The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – July 31, 2022

27 Comments

  1. bruce wilder

    The NY Times participation in the Ukraine propaganda war continues to fascinate me, especially when it frays enough to show some reluctance.

    One theme or really a primary narrative in New York Times coverage has been an insistent claim that the Russians randomly destroy civilian areas and structures in Ukrainian cities.

    Today:

    Two missile strikes hit military compounds in central Kharkiv just before dawn on Friday, the latest in a series of powerful nighttime strikes on the city that seem increasingly targeted at sites used by the Ukrainian armed forces.

    At least two soldiers died, according to rescue workers and police officers at the scene.

    Ukrainian officials rarely release information on military casualties or damage done to military sites and forbid photographers from recording the destruction at them. The head of the regional administration in Kharkiv, Oleh Synyehubov, said only that a 71-year-old civilian had been wounded in the head from the blasts.

    On Friday, soldiers and emergency workers covered in brick dust cleared away the rubble from the courtyard of a two-story building. Two vehicles, an S.U.V. and a jeep, caked in dust and crushed by falling debris, had been dragged out into the street.

    An officer in plainclothes asked reporters to leave, explaining that the site was a military building.

    Across the street, a second missile demolished a wing of the Agricultural Institute. Soldiers guarded the gate, and other soldiers loaded boxes into vehicles at the entrance of a building.

    The gardens of the institute were full of old vehicles, including three damaged Russian armored vehicles. One was marked with the letter “Z,” which is one of the code signs used by Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.

    While much of the Russian bombardment of Kharkiv has seemed random and indiscriminate, some recent strikes by ballistic missiles — including on Wednesday morning — have landed in or near compounds and buildings used by the Ukrainian military, suggesting a more calculated targeting by Russian forces.

    So, there you have it: a reporter has reported not only that it might not be true — under cover of detecting a newly emergent pattern — but also exposes the manipulation by Ukrainian officials that may drive the editorial line: officials never acknowledging military structures and facilities and prohibiting reporters from photographing or even lingering to view them. It is interesting to me that these moments of actual journalism are sprinkled sparingly into the coverage.

    I feel sometimes as if very little can be known reliably about the course and conduct of the war, beyond its general brutality and destructiveness, let alone its causes or the potential for settlement. “Experts” putting forth disinformation under the guise of “explaining” context and significance is common. But, that doesn’t excuse the cheerleading by mainstream Media. On some level, I am a little shocked by the implicit bloodthirstiness of it — the prevalent spirit of “let’s fight to the last Ukrainian” that prevails in the absence of any Western interest in pressing concessions to secure a settlement that would end the violence of the conflict.

  2. someofparts

    https://www.globalresearch.ca/when-globalists-crossed-rubicon-assassination-shinzo-abe/5786559

    “Abe was highest ranking victim so far of the hidden cancer eating away at governance in nation states around the world, an institutional sickness that moves decision making away from national governments to a network of privately-held supercomputer banks, private equity groups, for-hire intelligence firms in Tel Aviv, London and Reston, and the strategic thinkers employed by the billionaires at the World Economic Forum, NATO, the World Bank and other such awesome institutions.”

    This is why the European heads of state baffle us by destroying their own nations. This, in fact, is what Putin really meant by saying the U.S. head of state is not ‘agreement capable’. An agreement made with the American president is not binding until it is countenanced by the people really in charge. Same for Europe, Australia, etc.

    Abe was the last one who really was in charge in his own nation. As the article linked to here explains, Japan under Abe was resisting domination by the true behind-the-scenes rulers of the West. The NATO meeting in Madrid was a laying-down-the-gauntlet moment and when it became clear that Abe was going to resist their power, they killed him.

    I won’t live long enough to see the end of this movie but I hope the good people win, because the alternative is monstrous.

    Also, just to include a feel-good experience here is a link where Eve Bartlett describes her visit to Crimea. Lovely stuff.

    https://www.mintpressnews.com/return-russia-crimea-story-referendum-lives-since/262247/

  3. Z

    Random fact: Rahm Emanuel is the U.S. Ambassador to Japan.

    Z

  4. Z

    War Pimp “Let Them Eat Lead” Zelenskyy, fresh from an eyebrow plucking for his Vogue exposé, went back into war mode this week and raised the Ukrainian conscription age to 70.

    Unfortunately, it is probably going to take a military strike on a major U.S. city for the U.S.ers to come to their collective senses and unite enough to pose a threat to our rulers’ supremacy over us. It’s even more unfortunate that these two drugged up 80 year old idiots are empowered to induce such an attack on the U.S.:

    https://twitter.com/paulturner2012/status/1552730151074545666?cxt=HHwWhICy7Y_2s4wrAAAA

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WecV9XwgqD4

    Z

  5. Z

    Been reading a lot on Twitter about previously ultra-healthy people who got vaxxed dying suddenly, though not necessarily immediately after the vax.

    I have no idea as to how common this is, but it makes me wonder if folks who are addicted to exercise … the compulsive types who haven’t missed a workout in ten years … are driven to continuing their exercise regimen after the COVID vax instead of taking some time off and the reactions to the vax are causing some internal organ damage.

    Just a theory that I admittedly have no data to support …

    Z

  6. Z

    You’d think that if there is something potentially damaging in the vax or in the body’s reaction to it, and it doesn’t appear to be that uncommon to have an adverse reaction to the vax for a few days, and yet the host is still pushing their body to its limits through running or strenuous exercise that that could cause some problems.

    Z

  7. NL

    Astrid
    “Yet somehow the Russian government is capable of doing things that their population wants and improving their common people’s lives year on year.”

    Evidence please. And of course, it would be hard to comprehensively prove or disprove this. There are also plenty of excuses, like the Western sanctions. However, we can look at certain things and get a general sense of where our and Russian oligarchies are:

    Do the Russians ‘live’ with the virus SARS-CoV2 like we live with it here in the US? — Yes, they do. The numbers of infected and dead are fudgeable — the bottom line is, the Russian oligarchy does not pursue a dynamic zero policy like China, nor are there any mitigations, except for pharmacological treatments of dubious effectiveness. In fact, the Russian oligarchy attempted the same carbon-copy policy of “nudged”/forced vaccination as the US —
    From Oct of last year – “Many Russian regions on Monday announced plans to keep cafes, museums and other public venues open only to those who have recently recovered from COVID-19, have proof of inoculation with a Russian vaccine or a negative coronavirus test, as new cases in the country hit a record.

    The round of unpopular measures that limits freedoms in Russia comes as the number of daily COVID-19 infections reached an all-time high of 34,325 despite the state-driven vaccination programme.

    St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city of around 5 million people, said on Monday only people with a QR code showing they meet the criteria will be allowed to visit cafes or restaurants from Dec. 1, joining many other regions that have imposed similar restrictions. From Nov. 15, St. Petersburg will require a QR code for those who want to attend swimming pools, gyms, theatres and cinemas.

    Earlier this year, Moscow was first to impose a QR code system, under which a unique electronic code was required to visit restaurants, gyms, beauty parlours, hairdressers, cinemas or to stay in hotels. ”

    By Jan of this year, the oligarchy passed a law but ran into a potential for riots – “The Russian government has decided to delay a controversial bill requiring QR codes confirming vaccination or recovery from COVID-19 to access public places, despite surging cases and warnings from top officials about the highly infectious omicron variant” “Indeed, by using the QR code as a hybrid means of forcing people to get vaccinated, the Kremlin has increased opposition to itself among people who don’t like the inconveniences this system is producing and fear the consequences of such arrangements, the leftist Russian sociologist says.

    Had Moscow simply ordered everyone to get the shots, there would have been some opposition; but it would have been far smaller and far less politically threatening than the opposition that has emerged to the QR codes and the political reflections this approach has provoked among the people and the elites, Kagarlitsky continues.”

    At the same time, their ‘vaccine’ was added to the list of mandatory vaccines for workers in certain sectors (like education). Even their vaccine was the same type as one of our vaccines — the one based on AAV. No whole inactivated virus or protein based vaccines, like in China, were offered and even under development.

    A strong argument can be made that the invasion of Ukraine was the Russian’s oligarchy effort to suppress the building disquiet and genuine grassroot uprising in the country. And this seems to be working — the regime is enjoying support from the population, economic issues are readily explained away by the Western sanctions and some economic benefits may be even accruing to the oligarchy in the form of higher priced energy resources and economic support from China and the anti-US bloc. Of course, the pandemic is ongoing — hence there is no rush to finish the war. The Russian war in Ukraine did not benefit our oligarchy in terms of population consolidation. Our oligarchy threw all sorts of things at us — racial riots, space aliens, abortion, economic depression — nothing is super working to turn the population to loyalty and obedience, as we can see for example from the difficulty of forcing the office folks back into the offices.

    Second, Naked Capitalism recently posted a map with the % of single parent households in the countries around the world. 18% of the Russian household with children are single parent household — that is not that different than for the UK (21%) and us (23%). The US, UK and Russia are the leaders in the single parent households, way ahead of everyone else. In the US, 50% of the African homes with children are single parent — Kenya has the highest in Africa — 16% — with the rest of countries in that continent with much lower percentages. That difference for African ethnicity between the US and Africa is the indication of the derangement imposed by the oligarchy on family life. For European ancestry Americans, the % single parent homes is 20 — almost the same as in the UK and Russia.

    Our and Russian oligarchies are not that different…

  8. Trinity

    The reason why the Dem leadership insist they “need” the Repugnant party keep surfacing, or perhaps this is just another way for them to advance their desire for global leadership:

    https://chiefhro.com/2022/07/28/f-the-civil-service-again/

    “Rather than trying to work with the career civil service, the Trump Administration proposed Schedule F. When the proposal first rolled out, there was widespread belief that it was an attempt to politicize the civil service and add tens of thousands of political appointees.”

    “If we surveyed the people and asked if they thought 50,000 more politicians running around the federal government would be a good idea, does anyone really think the answer would be yes? Does any reasonable person think that having 50,000 more political appointees turning over every four or 8 years is a good idea? Is replacing technical experts with political hacks the way to run an effective government? Do the republicans who want to replace 50,000 civil servants with political appointees relish the idea of their 50,000 partisans being booted out and replaced with 50,000 partisans appointed by the next democrat in the White House?”

    “The Preventing a Patronage System Act, sponsored by Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA), would prohibit current and future administrations from implementing Schedule F without congressional approval. It has passed the House, but has not yet passed the Senate. The bill is called the Preventing a Patronage System Act because the federal government has experience with a patronage system. Nothing about that experience was good. Prior to the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883, the federal government was filled with patronage jobs. The spoils system meant that every change of administrations resulted in a mad dash for partisans to get a government job. The primary qualification for a job was not experience, but rather politics.”

    Of course, we’ve already seen technical experts replaced with political hacks (Covid). And I doubt that leaving it up to Congressional approval would prevent it from happening.

  9. different clue

    A military strike on a major American city would merely have a Pearl Harbor effect on the American population and rally it around the flag and the concept of striking a major city of whatever country the military strike was supposed to have come from.

    And there is always a chance that the Nazi Paperclipper Deep State might launch some kind of strike against an American city to get it attributed to whatever target our Nazi Paperclipper Deep State would like popular opinion to seek and support a vengeance strike-back against.

    It worked for the Nazi Paperclipper Deep State in 9/11, after all.

    So wishing for a military strike on a major American city is not a wise thing to wish for, however much pleasure anti-Americanitic anti-Americanites might take in beholding it for the first few days.

  10. Z

    A military strike on a major American city would merely have a Pearl Harbor effect on the American population and rally it around the flag

    Hey, you might be right. It’s always worked in the past.

    Z

  11. multitude of poors

    Random fact: Rahm Emanuel is the U.S. Ambassador to Japan.

    Don’t let’s forget Rahm’s Bro Dr. Zeke; among other things (such as a special, early on, Biden appointment) outside of claiming those over 75 may as well off themselves (though he certainly won’t be doing that), VC partner with vile governor Ned Lamont’s wealthy as sin wife, Annie Huntress Lamont

    VillageMD indeed: https://www.oakhcft.com/team-members/ezekiel-j-emanuel-m-d-ph-d

    And then there’s a Hollywood Bro too, Ariel? (I recollect he did some cinematic favors for the master droner and his wife Mickey) don’t have the time, gotta run, sorry for any misspellings; and sorry, no time to respond.

  12. Z

    Back to the vax, without spending tens of hours on the internet researching the matter, I instinctively believe that if you got some kind of poison in your body, and I’m classifying a vaccine as a temporary poison, and you increase the velocity that it’s traveling through your body and your cell walls are thinned from stressing your body that that could potentially lead to organ damage.

    Another danger I perceive from exercising too soon after getting the vax is that if you are inducing an immunity response and then a physical stress from exercising is introduced into the equation that the immunity response might start targeting, at least partially, the physical stress on your body … say “burning” lungs from pushing oneself hard on a run or a heavily beating heart … and that could cause problems.

    The most serious ailments I’ve ever had have been when I got slightly sick, still decided to go for a run anyway (((I’ll feel better after it))), and then got taken down hard.

    Z

  13. Z

    I’d have to think that for most of the vaccinated the vaccines have been a disappointment.

    I know some will lay a substantial part of the blame, or maybe 100% of it on the unvaccinated … if only everyone got vaccinated this would have been eradicated or rendered harmless (((they’re certain because they know))) … but who can forget COVID Czar Zients angry pronouncement that the vaccinated would be fine … party on, nothing to worry about, live your life, be you, you’re cool and covered … but the filthy unvaccinated had horrible deaths to look forward to.

    I think the more honest of the vaxxed, and again I’d put their numbers in the majority, would admit that the vaxxes have been a disappointment irregardless of the unvaxxed.

    Z

  14. Jason

    our Nazi Paperclipper Deep State

    Oh? There are a lot of “Nazis” – however one defines them – in “our” deep state?

    In fact, where on the world stage do “Nazis” hold any significant power? There aren’t any Nazis at the IMF or the WTO.

    There sure are a lot of Zionists and Zion-philes at these institutions.

  15. Willy

    I think propaganda is that place where another’s own personal experiences and opinions take dream, if you let them. The propagandists that is, while your own get ignored I mean. Nobody I know who’s gotten vaccinated bitches, let alone has died horribly. Nobody I know from the American Slavic community has surrendered to any Jewish NATO Nazi, let alone to Putin.

    So color me biased, against the propaganda. I think for propaganda to be plausible it has to be well…. plausible. But it is fun though, isn’t it?

  16. different clue

    @Jason,

    Here is an article about the rich nazi-phile aristocracy at the heart of American national government and held at semi-bay temporarily during the Roosevelt Administration during World War II.
    http://rigint.blogspot.com/2007/01/patterns-of-force.html

    There are lots of other essays about that sort of thing at the blog this blogpost came from.

    And David Emory on his For The Record set of radiocasts did some talks about this, including talks about the various rich American persons and groups who shipped various arms into Germany before the Nazi takeover to give the Hitler Nazi party a power advantage in the political struggles there.

    We are not talking about the vulgar swastika-uniform street Nazis who were used and then expendablized in World War II. We are talking about the oak-panelled-boardroom lifted-pinky-china-teacup old-leather-chair nazi funders and supporters who supported and facilitated Hitler’s rise to power for fun and profit. The people who paperclipped and ratlined thousands of various EuroNazis of various types out of Europe in order to save and preserve them for a possible future fascist resurgence. The people who created the shooter-teams and support infrastructure to kill Kennedy, X, King, Kennedy and numerous less-famous others to behead popular democracy with enough domestic leadership decapitation strikes.

    If you are looking for uniformed Hitler-style street nazis in American power structures, you are like the drunk who dropped his car keys off in the dark somewhere but who is looking for them under the streetlight because the light is better there.

  17. Z

    Different Clue,

    The people who created the shooter-teams and support infrastructure to kill Kennedy, X, King, Kennedy and numerous less-famous others to behead popular democracy with enough domestic leadership decapitation strikes.

    Those were Nazis?

    Zionists have much more power in the Deep State and have had much more to do with the current state of affairs than any Nazis. That’s not even debatable amongst honest people.

    Did Nazis run The Office of Special Plans that ginned up fake intelligence to justify invading Iraq? Did Nazis create Russia-gate? Do Nazis currently head the U.S. State Department? Have Nazis created conflicts with Syria and Iran? Do Nazis dominate Wall Street and Hollywood? Has Nazi money corrupted our political system? Did Nazis run the criminal Federal Reserve for the three decades prior to Powell? Did Nazis infest the economic team of the Robber Rubin Administration II, sometimes naively referred to as the Obama Administration, and bail out Wall Street and make working class U.S.ers bear the brunt of the financial crisis in 2009? Did Nazis push to destroy Glass-Steagal? Did Nazis bully Brooksley Born so that derivatives were deregulated? Did Nazis rape the USSR of its assets in the 90s? Did Nazis run the Epstein pedophile ring?

    Z

  18. Z

    Different Clue,

    If you are looking for uniformed Hitler-style street nazis in American power structures, you are like the drunk who dropped his car keys off in the dark somewhere but who is looking for them under the streetlight because the light is better there.

    How do you identify Nazis? What’s the tell?

    Z

  19. Jason

    If you are looking for uniformed Hitler-style street nazis in American power structures…

    I’m not looking for anything of the kind. Those are your words. I’m simply following the evidence.

    The global, western-aligned power structure is much closer to Israel than any well-dressed Nazis you or Dave Emory may imagine.* And Russia was run by its handful of Jewish Zionist oligarchs after it was looted by the west – via schemes devised and carried out primarily by Jewish Zionists with close ties to Israel in the academia-government-private sector nexus.

    Do we really need to name the names? Z does an admirable job pointing out the obvious from time to time, and there was a poster named Bridget a while back who went full-bore naming the names involved with the World Trade Center part of the Mossad-CIA event on 9/11. The New York part of the job was obviously handled by the Israelis.

    Kudos to Bridget for daring, and to Ian for publishing it.

    The “trade deals” that have almost entirely de-industrialized the United States and much of “the west” and beyond originated in Israel and its circles. It was bilateral trade agreements that preceded NAFTA and its successors, and the first bilateral agreement was between Israel and the U.S. The deal was so one-sidedly pro-Israel that the entire California agriculture industry was against it, as was most of US industry. On its side were the Heritage Foundation and, primarily, the all-powerful Israel Lobby. The deal passed rather easily.

    Given these facts, would it be your contention that a Nazi power structure in the US – an “oak-panelled-boardroom lifted-pinky-china-teacup old-leather-chair nazi funders and supporters” as you so verbosely and insubstantially put it – pushed a deal that much of the existing US power structure was against, and that benefited Israel handsomely?!

    Is Israel a Nazi outpost?

    I used to listen to Dave Emory on WFMU. Entertaining listening in my pot-smoking teenage and early twenty years. Joe Frank’s long-winded, sometimes funny narratives were also nice “mind candy” at the time.

    These days, I’d like to hear more facts from the likes of the late Admiral Thomas Hinman Moorer, he of the USS Liberty – which the Zionists knowingly torpedoed in order to start a war, as they are wont to do. I agree wholeheartedly with Admiral Moorer’s sentiment:

    “I’ve never seen a President . . . stand up to them [Zionists]. If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms.”

    *Of course top-level “Nazis” from Germany were brought to other countries for their expertise. That’s how it works with evolving power structures.

  20. Z

    It’s starting to look more and more to me like our rulers are trying to create geo-political chaos because there is another multi-trillion dollar hole in the derivatives market (((thanks again Robber, Larry, and Alan – the Committee to Enslave the World))) and they need to gin up some reason such as global economic calamities to print up another five trillion or so to plug it and maintain their financial power over their subjects.

    Z

  21. Astrid

    NL,

    You’re assigning homework to me, when the improvements in Russian living standards in the last 20 years is self evident to anyone paying the least bit of attention. You’re referencing a very specific piece of government action that has little to do with my general point.

    Furthermore, people who ask such questions of others are rarely open to changing their opinions no matter what is said in response. So…pass.

  22. Z

    Someone needs to talk some sense into Speed Queen Nancy P and remind her that there isn’t any Jeni’s ice cream in hell.

  23. Astrid

    DC has the best ice cream I’ve ever had (and I ate a ton of gelato in a Florentine vacation). https://happygyrotogo.square.site/

    BTW – drive through the toniest parts of NW DC last weekend. I noted that these are definitely not defensible positions against molotov cocktails and the like, nevermind whatever small arms might flow out of Ukraine. Lots of trees and lampposts too.

  24. NL

    Astrid, like they say in Ukraine and Russia, everyone has their own truth…

  25. Z

    I don’t see the point of China hitting Taiwan. If they’re pissed about Speed Queen Nancy P stirring up shit then the moral thing to do is to make the U.S. pay in some way. Hitting Taiwan is not going to necessarily do that and in fact might even benefit the U.S..

    Z

  26. Astrid

    Z,

    I agree. The Chinese will likely want to see off Taiwan one way or another in the next 24 months, but I think they will still try for a peaceful solution if they can. Killing Taiwanese by the KMT triggered the Taiwanese independence movement, and the Chinese have plenty of experience in Xinjiang and Tibet on counterinsurgency.

    I would see the Chinese restricting sales of pharma and rare earth to the West. Those are essential for the West but not serious hits to its economy. A functional West might be able to replace these supplies after a year or two of very strict rationing and recycling, but the West is not functional. This could escalate to de-dollarizing, nationalizing Western business interests, and cutting off all commerce and travel. But perhaps just a few months of dire pharma shortages and poor response will be enough for the West to back down, and also remind the DC/Hague morons that destroying China/Russia means destroying themselves.

    I will say that the Ukraine SMO makes me think that China will be more likely to go to war than I had previously thought. The Russian air defense and missile systems are better than I had realized. While there is an overall trend of Western decline, China and Russia (and Iran and other global South countries) may be tempted to use their technological advantage to reset the chessboard while they can. Even in a best case relatively peaceful transition to multipolarity, the world may be in for a bumpy ride in the next 5-10 years.

  27. Z

    If I was rich I’d offer to pay five hundred thousand dollars to the very first reporter who Speed Queen Nancy P grants a question to on her return from her vanity venture if they asked her: What are your thoughts on your husband Paul’s DUI hearing?

    Z

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