BOOMERBUSTER
OLD CELLO
Friday, April 11, 2014
LONG TERM COMPETITIVENESS OXYMORON
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/08/re-previous-patents-article-post-r-d-at.html
RE REALECONTV TODAY
"Ah Wall Street...
We couldn't live without them - yet somehow the vast majority of Americans had zero involvement with Wall Street before World War One.
Now, whether you're in the market or not, you're "in."
All pension plans, public and private, are 100% in. So is every level of government from small villages to huge enterprises like the NY-NJ Port Authority (former owner of the World Trade Center.)
If (and when) the markets collapse, everyone who doesn't live in a cave will be effected either with a direct loss of wealth or a decline in living standards when your community cuts roads, police, fire, education, you name it. - See more at: http://www.realecontv.com/videos/capital-market-collapse/the-recent-history-of-wall-street-.html#sthash.5ydSpvJa.dpuf
We couldn't live without them - yet somehow the vast majority of Americans had zero involvement with Wall Street before World War One.
Now, whether you're in the market or not, you're "in."
All pension plans, public and private, are 100% in. So is every level of government from small villages to huge enterprises like the NY-NJ Port Authority (former owner of the World Trade Center.)
If (and when) the markets collapse, everyone who doesn't live in a cave will be effected either with a direct loss of wealth or a decline in living standards when your community cuts roads, police, fire, education, you name it. - See more at: http://www.realecontv.com/videos/capital-market-collapse/the-recent-history-of-wall-street-.html#sthash.5ydSpvJa.dpuf
RE GLOBALIZATION CAPITALISM AND POLITICS PUTIN AS BAILIFF
One of the ironies, with too much trade and interdependence, call it globbalization, is that an autocrat can pose as, and be or represent, merely a disappointed investor or group of them.
Putin demanding to be paid for gas is merely the free global market running its course. Massing troops is what any prudent investor bailiff, using self help where necessary and available, would do. If he did not, what would GAZPROM say?
Nation states, including western empires, have used force to protect or expand their constituents' interests, usually the their big nation state trading companies, for centuries.
Putin demanding to be paid for gas is merely the free global market running its course. Massing troops is what any prudent investor bailiff, using self help where necessary and available, would do. If he did not, what would GAZPROM say?
Nation states, including western empires, have used force to protect or expand their constituents' interests, usually the their big nation state trading companies, for centuries.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
PAST BLAST RE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/08/re-nation-building-works-editorial.html
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
technocrats regulatory paradigm excerpt
Politicians or CEOs can get technocrats for any goal they select, they can mix or match technocrats, they want 'team players', almost invariably, that is the code word for a group of otherwise disparate experts, willing to shed their respective discipline's norms for a 'higher goal'.
old post re technocracy
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/07/re-technocrats-regulatory-paradigm.html
Wikipedia Neutrality Pact 1941 problem sentence Allies versus Axis Powers American Simple Politics
"Stalin feared that an attack on the Soviet Union would enable Japan to challenge the United States overtly and set out to remove that incentive."
Roosevelt, quoted in DK: “We know also, ...that Germany and Japan are conducting their military and naval operations in accordance with a joint plan. That plan considers all peoples and Nations which are not helping the Axis powers as common enemies of each and every one of the Axis powers. That is their simple and obvious grand strategy. And that is why the American people must realize that it can be matched only with similar grand strategy.”
Roosevelt, quoted in DK: “We know also, ...that Germany and Japan are conducting their military and naval operations in accordance with a joint plan. That plan considers all peoples and Nations which are not helping the Axis powers as common enemies of each and every one of the Axis powers. That is their simple and obvious grand strategy. And that is why the American people must realize that it can be matched only with similar grand strategy.”
Monday, April 7, 2014
from Comrade Dos comment DK's site
"A very good post! Have you ever considered the idea of "submerged empires"? Because I think what you are seeing within Ukraine is product of two "submerged" empires contesting each other for influence in territory that once belonged to them.
The key state here is not the US, but Poland. It is because of Poland that we have developed an awareness of and interest in Ukraine. One of the top policy thinkers in the US continues to be Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was born in Poland, and who married into the family of the former Czech president Benes. Brzezinski and those who agree with him have cited one fact tirelessly and that is "If Russia dominates Ukraine, then Russia again becomes an empire."
Brzezinski's policy therefore is to not allow Russia to become an empire by controlling Ukraine. He does this partially in the interests of the US, but to a much greater degree in the interests of Poland and other former Warsaw Pact countries. Their concept is a Europe whole and free, and Europe cannot be whole without Poland, and it cannot be free under Russian domination.
Poland, especially, resented Russian and then Soviet rule. They see it in their vital interest to keep it from occurring again.
Moreover, Poland (and Lithuania with it) were one of the greatest powers in Europe up until the end of the 18th century. Poland-Lithuania controlled much of what is now Western Ukraine all the way down to Odessa on the Black Sea. Their historical memory is just as self-serving and long as Russia's is. To them, it is not a historical fact that Ukraine belongs to a Russian sphere of influence. To them, Ukraine belongs to THEIR sphere of influence. Indeed, Ukrainian itself is similar to Polish. The faith is Catholicism in Western Ukraine, as it is in Poland and Lithuania. The EU, and NATO, are but stalking horses for this strategy. And if NATO and EU expand eastward to include Ukraine, then the center relationship of European power is no longer Paris-Berlin, but Berlin-Warsaw.
The same principle applies to the Baltic States, but that construct is Soviet in origin. Originally, there were four or five "Baltic countries" -- Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. The Second World War left the USSR with three "Baltic republics," the "Soviet Scandinavia" or "Soviet West," regarded as such because they were so different from, say Uzbekistan or Armenia. In Estonia, the submerged empire was the Swedish Kingdom. Even today, 28 percent of FDI in Estonia is Swedish, 25 percent is Finnish, and a distant third, 10 percent, is Dutch. Russian is less than 5 percent. The leading banks in Estonia are all based in Stockholm -- Swedbank, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken(SEB), and Nordea. Estonia is not only an EU member and NATO member, but an OECD member.
About your point of it submitting to Russian power, well, it just signed away territory stolen from it by Moscow in 1944 with a new border treaty. And the new government is going to liberalize some of the citizenship requirements for stateless persons. But I have a hard time imagining a parliamentary democracy that is well integrated into the Nordic economy coming under the direct control of Putinism as Crimea has."
JAPAN AUSTRALIA TRADE PACT A BAD IDEA GETTING THESE TWO COUNTRIES CLOSER TOGETHER
The Japanese certainly wanted to get them much closer together in WWII!
Pending, and beating out, a worse idea, a multilateral trade initiative, PPP that the US had been flogging, no doubt with substantial strategic concessions and arrangements attached all over Asia.
Pending, and beating out, a worse idea, a multilateral trade initiative, PPP that the US had been flogging, no doubt with substantial strategic concessions and arrangements attached all over Asia.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
RE ISRAEL MODERN STATE AND WWI
DK:
“The Balfour Declaration called for a
"Jewish national home": in which Jews--and specifically the Jews of
the Russian Empire, who enjoyed very few political rights--could enjoy those
rights, although it also specifically promised to protect the rights of the
Arab population. Israel has never been a
completely Jewish state, and indeed, its Arab minority is increasing. No advanced nation has found a way to keep
its birth rate high enough to do without immigration. Yet Israel wants to give special status to its
majority of Jewish citizens--and to treat the Arab citizens similarly to the
way Jews were treated in Europe in earlier ages. I do not think this was what the founders of
Zionism had in mind, but they came from much earlier generations.”
Prior post discussion here:
Re Echoes of the
distant past,
See also, Michael Howard's The Lessons Of History, ch 2, at paragraph at fn 3, re the politics and reasoning in 1917 surrounding the British decision for a small scale Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
At least one British cabinet minister apparently sensed the coming travails.
Of course there were various other irons in the fire, at that time:
Britain entered into more specific obligations to other allies. In April 1915, it signed a secret treaty promising Constantinople to Russia, thus explicitly jettisoning Britain's long-standing reservations about Russian control of the Straits. (In fact, British governments since the time of Lord Salisbury at the turn of the century had resigned themselves to eventual Russian control of Constantinople.) At the same time, as part of the price of persuading Italy to enter the war on the Allied side, Britain agreed in the Treaty of London that, in a postwar carve-up of the Ottoman dominions, Italy would receive southwest Anatolia. Under an agreement negotiated in 1916 between Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, Britain promised France most of Syria, Cilicia, and the oil-bearing region around Mosul in northern Mesopotamia. Most fraught with evil consequence for the British was the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 in which Britain undertook to facilitate the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine - with provisos protecting the "civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities" and the rights of Jews in other countries. All of these engagements were designed to serve urgent wartime objectives rather than long-term interests.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/britain-and-the-middle-east-from-1914-to-the-present#ixzz1DQvzXruy
See also, Michael Howard's The Lessons Of History, ch 2, at paragraph at fn 3, re the politics and reasoning in 1917 surrounding the British decision for a small scale Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
At least one British cabinet minister apparently sensed the coming travails.
Of course there were various other irons in the fire, at that time:
Britain entered into more specific obligations to other allies. In April 1915, it signed a secret treaty promising Constantinople to Russia, thus explicitly jettisoning Britain's long-standing reservations about Russian control of the Straits. (In fact, British governments since the time of Lord Salisbury at the turn of the century had resigned themselves to eventual Russian control of Constantinople.) At the same time, as part of the price of persuading Italy to enter the war on the Allied side, Britain agreed in the Treaty of London that, in a postwar carve-up of the Ottoman dominions, Italy would receive southwest Anatolia. Under an agreement negotiated in 1916 between Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, Britain promised France most of Syria, Cilicia, and the oil-bearing region around Mosul in northern Mesopotamia. Most fraught with evil consequence for the British was the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 in which Britain undertook to facilitate the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine - with provisos protecting the "civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities" and the rights of Jews in other countries. All of these engagements were designed to serve urgent wartime objectives rather than long-term interests.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/britain-and-the-middle-east-from-1914-to-the-present#ixzz1DQvzXruy
RE SPECIALIZATION EXPERTS ETC
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=50
RE BOTH PARTIES CROSS CUT AVERAGE AMERICANS
This has been going on since the beginning really.
Going back to the run up to the Civil War, the slavery issue was a really big one they were not going to address together, but rather play each other off against it, for decades.
It required a sectional ' single issue ' President, determined to preserve a certain weak nationalism by then identified with the issue, to resort, under pressure from a seceding section, to a military solution.
One can easily see developing here, eventually, a new but not wholesome nationalism, after many decades of relative national and civilizational decline, under globalization.
Going back to the run up to the Civil War, the slavery issue was a really big one they were not going to address together, but rather play each other off against it, for decades.
It required a sectional ' single issue ' President, determined to preserve a certain weak nationalism by then identified with the issue, to resort, under pressure from a seceding section, to a military solution.
One can easily see developing here, eventually, a new but not wholesome nationalism, after many decades of relative national and civilizational decline, under globalization.
Saturday, April 5, 2014
RE MAKING IGNORANCE CHIC PAST BLAST
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/10/cinderella-three-penny-opera-marilyn.html
Thursday, April 3, 2014
FRANCE AND THE US SIMILAR IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE
Looking back, the faults and foibles of these two are more similar than meets the casual eye, especially the American eye.
Russia was, for a long time, justifiably reluctant to enter into the fateful alliance with France, against Germany, that, in part, resulted in the WWI debacle, precisely because the political system in France was so anarchic and unstable year to year.
Russia was, for a long time, justifiably reluctant to enter into the fateful alliance with France, against Germany, that, in part, resulted in the WWI debacle, precisely because the political system in France was so anarchic and unstable year to year.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
PASSAGE REFERRED TO RE DK'S CURRENT NOTE
"The future relationship of the West and the Far East is, I think, much more uncertain than many of us realize."
What if one or more Asian powers physically invaded one or more others, with one or more of which the US has a military alliance (past, but ongoing, blunder).
Would the US intervene militarily? A foolish thing to do, but with an existing alliance, good question.
If so, why?: Another good question. Usual answer: alliance.
Another hard question: How?
Options: not nuclear; not, mainly, drones; not, primarily air strikes; probably, conventional forces, embargoes, blockades, etc.
What if one or more Asian powers physically invaded one or more others, with one or more of which the US has a military alliance (past, but ongoing, blunder).
Would the US intervene militarily? A foolish thing to do, but with an existing alliance, good question.
If so, why?: Another good question. Usual answer: alliance.
Another hard question: How?
Options: not nuclear; not, mainly, drones; not, primarily air strikes; probably, conventional forces, embargoes, blockades, etc.
INDIVIDUALS MNC UNFETTERED RIGHTS WEAK SAFETY NET MARKET NON NATION STATE
That sort of captures both parties' illusions in one fell phrase.
RE WHY US HAS NEEDED POLITICAL REFORM AMBASSADORSHIPS ETC ETC ETC
Re Re Kennan At a Century's Ending.
It's not just about the Department of State.
Cf Trading Places, Departments of Commerce, Defense, etc etc., structural problems, and implications of informal structures, such as parties and interest groups, overlying formal structures.
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-us-has-needed-political-reform.html
Terms search: eg Prestowitz, Trading Places, etc.
Kennan sees at several points in Century's Ending a crying need for a small group of senior statesmen to advise the President, apart from his own staff.
I see this as a need, expressed on his part, to return to a kind of service aristocracy, or service nobility. How else to describe it?
Kennan seemed to see this idea as fastened onto the existing American political system, which itself implies, he admits, an inability to transform the system, from within, in such a direction.
It's not just about the Department of State.
Cf Trading Places, Departments of Commerce, Defense, etc etc., structural problems, and implications of informal structures, such as parties and interest groups, overlying formal structures.
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-us-has-needed-political-reform.html
Terms search: eg Prestowitz, Trading Places, etc.
Kennan sees at several points in Century's Ending a crying need for a small group of senior statesmen to advise the President, apart from his own staff.
I see this as a need, expressed on his part, to return to a kind of service aristocracy, or service nobility. How else to describe it?
Kennan seemed to see this idea as fastened onto the existing American political system, which itself implies, he admits, an inability to transform the system, from within, in such a direction.
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