IanGould

  https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/chalmers-fantasy-of-making-a-better-capitalism-is-absurd,17189 The problem with Chalmers' essay about "value-based capitalism" is that it's a bunch of benign long term aspirations - much like Labor's talk of reforming Medicare. But just as with Medicare, the current Labor government is hamstrung by their determination to deliver massive tax cuts promised by the last government, massively increase defense spending and pursue a lower deficit despite the fact we have among the lowest budget deficits and public deft as a percentage of GDP in the developed world. Faced with reports of a radical reduction in this year's budget deficit, Chalmers response isn't relief so much as embarrassment and an insistence that no additional public spending is possible. So with Medicare we get vague talk of allowing nurses, chemists and other related professions to prescribe medications that can currently only be pre...

 Contrary to what many people like to believe Musk isn't actually stupid. Stupid people don;t get into doctoral programs at Stanford. He actually has a record of founding and running highly successful companies. Tesla is the first successful new mass market automaker in decades (outside China). But his biggest achievement has to be convincing investors to value Tesla as a tech company not a car company. Even after a recent 70% fall in the stock price, Tesla is valued twice as high as Toyota, four times as high as BYD and nearly ten times as high as any of the Big Three US carmakers. That;s despite the fact that Tela makes far fewer cars than Ford, GM or Stellantis and is far less profitable. Supposedly, it's a "growth story", - except it has the oldest model line-up of any major carmaker. The Cybertruck and Semi will supposedly be released in 2023 - years late. The updated Roadster will also supposedly be released in 023 but isalsolikley to be dleayed. Best scenario ...

 In the 1920s, the briefly indwpendent West Ukrainian Republic used paramilitary police to deport Poles to the newly independent Polish republic. After the Poles, with the support of the western allies, occupied western Ukraine. they used paramilitary police to deport Ukrainians and Jews from the Ukrainian-majority area of Galicia - at first deporting them to Ukraine then to eastern Ukraine then after the Soviets took over the rest of Ukraine, to other parts of Poland where they were dispersed widely and prevented from forming communities. At te same time, the Soviets were deporting Poles from Ukraine to Poland. Then after the Soviet-German partition of Poland, the Soviets occupied Galicia and started deporting ethnic Poles to German-occupied Poland - where many of them were delivered straight to labour camps. Here's the thing when the Germans started deporting Jews from Poland occupied Soviet territory, they were largely using mechanisms already in place for up to 20 years. In fa...

 We've been here before. The Cominc War with China: https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FThe_Coming_Conflict_with_China%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR1DhxbdNbWbMrLdCf8FIWnCcotILmTievQRkz3ZnY6M-neac28l7fHjPKc&h=AT1H-Y2_r17rBGSSIpz0LBeRxvN0VXXEIo4SYIW0_lthf9040HB-ExzIfkBII04HnF8mRma_JBab0rIEr6Ex2J9L16tuzjFIOY1yhXaaQZK0LHVLX8XlZTrlgLFWPDG4pA&__tn__=R]-R&c[0]=AT2R4W9w06T4CYxSI6lfTciYOVKy9nJ8QXLko_34wYnY0-wBoFgmLKkpsuMzHGZETeJy1e7G2kdydlIJc73DxEQUqWJ3_bj8ENrvLVmm678iFashhorpEyLYGUBBixy-tysbnCUBoCm2Apz4n_uWWntjl_A-gxqfHX0fgOh2eweea8cE9KUbElPdpG_rQC_cqA The Coming War with Japan (1989):  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_with_Japan?fbclid=IwAR3Vh1U8HyTDj2VAZ0gfDsyH_pMtT3cgn2H63a7J5tJymPmvI7hOEBhd02g#See_also The Cominc War with the Qing Empire: https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F8%2F87%2FYellowTerror.jpg%2F450px-YellowTerror.jpg%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0T52iCMqmBQ1vYxI7iLfCdG62Qw...

  It's sort of tangential to the main point of the article but there's a very important point to be made about deficits and debt from the data here. In 1945, Australia's national debt was around 120% of GDP. For the next 30 years, we ran continuous budget deficits for the whole period. At the end of the period our national was 20% of GDP. That sounds illogical but there's a very simple explanation: the debt was growing more slowly than the economy. Also, the real value of the existing debt was reducing due to inflation. A really extreme example of that last point: Germany borrowed heavily during World War I, mostly from domestic lenders. After the war, Germany experienced hyperinflation. So someone who had invested their life savings - say 100,000 Reichsmarks - would receive a letter with a cheque for the amount owed. Only catch was the stamp on the letter would have cost 1,000,000 Reichsmarks. That's how Germany paid off its war debt. To take a way less extreme exa...

  Some people seem to think I'm a defender or supporter of the CPC and PRC. I'm not but 30 year of studying them have demonstrated one thing: they're depressingly durable. Countless predictions of China's imminent economic collapse have proven incorrect. But currently the Chinese economy is starting to look more and more like the Japanese economy at the start of their "lost decade" of the 1990's. Back in 1979 when the Dengist reforms started, China had a massive deficit in almost every form of physical infrastructure. Much of China's economic growth since then can be attributed to building infrastructure -ports; airports; railway lines; power plants - that increased economic efficiency. But that deficit has been largely made up and the economic returns on further investments in physical infrastructure have fallen sharply. This is why, for example, the expansion of the high speed real network has effectively been halted. Xi and the Presidium know all ...

John Mearsheimer's lecture "Why is Ukraine the west's fault" has been getting a whole lot of attention lately mainly because of its title and because it appeals to the narcissistic and solipsistic worldview of many westerners. - it's from 2015 so it's 7 years out of date. Simply put, if you actually listen to the lecture as opposed to simply waving a link to it around in lieu of an actual argument, events since then have proven him catastrophically wrong. - Mearsheimer starts out by giving a backgrounder in which he feels the need to explain that France is next to Germany and Ukraine is next to Russia. That pretty much sets the level for the rest of the lecture. (He also completely omits Great Britain from his discussion of European geopolitics.) Oh good now he's describing the massacre of peaceful protesters in 2014 as "an overreaction" and "messy" "What they're doing is not trying to conquer Ukraine. That's not going...

 The McDonald's Theory of Conflict Avoidance argued that no two countries with McDonald's restaurants had ever gone to war. The serious underlying point was that advanced capitalist economies tend to avoid direct armed conflict because it's bad for business. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has dealt that theory a potentially fatal blow. The question is whether Russia counts as an "advanced capitalist economy" and if so, for long will it continue to qualify as such. More broadly, the share of the global economy attributable to primary industries like mining and agriculture has been declining for decades as has that of manufacturing, services are where it's at. That's why China is pushing to become a service-based economy. That implies that natural resources have become relatively less valuable and that it's generally cheaper to buy them than to go to war to obtain them. That's true even if you're a private company and can get a government to do ...

  "Russia has one million soldiers. How can they be running out of troops in Ukraine." Well, first, that figure includes their navy and air force both of which have around 150,000 troops and their Special Rocket Forces, the branch that runs their nuclear deterrent, that has around 50,000. Next of the 650,000 in their army, 200,000 or so are conscripts who, according to Russian law can't be deployed outside Russia's borders. Even if they choose to ignore that law, you can't send troops who haven't even completed basic training into high intensity front line combat because if you do they'll die. So let's assume 50,000 of those conscripts are available for service in Ukraine. That leaves 500,000 troops. Now in a typical military there's what's known as the spear tip/spear shaft split. The spear tip are the units that directly conduct offensive operations - the tanks units, the artillery and the infantry - the spear shaft are all the other units t...

  Close to two thirds of Russia's oil refining capacity is off line. Production has fallen from around 7 million to around 3.3 million bpd. The refiners are saying that's because of problems exporting refined oil due to sanctions and payment problems etc. BUT, Russia's peace-time petrol consumption is around 3.6 million barrels per day. That's in peace time - when they aren't trying to supply a massive ground offensive in Ukraine. They may be able to get some petrol from Kakazhstan or other friendly states but I doubt it's enough to make up the deficit. This leads to a theory about the limited use of Russian airpower - they don't have enough avgas to support their entire fleet. Russian oil refineries like other Russian industries depend heavily on imported components even in peace time. This is why stuff like Shell withdrawing from Russia is significant. News report on Russian refineries idling capacity https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia...

 "Ukraine killed 14,000 civilians in Donbas" Well, no. Approximately 14,000 people died in Donbas as a result of the war there initiated by Putin.  But that included just under 5,000 Ukrainian soldiers and jut under 6,000 Russian and separatist troops. The 3,000 civilian deaths incude those killed by Russian forces. Not included are any deaths due to exposure or lack of medical care among the 1.5 million refugees who fled Donbas to unoccupied Ukraine  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas

  Why the US isn't going to cease to be the world's primary reserve currency any time soon and why if it does the Euro would likely replace it. The US dollar represents more than 50% of official foreign reserves around the world. The Euro represents around 15%. The Yuan (AKA the Renminbi) represents around 2.5%. The British Pound represents about double that and both the Australian and Canadian dollar aren't far behind the Yuan. https://data.imf.org/?sk=E6A5F467-C14B-4AA8-9F6D-5A09EC4E62A4

  The Gulf monarchies are contemptible in many ways but at least they're trying to make some provision for a post-oil future. The Emiratis and Qataris are investing in a services economy as exemplified by companies like Etihad Air and Al Jazeera. The Saudis are investing in solar energy and in science and technology. The King Abdullah City of Science and Technology is emerging as a word-class research centre. Russia has done virtually nothing like that. What money wasn't simply stolen and sent abroad was spent on a military machine that is now collapsing in Ukraine. Much of the money that was sent abroad will likely end up being confiscated and used to rebuild Ukraine. None of this benefits the Russian people who, as the oil money runs out, will face increasing difficulty in developing an alternative economic base. Think about the entirely deserved reputation the Gulf elites earned over decades for extravagance and waste. Now think about the fact that Putin and his accomplices...

 Semi-random Notes on Ukraine  1. If the attempt to take Hostomel airport and fly additional forces in had succeeded those predictions of a rapid Ukrainian collapse might have been correct. 2. That convoy that sat on the road outside Kiev for abut two week was a resupply convoy - lots of trucks, minimal tanks and artillery. It was supposed to link up with and resupply the forces landing at Hostomel. The reason the Ukrainians made minimal attempts to attack it was that it effectively blocked the highway, denying it to other Russian units. By now, the food and fuel they were supposed to be delivering has probably been exhausted feeding the convoy itself. Admittedly that still leaves ammo, spare parts etc. 3. The key difference between Putin's regime and, say, Kruschchev's is that the Politburo had the power to remove Kruschchev and they'd all risen to the top based, at least in part, on their own ability. I hate to keep using the H-word, but Putin is more like Hitler in that...

  Stepan Bandera was a Ukrainian nationalist. He spent most of the 1930's opposing Polish rule in western Ukraine. In 1941, when Germany invaded Ukraine he issued a Ukrainian Declaration of Independence which was heavily promoted in German propaganda. By 1942, Germany controlled most of Ukraine and consequently wanted Bandera to rescind his Declaration of Independence and support direct German rule. When he refused to do, Germany sent him to concentration camp where he spent the next two years. In 1944, faced with the imminent loss of Ukraine, the Nazis freed him and sent to Ukraine to organize resistance to reincorporation into the Soviet Union. In 2009 Yushkovych the outgoing pro-Russian President declared Bandera a "Hero of Ukraine". A subsequent pro-independence anti-Russian government revoked that title. A later attempt to restore that title was rejected in 2019 by the Ukrainian Rada after Zelenskkyy's party took control of the Rada. That's the essential tr...

  This is the insignia of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It's what's on the army fatigues President Zelenskyy wears, which idiots keep misrepresenting as a Nazi Iron Cross. While he never served in the military, Zelenskyy is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Ukraine and as such is entitled to wear it. The design was adopted a decade ago, well before Zelenskyy was elected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emblem_of_the_Ukrainian_Armed_Forces.svg

  In 2014, the population of the areas of the Donbas later occupied by Russia was just under four million. When Russia invaded, approximately 1.6 million people fled to unoccupied Ukraine. That's according to the International Organization for Migration. https://www.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl486/files/situation_reports/file/IOM-Ukraine-IDP-Assistance-Report-November-2015.pdf Several hundred thousand more people from Donbas fled to Russia or to third countries. Now, according to the Russian government, the population of the occupied regions of Donbas is ... just under four million. https://www.dsnews.ua/static/longread/donbas-eng/demography-of-ordlo.html#:~:text=The%20results%20of%20those%20calculations%20are%20presented%20in%20the%20table.&text=According%20to%20the%20above%20data,which%20are%20now%20under%20occupation . How is that possible? Did the people who left return? No. Russia paid people from Russia to move to the region. So when you hear "Ukraine is attacking i...