SIMON SAYS IN THE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES HEADS I WIN TAILS YOU LOSE

Are radical Islamists Sunnis or Shiites?

  

Trump is preaching to Sunnis in Saudi Arabia about radical Islamists. Read: Iran, a Shiite Fundamentalist Islamist State, thus radical  by American definition.

Syria, also, is a Shiite associated regime with many minorities, but Assad himself and his regime seem to be less radical Shiite Islamist than a secular military dictatorship per se.

You can't have a union of church and state, under American foreign policy, without being radical.

We have long forgotten how truly radical (and in many ways profoundly unfortunate) a separation of church and state was, and really still is. It takes reading something like Butterfield's brief but pithy account in The Whig Interpretation to get some sense for how difficult, long in coming, ideologically and theologically awkward and unintended, bloody, problematic, unhelpful, and unnatural, was the transition to, and is life under, a separation of church from state.

Osama: a radical Islamist Sunni. The United States fought  radical Islamist Sunni Osama. We had taught Osama to fight the Rooskies. We did that for him.

Trump announces 100bn arms deal, like this is a triumph. Where do you think those arms are going to end up my friend?

The US hates radical Islamist Shiite Iran.

We fought two enormous wars against secular Sunni controlled Iraq, where nonradical Sunni Saddam had ruled over a presumably radicalist fundamentalist Shiite majority.

Thus:
On the one hand, if they run a secular dictatorship (say, Saudi, Iraq, Syria), usually Sunni, (how they have to do it over there), we nail them on human rights, or military aggression, or both (Saddam, Assad).

On the other hand, if they run a religious state (Iran), we nail them on radical Islamism, and human rights.

Heads I win, tails you lose.

When Trump tells Muslims to drive extremists out, where is he telling them to send them, Europe?

Remember the Ayatollah? Where did the old bastard come from, out of exile, in the end? Paris. He had been allowed in on a tourist visa.

When Trump exhorts Muslims to attack extremists, isn't he telling them to attack a fundamentalist Islamic State, Iran?

What does he want? He wants  them to reinstitute, presumably by war, a separation of church and state among states of the Middle East, on the model of the separation of church and state in the West.

 

 

 

WE NEED A BIG LOAD OF UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS TO HELP US CATCH MS 13 WHICH PREYS ON THEM.ESPECIALLY

Do you see any little circularity of the logic here, or is it just me?

THE DUMB MONEY IDEOLOGY

Watched Lewis, again, last night, with laGarde.

What brought him back to following Wall Street he said was the sub prime debacle, and the extent, as I reiterated recently here, that the big banks themselves had been what he calls the dumb money, and had lost their ass too, rather than taking someone else's ass for a profit, which they are accustomed to do (they do not, of course, really want to be bailed out, they want to make money.)

Western liberalism has been and continues to be the dumb money ideology, and this sad fact is only now really being brought home to the average person in the West. 

There are so many reasons for this late awakening, analogously to the late awakening of big bank executives to the realities of the sub prime debacle. 

For example, in 89 (1989), the West actually still thought they had 'won'.

Tragically, it symbolized a huge sign of a loss for the West in general, against the Rest, and not just for the West's Europhile Soviet elite.

Lewis is himself ironically, of course, one of the liberals who fail to see what is coming. He discusses the big problem, with LaGarde, inequality, rather in the fashion that Piketty addresses it, as the really big roadblock to further good globalization.

What he fails to see, apparently, and what Piketty certainly has seen but refuses to mention or discuss, is not inequality at all, which is not really a new thing as such (the so called problem of the top 1%), which will neither shake your windows nor rattle your walls.

The 800 pound gorilla in the room of economic globalization, oh the times they are a changin, is income and wealth convergence, converging average or median income of a world population, amid gathering environmental degradation and vanishing natural resources.

For relatively wealthy Westerners, it is rather like having a freight train bearing down on you in the dark with its lights off.

RE GROWTH FOR GROWTH'S SAKE

Watched Christine LaGarde and Michael Lewis dialogue, briefly.

 

What is growth? Purely quantitative?

 

Is it merely something to ward off stagnation, or decline, again purely quantitative terms?

 

What is it really for? Is it an end in itself ultimately? More and more and more amd more without end?

 

Can it go on forever? Forever is a long time.

 

Does it matter much, in terms of a purely quantitative definition of growth, whose growth it happens to be?

 

Is relative growth, or relative decline, significant to global growth afficionados?

 

When does growth, assuming it trends upward, or at least has trended upward fitfully, when does it permanently taper off, or even begin to decline permanently, or for a long time to come?

 

Why shouldn't growth itself cease, say under environmental or population pressures?

 

What could be wrong with that, really?

 

Haven't we been seeing that happening, to some extent, already?

OUR ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL LIBERALISM KRUGMANISM

SHOT OUR CULTURAL AND MILITARY WESTERN DOMINANCE IN THE ASS.

Over the long term, say, since at least 1789.

Terms search: ignoramitocracy.

See this old post from 2011:

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

RE IGNORAMITOCRACY KRUGMAN NYT WHEN MARKETS DECIDE AND THE FREE MARKET FOR INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY

RE DK POST TIME MY COMMENTS HERE THERE TRUMP PUTIN RUSSIAGATE

Let's just speculate here...

 

Leet's say Trump, knew, arguendo, even all along, that Putin had him in his pocket, so to speak.

 

Never mind how, but in ways.

 

Let's say, now, that Trump has to blame someone.

Let's say we suspect it's Putin he should blame.

 

What does Trump ultimately do, say impeachment proceedings loom, disclosures unwanted by either Trump or Putin.

 

What does Trump do?

Does he finger Putin?

 

Guess what? He can't finger Putin because Putin has nixed being fingered.

IF YOU DIDN'T WANT CHINA TO TAKE OVER ASIA

you shouldn't have boomed them in the first place.

It is your fault.

American stupidity over China, and many other things about globalization, goes way back, really 19th Century stuff.

Kennan (1960s re 1900 ish, and later, until Mao): 
"Out of all these ingredients there was brewed the curious view of China that seems to have animated American statesmanship during the war; the picture of a helpless, deserving nation, for whose virtues we alone, among the great powers, had understanding, whose interests we had to sponsor in the face of Japanese enmity and British callousness, and whose grateful support in the postwar period we could take for granted as a mainstay of the world position we hoped to occupy.  China was, in fact, and on this we insisted with a most extraordinary vehemence, to be one of the future great powers--- one of what F.D.R. called the 'four world policemen'"
"In this highly subjective picture of the Chinese, there was no room for a whole series of historical and psychological realities.  There was no room for the physical ruthlessness that had characterized Chinese political life generally in recent decades; for the formidable psychological and political powers of the Chinese people themselves; for the strong streak of xenophobia in their nature; for the lessons of the Boxer Rebellion; for the extraordinary exploitative talent shown by Chinese factions, at all times, in turning outside aid to domestic political advantage."

"It was this idealized view of the Chinese, rather than any illusions about the relationship between the National Government and the Chinese Communists, which was most damaging to our Far Eastern policy.  We did, to be sure, underrate the depth of the antagonism between these two elements.  Our memories of what had transpired in 1927 were certainly shorter (if they existed at all) than were those of Mao and Chiang and Stalin.  There also seems to me to have been a certain naivete, but nothing worse, in our efforts to bring about a political compromise between these two factions, and to induce Stalin to join us in this effort....".  Russia and The West Under Lenin And Stalin, p 374.

We blunder early and we blunder hard. 

Wilson, 1917, re Lenin:

"Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia?  Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the imtimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude towards life.  The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace.  Here is a fit partner for a league of honor."

RE CHINA'S NEW SILK ROAD WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY ARE GOING TO EXPORT THE MOST

What do you think they are going to drive, over that New Silk Road, to Europe, to the Middle East, and also thence to Africa?

 

Chinese people, in enormous numbers.

I actually had speculated about this development, recently, on the blog here......

Think: The Chinese Connection

Japan, of course, is really all done. It is toast.

TRUMP PUTIN DIALOGUE ON THE ECONOMY

P: I admit, Donenka, you have the most advanced economy in the world.

 

T: Yes, Vladishka, we have the most advanced agriculture of all. Even Krugmanovitch so admits!

AN OLD POST SOMEONE SAW RE DK POST WHY NOT REPRISE IT

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

SEE DK'S CURRENT POST AND COMMENTS

I may have made myself misunderstood by Mr Glover and others.

See this article and especially the quote below:

www.nps.gov/resources/story.htm?id=251

The Southern lag in industrial development did not result from any inherent economic disadvantages. There was great wealth in the South, but it was primarily tied up in the slave economy. In 1860, the economic value of slaves in the United States exceeded the invested value of all of the nation's railroads, factories, and banks combined. On the eve of the Civil War, cotton prices were at an all-time high. The Confederate leaders were confident that the importance of cotton on the world market, particularly in England and France, would provide the South with the diplomatic and military assistance they needed for victory.

Here was my comment:

Professor

Very interesting post. Many thanks.

I don't want to get into the telephone squabbles now under way.

I would just say that I had thought that the South, both in colonial days, and until the Civil War, far from being economically backward (by the primarily agrarian economic principes and metrics of those times), had been the most prosperous and profitable sector of the country, albeit based increasingly on disastrous northern banker financing, and on free trade with Europe rather than with the North.

I guess by economically backward, you mean merely less industrialized...but that is not necessarily how it would have been interpreted in the 17th, or even the early 19th, centuries, anywhere but in places like Manchester, or London, etc.

all the best,

Here was Glover's:

"Bozon:

When South Carolina seceded, General Sherman described the South's economic backwardness in his famous prediction of its ultimate result:

You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it... Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth—right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.

A few months ago I read an excellent comparative survey ("A House Dividing", John Majewski) of economic development in two counties, one in Virginia and the other in Pennsylvania. Well before the Civil War the wealth, and the sources of wealth, were on two very different trajectories in the two counties. In simple terms, with their sparse consumer populations, regions based on planatation economics were totally barren ground for the development of industry and rail networks. Further, this was widely acknowledged at the time."

 

I would just add, here, May 19, 2017, that if industrial economic development had been Lincoln's goal, which it supposedly had been at some time, that goal was utterly confounded by the Civil War and its aftermath, not merely by Sherman's military tactics, but by thw whole tenor of occupation and so called Reconstruction.

 

Ironically, I commented, just the other day, regarding Krugman's idiotic article, about how our so called economy is mainly, yet again, and even now, quite a misguided agrarian one:

RE NATTERING NABOBS OF NAFTA KRUGMAN ACTS LIKE THIS SOME KIND OF GENIUS THE MORGENTHAU PLAN AGAIN

We should have continued to conduct a robust Western Civilization first colonial policy, getting only raw materials, labor intensive agricultural products, and unprocessed foodstuffs, from them, and giving them only as little, in the way of industrial products and manufactures, as possible, for as long as possible.

If the West had done that, we would not now be in the ridiculous, and highly dangerous, position we are now in.

THE MEDIA NYT PLAY BOTH SIDES OF THE RACE CULTURE CIVILIZATION CARD

They ram the racism and civilizational backwardness of the Western civilizationalism of their readers up their ass.

 

Then, they turn around, turn on a dime so to speak, and ram their readers' and others' multiculturalism, and lack of cultural or ethnic identity, up their ass.

 

As I noted recently, here they are ramming Russia's multiculturalism up its ass:

 

RE NYT RUSSIA'S AGE-OLD QUESTION: WHO ARE WE? EURASIA NOTHINGLAND

 

Different day, differnt ramming, same readership.

 

They got you on a rollercoaster of moral ethical and political befuddlement.

RE NYT RUSSIA'S AGE-OLD QUESTION: WHO ARE WE? EURASIA NOTHINGLAND

They've been just reading my blog and shamelessly copying it into very polite terminology:

HUNTINGTON CALLED RUSSIA A TORN COUNTRY VERY APT DESCRIPTION BUT MORE

 

Let's go on with this discussion:

 

What was Russia's answer to its grossly excessive Jewish population, in the 19th and early 20th Centuries?

 

It exported all of them to Europe, and to us, in enormous numbers.

 

It dumped a great load into Israel after England rubber stamped the move in 1917, as a war tactic, to try to keep czarist Russia in the war, rather like Lincoln emancipating black slaves in an area he did not control, as a war measure. What an unmitigated disaster for the West.

 

Who will stop them from doing the same now, with their enormous excess, and well hated, Muslim populations, as this article itself points out?  Do you think they are going to sit around and let Muslins become the majority population group in Russia? You've got another thought coming.

 

No one here, or perhaps in Europe, can, will stop them. We're all Whig liberals about immigration, over here.

If the West had broken Russia up, somewhat along ethnic and geographic lines, back when Lenin took over and gave us the excuse, they would all be a whole lot better off over there in Eurasia Nothingland now.

The article more or less admits as much, between the lines....
You can kid yourself.

Smell the coffee.

PS China's New Silk Road runs right through Russia's Muslim Ass.

Think about the implications...

COTE D'IVOIRE IS A NEW ONE

Entry	Pageviews
United States	52
South Korea	32
Russia	21
Portugal	5
Netherlands	3
Germany	2
France	2
Venezuela	2
Côte d’Ivoire	1
Indonesia	1

RE INDONESIAN GAY MEN SENTENCED TO CANING

Samantha Power: "Human rights violation. Have they no shame? Bomb them."

RE HEDGING INVESTMENTS THE GOVERNMENT IS THE BIGGEST HEDGE FUND FOR INVESTMENT BANKS

"Although I also read a history of hedge funds by Sebastian Mallaby and blogged about it here, I am still quite unclear as to how this key new financial institution got off the ground and became so powerful." DK

 

I have a layman's account of where the term came from. The directions in which so called hedge funds originated and have gone is quite another matter.

 

Hedging was shorthand for protecting an investment with another investment which would offset a loss in the original investment.

 

One view of what is called diversification in an investment portfolio is merely another way of talking about a sort of generalized hedging of all one's investments, on the theory that movements in the financial market takes sectors in turn, so that a diversified portfolio protects the investor from catastrophic losses due to having put his eggs only in one basket.

Of course, this diversification theory fails in bear, recession, or catastrophic crashes, because virtually all sectors plummet together. But brokers want investors to buy as many stocks and bonds as they can, and keep on buying.

 

The options markets developed also in some respects as investment vehicles for gamblers, and profit centers for financial insiders, but also as hedging opportunities for investment banks, where one buys one investment as a hedge against a corresponding loss in another. In this sense, it is really another species of diversification, or perhaps better, 'countervailing investment'. 

 

Of course with leveraged investments, of underlying securities or of options, an element of risk is reintroduced, which often cuts against so called hedging or diversification agendas themselves.

 

With inside information, however, any kind of investment risk, especially in the short term, and critically with leveraged options, is reduced. 

I should point out, also, as an aside, that seldom, if ever, has the insider community itself, been able to predict, protect against, or bet on a crash of the market itself.

Perhaps the classic recent example is the crash of 2008, initiated by the bubble in mortgage backed securities, chronicled by Lewis in The Big Short, where the investment bankers themselves lost their ass too, and were bailed out by the government.

 

Michael Lewis could explain all this much better than this.

When the government bails out banks, it is the big big hedge fund, and so, in a sense, banks are protected, hedged, by their size and importance, from catastrophic loss, ab initio. Not so the individual investor.

THE MENU GRILL THEN FRY OR BAKE IMPROV

One can butterfly shrimp, flash grill, then tempura.

You could do duck breast scaloppine this way, too.

See also prior Wellington ideas... For example, one could flash grill chicken gizzards, then saute, remove gizzards, make a gravy, then scrape away gristle from gizzards for the gizzard pate. This pate and gravy would be made in advance of the then grilled and baked Delmonico Gizzard Wellington, in a perfect world.

RE THOMAS FRIEDMAN THE WORLD IS FLAT WHAT COMES AFTER FLAT? FLATTER?

What comes after flatter?

I will tell you:

Psalm 18:42 I grind them as fine as windblown dust. I trampled them like mud in the streets.

2 Samuel 22:43 I grind them as fine as the dust of the ground. I crush them and stomp on them like clay in the streets.

SNAPSHOT ROOSKIES SUDDENLY ALL GONE MAYBE THEY ARE SLEEPING

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United States	48
Portugal	9
Indonesia	5
Brazil	1
Switzerland	1
Germany	1
France	1
United Kingdom	1
Peru	1
Poland	1

ONE HAS ONLY TO REFLECT FOR A MOMENT ON OIL TO SEE THE STUPIDITY OF DECOLONIZATION

Americans of course could not see even this most basic economic and strategic fact.

RE NATTERING NABOBS OF NAFTA KRUGMAN ACTS LIKE THIS SOME KIND OF GENIUS THE MORGENTHAU PLAN AGAIN

Actually, it is perhaps the most glaring symbol of American decline.... all these fancy, advanced, entrepreneurially savvy, highly educated, American states, count em, making most of their income by exporting not fancy technology items, but rather basic, idiot stupid, agrarian produce, to a big, dumb, even more backward third world country, just across the border... the most pathetic scenario one can possibly imagine really. Why would you do it unless you were desperate?

 

Krugman doesn't want to get into how that could possibly be, or how we could reverse this long term highly pathetic history of mostly agrarian exports. We have, singlehandedly, fed, literally, the growth of our competitors across the world.

Only fools like us would ever have wanted to integrate our auto industry with a place like Mexico, after the experience of Japan, and then the rest of Asia.

Why would you want to let poor, very numerous, foreign people learn to make and export your expensive industrial consumer products for you, while you mostly make and ship them their cheap agrarian staples?

Rather like voluntarily and cheaply feeding a hostile foreign army, ultimately. We actually still subsidize our farmers to do stuff like this, it seems.

What we are ultimately confronting, big picture, is a long 70 year slide into a self inflicted ad hoc Morgenthau Plan for America, the plan originally intended to agrarianize Nazi Germany after WWII.