I think of .au as more like a vassal to .us empire than member.
When I try to look on the bright side, I see this rush to abandon constitutional protections on free speech, and to deploy private sector monopoly power to push a Nato orthodoxy, as solid evidence of the decline and perhaps imminent collapse of the empire. I don't know how it will work out but the new Iron Curtain that's being hung up may end up around the Nato countries, as the rest of the world learns to do business in and keep savings/reserves in currencies beyond arbitrary US/Nato sanction/confiscation. The reserve currency status of the dollar comes simply from net exporters to the USA estimating that it a safe choice as a store of wealth and buying T-bills, and US militarily spending depends on those t-bill sales (i.e. the $s Americans spend on imported goods and services end up deposited at the Treasury to fund the MIC). And we can now see day-by-day in the international business news how this empire might end.
Fiat money is quite real enough. Try not having any, or having some and not paying taxes. Bitcoin, otoh, is just a game of dupe the dopes, even dafter than tulip bulbs. If you want to understand money: Stephanie Kelton, Randall Wray, David Graeber.
I agree we may well be watch the last throws of the unipolar post-USSR consensus. The transition may be very uncomfortable for some of us. It depends what the core of the empire does about its decline. I see two directions, increasing authoritarianism or a popular reinvestment in democracy/republic. I hope for the latter but that will mean unwinding the exorbitant capital/power accumulation of the Neoliberal Era, and I don't see those authoritarian fucks going down without a fight.
I prefer the definition of money from Michael Hudson and Ellen Brown. And "real enough" is just an illusion in any case. If it was "really real", it wouldn't be paper and considering that there are movements to a Central Bank Digital Currency being promoted, (which, I would argue is kind of where we are right now since how often do you actually exchange paper money for services or goods?) it is becoming "less real".
If the banks can create money out of thin air merely by getting some poor slob to sign up for an overpriced mortgage, why can't the government just "do stuff" (other than buy new weapons systems) and create heaven on earth. (I mean for the rest of us and not just the billionaires).
The "fight" might be successful if we all recognize that there are just over 600 billionaires in the USA. Wrest control of the money from them and their support staff will crumble.
Brown and Hudson are also good and there isn't an important conflict the views of those I mentioned.
I guess I don't understand what "real" means in this context. Fiat money is an IOU issued by the state with all the force of the state behind it. (Banks are authorized to create credit, i.e money, by the state.) That makes it real enough for practical purposes in many peoples' lives. It is or isn't real in the same way as a nation or a president or sovereignty.
OK. But you can touch the consequences of not paying, and that's an important kind of reality. Graeber was greatly influenced by Hudson and both have argued convincingly of the importance of debt forgiveness to reset social relations. In this sense I can go along with debts not being real in the same sense as a broken leg or loaf of bread, they have the reality we collectively give them. Unfortunately we allowed our governments to be bought by the credit issuers, assuring debt bondage instead of forgiveness.
Yeah, I note that your link is talking about how Russia's money is all gone. They don't care. The Ruble is still the medium of exchange inside of Russia. The world still has to buy Russian wheat or starve. They sure as hell aren't going to buy that wheat using Rubles. And now that Russia has been kicked off SWIFT, how is the world going to buy it? It will go to China and then distributed throughout the Global South using the Russia/China replacement for SWIFT. America has so totally screwed itself.
Especially true now that a huge proportion of the world, and it is on the upswing, has been forced to make it on its own and has reluctantly taken on the challenge, quite successfully, even replacing the SWIFT with its own very effective version. The parameters of this situation, squeezed out of the toothpaste tube of a narrow and self-centred, even murderous economics, have not been fully appreciated yet, but soon will be.
2nd comment, sorry. I think your feeling nervous, Caitlin, makes sense. But if and how much you are punished depends on how much of a danger you are. They continue to use Snowden and Assange like heads on spikes outside the fortress, holding them up as examples of what happens if you embarrass the US government. So how come you and Aaron Maté are allowed to do what you do? I believe it's because you don't have enough audience to be a problem. So your liberty may depend on the success of authoritarian management of the generic reality and your inability to substantially threaten it. It's so depressing.
Just a simple thought. If we all unplugged from the matrix, what narrative would be left to control? Here's an invitation, or perhaps an invocation: Evacuate immediately from all social media. Avoid any news reports that smell off. Do a deep dive into your own confirmation bias. Go into the woods if you can and watch moss grow. Dip your toes into a body of water. Grow things. Read more poetry. Dance in the kitchen while you make dinner. Hug more people. Make more eye contact. Boycott screens and establish a rich inner life. Practice gratitude. Forgive yourself.
What a beautiful sentiment. Forgive me for not being more tactful, but while you’re in the woods with your face close to the ground watching the moss grow, please don’t be surprised when the jackboot descends on your skull.
I don't think there will be any surprise about it. All depends on how you want to spend your last days on earth. When the nukes go off, I hope I'm at ground zero.
Exactly. Social media is a sewer and when I unplugged from it, I felt better. I'm not a huggy person, so I prefer to live like a recluse in my rural home with just my dogs and nature for company. My favorite philosophy is to opt out of anything that causes stress and unhappiness, things I cannot change, and these days that would be TV news and social media.
Same advice that Guy McPherson offers on dealing with Climate Change. Nothing you can do about it. You're going to die anyway. May as well just accept it and get on with waiting for the end to arrive.
I'm not counseling against this as a choice. Just saying what the consequences will be.
boycotting whomever you perceive of as your enemy (while building alternatives) is the only action that doesn't cost dearly and still produces real results.
That poor kid asked a really thoughtful and consice (and gutsy) question about the narrative involving Ukraine and Russia and THAT was the response...
Sadly, when the audience applauded, I soon came to the realization that that kid was the only adult in the audience. He didn't belong there, not for the question he asked, but because he was the only human left in a room of zombies.
Isn't it strange to hear from folks on social media advocating the benefits of opting out of social media? My suggestion is let them be the guinea pigs. Go away for a year and get back to us. We are curious to learn the upside as well as the downside. Just need someone to go first.
I talk about this post along with the last two in my new YouTube, Yanis Varoufakis is Naive on Ukraine. I put Caitlin's Substack in the description. Here's the link:
Of course, you realise that the definition of 'misinformation' is: anything deviating from the Party line. This has always been true in repressive totalitarian regimes. It is time to recognise that it is now true in the 'free' West, as well.
Ministries of Truth are catching on everywhere, along with Ministries of Sanctions, although they are to this point still unofficial and embedded in the mundane affairs of state: but it's all very professional, authoritative, right from the top, and on the up-and-up. About as far up as you can go in that very dark place. If the world survives this trite kind of insanity, it won't even be represented in art and literature ,as in the works of Orwell, Picasso's Guernica, and others: it's too downright dumb, boring, narrow, obvious, unimaginative, ignoble - all the crap you avoid in propagandized movies, art and literature.
I agree, Caitlin: we are witnessing a protean assault on democracy and basic freedoms. Although the process is not yet complete, and in the end it is hard to see how it will be sustainable, we have to admit that the Empire is succeeding quite well in its objectives at the moment, and that is very worrying
I think of .au as more like a vassal to .us empire than member.
When I try to look on the bright side, I see this rush to abandon constitutional protections on free speech, and to deploy private sector monopoly power to push a Nato orthodoxy, as solid evidence of the decline and perhaps imminent collapse of the empire. I don't know how it will work out but the new Iron Curtain that's being hung up may end up around the Nato countries, as the rest of the world learns to do business in and keep savings/reserves in currencies beyond arbitrary US/Nato sanction/confiscation. The reserve currency status of the dollar comes simply from net exporters to the USA estimating that it a safe choice as a store of wealth and buying T-bills, and US militarily spending depends on those t-bill sales (i.e. the $s Americans spend on imported goods and services end up deposited at the Treasury to fund the MIC). And we can now see day-by-day in the international business news how this empire might end.
Kind of points out that "money" isn't real and that the only way to really generate wealth is to "just build it". I mean, "Bitcoin"?
The unipolar world has come to an end.
Fiat money is quite real enough. Try not having any, or having some and not paying taxes. Bitcoin, otoh, is just a game of dupe the dopes, even dafter than tulip bulbs. If you want to understand money: Stephanie Kelton, Randall Wray, David Graeber.
I agree we may well be watch the last throws of the unipolar post-USSR consensus. The transition may be very uncomfortable for some of us. It depends what the core of the empire does about its decline. I see two directions, increasing authoritarianism or a popular reinvestment in democracy/republic. I hope for the latter but that will mean unwinding the exorbitant capital/power accumulation of the Neoliberal Era, and I don't see those authoritarian fucks going down without a fight.
I prefer the definition of money from Michael Hudson and Ellen Brown. And "real enough" is just an illusion in any case. If it was "really real", it wouldn't be paper and considering that there are movements to a Central Bank Digital Currency being promoted, (which, I would argue is kind of where we are right now since how often do you actually exchange paper money for services or goods?) it is becoming "less real".
If the banks can create money out of thin air merely by getting some poor slob to sign up for an overpriced mortgage, why can't the government just "do stuff" (other than buy new weapons systems) and create heaven on earth. (I mean for the rest of us and not just the billionaires).
The "fight" might be successful if we all recognize that there are just over 600 billionaires in the USA. Wrest control of the money from them and their support staff will crumble.
Lincoln's greenbacks come to mind.
Brown and Hudson are also good and there isn't an important conflict the views of those I mentioned.
I guess I don't understand what "real" means in this context. Fiat money is an IOU issued by the state with all the force of the state behind it. (Banks are authorized to create credit, i.e money, by the state.) That makes it real enough for practical purposes in many peoples' lives. It is or isn't real in the same way as a nation or a president or sovereignty.
No, I understand the IOU concept. And IOUs are just as "imaginary" as anything else. Like the rent I didn't get paid last month.
That's why I say "real", you can't touch it.
OK. But you can touch the consequences of not paying, and that's an important kind of reality. Graeber was greatly influenced by Hudson and both have argued convincingly of the importance of debt forgiveness to reset social relations. In this sense I can go along with debts not being real in the same sense as a broken leg or loaf of bread, they have the reality we collectively give them. Unfortunately we allowed our governments to be bought by the credit issuers, assuring debt bondage instead of forgiveness.
Yeah, I note that your link is talking about how Russia's money is all gone. They don't care. The Ruble is still the medium of exchange inside of Russia. The world still has to buy Russian wheat or starve. They sure as hell aren't going to buy that wheat using Rubles. And now that Russia has been kicked off SWIFT, how is the world going to buy it? It will go to China and then distributed throughout the Global South using the Russia/China replacement for SWIFT. America has so totally screwed itself.
It's not quite so simple. Radio War Nerd has a good new episode looking in detail at the economic war.
One of us has had too much to drink this evening.
But, if I get the gist of your post, we are in total agreement.
Have another beer.
And remember: "It's the Oligarchy -- Stupid!"
Especially true now that a huge proportion of the world, and it is on the upswing, has been forced to make it on its own and has reluctantly taken on the challenge, quite successfully, even replacing the SWIFT with its own very effective version. The parameters of this situation, squeezed out of the toothpaste tube of a narrow and self-centred, even murderous economics, have not been fully appreciated yet, but soon will be.
2nd comment, sorry. I think your feeling nervous, Caitlin, makes sense. But if and how much you are punished depends on how much of a danger you are. They continue to use Snowden and Assange like heads on spikes outside the fortress, holding them up as examples of what happens if you embarrass the US government. So how come you and Aaron Maté are allowed to do what you do? I believe it's because you don't have enough audience to be a problem. So your liberty may depend on the success of authoritarian management of the generic reality and your inability to substantially threaten it. It's so depressing.
Just a simple thought. If we all unplugged from the matrix, what narrative would be left to control? Here's an invitation, or perhaps an invocation: Evacuate immediately from all social media. Avoid any news reports that smell off. Do a deep dive into your own confirmation bias. Go into the woods if you can and watch moss grow. Dip your toes into a body of water. Grow things. Read more poetry. Dance in the kitchen while you make dinner. Hug more people. Make more eye contact. Boycott screens and establish a rich inner life. Practice gratitude. Forgive yourself.
What a beautiful sentiment. Forgive me for not being more tactful, but while you’re in the woods with your face close to the ground watching the moss grow, please don’t be surprised when the jackboot descends on your skull.
I don't think there will be any surprise about it. All depends on how you want to spend your last days on earth. When the nukes go off, I hope I'm at ground zero.
I suspect that the powers that be would be just fine with less pushback.
Exactly. Social media is a sewer and when I unplugged from it, I felt better. I'm not a huggy person, so I prefer to live like a recluse in my rural home with just my dogs and nature for company. My favorite philosophy is to opt out of anything that causes stress and unhappiness, things I cannot change, and these days that would be TV news and social media.
Same advice that Guy McPherson offers on dealing with Climate Change. Nothing you can do about it. You're going to die anyway. May as well just accept it and get on with waiting for the end to arrive.
I'm not counseling against this as a choice. Just saying what the consequences will be.
boycotting whomever you perceive of as your enemy (while building alternatives) is the only action that doesn't cost dearly and still produces real results.
This is the way
That poor kid asked a really thoughtful and consice (and gutsy) question about the narrative involving Ukraine and Russia and THAT was the response...
Sadly, when the audience applauded, I soon came to the realization that that kid was the only adult in the audience. He didn't belong there, not for the question he asked, but because he was the only human left in a room of zombies.
Isn't it strange to hear from folks on social media advocating the benefits of opting out of social media? My suggestion is let them be the guinea pigs. Go away for a year and get back to us. We are curious to learn the upside as well as the downside. Just need someone to go first.
There are a lot of people who are not on Twitter or Facebook. They're all around you.
I understand your fear Caitlin, but please keep doing what you are doing. You serve the truth, and truth is the only path to justice.
I talk about this post along with the last two in my new YouTube, Yanis Varoufakis is Naive on Ukraine. I put Caitlin's Substack in the description. Here's the link:
https://youtu.be/mYaPiQBdteQ
How very convenient for H.M. Australian Government.
Of course, you realise that the definition of 'misinformation' is: anything deviating from the Party line. This has always been true in repressive totalitarian regimes. It is time to recognise that it is now true in the 'free' West, as well.
Ministries of Truth are catching on everywhere, along with Ministries of Sanctions, although they are to this point still unofficial and embedded in the mundane affairs of state: but it's all very professional, authoritative, right from the top, and on the up-and-up. About as far up as you can go in that very dark place. If the world survives this trite kind of insanity, it won't even be represented in art and literature ,as in the works of Orwell, Picasso's Guernica, and others: it's too downright dumb, boring, narrow, obvious, unimaginative, ignoble - all the crap you avoid in propagandized movies, art and literature.
Very glad you were not one of the 10, Caitlin. Lots of your readers (fans) were worried. :-)
I agree, Caitlin: we are witnessing a protean assault on democracy and basic freedoms. Although the process is not yet complete, and in the end it is hard to see how it will be sustainable, we have to admit that the Empire is succeeding quite well in its objectives at the moment, and that is very worrying
China will crush, economically, the zionist outpost aka Australia in good time, return it to the natives, and live happily ever after together.