From neoliberalism to nationalism

The Russians and the Chinese both understand that in keeping with the demographic and economic decline of the USA, the neoliberal world order is failing:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared today that the Western, liberal model of society is dying, and a new world order is taking its place. Lavrov made the comments at his annual meeting with students and professors at the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy, reported Russian state news agency TASS.

“The Western liberal model of development, which particularly stipulates a partial loss of national sovereignty – this is what our Western colleagues aimed at when they invented what they called globalization – is losing its attractiveness and is no more viewed as a perfect model for all. Moreover, many people in the very western countries are skeptical about it,” Lavrov said.

According to him, global development is guided “by processes aimed at boosting multipolarity and what we call a polycentric world order.”

This is why the neoliberals - and the wolves in sheep's clothing called the neoconservatives - are so terrified of nationalism and nationalists. Multipolarity is just another word for nationalism and "a polycentric world order" is synonymous with "a balance of power."

The battle for France continues

Yellow vest demonstrators have again clashed with riot police in the French city of Toulouse as President Emmanuel Macron prepared a series of policy announcements aimed at quelling 22 consecutive weekends of anti-government protests.

The southern city resembled a war zone today as police fired teargas and arrested several people after hundreds of demonstrators started throwing objects, burning rubbish bins and trying to enter areas where protests have been banned.

Around 2,000 protesters had gathered on the Allee Jean Jaures - a wide avenue in the city centre - and on nearby side streets.

The virtues of vibrancy

Given the increasing number of attacks like this, it won't be long before the vast majority of Americans conclude that the Civil Rights Movement was the most evil and deleterious attack on the nation since the 1965 Naturalization Act.

A Twin Cities man accused of throwing a child over a third-floor railing at the Mall of America has a history of mental health problems and had twice been ordered to stay away from the mall, court records show.

In a previous criminal case, Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda told police that “he has some anger issues” after being arrested for smashing computers at a Minneapolis public library.

Aranda, 24, is being held by Bloomington police on suspicion of attempted homicide after he threw or pushed a 5-year-old boy from a third-floor balcony at the mall Friday morning, police said.

Aranda was arrested in the mall transit station after fleeing the scene.

And yes, this is yet another example of an unprovoked black-on-white attempted murder. The charges have been upgraded. It doesn't matter if "you don't see color," not that anyone takes your sanctimonious pretense seriously. The point is, those who hate you do.

There isn't much of a mystery surrounding the death of the shopping mall. Who wants to go shopping in public when it means putting your small children at the risk of murderous vibrants.

UPDATE: Twitter jumped the gun. The boy is hanging in there.

The boy, whose first name is Landen, "is still very much with us and fighting," he said in a Facebook message.

Book Interview with BIC

I spoke briefly with John Trent of Bounding Into Comics about Milo's new book:

Not only is the book for sale on Amazon, but it’s also for sale on Arkhaven Comics’ website given the book was edited by Arkhaven Comics publisher Vox Day.

I got the opportunity to chat with Vox about the book and he lauded it’s usefulness and noted it “underlines the importance of self-responsibility.”

BIC: The book is described as a guide for people who have been deplatformed, do you expect it be common reading in the near future as social media platforms continue to ban people for writing things like “learn to code?”

Vox: “I think HOW TO BE POOR will be useful for anyone who finds themselves in difficult circumstances, even those that are not necessarily related to poverty. Milo’s book is surprisingly stoic and underlines the importance of self-responsibility even when those circumstances are beyond one’s control. But I think HOW TO BE POOR will be very popular, and indeed, the Kindle version is already an Amazon bestseller in all of its categories, because the subject matter is so relevant to an increasing number of people these days. And, of course, because it’s hilarious.”

Read the whole interview there to see what is coming next for Milo.

AH:Q1 for backers

Yesterday we sent out 25 emails to backers who didn't receive the initial mail blast, and have just sent out another 18 to additional backers who contacted us to inform us that they didn't receive it. So, if you've emailed us about AH:Q1 in the last 24 hours, please check your email.

In other backer-related news, we expect to send the omnibus editions of ALT-HERO issues #1-6 out, featuring new covers by Cliff Cosmic and another artist, before the end of the month. We also expect to release the first digital edition of SWAN KNIGHT'S SAGA.

If you didn't back AH:Q #1 WHERE WE GO ONE, please note that you can still pick it up at Amazon, where it is the #1 New Release in graphic novels, ahead of the new Superman and Batman comics.

Pope Benedict on the betrayal of the RCC

The ex-Pope, or possibly genuine Pope, depending upon how you see these things, lambastes the moral degradation of his Church:

Benedict’s “The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse” has the unmistakable ring of a papal document. You might even call it a post-retirement encyclical.

It’s written with his signature precision and clarity of insight and offers a piercing account of the origins of the crisis and a ­vision of the way forward.

The church’s still-radiating crisis, Benedict suggests, was a product of the moral laxity that swept the West, and not just the church, in the 1960s. The young rebels of 1968, Benedict writes, fought for “all-out sexual freedom, one which no longer conceded any norms.”

Benedict adds: “Part of the physiognomy of the Revolution of 1968 was that pedophilia was now also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate.” This might strike contemporary readers as puzzling. But those who lived through that wretched decade will remember that some of the leading ’68ers also advocated “anti-authoritarian education,” which involved some pretty ­unsavory interactions between adults and children. Hippie communes weren’t child-friendly places, either.

“I have always wondered how young people in this situation could approach the priesthood and accept it, with all its ramifications,” Benedict writes. “The extensive collapse of the next generation of priests in those years and the very high number of laicizations were consequence of all these processes.”

The church, in other words, was no more immune to the disorders of that decade and its aftermath than the rest of society.

How come? Benedict blames clerics and theologians who, in the ­aftermath of Vatican II, abandoned natural law — the notion that morality is written into ­human nature itself and can therefore be grasped by human reason — in favor of a more “pragmatic” ­morality.

Under the new dispensation, “there could no longer be anything that constituted an ­absolute good, any more than anything fundamentally evil; there could only be relative moral judgments.”

The real world result was that “in various seminaries, homosexual clubs were established, which more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in seminaries.”

The new morality also encouraged a “critical or negative attitude toward hitherto existing tradition,” he writes, in favor of a “new, radically open relationship with the world.”

For one bishop, the German pontiff says, that meant going so far as screening porn for seminarians. In many seminaries, meanwhile, students caught reading his own books, written while he was still a cardinal and known for their doctrinal rigor, would be “considered unsuitable for the priesthood.”

The looseness of those years also affected how the church ­handled cases of abusive priests, who we now know targeted mostly boys and young men. In church proceedings, “the rights of the accused had to be guaranteed” above all else, “to an extent that factually excluded any conviction at all.”

Such absolutism in defense of the accused was ­incorrectly seen as a “conciliar” requirement — anything less was a betrayal of Vatican II. Hence the cover-ups and shuffling around of abusive priests.

You will note that the key to abnegating Christianity, even in the Church, is the redefinition of evil. The existence of evil is not, and has never been, a philosophical problem for Christianity. To the contrary, in the absence of the existence of evil, there is simply no need for the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, his Crucifixion, his Resurrection, salvation, or the Christian faith.

The importance of conversation

On the off-chance that anyone still takes either Ben Shapiro or Sam Harris seriously, this video should disabuse them of the notion.

Of course, the really great thing is that we're able to talk about the importance of this conversation.

Not-American by definition

On his recent stream, Owen directed us to the 1828 Webster's Dictionary online. And if you happen to consult it, one thing you'll notice is the indisputable fact is that if you're not a descendant of the American Indians or the European nations, you are not an American. Literally and by definition.

AMER'ICAN, adjective Pertaining to America.

AMER'ICAN, noun A native of America; originally applied to the aboriginals, or copper-colored races, found here by the Europeans; but now applied to the descendants of Europeans born in America.

Notice there is nothing said about propositions, ideas, citizenship, or Judeo-Christian values. Those ideas are Fake History concocted as 20th-century immigrant propaganda. This is why the falsifiers and revisionists always attack history. This is why liars attack the truth and those who tell it. This is why evil always attempts to claim that whatever year it actually is, today is always Year Zero.

And to those who might be inclined to argue that the definition has simply changed again, I encourage you to think all the way through exactly what that implies.

HOW TO BE POOR in paperback

We're very pleased to be able to say that HOW TO BE POOR by Milo Yiannopoulos is now available in paperback from Castalia Direct. It's a pocket-sized 96-page edition that retails for $9.99, although international readers should note that this direct service is only available in the USA at this time. You may wish to consider saving some shipping and picking up an Arkhaven comic or two while you're at it.

Never mind the "No Image Available" graphic. We get through their system so fast now that the metadata can require a day or three to keep up. The cover is the same as the one displayed here. International readers should note that the paperback will be available on Amazon and other online booksellers within a week or two.

Speaking of Amazon, after an extensive review process, Amazon KDP has finally deigned to publish the Kindle edition, which is now available on Amazon for $2.99. Please to enjoy all the inevitable fake reviews from Milo-haters who wouldn't even read the book for the schadenfreude.

And if you're a Kindle reader who is now planning to head over to Amazon, don't miss the chance to pick up a copy of AH:Q #1, which is already the #1 New Release in the Mystery and Superhero categories!

UPDATE: Already a multi-category bestseller!

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,469 #844
#1 in 90-Minute Self-Help Short Reads
#1 in Aesthetics
#1 in Philosophy Aesthetics

Assange expelled and arrested

The rumors last week were correct. Julian Assange has been expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested by the UK police:

Julian Assange has been arrested by British police today after Ecuador withdrew his political asylum seven years after he was given refuge by the country. The Wikileaks founder was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in handcuffs by a large group of seven Metropolitan Police officers as stunned supporters and protesters watched on in central London.

He is currently in police custody and is set to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court 'as soon as possible'.

Ecuador's president Lenin Moreno said the decision to withdraw Assange's asylum status came after the 'repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols' and his 'discourteous and aggressive behaviour'. Moreno added that he had asked Britain to guarantee that Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty.

Moments after the arrest, during which Assange held on to a Gore Vidal book on the history of the national security state, WikiLeaks said Ecuador had acted illegally and 'in violation of international law'. Assange, 47, has not left Ecuador's diplomatic soil for seven years amid fears he would be arrested and extradited for publishing thousands of classified military and diplomatic cables.

Obviously Ecuador has the right to expel anyone it wants from its embassy. But why now? And what UK law has Assange violated to justify his arrest?

Enhancing your experience

Amazon isn't SPYING on you. They're just improving your experience!

Amazon workers are listening to private and sometimes disturbing voice recordings to improve the voice-assistants' understanding of human speech. Amazon has admitted to its customers that thousands of recordings are being analysed by staff and transcribed before feeding them back into the software.

As many as 1,000 clips are reviewed by workers in buildings all over the world, many of which are not obviously run by the online giant.   Staff members have said that the work is mostly mundane, however they do come across embarrassing clips, like a woman singing off-key in the shower.  The teams use internal chat rooms to share files when they need help deciphering a muddled word - or come when they come across an amusing recording. Among more sinister content the workers have heard, have been a child screaming for help and two instances were they believed they heard a sexual assault taking place. 

Amazon last night confirmed the revelations when approached by Bloomberg saying that 'an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings' are analysed by staff. In an emailed statement to MailOnline, an Amazon spokesperson said: 'We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order to improve the customer experience.

I find this particularly amusing because Spacebunny and I use the term "enhancing your user experience" as a synonym "made it stop working". Which is usually expressed in some sort of context like this:

"Did you take out the trash?"

"No, I'm enhancing your user experience!"

Experts approve

One of the foremost authorities on Qanon, NEON REVOLT, very much likes ALT-HERO:Q #1. He posted his initial reaction on Gab:

Wooooooow. This is actually really good!

Vox Day's Alt-Hero Q issue one, is now available for purchase through his Arkhaven Comics site, and on Amazon.

And as though it were by by some divine coincidence, it's written by Chuck Dixon, the guy who did a ton of work on The Punisher and Batman.

(I swear to god, none of this was planned).

This is an honest-to-goodness spy story, and possibly the first piece of fiction inspired by #QAnon, and man, it's a lot of fun.

And no, we don't mind patriots posting single panels or creating memes from the comic. WWG1WGA.

This is why moderation is required

In case you find yourself being a little irritated by way in which the institution of comment moderation here causes a delay in the appearance of your comments, don't be. Be grateful instead. Because what you no longer see is the antics of all the angry gammas sperging out in hapless gamma rage at their rejection from the group here.

For example, the banned gamma who goes by the laughable name "spinoza" posted this comment 28 straight times today between 3:13 and 3:19 PM, as he apparently failed to realize that his comments go directly into spam now.

33339777737655901870574806828678347965624146102899508487399692
97075043753029972722973279344429886464127253481606037797072982
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70841079463189325391069639557807060212459748982935646135607889
83472419979478564362042094613412387613198865352358312996862268
94860840845665560687695450127448663140505473535174687300980632
27804689122468214608067276277084024022661554850240089528916571
17617439020337584877842911289623247059191874691042005848326140
67733375102719565399469716251724831223063391932870798380074848
57265161234349332733566644733585564302352808839243482787608864
94328939916639921048830784777704804572849145630335326507002958
89062659154985094079727675671297950100982294762289618915914415
20032283878773485130979081019129267227103778898053964156362364
16915498576840839846886168437540706512103906250612810
on Foreign investment
spinoza
at 3:16 PM

This is nothing, in fact, it is two orders of magnitude less than the worst gamma tantrum we've witnessed here. And what you also probably don't know is that every single gamma who is banned attempts to continue posting here after being told not to do so. That's how reliable the socio-sexual hierarchy is. Although the level of persistence and the number of attempts vary, they exhibit the exact same patterns of behavior every single time.

Once you see how they respond to being rejected, you begin to understand why women react to them as if they are lethally radioactive cancer-causing agents.

That would be awkward

My money would be on China getting there first.

The US military is desperately trying to recover the wreckage of a Japanese F-35A stealth fighter which crashed over the Pacific yesterday amid fears China and Russia could beat them to it. Parts of the tail of the world's most sophisticated stealth jet have already been found after it disappeared off the radar 85 miles east of Misawa, Japan during a training mission.

Eight ships and seven aircraft,including a U.S. Navy P-8 Orion maritime patrol plane, are looking for traces of the jet that is believed to have sunk to 5,000ft. The pilot of the aircraft is still missing.

But experts today warned that Russia and China could also be trying to get their hands on the aircraft to discover its secrets.

Tom Moore, a former senior professional staff member at the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tweeted: 'There is no price too high in this world for China and Russia to pay to get Japan's missing F-35, if they can. Big deal.'

'Bottom line is that it would not be good,' retired US Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula told Business Insider.

It is believed Russia and China could be using their advanced submarines to scour the ocean floor in search of the jet in order to steal vital technology on board. And experts have warned that parts of the jet could easily be replicated if they do recover the wreckage before US or Japanese search teams.

On the other hand, given the apparent shortcomings of the F-35, the bigger fear might be the Chinese or Russians learning that there is no reason to replicate any parts of the jet. It's interesting how this storyline tends to track the plot of A Mind Programmed/The Programmed Man.

AH:Q #1 now available

Arkhaven Comics is very pleased to announce that the digital edition of Alt★Hero:Q issue #1 Where We Go One is now available in CBZ and Kindle formats.

AH:Q backers should check your email, as we have sent out emails with download links to both formats to all the backers. Please note that these were only sent out to AH:Q backers, not backers of the original ALT-HERO campaign.

If you are an AH:Q backer who did not receive an email, please check your spam trap and your social media trap on Gmail before contacting us. If you still cannot find it, then please email us at books -at- castaliahouse -dot- com and we will add your email to the mailing list. Please note, however, that if we add your email to the list and discover that it is already there, then the problem is on your end which means there is nothing we can do about it. We would also suggest whitelisting the @castaliahouse.com address to increase the likelihood that you will receive the emails properly.

If you are not a backer, then you can purchase Alt★Hero:Q issue #1 Where We Go One for $2.99 at Arkhaven Comics, which includes both formats. The Kindle version should also be available on Amazon later today. Backers should note that we will not be sending out the individual print editions until all six issues are available in print and can be sent together.

UPDATE: You can now buy and review AH:Q #1 on Amazon.

Foreign investment

This destruction of the housing stock by rich foreign owners is the sort of consequence the free traders never factor into their "it's good for the economy" arguments when considering the free flow of capital:

Drained whirlpools, decaying walls and foliage creeping up the stairs can be seen on a North London street called Billionaires' Row. Bishops Avenue in Hampstead, north London, is one of the most exclusive roads in the country, but many of its 66 mansions lie vacant. Footage taken by 'urban explorers' shows moss growing up the once pristine white walls of the huge rooms and swimming pools with a shallow layer of murky water. The gardens rise high and in many the decor is clearly a few decades behind.

They include a selection of residences worth £73 million, reportedly bought for the Saudi royals between 1989 and 1993. In those days the homes caught be purchased for a cool million, now prices rise to around £20 million. In 2014, an estimated £350 million worth of mansions could be found on the prestigious street, the Guardian reported.

An Iranian resident told the paper: 'Ninety-five percent of the people who live here don't actually live here. It is a terrible place to live really.

So, the best housing stock in the most desirable areas is being destroyed, but on the plus side, the natives can't afford to live there anyway. And the cycle will only continue as new developments are built to house the people who now live elsewhere and are building up a desirable neighborhoods that will attract more foreign "investors".

Why the US is moving toward socialism

The Week suggests three reasons:

The question, then, is whether or not capitalism seems to be improving American lives. If so, it'll remain dominant. If not, alternatives will look increasingly attractive. Here are three pieces of evidence that the capitalist system in America is, indeed, broken:

1. Leaders are paving the way for a second massive economic crisis within a generation.

Regulators are starting to ease the rules put in place after the economic meltdown that led to the Great Recession a decade ago. The Fed, for example, wants to loosen requirements for big banks to have plans in place to close in an emergency without requiring a government bailout. Congress and regulators are making it easier for those same banks to make the kinds of high-risk loans that led to the last economic disaster. The government last year rolled back the Dodd-Frank law that enshrined many economic protections into law.

2. It is becoming more and more difficult for the average American to live life sustainably.

3. The party of capitalism put Donald Trump in the White House.

All three reasons are legitimate, though not as significant as two additional reasons. The first is that there are now tens of millions of US citizens from nations with strong socialist traditions. For example, two of the three major Mexican parties are members of the Socialist International.

The second is that the media is dominated by individuals whose politics range the gamut from Marxian to Trotksyite.

Losing our true selves

This selection from Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 underlines the fundamental evil of Ben Shapiro's attempt to redefine Western Civilization by rewriting Christianity and the European nations out of it.

“Do you have the book you were talking about with the Professor,” Fuka-Eri asked. “The one with Big Brother.”

“1984? I don’t have that one.”

“What kind of story is it.”

Tengo tried to recall the plot. “I read it once a long time ago in the school library, so I don’t remember the details too well. It was published in 1949, when 1984 seemed like a time far in the future.”

“That’s this year.”

“Yes, by coincidence. At some point the future becomes reality. And then it quickly becomes the past. In his novel, George Orwell depicted the future as a dark society dominated by totalitarianism. People are rigidly controlled by a dictator named Big Brother. Information is restricted, and history is constantly being rewritten. The protagonist works in a government office, and I’m pretty sure his job is to rewrite words. Whenever a new history is written, the old histories all have to be thrown out. In the process, words are remade, and the meanings of current words are changed. What with history being rewritten so often, nobody knows what is true anymore. They lose track of who is an enemy and who an ally. It’s that kind of story.”

“They rewrite history.”

“Robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of part of themselves. It’s a crime.”

Fuka-Eri thought about that for a moment.

Tengo went on, “Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us—is rewritten—we lose the ability to sustain our true selves.”

Indiegogo hate campaign list

Indiegogo is attempting to legally strike back at ALT-HERO:Q. We believe we can very easily demonstrate the absurdity of their claims by pointing out how many of their campaigns are promoting hate by the ludicrous standard of the ADL, so I'm asking the Dread Ilk and the Reprehensibles to compile a comprehensive list of these Indiegogo hate campaigns for the legal team. This is the post to which you can add Indiegogo hate campaigns in the comments. Be sure to leave four details:

• The name of the campaign
• The URL of the campaign on the Indiegogo site
• The specific hate symbol from the ADL Hate Symbol list that appears in the campaign
• The end date of the campaign if it has ended, otherwise just note CURRENT.

All comments are moderated so don't worry if your comment with a campaign or four does not appear immediately. Please follow the directions precisely. We need all four elements, one per line, with the SPECIFIC ADL hate symbol listed in the third line.

EXAMPLE

• A Perfect 14
• https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-perfect-14/pies
• 14
• June 1, 2014

The fake opposition

A progressive embraces the Ineffectual Dork Weasels:

The vast majority of people in the IDW are extremely liberal on all of the core issues like abortion, climate change, gay marriage, etc. They’re not neocons, they’re not alt-right, and they’re not racists. They’re the opposite of that, actually, and the main thing they have in common is the desire to preserve and amplify good-faith conversation.

Rather than bash them due to something you heard from this one place—or that one friend—take the time to actually listen. Most of them are progressive just like you and me. And if you’re not liberal that’s fine too—listening will show you that true discussion is still possible.

The author suggests that Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson as partial exceptions who are not "extremely liberal", but of course, he also mistakenly believes the Littlest Chickenhawk "doesn’t want to impose his religious ideas upon you through government" which is unintentionally hilarious to anyone who has read Shapiro's book dedicated to the notion that both America and Western Civilization are Jewish.  But he did produce this useful chart:

And remember, this is supposed to be the courageous opposition to American progressivism.

Tapa a tapa

Barcelona Life Episode 3 is now available on Unauthorized.TV. Join Farley and Elizabeth as they go in search of the perfect tapa at the Sitges tapa festival. Free content.

Mailvox: What about MEEEEE?

Fortunately, I now have an answer for every "whataboutmeeist" who is in some sort of mixed-race marriage, interracial relationship, has mixed-race children, or has a half-Chinese step-brother married to a Filippino woman who has adopted Congolese orphans. Read this paper:

When competition between groups becomes violent the female of a mixed marriage and her offspring are often vulnerable to violence by not only the group from which her male partner is assigned but also to violent acts by members of the group with which she is identified. When the goal of an adversary is to eliminate manifestations of identity the role of the individual within a society, including children and other non-combatants, is of little consequence. Using the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda as a focus this essay takes a bio-social and cultural comparative approach in exploring the situational factors underlying genocidal behavior wherein the woman in a mixed conjugal union and her offspring are disproportionately vulnerable to violence. The possible co-evolvement of individual behaviors with group-level institutions is considered as worthy of more focused attention in an attempt to understand the intense vulnerability of some women and children in environments of lethal conflict.

Be sure to bookmark the URL, as no doubt it will prove useful for commenters here in answering the inevitable questions from the What About Me crowd in the future.

And to all of those who have wonderful [nationality] [family members] and wish to dispute the probable outcome of mass immigration and demographic change in their [political entity], I cordially invite you to take the matter up with Ralph Hartley at the Department of Anthropology, University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Ann Coulter for DHSS

Replacing Kirstjen Nielsen with Ann Coulter would take care of the problem of immigration very nicely indeed:

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen abruptly resigned Sunday, as the president continues to fume over continued illegal border crossings. CBS News first reported Nielsen's impending departure, which Mr. Trump confirmed in a tweet after a 5 p.m. meeting with Nielsen at the White House.

Nielsen's resignation is effective immediately. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan will serve as acting DHS secretary, Mr. Trump announced.

"Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen will be leaving her position, and I would like to thank her for her service," Mr. Trump tweeted Sunday. "...I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary for @DHSgov. I have confidence that Kevin will do a great job!"

Nielsen's exit comes as Trump eyes "tougher" approach on immigration
Nielsen's departure is a part of a massive DHS overhaul engineered and directed by top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, according to a senior U.S. official. It's unclear whether Nielsen is deciding to leave voluntarily, or whether she has been pressured to resign.

You probably think I'm kidding, but I'm totally serious. The God-Emperor could use a good hatchet-woman to shake up his administration.

Forgive us our debts

Jesus wasn't just talking about sin when he told us to pray for the forgiveness of our debts. That's one of the reasons the Pharisees hated him so much. Michael Hudson is interviewed concerning a very important trilogy of economic history he is writing:

MH: The key public concern throughout history has been to prevent debt from crippling society. That aim is what Babylonian and other third-millennium and second-millennium Near Eastern rulers recognized clearly enough, with their mathematical models. To make an ideal society you need the government to control the basic utilities — land, finance, mineral wealth, natural resources and infrastructure monopolies (including the Internet today), pharmaceuticals and health care so their basic services can be supplied at the lowest price.

All this was spelled out in the 19th century by business school analysts in the United States. Simon Patten [1852-1922] who said that public investment is the “fourth factor of production.” But its aim isn’t to make a profit for itself. Rather, it’s to lower the cost of living and of doing business, by providing basic needs either on a subsidized basis or for free. The aim was to create a low-cost society without a rentier class siphoning off unearned income and making this economic rent a hereditary burden on the economy at large. You want to prevent unearned income.

To do that, you need a concept to define economic rent as unearned and hence unnecessary income. A well-managed economy would do what Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Marx and Veblen recommended: It would prevent a hereditary rentier class living off unearned income and increasing society’s economic overhead. It’s okay to make a profit, but not to make extractive monopoly rent, land rent or financial usury rent.

JS: Will human beings ever create such a society?

MH: If they don’t, we’re going to have a new Dark Age.

JS: That’s one thing that especially surprises me about the United States. Is it not clear to educated people here that our ruling class is fundamentally extractive and exploitative?

MH: A lot of these educated people are part of the ruling class, and simply taking their money and running. They are disinvesting, not investing in industry. They’re saying, “The financial rentier game is ending, so let’s sell everything and maybe buy a farm in New Zealand to go to when there is a big war.” So the financial elite is quite aware that they are getting rich by running the economy into the ground, and that this must end at the point where they’ve taken everything and left a debt-ridden shell behind.

JS: I guess this gets back to what you were saying: The history of economics has been expurgated from the curriculum.

MH: Once you strip away economic history and the history of economic thought, you wipe out memory of the vocabulary that people have used to criticize rent seeking and other unproductive activity. You then are in a position to redefine words and ideals along the lines that euphemize predatory and parasitic activities as if they are productive and desirable, even natural. You can rewrite history to suppress the idea that all this is the opposite of what Adam Smith and the classicaleconomists down through Marx advocated.

Today’s neoliberal wasteland is basically a reaction against the 19thcentury reformers, against the logic of classical British political economy. The hatred of Marx is ultimately the hatred of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, because neoliberals realize that Smith and Mill and Ricardo were all leading to Marx. He was the culmination of their free market views — a market free from rentiers and monopolists.

That was the immediate aim of socialism in the late 19thcentury. The logic of classical political economy was leading to a socialist mixed economy. In order to fight Marxism, you have to fight classical economics and erase memory of how civilization has dealt with (or failed to deal with) the debt and rent-extracting problems through the ages. The history of economic thought and the original free-market economics has to be suppressed. Today’s choice is therefore between socialism or barbarism, as Rosa Luxemburg said.

JS: Let’s consider barbarism: When I observe the neoliberal ruling class — the people who control the finance sector and the managerial class on Wall Street — I often wonder if they’re historically exceptional because they’ve gone beyond simple greed and lust for wealth. They now seek above all some barbaric and sadistic pleasure in the financial destruction and humiliation of other people. Or is this historically normal?

MH: The financial class has always lived in the short run, and you can make short-term money much quicker by asset stripping and being predatory can by being productive. Moses Finley wrote that there was not a single productive loan in all of Antiquity. That was quite an overstatement, but he was making the point that there were no productive financial markets in Antiquity. Almost all manufacturing, industry, and agriculture was self-financed. So the reader of Finley likely infers that we modern people have progressed in a fundamental way beyond Antiquity. They were characterized by the homo politicus, greedy for status. We have evolved into homo œconomicus, savvy enough to live in stable safety and comfort.

We are supposedly the beneficiaries of the revolution of industrial capitalism, as if all the predatory, polarizing, usurious lending that you had from feudal times (and before that, from Antiquity), was replaced by productive lending that finances means of production and actual economic growth.

But in reality, modern banks don’t lend money for production. They say, “That’s the job of the stock market.” Banks only lend if there’s collateral to grab. They lend against assets in place. So the result of more bank lending is to increase the price of the assets that banks lend against — on credit! This way of “wealth creation” via asset-price inflation is the opposite of real substantive progress. It enriches the narrow class of asset holders at the top of the economic pyramid.

JS: What about the stock market?

MH: The stock market no longer primarily provides money for capital investment. It has become a vehicle for bondholders and corporate raiders to borrow from banks and private funds to buy corporate stockholders, take the companies private, downsize them, break them up or strip their assets, and borrow more to buy back their stocks to create asset-price gains without increasing the economy’s tangible real asset base. So the financial sector, except for a brief period in the late 19th century, especially in Germany, has rarely financed productive growth. Financial engineering has replaced industrial engineering, just as in Antiquity creditors were asset strippers.

The one productive activity that the financial sector engaged in from the Bronze Age onward was to finance foreign trade. The original interest-bearing debt was owed by merchants to reimburse their silent partners, typically the palace or the temples, and in time wealthy individuals. But apart from financing trade – in products that were already produced – you’ve rarely had finance increase the means of production or economic growth. It’s almost always been to extract income. The income that finance extracts is at the expense of the rest of society. So the richer the financial sector is, the more austerity is imposed on the non-financial sector.

You can pick up the first book in the trilogy, ...and Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year, at Castalia Direct.

Turkey and the neocons

The deal between Erdogan and Obama, which Obama later reneged, was the catalyst for the Russian intervention in Syria:

The announcement that Turkey had struck a deal with Obama on Incirlik turned out to be the trigger for Russia’s entry into the war. This little known fact has escaped the attention of historians and analysts alike, but the truth is clear to see. Shortly after the above article was published (July 27, 2015), Russia began hastily clearing airfields and shipping its warplanes to Syria. Two months later, Russia began its momentous air campaign across Syria.

Why the hurry?

Mainly because of the information that appeared in the NY Times article, particularly this:

“Turkish officials and Syrian opposition leaders are describing the agreement as something just short of a prize they have long sought as a tool against Mr. Assad: a no-fly zone in Syria near the Turkish border.”

“No-fly zone”? Is that what Obama had up his sleeve?

Once Putin realized that the US was going to use Incirlik to establish a no-fly zone over Syria, (the same way it had in Libya) the Russian president quickly swung into action. He could not allow another secular Arab leader to be toppled while the country was plunged into chaos. This is why Russia intervened.

However, the current conflict between Turkey and the USA may actually be playing into neocon hands, as they desperately seek an enemy, any enemy, that will give them an excuse to send more troops into the Middle East:

So now Turkey and the United States are at loggerheads, the Turkish Army has completed its preparations for a cross-border operation east of the Euphrates, while Pompeo, Bolton and Pence continue to exacerbate the situation by issuing one belligerent statement after the other.

Is this the administration’s strategy, to lure Turkey into a conflict that will force Washington to get more deeply involved in the Middle East? Is that why the US has shrugged off its commitments to Ankara, dug in along the border, created a Kurdish state at the center of the Arab world, and is now thumbing its nose at Erdogan?

What is it the neocons (Pompeo, Bolton and Pence) really want?

They want to intensify and expand the fighting so that more US troops and weaponry are required. They want a wider war that forces Trump to go “all in” and deepen his commitment to regional domination. They want America’s armed forces to be bogged down in an unwinnable war that drags on for decades and stretches across borders into Lebanon, Turkey and Iran. They want Washington to redraw the map of the Middle East in a way that diminishes rivals and strengthens Israel’s regional hegemony. They want more conflagrations, more bloodletting, and more war.

That’s what the neocons want, and that’s what their provocations are designed to achieve.

Putin and the Iranians have shown the discipline required to avoid handing the neocons the excuse they are seeking. But Erdogan does not appear to have a similar level of discipline. That being said, Turkey is a considerably more formidable foe and even a low-level war between Turkey and the USA might be sufficient to break apart NATO, especially if Russia decides to assist the Turks in the way they assisted the Syrians.

Mailvox: Bye, Gamma

Professor Julian checks all the boxes in a single email.

Vox,
Although your narcissism has been quite amusing, I'm afraid I must ban you now. Your rants haven’t convinced me that your IQ is anywhere above 105, and as one administering IQ tests weekly, I should know. Regretfully, I don’t like to associate with average IQ people.
Sorry...LMAO

To which I simply responded "Bye, Gamma." What else is there to say?

Do you see how easy it is to spot these characters? So much so that we can safely conclude that this guy isn't even a genuine professor at a university, but is actually some sort of less-credentialed non-academic who has granted himself the title.

UPDATE: His inevitable response:

Gamma…LOL Not that smart, are you?...LMAO

Gammas must have such a wonderful life. They're just laughing so hard all the time....