who it was marketed to: "Race Records" for Blacks, and "Hillbilly" for Whites. Then they began to gradually diverge from one another.
As for blues surviving to due White fans, this is also the case in some forms of Jazz, and in "Turntablism" as well; the art of hip hop Deejaying w/r/t older songs.
How reliable are the calculations concerning the distribution of money?
In any case, taxes are relevant only at a state level. The Feds now finance themselves by printing money which they do on a prodigious scale. Federal taxes are not levied to pay for government, they are to remind people who their master is and to create financial liabilities that can be used as an excuse to keep people in line.
Deflating costs means lower incomes for producers and their workforce. Subsidies need to be monitored very carefully. Prices also need to convey information about relative scarcity. Food and energy need to be abundant, reliable and good quality. Decent food is never cheap to produce and poor diet costs the economy vast amounts in medical costs due to chronic metabolic disorders.
Ultimately economic life is about providing people with the best possible life. No easy answers for anyone on either side of politics.
Indeed, promoting more local food production and small scale farming would be much wiser than subsidizing massive cornfields, so many physical and mental health benefits would result. That and related food policy is a whole other discussion though.
My comment was more directed at the rationale for why blue cities subsidize red rural areas. What New York City pays in higher taxes, West Virginia pays in lower quality of life and lower salaries, for example.
The Biden Administrations dismissal of China's peace proposal reveals that Washington's aim is to prolong the war. This is a conflict that Washington seeks to encourage, regardless of the cost in life or the risks to the world at large.
Washington had decades to address Russia's concerns over the expansion of NATO. They refused to engage with Russia on the issue. Instead they doubled down and seized control of Ukraine in the coup d'etat of 2014. They aggravated things further by re-arming Ukraine and egging on the Ukrainian assault on Donbass in February 2022, the attack that provoked Russia's invasion (authorised by article 51 of the UN Charter).
So far Washington has refused to issue a response to the draft treaty on security in Europe that Russia handed them in December 2022.
Washington presumably supported Bojo when he persuaded Zelenskyy not to sign the draft peace treaty negotiated in Istanbul in April 2022.
The Turbo American intelligence agencies and Foggy Bottom may very well have encouraged its allies/stooges in Pravy Sektor to threaten Zelenskyy with assassination after his election - Z. had been elected on a platform calling for the implementation of Minsk I & II. We now know from Merkel, Poroshenko, Hollande et al that Minsk was a Western hoax all along and any implementation would have wrecked NATO's plans for Ukraine.
Washington has no peace proposals of its own. It has not developed any process for resolving the dispute.
Leaving ethical considerations aside, this policy is insane. The US lacks the capacity to wage conventional war in Europe. It lacks the logistics, the armaments, the men (cis or trans) and women (cis or trans). It lacks any thing like the kind of force structure for the job. It also lacks credible or accomplished military leadership.
Washington is playing poker with a weak hand and a ludicrously ambitious bluff. They appear delusional enough to think that Moscow will be cowed by Biden and his cohort of nobodies (Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan, Austin and Milley). Given the domestic legitimacy crisis following the 2020 election (and the 2022 mid-term election steal in Arizona etc) and the collapsing rate of enlistment, Washington's hand is getting weaker.
The only thing that could conceivably justify anything like this is that Washington is convinced that the economy is on the verge of collapse and a controlled demolition of the post-wear order is preferable to a chaotic one.
The US could not accept China as a mediator, the lines are drawn too clearly. This in itself is not evidence of perfidy, you'd expect no different. And China knows this more than anyone.
I wonder about Isreal. Bennett seemed to have the ear of both Putin and Zelensky early in the war (and has publicly stated the West scuppered his attempts at mediation). Is Netanyahu as trusted, does either side even want talks at this stage?
Netanyahu is disliked by the Biden Administration and they control Kiev. In any case, the US will veto any peace.
If Zelenskyy were free to do so, he would settle things with Putin in a heartbeat. But he'd be killed by NATO's fifth column (Pravy Sektor) for doing so (probably with the blessing of the CIA station chief).
Putin originally just wanted to keep NATO out and get Kiev to implement the Minsk Accords as promised. Now Moscow would be under intense public pressure to recover Kharkov and Odessa at a minimum. There'd be hardliners in the Kremlin who would be seeking wider goals...inflicting maximum humiliation on NATO. The sabotage of Nordstream by the US offers wonderful opportunities for Moscow to exploit Germany's miserable situation. It is all very dynamic.
Why would the American elite want peace? War is great business if you don't have to suffer any of the consequences.
Seeking conflict far from home has been America's playbook since the end of World War Two. They've gotten high on their own supply though. It's one thing to play this game in Iraq or Afghanistan which are minor players geopolitically, but instigating a global superpower's most strategically important neighbor is beyond foolish.
Sooner or later the chickens will come home to roost, and I am not looking forward to that day.
That is exactly the problem. It worked before, but it is unlikely to work like that again.
An incompetent political elite, socially and culturally isolated, insulated from opinions other than their own, made unwarranted assumptions about a fast-changing world. And they blew it.
It is more than just an accident though. The US government is well aware of the fact that Russia has overtaken the US in key areas of military technology (above all in hypersonic missiles and air defense). To compensate for this the US is now reliant on its nuclear forces to a far greater degree than ever before.
Getting US nuclear missiles as close as possible to targets within Russia is essential for the US to maintain any kind of nuclear credibility. The missile bases in Poland and Rumania are 15 mins flying time from Moscow. A base in the eastern Ukraine would have 8 mins flying time.
To secure such a site the US needed Ukraine in NATO, preferably with the Russian speaking locals ethnically cleansed.
The greed of the US oligarchy and the malicious spiteful hubris of the foreign policy and intelligence crowds (angered that Putin brought an end to the rape of Russia under Yeltsin) was a second order factor.
The cluelessness of the US political elite in general ensured that there was no check on the reckless policy of turning Ukraine into a NATO puppet. A competent and reliable elite would have put a stop to anything this crazy.
You don't need first strike as long as you can guarantee a retaliatory strike from somewhere in world, which they can. Second strike 15 mins later makes everyone just as dead.
For the people in the Kremlin the difference of 7 mins is measured by the contrast between incineration on the one hand and mutation, cannibalism and nuclear winter on the other.
Not as much fun as the Pepsi challenge, but the difference is real.
They will, but the one thing that is absolutely 100% guaranteed is that none of the people responsible will ever feel a moment of pain. Big dick cheney, wolfowitz, victoria nuland, susan rice, the kagans and kristols will all die in their mansions surrounded by their servants and their children, who will all be Ivy Leaguers on the board of Raytheon.
This is besides the point. If you seek integrity and probity from the governing class you should be prepared to live in a barrel or join Lear on his heath.
The personal fate of those who govern us is less important than the agency we provide to them. The who and the whom need to be blended better.
None of the excesses of US policy towards Russia and Ukraine would have been possible for a minute had people been prepared to call the villains out. As a rule, almost nobody did. Blame needs to be apportioned to the passively conformist types too, not just the comic opera villains of the Beltway.
Re Greece and Macedonia, I believe that during WW2 the Greek Cabinet fled to Egypt. Whenever they held a meeting a British officer sat in on them. If the ministers wished to discuss something amongst themselves they switched to Albanian (presumably the southern dialect) which the cabinet members all spoke and understood.
The language issue may be caught up to some extent in the historic division between Left and Right and the civil war. If I understand it correctly, the communists were strongest in the north, the monarchists in the south and in the islands. When the monarchists won, the communists fled into what is now Yugoslavia. My knowledge of all this is very sketchy. Would be interested in any details people might be able to offer.
And individual Slavs would have migrated across an even larger area. The Byzantines absorbed many peoples.
I am not an expert but I expect that the Slav migrations probably played a role in the vowel shift between classical and modern Greek (the long 'eta' becomes 'ita' and so on).
IMO there is nothing to regret or be sensitive about. It is disappointing to see people in conflict over anything like this. The great challenges facing the Greeks (and their neighbours) are the economy and immigration.
Of all the hefty offerings here this morning I’m going to weigh in on the cashless society and my opposition to it being that it allows me to not have to pay a $1 tip for my $2 breakfast burrito
Great post. Thanks especially for the piece on Nigeria. To whitepill re: digital currency, I think the structure of the fed will make it unlikely anything similar would happen in the USA
America is no longer a high trust country. No way people would trust the Fed with a digital currency. Not after the fiasco with electronic voting machines! It is one thing to elect a president by way of fraud, quite another to apply that standard to every-day transactions.
They certainly are. They have no choice. The post-war system is crumbling. The US dollar was never supposed to be the world's reserve currency in the first place. There were plenty of people at Bretton Woods who wanted the IMF to issue special drawing rights to cover settlement and exchange.
The US dollar is hemorrhaging confidence. People are eyeing the exits.
Central banks are buying gold in significant quantities. A number of countries are seeking audits of their gold holdings in New York or London. Sovereign gold reserves held in trust are a super sensitive issue...geopolitically significant and very rarely discussed honestly in public. Several states within the USA have established bullion deposits and quite a few have begun legalising the use of bullion for exchange and settlement. This is the first step towards state or regional currencies within the US. The next step will be for the relevant authorities to issue transferable certificates or notes of deposit for the gold.
A new currency requires confidence in the system. This cannot be summoned out of thin air. Inflation, negative real interest rates, money printing, the sanctions against Russia and federal electoral fraud are all undermining the ability of the Fed to move forward. The Fed is buying up treasury bills because demand for them is falling. The US is still the number one destination for capital flight, but this could change very easily in the next few years.
There are indications that one or two computer programmers specialising in digital currencies have had unexpected accidents in recent years.
Yes definitely. The board of governors is probably in favor of it, same deal with a lot of academic economists. Don’t think it will go beyond a pilot program bc community banks / regional fed boards don’t want to get rid of cash and they have political influence w state level elites (and can combine w fun goldbugs and other “weird” people to create opposition coalition)
Feb 25, 2023·edited Feb 25, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Russias relatively new Prime minister came from the Tax agency, one of the prime reasons he was selected was for his ability to increase tax revenues ~20% while the tax burden only rose around 2%.
Nowadays in Russia, every electronic purchase is centrally logged if you pay by way of card. Every receipt has your information attached to it by way of QR code, from your age to your nationality. More so, there are some products (mostly alcohol) that have excise marks on them that track the whole lifecycle of that product, from the input raw materials to the truck that the the bottle was on. If you where to for example commit a crime and leave behind a bottle of beer, the authorities could simply scan it and get your identity (if you paid for it by card). I don't doubt that in the future every product will have these type of stickers on them.
But Russia is a land of paradoxes, from 2018-2021 I was paid fully in cash (worked under the table), and would deposit hundreds of thousands of rubles in cash and never get one question about where I got that sum from or any request to pay taxes on it.
It's true that most Swiss people (even younger ones) carry around cash but a lot has changed since 2019. If back then you couldn't get anything at the farmers market without cash, now everyone has a small pos machines and a few don't even take cash.
Hit the like button at the top of the page to like this entry and use the share button to share this across social media.
Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so (be nice!), and please consider subscribing if you haven't done so already.
Hungary spearheaded contactless payment (in the early 2010s, you could amaze foreign tourists by using it), and overall, despite the privacy concerns, digital payment is better for any country that is middle-trust like Hungary or lower. It erases the black economy.
It's either this, or we go the way of Greece.
I personally only have a single coin in cash, to use it with the shopping carts.
I understand the libertarian appeal of cash, but in this part of the world (and most of the world) the less anarcho-capitalist society is, the better.
Love Hungary though have not seen much outside Budapest. Nephew lived there for 9 years. Very self-aware as a nation of their unique Magyarness, unique in Europe. Horrible to see the disgusting Samantha Power appearing there to "help democracy" I e. to organise a coup. Orban embarrasses many European leaders in his failure to become a US bitch.
Samantha Power gets loads of puff pieces here in Ireland, we like to see one of our own do well.
The Celtic Menace goes unremarked in the wider world
A Ginger Gurkha for the Yankeestani Raj!
She is doubly repulsive as 'wearing the green jersey' posing as a sort of neutral Irish person, but is an able successor to Victoria 'Fuck the EU' Nuland and Madelaine 'We think 500,000 Iraqi children dead due to danctions is worth it' Albright.
Not to worry, our national lickarses are doing thei best to sabotage our longstanding policy of military neutrality to get a pat on the head from Brussels and DC, just as they sold out the country every opportunity they have had over 30 years. Sugar beet quota to Germany - yessir. Bail out unsecured bond holders to prevent bank contagion spreading in Europe - yes boss (47% of public debt assumed to contain 2008 Euro collapse was paid by Ireland, to our usual friends - BNP, Landsbanks, Goldman etc). Fisheries policy? We'll 'give' you a miniscule quota and the rest of the annual 2 bn harvest to your 'EU partners' - yessir. Etc ad nauseum. There is an old irish expression 'sleveens', slave minded creeping Jesus types. They run the show now. Worse to any state is not the bad man but the weak man.
PS An irish comic actor used to say that I'm saying nothing bad about the deceased, but he is going where he will light his pipe with his finger - hope that Albright enjoys lightingher cig with her finger. Evil knows no sex boundaries.
It puts Dermot MacMurrough in perspective.
One more request:
Greek and Macedonian friends, please do not scream at me. My comments aren't meant to be an attempt at a rigid analysis. I'm just introducing the thorny subject to casuals and novices.
Thank you for your comments. When I lived in Yugoslavia, I asked my mother why we needed a visa for Greece, and not for any other European country. She told me that the Greek government did not want Yugoslav Macedonians to freely go to Greece and hang out Greek Macedonians--to prevent them from planning irredentism. I have met Greeks who do not know that Slavic speaking people exist in Greece.
There are many taboos regarding ethnicity in the Balkans. For example, I did not hear in school anything about mediaeval Bulgaria, but Bulgarians tell me they learn in school that Bulgaria used to consist of present Northen Macedonia and most of Serbia. This is an excellent substack. I always liked it but almost did not subscribe because of its unappalling name.
Bulgaria had a very large empire in the medieval era, stretching all the way to present-day Albania.
"This is an excellent substack."
Thank you, Sonja!
"I always liked it but almost did not subscribe because of its unappalling name."
You are not the first to say this ;)
China is true catalyst for Putin's criminal offensive to Ukraine. However the real target of this offensive is the EU and the US
criminal…..!
look into the disney character uncle remus.
grabbing the donbas tar baby from kiev who was shelling it for 8 years bc it exercised self determination is only a crime to imperial fascists.
and following russia stuck to that tar baby 5000 miles from usa small logistics base is no way to chase a trumped up enemy.
watching this china is thoroughly amused while russia depletes the empire’s paper military.
My friend used to be married to a Basque woman whose family members in Franco's Spain were told by police to "speak Christian." Reference to the Basque language being ancient Indo-European and HEATHEN
On the topic of a national divorce, or at the very least some wild frontiers, check out this surprisingly good vanity fair piece:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/new-right-civil-war
Yeah, I caught that when it came out. Very long and rambling piece.
How concerned are you that the conflict will expand beyond Ukraine (and maybe later Taiwan) into a full blown WWIII?
Also, I don't think the main concern with CBDCs is privacy, although that is a concern. It is that they give governments way too much power. Participate in an untoward protest against government? Good luck accessing any of your money (i.e. paying your bills and eating)! While I think crypto was way oversold and in most cases a scam, it does have real utility as a hedge against potential financial system-enabled authoritarianism of CBDCs.
"Participate in an untoward protest against government?" Been there, done that -- last year's Canadian truckers convoy, et-al. (and forget about GoFundMe)
Things are so changeable now that who knows what will be an offence in 10/5/2 years time. We all have seen the pileons when some time-rich scold digs up an insensitive tweet from 2011.
Who wants the future government to know we once financially contributed to the activities of, say, a Balkan trader in illicit tobacco.
It's a cliche but it's true - the Stasi could only ever dream of this level of surveillance
I'd take it even a step further and wonder what happens when they find out we financially contributed to an independent pseudonymous Balkan political commentator whose writings definitely fall outside the accepted orthodoxy. I feel only mildly paranoid in thinking this, quite honestly.
I hope 'Fisted by Foucault' is not literally written in black and white in the bank code.
My brother in law does IT for the bank and he already thinks his brother got dealt a bad hand.
Heading towards cashless in the Gulf as well - I hate it. I’m sure there it just makes sense as a mechanism of control, how can you keep any secrets from the state if every purchase you make is tracked? Ultimately terrible for what little remaining privacy we have.
And loved the way you ended it this week, fascinating to see what people will sell their souls for...
I'm not a fan of the Blues, but for some reason I really enjoy the early of the Delta Blues.
muddy waters? howlin wolf?? big mama thornton? john lee hooker?
dont make me make u playlist!
I simply can't enjoy it....it's too archaic in its own way, much like any popular western music prior to the mid-60s. I feel the same way about old Country music as well: I am fascinated by it from a historical-cultural perspective, but that's about it.
well, that does it, cancel my subscription! ;))
I like how the Blues influenced what became Rock'n'Roll and Hard Rock....but I do not like the white guy Blues purists who sprung up in the 60s and still torture us to this day.
Clapton and Beck always bored me stiff, but there's always Hendrix and Led Zep and "Exile on Main Street" may be the best blues-rock record ever...Keef rules!
hey, OT, u seen this yet?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-origin-china-lab-leak-807b7b0a?mod=hp_lead_pos1
i'm high on schadenfreude LOL
Likewise. The reason blues survives is white fans. I love Americana/Appalachian music in that as a fan and lover of Irish trad music and songs, many of the songs and tunes are familiar. It seems that people seek out authenticity in culture as an antidote to modern anomie.
My reading has taught me that in the early 20th century, there wasn't much of a difference between Blues and Country, except who it was marketed to: "Race Records" for Blacks, and "Hillbilly" for Whites. Then they began to gradually diverge from one another.
As for blues surviving to due White fans, this is also the case in some forms of Jazz, and in "Turntablism" as well; the art of hip hop Deejaying w/r/t older songs.
Good luck to Marjorie Taylor Greene wanting to divide the nation. Blue states overpay taxes vs benefits received.
Red states pay less than they receive.
Even within states, cities pay more into state taxes than the state pays them. Suburbs and rural areas get more from the state than they pay.
So I'm down with this, as I live in a blue state 🤣🤣🤣 🤑🤑🤑🤑
How reliable are the calculations concerning the distribution of money?
In any case, taxes are relevant only at a state level. The Feds now finance themselves by printing money which they do on a prodigious scale. Federal taxes are not levied to pay for government, they are to remind people who their master is and to create financial liabilities that can be used as an excuse to keep people in line.
It's in the national interest to subsidize the production and deflate the costs of essentials produced in rural areas - food and energy for example.
If you have to import these essentials from another country you're much worse off; see the current European energy crisis.
Conversely, urban service-economy products are easily outsourced as costs increase.
The fundamental issue here is not a left/right divide but the income tax itself, which Phillip demonstrates below.
There is a complex set of issues here.
Deflating costs means lower incomes for producers and their workforce. Subsidies need to be monitored very carefully. Prices also need to convey information about relative scarcity. Food and energy need to be abundant, reliable and good quality. Decent food is never cheap to produce and poor diet costs the economy vast amounts in medical costs due to chronic metabolic disorders.
Ultimately economic life is about providing people with the best possible life. No easy answers for anyone on either side of politics.
Indeed, promoting more local food production and small scale farming would be much wiser than subsidizing massive cornfields, so many physical and mental health benefits would result. That and related food policy is a whole other discussion though.
My comment was more directed at the rationale for why blue cities subsidize red rural areas. What New York City pays in higher taxes, West Virginia pays in lower quality of life and lower salaries, for example.
The Biden Administrations dismissal of China's peace proposal reveals that Washington's aim is to prolong the war. This is a conflict that Washington seeks to encourage, regardless of the cost in life or the risks to the world at large.
Washington had decades to address Russia's concerns over the expansion of NATO. They refused to engage with Russia on the issue. Instead they doubled down and seized control of Ukraine in the coup d'etat of 2014. They aggravated things further by re-arming Ukraine and egging on the Ukrainian assault on Donbass in February 2022, the attack that provoked Russia's invasion (authorised by article 51 of the UN Charter).
So far Washington has refused to issue a response to the draft treaty on security in Europe that Russia handed them in December 2022.
Washington presumably supported Bojo when he persuaded Zelenskyy not to sign the draft peace treaty negotiated in Istanbul in April 2022.
The Turbo American intelligence agencies and Foggy Bottom may very well have encouraged its allies/stooges in Pravy Sektor to threaten Zelenskyy with assassination after his election - Z. had been elected on a platform calling for the implementation of Minsk I & II. We now know from Merkel, Poroshenko, Hollande et al that Minsk was a Western hoax all along and any implementation would have wrecked NATO's plans for Ukraine.
Washington has no peace proposals of its own. It has not developed any process for resolving the dispute.
Leaving ethical considerations aside, this policy is insane. The US lacks the capacity to wage conventional war in Europe. It lacks the logistics, the armaments, the men (cis or trans) and women (cis or trans). It lacks any thing like the kind of force structure for the job. It also lacks credible or accomplished military leadership.
Washington is playing poker with a weak hand and a ludicrously ambitious bluff. They appear delusional enough to think that Moscow will be cowed by Biden and his cohort of nobodies (Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan, Austin and Milley). Given the domestic legitimacy crisis following the 2020 election (and the 2022 mid-term election steal in Arizona etc) and the collapsing rate of enlistment, Washington's hand is getting weaker.
The only thing that could conceivably justify anything like this is that Washington is convinced that the economy is on the verge of collapse and a controlled demolition of the post-wear order is preferable to a chaotic one.
Or it is all just geopolitical suicide by cop.
biden is a clear and present danger to use h bombs to destroy the world.
usa is clearly evil, arming up ukraine like it was Cuba in 1962.
biden is no jfk, and there is no RF in sight
RF?
I don't know.
The US could not accept China as a mediator, the lines are drawn too clearly. This in itself is not evidence of perfidy, you'd expect no different. And China knows this more than anyone.
I wonder about Isreal. Bennett seemed to have the ear of both Putin and Zelensky early in the war (and has publicly stated the West scuppered his attempts at mediation). Is Netanyahu as trusted, does either side even want talks at this stage?
These rhetorical escalations are quite scary.
Netanyahu is disliked by the Biden Administration and they control Kiev. In any case, the US will veto any peace.
If Zelenskyy were free to do so, he would settle things with Putin in a heartbeat. But he'd be killed by NATO's fifth column (Pravy Sektor) for doing so (probably with the blessing of the CIA station chief).
Putin originally just wanted to keep NATO out and get Kiev to implement the Minsk Accords as promised. Now Moscow would be under intense public pressure to recover Kharkov and Odessa at a minimum. There'd be hardliners in the Kremlin who would be seeking wider goals...inflicting maximum humiliation on NATO. The sabotage of Nordstream by the US offers wonderful opportunities for Moscow to exploit Germany's miserable situation. It is all very dynamic.
Why would the American elite want peace? War is great business if you don't have to suffer any of the consequences.
Seeking conflict far from home has been America's playbook since the end of World War Two. They've gotten high on their own supply though. It's one thing to play this game in Iraq or Afghanistan which are minor players geopolitically, but instigating a global superpower's most strategically important neighbor is beyond foolish.
Sooner or later the chickens will come home to roost, and I am not looking forward to that day.
That is exactly the problem. It worked before, but it is unlikely to work like that again.
An incompetent political elite, socially and culturally isolated, insulated from opinions other than their own, made unwarranted assumptions about a fast-changing world. And they blew it.
It is more than just an accident though. The US government is well aware of the fact that Russia has overtaken the US in key areas of military technology (above all in hypersonic missiles and air defense). To compensate for this the US is now reliant on its nuclear forces to a far greater degree than ever before.
Getting US nuclear missiles as close as possible to targets within Russia is essential for the US to maintain any kind of nuclear credibility. The missile bases in Poland and Rumania are 15 mins flying time from Moscow. A base in the eastern Ukraine would have 8 mins flying time.
To secure such a site the US needed Ukraine in NATO, preferably with the Russian speaking locals ethnically cleansed.
The greed of the US oligarchy and the malicious spiteful hubris of the foreign policy and intelligence crowds (angered that Putin brought an end to the rape of Russia under Yeltsin) was a second order factor.
The cluelessness of the US political elite in general ensured that there was no check on the reckless policy of turning Ukraine into a NATO puppet. A competent and reliable elite would have put a stop to anything this crazy.
But hang on. What difference does 7 minutes make
You don't need first strike as long as you can guarantee a retaliatory strike from somewhere in world, which they can. Second strike 15 mins later makes everyone just as dead.
For the people in the Kremlin the difference of 7 mins is measured by the contrast between incineration on the one hand and mutation, cannibalism and nuclear winter on the other.
Not as much fun as the Pepsi challenge, but the difference is real.
They will, but the one thing that is absolutely 100% guaranteed is that none of the people responsible will ever feel a moment of pain. Big dick cheney, wolfowitz, victoria nuland, susan rice, the kagans and kristols will all die in their mansions surrounded by their servants and their children, who will all be Ivy Leaguers on the board of Raytheon.
This is besides the point. If you seek integrity and probity from the governing class you should be prepared to live in a barrel or join Lear on his heath.
The personal fate of those who govern us is less important than the agency we provide to them. The who and the whom need to be blended better.
None of the excesses of US policy towards Russia and Ukraine would have been possible for a minute had people been prepared to call the villains out. As a rule, almost nobody did. Blame needs to be apportioned to the passively conformist types too, not just the comic opera villains of the Beltway.
Great entry.
Re Greece and Macedonia, I believe that during WW2 the Greek Cabinet fled to Egypt. Whenever they held a meeting a British officer sat in on them. If the ministers wished to discuss something amongst themselves they switched to Albanian (presumably the southern dialect) which the cabinet members all spoke and understood.
The language issue may be caught up to some extent in the historic division between Left and Right and the civil war. If I understand it correctly, the communists were strongest in the north, the monarchists in the south and in the islands. When the monarchists won, the communists fled into what is now Yugoslavia. My knowledge of all this is very sketchy. Would be interested in any details people might be able to offer.
Slavic speaking people lived in northern Greece for a long time. There are some Slavic toponyms there.
Slavs made it all the way down to the Peloponnese during the Dark Ages.
And individual Slavs would have migrated across an even larger area. The Byzantines absorbed many peoples.
I am not an expert but I expect that the Slav migrations probably played a role in the vowel shift between classical and modern Greek (the long 'eta' becomes 'ita' and so on).
IMO there is nothing to regret or be sensitive about. It is disappointing to see people in conflict over anything like this. The great challenges facing the Greeks (and their neighbours) are the economy and immigration.
Of all the hefty offerings here this morning I’m going to weigh in on the cashless society and my opposition to it being that it allows me to not have to pay a $1 tip for my $2 breakfast burrito
You can choose not to tip on those damn tablets but yea it is a little uncomfortable because you're so consciously telling them you will not tip them.
Great post. Thanks especially for the piece on Nigeria. To whitepill re: digital currency, I think the structure of the fed will make it unlikely anything similar would happen in the USA
America is no longer a high trust country. No way people would trust the Fed with a digital currency. Not after the fiasco with electronic voting machines! It is one thing to elect a president by way of fraud, quite another to apply that standard to every-day transactions.
Plus there is the Number of the Beast thing.
Isn't the Fed exploring it though?
They certainly are. They have no choice. The post-war system is crumbling. The US dollar was never supposed to be the world's reserve currency in the first place. There were plenty of people at Bretton Woods who wanted the IMF to issue special drawing rights to cover settlement and exchange.
The US dollar is hemorrhaging confidence. People are eyeing the exits.
Central banks are buying gold in significant quantities. A number of countries are seeking audits of their gold holdings in New York or London. Sovereign gold reserves held in trust are a super sensitive issue...geopolitically significant and very rarely discussed honestly in public. Several states within the USA have established bullion deposits and quite a few have begun legalising the use of bullion for exchange and settlement. This is the first step towards state or regional currencies within the US. The next step will be for the relevant authorities to issue transferable certificates or notes of deposit for the gold.
A new currency requires confidence in the system. This cannot be summoned out of thin air. Inflation, negative real interest rates, money printing, the sanctions against Russia and federal electoral fraud are all undermining the ability of the Fed to move forward. The Fed is buying up treasury bills because demand for them is falling. The US is still the number one destination for capital flight, but this could change very easily in the next few years.
There are indications that one or two computer programmers specialising in digital currencies have had unexpected accidents in recent years.
Yes definitely. The board of governors is probably in favor of it, same deal with a lot of academic economists. Don’t think it will go beyond a pilot program bc community banks / regional fed boards don’t want to get rid of cash and they have political influence w state level elites (and can combine w fun goldbugs and other “weird” people to create opposition coalition)
It’s my understanding that they are
Russias relatively new Prime minister came from the Tax agency, one of the prime reasons he was selected was for his ability to increase tax revenues ~20% while the tax burden only rose around 2%.
https://www.ft.com/content/38967766-aec8-11e9-8030-530adfa879c2 (interesting read that scratches the surface of the tax agency in ru)
Nowadays in Russia, every electronic purchase is centrally logged if you pay by way of card. Every receipt has your information attached to it by way of QR code, from your age to your nationality. More so, there are some products (mostly alcohol) that have excise marks on them that track the whole lifecycle of that product, from the input raw materials to the truck that the the bottle was on. If you where to for example commit a crime and leave behind a bottle of beer, the authorities could simply scan it and get your identity (if you paid for it by card). I don't doubt that in the future every product will have these type of stickers on them.
But Russia is a land of paradoxes, from 2018-2021 I was paid fully in cash (worked under the table), and would deposit hundreds of thousands of rubles in cash and never get one question about where I got that sum from or any request to pay taxes on it.
The cashless society reminds me of this article: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190416-why-the-swiss-still-love-cash
It's true that most Swiss people (even younger ones) carry around cash but a lot has changed since 2019. If back then you couldn't get anything at the farmers market without cash, now everyone has a small pos machines and a few don't even take cash.
Germans are big on cash too. But being incredibly rule-abiding, I can see them buying into this without a hitch.
Buskers have pos machines now