Park Life

Red Stripe was quality.

Rayvin celebrates another asymmetrical strike at Gloom.

It's one of the best czech lagers on the market. Trust me.

It might well be that Trump wasn't joking about 4% growth. The only dangers are the hardening of the dollar which will hurt exports but America is in a very privileged position in that its internal market can buy a helluva lot of its own product. The hidden secret is that Capitalism grew and flourished between 1950-1975ish when the state still retained a lot of its regulatory and interventionist power and proved no hindrance. It follows that the attack on the state has other motives than the mantra of 'free markets'.

The endgame is to move first position (phase one investment) capital back to the states. The leverage will come in the form of sweetheart deals, tax breaks and the muddying of the investment waters in China for Western Capital. This has already started. Trump (his advisors) have correctly identified China as the only real existential threat to America. Russia doesn't have the economy or reach to threaten America in the long term in any significant way apart from military engagement. The increased cost of goods will be offset by job creation and the increase in inflation will be offset by endless borrowing from itself (Treasury paper).

Yeah he used to go on about the currency wars with China right back at the start of the campaign.

“The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country… All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are destroyed by new industries whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised countries, by industries that work up raw materials drawn from the remotest zones, industries whose products are consumed in every quarter of the globe… The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarous, nations into civilisation.” Marx and Engels 1848. Communist Manifesto. 1848...Yeah you read that right. This was way before Globalization even got going.

The catch here is that Western capital is heavily invested in China and Vice versa. Mandhelson found out many moons ago when he tried to get the EU to take a harder line. https://www.ft.com/content/8892d198-f1ba-11e5-aff5-19b4e253664a “The Chinese are deeply concerned and we hear now from reliable sources in Beijing who suggest the Chinese government, the Communist Party, are developing lists of U.S. interests against which they could retaliate, commercial interests, and obviously one merely has to look at top U.S. exports to China to get a quick sense of whose heads may be on the chopping block,” said one China trade policy expert who interacts closely with U.S. business. The expert pointed out that more than 30 states have over $1 billion in exports to China and that there is over $500 billion in commercial engagements by U.S. companies in China. All of that would be at risk if China retaliated. “That commercial engagement supports American jobs, many American jobs here in the United States,” the expert said.'' http://fortune.com/2016/12/13/donald-trump-business-conflict-interest/

Last few pages made good reading. Good posts chaps. This will have Gloom conflicted.

Your lot started the post truth we finished it.

U.S. foreign policy is to encircle and destabilize Russia. Even China sees this and hence they now have a mutual defence agreement. China realising it's next.

You're just pretending we're saying the all are. They clearly all aren't. I stick up for the Guardian as and when needed. There are vast swathes of the MSM that are part of setting the agenda for the corporate and establishment mural...But by no means all. Along with the Indi the Guardian is least vulnerable to the prevailing 'story'....That everything is cool in Mu Mu land. As is the BBC/Telegraph and F.T. on good days.

Thought Viner was English.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Viner

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/03/18/why-the-color-revolutions-failed/ ''Samuel Huntington, summarising the mix of primary causes for the "third wave" of democratisation that began in 1974, listed a new but not decisive factor that had been absent in the preceding two waves: "Changes in the policies of external actors…a major shift in US policies toward the promotion of human rights and democracy in other countries…". American international NGOs ("Ingos") were prominent mechanisms through which this causal link between superpower foreign policy interests and regime change worked out in many transitions from authoritarian rule in the twenty-one-year-long "third wave". The intention is to bring the state back into a field dominated by flawed renderings of transnational activism. The principal argument is that the main and direct causes of the colour revolutions were United States foreign-policy interests (strategic expansion, energy security and the war on terrorism) as they were serviced by Ingos. Without the intervention of these US-sponsored Ingos, the political landscapes in countries like Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan would not have been repainted in new colours. These three revolutions – the "rose revolution" in Georgia (November 2003-January 2004), the "orange revolution" in Ukraine (January 2005) and the "tulip revolution" in Kyrgyzstan (April 2005) – each followed a near-identical trajectory; all were spearheaded by the American democratisation Ingos working at the behest of the US foreign policy establishment. It will be argued that the comparable political convulsions of Uzbekistan (May 2005) and Azerbaijan (November 2005) did not experience "colour revolutions" due to a variation in the independent variable, US foreign-policy priorities.'' https://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/colour_revolutions_3196.jsp https://www.ft.com/content/9b5a2ed2-af96-11e4-b42e-00144feab7de The wave of revolutions in the Arab world stirred deep anxieties in the Chinese Communist party about popular risings against undemocratic governments — and the chaos they can unleash. The role of western institutions and technology in stoking these revolts was noted in Beijing. The fact that the Egyptian uprising of 2011 was labelled the “Facebook revolution” and that one of its most prominent early activists was a Google executive helped to seal the fate of those two companies in China.''

'This narrative reduces Washington and its Western European allies to befuddled onlookers, whose role consisted of brokering a truce between the Yanukovych government and the violent demonstrators in Kiev’s Maidan square, which quickly broke down amid violence. It cynically excludes the extensive evidence that the overthrow of Yanukovych was the outcome of a plan worked out by the US government to install a pro-NATO regime in Kiev and thereby weaken Russia and further Washington’s drive for hegemony in Eurasia. Thus, the piece makes no mention of the infamous leaked telephone conversation between Washington’s point person on Ukraine, high-ranking State Department official Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, in which Nuland spelled out the US role in preparing Yanukovych’s downfall. She even dictated the parts to be played by individual opposition figures in a successor government, naming “Yats” (her pet name for Arseniy Yatsenyuk) as prime minister, the post he assumed post-coup. Nor does it refer to Nuland’s public admission in December 2013 that since 1991 Washington had pumped $5 billion into Ukraine in an attempt to secure the kind of regime it desired. Much of this money was funneled trough the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an agency created to conduct the kind of political operations formerly overseen by the CIA. NED President Carl Gershman referred to Ukraine as “the biggest prize.” https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/01/06/time-j06.html "Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations," she said. "We have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine." They always say its about Democracy etc...Time and time again it's about Democracy...It's about Democracy. As are the 800 foreign bases...They too are about democracy. Interest in Ukraine is high among the vultures. Jabba is right on it.

I've been nice so far. Don't make me come after you.

Guardian aren't as bad as the Mail. Yet they continue to call ISIS 'rebels' and make out Corby is some kind of Marxist nutcase. I go to it first every morning before I look at anything else. It was marvelous on Snowden as you say. Been taken over by sandal wearing, avocado eating hippies this year mind.

Well worth a read. http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/blade-runner_shooting.html The new one looks promising. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/blade-runner-2-has-best-828389

South of France is full of em.

I can't guarantee it.

You looking forward to the new one? Out next year.