I used to make music. Now retired. Temporarily embarrassed country squire I work my property DIY Not my time to rest @ 74
United States
Joined March 2016
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American pop culture fascinated the world.
It cut through the lies and showed who we were from the streets, the towns, the working class, and they loved us.
American empire needed enemies, and so destroyed its pop culture.
Being 74, I'm glad I chose to be on the right side of history.
I'm glad I met Michael and all my other mentors.
Bill Bottrell retweeted
Few poems describe a gentleman's character better than Kipling's "If—," and few men read it better than Sir Michael Caine.
Have a great Friday.
Bill Bottrell retweeted
The US empire only has two tools left to force the world into line: financial sanctions and dropping bombs.
For 30 years, this worked. You either obeyed Washington's "rules-based order," or you got sanctioned, overthrown, or bombed.
But China, Russia and Iran are seems to not playing those rules. They aren't just breaking them; they are building entirely new lines.
Look at the material reality of this shift:
- The US weaponized the banking system and stole sovereign reserves. The result? The Global South is building parallel financial networks. Trade in local currencies is exploding. Ao, you cannot sanction a transaction if you do not control the ledger.
- The US empire runs on financialization, debt, and printing money. The emerging multipolar bloc runs on physical reality: energy, minerals, manufacturing, and infrastructure. You cannot bomb your way out of a supply chain deficit.
- Every time Washington imposes a new sanction to "punish" defiance, it just forces more countries to join the alternative system. The empire’s favorite weapon has become the exact catalyst for its own decline.
So, where is this going?
We are watching the transition from a unipolar financial system to a multipolar physical world.
The transition will be violent. A dying hegemon will use bombs, blockades, and proxy wars to try and stop the tide. But the historical direction is set.
The old order was based on who could print the most dollars and drop the most bombs.
The new order is being built by those who mine the lithium, refine the oil, and build the factories.
The US empire cannot sanction a new world into submission. It can only sanction itself out of it.
This is old news and obvious, but it bears repeating.
The whole ethos of Washington, D.C. these days is: let's keep the racket going as long as possible. This is every agency, every Congressional office, every lobbyist, every think tank. Idealism is gone. Public service is gone. The notion of government as servant of the people is gone. We hardly even hear these cliches anymore.
Bill Bottrell retweeted
Hay más verdad, valentía y honestidad en estos 93 segundos de Stallone que en toda la filosofía de ____________.
Bill Bottrell retweeted
Due to decades of wealth consolidation at the top and trillions spent on imperialist wars, capitalism is in crisis and failing to meet people’s needs. That is why millions of students and workers are rising up. They realize the system is a lie and that a better world is possible!
Millennials and Gen Z never learned they were meant to rebel against their parents' values.
It is imperative in a post-modern world, otherwise societal rigor mortis takes hold, breeding corruption and decay acceptable to their comfortable parents.
Maybe it's not too late.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”
This performance of Henry V is from @thebasecreates.
Absolutely spectacular work and words that our world needs right now.
China China China
Russia Russia Russia
Iran Iran Iran
All while the homeland and its people shrivel in neglect
I remember when this hit home for me.
Bill Clinton kept repeating the phrase "The service economy"
Then the talking heads picked up on it with full acceptance.
I spent 35 years building banking systems for banks worldwide, including central banks. I know how banks decide where their money goes.
When you build systems, you have to make them work, so you have to know how they work.
The Basel Committee de-industrialised the countries that adopted its rules. It's that simple: I explain the whole complicated mechanism in my essay. They simply regulated it away because that was the most profitable thing to do. It was implemented in such a systemic global way, and nobody seemed to notice
Capital is what a bank must hold before it can lend, the way a manufacturer or miner must hold supplies before it can sell. No miner doubles their costs to serve one group of customers. But that's what the banking system does to miners and manufacturers. Since 1988, the Basel rules have required banks to hold twice the capital against a factory loan as against a home loan, and under Basel III the gap reaches five times. So banks lend less to industry and more against houses. It should be stopped tomorrow.
Manufacturing's share of GDP fell in ten of the eleven countries I examined. In Australia it fell from 13.7% to 5.4%. Every other country that followed fell as well. The only truly crafty ones were the Koreans, who did a good job of offsetting it.
Regulators were warned in writing that the rule would steer credit, and they adopted it anyway. No parliament voted for it, and it's simply too dumb to keep doing, but we do . Not today; there is no justification. Yet from India, across Europe, across the US, including Australia, sanctions against industrial capacity. Financialization has gone too far it needs to be reviewed .
The charge is manslaughter by gross negligence. The mechanism is proven.
Same Rules, Different Ruins:ctindale.substack.com/p/same…
Bill Bottrell retweeted
European leaders strutted the world stage. They looted their own people to fund foreign wars. They criminalised and threatened any of their dissidents who told them this was the road to Peterloo and the storming of the Bastille…
If you're old enough, you'll remember the troupe 'the credibility gap' in L.A. in 1971. A political comedy sketch outfit performing every day on top-40 radio, KFWB, alongside Zeppelin and The Band.
I was hired to make water-bed frames, a one-man woodworking and assembly line guy. If anything said LA '71, it was waterbeds.
The boys' skit came on in the afternoon - McKean, Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and David Lander.
They defined us, and LA, and the time - and kept going in various combinations for the next 55 years, just below the surface of stardom. Michael McKean was Lenny and Squiggy, David St. Hubbins (Spinal Tap), Best in Show, A Mighty Wind.
But here, on Better Call Saul, is where McKean, playing a powerful law-firm founder, finds himself at last with a failing mind, and this scene, it hits hard in so many ways.
Bill Bottrell retweeted
If you're going to attempt to persuade citizens to fight for their nation, you must first ensure that you have established among them a shared national story and the highest levels of social solidarity, trust and cohesion. If you've spent several decades eroding those things, you'll find you're left with a citizenry which feels it has little to fight for. That's basically the difference between Britain in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Bill Bottrell retweeted
In 1996, a Libyan leader put one billion dollars on the table for Black America. Washington made sure it never reached them.
The offer came during Louis Farrakhan's visit to Tripoli in January 1996. Muammar Gaddafi pledged the money to the Nation of Islam for economic development-Black-owned banks, factories, housing, schools, hospitals. Not a loan. Not charity with strings. A gift from an African head of state to the descendants of enslaved Africans.
Farrakhan did everything by the book. He applied to the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control for permission to accept the money. The Clinton administration denied it in August 1996. Libya was a state sponsor of terrorism. Sanctions barred the transaction. Case closed. Thoughts 💭 ⁉️
