Nassim
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
This link should work:
Sorry, here is the link again
Speaking of the devil, here is a good approximation:
Last night, on the BBC, I watched a piece where the presenter was explaining that after Brexit there will be a shortage of lorry drivers, restaurant cooks, vegetable pickers, nurses and so on.
I told my host this was ridiculous as people in the UK did all these jobs previously. He agreed with the presenter and said that I had no idea how many people in the UK don’t want to work. My position is that people will work if you give them a decent wage. Obviously, no one can compete with Polish vegetable pickers who live in dormitories and work 12 hour days in the open for a low pay.
OTOH, Russia is discovering that there are plenty of Russians who can make Italian-style cheeses.
Russian Counter-Sanctions Created a Domestic Cheese Industry Overnight
Russian farmers adore Putin for the EU food ban
I wonder who has got it right? 🙂
They’re at it again, howling about a town in Syria that’s being retaken by the government. This time it’s Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus and one of the last remaining strongholds of the Islamist insurgency that has torn the country apart over the last seven years.
Before Eastern Ghouta it was Aleppo and before Aleppo it was Madaya and before Madaya it was Homs, and so on. All of these places were framed as though there were no armed insurgents present, and the Syrian authorities were just mercilessly massacring civilians out of cartoonishly villainous bloodlust. If the insurgents were mentioned, they were usually (and still are) presented by the western press as moderate rebels and freedom fighters.
What the mainstream media isn’t telling you about Eastern Ghouta
I have no idea why the images sometimes show and sometimes do not. Strange.
I was in London yesterday. I hadn’t been there for 9 years and had not lived there for 43.
I went to places I frequented as a kid. Harrods food halls used to be gigantic, but they seem to have shrunk. They don’t seem to sell their famous “Swiss Rolls” any more. I had an early version of a Harrods “debit card” as a teenager – which I never used.
I saw a strikingly pretty girl working for Harrods go to a fridge to select a bottle of mineral water. She spent 5 minutes checking them all and an attendant came to help her. A long discussion ensued. I waited in the hope that she would return the same way so that I could have a better look at her.
Another tall young woman who was obviously upper middle-class English came very close to me and stood there all the while. I guess she wanted to strike up a conversation. She was very expensively dressed and her handbag must have cost the same as a car. I ignored her. She grabbed her mobile and started typing – and did not move away. I waited. The first girl went away and I did not get a chance to see her properly. I lost interest and walked around a bit. A few minutes later, I saw the second girl pass me with a middle eastern gentleman who was a lot shorter than her. My guess had been correct.
I went to the top floor of Harvey Nichols nearby. I had a coffee at the bar. The menu they gave me had amazing prices. It was so amazing that I felt I had to take it with me to show my friends. Here are some samples:
chicken club sandwich £18 ($25)
côte de boeuf £65 ($90)
beef burger £20 ($28)
Krug champagne £255 ($355)
chocolate brownie with ice cream £10 ($14)The place was half as busy as it had been last time I went there 9 years ago. I think they forgot that billionaires like to go to places with young people having fun. Well-off young people cannot afford these prices.
I had a chat with a sad-looking flower girl. I cheered her up. It turned out that she commuted every day from Canterbury. She must spend 4 hours travelling every working day. She told me how most of the houses in Knightsbridge had no lights on in the evening.
It will be interesting to see whether this prediction comes true
It is all beginning to make sense.
People who live in big cities all over North America have had psychic surgery performed on them with identity politics, eco-activism, neo-liberalism, LGTB legislation, and now the #MeToo movement, precisely because Wall Street and the City of London’s policies have made our cities unlivable, overcrowded and expensive beyond any rationality or justification. In reality, it is not development or capitalism that is to blame. The blame lies squarely with bankers and financial policy writers who make development and capitalism work for them, not the rest of us or the environment we live in. In this context, considering how much positive change the BRI has and will bring to the most poverty-stricken areas of the world, upper middle-class Vancouverites accusing China of human rights violations and climate change denial is something that only the brainwashed or elitist wanna-be’s would put enough energy into to muster a question to elites at an event like this. And that’s precisely what I witnessed.
” International bankers, including some in the United States, lent billions of dollars to European countries to fight World War I. One of the big ways Europe paid those loans back was to export goods to the United States, including food and manufactured products.”
The other big way was in the US acquiring assets from foreigners – e.g the British – on a monumental scale. Before WW1, South America was very much a British zone. After, it became American. A good read is “The House of Morgan” which describes what a huge financial operation it was.
The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
I just cannot imagine today’s wealthy in the UK handing over their shares on such a massive scale to save their country. The people have changed.
Here is a picture that you will never see in the MSM.
Must really upset the Israelis, Brits, French, Turks, Saudis, Qataris, Emiratis and Americans. 🙂
I am sorry oxymoron to hear about your travails. Australia is a very tough place for people to survive in and that is why the aborigines never made much progress. They had the added problem of no goats, no sheep, no horses, no donkeys, no camels and no cows.
I used to go with my kids picking blueberries in Victoria. The plantation had nets to stop the birds and bats from eating the fruit. I don’t know what they did about the rats and so on.
Some while back, I thought to myself that some effort should be made into developing self-driving scarecrow machines. Here is something along those lines:
Meet robocrow: Machines shooting long-range laser beams to scare birds away replace scarecrows
Someone made a quote that goes something like this:
“Russia is never as strong as it seems to be and never as weak as it seems to be”
I cannot remember who said it and Google is not much help. I think it was from before WW1
I did find this piece of nonsense though:
“Russia is weak. It is not in any relevant, meaningful, sense, a “Great Power”.
Indeed, it is less powerful in many ways, than Britain.
The message may not be welcomed by Nato and hawks in the west.
But it came, refreshingly, from one of Britain’s most distinguished military historians.
“Russia has always tried to get over its weakness by exaggerating its strength”, said professor Sir Lawrence Freedman. The western commentariat played along with it, and denounced Barack Obama for being weak.
“Keep Putin in perspective; don’t play to the cult of personality”, Freedman warned. “Russia is less powerful in many respects than the UK”, he added. It does have larger armed forces and more nukes, but its economy is in deep trouble.
Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate – sent direct to you
Read moreFreedman was speaking the other day at a conference on “Global Trends and Implications for British Security” at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).
Russia may be a “Great Power” by virtue of its nuclear arsenal and permanent seat on the UN security council, but being a “Great Power” was highly overrated, he suggested.
It may have started to rebuild its armed forces, but they are no match for Nato’s. Russia’s GDP is close to that of Italy, and its per capita GDP is less than Poland’s. Oil and gas prices have fallen and Russia is having trouble attracting inward investment.”
Putin’s Russia is weak – the UK in many ways is stronger (Guardian 2014)
<p>V. Arnold,
Unfortunately, they are still pretending to be “exceptional.” It will take the sinking of a few aircraft carriers to sort out that mind set.
</p>
<p>Putin’s stunning revelations about new Russian weapons systems</p>
<p>This is absolutely devastating. It shows that the US school and university system is producing laggards. </p>
- A nuclear powered cruise missile with basically unlimited range
- A nuclear powered unmanned submersible with intercontinental range, very high speed, silent propulsion and capable of moving a great depths
- A Mach 10 hypersonic missile with a 2’000 kilometer range (named: Kinzhal)
- A new strategic missile capable of Mach 20 velocities (named: Avangard)
<p>Number 3 above can be launched from a plane travelling at mach 3. It means that surface navies cannot get within 3000 km of any protected coast. The Baltic and Black Seas are no longer in NATO. All the incursions by US ships into the Black Sea to wave the flag are purposeless.</p>
I am stuck in the Midlands and I am beginning to really miss Australia
“An alarming heatwave in the sunless winter Arctic is causing blizzards in Europe and forcing scientists to reconsider even their most pessimistic forecasts of climate change”
It looks like climate hysteria is going into overdrive. 🙂
“Once East Ghouta is liberated from Al-Qaeda, the world will see the same response from its inhabitants as the world saw once East Aleppo was liberated: jubilation. And, like with East Aleppo, East Ghouta will serve as another testimony about the facade that is the White Helmets.”
Quite correct. I hope they put on TV the British and French special forces who are there. I guess if they did so, they would be accused of violating the human rights of these savages – or the rules of war.
I am in the strange situation of being a guest of a friend of mine in the English Midlands – we have known each other for 48 years – and he, a retired GP, believes every piece of nonsense that the BBC spews out about Syria and gas, Russia’s fake doping scandal etc. It is a real education for me. I am really impressed by how powerful the media is and how little critical thinking otherwise intelligent people seem to do.
In much of the world, if you don’t see through government propaganda, you are toast.
“I don’t think you can begin to understand contemporary problems in the Middle East without knowing some history about Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire from about 1800 through the end of World War I.”
Quite correct. I would go a bit further and say that dumbing down the population is why history is no longer taught at school.
The most rational explanation as to how the First World War came about is to be found here:
Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War
WW2 was really a continuation of WW1. And the ongoing WW3 is going to be a continuation of WW2.
Here is a bit about the most famous British Jew who opposed Zionism
Here is some of what he had to say about it:
“I assume that it means that Mahommedans [Muslims] and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine. Perhaps also citizenship must be granted only as a result of a religious test.”
It goes without saying that he was entirely correct.
“what was or is the goal of the Jews having their own country in the Middle East? What’s their over-arching objective?”
It was originally a non-Jewish plan. The British wanted to have a buffer in the Middle East and sending lots of poor Jews there was a bonus. The English had expelled the Jews centuries before – and confiscated their property. The Spanish did something similar. The Arabs never did.
Zionism was a creation of the British Foreign Office. They financed the first Zionist newspaper in London. The Jews who had recently arrived there from the Russian Empire, Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were not interested and the paper was eventually wound up.
You must remember that the Jews in the UK and France are not homogeneous. Not all Jews are equal. The ones who had been wealthy for generations – they owned the cotton mills of Manchester and they had a monopoly on the cotton of Egypt – went into banking in a big way. Pretty well all important British politicians prior to 1914 were owned by Jewish bankers. The father of Winston Churchill was assumed to be a prime minister in the making (he made the number 2 job) but died of syphilis. His estate owed Jewish bankers the equivalent of £5m. Just one example.
Winston Churchill maintained the magnificent palace of Blenheim – by writing books and on his parliamentary salary. 🙂
All of them – Salisbury, Balfour (of the infamous Balfour Declaration), Edward Grey, Lloyd George etc. were either in debt to these wealthy Jews or they were subject to blackmail. Lloyd George was subject to blackmail and went along with the launching of WW1 – totally against the wishes of his supporters. Some wealthy Jews were totally against the whole Palestine project and made their views known – they knew that it was a trap long-term.
The irony of the whole thing is that the Old Testament is largely a fairy tale and most of the stories were taken from older cultures. The real “promised land” is in the area called today North Yemen. The Jews never escaped from Egypt. Egypt had kings and queens – not pharaohs. There is not one iota of evidence that king David or king Solomon were ever in the place that is today called Jerusalem.
“Eastern Ghouta Crisis: The West’s Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds (SCF) ”
How did terrorists in East Ghouta get highly expensive US-made weaponry?
There can be only one answer. These things are hugely expensive at $450,000 apiece
“Does this mean that they sold/liquidated some of the stocks/investments that they had so that they have cash to meet their outflow obligations/requirements.”
Yes
“If so, then I would think that this would be a good thing because their remaining stock/investments is going up and the future dividends would be going up.”
Not quite. The shares are only going up because there are fewer of them – that is what happens when companies buy back their own shares (largely illegal in UK). The actual value of the company does not change. It is a chimera.
Can a company buy its own shares?
It is largely illegal in the UK because it allows management to manipulate the stock price. In The USA, it is what companies like IBM have been doing for decades. The share price of IBM might be 12 times what it was in 1993, but the company is not a shadow of its former self. 🙂
“The Exponent Problem Of Running Other People’s Lives (Gore) ”
This guys has obviously never been in a position to manage or rule over others. It is the easiest thing that one can imagine. Most people just love to be told what to do and what to think. The ones who cause trouble and try to correct you get cast aside.
There is plenty of empirical evidence that people like CEO’s have much less stressful lives than their underlings. They live longer, are happier and have far more sex.
“All living presidents have either already exceeded the estimated life span of all US men at their age of inauguration or are likely to do so.”
What a difference a few weeks makes!
What has become of the “Kurds” who were all over the MSM a few weeks ago – and their heroic efforts to free themselves from the wicked “regime” of Bashar el-Assad?
Well, it seems – just as expected – that the USA will always side with Turkey in its efforts to eradicate any Kurdish presence along its borders.
Afrin marks the point of collapse for American influence in Syria
The “Kurds” have begged the Syrian army and its Russian ally for protection against the Turks. Also highly predictable.
Meanwhile the lying MSM of the West has turned its beam of dishonour on events in East Ghouta in Syria.
Sheltering from the bombs in Eastern Ghouta
What they won’t tell you is that the people in this unfortunate place have been under the rule of the head choppers for many years now. The Syrians and Russians have dropped leaflets to tell them how to get out – but the terrorists won’t let them go. These terrorists have been randomly bombarding central Damascus for years – causing many deaths and injuries.
When the Americans destroyed Mosul with its inhabitants in place using the US Marines’ heavy artillery, the people were not allowed out and the US did not try to help them get out. On the contrary, when things got desperate, they used helicopters to evacuate the leaders of ISIS and to send them to Syria. The fighters of ISIS went out by bus under US protection.
So we have now learnt once more that the “Kurds” were not even pawns in this game. Let’s not forget that 90% of the terrorists came to Syria through Turkey – with the blessing of NATO and Turkey. The other 10% came in from Jordan – with the blessing of NATO and Israel.
Turkey is way too important for NATO and their dictator may insult the US – but they will always send VP’s etc. over to lick his boots.
Erdogan: US Is a ‘Double-Faced, Liar, Crook’ Country
The good news is that the Syrians are taking over East Ghouta. I wonder how many Brits and Israelis will be among those captured. I believe there is a market for these people – and the Syrians get a good price.
Syrian Army liberates first major town from terrorist forces in East Ghouta
To get an idea of how desperate governments are to raise money, read about what the UK’s government has made into law.
“Britain’s New Law UNEXPLAINED WEALTH ORDERS Targeting the Rich”
Britain’s New Law UNEXPLAINED WEALTH ORDERS Targeting the Rich
I can think of no better way of encouraging Russian / Chinese / Arab oligarchs to repatriate their wealth than this piece of draconian nonsense. I have searched FT.com for any reference to “Unexplained Wealth Orders” with no success. Bravo MSM. It bodes ill for London property prices.
When I was a student in London – 1968-73 – many students could afford to live near Imperial College in South Kensington – and on their grants. One of my friends lived in Queensgate in a bedsit on the top floor with a great view. Clementine Churchill – the widow of Winston – lived across the street. Those were the days.
A bit earlier, I was at a boarding school where some boys had parents who owned vast estates that were worth very little. Some had difficulty paying the annual fees of £600. Today, the same school charges around £35,000 ($49,000) per year in fees – more for non UK-resident parents. I somehow don’t think that the UK is generating 50 times more real wealth than 50 years ago.
g-minor,
Thank you for scaring the bejusus out of me. That is the most horrible interview that I have ever heard.
Swedish Porn Conference Drops Leftist Journalist Who Says Gender Is Biological
“Kajsa “Ekis” Ekman is a Swedish journalist, writer and activist. She is the author of several works about the financial crisis, women’s rights and a capitalism critique. Her book “Varat och varan” (“Being and being bought”) about the sex industry described the very notion of “sex work” as an “unholy alliance between the neoliberal right and the postmodernist left” used to legitimize prostitution.
For her book “Stolen Spring” about the financial crisis seen from Greece, Ekman was awarded the prize “Swedish-Greek of the Year” for her solidarity with Greece. Ekman was also one of the participants on the Freedom Flotilla 2015 to Gaza.”
I suspect that her sympathy for the Greeks and the Palestinians did not go down too well at this fake conference financed and publicised by those who are trying to undermine the West’s underpinnings.
Oxfam sex? I am shocked – shocked – to find that sex is going on here.
I am a bit of a cynic and I always assumed that there must be something in it for all these people to rush off to the 3rd world and spend years there. A bit like those French middle aged ladies and gay men who used to go solo on vacation to the Ivory Coast. They probably go to the Caribbean these days.
I have been attending a local church here in the Midlands and it seems that they spent months collecting money to buy a bakery for an orphanage in Malawi.
The only problem with imposing Western “solutions” in this part of the world is that the wheat has to be imported. It is a largely agricultural country and importing wheat or subsidising it is bound to lead to a lower income for the local farmers who grow local crops. In sum, it is plain stupidity.
It is OK to import wheat to England in the 19th century so as to free labour so that it can work in factories, but this is entirely different as there are no factories for these people to go to.
Funny how the guys who come out with the most ridiculous predictions invariably get the media’s attention.
In the real world, things are a bit different. It was snowing in Tasmania this week – that is like snow in August in the northern hemisphere. Here is a short list of temperature records being broken to the downside these past few months:
“There Is No Time Left”
It must be so much more simple to live in a world with only one important variable – CO2. There is plenty of geological evidence that the earth was frozen when atmospheric CO2 was tens of times more than is the case today.
In fact, if CO2 were half what it currently is, lots of plants would struggle to survive
During the last ice age, too little atmospheric carbon dioxide almost eradicated mankind
“Farmers are running out of patience with what they see as government inaction over the future availability of seasonal fruit and vegetable pickers”
I moved back to the UK from Australia a few weeks ago. The food in the UK is vastly cheaper than in Australia – although Australia is a major exporter of meat, wine and grains. I really cannot work out why this should be so. Perhaps we should thank the Polish university graduates who pick the food that the UK’s indigent population will not.
“So, Homewood is comparing one way of calculating “central tendency” of 1943 data set to a different way of calculating “central tendency” of 2014 data set. The result is not wrong, it’s meaningless.”
All I am trying to show is that common sense has gone out of the window. Reality – a very cold January in NE USA – take a backseat to lies.
When it comes to changing raw data, it seems that there are no limits. Absolutely shameless!
I think this is an amazing chart. Rural areas have far fewer weather stations than was the case 50 years ago. Urban location were largely unchanged – and the Urban Heat Island Effect was fully recorded.
Cities have been growing and the data for many cannot be compared with the same cities 100 years ago.
Sea ice is floating. It melts from below for the same reason that if you were to plunge naked into water at 18C, you would know all about it. Standing in still air at 18C is no big deal. That means that sea ice is at the mercy of changes in currents.
For a look at the temperature of the world’s oceans, take a look at this:
Greenland, Antarctica And Dozens Of Areas Worldwide Have Not Seen Any Warming In 60 Years And More!
The interesting thing about all these charts is that the most recent data indicates a sharp drop in temperature since the end of the recent el Niño.
Sorry V Arnold.
I am equally tired of the repetitive lies being bandied about by people who have never met a Kurd in the lives or been to that part of the world and are yet so very awfully keen for the Kurds to have a fake independence – just as independent as Ukraine.
How about independence for the Palestinians? What about the Druze of Israel? All subhumans?
“So that’s what this is about, a reasonable discussion about Turkish aggression is just an excuse for you to hijack the discussion to vent your idiotic antisemitic ravings.
I don’t believe the Jewish people will ever back down, surrounded as they are by people that have vowed to kill them for who they are. They only have to look at the terrified remnants of every other minority group in the Middle East to know what fate awaits them if they do. ”1- Israel is not the Jewish people – that is a Zionist lie
2- The ruling class in Israel is almost 100% European or American. Netanyahu is from New Jersey. 🙂
3- There a lot more Jewish DNA in the Palestians than in the Jews of Eastern Europe.
4- The so-called “Promised Land” was actually in North Yemen. The Jews were Arabs in those days BTW
5- The Jews did very well in the Middle East before modern times. The Safardi Jews (i.e. real Jews) came with the Moslems to Europe via Spain
6- The best repository of Jewish history from the middle ages was found in a Cairo Synagogue. Many of the documents in the fake “Dead Sea Scrolls” came from that source. The Jews were prosperous in did very well in the Levant, Egypt and North Africa while their contempories in Europe were treated like scum.
When it comes to Iran, the Persians/Iranians saved the Jews on a number of occasions. The Wikipedia is assuming that the “temple” was in Jerusalem. That was not the case as the Jews were sent to Babylonia – together with at least as many non-Jewish Arabs – from North Yemen.
The Babylonians punished the Arabs of Yemen for raiding the caravans that joined Yemen with Petra in Jordan. At that time, Palestine was impoverished and dry. There is no archeological evidence of the original temple ever having been in Palestine. In fact the town they call “Jericho” never had any walls. All these events took place some 2000km to the south. The Jews have always been expert at the propagation of lies.
This article suggests that since the Israelis and Americans have been thoroughly humiliated in Syria, they are trying to “kill Russians”
It is a bit pathetic since the US has a string of indefensible bases in Syria that need be supplied by air. Sooner or later, they are going to be squeezed out. The real question is whether the Russians and Iranians are going to retaliate or not. I suspect that if a few thousand Americans were killed overnight, the public back home might decide that Israel should not be in control of US foreign policy. It is a very dangerous game and might get out of control. The Europeans have been moving away from the USA’s position regarding Iran for some time now. The US seems to have fewer allies each year.
No George. Israel is a nice peaceful place that never tries to get the USA to attack and demolish its neighbours. 🙂
US foreign policy is totally independent and not at all subject to influence by the Israel lobby. It is designed solely to further the interests of US citizens.
“Benjamin Netanyahu Speech to Congress 2015”
Just watch the congressmen clapping like crazy – each of them afraid to stop before the others. Does it not remind you of Stalin when he was on top. They should install a bell so that the congressmen know when to stop.
“Stalin receives a standing ovation”
I suggest that the USA gets its troops out of Syria. They are sitting ducks and all their plans have failed dismally. Plenty of Kurds were in ISIS – and now they call themselves YPG or whatever. It is all BS.
