Young Master Smeet
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As expected, his book is quite clear sighted:
“Whether or not there is more discontent in the world than was formerly the case, there is no doubt whatsoever that the means of fanning it and exploiting it are infinitely greater than they used to be, because of the increase in literacy and the introduction of wireless and television sets in large numbers.
“Although the same channels of communication are available to those involved in protecting the existing order, they seldom manipulate them as skillfully as their opponents.”
This is from 1972, the lesson has been learned, and propaganda control has been learned very ferociously, up to and including Israel’s apparent targeting of journalists as a war strategy.
“Countries are obliged to fight where their interests demand they should, and this is not necessarily along their geographical frontiers.”
This is a killer quote, Britain has worldwide interests, and it will use force to protect and advance them.
Ukraine Increasing conscription and raising taxes The article alleges the burden will fall on the poor:
“The two complementary bills regarding on mobilisation which were submitted by the government to parliament on December 30 2023, indicate that Zelensky and his inner circle are serious about this. At the same time, if adopted and implemented, the new approach to mobilisation will also add significant strain for already stretched the Ukrainian state institutions and society.”
“The planned mobilisation will be accompanied by a new economic strategy to increase the tax burden on individual citizens and small and medium-sized businesses, while social spending will be radically reduced.”
Given Ukraine is practically bankrupt, with donor states paying its civil service wage bill, this is an ugly sign: the demographics are not good, and the economy is crashed (and taxing people while calling up more workers is death spiral territory).
Indeed, as this blog post notes: “In late November, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed off on the 2024 Ukrainian state budget, which earlier had been passed by the Verkhovna Rada. It goes without saying that the war is the key factor affecting the structure of revenues and expenditures. The state budget anticipates revenues of UAH 1.78 trillion ($43.7 billion), while expenditures almost doubled, to an anticipated UAH 3.35 trillion ($82.3 billion). The expectation is that the difference will be covered by international loans and grants.” (For comparison the UK will spend £1,189 billion ($15,128 billion).
This is stark: “If sufficient external funding is not available, the government and the National Bank may resort to money printing and use the liquidity reserves of the national banking system, which are about $20 billion. But this would lead to running inflation, with devaluation of the national currency and higher national debt. Ultimately, these factors jointly would be expected to cause a national default between 2025 and 2027.”
Divisions in the Israeli government
“Weiss’s position – and the aspirations of the settler movement – appear to have been dealt a setback by Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, who has presented his plans for Gaza after the destruction of Hamas.
“On January 5, he said: “Gaza residents are Palestinian, therefore Palestinian bodies will be in charge, with the condition that there will be no hostile actions or threats against the State of Israel.” Gallant further proposed that there should be no Israeli civil presence in Gaza.”
Likud wants the status quo pre-war, Palestinian day to day administration of a reservation/Bantustan. The issue is if the genocidal faction can bring the government down.
Looks like we’ve reached the filtration camp stage[/url] (Wikipedia doesn’t use that term, it seems Internment is preferred, although there is, curiously, a redirect on Filtration camp entirely referring to Russian Activities, interesting.
Anyway, “More than 660 Palestinians from Gaza are currently known to be detained in Israeli prisons — most of them in Ketziot Prison in the Naqab/Negev desert. An additional number, which the army refuses to reveal but could be as high as several thousand, are being held at the Sde Teyman military base near Be’er Sheva, where much of the abuse of detainees is alleged to be taking place.”
Then there’s things like: “According to testimonies, the most common punishment was being tied to a fence and having to raise their arms for several hours. Whoever lowered them was taken away by the soldiers and beaten.” The British routinely used ‘stress positions’ like this in Ireland, and the infamous ‘Hooded Men‘ case that allowed ‘enhanced interrogation’ under international law.
The opening lines of his book tell a story that you don’t often hear: “During the 25 years which elapsed between 1945-70 the British Army took part in a large number of operations of one sort or another. Julian Paget mentions 34 in a book which he wrote on this subject, and now there are one or two more to add to this list which only goes up to 1966, Anguilla and Northern Ireland being cases in point. Of all the operations he quotes, only four could be described as Limited War, i.e. Korea, Suez, the move into Kuwait in 1961 and the Indonesian confrontation. All the rest were concerned with countering subversion or insurgency, or with peace-keeping operations.” How many more ‘operations’ since he wrote those words?
This reminds me of the recent spate of the ‘In defence of Scrooge’ style articles that have been popping up.
But, this has been bugging me all day: “an economic system based on private ownership and competition, in which companies themselves are free to determine what and how much they produce, aided in their decisions by the prices set by the market” This is not a definition of capitalism: it is possible to have all of these characteristics on an economic system, and for it not to be capitalist (as Kevin Carson, the free-market anti-capitalist would doubtless readily say) – incidentally, he critiques those firms from that definition above against Mises/Hayek’s own theories, and apparently modern industrial bureaucratic capitalism fails the economic calculation argument.
Moved from
Forums › General discussion › Big capitalists anticipating nuclear apocalypse
to
Forums › General discussion › Free will an absurdityPosts:
#249547
#249548
#249417
#249364
#249363The odd off-topic post, if it is part of the natural flow of debate is fine, but in this case, it’d clearly derailed the whole discussion back to free will, so to the big free will thread they all go.
Posts:
#249368 – off topic (any topic)
#249370 – off topic (also rule 14, discussion of moderation)
#249423 – off topic (also rule 14, discussion of moderation)Were binned.
Mostly Eliane Radigue: of your two, the first is a little busy for my taste, but the second was cool.
The British are pretty much sticking an oar in: British navy goes to Guyana
“HMS Trent – a ship used for “defence diplomacy” according to the government – will take part in joint exercises with Guyana after Christmas.”Now, Guyana is a former British colony, a Commonwealth member and ‘ally’ of Britain: of course, sending a ship could just be dancing for the British public jingos, but it is also sending a message, and British oil firs presumably stand to benefit from the oil in the current Guyanian territory.
@Almamater
Seriously, nothing was moved, nothing was deleted. I used the ‘close thread’ function to prevent any further posting to the old music thread, and then I started a new thread in a different forum, and provided a link and asked people to post there. I have not moved any music, no music have I moved, there was no movement of music, the music stayed where it is, it is immobile, I have not moved any music.
No music was eliminated, nothing was removed, as ALB has said, the music thread is still there, it is still visible, nothing was deleted, nothing was moved, there was no censorship.
Please, just post nice music links in the new music thread. Start a new thread if you like (in Off topic, please). Feel free to discuss music here, preferably in a socialist context.
Nothing was moved to the new thread, people just started posting there, I cannot merge topics across different forums (else I would just have moved the whole music thread to off-topic.) I simply closed the thread in this forum, and started a new one in the off-topic forum.
@Almamater
The reason I suggested moving the Music thread to off-topic is precisely because there are no limits to what goes in the off-topic forum, leaving the general forum for discussions of socialism.
My own collection of atonal drone music might not make the cut of most people’s definition of music.
@Paula
1: I didn’t delete the music thread.
2: I Closed it, and asked users to use the New Music Thread:
which they have been doing so.It seems to me that off-topic is a better place for the music thread, as the forum’s purpose is the discussion of socialism and the socialist party, it’s not a music forum.
