I see over at RIP that Freeman Dyson has died. His article [url=https://www.edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society]HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY[/url] starts out ridiculing climate models. But the part of the article that fits in this thread is his "third heresy."[quote]To conclude this piece I come to my third and last heresy. My third heresy says that the United States has less than a century left of its turn as top nation. Since the modern nation-state was invented around the year 1500, a succession of countries have taken turns at being top nation, first Spain, then France, Britain, America. Each turn lasted about 150 years. Ours began in 1920, so it should end about 2070. The reason why each top nation’s turn comes to an end is that the top nation becomes over-extended, militarily, economically and politically. Greater and greater efforts are required to maintain the number one position. Finally the over-extension becomes so extreme that the structure collapses. Already we can see in the American posture today some clear symptoms of over-extension. Who will be the next top nation? China is the obvious candidate. After that it might be India or Brazil. We should be asking ourselves, not how to live in an America-dominated world, but how to prepare for a world that is not America-dominated. That may be the most important problem for the next generation of Americans to solve. How does a people that thinks of itself as number one yield gracefully to become number two?[/quote]Present circumstances suggest the possibility that he may have come a lot closer to seeing this come to pass than he thought he would.

"How does a people that thinks of itself as number one yield gracefully to become number two? " -- Hmm, I don't think any of Dyson's past-number-ones managed to that, either - both France and UK maintained overseas colonies, often quite ruthlessly, until around middle of the 20th century, and both still love their military escapades - though as often as not as best-pals of the current #1 - which serve as a kind of bloody heyday nostalgia.

One key difference between past empires and the current U.S. one - the introduction and subsequent worldwide spread of fiat currency regimes, which began in earnest as a result of the Great Depression. In the U.S., after laying the groundwork for this during WW2, in was the cost of the Vietnam war which forced it to finally completely abandon the gold standard, in the so-called "Nixon shock" of the early 1970s. So at present the U.S. enjoys the exorbitant privilege of financing its ongoing trade and budget deficits - the former being more crucial in the context of a fiat regime - with effectively unlimited IOU issuance, as the $US is far and away the world's leading reserve currency. That means that countries which have a persistent trade surplus with us are in effect forced to buy US assets by way of recycling their accumulated trade-surplus dollars. While asset purchases can consist of material things - think the Japanese buying all manner of US prime office real estate during the period of their massive surpluses with us, and the Chinese having taken ver that role in recent decades - those are much more fraught in terms of getting fair value for one's money, much less liquid and subject to much more market risk than US bonds, i.e. IOUs. In other words, to a large extent countries are trading their goods and services (trade surplus) to the US, and as a consequence funding the US' bloated military and overseas adventures. Talk about a win-win!

Of course there are limits to this, but near-term the worst thing that can happen to the US is faith in the $US's purchasing power collapsing, i.e. the value of said bonds plunging. That would of course also affect a lot of US-side bondholders which include things like pension funds, and make it harder for the US to finance its debts, but at that point the Federal Reserve (= US central bank) has the option of stepping in and beginning direct monetization of new debt issuance, much as the Japanese central bank has been doing on an ongoing basis, without any sign of the economic collapse the balanced-budget fetishists predicted would occur there as a consequence. In other words, this fiat-money free lunch can go on for a lot longer than one might think would be possible.

I was thinking more along the lines of political implosion. As I indicated long, long ago, the country I grew up in had ideals which it aspired to, if not always living up to them. And I feel that it has abandoned its ideals.

It was while looking into the complexity of the grammar of old languages over in the "Latin lovers" thread in the lounge, that I ran into a quotation that just about floored me.

In a [url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/1497614/The-moment-you-give-up-your-principles-and-your-values-you-are-dead-your-culture-is-dead-your-civilisation-is-dead.-Period..html]2005 interview[/url], Oriana Fallaci was referring to what she saw as Europe becoming "Eurabia," and the impending fall of the West to Islam, when she said something that also beautifully expresses my own view of the 2016 election:
[quote]The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilisation is dead. Period.[/quote]

[url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/02/syria-deadly-bombstrike-warns-turkey-to-end-its-escapades.html]Syria - Deadly Bomb Strike Warns Turkey To End Its Escapades[/url] | Moon of Alabama

Sultan Erdogan thought he could just use his Turkish-military-armed-and supported jihadist proxies to carve himself out a fat piece of Syria along the Turkey/Syria border in Idleb province, and risked directly engaging the Syrian-supporting Russian military assets to do so. Think again.

Note that MofA (a.k.a. its owner Bernhard) is good on Middle East happenings, but a mixed bag elsewhere - e.g. on the Hong Kong protests he insists on his thesis that they are a U.S.-fomented "color revolution" a la the Maidan Spring "uprising" in Ukraine a few years back, despite ample evidence that the HK protests are predominantly homegrown. And with respect to the Coronavirus pandemic, he has been taking all the official Chinese new-case and fatality numbers at face value and was until recently making rosy predictions about the whole affair being a viral tempest in a teapot. Now that we clearly have a global pandemic underway, he is still lauding the Chinese containment efforts, and [url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/02/coronavirus-globally.html]blaming "the other countries" for botching their responses[/url]. Well, clearly there is plenty of blame to go around, but ground 0 is China, where the government tolerated the panoply of unlicensed, unregulated wild-meat markets which are an ideal staging place for zoonotic-pathogen "experiments", like SARS a little over a decade ago, and now something much worse. Did they learn anything from the SARS outbreak? Apparently not. And as laid out in [url=http://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/]this article[/url], the Chinese Communist Party is directly implicated in helping the initial local outbreak explode by disregarding clear and evidence-based warnings from their own scientists and insisting on going ahead with a lavish Chinese New year's banquet for 40,000 people right near the outbreak epicenter in Wuhan.

I keep wondering, how is it that Turkish troops are on foreign soil, and "cavorting with terrorists" no less? Erdogan's outrage at these invading troops being killed in actions by the Syrian government and its ally against remnant jihadis in Idlib rings pretty hollow.

Latest [url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/03/syria-a-short-note-on-recent-developments.html]update from MoA[/url]: "The current situation in Syria is confusing."

Over on the NC daily Links aggregation today, [url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/03/links-3-2-2020.html#comment-3304862]a reader comments[/url] on an AFP article re. the Turkish counteroffensive in Syria with a link of his own to well-respected ME-issues blogger Elijah Magnier:
[quote] Turkey confirms military operation against Syrian regime | Agence France Presse

[url=https://ejmagnier.com/2020/03/01/erdogan-idlib-is-mine/]Elijiah Magnier has a long form post on this[/url] – he thinks Putin made a major error in agreeing a ceasefire, leaving Syrian government forces very vulnerable to a drone attack mounted by the Turks. It seems they inflicted a very serious blow to the Syrians.

It was now clear that Russia, Iran and its allies had misunderstood President Erdogan: Turkey is in the battle of Idlib to defend what Erdogan considers Turkish territory (Idlib). That is the meaning of the Turkish message, based on the behaviour and deployment of the Turkish Army along with the jihadists. Damascus and its allies consider that Russia made a mistake in not preventing the Turkish drones from attacking Syrian-controlled territory in Idlib. Moreover, Russia made another grave mistake in not warning its allies that the political leadership in Moscow had declared a one-sided ceasefire, exposing partners in the battlefield and denying them air cover.

It seems likely that the Syrians will mount a major counter attack in the next week or so, Putin will have to make a decision as to whether to go all in and risk a major conflict with Erdogan (which he has been avoiding so far), or leave the Syrians on their own there.[/quote]
See also the replies/updates in response to that post.

[url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/03/us-breaks-its-just-signed-agreement-with-the-taliban.html]MoA - U.S. Breaks Its Just Signed Agreement With The Taliban[/url]
[quote]Today a U.S. fighter jet [url=https://tolonews.com/index.php/afghanistan/us-airstrike-hits-taliban-helmand-first-11-days]bombed a Taliban unit[/url] which was fighting with an Afghan government checkpoint.

The air attack came just a day after U.S. President Trump had a telephone call with the Taliban leaders in Doha. The Taliban will likely see this as a breach of the recent ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban.

The Russian Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov supports that view:

"This is a treaty violation, because both the US and the Taliban entered into legally binding commitments not to attack. The Taliban did not attack the Americans or other foreign forces. If the US did that, they violated the agreement blatantly," the diplomat pointed out.

The Russians have called the U.S. "nedogovorosposobny" (недоговороспособны) which translate to "not-agreement capable" or unable to make and then abide by an agreement.[/quote]
That Russian word would make a fine addition to the Word Puzzles thread in Lounge, where we had some fun last year with "English words having the most consecutive occurrences of the same vowel" - ISTR a run of 5 o's was the most we found in English, e.g. in 'nonmonotonous'.

And I would be remiss to not include Duffel Blog's humorous take on the peace agreement:

[url=https://www.duffelblog.com/2020/03/us-tells-18-year-old-afghanistan-war-to-get-off-couch-find-a-job/]US tells 18 year-old Afghanistan War to get off couch, find a job[/url]

[url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/03/syria-ceasefire-in-idleb-erdogan-loses-on-all-points.html]MoA - Syria - Another Ceasefire In Idleb - Erdogan Loses On All Points[/url]

The photo from the face-to-face is kinda priceless ... of course the fact that Erdogan & co. travel to Moscow to meet Ras-Putin in his house tells us who the Big Dog in this negotiation is.

We'll see how long this latest cease-fire holds...

[url=https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=pr1516]Afghanistan: ICC Appeals Chamber authorises the opening of an investigation[/url][quote]Today, 5 March 2020, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court ('ICC' or 'Court') decided unanimously to authorise the Prosecutor to commence an investigation into alleged crimes under the jurisdiction of the Court in relation to the situation in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The Appeals Chamber's judgment amended the decision of Pre-Trial Chamber II of 12 April 2019, which had rejected the Prosecutor's request for authorisation of an investigation of 20 November 2017 and had found that the commencement of an investigation would not be in the interests of justice. The Prosecutor had filed an appeal against that decision. Judge Piotr Hofmański, the presiding judge in this appeal, read a summary of the Appeals Chamber's judgment in open court.[/quote]

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo [url=https://www.state.gov/icc-decision-on-afghanistan/]made the following statement[/url]:[quote]Today, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Appeals Chamber authorized an investigation into the alleged activities of the Taliban and U.S. and Afghan personnel related to Afghanistan. This is a truly breathtaking action by an unaccountable political institution, masquerading as a legal body.

It is all the more reckless for this ruling to come just days after the United States signed a historic peace deal on Afghanistan – the best chance for peace in a generation. Indeed, the Afghan government, itself, pleaded with the ICC to not take this course. But the ICC politicians had other goals.

The United States is not a party to the ICC, and we will take all necessary measures to protect our citizens from this renegade, so-called court.

This is yet another reminder of what happens when multilateral bodies lack oversight and responsible leadership, and become instead a vehicle for political vendettas. The ICC has today stumbled into a sorry affirmation of every denunciation made by its harshest critics over the past three decades.[/quote]

Sickening US Sanctions on Iran -By Finian Cunningham
 

[url]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54006.htm[/url]

[QUOTE]At a time of global crisis as seen with the coronavirus epidemic, it is heartening to witness compassion and solidarity that unites all human beings.
Russia, which has so far been relatively unscathed from the disease, is reportedly sending 50,000 test kits to Iran for detecting the virus. The Islamic Republic has recorded over 300 deaths so far and there are fears of many more fatalities to come over the next few weeks as the flu-like disease spreads to all provinces.

Meanwhile, China – where the outbreak originated in December – is sending thousands of ventilators, respirators and other equipment to Italy, which has become the worst-affected country in Europe by the disease.

In stark contrast to these international humanitarian actions, the United States continues to impose crippling economic sanctions on Iran under its policy of “maximum pressure”.

Iran’s parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani this week called on the rest of the world to demand the lifting of US sanctions because they are hampering the fight against Covid-19 in Iran.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]The Trump administration re-imposed crippling US sanctions on Iran in May 2018 after the Americans decided to dump the international nuclear accord. As the ICJ ruling above makes clear, those sanctions are unlawful. Again, let that fact sink in: US policy towards Iran is unlawful.

The American economic stranglehold has slashed Iran’s global oil exports, plunging the country’s economy into turmoil. Even before the coronavirus epidemic emerged, Iranians have been deprived of life-saving medicines because of failing import-purchasing power and skyrocketing inflation. Untold numbers of patients have died from lack of drugs for cancer treatment and other terminal illnesses – all because of the US blockade on the country.

But from the callous American point of view, this is all going to plan as part of “maximum pressure” to incite regime change. Professed concern for the Iranian people by President Trump and his administration is simply sickening.

[/QUOTE]