Welcome to Saturday's Potluck - 12-24-2022

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

Wish everyone a great weekend of celebration of their choosing. Mine will be surrounded by those I care about, more food than necessary, reflection of past year and future plans.

Just have to add some news.

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Richard Wolff, a good economic educator has an article on the Economic war currently being conducted and its history from World War I forward.
The economic realities we face at the end of 2022 Asia Times Richard D. Wolff Dec 19, 2022
The economic warfare that has defined this year threatens to escalate into hot war, as it has in the past

The key fact is not the military war between Russia and Ukraine, so far a limited, secondary affair except for the massive on-the-ground suffering of the Ukrainian people and the soldiers on both sides of the conflict. The year’s key reality is rather the economic warfare between the United States and the EU versus Russia and China: sanctions and countersanctions.

Their ramifications (energy-price spikes, supply-chain disruptions, and massive market shifts) worsened the inflation already troubling many countries. These, in turn, provoked central-bank interest-rate increases that added more disruptive and costly shocks to an already problematic 2022 global economy.
...
Meanwhile, global changes in great-power alignments risk being misunderstood or undervalued because clashing capitalisms disguise themselves, yet again, in great principles. Russia versus Ukraine gets rewritten as anti-Russian NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) expansion versus Ukrainian self-determination.

US capitalism’s shift from neoliberal globalization to government-led economic nationalism to counter China’s rise in the global economy gets rewritten as required by “national security.” The further fracturing of Europe’s unity gets rewritten, in truly upside-down fashion, as a rebuilt US-EU-NATO alliance. Proliferating delusions need deciphering.
...
The capitalist system that dominates globally today organizes 99% of its workplaces/enterprises with a small minority of employers who direct the large majority of employees. It forces today’s great powers (the United States, the EU and China) to mobilize their allies and compete to shape the decisions of the Global South.

The post-World War II years of US hegemony governed and held together a particular global arrangement of economies. The culmination of short-term instabilities and long-term trends inside and outside the great powers has undermined US hegemony. A struggle to shape the emerging “new world order” is under way. That struggle is the economic reality as 2022 ends.

The hegemonic war of maneuver is our context now; it will last until or unless a new global arrangement arrives.
...
t would be wishful thinking to mistake this result as peculiar to the French. Many leaders and influencers around the world criticize and resent the last 75 years of economic hegemony wielded by the United States.

That perspective on current events has only strengthened in recent years as the US global empire has lost power, the United States lost wars in Asia, and China emerged as the first serious economic competitor against the United States since at least 1945. The Ukraine war has so far served mainly to validate and thus harden that perspective.
...
Propaganda, trials and errors characterize efforts by all sides to navigate a dangerous, tension-filled time of change. One side’s “freedom fighters” are characterized by the opposing side as agents of domination by major powers. One side’s expansion of its international trade and capital is branded “aggressiveness” by another side rattling its swords. Shifts from neoliberal globalization to assertive economic nationalism are all rationalized as requirements of “national security.”
...
World War I split socialists even as it strengthened a broadly defined socialism. World War II did the same. It not only hardened the splits within socialism (such as social democracy and Soviet socialism) but also extended the social reach of socialist variants of anti-capitalism, especially to the former colonies and China.

Capitalism has been the context and ultimate cause of world history’s two worst wars. Many had thought, hoped, and worked so that those horrific wars might enable and empower first the League of Nations and later the United Nations.

The goals of these organizations were to secure peace in place of global power politics moving toward war. They tried to achieve that goal without fundamentally challenging capitalism, the organization of an economy whose production entails a powerful minority (private or state) owning and operating enterprises. These organizations seem to have failed, but their failure left a lesson we can learn and build on.

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Pepe one of the best writers on Asian geopolitical The full article is worth reading.

Can China help Brazil restart its global soft power? Asia Times Pepe Escobar Dec 22, 2022

Ten days of full immersion in Brazil are not for the faint-hearted. Even restricted to the top two megalopolises, Sao Paulo and Rio, watching live the impact of interlocking economic, political, social and environmental crises exacerbated by the Jair Bolsonaro project leaves one stunned.

The return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for what will be his third presidential term, starting January 1, 2023, is an extraordinary story trespassed by Sisyphean tasks. All at the same time he will have to

  • fight poverty;
  • reconnect with economic development while redistributing wealth;
  • re-industrialize the nation; and
  • tame environmental pillage.

...
A concerted imperial campaign since 2010, duly denounced by WikiLeaks, and implemented by local comprador elites, targeted the Dilma Rousseff presidency – the Brazilian national entrepreneurial champions – and led to Rousseff’s (illegal) impeachment and the jailing of Lula for 580 days on spurious charges (all subsequently dropped), paved the way for Bolsonaro to win the presidency in 2018.

Were it not for this accumulation of disasters, Brazil – a natural leader of the Global South – by now might possibly be placed as the fifth-largest geo-economic power in the world.
...
Batista sees Lula facing at least three hostile blocs.

  • The extreme right supported by a significant, powerful faction of the armed forces – and this includes not only Bolsonarists, who are still in front of a few army barracks contesting the presidential election result;
  • The physiological right that dominates Congress – known in Brazil as “The Big Center”;
  • International financial capital – which, predictably, controls the bulk of mainstream media.

Bolsonaro reduced Brazil to resources-exporter status; now Lula should follow Argentina’s lead into Belt and Road
...
Lula is already winning his first battle: approving a constitutional amendment that allows financing of more social spending.

That allows the government to keep the flagship Bolsa Família welfare program – of roughly $13 a month per poverty-level family – at least for the next two years.
...
To recover from the previous, disastrous six years – which included a two-year no man’s land (2016-2018) after the impeachment of president Dilma – Brazil will need an unparalleled national drive of re-industrialization at virtually every level, complete with serious investment in research and development, training of specialized work forces and technology transfer.

There is a superpower that can play a crucial role in this process: China, Brazil’s close partner in the expanding BRICS+. Brazil is one of the natural leaders of the Global South, a role much prized by the Chinese leadership.

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We will see if this is a trend. Countries not simply exporting raw material, but creating the industrial infrastructure for some processing and obtain the additional profit.
Indonesia bauxite ban drops a trade war gauntlet Asia Times Dec 24, 2022

Doubling down on Indonesia’s value-added mineral policy which has drawn fire from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and European importers, a defiant President Joko Widodo insists his administration will go ahead with its plan to ban bauxite exports in June next year.

Widodo made the announcement only days after returning from a visit to Brussels where he told the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-European Union (EU) summit that relations between the two regional blocs had to change.

“If we want to build a good partnership, then (it) must be based on equality, there should be no coercion,” he said in a surprisingly assertive statement. “There should no longer be anyone dictating and assuming their standard is better than others.”

“Indonesia wishes to underline the fact that developments that have added value and inclusivity will help support the world’s economic resilience,” he continued. “In this case, Indonesia will continue to build our downstream industry.”

The government acknowledged it will initially lose an annual US$500-600 million in export earnings, but Economic Coordinating Minister Airlangga Hartarto says increased refining will boost state revenues from 21 trillion rupiah ($1.37 billion) to 62 trillion rupiah ($4.0 billion) a year.
...

________

What is on your mind today?

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Lookout's picture

A chilly 6F at daybreak.

Merry Christmas eve to all! Due to the frigid weather we're hunkered down in the holler for the weekend. Should break freezing on Monday. Headed to 60's by the end of the week when we've rescheduled our family visit.

I wish Lula the best of luck and hope the US doesn't interfere like they did with Dilma. First place Bolsanaro visited when he came to the US was CIA headquarters. That spoke volumes to me. Then Glenn came out with the "Car wash" scandal info...a bombshell that was poorly covered in the US CIA controlled media.

Thanks for the OT. Enjoy the holiday, your family, and the food!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

soryang's picture

@Lookout Thanks for the link. Read the whole thing. I can't speak to the ELINT or technical cloak and dagger issues, but superficially as an analyst (from open sources), I can't help but notice the similarity of the actions and techniques of Moros, to those of Yoon Seok-yeol as Prosecutor General of South Korea, with the help of his hatchet man, prosecutor Han Dong-un, (the current justice minister of South Korea) in taking down political opponents in the Democratic Party and bringing themselves to power currently.

Lee Jae-myung, the current leader of the Minjudang (Democratic Party) has been subpoenaed in last couple of days, in another politically motivated investigation and persecution in the ongoing Daejanddong scandal, which ironically, President Yoon played a key role in covering up in its early stages (the Pusan Savings Bank scandal from which the original conspirators/investors in the Daejangdon real estate development obtained their seed capital). Yoon, then a chief prosecutor in charge of the investigation of the bank's massive, improvident and improper loans said "nothing to see here" in the early stages of the conspiracy.

In my opinion, this seems to be a more advanced technique using the administration of justice and the courts, to implement a de facto coup d'etat than by a conventional military coup, or right wing led, fascist (faux democracy movement) street movement, because it is more subtle, attempts to preserve the trappings of the rule of law, in a (corrupted) republic. The technique requires the fabrication of evidence and the cooperation of corporate media. The implicit threat of being the victim of the same police power techniques intimidates the witnesses, justices and elected officials, who are perhaps not sympathetic to the object of the conspiracy, nor fooled by the flimsy, fabricated, and coerced evidence. Needless to say, all but the most courageous independent journalists are also intimidated to remain silent. fwiw.

I also have to always consider the possibility of you know who, managing the internal politics of a foreign country by orchestrating or coaching such events through contacts with the key players.

I'll be home for Christmas, yes sure I will. Home is where the heart is, right?

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語必忠信 行必正直

studentofearth's picture

@Lookout We often get a break in the cold weather in January. I have always counted it as a mini-vacation before winter returns.

The up and down heat cycle is hard on the plants. Concerned to see the cycle showing up in more parts of the country. It creates unique challenges to growing crops with regular annual yields.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

mhagle's picture

They all speak to how little U.S. citizens are paying attention to the world. Add to it an African response to this recent silly summit.

[video:https://youtu.be/w_3Dp4GuLrk]

Not as cold last night - 20 rather than 11 - supposed to get up to 36 today. Making the stuffing and potatoes to put in crackpots for tomorrow. We are dripping faucets so we have water, but my kitchen drain is frozen—one of life's minor challenges. Fortunately, I have a pail. Smile

It will just be us here. That's OK. Kids start college classes in a few weeks so it is important to cherish all of these moments. And from this OT we know that we don't know the future. It's all good right now and let's enjoy it.

Happy holidays to all!!!!

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

studentofearth's picture

@mhagle of diplomacy and international relations. Only part way through, but her points of poor planning of conducting the Summit while congress was not in session and Us policy makers using refugees as the primary source of understanding a country were interesting viewpoints.

Are the kids moving to other parts of the country for college or does your area have options close to home? Not having to pay room and board is a significant decrease in the cost.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

mhagle's picture

@studentofearth

So they will still be home. Yes, housing costs more than tuition in most places.

My daughter says she can't leave her birds, too. (chickens, turkeys, guineas)

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

thanks for hosting soe!

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snoopydawg's picture

@QMS

That has been my ringtone since I got a phone. Two versions of it so I know who I should answer.

I’ve been a Snoopy fan my whole life and he was born the same year I was. I had a cool thing that made peanuts figures out of some goo and then baked them on the machine till they were soft plastic. Man I wish I still had it!

Lol..whoever bought my old Mazda must have had a fun time taking off all the little Snoopy stickers I plastered on the inside of the doors.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

studentofearth's picture

@QMS

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

snoopydawg's picture

https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/the-claim-that-the-ukraine-war-advance...

If it weren’t for the imperial spin machine, nobody would believe the US just coincidentally stumbled its way into a lucky proxy war that happens to help it advance its agendas of global domination.

I tweeted her article in reply to the guy making an ass of himself.

Caitlin often reminds us that our narratives are being shaped by the PTB to further their agendas and get our consent for what they plan on doing. I think Taiibi nails how that has affected us and what it’s done to our realities. Even if we see through the propaganda it still takes a toll. I’ve seen it.

Sometime in the last decade, many people — I was one — began to feel robbed of their sense of normalcy by something we couldn’t define. Increasingly glued to our phones, we saw that the version of the world that was spat out at us from them seemed distorted. The public’s reactions to various news events seemed off-kilter, being either way too intense, not intense enough, or simply unbelievable. You’d read that seemingly everyone in the world was in agreement that a certain thing was true, except it seemed ridiculous to you, which put you in an awkward place with friends, family, others. Should you say something? Are you the crazy one?

I can’t have been the only person to have struggled psychologically during this time. This is why these Twitter files have been such a balm. This is the reality they stole from us! It’s repulsive, horrifying, and dystopian, a gruesome history of a world run by anti-people, but I’ll take it any day over the vile and insulting facsimile of truth they’ve been selling. Personally, once I saw that these lurid files could be used as a road map back to something like reality — I wasn’t sure until this week — I relaxed for the first time in probably seven or eight years.

Something tells me the coming year is going to be a better one. Happy Holidays, everyone. Enjoy your loved ones, ignore the rest, and see you all again soon.

Thanks Obama for making government propaganda legal you worthless POS!

We got more snow last night so we will have a white Xmas. I remember one Xmas back in the 80's when it snowed for days and the plows couldn’t keep up. This was before everyone had 4 wheel drive. I had a little Honda Civic with front wheel drive and it did okay. It sure doesn’t snow like it used to.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

enhydra lutris's picture

@snoopydawg

for ages if you told somebody that the government was spewing propaganda many/most would reply that they couldn't because it was illegal. Now you can tell them that it ain't illegal and they have to come up with some other self-deception.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

enhydra lutris's picture

@snoopydawg

for ages if you told somebody that the government was spewing propaganda many/most would reply that they couldn't because it was illegal. Now you can tell them that it ain't illegal and they have to come up with some other self-deception.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

studentofearth's picture

@snoopydawg Caitlin has a special talent with words.

Matt generally writes on very serious, depressing subjects - his statement of hope after reviewing the Twitter files is encouraging.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

https://t.me/levigodman/6249

This cartoon seems to fit what's actually happening on the ground right now.

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NYCVG

studentofearth's picture

@NYCVG I am glad you are seeing well enough to enjoy the media format.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

Pluto's Republic's picture

I would also recommend Escobar's most recent offering: Rest in Peace JCPOA. It another view of economic restructuring for the 21st century, this time in Iran. Here are some excerpts:

The Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is now, for all practical purposes, dead. Just like in the legendary Dead Parrot sketch  by Monty Python, this deal is no more. It has gone to meet its maker. This is a former deal.

The undertaker, significantly, was none other than the senile character currently impersonating the “leader of the free world”.

His name may be Joe Biden, but “Biden” is in fact a combo in the background dictating every line of the script the Crash Test Dummy in question haltingly tries to deliver, either mimicking the words whispered to his earpiece or struggling to read a teleprompter.

A new video, shot in early November, surfaced earlier this week where “Biden” says the JCPOA deal is dead. "But we’re not going to announce it. Long story.”    

The long story it is. When he was relatively less senile, on his campaign trail over two years ago, “Biden” promised that Washington would rejoin the JCPOA, which was unilaterally torn apart by his predecessor Donald Trump in 2018.

::

The original JCPOA, clinched in Vienna in 2015 – I followed most of the process live – was very convenient at the time for the then-Barack Obama administration, the so-called EU3 (France, UK and Germany) and even Russia and China. Obama believed that a deal would lead Tehran to be more amenable toward Washington.

The JCPOA was essentially a clone of the Minsk agreement: the Empire just playing for time before coming up with renewed mischief. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel herself has revealed, on the record, that Minsk was nothing but a gigantic farce. 

Now the geopolitical chessboard has completely changed. The European Union plus the Brexiters have been reduced to an outsize satrapy of the American Empire.

The Russia-China strategic partnership is considered by the Americans as an existential threat. And Iran on top of it has been admitted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). 

::

Everyone analyzing West Asia with an IQ above room temperature knows that Iran’s “nuclear weapon program” is a gigantic farce – a massive propaganda campaign developed for decades by the usual suspects.

What really matters for Tehran is to increase its civilian nuclear power capabilities. And that’s what’s already happening. Iranian capacity for uranium enrichment is now twice as high as the total volume produced since the onset of its nuclear industry.

::

The leadership in Tehran has fully grasped the future is in Eurasia – from fully joining the SCO to becoming a member of BRICS+ perhaps as early as next year. Interlocking strategic partnerships with BRICS members Russia, China and India are in progress.

Iran is involved in the drive towards multipolarity across the spectrum. The latest example is Russia’s second-largest bank, VTB – sanctioned by the collective West - launching a new money transfer service to Iranian individuals and businesses, bypassing the US dollar.  

Nobody will miss the JCPOA. What matters in fact in this long-running saga is the valuable lesson learned by the whole Global South: it’s now blatantly clear the decaying Empire is non-agreement capable, and an eminently untrustworthy entity.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
studentofearth's picture

@Pluto's Republic Thanks for adding the article and link. It is not a site I had looked at before.

Now we need time to see if the changes are a new normal or a temporary adjustment. The understanding of United States negotiations as fake to simply by time for other plans is finally reaching critical mass of basic knowledge. (I would add English to fake negotiations as a tactic after taking a deeper dive into early colonization of North America and Caribbeans)

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@studentofearth

I would add English to fake negotiations as a tactic after taking a deeper dive into early colonization of North America and Caribbeans.

.
...and one that seems hold the key to the isolated legal rational at the foundation of the American Experience, today.

Good catch.

I've been compelled to dip into lots of strange wells, lately, seeking basic information and opinions that I once took for granted. This is one of the unintended consequences of the censorship that the US authoritarian regime has forced upon the American people. For, in these new wells of information, I find so much more that I was looking for.

The other day, Snoopydawg posted a link to Matt Taibbi, who was explaining his abrupt absence since the Twitter papers were released by Elon Musk. If you haven't read it yet, you may find that it resonates. Here's a passage:

Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

Sitting in a hotel bar in San Francisco, going through what’s become a nightly “remembering to eat” ritual. As readers here know, this has been a crazy month, during which time I lost track of a lot of things. I’ve been an absentee father during the holidays, which is contemptible, and also remiss when it comes to responsibilities to subscribers to this site, omitting to even take time to explain basic things, which I’ll try to do now.

A group of us spent the last weeks reading thousands of documents. For me a lot of that time was spent learning how Twitter functioned, specifically its relationships with government. How weird is modern-day America? Not long ago, CIA veterans tell me, the information above the “tearline” of a U.S. government intelligence cable would include the station of origin and any other CIA offices copied on the report.

I spent much of today looking at exactly similar documents, seemingly written by the same people, except the “offices” copied at the top of their reports weren’t other agency stations, but Twitter’s Silicon Valley colleagues: Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, even Wikipedia. It turns out these are the new principal intelligence outposts of the American empire....

Sometime in the last decade, many people — I was one — began to feel robbed of their sense of normalcy by something we couldn’t define. Increasingly glued to our phones, we saw that the version of the world that was spat out at us from them seemed distorted. The public’s reactions to various news events seemed off-kilter, being either way too intense, not intense enough, or simply unbelievable. You’d read that seemingly everyone in the world was in agreement that a certain thing was true, except it seemed ridiculous to you, which put you in an awkward place with friends, family, others. Should you say something? Are you the crazy one?

I can’t have been the only person to have struggled psychologically during this time. This is why these Twitter files have been such a balm. This is the reality they stole from us! It’s repulsive, horrifying, and dystopian, a gruesome history of a world run by anti-people, but I’ll take it any day over the vile and insulting facsimile of truth they’ve been selling. Personally, once I saw that these lurid files could be used as a road map back to something like reality — I wasn’t sure until this week — I relaxed for the first time in probably seven or eight years.

....

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

I took a day off yesterday from current world events, mostly to get a little down time to recharge my inquisitiveness batteries and find inspiration to resist tptb, fight hard against falling in line with their Great Reset. Bastards.
It was great to read Wolff, enjoy how he can reduce world economic history to a short article, using language and terms non-economist types can understand easily.
It had to have been Happy Hour somewhere in the world when I popped a top on a beer at 4pm, Galveston-Time. I am getting ready for a slow read of Pepe'. He is just brilliant.
Ok. I have made, and still make, a real bitchy criticism of Wolff, and for all his immense intellectual properties, and inherent appreciation of the perpetual economic slavery of the working man, he needs to spend some time out on the farm.
I listened to one of his videos a few months ago, and he said people need to lose their ideas and desires for private dwellings and individual land ownership. According to him, we all need to forget that, move into multi family unit dwellings. I am currently staying in a condo. Mostly rentals, but a few dwellers live in and own their condos. It is tiny. No place to store or stack food or clothing. Walk softly. No loud talking, dress appropriately, certain garbage must be taken off premises, forget having a piano! Forget buying kitchen, bathroom, or bedding on sale! No storage! Do not put anything on the balcony!
If shit hits the fan next year, as Wolff predicts, I am secure in my own home, have land, can grow food, can hunt, can fish,and I can make as much noise as I want, and if I decide to dress inappropriately, or not at all, it will not offend anybody.
Thanks for the ot, soe. It was very interesting!

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

studentofearth's picture

@on the cusp my thoughts on his endpoint of how people should live. Choices should be allowed in our imagining a future for type of activities (including work), residences and social structure of family units integrating with larger society.

He does explain broad economic policies well.

The trip to Galveston was a well deserved break from being on the front line of our dysfunctional society.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

enhydra lutris's picture

Thank for the articles and info.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

studentofearth's picture

@enhydra lutris

up
2 users have voted.

Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.