Rotating Elites

Serfs and Artisans,

The Wagner Factor and the Fairness Principle​,​ Alexander Dugin​ (​Alexander Dugin is not "Putin's brain", but is an influential ​R​ussian political philosopher. His daughter was recently murdered in ​an ​attempt to kill him. He is a Russian at war, completely at war. He wrote this for western Europeans, but also for Russians.)

​  ​Throughout the Special Military Operation (SMO), the PMC Wagner and Yevgeny Prigozhin have been the center of attention of Russian society and the world community. For Russians, he has become the main symbol of victory, determination, heroism, courage and resilience. For the enemy a source of hatred, but also of fear and terror. It is important that Prigozhin not only leads the most combat-ready, victorious and undefeated unit of the Russian armed forces, but also provides an outlet for those feelings, thoughts, demands and hopes that live in the hearts of the people of war, completely and to the end, irreversibly immersed in its elements...
..Inside Russia, people accept Prigozhin unconditionally. He, without any doubts, is the first in this war. Whatever he says or does, it immediately resonates in the heart of the people, in society, in the broad Russian, Eurasian masses. It is one of the many paradoxes of our history—an ethnic Jew, an oligarch, and a man with a rather turbulent past is transformed into the archetype of a purely Russian hero, into a symbol of justice and honor for all people...
..Russian elites are another matter. It is precisely because Prigozhin has made a pact with the Russian people, with the Russian majority, on the blood—his own and that of his heroes from Wagner—that he is most hated by that part of the elite that has not accepted the war as its fate, has not realized its true and fundamental motives, has not yet seen the mortal danger that hangs over the country. It seems to the elite that Prigozhin is simply rushing to power, and, relying on the people, is preparing a “black redistribution.” For this part of the Russian elite, the word “justice” itself is unbearable and burns with the fires of hell. After all, Prigozhin is himself from this elite, but he found the courage to renounce the class of the rich, exploiters, cynics, and cosmo..politans, who despise all those who are less successful, and to move to the side of the warring, country-saving people...
..In Prigozhin, society has begun to see something more than a successful and desperate field commander, a warlord. The configuration in the elites that prevailed in Russia before the SMO allowed (with personal loyalty to the supreme power) for a certain oligarchic stratum the opportunity to remain part of the global liberal globalist system. The people grumbled, lamented and complained about this, but as long as Russia’s sovereignty was being strengthened and, as it seemed, nothing threatened the country, this could somehow be tolerated. After the beginning of the SMO, this contradiction was fully exposed. Russia faced a deadly battle with the entire West, which fell upon our country, a West with all its might; and the Russian elite, by inertia, continued to slavishly follow the land of the setting sun, copying its standards and methods, keeping their savings abroad, dreaming of Courchevel and the Bahamas. Part of the elite frankly fled, and part hid and waited for it all to end. And here the “Prigozhin factor” appeared, already as a politician who became the mouthpiece of popular anger towards the remaining oligarchic elites, stubbornly refusing to accept the new realities of the war and do as Yevgeny Prigozhin himself did, that is, go to the front or, at least, join in the cause of Victory entirely and without a trace. If the West is our enemy, then a supporter of the West, a Westerner is a traitor and a direct agent of the enemy. If you are not at war with the West, then you are on its side. This is the simple logic voiced by Prigozhin. And in his decisive battle with the external enemy, the masses of the people saw a second—future—act, the transfer of similar methods for the internal enemy. And this is “justice”—in its popular, even albeit common people—understanding...
​..​There is a tremendous time delay, but it is the beginning of fundamental change in Russian society. Yevgeny Prigozhin represents one of the directions. This, above all, is war, where Wagner is the brightest illustration of what meritocracy is; that is, the power of the most distinguished, the most courageous, and the most deserving. The elites of war are those who perform the task best, and there are no other criteria at all... Loyalty in war is implied; otherwise, immediate execution. But now something more is needed: the ability to cope with the task at hand. At any cost. Even at the cost of one’s own and others’ lives. This alone brings out the best. And the worst. And all that remains is to put the best over the worst, and the whole thing will head to Victory...
..Those who do not cope with the task are relegated to the back burner. In the political science of Wilfred Pareto this is called the “rotation of the elite.” In Russia, this process is extremely inert and sporadic, and most often it is not taking place at all. War, on the other hand, requires the “rotation of the elites” in an ultimatum manner. This is a real horror for the elites, who are old and incapacitated, moreover, cut off from their matrix in the West...
..The stakes are constantly rising. Victory is at stake. And the way to it lies only through justice.​ [A call for bloody retribution f​rom a man whose daughter was recently murdered by enemies​?  When will the US reach such a similar point of decision? Soon? Suddenly?​ Thanks Christine.]​                                         ​https://www.thepostil.com/the-wagner-factor-and-the-fairness-principle/

​  The seat of empire needs to get on a war-footing financially. What will that mean?

​  Republic First, J.P. More-Gain​, ​By Michael Every of Rabobank

​  ​Then we had First Republic Bank being taken over by J.P. Morgan in an ‘interesting’ piece of financial engineering which I don’t have the space to go into here in detail. Suffice to say that again, the US financial system has been ‘saved’; again, stock and bondholders haven’t; again rich, uninsured (Californian, Democrat-donor) depositors have; and Too Big To Fail banks are now even bigger and obviously even less allowed to fail, reversing what was supposed to be the post-2008 regulatory norms.​..

​..​Fed Chair J. Powell starts another FOMC meeting against a bank failure, and yet will again hike rates 25bps (this time to 5.25%). Moreover, the Wall Street Journal’s Timiraos says he isn’t likely to flag a pause, instead keeping the door open to doing more if necessary.
​  ​We may see some form of US credit crunch. Indeed, a US banking conflab was talking about that yesterday. On the other hand, there are some who think the Fed has been asking banks to scale back on lending to try to give them more leeway to pause – in other words tightening via backdoor policy. That sounds ‘un-American’ for those who know nothing about the real America, but it’s arguably still better than policy tightening via repeated bank failures.
​  ​J.P. Morgan is at the heart of things again. Some will recall that in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the bank was persuaded to swallow Bear Sterns and Washington Mutual, which CEO Dimon has said he would rather not have undertaken. Those with a longer memory will recall the 1907 Panic, where Mr. Morgan personally bailed out the US financial system. I expect fewer mentions this week of the allegations that Morgan was also involved in a planned fascist coup against President F.D.R. in the 1930s, the so-called “Wall Street putsch”.  
​  ​Geopolitics is echoing the 1930s. Axios is the latest to say: ‘US allies prepare for possibility of war over Taiwan’; the US says its Mutual Defence Treaty with the Philippines is “iron clad” following maritime tension; China revised its conscription law to boost its pool of draftees, ‘Locks Information on the Country Inside a Black Box’, and even the US Chamber of Commerce in China warns of major increase in risks for businesses; China and Russia signed a deal on maritime law enforcement; Iran --which saw an oil tanker destined for China seized by the US, seizing a foreign tanker back-- proposed a “maritime security belt” led by the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation to provide “safety, security, and stability of global maritime trade”; and the US displayed bunker-busting bombs for use against Iran. Yet the Wall Street Journal also says ‘US Struggles to Replenish Munitions Stockpiles as Ukraine War Drags On’ noting, “plans to increase production of key munitions have fallen short due to shortages of chips, machinery, and skilled workers.”
​  ​How does this latter point link back to JP and First Republic? Let’s look at the wording of the Federal Reserve’s Section 2A. Monetary policy objectives [I read this a little differently from M.Every. I see "commensurate with 'potential' to increase production", not  "to increase production". It might be different.]
​  ​“The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy's long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.”
​  ​Not just “stable prices”, which we won’t have if the Fed cuts rates as markets are pricing for; not just “maximum employment”, which we may not end ahead given demographics, onshoring, re-arming, and labor hoarding; not just “moderate long-term interest rates,” or financial stability, so acronyms like BTFP, which FRB partook of to no avail before being swallowed by JPM; rather, TO INCREASE PRODUCTION to allow all of the above to happen.
​  ​For three decades of a geopolitically benign environment and the last Cold War decade before, the Fed could get away with ignoring US production to rely on imports and financialisation. Now, as war rages in Ukraine and wider war fear mount, and de/re-globalisation shifts supply chains, it cannot. US production must increase, and financialisation decrease. The question is how, starting from here.​ [I again disagree​ with Every​. I think a more ​government-​directed-economy, like China's, like pre-war Germany's, and like that of the US pre-WW-2, and even pre-WW-1, is more likely than allowing Wall-Street to keep making strategic national industrial policy decisions.]

​ ​Rates are going to be much higher for much longer even before we get into the biggest picture issue of ‘de-dollarisation’. That’s a production problem according to economic theory. However, economic reality shows in a globalised trading system, lower US rates don’t see any increase in productive investment anyway – just pointless (but profitable for some) financialisation.​  [Hence national industrial policy is needed.]
​  ​Clearly, much more productive investment is going to be required by the US economy when the current ‘financialised’ system has no ability or interest in supporting it. That means more national-security focused industrial policy, as White House National Security Advisor Sullivan made explicit last week, to tumbleweeds from a market unwilling to listen. It likely also means more QE, not QT, in the form of de facto MMT, not yield-lowering, excess-reserve-building exercises: it’s just when this happens. And/or it means a more centralised US banking system that listens to ‘guidance’ from the more powerful Fed telling it what is in the national interest for it to lend to.​  [But ​US ​bank lending is against existing assets, not to build new industries.] https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/republic-first-jp-more-gain

S**t Just Hit The Fan Across Markets, Regional Banks Crashing​  (And gold spiked up hard at the same moment.) https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/st-just-hit-fan-across-markets-regional-banks-freefall

Yellen Warns Treasury To Run Out Of Cash As Soon As June 1 Absent Debt Ceiling Deal https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/yellen-warns-treasury-run-out-cash-soon-june-1-absent-debt-ceiling-deal

​  ​Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Algeria, Egypt, Bahrain, and Iran have formally asked to join the BRICS group of nations as it prepares to hold its annual summit in South Africa.
​  ​In total, 19 nations have expressed interest in joining the emerging-markets bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, according to Anil Sooklal, South Africa’s ambassador to the group.
​  ​“What will be discussed is the expansion of BRICS and the modalities of how this will happen … Thirteen countries have formally asked to join, and another six have asked informally. We are getting applications to join every day,” the South African official told Bloomberg earlier this week.
​  ​BRICS will hold its annual summit in Cape Town during the first week of June.​..

​..By 2028, the G7 is expected to make up just 27.8 percent of the global economy, while​ (pre-expansion) ​​BRICS will make up 35 percent.
​  ​The estimations came just a few weeks after the Deputy Chairman of Russia’s State Duma, Alexander Babakov, revealed that BRICS is working on developing a “new currency” that will be presented at the organization’s upcoming summit.​..

​..​The interest from Global South nations to join the bloc comes at a time when more and more governments move away from the US dollar.
https://thecradle.co/article-view/24119/five-arab-states-plus-iran-among-19-nations-ready-to-join-brics

​  Alastair Crooke, Thanks F.S.  ​‘Securing Ourselves Is in Our Hands; and Defeat of the Enemy Lies in His Own Hands’ (Sun Tzu, d. 496 BCE)

​  ​The media focus is so much centred on the military situation in Ukraine that it is easily overlooked that President Putin has also been fighting a financial war – a war on liberal economic theory; and a diplomatic war for the support of the non-West and from key strategic allies, China and India.

​  ​On top of that, Putin has to manage the psyche inside Russia. His objective is to restore patriotism and a Russian national culture reconnected to its roots in Orthodox Christianity...

​..​Like any system, the World Order rests on philosophical principles believed to be universal, but which, in truth, are specific to a particular moment in European history.
​  ​Today, the West is not ‘what it was’. It is a fractured ideological battlespace. The Rest of World is not ‘what it was’. And today’s ideological western writhings are no longer viewed as being of primary concern to the World.
​  ​The point here, however, is about a project designed to bring change to that which has not changed. It is as much a war for global psyche as of attrition on the battlefront (though that, too, is a vital component in shifting the global zeitgeist). If a multi-polar order is to be built based on self-sufficient sovereignty, others should exit the neo-liberal economic system too (if they can). Hence the need for a major diplomatic initiative by Russia and China to build a strategic depth for a new economics.​..

​..The Anglo-American system of economics, James Fallows, a former White House speechwriter has noted, like any system, rests on certain principles and beliefs:
​  ​“But rather than acting as if these are the best principles, or the ones their societies prefer, Britons and Americans often act as if these were the only possible principles: And that no one, except in error, could choose any others. Political economics becomes an essentially religious question, subject to the standard drawback of any religion – the failure to understand why people outside the faith might act as they do”...

..So, back to that ‘which has not changed’, Secretary Yellen recently delivered a speech on the U.S.-China relationship, implying that China largely had prospered on the back of this Anglo, ‘free workings’ market order; yet now was pivoting toward a state-driven posture: one that “is confrontational towards the U.S. and its allies”. The U.S. wants to co-operate with China, but wholly and exclusively on its own terms, she said.

​  ​The U.S. seeks “constructive engagement”, but one that must be subject to the U.S. securing its own security interests and values. “We will clearly communicate to the PRC our concerns about its behaviour … And we will protect human rights”. Secondly, “we will continue to respond to China’s unfair economic practices. And we will continue to make critical investments at home – while engaging with the world to advance our vision for an open, fair, and rules-based global economic order”. She finishes by saying China must ‘play by today’s international rules’.​..

​..Put simply, Yellen’s speech displays a complete failure to acknowledge that the Sino-Russian ‘revolution’ is not confined to the political, but extends to the economic sphere, too. It shows just how important the ‘other war’ is for Putin and XI – the war to shape an exit from the grip of the financialised, neo-liberal paradigm.​..

..And what Yellen’s speech wholly misses is this geo-strategic paradigm change: Putin has brought Russia back, and into broad alignment with China and other Asian states on economic thinking.
The latter have, in effect, been saying for some time that ‘Anglo’ political philosophy is not necessarily the world’s philosophy. Societies may work best, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and others have said, were they to pay less attention to the individual, and more to the welfare of the group.
President Xi says it straight: “The right of the people to independently choose their development paths should be respected … Only the wearer of the shoes knows if they fit or not”...

​..​The Anglo-American approach is premised on the basis that the ultimate measure of a society is its level of consumption. In the long run however, List argued, a society’s well-being and its overall wealth are determined not by what the society can buy, but by what it can make (i.e. value arising from a real, self-sufficient economy). The German school, deeply sceptical of Adam Smith’s market ‘serendipity’, argued that emphasizing consumption would eventually be self-defeating. It would bias the system away from wealth creation, and ultimately make it impossible to consume as much, or to employ so many.

​  ​List was prescient. He saw the flaw, now so clearly exposed in the Anglo model: an attenuation of the real economy, now aggravated by massive financialisation. ​[Financialization is a process of wealth extraction, somewhat aside from the focus on economic production vs. consumption.] ​A process that has led to the building of an inverted pyramid of derivative financial ‘products’ which suck the oxygen from the manufacture of real output. Self-reliance erodes, and a shrinking base of real wealth creation supports ever-smaller numbers in adequately-paid employment.​..

​..In Putin’s words, China “managed in the best possible way, in my opinion, to use the levers of central administration (for) the development of a market economy … The Soviet Union did nothing like this, and the results of an ineffective economic policy impacted the political sphere”...

Plainly put, Xi and Putin’s assessment is that the Russian disaster was the result of the turn to western liberalism, whereas Yellen clearly sees China’s ‘error’ – for which she chides it – is in the move away from the ‘liberal’ world system.​   [Markets  and state industrial policy are both important.]

​  ​This analytic mis-match goes some way to explaining the West’s absolute conviction that Russia is a state so weak and fragile financially (from its primordial error in eschewing the ‘Anglo’ system), that any reversal on the Ukrainian battlefront today could bring about a panicked financial collapse (as seen in 1998), and political anarchy in Moscow, similar to that of the Yeltsin era.
​  ​Paradoxically, observers in the non-West today see the obverse of what Yellen ‘sees’: It sees western financial fragility vs Russian economic stability.
​  ​Finally, the other ‘less noticed’ dimension to the Sino-Russian ‘revolution’ is the metaphysical – the re-appropriation of nationalistic political culture that is something more than ‘sovereignty’...

..Not surprisingly, those not living in the West – and who have never felt themselves inwardly to be a part of this contemporary western modernity, but rather, feel a belonging in a different cultural world; one with a very different ontological basis – look to the latter as the well-source from which to energise a new communal life.
​  ​They reach back to old myths and moral stories precisely to inject energy into political culture – a trend that stretches from China, to Russia, India and beyond. https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/05/01/securing-ourselves-is-in-our-hands-and-defeat-of-the-enemy-lies-in-his-own-hands/

​  ​Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Progressive American Critique of Pandemicism: A Review of 'The Real Anthony Fauci'

​  ​No single work has influenced the American alt-Covid discussion as much as Robert F. Kennedy’s The Real Anthony Fauci, an extended attack on the medical-industrial complex and its purported kingpin, recently-retired National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci. Across 450 pages of narrow margins and densely-set type, Kennedy argues that the entire Covid pandemic unfolded as a second act to the AIDS scare from the 1980s and 1990s. In Kennedy’s view, Fauci played a key role managing both pandemics, to steer massive profits into the coffers of corrupt pharmaceutical companies by pushing harmful proprietary drugs over vastly less profitable but more effective remedies, leading in both cases to untold unnecessary mortality.
​  ​Kennedy’s discussion of Covid is split between the opening and the concluding sections of his long book. Chapter 1 on “Mismanaging a Pandemic” – at 100 pages, a small monograph unto itself – argues that most if not all of American Covid mortality arises from Fauci’s cynical suppression of early treatments like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine. The final two chapters expand the narrow focus of this opening barrage, by tracing the history of “phony epidemics” like the 2009 Swine Flu that have occurred under Fauci’s watch (Chapter 11), as well as the strange tradition of pandemic wargaming, from Dark Winter to Event 201 (Chapter 12).​..

..All of our countries spent years subject to the tyranny of an arbitrary gaggle of Corona tsars, unelected and very often unofficial advisors who became the public face of pandemic policies and the incarnation of The Science for hysterical journalists and terrified television-bound Covidians sheltering at home. This phenomenon arises from the fact that the pandemic represented in almost all of our countries a kind of bureaucratic coup, as the institutional apparatus seized the initiative from the political arm of the state...
..One of the most vital things to understand about the pandemic (and pandemicism in general) is that it’s not about human health. It’s a bunch of antisocial, fundamentally unhealthy, illogical and insane policies that never had any hope of suppressing a virus. These policies were defended and implemented via the authority of avatars for The Science like Fauci, who “encouraged his own canonization and the disturbing inquisition against his blasphemous critics,” and at one point even famously declared that “‘Attacks on me … quite frankly, are attacks on the science’”...
..In many ways, those chapters that Kennedy devotes to Corona are his least impressive and original. His argument here is heavily indebted to American critics of pandemic policy like Pierre Kory, Ryan Cole and especially Peter McCullough, who are quoted in extenso to make the case for early treatment and the dire consequences of its suppression. Kennedy is at his strongest in the middle sections of TRAF, on Fauci’s role in the AIDS crisis. Here citations to contemporary reporting abound, and while he covers controversial ground – like Duesberg’s thesis that HIV is not the cause of AIDS – his approach is entertaining and also in many ways careful and sensitive to a broad range of possibilities...

​..Kennedy shares the view of many gay activists that much early AIDS mortality is to be laid at the feet of public health managers like Fauci, who were more interested in promoting expensive proprietary antivirals than saving lives, leaving the gay community to fend for itself...

​..The toxic Fauci-promoted antiviral azidothymidine, or AZT – which HIV sceptics like Duesberg invoke to explain early AIDS mortality – becomes in Kennedy’s telling a direct precedent for the failed and toxic antiviral Remdesivir, which Fauci and others promoted as a Covid treatment according to the very same “worn rabbit-eared playbook” (67) from the AIDS era. In this analysis, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are cast accordingly as the 21st-century counterparts to the off-the-shelf drugs procured for informal AIDS treatment by the buyers’ clubs of activist legend...

​..​In Kennedy’s final chapter, meanwhile, Fauci all but disappears in favour of new personalities like Peter Daszak and Robert Kadlec. Here, the civilian bureaucrat responsible for organising the catastrophic pandemic response is displaced by much different theses about the biosecurity aspects of pandemic wargaming and Covid as “a military project” (from 433). https://www.globalresearch.ca/robert-f-kennedy-jr-progressive-american-critique-pandemicism-review-real-anthony-fauci/5817913

  Steve Kirsch,  The FDA knew on September 17, 2021 that people who got the COVID vaccine were 2X more likely to be infected

Why didn't they warn us at the time? Instead, they remained silent. The mandates should have been the opposite: hospitals should have fired anyone who got vaccinated.​  ​

[This ADE, antibody dependent enhancement of viral pathogenicity, was apparent in UK data showing COVID infection rates amongst vaccinated and unvaccinated age groups over time, beginning in June 2021.​ After 6 months, the "vaccines" help the virus. https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/08/vaccines-help-delta.html ​]

​  ​Did you know that Pfizer told the FDA in a document dated September 17, 2021 that people who were on the vaccine for a longer period were more likely to be infected with COVD than those who spent only about half the time in the vaccinated state. The difference between the infection rates of the vaxxed vs. unvaxxed was more than 2X.

Proof: The FDA knew on September 17, 2021 that people who got the COVID vaccine were 2X more likely to be infected

​Fired Anyway (took this picture of Jenny in the Austin garden early this morning)​