RANT AGAINST MEDIAGARCHY

7 August 2022

https://youtu.be/TV5ubJq39h0

So mad! Yes! it is the media running public opinion, on behalf of an oligarchy of the rich and a minorigarchy of the weird and the woke, in the absence of any political leadership on behalf of the majority and the public interest.

The public interest is for me about a fair distribution of wealth, opportunity and freedom to the majority.

Where are the politicians with a longer term view of what's good for the country and the strength of leadership to outdistance the polls?

Instead, for reasons most of us link to greed and self-interest, the political elite piles on risk after risk (just the latest being support for Pelosi's provocation...which I support, just not at this time), distracts us from the real issues with this trivia, and whose policies the track record shows lead to ruination.

"Dig her up!"

End of rant, ha ha ha

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DOES THE CIA MAKE AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY?

6 August 2022

Does America have a foreign policy strategy and if so, who is running it? ... is it the CIA, sitting in the Pentagon?

How foreign policy is made

-You are supposed to start with your vision/goals/aims.

-Then you turn these vague wishes into measurable objectives.

-Then for each you need resources, and so a strategy:  a strategy is what you'll create to plan best use of resources to achieve your objectives.

-Then, you get to the policies, which are the rules governing running the strategy; and the organisation units you need to man the processes.

The machinery of government

The DoD, Blinken and Powell, are sitting in the Pentagon running foreign policy over 

Executive. Biden in the White House and 

Legislative. Congress. The Senate Foreign Reln.s Cttee and the House Cttee on Foreign Affairs, 

On behalf of The People.

Next

Next

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ANOTHER STEP TOWARDS NUCLEAR OBLIVION

3 August 2022

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-united-states-is-directly-involved-ukraine-war-2022-08-02/

Another step towards nuclear oblivion.

We've known this for a long time anyway, we've known perfectly well that the strategy and the planning - not just the training and the supply of arms - is down to the Western powers

 if it's the M142 HiMARS, it's Lockheed Martin, it's the Americans who plan the launch

 if it's the M270 MLRS launchers with GMLRS munitions, it's still Lockheed Martin, but from British stocks, it's gotta be the British who plan the launch.

 if it's the MARS M270 Mittleres Artillerie Raketen System, it's Lockheed Martin more $$$$$$ ohhhh now I get it, from German stocks, it's gotta be the Germans who plan the launch. Target practise.

 if it's a Caesar truck-mounted artillery, it's the French 155mm 52-calibre self-propelled gun, it's Nexter Systems (formerly Giat), taken from French stocks (they are very worried about this as apparently they've already sent over almost half their stock), it's gotta be the French who proudly plan the launch and add the ghastly glossy photos to their marketing collaterals.

You can't expect reservists and pig farmers and remnants of a professional army to understand the ins and outs of these 1980s technologies!

They take us for fools.

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THE UNITED SELF

2 Aug 2022

self and identity - a biography of our self - who we are - our identity

https://youtu.be/ZD52aZ5Jh7A

"personality modernity and the storied self"

modern

modernity means modern times. Especially in the West ("The West" by this time in the 21st century includes many non Western countries like South Korea or Japan, according to the following framework...).

we have to make a difference between pre modern or pre-industrial times and times since the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries.

what makes our time "modern" is: capitalism, markets, democracy, the nation-state, the dominance of Science and Technology.

drivers

and we should look at social, political and economic changes as causing, driving, the changes to our idea of self, of who we are.

characteristics of people's living in modern Western times

1. a scepticism towards religion and other traditional sources of authority and a preference instead for a data-driven approach based on science, reasoning, objectivity, evidence, positivism etc ... a belief that if we take an evidence-based approach this will lead to improvement in our world

2. difficulty in keeping a coherent sense of one's modern self across the past, present and future and across even yesterday compared to today or tomorrow.

also keeping up that coherence or integrity across the different roles and contexts and situations that we operate in.

it's especially challenging for people living in societies with a lot of diversity or to put it another way, a low homogeneity.

For example, societies with different ethnic and religious mixes.

3. there's also more emphasis on our uniqueness rather than on conformity with the tribe or group and this is challenging because at the same time as we seek to be different we also seek to remain connected.

Six characteristics of the modern self

1. work in progress. we are all a work in progress, we are a project we are working on, the "I" is forever improving a "Me". it can be thought of as a reflexive project reflexive because we are turned towards our self we are changing our self.

this is modern because compare with pre modern times where a person was given a role or a position or a post and told to get on with it. they were not responsible for creating a unique self or innovating and updating a persona.

2. Agency. in pre-modern times it was the king, or the church or mosque, or the tribe that assigned us a role; but today, we have to work out our own identity and roles in a more day-to-day context of family and work and friends.

3. multi-layered and deep. compare the simple role that Hindu people in Bali have and live by, compare that with the situation in which modern man or woman find themselves. A modern person has multiple roles and overlapping roles all depending on the context and the person and so on and this complexity creates a challenge to know who we are and is why many people are Forever on a voyage of self-discovery and why self-help groups are so popular

so before it was the church or mosque that was a moral authority, but these days, in the absence of that moral authority, it is us, we ourselves, who decide our own beliefs and values and and finally are our own identity and it is the search for this authentic identity that drives the projects to modernise ourselves

4. self development. we saw in the points above that the self is a project, for which we are responsible, and this project of ours is a voyage of self-discovery, adaption and improvement - a work in progress. now consider this as a series of projects, over the longer life that we live.

At the start of the 20th century, the average lifespan was maybe 50 years, but by the end it had reached 75 years and splits into different phases.

We go through different phases in that time span and so we have evolving roles and contexts and thus projects with different objectives for our self, as we mature and develop.

5. Coherence. we go from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to middle age to old age or maybe more phases than that ("the seven ages of man") and we have different roles and contexts to adapt to that we also look for a coherence across all those phases so that we have a story to tell, a narrative, which stitches everything together and brings us one coherent picture of who we are.

this coherent narrative is our auto-biography and it's really important, this sense of coherence across the different phases of our life, because it's how we construct our idea of who we are, in other words our identity, our sense of self

6 connection and the "pure relationship". the 6th and final characteristic of modern selves is that two separate selves can connect to each other to form what we all look for, which is a pure or perfect relationship, in terms of connectedness, love and intimacy.

Modern love is not something dictated to us by our parents or arranged by the group or or determined by the church or mosque it is something we choose for ourselves in order to fulfil our deepest needs and desires, needs and desires that we have defined and which are part of our uniqueness.

the two persons, each true and authentic to themself, have a relationship which is honest and open and flexible and negotiable between the two of them. The focus is on both parties achieving what you might call self-actualisation or self-transcendence. Of course, anyone who's been in a modern romantic relationship knows that this is a pure fiction! ... but nonetheless it is an ideal and a vision that we can aim for.

Summary. we saw in the points above that the self is a project about constructing our sense of identity, who we are. We are responsible for this project. It is a voyage of self-discovery, adaption and improvement - a work in progress seeking uniqueness, connectedness and authenticity. It is a series of projects, over the longer life that we live. Like ying and yang, we seek union with another like-minded soul .

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THE TORY PARTY LEADERSHIP DEBATES SHOW THE WEST IS OUT OF IDEAS

30 July 2022

 Liz Truss's thinking seems to be restricted and contained in rivers of cliches and I can just imagine the 169,000 Conservative Party voters waving their walking sticks in her favour because smartypants Sunak comes across as too slick and self-interested an operator.

There's no one who can think "outside the box" and get their head round the real-world issues and offer a clear coherent compact vision and path for getting there. Noone to provide a solid long-term leadership. There's no one there! There's no purposeful leadership, there is not that fundamental and simple grasp of the situation, no handles or ideas or options, only cliches, mental knots.

And in this situation of mental exhaustion, all the leaders in the west can do is offer distraction politics, like the woke or the war and China, all these other non issues - they are there to keep the people's attention away from the reality facing the West, to stop people mounting 6th January type insurgency operations, taking to the streets to shout their frustration at the stupidity and pettiness of the leaderships. 

The great thing about these non-issues is that whether they are resolved or not, they make absolutely no difference to the future, it doesn't matter one way or another, just the mass of ordinary people are given this mental food to chew on and digest.

It's a McDonald's political-mental diet really.

The West's leadership is the US and UK, but of course the West includes Europe as well as Japan and so on.

France has a pretty good leadership and there are many options that are widely and freely debated, but of course everything that happens in France is totally ignored and pushed aside by America. Same in Germany. 

So all that is left is the  American military, the only answer is violence. As they say, when all you have is a hammer, you make every problem look the same - a nail.

Japan just exists, it rots, it survives, it does nothing and goes nowhere.

And so we are looking across a sea but are incapable of formulating a destination. We are looking at a sea, at the parting of the Red Sea and looking through the channel to the other side we see China advancing towards us, strong, united, determined, the people seemingly marching in step with their leadership.

It's unlikely that China has the strength to make it all the way across the channel to our side of the sea, but along the way there could be much death and mayhem,  confusion.

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IS AMERICA STILL APPEASING CHINA OVER TAIWAN?

26 July 2022

Mercurius is right when he says (https://youtu.be/V9dS-eb7qmI) that all the warning lights are flashing in Europe (collapse of the Euro...see next post), in Ukraine likely to be the most disastrous of all American foreign policy Adventures), the American economy (( the impossible choice between deep and long recession and hyperinflation and destruction of the currency) and why on earth would America want to start a new conflagration with China?

From the history book, in 1971 ambassador George Bush proposed dual recognition of Taiwan and the PRC as a way to keep Taiwan in the UN but both sides rejected this. Even so, Nixon in his 1972 "week that changed the world" visit to China and meeting with Mao Zedong, kept up recognition of Taiwan. Nixon was a strong anti-communist and the purpose of that visit was to pull China away from Russia. Nixon was then swamped with Watergate.

It was Jimmy Carter - not known as America's strongest president - who in 1979 dropped Taiwan and recognised China as the sole representative of the Chinese people. ...without any good reason as what could China have done then, as now, other than grumble? 

The next American initiative was when Clinton welcomed Deng Xiaoping to America in 1979. Surprising to us today, the main or the most important outcome of that visit was Deng's warning to America (sic) that it, that Carter, should not appease Russia, or seek not to offend Russia, because this would just encourage Russia's world hegemonic ambitions.

This opened both countries to closer trade relations and led to get China's admission to the World Trade Organisation in September 2001 after 15 years of negotiations. The economic growth that came from China selling into America middle-class resulted in its position today as as the world's second largest economy by GDP.

But should we be seeing the subject of pelosi's visit to China as America calling China's bluff and how this flouts the first rule of diplomacy vis-a-vis to China - your bluff will always be called by the Chinese? Because maybe it's more about America ending its policy of "strategic ambiguity" (where relations between countries and Taiwan continue, though not officially; and an official future status of Taiwan is never discussed) and acting independently and on its own initiative. 

Given the rising level of threat, America doesnt want to be seen simply reacting to Beijing, as though Beijing determines American foreign policy.

Inaddition, Taiwan is important to America, not just for its advanced microchip factories, but as a longtime ally, with Japan and South Korea, in East Asia and thus to Americas containment policy towards China.

As remarked by John J Mearsheimer, America will not accept any competition or constraints or threats of any kind in any region of the world.. not even from the Solomon Islands.

So this trip is more about America's "splendid isolation", which could actually qualify as a peace role!!!

Yes, America sailing a frigate through the Taiwan Straits and now sending the house speaker to a supposedly neutral country is provocative. As is China threatening the security of the American speaker of the house. And obviously America is not going to let Chinese ultimatums decide its policy or Freedom of manoeuvre. 

Getting serious for a moment, can you imagine America's reaction if Pelosi's plane were shot down or even if it were prevented from entering Taiwanese airspace? So what can China do and given hostilities between America and china it would not be surprising if this president recognised Taiwan.

There are plenty of good reasons to co-operate with China, from climate change to trade, but these are all shared benefits.

I read that there is a 1933 Montevideo Convention which establishes the conditions for "statehood," : defined territory, stable population, functioning government, and some independence over foreign policy. Taiwan meets them all. Plus the popular vote in Taiwan is for independence and there is no one unless sent by the PRC in Taiwan supporting reunification. 

So what is holding America back from recognising Taiwan if it isn't Beijing opposition?

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FORCING AMERICA TO SHARE ITS POWER

23 July 2022

https://youtu.be/57obnJf_Tik

With covid it was a common enemy with brexit the vulnerabilities were more mixed but now with energy the vulnerabilities are very varied.

America is accountable for Europe's security and Russia is more or less accountable for Europe's energy. Europe is not independant and to change either of those is a 20-year plan so it is open to political manipulation.

Europe complains that Russia is blackmailing it, that Russia is dividing it, that Russia controls the taps to manage the price and sow dissent, that this is part of Russia's hybrid war, that this is a test of Winter nerves.

The trails all lead back to Washington. If you believe America maintains its monopoly of power through violence, then means must be found - eg the UN or expanding BRICS - to force America to accept this is a mulipolar world and it must cooperate and share its power.

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NEW PM FOR UK

21 July 2022

I think everyone would like this American order because it keeps the shipping lanes open, sends capital to the most efficient parts of the world economy, and ensures everyone prospers through fair trade ... at least that was the founding rhetoric.

But the reality is that America has always been high on testosterone and and the government sees its only role as protecting and advancing American industry and its only method is Force.

But these sanctions have shown us that the world outside of Europe and America no longer listens or obeys us. Everyone wants an order with its rules and institutions and rule keeper, but no one wants to be dominated or pushed aside.

So we have to recognise that if we want to be respected and followed, this method based on Force has failed and it's because we no longer have a monopoly of power.

So to keep our leadership and our room for manoeuvre, we must operate by persuasion, by example and by conviction, not by imposition.

America and the UK have a very black and white view, it's got to be total victory, and they do not want or feel they need to talk to anyone, just load in the arms, training and money, and let me little ukrainians get on with the fighting. So the question is, how do you change this leadership attitude from conflict to cooperation and consensus? In America first of all.

We're busy voting in Liz Truss as our new leader - a neocon. I would judge her purely on her foreign policy as if things go wrong - as they are doing - there will be no domestic policy decided by a UK government.

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SANCTIONS - UKRAINE

21 July 2022

<<If sanctions worked, it would be a victory over Russian boots ("une victoire à la Pyrrhus", cruel joke.)>>

We enter the sixth month of the war. Russia has taken a quarter of Ukraine and its most valuable industrial part and continues to advance militarily for the time being at least. The West has imposed the toughest sanctions imaginable, but Russia has escaped with ease, while the West appears trapped and discredited, and to have shot itself in the foot, the head and the stomach.

Sanctions are in place of war. It is war by economic means. The West does not approve of this "unprovoked invasion", but isn't willing to fight a nuclear power. The West (America and Europe, with popular - if "manufactured" support, despite great hardship) provides Ukraine with arms, training and money, but has sent in the locals to fight a superpower.

But are sanctions an effective alternative to war? What is their purpose? What does the historic record of sanctions teach us? Who pays the price? Are there any other ways of getting international law and human rights respected?

Action in the UN is blocked by the Russian veto, so war cannot be approved as it was in the case of Libya.

The aim of sanctions is to modify the behaviour of a regime. However, in this case the Russian people appear to strongly support their leadership and there is no Gorbachev figure around to ease a transition. Gorbachev dropped Russia's ally Iraq to permit the 1991 Iraq war.

Cuba, Venezuela. Sanctions did not top all the Communist leadership and despite the harshest of blocades, Fidel Castro died in his bed.

Iraq. From 1991 the date of the first invasion to 2003 sanctions caused the deaths of half a million Iraqis but it took an invasion by the West to topple Saddam Hussein.

Syria. The west plus the Arab League imposed sanctions after a failed sunny uprising in 2011 but the Shia are still running the country, with assistance from Russia and Iran.

Iran. Iran was the most sanctioned country in the world before Russia invaded Ukraine. 

-Sanctions were first imposed in 1979 after revolutionary students stormed the US embassy and were lifted in 1981 when the hostages were released. 

-Sanctions were reimposed in 1987 after years of Iranian harassment of Gulf shipping and other alleged acts of terrorism. 

-The sanctions were expanded in 1995 

-and a third set were imposed in 2006 when Iran refused a UN resolution to stop uranium enrichment. 

-The sanctions started in the petrochemical industry, then expanded to banking and insurance, then shipping and then the web where Iran was denied DNS access. 

-Then in 2015, there was the JCPA deal, that was cancelled by Trump in 2018 and sanctions were reimposed. 

-In February 2020, Iran was placed on the FATF Blacklist.

All this to say that the Iranian theocracy is still going strong and has just held a meeting in Tehran with Turkish and Russian leaders, presumably on the sanctions and how to take advantage of them.

South Africa. Here the sanctions worked a white minority government handed over power to a representative government in the face of universal condemnation of apartheid. This cases not like those above because the world United against an apartheid regime.

Israel. An apartheid regime with a vision of hegemony from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean, that has escaped sanctions due to a powerful Jewish-US lobby and a history of pogroms and the Holocaust.

So looking at the overall history of sanctions and their effectiveness, we could ask why, if sanctions have not been effective against small and medium-sized countries, then how could we expect a large and economically and militarily important country like Russia, led by shrewd and experienced president, to fold? Did the West really think this through? Did the reference frame include Brexit, Covid, the debt crisis and rising inflation, the Middle East, Taiwan, de-globalisation. Were the lessons of previous interventions really learnt? Was this belligerent and conflictual attitude to problem-solving ever re-evaluated?

Because what sanctions appear to have achieved is to have weakened and split the world economy and the world powers. Sanctions are really a story of a dominating power imposing its will on the dominated or slave or student power - something that worked well for a couple of hundred years. But now, the third world or the South doesn't like or appreciate this and do not approve of the Western narrative, seeing it as colonial and disrespectful, and they are now in a position to express themselves.

Perhaps the reason why Europe and America impose sanctions on Russia is that, well,  what else could we do? But the problem is this has exposed our impotence and isolation. Sanctions have failed to modify Putin's behaviour on the country he has found ways around Western sanctions and is building relationships, that may or may not endure, with the South. This at a time when China can be expected in this decade to make its first moves towards Taiwan.

So it seems that the mistake was that the sanctions were designed in America, approved in Europe and imposed on the South. We should not be asking the South to sign at the bottom of the page on the right, but we should be discussing and persuading and negotiating.

So this article should not be taken as an anti Western rant. Not at all. But it does question the attitude and the methods. It follows the principles of the West, it wants the West to be respected and followed, but this article recognises that this method employed of imposing rules has failed because we in the West no longer have a monopoly of power so to keep our leadership and our room for manoeuvre we must operate by persuasion by example and by conviction, not by imposition.

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SANCTIONS - SOUTH AFRICA

21 July 2022

These sanctions worked. A white minority government handed power to a forming black government as a result of a universal condemnation of apartheid.

 In 1968, the then SA president Vorster banned a UK cricket tour because the team contained a black player. Sanctions started in the sports industry, in particular cricket and rugby, mutch loved by all South Africans.

 And later, the ban extended to music with for example a concert by Elton John transferred to neighbouring Botswana.

 In 1985, foreign banks called in their loans.

 In 1976, civil unrest began amongst children in Soweto, which eventually made the country ungovernable.

 The collapse of communism in 1991 and changing world politics as the world became more inclusive following globalisation also played into the the worldwide anti-apartheid movement and global support for human rights. There was a popular world wide boycott of goods from South Africa. All this especially at a time when in the mid 1980s CND were marching through the streets of London, the conial power. 

 The US didn't have the same sporting and commercial links, but protests started there in churches and eventually forced big business to disinvest and the US government to impose financial sanctions.

 So we see that following decolonisation there was a worldwide revulsion at apartheid and this coupled with boycotts and sanctions lead to the transfer of power to a black majority government.

We could at the same time ask why sanctions were not applied against Israel another apartheid regime. And the answer lies in the very active support from the essentially American Jewish lobby and the history of pogroms and the Holocaust. 

So in this case, we might expect to see a flourishing, if contested, Zionist regime from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean.

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ENERGY WILL BE RATIONED

The EU has a plan to reduce energy consumption by 15% by next March.

It's a clever and detailed plan that breaks down your permitted consumption levels by EU state, first public sector must make economies, then commercial and finally individuals.

It's a proposal from the commission and needs to be approved. 

I just wonder how they will decide the split between states, industry and private individuals; and I wonder how they (the EU) will ensure compliance (by states with their plans). Do people get (digital) ration books? Is it done with the smart meters?

So I guess that's hundreds of new processes and hundreds of thousands of new staff to run all this for the EU bureaucracy. Love it.

What about the effect - on top of recent vertiginous price rises and caps- on GDP, on employment and share prices?

Will Germany shut down its automobile production lines? The principal Industries using up energy are automobile and chemicals, the biggest consumers of Russian gas. These industries will suffer the most and in particular ... the manufacture of fertiliser - oh rich irony! No food.

The Europeans can join the starving billions of the South.  And no doubt there will also be new covid-style handouts for industry and the public to keep them off the streets.... I mean there's the price caps on energy and petrol and the subsidies that they require; and now there'll be more subsidies to keep industry open even if the wheels aren't turning, and for people who lose their jobs. And surely this subsidies should be means-tested, or perhaps we have given up caring about the effects on future generations, to further plump up the state bureaucracy. Or we could organise auction sales of gas, at least for industry.

Just gets dumber and dumber with more and more hot air.

How will the public take price rises and now rationing? I guess in France the gilets jaunes are ok as they keep themselves warm on their roundabouts with braziers of foraged wood. But yes, how will we deal with heat waves and winter freeze-overs? We need an energy lockdown, obviously. And they are recommending that we turn offer our Wi-Fi at night, but what about turning off the data centres as there's so much duplicated and obsolete data?

What started as a western boycott, is now Russia turning off the taps. And just as we go into the final death spiral of debt along comes LNG at four times the price, I gather, of piped gas....More top ironies.

And we're told it was Putin who miscalculated!*

*PS Putin started cutting back delivery of gas over a year ago, it seems, to stop Germany from topping up its reserves. E'ez a clever bugger!!

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