Today is Friday 16 September 2016

 

(John Mason)

It increasingly looks to me that the Russians believed before the Kerry/Lavrov latest "ceasefire" was announced that this effort on the part of the US was simply another ploy to gain time and breathing space for the unicorns and non IS jihadis so beloved by the Borg. If that is what the Russians believed they appear to have been correct.  Rebel units are re-deploying under cover of the ceasefire.  The rebel commands are resisting the delivery of relief supplies to the people under their rule in East Aleppo.  Why?  They prefer to retain the IO/propaganda meme involved in the image of starving civilians in their part of the city.   The overall situation favors the Russians and the Syrian government.  The transformation of Russo/Turkish relations is a major gain for the Bear especially in economic issues involving pipe lines and other infra-structure projects. 

And then there is the over-arching problem of chauvinist Russophobia in the Borg, and now in the post Martin Dempsey world of Ash Carter's Department of Defense.  I have asked many well connected people to tell me what the roots of this hostility may be.  The usual answer is that the Russians threaten the US and our NATO allies.  When pressed for specifics the only substantive thing produced is the Russian annexation of the Crimea.  There is  a lot of talk about threats.  What threats there are other than the possession by Russia of a world killing nuclear capability, a capability surpassed by ours seem unknowable.  At root the Borgist problem with Russia seems to me to be a threat to the self-image of the American Borg (the foreign policy establishment both left and right).  This self-image is born of our fantasy political construct of the Exceptional City on the Hill.  How amusing that is!  It is a fantasy of those ignorant of actual history.  The City on the Hill thing largely rests on the story of colonial New England.  The Chesapeake colonies?  Well, the less said about those mere commercial adventurers the better.  (That was irony)  Well, pilgrims, my 9th great grand dad, Major John Mason commanded the colonial force of Englishmen and friendly Indians in the Pequot War in 1633 or thereabouts.  His men both European and Native Americans killed or enslaved something like a thousand Pequot Indians and very nearly exterminated the Pequots as a people.  Was this the Exceptional City on the Hill at work?  And then there was King Philip's War, etc., ad nauseam.  But, nevertheless most Americans have an ingrained belief in our superiority as a "people" and as the exemplar of the destiny of mankind.  that being the case Americans and the Borg particularly, believe that we should be the world's hegemon.  Countries who resist our hegemony must be evil.  France has sinned in that way in the past and now there is  ... Russia.  Grrr!.  pl

 

Comments

[Kooshy]

IMO there is no difference in thier final goal between the lefties and righties, that is, R2Pers and right to invaders, with or without UNSC permission. They are all the same, especially for the receiving end. It may look different in the American eyes, but outside of US, media protected shipels cocoon, they see no difference how we name or term our excuses for our hubris. IMO this will not end with any administration change, or skirmishing little proxy wars.

[Brunswick]

>>Exclusive: A widely touted U.N. report accusing the Syrian government of two chlorine-gas attacks relied on shaky evidence and brushed aside witness testimony that claimed some incidents were staged, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

United Nations investigators encountered evidence that alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian military were staged by jihadist rebels and their supporters, but still decided to blame the government for two incidents in which chlorine was allegedly dispersed via improvised explosives dropped by helicopters.<<

>snip

>>The U.N. report wasn’t officially available until the end of August, but even then it was extremely difficult to access at the U.N.’s Web site. This week, I finally reached a U.N. press representative who walked me through the maze of links required to get to the right page, but it turned out that the page had been off-line since last Friday, the press aide said. Finally, on Tuesday, I was sent a link that worked.

Though these technical glitches may well have been coincidental, the effect was to delay any critical review of the U.N.’s report. By the time its evidentiary and logical gaps could be examined by the public, the conventional wisdom had already solidified regarding the Syrian government’s guilt.<<

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/08/un-team-heard-claims-of-staged-chemical-attacks/

[Babak Makkinejad]

You ought to include EU among the looters; chief among them has been former colonial ruler UK, followed by Holland, Portugal, Spain, France and Italy.

I think if you live in France or Italy you can very clearly see the contemptuous sneer of the politicians - Left and Right - for the common man - awami adami; they do not even have the decency to hide it.

[Brunswick]

Turkish Army Leapard's, not T-72's.

[Babak Makkinejad]

The peace negotiated at Yalta entailed a profoundly sensible division of Europe between the Western Diocletian States and non-Diocletian states.

Once USSR disappeared, the Western Diocletian marched East - as though they could transform the Easterners into Westerners. It was a matter of time, before the East reasserted herself - it is called the Ukraine Crisis.

Here is Babak Makkinejad's Theory of Peace: If the Block boundaries do not coincide with Civilizational Boundaries; there would be war.

[MRW]

American government officials view this as an existential threat.

Because. It would mean among other things that the US federal government could not denominate debts to host countries where their global bases are located in USD. The US federal government/US Treasury controls and creates the USD. It is the monopoly creator of the USD worldwide. It costs them nothing to create USD to provision itself.

Last year the US Treasury issued $60.8 trillion in new USD.

It redeemed $60.4 trillion to pay government expenses.

That left $365.5 billion for the use of The People in the real economy. This $365.5 billion was added to the “National Debt” as the nation’s equity, it’s wealth.

You are confused about “government debt.”

When the federal government incurs “debt” it is new interest-free dollars into the economy. No debt to children or grandchildren.

When businesses, households, and state and local govts incur “debt," it’s that bitchy stuff we all have to pay back, and supply collateral for.

“Debt” is a contronym when you’re talking about government debt vs private sector and state and local govt debt. Look it up.

[Ghostship]

Dropping the USD as the reserve currency would cause major problems for the US economy as the US Treasury could no longer go on printing money to fund the military, wars, etc., but I think power is the real issue. Zbigniew Brzezinski reckons that Eurasia is the center of world power and that if the US wants to maintain its global dominance, then it's imperative that no Eurasian competitor capable of dominating Eurasia and Africa be allowed to appear. Although its at best a "regional power", Russia by its very size and position is starting to re-emerge as a power capable of dominating Eurasia. The same goes for China. The two combined are a real future threat so according to the Borg, preventative action is required, because if it's not taken soon it won't be possible in future and then the Western Hemisphere (US and Canada) and Oceania(Australia) become peripheral to the essential global landmass.
Populations:
Africa - 1.1 billion
Americas - 0.95 billion
Eurasia - 4.6 billion

[MRW]

The US government can continue to increase its level of debt exponentially as long as the dollar retains its status as the reserve currency.

Bullshit.

Look at the Historical Tables on the whitehouse.gov site. Table 1.1. Data from 1789.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

We were not the reserve currency during WWII (neither during the prosperous 1950s). Look at the total government “debt” (federal) during that time. Open the link above and do your research. That was because after we went off the gold standard in 1933, three federal government economists figured out in 1939 that it meant we, the US federal government, could denominate--pay for--anything we wanted as a country in USD. So they did. They put everybody to work buildings ships and planes for Britain. The phenomenal story of that is here: Keep From All Thoughtful Men: How U.S. Economists Won World War II by military historian Jim Lacey.

[Warpig]

Its not mutually exclusive to believe that America has been and remains mankind's hope because of its noble ideals while simultaneously acknowledging that America hasn't always been great and has done terrible things.

[Fred]

Col.,

That was my impression too.

[MRW]

Global trade is now conducted with American dollars, so nations will continue to purchase treasury bonds, even without interest.

You don’t understand the process. Countries want USD so they can buy oil. They don’t want to go on the open market and suffer the vagaries of the floating exchange rate where they could be forced to give up a significant portion of their treasury if their money isn’t doing so well. Example: Canada. Three years ago the USD and CAN$ were at parity. Now the CAN$ is around $0.75 against the USD. So anything they buy with USD costs them 25% more in real terms of trade. So Canada sells us stuff to get those USD. Ditto China. Ditto most countries in the world.

When Canada or China sells us stuff those USD are wired to their foreign bank checking accounts at the Federal Reserve In NYC. They can go on the market and wire those profits home by exchanging USD for CAN$ or Yuan. They could buy US goods with them instead including stocks and corporate bonds. They could leave their profits in checking. Or they could make some interest.

Since the purpose is to acquire USD, they usually choose the latter. They ask the Fed to transfer their profits from checking to savings and buy treasury securities which are risk-free USD cash equivalents that pay interest. Under no circumstances can they take USD out of the American banking system. Against the law. So Canada and China’s USD export profits are in their savings account at the Fed in Manhattan. (They do purchase small amounts of USD to service their country’s airport exchange markets, and the like, but not billions of them.)

When Canada or China want to cash in those treasury securities, they inform the Fed who sells them through “primary dealers”--Fed-independent--and the capital and interest is returned to their checking accounts.

The act of moving their capital and interest from their savings account back to their checking account is called ”paying off the National Debt".

[MRW]

Our debt is now approaching $20 trillion, the highest in the history of the world.

Lucky us. It’s The People’s wealth. Most of it is in individual and institutional pension funds.

The National Debt is the difference between all dollars created since 1791 and present time minus the dollars used (destroyed) for taxes.

[MRW]

Three workers now support every social security recipient.

Another ignorant bullshit statement.

FICA taxes do not pay for Social Security.

Social Security payments are mandated by law.

The trust fund concept is used, for historical reasons, as one way to view particular future obligations of the government, but certainly not all. The government has the obligation to pay for future years of military expenses, too, and many years of employee payrolls, and the future costs of congress, etc., but it would not be meaningful to record artificial funds today to represent the total of those future payments for many years.

The payments to be made by the government for each program are determined by law, not by the amounts recorded in the trust funds, and concerns about trust funds “running out of money” do not make sense. In fact, it would be easy to increase the size of any of the funds if we wanted to; it just wouldn’t accomplish anything useful. Congress and the President could simply pass a law calling for an accounting entry adding to a trust fund account: it could be for $ 500 billion or $ 1 trillion dollars, or any other amount, at any time. That would just be a larger version of what is done each year: an accounting entry determined by law is added to the fund accounting balance each year.

Newman, Frank N. (2013-04-22). Freedom from National Debt (pp. 88-89). Two Harbors Press. Kindle Edition.

Frank N Newman was Deputy Secretary of the US Treasury.

[MRW]

that there is a free lunch when central banks "buy" assets including government debt

Our central bank, the Federal Reserve, buys and sells treasury securities on the open market to maintain the target overnight interest rate for interbank transactions, aka, the Fed Funds Rate. It’s a very complicated process for the average Joe to understand, but they’ve been doing it for decades, since before WWII.

[apenultimate]

SS will bring in less than it makes starting in 2020. Without any change, SS will not be able to pay out full benefits by 2035. After that time, it'll people will get back 75 cents for every dollar they put in.

There is an easy solution, which effectively is a tax on the richer members of society--eliminate the income caps. Currently, only the first $120k or so of income is subject to the SS withholding. If you make more than that, you might notice at some point during the year--after you've made that much--your paycheck might get a nice bounce upwards for the remainder of the year because SS is no longer taken out.

If you eliminate that cap and make all earned income subject to SS withholding (without increasing benefits for people making over that much), then SS would remain solvent until at least the year 2090, if not beyond.

Of course, that is something of a redistribution of wealth. But considering the huge disparity of wealth in this country at this point, I think it's probably worth it.

The establishment sees a lot of money in the SS fund and they want access to it--thus the attempts in the past decade to allow that money to be invested in more risky ways. Fortunately, so far those efforts have failed.

[optimax]

MB

Abby Hoffman wrote STB. I scanned the book in a book store and picked up a bad piece of advice that got me thrown into jail for a night when in college. Drunk on tequila I was urinating in an alley when a police cruiser pulled up and two cops started asking me if I had been drinking. I was too drunk to not admit it. We were all quite friendly and joking but I stupidly took Abby's advice by asking, "Am I under arrest. Ociffers?" thinking they would say "No" and let me go, as Abby said would happen. Instead, they said, "Now you are," handcuffed me and put me in the drunk tank. I never listened to Hoffman or drank tequila after that night.

The clownish behavior of Hoffman and Jerry Rubin made them perfect counter culture icons for the media. Here's an old video of Hoffman being kicked off the Dorothy Fuldheim Show. She was a Cleveland institution by then.

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

[kao_hsien_chih]

As I understand it, SS theoretically has a huge reserve from the surpluses it has been running so far: the huge debt that US gov't owes to the Social Security trust fund, which makes the latter effectively the biggest creditor to USG. This was the reform during the Reagan years, right? And the idea was that if this debt is paid, SS cannot become insolvent. Why is it that no one is talking about repaying SS (and the American retirees) what they are owed instead of cutting back benefits? (rhetorical question, more or less).

[J]

Colonel, TTG,

Two items of note:

http://countercurrentnews.com/2016/09/colin-powell-leaked-emails-reveal-israel-200-nuclear-bombs/

https://www.rt.com/usa/359488-rule-41-fbi-surveillance-change-congress/

[VietnamVet]

Brunswick,

Thanks. The clip pretty much ices that NATO is supporting the Turkish incursion notwithstanding any involvement with the earlier Coup attempt. As a result, Russia did not challenge establishment of the safe zone and settled for a cease fire. This pretty much assures the partition of Syria. The convoy is reconnaissance force at best to direct air strikes. Due to the purge of Turkish military, backstabbing the Kurds and the obvious hostility of the Syrian Sunni rebels; Ash Carter doesn’t appear to have the forces to take Raqqa by November 7th.

[Fred]

MRW,

5 separate comments? How about a little consideration for the readers.

[jld]

"between the Western Diocletian States and non-Diocletian states."

And a pony...

[Fred]

Dr. Brenner,

Sir I believe you should issue a corrective to your corrective. "The former was by far more widespread and enduring." ...."Look at what's happening in the ensuring 45 years - a veritable counter-revolution pulling us back to the 1920s with virtually no resistance."

Among the enduring political actions taken were the immigration act of 1965, which has led into a major change in the ethnic make up of America. (I'm sure you'll hear plenty from Tyler on that subject.) Lets not leave out school de-segregation and school busing. I'm sure that those did not affect you in the privileged halls of Berkley and Cornell. Perhaps you heard of Roe vs. Wade over that 45 year period. You could watch the videos, but in that are you are correct, there is no resistance to that judicial gutting of the Bill of Rights that keeps them suppressed. Back to 1920's, with legally mandated school segregation and abortion in the back alleys? No.

"the racial crisis" It may have been calm in Berkley, but in 1967 the Detroit race riots led the governor to send in the national guard and LBJ to send elements of the 82nd and 101st. There was another riot in '68. "not enduring" other than a city that still hasn't recovered economically.

"In addition, the college life style associated with WASPS and predominant at places like Rice went on: .... rape of young women at frat houses..."

I'm sure there were some real ones. How many might there have been and which frat houses did they occur in? Were there any rapes in the football team's showers like at Penn State? Men getting raped sure don't seem to matter to any of our politicians, especially on the left, today. (They didn't matter to Joe Paterno when he covered up Jerry Sandusky's actions for decades. Penn State thinks it doesn't matter now either since they are giving him a big tada this weekend.)

"Here in Austin (supposedly liberal, cosmopolitan), all of the above noted activities are thriving. "
Which frat houses are women being raped in? Do you have personal knowledge of this? Have you reported those to the city or state police? I sure can't find any reported rapes in a frat house in Austin in 2016 using google. Should I look for details in Rolling Stone, I think they had a write up about rape on a college campus not too long ago? Hopefully the legal team in the city is better than the guy who prosecuted the Duke lacrosse team, he would up disbarred.

"A Rice alum circa 1968 would feel right at home." How would that be? MLK was assassinated in April of '68 which sparked riots across the country. I see a great deal of manufactured agitation in the US and Dallas recently suffered 5 assassinated cops but I don't see nationwide riots needing almost a division of troops to put down. What was Rice's student body make up in 1968, 90+% white? Florida, my alma mater, didn't have more than a handful of black students and only 1 black football player that year. Maybe Rice was already "progressive" though I sure as hell doubt it.

[Martin Oline]

Apemultimate:

"SS will bring in less than it makes starting in 2020. Without any change, SS will not be able to pay out full benefits by 2035."

I'm curious if these figures include the monies siphoned off the fund by Congress to pay for unrelated programs? Do these numbers assume it is returned to the social security fund or that it is gone forever?

[LeaNder]

The Russians can choose to trade their nickel in Swiss Francs if they want or coconuts. Everything have pros and cons.

Jack, I might even agree, if I understood what you have in mind with here: "dollar instruments have the most market depth", the dollar is widely accepted on the world market? (systemic leverage is growing??? Not sure I understand, but if I do, I agree)

The Russian's don't have nickels, your usage suggests definition 2, a pejorative usage, minimal worth:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nickel

Russians have the Ruble (Russian Ruble) as the Swizz have the Franc, supposing you are American and not a Brit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruble#English_spelling

[LeaNder]

It’s a very complicated process for the average Joe to understand,

Why not try anyway, MRW?

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/073113/introduction-treasury-securities.asp

Since the IYI have convinced the pols

Could you help me out with IYI? Or what it stands for?