Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
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John Quiggin 
Kompromat
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kgb-spy-russia/
Our host: “Civil discussion and no coarse language please.”
There goes my planned comment on Trump, Vance, Lindsey Graham and their case officer Putin.
James,
I thought I managed it with my post. It said in essence what I wanted to say. It was the only way I could safely do so without breaking all the discussion rules.
How can the (voting) majority of US citizens not see what is happening? Or are they beginning to see it?
Without a profound change very soon, the collapse of the US will be very rapid, occurring in just a few short years. There will be a collapse of effective governance, a collapse of the economy, a collapse of environment and a collapse of human health, to name the main big ticket items. Their current course, unaltered, will collapse their entire society and nation in short order.
Proper awakes, possibly
The divide in Europe is now between those who cling, against all the evidence, to the vain hope that Trump can be won over by flattery and appeasement, and those who accept that it is now up to Europe to arm and fund Ukraine until Putin accepts its sovereignty and independence. The current CW is the former, but facts will win out.
Starmer still hopes for a role as mediator, but in fact he has burnt his boats at the symbolic level by his hug of Zelensky in front of 10 Downing street and arranging an informal audience with the king at Sandringham – ahead of Trump’s state visit, no date set, and it won’t be soon.
Substantively he has done the same by securing agreement at Sunday’s meeting for a future security guarantee through a “coalition of the willing”, sidelining Hungary and Slovakia inside the EU and bringing the UK and Norway back to the European fold. (Nprway is as rich as Croesus and has a land border with Russia). Coalitions need an administrative structure. The Zoom working party is the seed of a future European Defence Agency, and will soon be looking for more office space, security-cleared translators and interpreters, seconded staff officers with NATO experience, and high-bandwidth secure communications.
A handful of locals spontaneously turned up at the gates of Sandringham in deepest Norfolk waving Ukrainian flags. They were perfectly clear why. A few of the elite are similarly clear-sighted: Phillips O’Brien, an American professor working in Scotland, who offers the illuminating analogy of an abusive relationship https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/ ; Kaja Kalas, the EU foreign policy chief, a Lithuanian woman https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/28/european-leaders-throw-support-behind-zelenskyy-after-heated-trump-meeting ; Rasmus Jarlov, chair of the Danish parliament defence committee https://www.wionews.com/world/zelensky-would-run-naked-in-nyc-for-getting-security-guarantees-says-denmark-defence-committees-chair-8771849 . There will be others.
I have yet to see anybody influential picking up my suggestion to forget about overall defence expenditure and concentrate for now on boosting direct aid to Ukraine. By taking on Putin in self-defence, Ukraine has dramatically lowered the objective threat to other European countries. The effective US exit from NATO leaves important gaps in specific areas such as logistics, communications, command and control, and intelligence, which will not be easy or cheap to fill. The French and British nuclear forces are now at last useful, but fitting them in to a new alliance is anther hard problem. But without imperial ambitions, there is no need for Europe to copy the bloated US military establishment.
Corrigendum
Title should read: Europe awakes, possibly
God, I hate pushy autocorrect algorithms. Why can’t I have one that fawns and grovels like a Trump courtier, and humbly requests my input when I type something stupid?
The only theory that makes sense is that T is a Russian asset and P has Kompromat on him. The Snopes report suggests T has been a Russian asset for a long time. T’s clearest and perhaps only goal is to be dictator of the USA. He thinks P will help him and then they will be dictator bros dividing up the world spoils.
T is correct about the first but incorrect about the second. P wants T as dictator of the US because he knows T is deranged and will destroy much of the state capacity of the US. Right now, on top of everything else T is halting all Cyber Command operations against Russia. He is giving Russia a free hand to attack the US and all US allies. None of it makes any sense except for the Occam’s razor, parsimonious, simplest explanation. T is a Russian asset whether or not he fully understands this.
🇺🇦
I guess it was a mistake to let in Murdoch. I too wonder if we are going to end up smarter, eventually, bc of all this mess. With our poor media culture though, my guess is we won’t, at least in the short term.
I am not trying to make excuses. (Not possible!) It’s hard to believe this is happening again.
However, I believe in you, Europeans. You will find a way.
N,
We are all battening down against the storms of the future. How many of us are left in the aftermath, if there is even an aftermath, is a good question. I happen to think there will not be many, or even any, humans left but I hope I am wrong.
Where I live we are battening down right now against a large Category 2 cyclone (you would call it a hurricane) where it looks like the eye will pass directly over the northern half of Brisbane, where I live in the NW quadrant. This is the city of Brisbane, Australia, pronounced “BRIZ-bn” not “Briz-BANE”. The only saving grace is that the cyclone is not projected to increase to Category 3 or beyond. The eye appears likely to pass over us or close to us. The highest winds are in the eye-wall so significant damage to my house on the hill is possible even at Cat 2.
Climate change is not (yet) necessarily responsible for this cyclone and it hitting Brisbane. What is happening is still quite consistent with the 1 in 50 year approx. frequency of cyclones hitting Brisbane and environs. But climate change will either increase the frequency and/or the severity going forward or even decrease frequency but increase severity. A bit of uncertainty still surrounds that.
“Hurricane Donald” (Cat 5 or 6) is now tearing apart the USA and the international order. The only beneficiaries will be (are already) Russia and China. The US people and the remaining functional US institutions have to do something or else we are all lost. But all the nails have to stand up together because the lone nail that stands up gets hammered. Stay safe.
“The only beneficiaries will be (are already) Russia and China”
Correction Iko: Trump, his oligarch cronies, criminal associates and (only the depth that varies) fraudulent offspring will also likely do well.
Troy,
I was talking at the state actor level. It is clear that many private / individual actors are acting out of pure self-interest and expect great personal benefits. I think they have all underestimated the many far-reaching levels of chaos and damage that will be unleashed in this globally destructive and disintegrative process.
Ah, my apologies Iko. Anything “Trump” tends to agitate the cogs in my head used for clear comprehension. I’ll be more careful next time.
Troy, No worries, we are all on edge. (Cyclone Alfred also has me on edge. The eye, which means also the eye-walls with the highest winds, looks set to pass over North Brisbane and the NW Brisbane city limits about where I live. Just hope it stays Cat 2 or lower.)
The US has now “paused” (read “ceased forever”) aid to Ukraine. It appears to me that Zelenskyy was deliberately baited to upset him and pave the way for this decision which had almost certainly been taken before that meeting.
Europe must defend itself, with some non-US aid. Fortunately, I think Europe (EU plus GB and some of Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Lichtenstein) can do this at a canter.
The Trumpcession is on the way
Atlanta Fed ( https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow: )
“The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -2.8 percent on March 3, down from -1.5 percent on February 28. […]The nowcast of first-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth and real private fixed investment growth fell from 1.3 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively, to 0.0 percent and 0.1 percent.”
That didn’t take long. Note that the slide is so far almost entirely down to sentiment and perceived uncertainty – the only economically significant policy action Trump has taken before today has been the initial 10% tariff on imports from China. That has now changed, with the imposition of 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and hiking the China tariff to 20%. It looks as if middle America understands and fears what lies ahead much better than Wall Street.
An idle thought. The Trump Administration is touting as a big win a plan by Taiwanese chip giant TSMC to invest “$100 bn” in chip foundries in the United States. One of the key pieces of technology in a chip foundry is the mask making machine. TSMC does not make its own, it buys them from ASML in the Netherlands. I’ve written about this before but a tech website is no doubt more credible ( https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/731065 ) :
“[ASML’s] top-of-the-line machines like the high-numerical-aperture (high NA) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines can cost up to US$380 million (RM1.6 billion) and weigh as much as two Airbus A320s. ASML is the only company on earth that has the ability to make these machines.”
These machines require export licenses from the Dutch government. This is not a formality; ASML can’t sell its most advanced gear to PRC Chinese chipmakers.
I have two questions.
– Is the TSMC plan contingent on installing ASML machines?
– What will the Dutch government ask the USA in exchange for an export license for foundries in the USA?
sunshine —
Things are happening fast now .To think was I assuming I probably would not live long enough to see what came next ! Two things stand out about the mainstream press coverage . 1) This time no one is saying we just need to wait it out until sanity returns in the US . There is a growing realisation that business as usual might be the cause rather than the cure . 2) There is no analysis in terms of decline of empire . NATO etc are part of the infrastructure of empire that directed the lions share of wealth Americas way .Inevitably the world empire couldn’t last ,America was the only large modern economy left standing after WW2. Trumps ahistorical narrative about American taxpayers being ripped off and wasting money on NATO out of the goodness of their freedom loving democratic hearts is left unchallenged .
Oh, gosh – I hope the storm will not be very destructive, Iko!! It sounds frightening.
I try not to say the names of certain people, but “Hurricane Donald” does have a certain appeal.
Dannielle Maguire, digital producer for the National News Desk at ABC Brisbane, wrote a piece published yesterday (Mar 5), including:
The latest storm surge expected for coastal properties in the path of Cyclone Alfred is reportedly around 100 cm over and above the high tide level. That’s a temporary phenomenon. Relentless and accelerating sea level rise (SLR) will be a much more permanent phenomenon. The Alfred-induced temporary sea level rise is a portent of what’s to come with lasting SLR within the next few decades.
The rate of global mean SLR is about 5 mm/year now. (World Meteorological Organization report titled State of the Global Climate 2023, Figure 6, global mean rate of SLR was 4.77 mm/year mean for period Jan 2014 to Dec 2023, extrapolated to Jan 2024)
The doubling rate of global mean SLR since satellite altimetry began measurements in 1993 has been around 18 years.
The rate of global mean surface temperature (GMST) warming has increased from 0.18 °C/decade (linear best fit in the period 1970-2010) to 0.36 °C/decade (linear best fit post-2010). See Figure 1. Global Surface Temperature Relative to 1880-1920.
In the YouTube video titled sea level rise – is Greenland beyond its tipping point?, published 29 Jul 2024, duration 04:19, glaciologist Professor Dr Jason Box, from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said from time interval 0:01:50:
“Now if climate continues warming, which is more than likely, then the loss commitment grows. My best guess, if I had to put out numbers; so by 2050, 40 centimetres above 2000 levels; and then by the year 2100, 150 centimetres, or 1.5 metres above the 2000 level, which is something like four feet. Those numbers follow the dashed-red curve on the IPCC’s 6th Assessment, which represents the upper 5-percentile of the model calculations, because the model calculations don’t deliver ice as quickly as is observed. If you take the last two decades of observations, the models don’t even reproduce that until 40 years from now.”
The global mean rate of SLR is circa 5 mm/year now. I would not be at all surprised to see the global mean rate of SLR accelerate to 10 mm/year sometime in the late 2030s, and accelerate further to 20 mm/year possibly before 2050.
Thus, 40 to possibly 50 cm of global mean SLR by 2050, relative to year-2000 baseline, is entirely likely, and multi-metre SLR is entirely plausible well before 2100.
Meanwhile, the insurance companies keep raising insurance premiums towards unaffordable rates, or refuse to insure. Note that insurance companies generally will not insure for ‘actions of the sea’.
And yet the deniers continue to deny reality.
The media continue to downplay the existential risks.
The bulk of the human race still doesn’t care about climate change. It will care but it doesn’t care yet. It will care enough to take action when enough people die or are displaced as impoverished and desperate climate refugees. By the time that happens, climate change will be accelerating and irreversible on any generational time scale. It may even be irreversible on a millennial time scale. That is to say it will then take thousands of years by human efforts or by other effects, like the mass death of 90% of all humans, to effect any difference in the trajectory of climate change. Or climate change may be completely runaway and unstoppable by then.
We are seeing a new phenomenon of weather systems getting stuck in one place. We have seen it with the (northern) polar vortex and its associated weather systems. We have seen it here with local and regional rain bombs. We are now seeing it with tropical cyclones, at least in the sub-tropics. Perhaps the new term will be cyclonic rain bomb system. In addition, the sub-tropics are becoming the tropics and the tropics are becoming the super-tropics. I have seen an article suggesting that our northern Australian waters will become too hot for crocodiles. No prizes for guessing where they will migrate. (They won’t a danger though. Humans will be so desperate for food by then, the crocodiles will all be hunted and eaten.)
Lismore is being evacuated again ready for its second devastating flood in four years. More and more of our towns and suburbs situated on flood plains are becoming untenable. More and more of our towns and suburbs situated on or near the seaside littoral zone are becoming untenable. There will have to be a mass relocation and/or mass hardening of all structures and infrastructures right across Australia. This must be a relocation and hardening against heat, fire, tempest and flood.
This will take all the resources we have. There certainly will be no respite and no reversing of climate change effects in our lifetimes, or in our children’s lifetimes or in our grandchildren’s lifetimes. Likely, there will be no reversal for thousands of years or more. The sooner people realise this the better. As a nation, we should already be putting all resources into this survival effort. We can no longer afford to waste resources on any and all efforts that do not relocate or harden (as appropriate) all communities, structures and infrastructures right across Australia.
No professional sports funding should ever be allocated again. No sports stadium should ever be built again. No tourism subsidies should ever be allocated again. No fossil fuel subsidies should ever be allocated again. No negative gearing should ever be permitted again. No non-taxation of the rich should ever be permitted again. The list should go on to end all of the truly wasteful spending that is not fully and equitably directed at human health and security, at community, structure and infrastructure sustainability and at such environmental sustainability as we may still be able to achieve.
The over-consumption / wasteful spending party is over; ought to be over. The sooner people grow up and realise that the better. I use “grow up” advisedly. The average modern human is infantile in demanding continuous and selfish gratification of excessive appetites while others suffer, the environment collapses and the climate goes into a runaway state. The average modern human is infantile because he/she is trained and brainwashed to be this way by the corporate consumption and advertising system.
But an accounting is coming. A judgement is coming. Not a judgement by a supernatural being but a “judgement” by the natural forces which we have ignored, imagining ourselves to be above, beyond and outside nature. We are not. We will learn the hardest way possible that selfish, unfettered capitalism, stripped of all values other than the cash nexus, the cold cash calculation, and the even more vapid virtual valuation, leads only to utter material and human destruction: to a perdition here on earth. The time is close. The sooner people realise it the better. We may still be able to prevent or ameliorate some of the worst destruction and misery if we change, even at this late stage.
Tropical Cyclone (TC) Alfred is now a tropical low (TL) with a centre somewhere off Bribie Island just north of Brisbane. The TC->TL system has followed a slow, meandering course and shows every sign of continuing to do so albeit in a direction consistent with landfall of the decaying centre some time soon, likely within hours or less.
The system has barely side-swiped us (my wife and I) at our residence as we are inland a little on the NW outskirts of Greater Brisbane. We have only had moderate rain and some annoying winds and gusts so far. There has been nothing damaging. This has not been the case for hundreds of thousands of people. The immediate coast and hinterland have been hit from Ballina to the Gold Coast and and to the Moreton Bay area and islands, major and minor.
There has been a lot of damage, over this entire area, to beaches, trees, powerlines, other electrical equipment, to some houses and also current serious flooding and likely (almost certain) further serious flooding damage to come. Lismore is once again in serious danger of major flooding. More damage west and north of the southern tip of Bribie Island is likely and much more in the way of serious flooding is likely over the coming days.
All of this serves to show, as I have been harping on for some time, that our infrastructure is in no shape to cope with current climate conditions and sea level conditions, let alone the future grave worsening of conditions which is coming inevitably. Geoff Miell mentions the future dangers above.
Meanwhile, all we do is respond reactively rather than preventatively. Our society and nation continue to do next to nothing to reduce CO2 emissions fast enough. We continue to do nothing significant to relocate housing, towns and suburbs in unsustainable positions on the coast or on river flood plains. We do nothing significant to relocate or harden infrastructure as appropriate. We do nothing significant to address our housing crisis, to prevent further development in inappropriate, unsustainable locations with an eye to future climate change and sea level rise, nor to assist people to relocate or harden their residences as appropriate – and to compel landlords to act -against the ever-increasing dangers.
If we keep chasing our tail in this fashion – ever repairing structures and infrastructure left in now inappropriate locations and failing to harden structures when that is appropriate and necessary – we will only end up in a worse and worse position. A continuous national reconstruction and climate change action emergency needs to be declared. All national expenditure not directed to these ends, other than all standard necessary health, welfare, education, other social spending (and needed defence spending only), needs to be redirected to these ends. We can longer afford to subsidise industries and activities of the consumption variety rather than those of the long term productive, nation-building, nation preserving and sustainable variety.
If we continue on our present path, we will slide ever further backwards into widespread poverty and social and national collapse and disintegration.
Trump has, by design or not, burst the bubble of US superiority. Within weeks he has transformed the US into a pariah state, unprincipled, unreliable and untrustworthy, along with Russia and the other miscreants.
Australia needs to review its national security arrangements with this global liability, AUKUS seems to be just another mobster squeeze and Pine Gap could well be up for rent.