[John Day]

Here is a snippet from today’s offering, Making America Gape Again, inspired by a bumper sticker for Trump that I saw riding my bike home from work yesterday afternoon.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/02/making-america-gape-again.html

​Caitlin Johnstone,
​Well, now we all know what happens when a public official criticizes AIPAC. And of course, that was the whole idea.
Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has published an apology for making self-evident observations about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an immensely influential lobbying firm which, like all lobbying firms, works to influence government policy toward a specific agenda, in this case the interests of the Israeli government. She issued the apology after hours upon hours of shrill, hysterical shrieking accusations of antisemitism from the entire establishment political-media class…
This wasn’t a random outburst, it was a political means toward political ends. This fact-free smear will be used to try and kill Omar’s re-election bid, and the damage that has been done to her reputation will serve as a head on a spike to deter any other would-be AIPAC critics on Capitol Hill in the future.​..
For the last two years the mainstream liberal establishment has been endlessly bleating about the need to elevate women of color to positions of leadership; then the first Black Muslim and first Somali American ever to get elected to Congress begins taking the leadership for which she was elected, and it turns out they actually meant they just wanted women with dark skin who will advance the status quo of the white imperialist patriarchy.

Why The Entire Political-Media Class Just Tried To End Ilhan Omar’s Career

IN 2005, STEVEN Rosen, then a senior official with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, sat down for dinner with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, then of the New Yorker. “You see this napkin?” Rosen asked Goldberg. “In twenty-four hours, [AIPAC] could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.”
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/12/there-is-a-taboo-against-criticizing-aipac-and-ilhan-omar-just-destroyed-it/

[John Day]

Today’s offering, Petrobuck Waterloo, opens with more global currency trade extraction insights http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/02/petrobuck-waterloo.html

Michael Hudson, who has the clearest views of international flows of finance and goods, of any economist I have read, looks at the American (“Super Imperialist”) relationship with Venezuela.

There is no way that’s Chavez and Maduro could have pursued a pro-Venezuelan policy aimed at achieving economic independence without inciting fury, subversion and sanctions from the United States. American foreign policy remains as focused on oil as it was when it invaded Iraq under Dick Cheney’s regime. U.S. policy is to treat Venezuela as an extension of the U.S. economy, running a trade surplus in oil to spend in the United States or transfer its savings to U.S. banks.
By imposing sanctions that prevent Venezuela from gaining access to its U.S. bank deposits and the assets of its state-owned Citco, the United States is making it impossible for Venezuela to pay its foreign debt. This is forcing it into default, which U.S. diplomats hope to use as an excuse to foreclose on Venezuela’s oil resources and seize its foreign assets much as Paul Singer’s hedge fund sought to do with Argentina’s foreign assets.
Just as U.S. policy under Kissinger was to make Chile’s “economy scream,” so the U.S. is following the same path against Venezuela. It is using that country as a “demonstration effect” to warn other countries not to act in their self-interest in any way that prevents their economic surplus from being siphoned off by U.S. investors.

Venezuela as the pivot for New Internationalism?

[John Day]

@Ilargi, Yep, John Ward is a Limey, living in France now, so paying a lot of attention to both populist waves. He used to have a line in one of the big UK papers, before the management changed or something.
It’s starting to look like a cat-fight between the older, meaner, Pelosi, and the younger, quicker, more energetic Ocasio-Cortez.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-07/pelosi-mocks-ocasio-cortez-green-new-deal

[John Day]

Facing Loss
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/02/facing-loss.html

[John Day]

John Ward, The Slog, summarizes Brexit negotiations: ​The EU is facing an existential crisis. The UK isn’t. That’s the reality.
This clarification explains the reason why the EU cannot negotiate in good faith, but has to take the hardest possible line, a position of betting everything upon reversing the Brexit vote, by creating fear and despair in the UK. If Brexit happens, it will hasten the inevitable demise of the common currency. That is death, so Eurocrats must bluff hard and gamble everything against that death. They have no room to negotiate, nor can they come to any other consensus. No-deal Brexit hastens Eurodeath faster, but it’s all-or-nothing at this point.
At the End of the Day

[John Day]

Today’s post: Criminal Union, begins as above.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/02/criminal-union.html

[John Day]

I couldn’t watch much of the speech last night, just up to the point of glorifying all the poor farm-boys who died on the beaches at Normandy. It was clear that the unifying theme was going to be the goodness of Americans at war, and that 75 years was the necessary reach back into the past, necessary to pull that off.
This was a speech of conciliation between the Republicans and Democrats. This was the common ground, upon which they could agree, and they did.
The agreement is that the empire goes on bleeding the rest of the world, and that drug prices will come down.
Reduce the costs of health care and price of prescription drugs.
Immigration that is safe lawful and secure
And pursue a foreign policy that puts Americans first.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-05/watch-live-president-trump-delivers-state-union-address

​The biggest problem which I see all of us facing is the same problem which was identified in The Limits To Growth, in 1972.
In 1972, Nixon had gotten off the gold standard, and US oil production had already peaked (as predicted in the 1950s). That book presented the best possible systemic analysis of the trajectories of all the aspects of global economy and population going forward. Systems Analysis was the new science, which programmed multiple variables, which all affected each other in certain ways, into the biggest mainframe computer of the day at MIT. The first model, tested against the history of the 20th century was Word-1. The second model, somewhat refined, was World-2, and that created the projections that showed the peak of industrial economy around 2014-2015. The limits to growth were resource depletion, environmental degradation, and the increasing inefficiencies of larger and larger layered complex economic systems.​
This analysis seemed intuitively obvious through the rest of the 1970s, and Jimmy Carter’s efforts to get Americans to conserve fuel typified the rational acceptance of it.
After Carter, we got Reagan/Bush decrying the analysis as false, and claiming that there was no limit to the growth of American prosperity.
That went over well, much better, but I think Dick Cheney and other henchmen of the elites still understood the validity of the analysis. They merely abandoned the majority of society in their plans going forward with “Continuity of Government” preparations. They have prepared a separate world for the elites in their well supplied bunkers, but it seems sterile, like a zoo. Zoo life is already a huge part of what makes us sick critters. The elite approach so far has been to goose the fuel-burning economy as much as possible, promise a rosy future, and to secretly prepare their own nests, by robbing the cookie jar. We can’t know the full extent of it, and their is increasing discord in the ranks of our rulers. It’s going to be hard to implement, and might stray as far from projections as the invasion of Iraq did.
We are not included in any of that, anyway, and we can reasonably expect our world to have much less fuel, much less electricity, much less information and supply chain problems with groceries and utilities.
Painting this as being necessitated by war is the traditional approach to accomplish vast societal change. The problem with that approach this time is that war sucks out every bit of available resource rapidly. The side that can burn more fuel faster usually wins. There is nothing left to pay the victors this time. The risks of major-power war are just too high, and the benefits are hard to imagine at all.
Global warming is a noble threat, but it is exactly not the kind of threat that humans are biologically wired to mobilize for. It creeps over generations.
Human societies have collapsed before, when the combination of maximal use and bad weather destroyed their systems of food and fuel provision. It’s part of our cycle.
We have never had this much benefit of fossil fuel wizardry ever. We can’t imagine living without it. Each of us has the equivalent of 50 to 60 “energy slaves”, fossil fuel equivalent slaves. That is invisible to us. All of the products and materials we use have lots of fossil fuel energy embedded. How do we get shovels?
The question is whether we human members of industrialized society can reset our ways in a couple of generations to use vastly less coal, oil and iron ore, maybe 80% less, maybe 90% less.
We will need a completely different approach, if we can do it at all. We will need to become loving stewards of life on earth. In the short term, whoever burns more fuel wins. How can we possible make a transition to stewardship, when anybody burning more fuel can kill us and take whatever we have made?
It is a koan. We will have to solve the koan to survive, and not just a few of us. It is a test we have to pass as a species.
That seems very unlikely, but I would rather die in the attempt than die in a bunker with big screen TV.
Unless we get WW-3, this will be long and hard. I want to die without regrets. How about you?

[John Day]

I’m a vegetarian and I more or less approve of this message.
Grass fed livestock is not the problem. The problem is the vast corn-fed economy based upon fossil fuels and fossil water, soon to be much less available.
Let me put in a plug for Kerrygold Irish Butter and Dubliner (Cheddar type) Cheese, from grass fed cows, which have the omega-3 fats we require, and do not get in the American diet.

[John Day]

Here’s the view from the cheap seats. Hey, we see some of the same plays!
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/02/cheap-seat-view.html
Trump wants China in nuclear negotiations in this new multipolar world. I say Israel should negotiate, too.
The US president announced that Washington will initiate the process of withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty on 2 February and suspend all obligations under the accord. Moscow slammed the US actions, noting that it has failed to present evidence that prove Russian violations of the accord.
US President Donald Trump said that he hopes to negotiate a new accord to replace the INF Treaty, which would be “much better” and include more parties. He noted that the new accord should be adhered to by all signatories to it, not just the US.
“I hope that we are able to get everybody in a very big and beautiful room and get new treaty that would be much better,” Trump said.
https://sputniknews.com/us/201902011072044203-trump-inf-treaty-deal-russia/

[John Day]

“All nice and all until the anonymous writer says young people since they grew up on the internet are less brainwashed. I’d claim the opposite.”
Exactly my reaction.

[John Day]

Professor Michael Hudson (Financial Architect of the Petrobuck Empire)
Trump’s Brilliant Strategy to Dismember U.S. Dollar Hegemony
The end of America’s unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected, thanks to the very same Neocons who gave the world the Iraq, Syria and the dirty wars in Latin America. Just as the Vietnam War drove the United States off gold by 1971, its sponsorship and funding of violent regime change wars against Venezuela and Syria – and threatening other countries with sanctions if they do not join this crusade – is now driving European and other nations to create their alternative financial institutions.
This break has been building for quite some time, and was bound to occur. But who would have thought that Donald Trump would become the catalytic agent? No left-wing party, no socialist, anarchist or foreign nationalist leader anywhere in the world could have achieved what he is doing to break up the American Empire. The Deep State is reacting with shock at how this right-wing real estate grifter has been able to drive other countries to defend themselves by dismantling the U.S.-centered world order. To rub it in, he is using Bush and Reagan-era Neocon arsonists, John Bolton and now Elliott Abrams, to fan the flames in Venezuela. It is almost like a black political comedy. The world of international diplomacy is being turned inside-out. A world where there is no longer even a pretense that we might adhere to international norms, let alone laws or treaties…
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/02/revolutionary-war.html

[John Day]

Here’s more on what is shaping up to be the final spastic war of the Petrobuck Empire in it’s own little Mediterranean, the Caribbean.
Finally gonna cut the cancer outta’ Cuba, too! 🙁
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/01/litmus-tests.html

[John Day]

Thanks guys, This is as good a democratic format as exists…
​Please note that the form of political organization chosen by the Yellow Vests is an “Assembly of Assemblies”, with small groups self organizing and sending a representative with their positions, and that process of carrying the message up the structure being respected at each organizational level, rather than the top-down hierarchy of command that we are accustomed to living under
​We, Yellow Vests, are inviting anyone with his/her own abilities and capacities to join us. We call to pursue the actions with Act 12 against police violence in front of the police stations and the Acts 13, 14 etc… We call for the continuation of the occupation of the roundabouts and the blockage of the economy, to engage in a massive unlimited general strike starting on February 5th 2019. We call for the creation of popular committees in the workplaces, in study places et everywhere else in order that this strike could be conducted from the grassroots by the strikers themselves and not by the unions. Let’s take the matter in our own hands ! Don’t stay alone, join us !
Let’s organise ourselves democratically, independently and autonomously ! This assembly of assemblies is a very important milestone which allows us to discuss about our demands and our means of action. Let’s federate to transform the society! https://hendersonlefthook.wordpress.com/2019/01/30/message-from-french-yellow-vests/

[John Day]

Thanks Ilargi,
I’m still reading, though I often don’t have much to add to comments. I have been focusing a lot on the Petrodollar Empire’s move to crush the Venezuelan government and take all that oil, and make sure it only gets sold in dollars, and thwart China and Russia. This really may the the crisis point for Petrobuck Empire. The sooner the empire fails, and countries trade in gold, or their own currencies, or Bitcoin, or whatever, the better. I live in the US, so it will suck, but Amerika is just a captured state.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/01/desperate-empire.html

[John Day]

Dr D.
Good-on-ya, Mate!
I planted onions today, and rode my bike to work at the clinic, cringing at the stress I felt on the way, empathic, all that.
It’s a life.
It was a sunny day.
🙂

[John Day]

Deerly Beloved,

I was able to join a yearly meditation retreat with my Sangha and teacher, Anam Thubten https://www.dharmata.org/teachers/ again this past weekend.
This one was silent, and in the same place that we have had prior silent retreats, a Hindu temple Radha Madhav Dham https://radhamadhavdham.org/ . This temple was made around 1990, and looks like it was built on a small national guard facility, by a guru later convicted of 20 cases of child molestation, and still on the run. They changed to the current name after that.
It’s on a nice 200 acres with good hiking trails for walking meditation, a hill, a creek and lots of deer.
I did about 3 hours of walking meditation per day for three days, and an hour the fourth day. I did personal walking meditation for one or two of the sitting meditation sessions per day. All my sitting stuff and knees and back were uncomfortable a lot, starting early and staying late.
I spent a lot of time around groups of does, at least two, and often three groups per hour walk. A large, strong buck crossed the trail about 20 feet in front of me, mostly interested in a doe in the bushes on the other side.
I whistle to deer to be nice. I start whistling a tune when I notice them, and keep whistling until I am well past them. I’m saying that I mean them no harm. The deer show a lot of curiosity about me. Sometimes they start and run, or a couple out of a group of twelve might move to the back of the group. Sometimes small groups of three to four will move back twenty or thirty feet behind some bushes and watch me quietly. They like to have their bodies facing away, and heads craned to look at me, probably to flee quickly if needed.
Sometimes deer emotionally connect with me. I can feel it. You might have felt it, or felt something like it from other non-human beings. Lots of people feel love from pets, or irritation from pet cats. I feel two things from deer. Most often I feel sort of a tingly excitement, with little sparklies dusted all over the top of it. Often I feel that when a deer seems to notice me, looking up to make eye contact. It doesn’t last long.
Sunday afternoon I got totally immersed in a big warm, funky wave of deer love, which I’ve felt a few times before, but this wave was really engulfing. There was a group of about a dozen does of various ages about 150 yards ahead of me when I started whistling, and a large doe was watching me as long as I was looking at them. I started whistling, maybe “This Land Is Your Land” or the Dr Who theme, or my usual theme song from “Bridge On The River Kwai” (“Winners, fill up with Malt-O-Meal…”). This wave was really a total immersion experience, a flood of full, funky, earthy, warm deer love with all the exciting little sparklies dusted on and through it, too, and it lasted a good ten or twelve seconds. It felt like a welcome-home love.
A female deer reached out over 100 yards to completely engulf me with emotional and visceral love groove experience. That’s really a remarkable feat, and I’m remarking on it. I had a chance to reflect and meditate on it, because I was at a silent meditation retreat for four days. This doe may well have recognized me, the whistling human, from my previous two retreats there. I’m about the same. I open up my personal space bubble a lot at meditation retreats, sometimes pretty big. I can’t measure it, but it feels like it gets big out in the open spaces, and completely gets around in the meditation room.
I’m pretty sure I can’t do what that deer did. In February 1991, when my friend, Guy took me to hear the Dalai Lama, under a tent top in Santa Fe, and he looked in my eyes and smiled as he walked in, I felt an explosion of light and energy from within myself. WOW! I had no reality framework in which to integrate that experience. I was flabbergasted. I have never experienced it before or since, but it was clearly from His Holiness looking into my eyes and smiling from about 15 feet away. I tried really hard to understand his talk about the non-existence of the self. I couldn’t. I really could not grok it at all.
Many people consider His Holiness to be a Living Buddha. Where are the goal lines on that? Beats me.
Deer do this thing in a deer way from over 100 yards, or at least one does, to me, once. It was a different thing from the Dalai Lama, but it was almost as total of an experience, and from a much longer distance.
You don’t have to believe this. I’m not asking that. You might or might not ever experience anything like this. It did get me thinking that the first and probably hardest thing humans do with meditation is getting past the “monkey mind” chatter and story-telling and craving and hating and stuff. My understanding is that deer don’t have those impediments to deal with at all. Unfettered. Completely unfettered by ego and concepts. As far as I know…
I can’t escape the conclusion that it must be vastly easier for deer to be their spiritual nature than it is for humans, like falling off a log easier.
Human Buddhas are rare and wondrous. I think we may really be missing the big picture here.
We humans talk to each other about how we are the whole party. It’s our world to ruin and save. It’s all up to us.
We need to become enlightened and save all the other animals. This is how we think things are.
We may actually be the lame latecomers to this enlightenment party.

Deer Abbie

[John Day]

Good work, Ilargi!
John catching up…

[John Day]

Yesterday my bcc news send to 188 usual recipients was still blocked, as it had been since before Halloween, and since early summer 2016, both election cycles. The filter is off today. The blog I started during my 2016 bcc ban is still up http://www.johndayblog.com .
Today, my bcc ban seems to have been lifted through the miracle of complex information filtering algorithms. Thanks Google (I guess).
We are seeing the expansion of the shadow-banning battlefield in the information war. We are all participants. This is ramping up. I’ll be growing vegetables, taking medical care of poor people, and bike commuting, as long as I can.
The real change will follow this foreshadowing, ya’know?

I think Mueller got the memo about saving his own deeply corrupted bacon.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-08/mueller-has-begun-writing-final-report-trump-russia-amid-doj-shakeup

[John Day]

On a potentially more optimistic note:
​Life (probably) adapts to quantum conditions​. Are we (entangled) on that spectrum?
Coles and company sequestered several hundred photosynthetic green sulfur bacteria between two mirrors, progressively shrinking the gap between the mirrors down to a few hundred nanometers—less than the width of a human hair. By bouncing white light between the mirrors, the researchers hoped to cause the photosynthetic molecules within the bacteria to couple—or interact—with the cavity, essentially meaning the bacteria would continuously absorb, emit and reabsorb the bouncing photons. The experiment was successful; up to six bacteria did appear to couple in this manner… In essence, it appears certain photons were simultaneously hitting and missing photosynthetic molecules within the bacteria—a hallmark of entanglement. “Our models show that this phenomenon being recorded is a signature of entanglement between light and certain degrees of freedom inside the bacteria” …“It certainly is key to demonstrating that we are some way toward the idea of a ‘Schrödinger’s bacterium,’ if you will,” he says. And it hints at another potential instance of naturally emerging quantum biology: Green sulfur bacteria reside in the deep ocean where the scarcity of life-giving light might even spur quantum-mechanical evolutionary adaptations to boost photosynthesis.​.. ​
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/schroedingers-bacterium-could-be-a-quantum-biology-milestone/

[John Day]

Thanks Ilargi,
I tried that in 2016, splitting my #200 addresses up into 3 groups. That also did not work.
Once the mark-of-Cain is seared onto one’s forehead…
I do appreciate your thoughtfulness.
At some point these channels of communication will be closed to us.
The inner work of meditation, and the growing of vegetables may remain a bit longer.
Semi-optimistic-John

[John Day]

The rumor is that MbS got Khashoggi’s head and fingers as a “present”. That might be why the body can’t be found, a further embarrassment to be revealed at the appropriate time.
My embarrassment is invisibility. Inspired to no small part by reading TAE since early 2008, I have long sent out a news-email to a bcc list. It’s at 188. In spring 2016, with primaries roaring, I suddenly started getting blocked, no matter how I appealed to Google/Gmail, no matter how compliant I became.
I started http://www.johndayblog.com as a work-around, which has not been relevant since late November 2016, until now. I can’t get anything out to the bcc newslist. I got one notice out a few days ago that the news was blocked, and got a flurry of hits on that one in the ensuing days.
The noose is tightening, folks. I don’t know if it will loosen up in a month.
We should all be securing water, friends and growing vegetables. http://www.johndayblog.com/2018/10/invisible-for-halloween.html
Nice to know ya…

[John Day]

Grow vegetables. Ride a bike to work. See who you meet and what you become as you take these first steps. Or don’t. That’s easier.

[John Day]

Everybody was afraid of the AIDS Epidemic when Kavanaugh was a junior in high school, through his college years. Remember that? Also, take a look. He was no Adonis… Prob’ly awkwardly self-conscious in his neediness and stuff, too.

[John Day]

What happened to the Journalists? Where did they go? Pulitzer Prize winner, John Pilger (who is getting older…)
The death of Robert Parry earlier this year felt like a farewell to the age of the reporter. Parry was “a trailblazer for independent journalism”, wrote Seymour Hersh, with whom he shared much in common.
Hersh revealed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the secret bombing of Cambodia, Parry exposed Iran-Contra, a drugs and gun-running conspiracy that led to the White House. In 2016, they separately produced compelling evidence that the Assad government in Syria had not used chemical weapons. They were not forgiven.
Driven from the “mainstream”, Hersh must publish his work outside the United States. Parry set up his own independent news website Consortium News, where, in a final piece following a stroke, he referred to journalism’s veneration of “approved opinions” while “unapproved evidence is brushed aside or disparaged regardless of its quality.”
Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has changed in recent years. Dissent tolerated when I joined a national newspaper in Britain in the 1960s has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism moves towards a form of corporate dictatorship. This is a seismic shift, with journalists policing the new “groupthink”, as Parry called it, dispensing its myths and distractions, pursuing its enemies.​..
Journalism students should study this to understand that the source of “fake news” is not only trollism, or the likes of Fox News, or Donald Trump, but a journalism self-anointed with a false respectability: a liberal journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it.​..
When he was U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus declared what he called “a war of perception… conducted continuously using the news media.” What really mattered was not the facts but the way the story played in the United States. The undeclared enemy was, as always, an informed and critical public at home.​..
In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s film-maker, whose propaganda mesmerized the German public.
She told me the “messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above”, but on the “submissive void” of an uninformed public.
“Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?” I asked.
“Everyone,” she said. “Propaganda always wins, if you allow it.”

Hold the Front Page: The Reporters are Missing

[John Day]

Beggin’ yer indulgence here, Amigos & Amigas, but somebody sent me this link a week ago, before 9/11, and I have been keeping it as an open tab. I have not sent it out on http://www.johndayblog.com , because I cannot vouch for it, and it is of high importance, especially if mostly-true.
The premise is that the facts about 9/11 are getting leaked by the Russians lately, and that retired-but-diverted-not-recycled W-54 nuclear artillery shell “pits” have a lot of useful applications, like vaporizing the central steel structural columns in the Twin Towers. I have seen evidence to that effect before, and the inductive heating of steel from nearfield nuclear event is just the right thing for that job. Microspherules of iron in the wreckage and vaporization of something like 20 tons of steel in the special antenna on top of the WTC (POOF!) add credence to that theory.
What’s different here, is that specific actors and pathways of disbursement of these illegal battlefield nukes are alleged. I’m spelling it out to this commentariat, so you can choose to look at this link or not.
Again, beggin’ yer pardon… John http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=103579

[John Day]

I feature you on my post today, and include much that you have put together on this, as well as this post of yours, Ilargi. Eleni is not actually wrong about those conspiracies, just abrasive, perhaps. Sincerely, John.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2018/08/invisible-hands.html

[John Day]

Oh, I found that obscure little Zero Hedge site in spring 2008 from links on The Automatic Earth.

[John Day]

@zerosum
I leave comments on ZH sometimes, too, like on this article. Look for same Daibutsu “avatar”.
Today’s story on how it’s-gonna’-be-gold-again-and-already-started looks at the 7 years of gold bull market prior to 2008 and the 7 years of gold bear market leading up to… now, and how the drop in “gold” priced in dollars then, due to dollar debts being called-in, won’t happen next-time. I will point out that last Tuesday (announced Friday evening) the positions in gold markets were net-short. The first time that happened, noted here, was “Browns Bottom Backwardation” in 2000.
I really think that the remaining gold shorts are in for brown backwardation in their shorts this time. China won’t unpeg the Yuan, or let market parasites manipulate their currency.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-20/next-crisis-gold-wont-drop-2008-report-19-august-2018#comment-12227460

[John Day]

I am working with the hypothesis that the Chinse Yuan peg to gold has been negotiated last Friday, and will no longer be contested/ The Friday graph shows an eerie straight line climb of $7-8/oz in the last 150 min, upon which nobody comments (like WTC #7). That has held this morning. The CNY peg appeared to be around 8200 CNY per oz. and was embattled all last week, though China can clearly hold it, and the battle is now off. I have been following this on my blog since 8/11/18 Gold Peg War. http://www.johndayblog.com/
Look at Kitco gold http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/au24hr3day.html
Look at Gold Price China https://goldprice.org/gold-price-china.html
The bottom is in for gold, and the Chinese Yuan is fixed to it arouns 8100 – 8200 CNY/oz.
You have been informed. The world will notice. The “players” already know. I think leg 2 of 2008 is ready to go, but will it be before or after November elections?

[John Day]

Thanks Ilargi, and imagine a global financial regime where the dollar is one national currency, and there is gold for international exchange again.
My hypothesis, which time and tide are now testing, is that the world is transitioning off a petrodollar standard and back onto a gold standard for international trade and finance.
It looks to me like the skirmishes are currently being fought around the line of 8200 Chinese Yuan/Renminbi per Troy oz of gold.
The People’s Bank of China can certainly defend this peg, and the more it is contested, the more established it becomes in global consciousness. Western banking/governments can drive gold lower, which they do from time to time to make people feel gold is unreliable, but they will also drive the CNY/Renminbi lower, and just emphasize the peg to gold, by so doing. It looks like letting things settle close to where they are now is where the truce should be called. 1 Troy oz. Gold = 8200 CNY = $US 1200.
https://goldprice.org/gold-price-china.html
http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

[John Day]

Things were very hard on Alex during the Clinton and Bush II regimes. He’s a good guy, well meaning. The blowhard persona protects him somewhat, by making him easy to dismiss, rather than silence. I stood next to him a couple of times on the steps of the Texas Capital, long ago. I like to hear his voice coming from a parked work truck, when I’m riding my bike here in Austin. Comforting. No, I don’t really listen, or go to his site, except just now, to sign the petition.

[John Day]

Good essay, Regionswork. Much appreciated. We follow the same star.
http://www.johndayblog.com/

[John Day]

Former California Governator has these words to emote for current POTUS, emoted fervently in 30 second video clip that went semi-viral…
“I mean, you stood there like a little wet noodle, like a little fan boy, I mean… I was asking myself when are you going to ask him for an autograph or a selfie or something like that? I mean, you literally sold out to this press conference our intelligence community, our justice system and worst of all our country.”
“You’re the President of the United States you shouldn’t do that. What’s the matter with you?’ Whatever happened to the strong words or to the strength of Ronald Reagan, when he stood there at the Berlin wall and said: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall? What happened to all that?”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-17/what-happened-ronald-reagan-schwarzenegger-blasts-fanboy-trump-over-putin-meeting

Mish Shedlock: ​ The mass hysteria following Trump’s meeting with Putin is likely to last for days. Most are outraged. Few see the light.
https://www.themaven.net/mishtalk/economics/mass-hysteria-vkQlQ1iuLEmF5S9-DqEx0A/
​
The Voice of (t)Reason:
​ “As for who to believe and who you can’t believe… can you believe at all – you can’t believe anyone.” Vladimir Putin
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-17/putin-denies-having-dirt-trump-calls-accusations-election-interference-utterly

(Feel threatened much, John?)
Former Obama-era CIA Director – and ubiquitous tweeter of anti-Trump rhetoric – John Brennan just unleashed the most aggressive comment yet on the Trump-Putin Summit, claiming it was an act of treason.
“Why did Trump meet 1 on 1 with Putin? What might he be hiding from Bolton, Pompeo, Kelly, & the American public?How will Putin use whatever Trump could be hiding to advantage Russia & hurt America? Trump’s total lack of credibility renders spurious whatever explanation he gives.”
“Donald Trump’s press performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,'” Brennan tweeted. “It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-16/john-brennan-blasts-trumps-press-conference-nothing-short-treasonous

​Peace Talk Between Nuclear Superpowers Offends America’s Assholes and Morons​, Caitlin Johnstone:
When I was a little girl I used to end all my nightly prayers with the words, “And please no nuclear war, and peace on earth. Amen.”​ ​
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/peace-talk-between-nuclear-superpowers-offends-americas-assholes-and-morons-14158ef5cade

Beginning his joint press conference with Vladimir Putin, President Trump declared that U.S. relations with Russia have “never been worse.”
He then added pointedly, that just changed “about four hours ago.”​…He has rejected the fundamental premises of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War and blamed our wretched relations with Russia, not on Vladimir Putin, but squarely on the U.S. establishment… On Syria, Trump indicated that he and Putin are working with Bibi Netanyahu, who wants all Iranian forces and Iran-backed militias kept far from the Golan Heights. As for U.S. troops in Syria, says Trump, they will be coming out after ISIS is crushed, and we are 98 percent there.. Pat Buchanan
​http://buchanan.org/blog/trump-calls-off-cold-war-ii-129662

[John Day]

If you look at actions, instead of words, Theresa May and Donald Trump are both easier to understand.
Both are highly constrained by the situation, and their situations are different. Theresa May has every interest in actually preventing Brexit for her masters, so she runs out the clock after scoring own-goal.
Donald Trump is doing what he is told by his masters, and doing it very badly, which does not serve them, and I don’t think he really likes serving anybody, but I am just speculating, because there is so much fog of war these days. One thing to consider about Trump is that he is comfortable using Paradox as a tool of social change. He says something really scary and repulsive that is the opposite of his ultimate action. Nuking North Korea becomes negotiating peace with north Korea, and maybe getting US troops out after that. I am inferring that no president really gets to BE president, but just to play president on TV. I think Trump can actually step the US down from global imperialist enforcer if he is allowed to. There is a deep-state power struggle between the neocons, and the faction sometimes called “rationalists”. Trump might actually serve the rationalists by doing everything Sheldon Adelson pays him to do. It all goes too far and creates an opposite effect. Risky. I’ll see how this works out, if I live through it.

[John Day]

“Lenders have given Greece the last €15 billion of the bailout to build a cash buffer. They also extended their loans by 10 years, meaning Greece should not face large repayments until the 2030s.”
We will be in a different world by 2030, but I don’t know the details. If my health is good I will be growing vegetables and riding my bike(s). If I can, I’ll be providing medical care to poor people.
I think we;ll have a different definition of “money” by then, maybe several.

[John Day]

Up-Periscope for a moment:
War has been the traditional solution for ruling elites to maintain their power in times of economic upheaval. Our current local and global economies are “inseparably” connected in the current globalist financial structure. This structure excels at extracting value and reducing current market prices, at the expense of strip-mining all of the production centers, including their environments and people. The exponential growth of this system is fated to meet hard limits, but a little bit before it hits the hard limits, the exponential growth collapses, which makes the financial system collapse, since the growing exponent is the flat-baseline of the current global financial regime. That’s sort of a saving grace, really… It tried to happen in 2008.
There will be a financial reset to a system that functions well without exponential growth. (Or we can just have chaos.) Ideally, it will be functional in wide fluctuations, since we can expect that. That’s what the world has had until the industrial revolution.
China has the longest contiguous history of financial ups and downs, alternating between paper money in growth and gold during declines, each serving a phase of economic cycles. These can be decades and centuries long. China has now come out of a couple of centuries of slump, and is in a sharp rise, but aware of Chinese history, and prepared for a reversion to the gold standard.
Russia has been through her reset, is economically and financially resilient, has lots of natural resources, including oil and gas that other countries need, the means to defend it, and pipelines to move it to markets.
Among the big 3 powers, Russia has the most flexible and least vulnerable position, but way too small of an economy to dream of subduing China or the US/Western-empire. Russia is focusing her brilliance on diplomacy, being the deciding voice in any awkward stalemate in the world.
Russia, China and the US, as “rational actors”, know that nuclear war is a threat to hold over the heads of their own populations, not a rational alternative.
Expunging irrational actors, like the playground-bully neocons, is of primary importance. Then the real deals can be made to carve out spheres of influence, and cut back on wasteful military spending. It looks like negotiations regarding Korea are the start of that.
The US affords military-financial-empire right now, because the global trade currency standard is still the $US. That will not persist, partly due to the decline of American industry, which it has created, as with prior empires. No national currency persists as global trade currency, as a quick review shows.
We can expect is a return of basic industrial production in North America. This will be in the contexts of much lower wages and much lower total bureaucratic cost structure, or it won’t happen at all.
That restructuring of productive economy must mean a cheapening of the upper layers of government, and a return of agency to less remote state and local governments, without any increase in revenues for state and local governments, just a decrease in Federal spending.
Within that overall picture, basic services will still need to be provided, in ways that are least costly to the overall economy.
Natural monopolies, owned and run by local, state and regional government include electricity, roads, waterways and railroads, water and wastewater, communications networks, regulatory agencies and enforcement, means of taxation, law enforcement, education and medical care. I’m sure I have left things out.
The necessary losers here are the portion of the 5% who are not actually skilled contributors to economy, but who manipulate the legal-financial system to draw off skim. They have to get real jobs. They will be tremendously stressed, and many will not be able to perform useful work. They are the politically powerful contingent, screaming “No, No, No”! They are what “pulled us out” of the 2008 financial crisis, by promising lots of nice money to everybody, if they would all just cooperate.
That nice money is promises of a cut of future wealth. Those promises are impossible, like our retirements.
Who loses the most, and when?
That deal may have been cut, but is not yet made public, or it may have to work itself out in very unpleasant ways, especially in the USA.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2018/06/global-and-local.html

[John Day]

I’m a little late to this commentary, but the children at America’s borders are not Mexican. They are fleeing American (CIA, economic hit man, etc) covert warfare that kills people you don’t know about. The American Academy of Pediatrics has the most detail I’ve found.
In the dramatic increase in arrivals that began in 2014 and continues at the time of writing this policy statement, more than 95% of undocumented children have emigrated from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador (the Northern Triangle countries of Central America), with much smaller numbers from Mexico and other countries. Most of these undocumented children cross into the United States through the southern border.2 Unprecedented violence, abject poverty, and lack of state protection of children and families in Central America are driving an escalation of migration to the United States from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2017/03/09/peds.2017-0483

[John Day]

@V.Arnold
I read Modernity and the Sickness of the Soul by David Nasr, and I agree with it, and I agree with your assessment, which is the self-assessment it contains: “I don’t know; I’m just a seeker”. I find that the search must be physical to some significant degree, growing vegetables with hands in the soil (and sweating, and hurting and being frustrated, etc), engaging other humans, and engaging in real projects of co-creation (gardening works, again). Meditation alone and together is not something we are sold, but it’s a normal function. Riding a bike places is pretty adaptive in more ways than apparent until you do it for a year or two.

[John Day]

More fine links and comments today. Happy Birthday, V.Arnold.
What I wonder is why it is so invisible that in the flow of history, the separation of ancient Korea into 2 countries is a temporary thing,and that the peace and denuclearization, and win, win, win, win, win can all be rolled into the reunification that desperately wants to happen. Both Kim and Moon openly aspire to reunification.
JFK’s American University speech is always relevant:
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/06/john-f-kennedy-and-the-question-of-world-peace.html

[John Day]

Lifted from my blog today: https://www.johndayblog.com/2018/06/very-special-bond.html
There is a lot of visceral rage and resentment against Donald Trump. Why? Bad manners.
Yep. Specifically, Donald Trump is impetuous, like a 3 year old, who was never forced to comply with order, but instead humored by his nanny, and in private schools, and in the elite New York business world.
“Enabled” is the current catch phrase. Most people, the great majority, were forced to accept order and authority at the age of 3. They may have had younger siblings, or seen neighbor kids, who broke rules and got away with it, while they, themselves had to comply.
There was a burning resentment, a deep and righteous sense of wrongness, and a wholehearted surge to restore order. All of this is so early in development, and so core to even a 5 year old, that it is almost impossible to look at within oneself.
We may speculate that this is the characteristic of the absolute monarchs of old, the kings that used to enjoy “divine right”.
“Don’t try to figure it out; God works in mysterious ways.”
Almost all of us, and certainly Angela Merkel (German), have gotten to whatever station we enjoy by internalizing rules and order, and navigating within that regimented context. We excel within the rules, using the rules to our advantage. We are masters of the set order, in that way, and we are rewarded.
Donald Trump has an adult intellect, and the impetuous nature of an untamed 3 year old, and most of the world is flummoxed.
It’s not that difficult. The analysts that see it and work with it, do not have trouble navigating these particular rules of engagement. You catch more flies with honey, than with vinegar.
Those who actually own our global financial system prefer to remain invisible, and to change the rules when it serves to advance their power. We gripe and follow them, and our resentment is unfocused and diffused into bureaucracy. Trump even seems to offend Soros, or maybe Soros is playing that role for us.

Trump and Kim have developed “a very special bond”. They “will meet many times”, Kim “is a very talented man”, who “loves his country very much”. “The world will see an important change.”
Donald Trump applies media impact to force the neoliberal-neoconservative establishment into a strategic change of direction. The non-binding memorandum of understanding dedicates the US and North Korea to work towards a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, without defining the term. the only definition which can actually work for all parties in the long term is the absolutely correct one, excluding all nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula. It is early for the US to declare this much.
Trump makes an important show of goodwill, renouncing joint war-games between the US and South Korean forces. South Korea will clearly appreciate this, as will Russia and China. Following suit, Kim declared as his sweetener that North Korea would shut down a testing facility for ICBM rocket motors.
Touche’
The mindset expressed in American media is that this is a big win for China and North Korea, but I think they will have to stop talking mean about Kim, and by later this year, the meme of Korean reunification will be playing. That meme can only play positively. Trump is directing expectations into a big positive payoff, for all interested parties, except the neocons. Even the global financial neoliberals get to lick their chops over another fresh market to exploit, with resources and cheap labor to grab.
Trump praised the country’s beaches. “I said to [Kim], you could have the greatest hotels in the world,” Trump told reporters.
American media is starting with the line that Trump got duped, but they won’t be able to hold that stance, and will start having to mention the very obvious long term benefits of normalization of US-North Korea relations, followed by reunification of a pacifist Korea. (Al Jazeera has the news without the insults today)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/06/trump-kim-singapore-summit-latest-updates-180611044520584.html

“President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un state the following:
The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.–DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
​
American small business sentiment is sharply more optimistic on North Korean diplomacy.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-12/small-business-euphoric-about-trump-optimism-soars-2nd-highest-ever

Moon of Alabama has an even handed and more concise interpretation of the “Photo-op Summit”:
Both sides commit to implement the above “fully and expeditiously”. Further talks will be held at the Foreign Minister/Secretary of State level.
This is not a deal, just a declaration. The ‘denuclearization’ commitment by the DPRK is aspirational. There is no equal commitment from the U.S. side. There is no time frame. As predicted the DPRK will not give up its nukes. It had good reasons to build them and the same reasons will let it keep them.
As long as talks are ongoing the DPRK will likely hold off on further nuclear and long range missile tests. The U.S. will likely stop large scale maneuvers in and around Korea. This is the ‘freeze for freeze’ which North Korea long wanted and which China and Russia actively supported.
Further talks between the U.S. and North Korea will be slow walked and may not lead to significant progress in nuclear disarmament. Their main purpose is to hold off the U.S. while the real talks that between North and South Korea continue. This is what the “efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula” are really about.
It is disappointing that the terrible human rights record of the United States was not mentioned during the talks.
The North Korean side played its cards exceptionally well. It built its capabilities under enormous pressure and used it to elevate the country to a real player on the international stage. The “maximum pressure” sanction campaign against it is now defused. China, Russia and South Korea will again trade with North Korea.In pressing for an early summit Trump defused a conflict that otherwise might have ruined his presidency.
The losers, for now, are the hawks in Japan, South Korea and Washington who tried their best to prevent this to happen. The winners are the people of Korea, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. Special prices go to President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and to Dennis Rodman who did their best to make this happen.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/06/thoughts-on-the-kim-trump-photo-op-summit.html#more

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