Young Master Smeet
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Craig Murray covers this quite well:
“Anyone who knows the former Soviet space well understands the crucial difference between “grazdanstvo” – citizenship – and “narodnosc” – nationality. It featured on all identity documents, including passports, in the Soviet Union and on post Soviet national passports, at least until countries joined the EU.”
“There may have been a slight Russian speaking majority. 14.8% of those, Ukraine wide, who identified their nationality as Ukrainian, gave Russian as their first language. This was higher in the East and lower in the West. But those who self-identify as Ukrainian but speak Russian as their first language, are no different to English speaking Scots. Russian speaking was advantageous in the Soviet Union.”
etc.
Putin’s full speech
“To emphasise, one of the reasons for the centuries-old Russophobia, the Western elites’ unconcealed animosity toward Russia is precisely the fact that we did not allow them to rob us during the period of colonial conquests and forced the Europeans to trade with us on mutually beneficial terms. This was achieved by creating a strong centralised state in Russia, which grew and got stronger based on the great moral valuesof Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, as well as Russian culture and the Russian word that were open to all.”Well, at least he’s clear about his goals.
Obviously, this is meant to be scary:
“The United States is the only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons twice, destroying the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. And they created a precedent.
“Recall that during WWII the United States and Britain reduced Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and many other German cities to rubble, without the least military necessity. It was done ostentatiously and, to repeat, without any military necessity. They had only one goal, as with the nuclear bombing of Japanese cities: to intimidate our country and the rest of the world.” (also, kinda true).
UK pension funds sell assets and tap employers in rush for cash
gulp.
“UK pension schemes are dumping stocks and bonds to raise cash and seeking bailouts from their corporate backers as the crisis in the industry continues to rage a week after the government’s “mini” Budget.”
Fun with fictitious capital:
Pension collapse?So, as I understand this, the pound value/interest rate rises on various financial instruments meant that the financial instruments held by pension funds effectively fell (since their value is in effect a multiplier of their expected income, so as more lucrative bonds came on stream, the value of their holding notionally fell) which meant they would have had to sell off assets in order to fulfil their obligations under financial rules.
So, the Bank of England had to intervene to protect the people in the “liability-driven investors” sector.
I believe it’s been revealed that the Queen has had several close shaves over recent years: the state of her health appears to have been known at top media and political circles: it does look like the punishment beating of Charles takes on a new light, the Times must have known he was on the cusp of office and wanted to fire a shot across his bows: lets see, now irremovably ensconced in office, if we does do a bit of revenge wreaking…
Part of the problem seems to have been it was a ragbag of a constitution, skimming through it, I’m sure I saw it abolishing slavery twice: some parts looked good, a right to work, a right to food, water and housing, but it was all about the state being empowered: I’ll be interested to hear the actual reasons why it was defeated, but I suspect confusion would have been one of them.
The Russian propaganda channel has advertised that Russia has adopted a raft of restrictive legislation: it might be signalling a willingness to be in this for the long haul, especially a law for effective military requisition of goods.
https://www.rt.com/russia/558973-criminal-code-amendments-treason/
Russia has introduced more severe punishments for actions that it considers detrimental to its national interests, such as joining the enemy during wartime or fighting against the country in foreign armed conflicts. The legislation was signed into law by President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.
https://www.rt.com/business/558980-putin-law-domestic-firms-military/
According to the legislation, Russian companies are now banned from refusing military contracts while such operations are ongoing. Mentioned in the document as covered under the provision are contracts for the purchase of goods and services for army use, as well as those aimed at creating stockpiles of products, raw materials and semi-finished goods for defense orders.
https://www.rt.com/russia/559000-media-law-retaliation-foreign/
According to the law, “if a ban (restriction) is imposed on the activity of a Russian media outlet within the territory of a foreign state,” the prosecutor general and deputies may apply similar measures to that country’s media outlets operating in Russia, resulting in “the termination of the correspondents’ accreditation,” revoking of registration or licenses, and the closure of offices.
Well, these sorts of systems are necessary to some extent in any widescale organisation, computerisation doesn’t add magic, but it does add interconnexion and co-ordination: if we’re going to have trainlines running or nuclear power plants, we will have to have vertically organised command control systems to do so, and the same could be applied to the whole logistics chain. After all, we will have Amazon’s systems to use for ourselves once we change over, absent the compulsion. That plural and myriad organisations can organise themselves means they can link up and effectively function together.
The paper also references Stafford Beer, so they must have the viable system model in mind. so subordinate units would still have relative autonomy within the needs of the wider system.
Beer’s concept was structures should be recursive, so global planning is possible, but in a steady state sub-systems would run pretty much without interference. In the chart above, system 5 would be the population as a whole, through worldwide bodies.
Well, we will need society-wide planning, if we want to build, say, a railway across the Bering Straight, or to move everyone into Texas while we re-wild the earth, and we’ll need some sort of co-ordination against external shocks. Lawrence’s model includes a role for the FAO as some sort of worldwide co-ordinating body, and similar other such bodies, so there is a role for this sort of planning.
I think Cockschott, whose work they seem to be influenced by, would argue that if it can be designed as a system at the firm level, it can be run by computer globally. I believe even Lawrence’s model requires ‘statistical clearing houses’ so some of the mathematics deployed here may come into play there. I certainly think Kantarovich’s polynomial spaces for optimal productive allocation may well play a part.
Where I disagree with them is that I think machine computers aren’t essential, what matters is the underlying methodology.
I think it relates to this: “this total profit is henceforth received only in the form of interest, i.e., as mere compensation for owning capital that now is entirely divorced from the function in the actual process of reproduction” i.e. instead of getting the residue of any prices achieved in the form of profits, profits simply become (he is suggesting) fixed interest on capital advanced, so long as that payment is achieved, there is no requirement to pursue the maximisation of profits. The c:v ratio is only relevant because the size of the firms means they have a wider impact on the economy generally (i.e. the c:v ratio is incidental, it is the bare interest doing the leg work here).
That’s how I’d read it.
Well, they say the police entered 1000’s of organisations, so I think it is close to a certainty that at least one member has been a police infiltrator. I suspect they wouldn’t have put in much effort, but a passive member.
I think it is probable that they have had access to our membership list.
But, overall, our openness is our best defence against infiltrators.
But, if there was a member who was very keen for about 4 years and then vanished altogether (and had a van)….
This sounds precisely the sort of thing Graeber and Wengrow are having a pop at. They’d point out that the agricultural revolution took millennia, and a prerequisite for elites appropriating surplus would be restrictions on leaving the area, among other things. Also, they note ‘play agriculture’ wherein societies avoided being dependent upon a monocrop.
This is an interesting long article on RT:
Ukraine is winning the battle on twitter.For a propaganda channel, it contains some interesting admissions of Russian failure:
“Within the first week of the Russian operation getting underway, it was clear to most that many of the assumptions that had been made were flawed and/or misplaced. First and foremost, Moscow had opted not to employ its forces according to standard doctrine, opting instead to take a light approach, which appeared to be born from a concerted effort to minimize civilian casualties and harm to civilian infrastructure that itself was derived from a fundamental misunderstanding of the reality of the situation on the ground in Ukraine.[…]
the statements by Russian leadership suggesting that the Ukrainian military might remain in its barracks and that civilian leadership would not interfere with Russia military operations suggest that these assumptions were made using intelligence provided by the 5th Department. That such assumptions, if indeed they were made, proved to be so fundamentally off target, when combined with the preparedness of the Ukrainian military to engage the initial columns of Russian forces, suggests that the work of the 5th Department had been disrupted by Ukrainian security services, who took control of Russian human networks and fed false reports back to the Russian leadership.”Ritter suggests that despite all that, the attack in the North on Kyiv was a feint, and substantially the military operation is on track, and that attrition might tell in the coming month.”Perception, when subjected to the harsh light of reality, is exposed as little more than wishful thinking. This is very much the case regarding the so-called “Battle for Kiev,” where the Ukrainian military was left holding territory which no longer served any useful purpose for the Russians. Russia was able to redeploy its forces to better support its prime objective, the seizure of Donbass, leaving the Ukrainian forces in Kiev frozen in place.”
“This is the current situation with the Ukrainian military facing off against the Russians in Donbass today. The Ukrainians, lacking any meaningful artillery support of their own, are at the mercy of the Russian artillery and rocket launchers that pound their positions day in and day out, without respite. The Russian troops have taken a very deliberate approach to engaging with their Ukrainian opponents. Gone are the rapid advances by unprotected columns and convoys; now, the Russians isolate the Ukrainian defenders, pound them with artillery, and then carefully close in and destroy what remains with infantry supported by tanks and armored fighting vehicles. The casualty ratio in this fighting is unforgiving for Ukraine, with hundreds of soldiers lost each day in terms of killed, wounded and surrendered, while Russian casualties are measured in scores.”
Now, this is still propaganda, but I think it is worth taking this as what Russia wants us to believe, and I think there is a grain of truth in it. After all, Ritter is admitting to a ‘turkey shoot’ and heavy losses.
